Kitap 1
Thus the Athenians quickly raised their walls, the structure itself making manifest the haste used in the building.
For the foundation consisteth of stones of all sorts, and those in some places unwrought and as they were brought to the place. Many pillars also taken from sepulchres and polished stones were piled together among the rest. For the circuit of the city was set every way farther out, and therefore hastening they took alike whatsoever came next to hand.
Themistocles likewise persuaded them to build up the rest of Piraeus, for it was begun in the year that himself was archon of Athens, as conceiving the place both beautiful, in that it had three natural havens, and that being now seamen, it would very much conduce to the enlargement of their power.
For he was indeed the first man that dared tell them that they ought to take upon them the command of the sea, and withal presently helped them in the obtaining it.
By his counsel also it was that they built the wall of that breadth about Piraeus which is now to be seen. For two carts carrying stones met and passed upon it one by another. And yet within it there was neither rubbish nor mortar [to fill it up], but it was made all of great stones cut square and bound together with iron and lead. But for height it was raised but to the half, at the most, of what he had intended.
For he would have had it able to hold out the enemy both by the height and breadth, and that a few and the less serviceable men might have sufficed to defend it and the rest have served in the navy.
For principally he was addicted to the sea because, as I think, he had observed that the forces of the king had easier access to invade them by sea than by land, and thought that Piraeus was more profitable than the city above. And oftentimes he would exhort the Athenians that, in case they were oppressed by land, they should go down thither and with their galleys make resistance against what enemy soever.
Thus the Athenians built their walls, and fitted themselves in other kinds, immediately upon the departure of the Persians.
In the meantime was Pausanias, the son of Cleombrotus, sent from Lacedaemon commander of the Grecians with twenty galleys out of Peloponnesus, with which went also thirty sail of Athens, besides a multitude of other confederates, and making war on Cyprus subdued the greatest part of the same;
and afterwards, under the same commander, came before Byzantium, which they besieged and won.
But Pausanias, being now grown insolent, both the rest of the Grecians and especially the Ionians who had newly recovered their liberty from the king, offended with him, came to the Athenians and requested them for consanguinity's sake to become their leaders and to protect them from the violence of Pausanias.
The Athenians, accepting the motion, applied themselves both to the defence of these and also to the ordering of the rest of the affairs there in such sort as it should seem best to themselves.
In the meantime the Lacedaemonians sent for Pausanias home to examine him of such things as they had heard against him. For great crimes had been laid to his charge by the Grecians that came from thence;
and his government was rather an imitation of tyranny than a command in war. And it was his hap to be called home at the same time that the confederates, all but the soldiers of Peloponnesus, out of hatred to him had turned to the Athenians.
When he came to Lacedaemon, though he were censured for some wrongs done to private men, yet of the greatest matters he was acquit, especially of Medising, the which seemed to be the most evident of all.
Him therefore they sent general no more, but Dorcis, and some others with him, with no great army, whose command the confederates refused;
and they, finding that, went their ways likewise. And after that the Lacedaemonians sent no more, because they feared lest such as went out would prove the worse for the state, as they had seen by Pausanias, and also because they desired to be rid of the Persian war, conceiving the Athenians to be sufficient leaders and at that time their friends.
When the Athenians had thus gotten the command by the confederates' own accord for the hatred they bare to Pausanias, they then set down an order which cities should contribute money for this war against the barbarians, and which galleys. For they pretended to repair the injuries they had suffered by laying waste the territories of the king.
And then first came up amongst the Athenians the office of treasurers of Greece, who were receivers of the tribute, for so they called this money contributed. And the first tribute that was taxed came to four hundred and sixty talents. The treasury was at Delos, and their meetings were kept there in the temple.
Now using their authority at first in such manner as that the confederates lived under their own laws and were admitted to common council, by [the] war and administration of the common affairs of Greece from the Persian war to this, what against the barbarians, what against their own innovating confederates, and what against such of the Peloponnesians as chanced always in every war to fall in, they effected those great matters following.
Which also I have therefore written both because this place hath been pretermitted by all that have written before me (for they have either compiled the Grecian acts before the invasion of the Persians or that invasion only, of which number is Hellanicus, who hath also touched them in his Attic history, but briefly and without exact mention of the times), and also because they carry with them a demonstration of how the Athenian empire grew up.
And first, under the conduct of Cimon the son of Miltiades they took Eion upon the river Strymon from the Medes by siege and carried away the inhabitants captives.
Then the isle Scyros, in the Aegean sea, inhabited by the Dolopes, the inhabitants whereof they also carried away captives and planted therein a colony of their own.
Likewise they made war on the Carystians alone without the rest of the Euboeans, and those also after a time came in by composition.
After this they warred on the revolted Naxians and brought them in by siege. And this was the first confederate city which contrary to the ordinance they deprived of their free estate; though afterwards, as it came to any of their turns, they did the like by the rest.
Amongst other causes of revolts the principal was their failing to bring in their tribute and galleys and their refusing (when they did so) to follow the wars. For the Athenians exacted strictly and were grievous to them by imposing a necessity of toil which they were neither accustomed nor willing to undergo.
They were also otherwise not so gentle in their government as they had been, nor followed the war upon equal terms, and could easily bring back to their subjection such as should revolt.
And of this the confederates themselves were the causes. For through this refusal to accompany the army the most of them, to the end they might stay at home, were ordered to excuse their galleys with money, as much as it came to, by which means the navy of the Athenians was increased at the cost of their confederates, and themselves unprovided and without means to make war in case they should revolt.
After this it came to pass that the Athenians and their confederates fought against the Medes, both by land and by water, upon the river of Eurymedon in Pamphilia; and in one and the same day the Athenians had victory in both and took or sunk all the Phoenician fleet to the number of two hundred galleys.
After this again happened the revolt of Thasos upon a difference about the places of trade and about the mines they possessed in the opposite parts of Thrace. And the Athenians, going thither with their fleet, overthrew them in a battle at sea and landed in the island.
But having about the same time sent ten thousand of their own and of their confederates' people unto the river of Strymon for a colony to be planted in a place called then the Nine-ways, now Amphipolis, they won the said Nine-ways, which was held by the Eidonians; but advancing farther towards the heart of the country of Thrace, they were defeated at Drabescus, a city of the Eidonians, by the whole power of the Thracians that were enemies to this new-built town of the Nine-ways.
The Thasians in the meantime, being overcome in divers battles and besieged, sought aid of the Lacedaemonians and entreated them to divert the enemy by an invasion of Attica,
which, unknown to the Athenians, they promised to do and also had done it, but by an earthquake that then happened, they were hindered. In which earthquake their Helots, and of neighboring towns the Thuriatae and Aethaeans, revolted and seized on Ithome. Most of these Helots were the posterity of the ancient Messenians brought into servitude in former times, whereby also it came to pass that they were called all Messenians.
Against these had the Lacedaemonians now a war at Ithome. The Thasians in the third year of the siege rendered themselves to the Athenians upon condition to raze their walls, to deliver up their galleys, to pay both the money behind and for the future as much as they were wont, and to quit both the mines and the continent.
The Lacedaemonians, when the war against those in Ithome grew long, amongst other their confederates sent for aid to the Athenians, who also came with no small forces under the command of Cimon.
They were sent for principally for their reputation in mural assaults, the long continuance of the siege seeming to require men of ability in that kind, whereby they might perhaps have gotten the place by force.
And upon this journey grew the first manifest dissension between the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians. For the Lacedaemonians, when they could not take the place by assault, fearing lest the audacious and innovating humour of the Athenians, whom withal they esteemed of a contrary race, might, at the persuasion of those in Ithome, cause some alteration if they stayed, dismissed them alone of all the confederates, not discovering their jealousy but alleging that they had no farther need of their service.
But the Athenians, perceiving that they were not sent away upon good cause but only as men suspected, made it a heinous matter, and conceiving that they had better deserved at the Lacedaemonians' hands, as soon as they were gone left the league which they had made with the Lacedaemonians against the Persian and became confederates with their enemies the Argives; and then both Argives and Athenians took the same oath and made the same league with the Thessalians.
Those in Ithome, when they could no longer hold out, in the tenth year of the siege rendered the place to the Lacedaemonians upon condition of security to depart out of Peloponnesus and that they should no more return, and whosoever should be taken returning to be the slave of him that should take him.
For the Lacedaemonians had before been warned by a certain answer of the Pythian oracle to let go the suppliant of Jupiter Ithometes.