288 HISTOR* OF UKEECE. struggle to retain some of the fragments. But if ve view it aa it had stood before that event, during the period of its integrity, it is a sight marvellous tc contemplate, and its working must be pronounced, in my judgment, to have been highly beneficial to the Grecian world. No Grecian state except Athens could have sufficed to organize such a system, or to hold in partial though regulated, continuous, and specific communion, so many little states, each animated with that force of political repulsion instinctive in the Grecian mind. This was a mighty task, worthy of Athens, and to which no state except Athens was competent We have already seen in part, and we shall see still farther, how little qualified Sparta was to perform it, and we shall have occasion hereafter to notice a like fruitless essay on the part of Thebes. As in regard to the democracy of Athens generally, so in regard to her empire, it has been customary with historians to take notice of little except the bad side. But my conviction is, and I have shown grounds for it, in chap, xlvii, that the empire of Athens was not harsh and oppressive, as it is commonly depicted. Under the circumstances of her dominion, at a time when the whole transit and commerce of the JEgean was under one maritime system, which excluded all irregular force ; when Persian ships of war were kept out of the waters, and Persian tribute-officers away from the seaboard ; when the disputes in- evitable among so many little communities could be peaceably redressed by the mutual right of application to the tribunals at Athens, and when these tribunals were also such as to present to sufferers a refuge against wrongs done even by individual citizens of Athens herself, to use the expression of the oligarchi- cal Phrynichus, 1 the condition of the maritime Greeks was materially better than it had been before, or than it will be seen to become afterwards. Her empire, if it did not inspire attach- ment, certainly provoked no antipathy, among the bulk of the citizens of the subject-communities, as is shown by the party- character of the revolts against her. If in her imperial charac- ter she exacted obedience, she also fulfilled duties and insured protection to a degree incomparably greater than was evei 1 Thucyi. viii. 48
