Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/304

82 HISTOKY OF GRELOE. empire. Such transformation, as Thucydides plainly intimates, 3 did not arise from the ambition or deep-laid projects of Athens, 6ut from the reluctance of the larger confederates to discharge the obligations imposed by the common synod, and from the unvvarlike character of the confederates generally, which made them desirous to commute military service for money-payment, while Athens on her part was not less anxious to perform the service and obtain the money. By gradual and unforeseen stages, Athens thus passed from consulate to empire : in such man- ner that no one could point out the precise moment of time when the confederacy of Delos ceased, and when the empire began. Even the transfer of the common fund from Delos to Athens, which was the palpable manifestation of a change already realized, was not an act of high-handed injustice in the Athe- nians, but warranted by prudential views of the existing state of affairs, and even proposed by a leading member of the confed- eracy. 2 But the Athenian empire came to include (between 460-44G B.C.) other cities, not parties to the confederacy of Delos. Athena had conquered her ancient enemy the island of JEgina, and had acquired supremacy over Megara, Bceotia, Phocis, and Lokris, and Achaia in Peloponnesus. The Megarians joined her to escape the oppression of their neighbor Corinth : her influence over Boeotia was acquired by allying herself with a democratical party in the Boeotian cities, against Sparta, who had been actively interfering to sustain the opposite party and to renovate the ascendency of Thebes. Athens was, for the time, successful in all these enterprises ; but if we follow the details, we shall not find her more open to reproach on the score of aggressive ten dencies than Sparta or Corinth. Her empire was now at its max- imum ; and had she been able to maintain it, or even to keep possession of the Megarid separately, which gave her the means of barring out all invasions from Peloponnesus, the future course of Grecian history would have been materially altered. But her empire on land did not rest upon the same footing as her empire at sea. The exiles in Megara and Boeotia, etc., and tbe and- Athenian party generally in those places, combin ed with 1 Thocyd. i, 97. * See vol. v, of this History, ch. xlv, p 343.