Athens, which made them always backward in revolting, sometimes decidedly opposed to it. Neither Perikles nor Kleon, indeed, lay stress on the attachment of the people as distinguished from that of the Few, in these dependent cities; but the argument is strongly insisted on by Diodorus,[1] in the discussion respecting Mitylene after its surrender: and as the war advanced, the question of alliance with Athens or Sparta became more and more identified with the internal preponderance of democracy or oligarchy in each.[2] We shall find that in most of those cases of actual revolt where we are informed of the preceding circumstances, the step is adopted or contrived by a small number of oligarchical malcontents, without consulting the general voice; while in those cases where the general assembly is consulted beforehand, there is manifested indeed a preference for autonomy, but nothing like a hatred of Athens or decided inclination to break with her. In the case of Mitylene,[3] in the fourth year of the war, it was the aristocratical government which revolted, while the people, as soon as they obtained arms, actually declared in favor of Athens: and the secession of Chios, the greatest of all the allies, in the twentieth year of the Peloponnesian war, even after all the hardships which the allies had been called upon to bear in that war, and after the ruinous disasters which Athens had sustained before Syracuse, was both prepared beforehand and accomplished by secret negotiations of the Chian oligarchy, not only without the concurrence, but against the inclination, of their own people. [4] In like manner, the revolt of Thasos would a>t have occurred, had not the Thasian democracy been previ-
- ↑ Thucyd. iii, 47. Νῦν μὲν γὰρ ὑμῖν ὁ δῆμος ἐν ἁπάσαις ταῖς πόλεσιν εὔνους ἐστί, καὶ ἢ οὐ συναφίσταται τοῖς ὀλίγοις, ἢ ἐὰν βιασθῇ, ὑπάρχει τοῖς ἀποστήσασι πολέμιος εὐθὺς, etc.
- ↑ See the striking observations of Thucydides, iii, 82, 83; Aristotel. Politic, v, 6, 9.
- ↑ Thucyd. iii, 27.
- ↑ Thucyd. viii, 9-14. He observes, also, respecting the Thasian oligarchy just set up in lieu of the previous democracy by the Athenian oligarchical conspirators who were then organizing the revolution of the Four Hundred at Athens, that they immediately made preparations for revolting from Athens, ξυνέβη οὐν αὐτοις μάλιστα ἃ ἐβούλωντο, τὴν πόλιν τε ἀκινδύνως ὀρθοῦσθαι, καὶ τὸν ἐναντιωσόμενον δῆμον καταλελύσθαι (viii, 61).
