Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/68

 46 HISTORY OF GREECE. petty collateral interests indicated by Xenophon, 1 such as the increased customs duty, rent of houses, and hire of slaves at Peiraeus, and the larger profits of the heralds, arising from the influx of suitors. It was nothing but the pjwer, originally in- herent in the confederacy of Delos, of arbitration between mem- bers and enforcement of duties towards the whole, a power inherited by Athens from that synod, and enlarged to meet the political wants of her empire ; to which end it was essential, even in the view of Xenophon himself. 2 It may be that the dikastery was not always impartial between Athenian citizens privately, or the Athenian commonwealth collectively, and the subject-allies, and in so far the latter had good reason to com- plain ; but on the other hand, we have no ground for suspecting it of deliberate or standing unfairness, or of any other defects than such as were inseparable from its constitution and procedure, whoever might be the parties under trial. We are now considering the Athenian empire as it stood be- fore the Peloponnesian war ; before the increased exactions and the multiplied revolts, to which that war gave rise, before the cruelties which accompanied the suppression of those revolts, and which so deeply stained the character of Athens, before that aggravated fierceness, mistrust, contempt of obligation, and rapacious violence, which Thucydides so emphatically indicates as having been infused into the Greek bosom by the fever of an all-pervading contest. 3 There had been before this time many revolts of the Athenian dependencies, from the earliest at Naxos down to the latest at Samos : all had been successfully suppressed, but in no case had Athens displayed the same unre- 1 Xenophon, Repub. Ath. i, 1 7. 8 Xenophon, Repub. Ath. i, 16. He states it as one of the advantageous consequences, which induced the Athenians to bring the suits and complaints of the allies to Athens for trial that the prytaneia, or fees paid upon entering a cause for trial, became sufficiently large to furnish all the pay for the dikasts throughout the year. But in another part of his treatise (iii, 2, 3), he represents the Athenian dikasteries as overloaded with judicial business, much more than they could possibly get through ; insomuch that there were long delays before causes wuld be brought on for trial. It could hardly be any great object, there- ore, to multiply complaints artificially, in order to make fees for the dikast-s ' See his well-known comments on the seditions at Korkyra. iii, 82. 83.