Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/31

Rh sation and training gave it a natural superiority in war, in which it was expected to take the first place. It occupied a similar position again for about twenty-five years after the Peloponnesian war, with somewhat higher pretensions and a wider sphere of influence. For about ten years Thebes held a like supremacy in Central Greece and a part of Peloponnese. A similar precedency in Sicily was at times attributed to Syracuse, and in Magna Graecia, that is, in the Greek cities of Italy, to Croton or Tarentum.

The nearest approach, however, to an Empire was the position held by Athens between the Persian wars and the end of the Peloponnesian war [B.C. 478–404]. The Confederacy of Delos was formed for a special purpose—to put down piracy and to exclude the Persian fleets from the Ægean, and thus secure the independence of the Greek states of Asia Minor. It was meant to be a federation of free and independent states, but did become in practice something like an Athenian Empire. Athens claimed the right of forcing members to remain in the League, to maintain a democratic form of government, to admit in certain circumstances an Athenian garrison and "resident," and to refer certain controversies to the Athenian courts. But this combination never embraced Central Greece or Peloponnese; it was almost entirely confined to islands and to towns in Thrace and Asia, and was finally dissolved by the result of the Peloponnesian war.

The universal control afterwards exercised first by the Macedonian and then by the Roman Government, so far from promoting unity, made the separation of