Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/334

 810 mSTORY OF GREECE. from Athens, with the view of procuring grants or making theif fortunes bj partnership with powerful Thracians in working the gold-mines round Mount Pangajus. In so doing, they speedily found themselves in collision with the Greeks of the opposite island of Mount Thasos, who possessed a considerable strip of iand, with various dependent towns on the continent of Thrace, and derived a large revenue from the mines of Skapte Hyle, as well as from others in the neighborhood.' The condition of Thasos at this time, about 465 B.C., indicates to us the progress which the Grecian states in the iEgean had made since their liberation from Persia. It had been deprived both of its fortifi- cations and of its maritime force, by order of Darius, about 491 B.C., and must have remained in this condition until after the* repulse of Xerxes ; but we now find it well-fortified and possess- ing a powerful maritime force. In what precise manner the quarrel between the Thasians and the Athenians of Eion manifested itself, respecting the trade and the mines in Thrace, we are not informed ; but it reached such a heio^ht that the Athenians were induced to send a powerful arma- ment against the island, under the command of Kimon.2 Hav- ino- vanquished the Thasian force at sea, they disembarked, gained various battles, and blocked up the city by land as well as by sea. And at the same time they undertook — what seems to liave been part and parcel of the same scheme — the estab- lishment of a larger and more powerful colony on Thracian ground not far from Eion. On the Strymon, about three miles higher up than Eion, near the spot where the river narrows itself again out of a broad expanse of the nature of a lake, was situated the Edonian town or settlement called Ennea Hodoi, (Nine Ways), a little above the bridge, which here served as an important communication for all the people of the interior. Both ' About Thasos, see Herodot. vi, 46-48 ; vii, 118. The position of Kagusa in the Adriatic, in reference to the despots of Servia and Bosnia in the fif- teenth and sixteenth centaries, was very similar to that of Athens and Thasos in regard to the Thracian princes of the interior. In Engel's His- tory of Ragusa we find an account of the large gains made in that city by its contracts to work the gold and silver mines belonging to these princes (Engel, Geschichte des Freystaates Ragusa, sect. 36, p. 163. Wien, 1807). • Thucyd. i, 100, 101 ; Plutarch, Kimon, c. 14 ; Diodor xi, 70.