Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/245

 SOCIAL WAB. 21 l evacuate it under capitulation. A body of meicenar.es unde* Chares contributed to the Athenian success. Yet it seems no' clear that the success was so easy and rapid as the orators are fond of asserting. 1 However, their boast, often afterwards re- peated, is so far well-founded, that Athens fully accomplished her object, rescued the Euboeans from Thebes, and received the testi- monial of their gratitude in the form of a golden wreath dedi- cated in the Athenian acropolis. 2 The Euboean cities*, while ac- knowledged as autonomous, continued at the same time to be enrolled as members of the Athenian confederacy, sending deputies to the synod at Athens ; towards the general purposes of which they paid an annual tribute, assessed at five talents each for Oreus (or Histisea) and Eretria, 3 On the conclusion of this Eubrean enterprise, Chares with his mercenaries was sent forward to the Chersonese, where he at length extorted from Charidemus and Kersobleptes the evacua- tion of that peninsula and its cession to Athens, after a long train of dilatory manoeuvres and bad faith on their part. I have in my last preceding volume, described these events, remarking at the same time that Athens attained at this moment the maximum of her renewed foreign power and second confederacy, which had begun in 378 B. c. 4 But this period of exaltation was very short. It was speedily overthrown by two important events the Social war and the conquests of Philip in Thrace. The Athenian confederacy, recently strengthened by the rescue of Euboea, numbered among its members a large proportion of the islands in the JEgasan as well as the Grecian seaports in Thrace. 1 Diodorus (xvi. 7) states that the contest in Euboea lasted for some con siderable time. Demosthenes talks of the expedition as having reached its destination in three days, JEschines in five days ; the latter states also that within thirty days the Thebans were vanquished and expelled (Demosthenes cont Androtion. p. 597.. s. 17; JEschines cont. Ktesiphont. p. 397. c. 31). About Chares and the mercenaries, see Demosthenes cont. Aristokrat. p 678. s. 206. 205 1 JEschincs cont. Ktesiphont. p. 401, 403, 4( I. c. 32, 33; Demosthenes I TO Megalopolitan. p. 204. s. 16. ' Sec Vol. X. Ch. Ixxx. p. 381, 382.
 * Demosthenes cont. Androtion. p. 616. s. 89. cont. Timokrat. p. 756. s.