GRECIAN CONFEDERACY LT^'DER ATHENS. SH Histi«us and Aristagoras, the two Blilesian despots, had been tempted by the advantages of this place to commence a settle- ment there : both of them had foiled, and a third failure on a still grander scale was nov/ about to be added. The Athenians sent thither a large body of colonists, ten thousand in number, partly from their own citizens, partly collected from their allies : and the temptations of the site probably rendered volunteers numerous. As far as Ennea Hodoi was concerned, they were successful in conquering it and driving away the Edonian pos- sessors : but on trying to extend themselves farther to the east- ward, to a spot called Drabeskus, convenient for the mining region, they encountered a more formidable resistance from a powerful alliance of Thracian tribes, who had come to the aid of the Edouians in decisive hostility to the new colony, — prob- ably not without instigation from the inhabitants of Thasos. All or most of the ten thousand colonists were slain in this warfare, and the new colony was for the time completely abandoned : we shall find it resumed hereafter.' Disappointed as the Athenians were in this enterprise, they did not abandon the blockade of Thasos, which held out more than two years, and only surrendered in the third year. Its fortifications were razed ; its ships of war, thirty-three in num- ber, taken away :~ its possessions and mining establishments on the opposite continent relinquished : moreover, an immediate contribution in money was demanded from the inhabitants, over and above the annual payment assessed upon them for the future. The subjugation of this powerful island was another step in the growing dominion of Athens over her confederates. The year before the Thasians surrendered, however, they had
- Thucyd. i, 101. Philip of Macedon, in his dispute more than a century
after this period with the Athenians respecting the possession of Amphip- olis, pretended that his ancestor, Alexander, had been the first to acquire possession of the spot after the expulsion of the Persians from Thrace, (see Philippi Epistola ap. Demosthen. p. 164, E.) If this pretence had been true, Ennea Hodoi would have been in possession of the Macedonians at this time, when the first Athenian attempt was made upon it : but the state- ment of Thucydides shows that it was then an Edonian township. • Plutarch, Kimon, c. 14. Galepsus and (Esyme were among the Thasian settlements on the mainland of Thrace (Thucyd. iv, 108).
