Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/280

 9.58 HISTORY OF GREECE To the misfortunes of Mitylene belongs, as a suitable appen dix, the fate of Paches, the Athenian commander, whose perfidy at Notium has been recently recounted. It appears, that having contracted a passion for two beautiful free women at Mitylene, Hellanis and Lamaxis, he slew their husbands, and got possession of them by force. Possibly, they may have had private friends at Athens, which must of course have been the case with many at Athens, but receiving rent from his lot of land in some other territory, the analogy between him and the Roman colonist fails. The Roman colonists, though retaining their privileges as citizens, were sent out to reside on their grants of land, and to constitute a sort of resident garrison ever the prior inhabitants, who had been despoiled of a portion of territory to make room for them. See, on this subject and analogy, the excellent Dissertation of Madwig : De jure et conditione coloniarum Populi Romani quaestio historica, Mad- wig, Opuscul. Copenhag. 1834. Diss. viii, p. 246. M. Boeckh and Dr. Arnold contend justly that at the time of the expe- dition of Athens against Syracuse and afterwards (Thucyd. vii, 57 ; viii, 23), there could have been but few, if any, Athenian kleruchs resident in Lesbos. We might even push this argument farther, and apply the same inference to an earlier period, the eighth year of the war (Thucyd. iv, 75), when the Mitylensean exiles were so active in their aggressions upon An- tandrus and the other towns, originally Mitylensean possessions, on the opposite mainland. There was no force near at hand on the part of Athens to deal with these exiles except the apyvp6"ko-/ai VTJE<;, had there been kleruchs at Mitylene, they would probably have been able to defeat the exiles in their first attempts, and would certainly have been among the most important forces to put them down afterwards, whereas Thucydides makes no allusion to them. Farther, the oration of Antipho (De Cajde Herod, c. 13) makes no allu sion to Athenian kleruchs, either as resident in the island, or even as ab- sentees receiving the annual rent mentioned by Thucydides. The Mityle- nsean citizen, father of the speaker of that oration, had been one of those implicated as he says, unwillingly in the past revolt of the city against Athens: since the deplorable termination of that revolt he had continued possessor of his Lesbian property, and continued also to dis- charge his obligations as well (choregic obligations ^op^/i'af ) towards Mitylene as (his obligations of pecuniary payment re^jy) towards Athens. If the arrangement mentioned by Thucydides had been persisted in, this Mitjlenaean proprietor would have paid nothing towards the city of Athens bnS merely a rent of two minae to some Athenian klerucn, or citizen which can hardly be reconciled with the words of the speaker as we find them in Antipho.