perhaps the next best, and we shall be the more induced to think so, when we compare it with the proceedings afterwards adopted by Sparta, when she had put down the Athenian empire. Under Sparta, the general rule was, to place each of the dependent cities under the government of a dekadarchy or oligarchical council of ten among its chief citizens, together with a Spartan harmost, or governor, having a small garrison under his orders. It will be found, when we come to describe the Spartan maritime empire, that these arrangements exposed each dependent city to very great violence and extortion, while, after all, they solved only a part of the problem: they served only to maintain each separate city under the dominion of Sparta, without contributing to regulate the dealings between the citizens of one and those of another, or to bind together the empire as a whole. Now the Athenians did not, as a system, place in their dependent cities, governors analogous to the harmosts, though they did so occasionally under special need; but their fleets and their officers were in frequent relation with these cities; and as the principal officers were noways indisposed to abuse their position, so the facility of complaint, constantly open to the Athenian popular dikastery, served both as redress and guarantee against misrule of this description. It was a guarantee which the allies themselves sensibly felt and valued, as we know from Thucydides: the chief source from whence they had to apprehend evil was the Athenian officials and principal citizens, who could misemploy the power of Athens for their own private purposes,—but they looked up to the "Athenian Demos as a chastener of such evil-doers and as a harbor of refuge to themselves."[1] If
- ↑ Thucyd. viii, 48. Τούς τε καλοὺς κἀγαθοὺς ὀνομαζομένους οὐκ ἐλάσσω αὐτοὺς (that is, the subject-allies) νομίζειν σφισι πράγματα παρέξειν τοῦ δήμου, ποριστὰς ὄντας καὶ ἐσηγητὰς τῶν κακῶν τῷ δήμῳ, ἐξ ὧν τὰ πλείω αὐτοὺς ὠφελεῖσθαι· καὶ τὸ μὲν ἐπ' ἐκείνοις εἷναι καὶ ἄκριτοι ἂν καὶ βιαιότερον ἀποθνήσκειν, τὸν τε δῆμον σφῶν τε καταφυγὴν εἶναι καὶ ἐκείνων σωφρονιστήν. Καὶ ταῦτα παρ' αὐτῶν τῶν ἔργων ἐπισταμένας τὰς πόλεις σαφῶς αὐτὸς εἰδέναι, ὅτι οὕτω νομίζουσι. This is introduced as the deliberate judgment of the Athenian commander Phrynichus, whom Thucydides greatly commends for his sagacity, and with whom he seems in this case to have concurred.
Xenophon (Rep. Ath. i. 14, 15) affirms that the Athenian officers on service passed many unjust sentences upon the oligarchical party in the allied cities,
