Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/375

GRECIAN CONFEDERACY UNDER ATHENS. 351 — thus abandoning Peloponnesus altogether,! and leaving the Megarians — with their full territory and their two ports — to be included among the Peloponnesian allies of Sparta. It was to the Megarians, especially, that the altered position of Athens after this truce was owing : it was their secession from Attica and junction with the Peloponnesians, which laid open Attica to invasion. Hence, arose the deadly hatred on the part of the Athenians towards Megara, manifested during the ensuing years, — a sentiment the more natural, as Megara had spontane- ously sought the alliance of Athens a few years before as a pro- tection against the Corinthians, and had then afterwards, without any known ill-usage on the part of Athens, broken off from the alli- ' Thucyd. i, 114, 115 ; ii, 21 ; Diodor. xii, 5. I do not at all doubt that the word Achaia here used, means the countrj'in the north part of Pelopon- nesus, usually known by that name. The suspicions of Goller and others, that it means, not this territory, but some unkno^^^l to^Ti, appear to me quite unfounded. Thucydides had never noticed the exact time when the Athenians acquired Achaia as a dependent ally, though he notices the Achaeans (i, 111) in that capacity. This is one argument, among many, to show that we must be cautious in reasoning from the silence of Thu- cydides against the reality of an event, — in reference to this period between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, where his whole summary is so brief. In regard to the chronology of these events, Mr. FjTies Clinton remarks : " The disasters in Bceotia produced the revolt of Euboea and Megara about eighteen months after, in Anthesterion 445 b.c. : and the Peloponnesian in- vasion of Attica, on the expiration of the five years' trace," (ad ann. 447 B.C.) Mr. Clinton seems to me to allow a longer interval than is probable : I incline to think that the revolt of Euboea and Megara followed more closely upon the disasters in Bceotia, in spite of the statement of archons given by Diodorus : 01; ttoZacJ vatEpov, the expression of Thucydides means prob- ably no more than three or four months ; and the whole series of events were evidently the product of one impulse. The truce having been con- cluded in the beginning of 445 B.C., it seems reasonable to place the revolt of f)ubcea and Megara, as well as the invasion of Attica by Pleistoanax, in 44b B.C. — and the disasters in Bceotia, either in the beginning of 446 B.C., or the close of 447 b.c. It is hardly safe to assume, moreover (as Mr. Clinton does, ad ann. 4.50, us well as Dr. Thirlwall, Hist. Gr. ch. xvii, p. 478), that the five years' trace must have been actually expired before Pleistoanax and the Lacedaemo- nians invaded Attica : the thuty years' truce, afterwards concluded, did not run out its full time.