Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/52

30 special meeting, the question of compliance or refusal was formally debated. Notwithstanding the thirty years' truce then subsisting, of which only six years had elapsed, and which had been noway violated by Athens, — many of the allies of Sparta voted for assisting the Samians: what part Sparta herself took, we do not know, — but the Corinthians were the main and decided advocates for the negative. They not only contended that the truce distinctly forbade compliance with the Samian request, but also recognized the right of each confederacy to punish its own recusant members, and this was the decision ultimately adopted, for which the Corinthians afterwards took credit, in the eyes of Athens, as the chief authors. Certainly, if the contrary policy had been pursued, the Athenian empire might have been in great danger, the Phenician fleet would probably have been brought in also, and the future course of events might have been greatly altered.

Again, after the reconquest of Samos, we should assume it almost as a matter of certainty, that the Athenians would renew the democratical government which they had set up just before the revolt. Yet, if they did so, it must have been again overthrown, without any attempt to uphold it on the part of Athens. For we hardly hear of Samos again, until twenty-seven years afterwards, towards the latter division of the Peloponnesian war, in 412 B.C., and it then appears with an established oligarchical government of geomori, or landed proprietors, against which the people make a successful rising during the course of that year. As Samos remained, during the interval between 439 B.C. and 412 B.C., unfortified, deprived of its fleet, and enrolled among the tribute-paying allies of Athens, and as it, nevertheless, either retained or acquired its oligarchical government; so we may conclude that Athens cannot have systematically interfered to democratize by violence the subject-allies, in cases where the natural tendency of parties ran towards oligarchy. The condition of Lesbos at the time of its revolt, hereafter to be related, will be found to confirm this conclusion.