Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/328

 304 HISTORY OF GREECE. synod, which condemned the island to make restitution : the mass of the islanders threw the burden upon those who had committed the crime ; and these men, in order to evade payment, invoked, Kimon with the Athenian armament, — who conquered the island, expelled the inhabitants, and peopled it with Athenian settlers. Such clearance was a beneficial act, suitable to the new char- acter of Athens as guardian of the -/Egean sea against piracy : but it seems also connected with Athenian plans. The island lay very convenient for the communication with Lemnos, which the Athenians had doubtless reoccupied after the expulsion of the Persians,' and became, as well as Lemuos, a recognized ad- junct, or outlying portion, of Attica : moreover, there were old legends which connected the Athenians with it, as the tomb of their hero Theseus, whose name, as the mythical champion of democracy, was in peculiar favor at the period immediately fol- lowing the return from Salamis. It was in the year 476 B.C., that the oracle had directed them to bring home the bones of Theseus from Skyros, and to prepare for that hero a splendid entombment and edifice in their new city : they had tried to effect this, but the unsocial manners of the Dolopians had pre- vented a search, and it was only after Kimon had taken the island that he found, or pretended to find, the body. It was brought to Athens in the year 469 b.c.,^ and after being wel- ' Xenophon, Hellenic, v, 1, 31. quest of Skyros by Kimon in the year 476 b. c. He says, after citing a passage from Thucyd. i, 98, and from Plutarch, Theseus, c. 36, as well as a proposed correction of Bcntley, which he justly rejects : " The island was actually conquered in the year of the archon Phsedon. B.C. 476. This we know from Thucyd. i, 98, and Diodor. xi, 41-48, combined. Plutarch named the archon Phaedon, with reference to the conquest of the island : then, by a negligence not unusual with him, connected the oracle with that fact, as a contemporary transaction : although in truth the orHcle was not procured till six or seven years afterwards." Plutarch has many sins to answer for against chronological exactness; but the charge here made against him is undeser'ed. He states that the oraclewas given in (476 B.C.) the year of the archon Phaedon ; and that the body of Theseus was brought back to Athens in (469 B.C.) the year of the archon Aphepsion. There is nothing to contradict either statement ; nor do the passages of Thucydides and Diodorus, which Mr. Clinton adduces,
 * Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fasti Hellenic, ad ann. 476 B.C.) places the con-