Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/251

 FOURTH YEAR OF THE WAR -RE VOLT OF MITYLENE. 229 Athenian empire. That empire undoubtedly contradicted one of the fundamental instincts of the Greek mind, the right of every separate town to administer its own political affairs apart from external control. The Peloponnesian alliance recognized this autonomy in theory, by the general synod and equal voting of all the members at Sparta, on important occasions ; though it was quite true, 1 as Perikles urged at Athens, that in practice nothing more was enjoyed than an autonomy confined by Spartan loading-strings, and though Sparta held in permanent custody hostages for the fidelity of her Arcadian allies, summoning their military contingents without acquainting them whither they were destined to march. But Athens proclaimed herself a despot, effacing the autonomy of her allies not less in theory than in practice : far from being disposed to cultivate in them any sense of a real common interest with herself, she did not even cheat them with those forms and fictions which so often appease discon- tent in the absence of realities. Doubtless, the nature of her empire, at once widely extended, maritime, and unconnected, or only partially connected, with kindred of race, rendered the forms of periodical deliberation difficult to keep up ; at the same time that it gave to her as naval chief an ascendency much more des- potic than could have been exercised by any chief on land. It is doubtful whether she could have overcome it is certain that she did not try to overcome these political difficulties ; so that her empire stood confessed as a despotism, opposed to the political instinct of the Greek mind ; and the revolts against it, like this of Mitylene, in so far as they represented a genuine feeling, and were not merely movements of an oligarchical party against their own democracy, were revolts of this offended instinct, much more than consequences of actual oppression. The Mitylena3ans might certainly affirm that they had no secu- rity against being one day reduced to the common condition of subject-allies like the rest ; yet an Athenian speaker, had he 1 Thucyd. i, 144. Kai orav KUKEIVOI (the Lacedaemoniins) Tale airuv uiroduat iroXeat, pr) acai rotf Aa/cedat/zovtotf iTUTjjtieiuf ai>To~ vofieta&ai, a%.?.' aiiToif ^/cuuroif, uf (3ov^.ovTai. About the hostages detained by Sparta for the fidelity of her allies, see Thucyd, v, 54, 61.