Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/173

Rh in Athens than ever, and it is a remarkable fact that the man who had led the opposition to him since the disappearance of Cimon, Thucydides, son of Milesias, was ostracised the next year. Thus Pericles remained active and powerful. He was promoting colonies at Thurii in Italy (B.C. 444) and at Amphipolis in Thrace (B.C. 437), the former as a means of securing trade with Italy, the latter to maintain Athenian influence in the rich gold-mining district of Pangaeus. He also interfered with such effect in a quarrel which had arisen between Samos and Miletus (B.C. 440) that after a nine months' siege the Samians were compelled to surrender their free status in the Confederacy of Delos, and to become an acknowledged subject of Athens, as did Byzantium also, which had joined the Samian movement. The only really free allies were now the Chians and Lesbians, and the altered position of Athens had been emphasised some ten years before by the removal of the treasury from Delos to Athens. The money, therefore, came more and more to be regarded as Athenian revenue, in return for which Athens was bound to maintain a fleet in the Aegean, but was not bound to render any account of it otherwise. The amount of the phoros had steadily in- creased, either by the adhesion of new members or by the readjustment of the contributions, so that it was greater by about a third than the original sum obtained. The right of Athens to enforce payment, and, if necessary, to place an overseer or resident with a garrison in any of the subject states, was gradually asserted, and contributed to her imperial pretensions.