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The Origins and the Nature of the Athenian Alliance of 478/7 B.C.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

N. G. L. Hammond
N. G. L. Hammond
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
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Extract

This article is concerned with the antecedents to the formation of the group known as οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ οἱ σύμμαχοι, and correctly styled the (First) Athenian Alliance (in distinction from the Second Athenian Alliance) and with the problems of its constitutional arrangements. So much has been written in the knowledge of subsequent events—by Herodotus, Thucydides and modern scholars—that it is particularly difficult for us to see this topic in its historical perspective, that is to see how the Athenian Alliance grew out of what went before. For example, the hegemony enjoyed by Athens in the Alliance has been described by many as the means by which she was later to fulfil her imperialistic ambitions, but few have studied its powers in relation to earlier examples of hegemony; yet it must have been these earlier examples of hegemony which were active in men's minds in 478/7 B.C. After a section, A, on the nature of the evidence, I therefore keep to the historical order and discuss in section B the campaign of Mycale down to the capture of Sestus; in section C the operations under Pausanias and the change of hegemony; in section D the creation of the Athenian Alliance; and in section E the relationship between Athens and the Allies.

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Research Article
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The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 87 , November 1967 , pp. 41 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1967

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References

1 I am most grateful to Professor Sir Frank Adcock and Mr Russell Meiggs for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. References to A. W. Gomme, A Historical Commentary on Thucydides, are given as ‘Gomme’ by number of volume and number of page.

2 For instance, recently an interesting article by Meyer, H. D. in Historia xii (1963) 405 ff.Google Scholar, ‘Vorgeschichte des delischen-attischen Seebundes’, finds in the policy of Athens during the Persian Wars those imperialistic visions and ambitions which became a reality decades later (? in the late 450s). To take an example of shorter range, he suggests that, when Attica was evacuated and Mardonius made his offer, Athens' refusal was due to her vision of an important ‘Machtstellung’ in the future (p. 410). Experience of evacuated countries and even experience of Britain after Dunkirk make one wonder whether immediate considerations do not press too heavily for distant views to have much effect.

3 Hdt. ix 121; for the month, see my remarks in Historia iv (1955) 384 n. 1, ‘Studies in Greek Chronology of the Sixth and Fifth Centuries b.c.’

4 I have discussed this point in CR vii (1957) 100 f. ‘τὸ Μηδικόν and τὰ Μηδικά.’ D. S. xi 37. 6 ends ‘the Median war’ with the return of Xanthippus from Sestus to Athens.

5 I have given reasons for supposing that Thucydides was collecting material before 431 B.C. in CQ xxxiv ( 1940) 150, ‘The Composition of Thucydides' History’; see also Adcock, F. E. in JHS lxxi (1951) 12Google Scholar, ‘Thucydides in Book I’.

6 Beloch, 's theory in GG ii 2146 ff.Google Scholar that the whole account is a fictitious anecdote—a theory roundly condemned by Gomme—passes my comprehension; for it shows no sense of time. How could such a fiction have been presented to men who had lived through 479/8 B.C.?

7 Doubts were expressed, for instance, by Walker, E. M. in CAH v 44 f.Google Scholar; they were well answered by Gomme, i 278. I discuss the procedure of the assessment and the nature of the ‘phoros’ later; I assume here that the ‘phoroi’ or ‘contributions to be made’ were expressed in money, whether the actual contributions were in money or in ships, and that the contributions came up to the assessments in the opening year. ATL iii 235 accepts the total assessment figure of 460 talents; see also ATL iii 221.

8 Tod, GHI no. 5 (Eleans and Heraeans); Plu. GQ v (Sparta and Tegea); Tod, GHI no. 123 (Second Athenian Confederacy).

9 I use the word League in recognition of the corporate name οἱ Ἕλληνες; so too I regard οἱ Βοιωτοί, οἱ Χαλκιδεῑς, οἱ Ἴωνες etc. as the names of Leagues. On the other hand or are Alliances in name and in fact, not Leagues at all; and far less should be rendered ‘Delian League’ or the like, which is a modern misnomer unrelated to the Greek name.

10 Hdt. ix 90.1 and 100–2, stating that enquiry was made into the exact date ‘a short time afterwards’. His statement, addressed inter alios to people who had taken part in the battles, should not be doubted as it has been (see the discussion in How and Wells, , Commentary on Herodotus ii 331Google Scholar); ancient historians are apt to forget the difference between ancient history and contemporary history.

11 Some scholars have been carried away by the bias of Herodotus; for instance, Larsen, J. A. O. in Class. Phil. xxix (1934) 15Google Scholar went so far as to comment that the Spartan officers ‘were opposed to admitting the Samians, Chians, Lesbians etc.’—a comment which is entirely without foundation in the narrative of Herodotus, and Meyer, H. D. in Historia xii (1963) 418Google Scholar sees in this a complete defeat for Sparta and a complete victory for Athens. The subject of the sentence in Hdt. ix 106–4 is οἱ Ἕλληνες, resumed through καὶ οὕτω οή from οἱ Ἕλληνες at ix 106.2 (the intervening sentences giving a summary of the discussion); this point is missed in some translations, e.g. in Burn, A. R., Persia and the Greeks (1962) 552.Google Scholar

12 Samos was now admitted for the first time. Unnecessary confusion has been introduced into Herodotus' narrative by those who hold that Samos was admitted twice: once at Delos (Hdt. ix 90–92) and again on this occasion. What Herodotus says at ix 90–92 is that three envoys from Samos came to the Greeks at Delos and stated that the Ionians would revolt; that Leotychidas, accepting as an omen the name of one of the envoys, Hegesistratus, asked him and his companions to give their pledge (δούς πίστιν) that in very truth Samos will be a zealous ally and that at once the Samians gave their pledge on oath about alliance with the Greeks —the Samian envoys, of course, and not the Samian state——the words συμμαχίης πέρι referring back to the words of the pledge In any case the envoys could not have been admitted into the Greek League in the name of the Samian state at Delos, because Samos was then under the rule of a pro-Persian tyrant, Theomestor (Hdt. ix 90.1). Larsen, J. A. O. in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology li (1940) 180Google Scholar, holding that Samos was admitted twice (on what I think is a misunderstanding of Herodotus), goes on to disregard Herodotus' statement that Mycale and Plataea were on the same day (see n. 9 above) and to assume that the (supposed) second admission of Samos was due to a reorganisation of the Greek League at Plataea. R. W. Macan in his commentary kept closer to the text of Herodotus and suggested that the three envoys from Samos undertook to conclude an alliance if Samos was liberated; they may have done, but this is not what Herodotus says they undertook.

13 See Barber, G. L., Ephorus 119–120Google Scholar for Ephorus' use of Hellanicus.

14 Herodotus used ‘the Ionians’ also to mean those who had migrated from Athens and celebrated the Apaturia (i 147.2—a much larger group in the islands than Samos and Chios, as we see also from Th. vi. 76.3 ) and those who had occupied the Greek mainland in prehistoric times. The uses are neatly expressed by Chadwick, J. in CAH 2 xxxix 12.Google Scholar

15 Gomme i 271 ‘again the Ionians … are taken for the whole of the Asiatic Greeks’. He says ‘again’ because in i 257 when commenting on Th. i 89.2 he had stated ‘Thucydides in ἀπὸ Ἰωνίας includes Lesbos, and mainland Aeolis, and presumably the Dorian hexapolis, or at least the Dorian islands as well.’ Gomme's ex cathedra statement exceeds the words of Thucydides and the probabilities even of late 479 B.C.

16 See n. 3 above.

17 This seems to be the view of Gomme i 257. He assumes that between the decision taken at Samos to admit only the islanders late in 479 B.C. and the attack on Sestus also late in 479 B.C. the states on the mainland joined Athens, and that they later, with her, broke away from the Peloponnesians (Th. i 95.1). The difficulties in such a view are that, if the Ionian states joined Athens, they did not thereby join the Greek League and become ξύμμαχοι in the sense of Th. i 89.2; and that, as they were not members of the Greek League (since according to Gomme i 257 ‘Sparta, the leader of the confederacy, was naturally not prepared to accept them as allies’), they could not be serving under Pausanias at Byzantium (Th. i 95.1). There are also difficulties in supposing that Athens accepted as her personal allies those whom the Greek League had just rejected.

18 It is possible that Diodorus' 50 triremes from the Peloponnese are not inconsistent with Thucydides' 20 from Lacedaemon. Th. i 94.1 seems to me to mean ‘Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, was sent out (ἐξ-) with twenty ships from (ἐκ) Lacedaemon as general of the Greeks, from the Peloponnese; the Athenians joined him with thirty ships’; and not to say, as Gomme i 271 appears to take it, ‘with twenty ships from the Peloponnese’, leaving, I suppose, ἐκ Λακεδαίμονος as an unparalleled periphrasis for Λακεδαιμόνιος. I take ἐκ Λακεδαίμονος to depend on ἐξεπέμφθη (cf. vii 1.4 and viii 20.1 for a similar order of words) and ἀπὸ Πελοποννήσον to be added in order to contrast with Ἀθηναῑοι. If Sparta provided twenty (a reasonable figure as she had sixteen at Salamis, when she was deeply committed on land), the other thirty ships needed to reach Diodorus' fifty from the Peloponnese could have been supplied by Corinth and other Peloponnesian states.

19 Thucydides may have had this wide range of islanders in mind when he wrote at i 95. 1; it was a generally accepted relationship (cf. Hdt. i 147). I have already commented (p. 46 above) on Gomme's supposition that ‘the Ionians are taken for the whole of the Asiatic Greeks’.

20 I disagree here with Gomme, i 272: ‘Probably in the ensuing spring, 477 B.C. The whole Peloponnesian force was then soon recalled; it did not wait for the campaign of that summer.’ His view requires us to suppose either that the Peloponnesian forces stayed at Byzantium all winter and were recalled only in early summer 477 B.C., or that the Peloponnesian forces went home late in 478 B.C., their successors went out to Byzantium early in 477 B.C. and were recalled not long afterwards. The former alternative can be rejected because the Peloponnesians had gone home in autum 479 B.C. (Th. i 89.2) and even the Athenians had disliked winter service at that time (Hdt. ix 117). The latter alternative creates many difficulties. If the question of the hegemony was still undecided in spring 477 B.C., the appointment of a hegemon and the decisions on strategy were taken in spring 477 B.C. at the normal meeting of the Greek League Congress; when Dorcis went out, if it was in spring 477 B.C., he went as official successor to Pausanias, and the Peloponnesian forces went with him (cf. i 94.1, quoted in n. 18 above), presumably fifty ships or so as in 478 B.C. and not the στρατιὰ οὐ πολλή of Th. i 95.6. There would have been a head-on collision between the Greek League's forces and those of Athens and her East Greek supporters. But such a reconstruction has no support in our sources and is far from necessary. The picture in Thucydides and in the other writers is of personalities active at Byzantium before and during the recall of Pausanias, of a sudden transference of command without consultation of the Greek League Congress and of Sparta's tacit withdrawal. All this happened in autumn 478 B.C.; and it was then that Dorcis was sent by Sparta to take over the remainder of Pausanias' period of command—Dorcis and some others (probably Spartan staff officers) and a small force (Th. i 95.6). The change of command from Sparta to Athens was achieved in time for Athens to reorientate her policy and for Aristides to complete the assessment in the year of Timosthenes, i.e. before c. July of 477 B.C. (Ath. Pol. xxiii 5).

21 Thucydides represents the Spartans as glad to be rid of ‘the Median war’. Plu. Arist. xxiii 7 puts their willingness more strongly Ath. Pol. xxiii 2 reports their unwillingness: (sc. ) It is true that Gomme i 272 and ATL iii 192, n. 30 interpret the last passage as ‘unwilling to keep the leadership’, but this is not the normal sense of such a phrase, nor can λαβεῖν be supplied with ἀκόντων because it was a matter of retaining, not taking the hegemony. I support Sandys ad loc. who had no doubt that the Greek meant ‘against the wishes of the Lacedaemonians’. Sparta accepted the fait accompli willy-nilly; one can express this by saying that Sparta did not contest the matter (Isoc. Paneg. lxxii οὐκ ἀμφισβητούντων), had her own reasons for not contesting it after the rejection of Dorcis (Th. i 95. 6–7), and gave up her position unwillingly (Ath. Pol. xxiii 2) and at the same time willingly (Plu. Arist. xxiii 7, stressing Thucydides' point that service overseas might corrupt her men). The Spartan envoys in Xen. HG vi 5.34 said ‘willingly’ for diplomatic reasons (reading συμβονλομένων which is a variant).

22 Ath. Pol. xxiii 5 (emphasising the importance of Aristides in the negotiations) (in 478/7) … The order is ὕστερον πρότερον since the treaty preceded the assessment. The treaty with οἱ Ἴωνες is an offensive and defensive alliance. Its simple terminology is that of the fifth century, known to us from Th. i 44.1, where the obligations on the offensive side are frankly stated (in 433 B.C.), and from Xen. HG ii 2.20, where Athens and Sparta in 404 B.C. form a defensive alliance with Sparta holding the hegemony (an interesting parallel if Athens had the hegemony in the treaty with the Ionians which those who equate this treaty with the foundation treaty must believe). It has been customary to regard this treaty as one made with all the allies who came forward at the first meeting (e.g. ATL iii 227 with n. 9 ‘we take “the Ionians” as a rough designation for “the allies, mainly Ionians”,’ and Wüst, F. R. in Historia iii [1954/1955] 149Google Scholar “die Teilnehmer”) and then to water down its meaning by further assumptions. For example, H. D. Meyer in Historia xii (1963) 439 says that Athens monopolised the interpretation of ‘enemy’ and ‘friend’: ‘die Auslegung aber, ob jemand als Freund oder Feind im Sinne des Bundeseides zu gelten habe, hatte Athen für sich monopolisiert.’ We are concerned with the meaning of the treaty at the time; to say that two sides have the same enemy and friend is to express a reciprocity of relationship (cf. Th. i 44.1), not a monopoly by one side, and to interpret ‘the Ionians’ as all the allies is inaccurate.

23 Gomme, ii 261–2, Hdt. ix 106 and Thuc. i 95.1. There is no need to look for inaccuracies of detail here, or inconsistencies between the two historians.' Gomme appears to conflate two different treaties (one between ‘The Greeks’ and Lesbos, and the other between Athens and Mytilene), made at different times (one at Samos just after the battle of Mycale and the other after Sparta resigned any effort to retain the hegemony, i.e. on Gomme's reckoning six months or more later).

24 This point causes embarrassment to those who suppose Athens to have put herself in this position. Thus ATL 227 ‘the powers of making policy rested with the Delian synod’ with note 10 ‘but Athens must have had some control even here’, and ATL 141 ‘the hegemonic power was surely protected somehow against being outvoted and compelled to execute a policy which it disapproved’ and ‘perhaps the simplest is to suppose that neither of them [Sparta and Athens] as hegemones would put a motion of which they disapproved. The hegemon, then, had what in Athens would be called “probouleutic” power.’ This is pure speculation; moreover, it implies in the case of Sparta that on the occasion of the Samian revolt Sparta's ‘probouleuma’ was for war against Athens—a ‘probouleuma’ defeated by the attitude of Corinth (Th. i 41.2), and this is highly improbable, as there is no mention of so frank a revelation of Sparta's purpose in the preliminaries to the Peloponnesian War; and again, what was Sparta's ‘probouleuma’ when Corinth summoned the allies to Sparta and denounced the Athenians? The suggestion of H. D. Meyer (see n. 22), that Athens alone interpreted the meaning of ‘enemy and friend’, i.e. dictated all foreign policy, is intended to meet the same difficulty; but it robs the allies of any ἰσοψηφία and is a denial of what was usually regarded as a part. of αὐτονομία. Bengtson, H., GG 176Google Scholar, makes no suggestion of means but thinks that Athens as hegemon knew how to guide the decisions of the Congress according to her will.

25 I follow Kahrstedt, U., Griechische Staatsrecht i: Sparta und seine Symmachie (1922)Google Scholar and others in the interpretation of the Spartan Alliance; the clearest evidence comes frorn the preliminaries to the Peloponnesian War (cf. Th. i 120. 1 and 125.1).

26 Walker, E. M. in CAH v 41Google Scholar realised this and expressed the point admirably: ‘the contract was not between allies on a footing of equality, of whom Athens was one, but … between two parties, of which Athens was one and the general body of the Allies was the other’.

27 The emphatic phrase ‘all the allies’, as distinct from the hegemon, is found also in Thucydides i 125.1, The same contrast between hegemon and allies seems to me to lie in the words of Thucydides at i 120.1 and in those of the Corinthian speakers, who separate τοὺς ἡγεμόνας from ἄνδρες ξύμμαχοι and accord to the former the right of considering in advance a matter of common concern (i 120.1 προσκοπεῑν).

28 ATL iii 234 sees Aristides acting as ‘representing Athens’. If so, Thucydides would have said so, because it would have been another example of Athens enjoying special powers at the outset. But it was in fact a personal appointment and a personal triumph for Aristides, as all our sources indicate. ATL ibid. suggests that Aristides took over Persia's assessment, made in 492 B.C. and even in earlier years; but fifteen years and more of enemy occupation make a difference in any country's economy.

29 ATL iii 234 f., arguing from later assessments, supposes that 460 talents was not the figure aimed at on the basis of need; but the alternative system of pay-as-you-can is not appropriate to the financing of an immediate campaign for liberty and survival. Nesselhauf, H., ‘Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der delisch-attischen Symmachie’ in Klio, Beiheft xxx (1933) 109 f.Google Scholar is closer to my view, that Aristides worked to a total or reckoning of 460 talents (Plu. Arist. xxiv 4 )

30 Nep. Arist. iii fin. puts his death in about the fourth year after the banishment of Themistocles.

31 See also D.S. xii 38.2; xii 40.1–2; xii 54.3; xiii 21.3

32 The point that the Athenians held this office at the outset is one of several points made by Thucydides to show the first stages of a process which led to the establishment of the empire (i 96.1 a matter of primary significance; i 96.2 and i 97.1 where, as in the comment of Classen-Steup ad loc., τὸ πρῶτον goes with both parts of the sentence; i 98.4 and Thucydides' purpose expressed in i 97.2 fin.). They were created at Athens, but we do not know whether the Allies had a hand in nominating the candidates. These and other points are discussed by Woodhead, A. G. in JHS lxxix (1959) 149 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Th. i 99.3 “they arranged to pay money instead of ships as their quota of expenditure’ (cf. L-S-J s.v. ἱκνέομαι III 2). This indicates the existence of such a scale at a later date.

34 The alternative view, that 460 talents were supplied by those states which did not contribute ships, means that they alone paid more in 477 B.C. than the much larger group of money-paying states between 454 and 431 ever paid; and this is highly improbable. Moreover it should be noted that Thucydides does not say that 460 talents was the contribution of money, what he does say is that 460 talents was the first assessed contribution (presumably of the whole alliance and not of the non-ship-contributing members only), and this seems to be exactly what is meant by the phrase in Plu. Arist. xxiv 4

35 The paying of money to the Greek League has been doubted (e.g. by Highby, L.I. in Klio Beiheft xxxvi, 77Google Scholar), but it is most unlikely that the provision of supplies for the huge forces deployed across Mt. Cithaeron at Plataea and stationed at Delos in 479 B.C. was not centralised but left to individual states—some of them evacuated.

36 The Greek fleet at Lade numbered 353 triremes.

37 D.S. xii 40.2 gives the value of τὰ Μηδικὰ σκῦλα at Athens in 432/1 as 500 talents.

38 Mentioned also in [X.] Ath. Pol. i 14 and i 19

39 Brunt, P. A., ‘The Hellenic League against Persia’ in Historia ii (1953/1954) 151Google Scholar, takes a different view: ‘she (Athens) could reasonably claim that such private wars were breaches of the covenant’. Either it was an article of the covenant—a further limitation of autonomy which is nowhere stated (but is assumed by F. Wüst, R. in Historia iii [1954/1955] 150)Google Scholar—or the reasonableness of the claim that they were breaches of the spirit of the covenant depended on the Alliance being at war with Persia, which was not the case in 441/0.

40 The oath at Erythrae ‘I shall not revolt from the Athenian democracy and Athens' Allies’ (Tod, GHI no. 29 lines 23 f.) is a repeat or an expansion of the original oath in all probability. The Spartan Alliance may have had a similar oath; cf. Th. i 71.4–5; v 30.1 and v 30.4

41 The Samian proposal in Plu. Arist. xxv is probably to be dated before 467 B.C. as it was made before Aristides died (see n. 30 above) and may have been put forward when Naxos, being close to Delos, revolted.

42 Such states were (Th. vii 57.3). The states named at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (Th. ii 9.4) as Athens' ξνμμαχία, namely Chios, Lesbos, Plataea, Messenians at Naupactus, most of Acarnania, Corcyra and Zacynthos, were clearly allies by individual treaty, whether or not they were relics of the foundation treaty of 477 B.C. Those states which took part in the Sicilian expedition (Th. vii 57) did so by virtue either of individual alliances or of individual obligations dictated by Athens to them as ὑπήκοοι after their capitulation. For it is to be noted that in Thucydides' account the terms were dictated by Athens and not by ‘Athens and her allies’ for Thasos (Th. i 101.3), for Aegina (i 108.4; see my note in Historia iv [1955] 401 n. 1 and MacDowell, D. in JHS lxxx [1960] 118 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar), and for Samos (i 117.3, against which the first proposal for war was made by Pericles in the Athenian Assembly). In general a state which had revolted and failed entered into a ξύμβασις with Athens (Th. iii 46.2 ) and the different terms of individual treaties with Athens are mentioned in Th. vi 85.2

It seems from the evidence that Athens could either go to war individually against a state which was a member of the Athenian Alliance or invoke the treaty of the Athenian Alliance and lead a joint force of ‘Athens and the Allies’ against the offender. It is probable that Athens did both in the case of Samos. For in Thucydides' account, which is to be preferred to that of Diodorus xii 27–28, there were two stages. Initially Athens alone with forty ships attacked Samos (Th. i 115.3); Plutarch (Per. xxiv 1 and xxv 1) reports that in a war between Samos and Miletus Athens ordered Samos to stop hostilities and accept Athenian arbitration, and on the refusal of Samos Pericles carried his proposal in the Athenian Assembly to go to war. This was a war between Athens alone and Samos. The second stage is entirely different. It is not concerned with Miletus at all. The Samian refugees, having seized the Samians held as hostages by Athens and having intrigued with the Persian satrap, ‘revolted’ (ἀπέστησαν i 115.5; their previous refusal of Athens' command not being so described), and the Byzantines, being ὑπήκοοι, ‘revolted’ with them (i 115.5 and i 117.3). This involved Medising, and in this context Samos broke the oath μὴ ἀποστήσεσθαι (see n. 40 above) which was, we suppose, an article of the treaty of the Athenian Alliance; therefore the fleets of Chios and Lesbos were called upon (i 116.1–2 and 117.2) to serve in a war not of Athens as an individual state but of the Athenian Alliance. It is clear that early in the history of the Athenian Alliance the Congress of Allies had to decide whether the treaty had been infringed and whether those Athens attacked (οἷς ἐπῇσαν) were in the wrong (ἠδίκουν, Th. iii 11.4). But we do not know whether the Congress met as such in 440 B.C. or whether Athens then consulted Chios and Lesbos separately; for I am not convinced by Jones, A. H. M. in Athenian Democracy (1957) 69 and n. 127Google Scholar that we can infer meetings of the Congress from Th. iii 10.5 πλὴν ἡμῶν καὶ Χίων.

43 This important passage receives no comment from Gomme; the translations by Jowett and Crawley are ambiguous, and the editors Poppo, Classen, Krüger and Arnold make no comment on the meaning.

44 Isonomia, isegoria and isokratia were slogans of the period at Athens and Miletus and probably elsewhere in Ionia, where pro-Persian tyrannies were being overthrown; see my History of Greece 190 and 204.

45 A passage misunderstood by Romilly, J., Thucydide el l'impérialisme athénien 85Google Scholar, in regard to sense and date: ‘dès l'époque d'Aristide, seules Chios, Lesbos et Samos …. avaient gardé leurs constitutions et leurs magistrats, n'ayant chez elles que des φύλακες pour les garder dans l'obéissance.'

46 The word ἰσόψηφος is probably one used in the controversies of the 460S and 450s when Athens was abusing the rights of her allies. Its meaning is not just equal in vote but rather equal in voting power: cf. Poppo ad loc. τοὺς ἰσοψήφους, de aequalitate suffragiorum, non solum de iure omnium suffragio ferendi videtur accipiendum. We see this in Aeschylus Eumenides (458 B.C.) where ἰσόψηφος means that two groups of votes were equal in power; the case of Orestes was an ἰσόψηφος δίκη (795) and Athena had declared her intention of exercising a casting vote: (741). The sense is clearly shown too in Plato Laws 692 a, where he says that the power of the twenty-eight Gerontes at Sparta was made ἰσόψηφος with that of the two Kings Here οἱ γέροντες as a group are equal in voting power with the Kings as a pair; it is immaterial that their numbers are 28 and 2. In other words, just as in the trial of Orestes, so at Sparta a deadlock could ensue, because each group had in modern parlance the power of veto. But it should be noted that we cannot say the Gerontes individually were ‘equal in vote’ with the Kings individually, whereas we can say that the Gerontes were ‘equal in vote and in voting power’ among themselves. So too in Th. iii 79.3, though Brasidas and Alcidas each gave one vote in a literal sense, Brasidas was not ‘equal in voting power’

In our passage in the Mytilenian speech we can therefore interpret τοὺς ἰσοψήφους as meaning either that the group of autonomous states was equal in voting power to Athens (the subject of the sentence)—like the group of Gerontes being equal in voting power to the Kings—or that the autonomous states were equal in voting power among themselves—like the Gerontes among themselves. It is not permissible (at least I know of no example) to interpret as meaning that the autonomous states individually were equal in voting power to Athens (the subject of the sentence); and I shall therefore exclude that interpretation. Nor is it correct to take as referring to the Mytilenians alone. They are speaking of the group of autonomous states of which they are one—e.g. τὸ ἡμέτερον (iii 11. i ) and (iii 11.5). If it should be held that here they are saying Mytilene and Athens had an equal vote, it is not apposite to the argument, because in a Congress of equal members, Athens included, an unwilling state such as Mytilene is one of a minority and is bound by a majority decision. We return then to our first two meanings. The second of these, that the states in the Congress, including Athens, were equal in voting power one with another, makes sense in the context but only with the corollary that Athens was in truth equal in voting power to Mytilene or to Siphnos and could be outvoted on any issue of peace or war; but this is the very point which the advocates of such a Congress rule out as impossible (see n. 24 above). The first meaning is therefore best, that the autonomous allies in the Congress were equal in voting power to Athens in her Assembly. Each body had the power of veto; if the autonomous allies did not exercise the veto, it could be supposed that they approved Athens' decision and regarded a war as just.

Incidentally, whichever meaning is taken, it follows that the non-autonomous members had no voting powers at all (the suppression of this right being a breach of an aspect of αὐτονομία which is not mentioned by de Ste Croix, G. E. M. in his article in Historia iii [1954/1955])Google Scholar, and that the Congress is not likely to have had regular meetings when the number of autonomous states became very few. The voting system and the meaning of ἰσόψηφος are discussed in ATL iii 138 ff.

47 The arguments of the Corinthians in their speech (Th. i 120–124) are directed against those defects, Sparta having already voted for war (i 120.1) and the Allied Congress being free to prevent war by voting for peace.

48 If we take the original membership to be roughly that suggested in ATL iii 194 ff.