ABSTRACT
The new Athenian alliance had little to fear from the Persians in the years immediately after its formation. The initiative passed to Athens. Her first naval success was to expel Pausanias from Byzantium (he had avoided conviction after his recall to Sparta, and had returned to Byzantium). The Athenian campaigns which follow-the capture of Eion in northern Greece, on the River Strymon, and of the island of Skyros, north-east of Euboia, both in 476/5 - were the work of Kimon, son of Miltiades the victor of Marathon. Miltiades' last operation (in 489) against the island ofParos, in the Cyclades, can be seen as an attempt to move on to the offensive against Persia after the defensive stand at Marathon. Paros had been a failure; but Miltiades' son Kimon pursued a similar line in the 470s and 460s, showing that he saw himself as the heir to his father's policies as well as his debts (for which see Plut. Kim. iv). But the similarity goes further: Miltiades had been a great figure in the early colonial days of Athens: his pocket principality in the Chersonese was in the van of Pisistratid expansion (for good relations between the tyrants and Miltiades in the 520s see the archon-list ML 6 = Fornara 23, belying Herodotus: Miltiades had held high office under the tyrants). In a sense, such sixth-century conquests are the beginning of Athenian imperialism. So Kimon's campaigns, which culminated in the victory over Persia at the River Eurymedon in Pamphylia, show continuity not just with Miltiades the enemy of Persia but with Miltiades the founder of an overseas Athenian Empire. This was very self-conscious imitation, as is proved by the peculiarities of some epigrams which celebrate the family's achievements: a surviving pair commemorates the Persian victories in the strange order Salamis-Marathon; 1 it was perhaps Kimon himself who thus sought to remind Athenians, in verse, of his father's great battle, just as painters were to remind them of it by their Marathon in the Painted Stoa built in the middle of the fifth century: Oinoe, a deme close to Marathon, was the title of one of the subsidiary
himself from the Alkmaionidai by the time of his ostracism in 484 (Ath. Pol. xxii, where his politics are distinguished from those of his Alkmaionid kinsman Megakles). Themistokles' friends were, however, either too young (like
Pericles) or too powerless (like Aeschylus, who, as a poet, had to put his points obliquely), and he was ostracized. His activities in the Peloponnese may have been provocatively anti-Spartan (p. 25); in any event, he was forced to look for a permanent home in the king's Asia. He was condemned to death in his absence ( 469) and arrived in Persia as late as 465, eluding en route an Athenian fleet which was besieging Naxos. It will not do to paint Themistokles as Kimon's opponent on the
issue of foreign policy principles-that is, as a medising Sparta-hater -and thereby to seek to explain his ostracism in 4 71: it is now certain that very many ostraka were cast against him in the early 480s when his patriotism was not in question. And the logic of Themistoklean imperialism was perfectly compatible with the expansion of Athenian power in the Aegean for which Kimon was responsible, and which ultimately roused Kimon's friends the Spartans to make war on Athens, in 431. That expansion had continued, after Eion and Skyros, with the
coercion of Karystos on Euboia, and the suppression of the revolt of Naxos, the largest island of the Cyclades, which attempted to revolt in the early 460s. Individual Athenians felt no compunction at this tightening of the screws: an Athenian father of about this time called his son Karystonikos, shamelessly exulting in the 'Victory over Karystos', and the name Naxiades, which occurs in the same inscribed casualty-list (ML 48) can be similarly explained. The Athenians did not, however, lose sight of the Persian War
which, in accordance with the propaganda of 478, was still going on throughout the 470s. Soon after Naxos, Athens undertook a big aggressive campaign in the south-eastern Aegean, under Kimon's leadership; this was perhaps in response to allied discontent at the way the league was turning into a machine for policing its own members. The Persian fleet put out from Cyprus and was defeated in Pamphylia (southern Asia Minor) at the battle of the River Eurymedon. This brought in new allies, particularly from inland Karia, and new revenue. Returning from this success, Kimon was obliged to deal with a major allied revolt, that of Thasos, an island in the north Aegean, rich in minerals. Itmay indeed have been the news from Thasos which
turned Kimon back from seeking further conquests after the Eurymedon vicrory. Ancient states did not much practise 'economic policies' in our sense, but they liked to control their own sources of corn, and of silver for the purpose of coining. So, because of the silver mines which it controlled, Thasos was - considerations of league discipline apart-too important to be allowed to slip the leash (465). At last Sparta began to stir. When Thasos, under siege by Kimon,
appealed to her for help, she offered 'secretly' (but the offer was evidently everybody's secret at Athens) to invade Attica and thereby to relieve Thasos indirectly: Thuc. i.lOl. (Thuc. i. 99-117 is the main source for the years 479-440.) This was a clumsy piece of diplomacy: the offer was not implemented, though Thucydides is sure that it was sincere. It cannot have pleased Kimon, the Spartans' friend, any more than it pleased politicians of more obviously radical complexion. But the same year, 465, saw the biter bit: instead of forcing Athens to abandon an overseas operation to deal with a problem nearer home, that is, a Spartan army menacing the Attic border, Sparta was herself forced to welch on the Thasos offer, because she had to deal with a revolt of the helots at !thorne in Messenia. This coincided with an earthquake - for a superstitious Spartan, a sign of divine disap proval, which might well make the helots, who were surely experts in the psychology of their oppressors, hope that Spartan nerve might give.
