But to finish the story of Cimon, in the following year, in 461, he was ostracized.
Have you seen this before? Of course.
In other words, the leader of what one might think of as a sort of moderate
democratic or pro-Spartan faction was removed from the political scene.
And what we're going to see now is the continuing transformation of this
voluntary confederacy of independent poleis into a network of ostensibly free
but in fact Athenian-dominated tribute paying allies.
One of the great sources of information that we have is a magnificent set of
inscriptions called the Athenian Tribute Lists.
Again, we're going to talk about this in somewhat more detail in the next lecture,
but in the mid 450s. The Athenians decided to move the treasury
of the Delian league from Delos to Athens "for safe keeping".
And at this point they started keeping meticulous records of how much each state
paid every year. That's actually 1 60th of the tribute,
which was skimmed off, quote, for Athena, end quote.
And these allow us to track sort of internal relations within the league.
How did Athens control the allies? The answer first, of course, is to flee.
The insular and coastal composition of the league meant that Fleet ships could get
virtually anywhere and generally very fast.
But there are other means of control as well.
So for example, the Athenians had official friends in a number of the allied states,
they're called [unknown]. And they serve both as gathering, to
gather intelligence about what's happening there, to one might say lobby for the
Athenians. And the Athenians tended to support
democratic factions in states where there was political struggle.
They also exercised legal control. Eventually Certain cases especially
capital cases, had to be heard in Athens by an Athenian jury.
Even if they involved citizens from a league state.
There was economic control, as well. The fleet played a great role, it can
control trade with this kind of navy. And trade as we'll see becomes one of the
causal factors in the war that breaks out between Athens and Sparta.
Eventually, the Athenians force the allied states to use Athenian coins, weight and
measures. Both psychologically and economically
very, very, significant. In cases of states that rebelled or where
there was extra land, moreover, the Athenians established colonies, now, not
the kind of colonies that we saw back in the archaic age.
But these were called cleruchies and they were meant to be Athenian outposts
constantly in contact with and beholden to the mother city.
Political, legal, economical control, all of these things working together.
I've put on our list a sort of outline of the major events here, and there's one
more, which is that around 460, the Athenians allied with the neighboring
state of Megara. You can see Megara occupies a very
uncomfortable position, sort of between Corinth on one side and Athens on the
other. But it's also strategically a very
important position, dominating this part of the land bridge, the Isthmus of
Corinth. When the Athenians allied with Megara, the
Corinthians were outraged and began to form alliances with the Peloponnesian
states, and there ensued about a 15 year war.
I put that, I say it in that way because there were no climactic battles.
There was a series of bloody and, or a set of bloody and inconclusive skirmishes.
But certainly tensions were mounting. Athenian domination over the league was
getting more and more complete. Resistance to Athenian domination on the
part of non-members like Corinth, and like Thebes was getting stronger and stronger.
And there also emerged at this time in Athens.
One of the most powerful leaders of in, within Athenian history and that of course
is the famous Pericles and we'll talk about him next.