Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/327

 GRECIAN CONFEDERACY UNDER ATHENS. 303 tion of the confederacy ; from whence we may infer that it was never at all increased upon individual members during the inter- val. For the difference between four hundred and sixty talents and sis hundred admits of being fully explained by the numerous commutations of service for money, as well as by the acquisitions of new members, which doubtless Athens had more or less the opportunity of making. It is not to be imagined that the confed- eracy had attained its maximum number, at the date of the first assessment of tribute : there must have been various cities, like Sinope and -^ilgina, subsequently added. i Without some such preliminary statements as those just Driven, respecting the new state of Greece between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, beginning with the Athenian hegemony, or headship, and ending with the Athenian empire, the reader would hardly understand the bearing of those particular events which our authorities enable us to recount ; events unhappily few in number, though the period must have been full of action, and not well authenticated as to dates. The first known enterprise of the Athenians in their new capacity — whether the first abso- lutely or not, we cannot determine — between 476 B.C. and 466 B.C., was the conquest of the important post of Eion, on the Strymon, where the Persian governor, Boges, starved out after a desperate resistance, destroyed himself rather than capitulate, together with his family and precious effects, as has already been stated. The next events named are their enterprises against the Dolopes and Pelasgi in the island of Skyros, seemingly about 470 B.C., and the Dryopes in the town and district of Karystus, in Euboea. To the latter, who were of a different kindred from the inhabitants of Chalkis and Eretria, and received no aid from them, they granted a capitulation : the former were more rigor- ously dealt with, and expelled from their island. Skyros was barren, and had little to recommend it, except a good maritime position and an excellent harbor ; while its inhabitants, seemingly akin to the Pelasgian residents in Lemnos, prior to the Athenian occupation of that spot, were alike piratical and cruel. Some Thessalian traders, recently plundered and imprisoned by them, had raised a complaint against them before the Amphiktyonic ' Thucyd. i, 108 ; Plutarch, Perikles, c, 20.