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344 HISTORY OF GREECE. urally feel that the large accumulated fund, with its constant annual accessions, would be safer at Athens than at Delos, which latter island would require a permanent garrison and squadron to insure it against attack. But whatever may have been the grounds on which the Samians proceeded, when we find them coming forward to propose the transfer, we may reasonably infer that it was not displeasing, and did not appear unjust, to the larger members of the confederacy, — and that it was no high- handed and arbitrary exercise of power, as it is often called, on the part of Athens. After the conclusion of the war with -^gina, and the conse- quences of the battle of OEnophyta, the position of Athens became altered more and more. She acquired a large catalogue of new allies, partly tributary, like jEgina, — partly in the same relation as Chios, Lesbos, and Samos ; that is, obliged only to a conformity of foreign policy and to military service. In this last category were Megara, the Boeotian cities, the Phocians, Lokrians, etc. All these, though allies of Athens, were strangers to Delos and the confederacy against Persia ; and accordingly, that con- federacy passed insensibly into a matter of history, giving place to the new conception of imperial Athens, with her extensive list of allies, partly free, partly subject. Such transition, arising spontaneously out of the character and circumstances of the confederates themselves, was thus materially forwarded by the acquisitions of Athens extraneous to the confederacy. She was now not merely the first maritime state of Greece, but perhaps equal to Sparta even in land-power, — possessing in her alliance Megai'a, Boeotia, Phocis, Lokris, together with Achaea and Troe- zen, in Peloponnesus. Large as this aggregate already was, both at sea and on land, yet the magnitude of the annual tribute, and still more the character of the Athenians themselves, supe- rior to all Greeks in that combination of energy and discipline which is the grand cause of progress, threatened still farther increase. Occupying the Megarian harbor of Pegae, the Athe- nians had full means of naval action on both sides of the Corin thian isthmus : but, what was of still greater importance to them, by their possession of the Megarid, and of the highlands of Geraneia, they could restrain any land-force from marching out of Peloponnesus, and were thus, considering besides their mas-