Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/326

 802 mSTORY OF GREECE. neglect attendance at the sjiiod. But we do not know the steps whereby this assembly, at first an effective reality, gradually dwindled into a mere form and vanished. Nothing, however, can more forcibly illustrate the difference of character between the maritime allies of Athens, and the Peloponnesian allies of Sparta, than the fact, — that while the former shrank fi'ora personal service, and thought it an advantage to tax themselves in place of it, — the latter were " ready enough with their bodies," but uncomplying and impracticable as to contributions. i The con- tempt felt by these Dorian landsmen for the military efficiency of the lonians recurs frequently, and appears even to have ex- ceeded what the reality justified : but when we turn to the con- duct of the latter twenty years earlier, at the battle of Lade, in the very crisis of the Ionic revolt from Persia,^ — we detect the same want of energy, the same incapacity of personal effort and labor, as that which broke up the confederacy of Delos with all its beneficial promise. To appreciate fully the indefatigable ac- tivity and daring, together with the patient endurance of labori- ous maritime training, which characterized the Athenians of that day, — we have only to contrast them with these confederates, so remarkably destitute of both. Amidst such glaring inequalities of merit, capacity, and power, to maintain a confederacy of equal members was impossible : it was in the nature of things that the confederacy should either break up, or be transmuted into an Athenian empire. It has already been mentioned that the first aggregate assess- ment of tribute, proposed by Aristeides, and adopted by the synod at Delos, was four hundred and sixty talents in money. At that time many of the confederates paid their quota, not in money but in ships ; but this practice gradually diminished, as the com- mutations above alluded to, of money in place of ships, were' multiplied, while the aggregate tribute, of course, became larger. It was no more than six hundred talents 3 at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, forty-six years after the first forma- ' Thucyd. i, 141. aCiuaai 6e iroifiorefjoi oi avrovpyol rCiv uv&puTiUV ij Xpi/fiaai ■nO/.euEiv, etc. ^ See Herodot. vi, 12. and the preceding volume of this history, chap. XXXV. vol. iv. p. 301. 3 Thucyd. ii, 18.