DELIA, a festival of Apollo held every five years at the great panegyris in Delos (Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 147). It included athletic and musical contests, at which the prize was a branch of the sacred palm. This festival was said to have been established by Theseus on his way back from Crete. Its celebration gradually fell into abeyance and was not revived till 426 B.C., when the Athenians purified the island and took so prominent a part in the maintenance of the Delia that it came to be regarded almost as an Athenian festival (Thucydides iii. 104). Ceremonial embassies (θεωρίαι) from all the Greek cities were present.
See G. Gilbert, Deliaca (1869); J. A. Lebègue, Recherches sur Délos (1876); A. Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen (1898); E. Pfuhl, De Atheniensium pompis sacris (1900); G. F. Schömann, Griechische Altertümer (4th ed., 1897–1902); P. Stengel, Die griechischen Kultusaltertümer (1898); T. Homolle in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités.
DELIAN LEAGUE, or Confederacy of Delos, the name given
to a confederation of Greek states under the leadership of Athens,
with its headquarters at Delos, founded in 478 B.C. shortly after
the final repulse of the expedition of the Persians under Xerxes I.
This confederacy, which after many modifications and vicissitudes
was finally broken up by the capture of Athens by Sparta
in 404, was revived in 378–7 (the “Second Athenian Confederacy”)
as a protection against Spartan aggression, and lasted,
at least formally, until the victory of Philip II. of Macedon at
Chaeronea. These two confederations have an interest quite out
of proportion to the significance of the detailed events which form
their history. (See Greece: Ancient History.) They are the first
two examples of which we have detailed knowledge of a serious
attempt at united action on the part of a large number of self-governing
states at a relatively high level of conscious political
development. The first league, moreover, in its later period
affords the first example in recorded history of self-conscious
imperialism in which the subordinate units enjoyed a specified
local autonomy with an organized system, financial, military and
judicial. The second league is further interesting as the precursor
of the Achaean and Aetolian Leagues.
History.—Several causes contributed to the formation of the first Confederacy of Delos. During the 6th century B.C. Sparta had come to be regarded as the chief power, not only in the Peloponnese, but also in Greece as a whole, including the islands of the Aegean. The Persian invasions of Darius and Xerxes, with the consequent importance of maritime strength and the capacity for distant enterprise, as compared with that of purely military superiority in the Greek peninsula, caused a considerable loss of prestige which Sparta was unwilling to recognize. Moreover, it chanced that at the time the Spartan leaders were not men of strong character or general ability. Pausanias, the victor of Plataea, soon showed himself destitute of the high qualities which the situation demanded. Personal cupidity, discourtesy to the allies, and a tendency to adopt the style and manners of oriental princes, combined to alienate from him the sympathies of the Ionian allies, who realized that, had it not been for the Athenians, the battle of Salamis would never have been even fought, and Greece would probably have become a Persian satrapy. The Athenian contingent which was sent to aid Pausanias in the task of driving the Persians finally out of the Thraceward towns was under the command of the Athenians, Aristides and Cimon, men of tact and probity. It is not, therefore, surprising that when Pausanias was recalled to Sparta on the charge of treasonable overtures to the Persians, the Ionian allies appealed to the Athenians on the grounds of kinship and urgent necessity, and that when Sparta sent out Dorcis to supersede Pausanias he found Aristides in unquestioned command of the allied fleet. To some extent the Spartans were undoubtedly relieved, in that it no longer fell to them to organize distant expeditions to Asia Minor, and this feeling was strengthened about the same time by the treacherous conduct of their king Leotychides (q.v.) in Thessaly. In any case the inelastic quality of the Spartan system was unable to adapt itself to the spirit of the new age. To Aristides was mainly due the organization of the new league and the adjustment of the contributions of the various allies in ships or in money. His assessment, of the details of which we know nothing, was so fair that it remained popular long after the league of autonomous allies had become an Athenian empire. The general affairs of the league were managed by a synod which met periodically in the temple of Apollo and Artemis at Delos, the ancient centre sanctified by the common worship of the Ionians. In this synod the allies met on an equality under the presidency of Athens. Among its first subjects of deliberation must have been the ratification of Aristides’ assessment. Thucydides lays emphasis on the fact that in these meetings Athens as head of the league had no more than presidential authority, and the other members were called σύμμαχοι (allies), a word, however, of ambiguous meaning and capable of including both free and subject allies. The only other fact preserved by Thucydides is that Athens appointed a board called the Hellenotamiae (ταμίας, steward) to watch over and administer the treasury of the league, which for some twenty years was kept at Delos, and to receive the contributions (φόρος) of the allies who paid in money.
The league was, therefore, specifically a free confederation of autonomous Ionian cities founded as a protection against the common danger which threatened the Aegean basin, and led by Athens in virtue of her predominant naval power as exhibited in the war against Xerxes. Its organization, adopted by the common synod, was the product of the new democratic ideal embodied in the Cleisthenic reforms, as interpreted by a just and moderate exponent. It is one of the few examples of free corporate action on the part of the ancient Greek cities, whose centrifugal yearning for independence so often proved fatal to the Hellenic world. It is, therefore, a profound mistake to regard the history of the league during the first twenty years of its existence as that of an Athenian empire. Thucydides expressly describes the predominance of Athens as ἡγεμονία (leadership, headship), not as ἀρχή (empire), and the attempts made by Athenian orators during the second period of the Peloponnesian War to prove that the attitude of Athens had not altered since the time of Aristides are manifestly unsuccessful.
Of the first ten years of the league’s history we know practically nothing, save that it was a period of steady, successful activity against the few remaining Persian strongholds in Thrace and the Aegean (Herod, i. 106-107, see Athens, Cimon). In these years the Athenian sailors reached a high pitch of training, and by their successes strengthened that corporate pride which had been born at Salamis. On the other hand, it naturally came to pass that certain of the allies became weary of incessant warfare and looked for a period of commercial prosperity. Athens, as the chosen leader, and supported no doubt by the synod, enforced the contributions of ships and money according to the assessment. Gradually the allies began to weary of personal service and persuaded the synod to accept a money commutation. The Ionians were naturally averse from prolonged warfare, and in the prosperity which must have followed the final rout of the Persians and the freeing of the Aegean from the pirates (a very important feature in the league’s policy) a money contribution was only a trifling burden. The result was, however, extremely bad for the allies, whose status in the league necessarily became lower in relation to that of Athens, while at the same time their military and naval resources correspondingly diminished. Athens became more and more powerful, and could afford to disregard the authority of the synod. Another new feature appeared in the employment of coercion against cities which desired to secede. Athens might fairly insist that the protection of the Aegean would become impossible if some of the chief islands were liable to be used as piratical strongholds, and further that it was only right that all should contribute in some way to the security which all enjoyed. The result was that, in the cases of Naxos and Thasos, for instance, the league’s resources were employed not against the Persians but against recalcitrant Greek islands, and that the Greek ideal of separate autonomy was outraged. Shortly after the capture of Naxos (c. 467 B.C.) Cimon proceeded with a fleet of 300 ships (only 100 from the allies) to the south-western and southern coasts of Asia Minor. Having driven the
