Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/314

 290 fflSTORY OF GREECE. CHAPTER XLV. PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONFEDERACY UNDER ATHENS AS HEAD -FIRST FORMATION AND RAPID EXPANSION OF THE ATHE NIAN EMPIRE. I HAVE already recounted, in the preceding chapter, how the Asiatic Greeks, breaking loose from the Spartan Pausanias, en- treated Athens to organize a new confederacy, and to act as pre- siding city (Vorort), — and how this confederacy, framed not only for common and pressing objects, but also on principles of equal rights and constant control on the part of the members, attracted soon the spontaneous adhesion of a large proportion of Greeks, insular or maritime, near the ^gean sea. I also noticed this event as giving commencement to a new era in Grecian politics. For whereas there had been before a tendency, not very power- ful, yet on the whole steady and increasing, towards something like one Pan-HePenic league under Sparta as president, — from henceforward that tendency disappears and a bifurcation begins : Athens and Sparta divide the Grecian world between them, and bring a much larger number of its members into cooperation, either with one or the other, than had ever been so arranged before. Thucydides marks precisely, as far as general words can go, the character of the new confederacy during the first years after its commencement : but unhappily he gives us scarcely any par- ticular facts, — and in the absence of such controlling evidence, a habit has grown up of describing loosely the entire period be- tween 477 B.C., and 405 B.C. (the latter date is that of the battle of JEgos Potamos), as constituting " the Athenian empire." This word denotes correctly enough the last part, perhaps the last forty years, of the seventy-two years indicated ; but it is mis- leading when applied to the first part : nor, indeed, can any single word be found which faithfully characterizes as well the one part as the other. A great and serious change had taken place, and we disguise the fact of that change,, if we talk of the Athenian