(1.99) The causes which led to the defections of the allies were of different kinds, the principal being their neglect to pay the tribute or to furnish ships, and, in some cases, failure of military service. For the Athenians were exacting and oppressive, using coercive measures towards men who were neither willing nor accustomed to work hard. And for various reasons they soon began to prove less agreeable leaders than at first. They no longer fought upon an equality with the rest of the confederates, and they had no difficulty in reducing them when they revolted. Now the allies brought all this upon themselves; for the majority of them disliked military service and absence from home, and so they agreed to contribute their share of the expense instead of ships. Whereby the Athenian navy was proportionally increased, while they themselves were always untrained and unprepared for war when they revolted.
(1.100) A little later the Athenians and their allies fought two battles, one by land and the other by sea, against the Persians, at the river Eurymedon in Pamphylia. The Athenians, under the command of Cimon the son of Miltiades, on the same day conquered in both, and took and destroyed all the Phoenician triremes numbering two hundred. After a while the Thasians revolted; a quarrel had arisen between them and the Athenians about the Thracian markets and the mine on the Thracian coast opposite, of which the Thasians received the profits. The Athenians sailed to Thasos and, gaining a victory at sea, landed upon the island. About the same time they sent ten thousand of their own people and of their allies to the Strymon, intending to colonise the place then called the Nine Ways and now Amphipolis. They gained possession of the Nine Ways, which were inhabited by the Edoni, but, advancing into the interior of Thrace, they were destroyed at Drabescus in Edonia by the united Thracians,64 whose country was threatened by the new settlement.
(1.101) The Thasians, now blockaded after several defeats, had recourse to the Lacedaemonians and entreated them to invade Attica. Unknown to the Athenians they agreed, and were on the point of setting out when the great earthquake occurred and was immediately followed by the revolt of the Helots and with them the Perioeci of Thuria and Aethaea, who seized Ithomè. These Helots were mostly the descendants of the Messenians who had been enslaved in ancient times, and hence all the insurgents were called Messenians.
While the Lacedaemonians were thus engaged, the Thasians, who had now been blockaded for more than two years, came to terms with the Athenians; they pulled down their walls and surrendered their ships; they also agreed to pay what was required of them whether in the shape of immediate indemnity or of tribute for the future; and they gave up their claim to the mainland and to the mine.
(1.102) The siege of Ithomè proved tedious, and the Lacedaemonians called in, among other allies, the Athenians, who sent to their aid a considerable force under Cimon. The Athenians were specially invited because they were reputed to be skilful in siege operations, and the length of the blockade proved to the Lacedaemonians their own deficiency in that sort of warfare; else why had they not taken the place by assault? This expedition of the Athenians led to the first open quarrel between them and the Lacedaemonians. For the Lacedaemonians, not succeeding in storming the place, took alarm at the bold and original spirit of the Athenians. They reflected that they were aliens in race, and fearing that, if they were allowed to remain, they might be tempted by the Helots in Ithomè to change sides, they dismissed them, while they retained the other allies. But they concealed their mistrust, and merely said that they no longer needed their services. Now the Athenians saw that their dismissal was due to some suspicion which had arisen and not to the less offensive reason which was openly avowed; they felt keenly that such a slight ought not to have been offered them by the Lacedaemonians; and so, on their return home, they forthwith abandoned the alliance which they had made with them against the Persians and went over to their Argive enemies. At the same time both Argos and Athens bound themselves to Thessaly by a common oath of alliance.
(1.103) In the tenth65 year of the siege the defenders of Ithomè were unable to hold out any longer, and capitulated to the Lacedaemonians. The terms were as follows: They were to leave Peloponnesus under a safe-conduct, and were never again to return; if any of them were taken on Peloponnesian soil, he was to be the slave of his captor. Now an ancient oracle of Delphi was current among the Lacedaemonians, bidding them let the suppliant of Ithomaean Zeus go free. So the Messenians left Ithomè with their wives and children; and the Athenians, who were now the avowed enemies of Sparta, gave them a home at Naupactus, a place which they had lately taken from the Ozolian Locrians.
The Athenians obtained the alliance of the Megarians, who revolted from the Lacedaemonians because the Corinthians were pressing them hard in a war arising out of a question of frontiers. Thus they gained both Megara and Pegae; and they built for the Megarians the long walls, extending from the city to the port of Nisaea, which they garrisoned themselves. This was the original and the main cause of the intense hatred which the Corinthians entertained towards the Athenians.
JOWETT'S FOOTNOTES
64. (From 1.100) Or, reading simpantes [?], as Poppo is inclined to do, 'were destroyed to a man by the Thracians.'
65. (From 1.103) Or, accepting tetartô (Krüger's conj.), 'the fourth year.'