Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/67

 an equal footing: and they are so accustomed to this, that they think themselves entitled to complain at every trifling disappointment of their expectations. They suffered worse hardships under the Persians before our empire began, and they would suffer worse under you (the Spartans), if you were to succeed in conquering us and making our empire yours." History bears out the boast of the Athenian orator, both as to the time preceding and following the empire of Athens. And an Athenian citizen, indeed, might well regard it, not as a hardship, but as a privilege, that subject-allies should be allowed to sue him before the dikastery, and to defend themselves before the same tribunal, either in case of wrong done to him, or in case of alleged treason to the imperial authority of Athens: they were thereby put upon a level with himself. Still more would he find reason to eulogize the universal competence of these dikasteries in providing a common legal authority for all disputes of the numerous distinct communities of the empire, one with another, and for the safe navigation and general commerce of the Ægean. That complaints were raised against it among the subject-allies, is noway surprising: for the empire of Athens generally was inconsistent with that separate autonomy to which every town thought itself entitled, and this was one of its prominent and constantly operative institutions, as well as a striking mark of dependence to the subordinate communities. Yet we may safely affirm, that if empire was to be maintained at all, no way of maintaining it could be found at once less oppressive and more beneficial than the superintending competence of the dikasteries, a system not taking its rise in the mere " love of litigation," if, indeed, we are to reckon this a real feature in the Athenian character, which I shall take another opportunity of examining, much less in those