Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/365

GRECIAN CONFEDERACY UNDER ATHENS. 341 We may therefore believe in the reality of this treaty betv/een Athens and Persia, improperly called the Kimonian treaty : im- centiuy must have elapsed between the conclusion of the treaty and the time when Theopompus saw the pillar. I confess that the hypothesis of Dahlmann appears to me more improbable than the historical reality of the treaty. I think it more likely that there tvas a treaty, and that the ora- tors talked exaggerated and false matters respecting it, — rather than that they fabricated the treaty from the beginning with a deliberate purpose, and with the false name of an envoy conjoined. Dahlmann exposes justly and forcibly — an easy task, indeed — the loose, inconsistent, and vainglorious statements of the orators respecting this treaty. The chronological error by which it was asserted to have been made shortly after the victories of the Eurymedon — and was thus con- nected with the name of Kimon — is one of the circumstances which have most tended to discredit the attesting witnesses : but we must not forget that Ephorus (assuming that Diodorus in this case copies Ephorus, which is highly probable — xii, 3,4) did not fall into this mistake, but placed the treaty in its right chronological place, after the Athenian expedition under Kimon against Cyprus and Egypt in 450-449 B.C. Kimon died before the great results of this expedition were consummated, as we know from Thu- cydides : on this point Diodorus speaks equivocally, but rather giving it tc be imderstood that Kimon lived to complete the whole, and then died of sickness. The absurd exaggeration of Isokrates, that the treaty bound the Persian kings not to come westward of the river Halys, has also been very properly censm-ed. He makes this statement in two different orations (Areopagatic. p. 150 ; Panathenaic. p. 462). But though Dahlmann succeeds in discrediting the orators, he tries in vain to show that the treaty is in itself improbable, or inconsistent with any known historical facts. A large portion of his dissertation is employed in this part of the case, and I think quite unsuccessfully. The fact that the Persian satraps are seen at various periods after the treaty lending aid — underhand, yet without taking much pains to disguise it — to Athenian re- volted subjects, does not prove that no treaty had been concluded. These satraps would, doubtless, be very glad to infringe the treaty, whenever they thought they could do so ^'ith advantage : if any misfortune had happened to Athens from the hands of the Peloponnesians, — for example, if the Athenians had been unwise enough to march their aggregate land-force out of the city to repel the invading Peloponnesians from Attica, and had been totally defeated, — the Persians would, doubtless, have tried to regain Ionia forthwith. So the Lacedasmonians, at a time when they were actually in alliance with Athens, listened to the persuasions of the revolted Thasians, and promised secretly to invade Attica, in order to aid their revolt ( Thucyd. i, 103). Because a treaty is very imperfectly observed, — or rather because the parties, without coming to open war, avail themselves of opportunities