To What Extent Did the Delian League Fulfil Its Aims?

To what extent did the Delian League fulfil its aims?

The Delian had fulfilled its aims within the first ten years of its existence. These included liberating the Ionian states from Persian control, driving the Persians from the coast of Asia Minor and plundering Persian territory. After 468 the League ceased to be a mutual defence pact and came under the control of Athens. By 440, its objective was solely the pursuit of Athenian power in Greece and the Aegean.

When the Delian League was formed in 478 it was intended to be an alliance of equals. All the Ionian states joined, as did the cities of Thrace, Euboea, Thessaly and Propontis. Each sent a deputy to the island of Delos, where meetings were held and where the treasury was based. These deputies had equal voting rights, though Athens exercised greater influence given its size and prestige.

Member states contributed to the League’s finances according to their capacity to pay, with the larger states supplying ships, and the smaller ones contributing money. Plutarch tells us that the contributions were determined with “scrupulous integrity and justice”, and that the member states “felt they had been appropriately and satisfactorily treated.”

In its early years, the League devoted itself to its mandate:compensating its members for their losses during the war by plundering Persia,protecting them from further Persian aggression, and liberating states still under Persian control. During this period it succeeded in freeing every Greek city in Thrace and Asia Minor, and expelled the Persians from the region.

This process was completed in 468 with the Battle of Eurymedon. Xerxes had gathered another force of ships and soldiers, in the hope of regaining part of his empire. He sailed this force north to the Eurymedon River. Cimon decided to attack it before Xerxes’ Phoenician ships could arrive. The Persian navy navy was destroyed, and Xerxes’ land force was scattered. Cimon gathered a great deal of booty from this victory, which was shared between Athens and its allies, thereby fulfilling a key aim of the League. He then sailed south and destroyed the Phoenician fleet. Xerxes’ hopes of another invasion were dashed, and he was forced to sign a peace treaty in which he promised to keep his ships away from Asia Minor.

With this victory, the Delian League had fulfilled its original purpose.From this point on, its aims changed to be those of Athens exclusively. The first evidence of this was in 468, when the island of Naxos decided to secede.Athens argued that this was illegal, as each member state had sworn an oath of loyalty which bound them in perpetuity. (Aristotle tells us they had thrown lumps of iron into the sea to symbolise an alliance that would last until the metal floated.) The fleet commander, Cimon, used the League’s forces to besiege Naxos and force it to rejoin the League. Naxos was then obliged to pay tribute rather than provide ships.

Thucydides points to this as a turning point in the transformation of the Delian League into the Athenian empire. Increasingly, member states either preferred, or were required, to contribute money, which Athens used to build ships that were manned by its own citizens. Those ships, in practice, were under Athenian rather than League control, and could be used to enforce Athenian authority.

That authority was used against restive members on a number of occasions between 468 and 441 BC. The earliest example was in 465, when Thasos seceded from the League. It was the richest island in the northern Aegean, and objected to Athenian demands for a share of its mining operations in Thrace. The Athenian fleet laid siege to Thasos, and defeated it in 463. As punishment, it was forced to hand over its ships and mining interests to Athens, demolish its city walls, and pay tribute rather than provide ships. This was the first time Athens had used the League’s fleet to settle a dispute between itself and another member. It was a promise of things to come, and the first sign that the League was no longer true to its original aims. It was, in practice, becoming an Athenian empire.

That view of Thucydides was given credence by the revolts of Megara and Euboea in 447-46 and of Samos in 440. The latter two states were forced back into the League, but Megara a late ally of Athens, managed to escape.

Further evidence of the League becoming a tool of Athenian imperialism was the souring of relations with Sparta. Up until 461 Athens had maintained friendly relations with its powerful rival. Cimon had been happy to cede military leadership to Sparta if it ceded naval leadership to Athens. However, this changed following an earthquake and slave revolt in Sparta in 464. Cimon sent soldiers to help the Spartans crush the revolt, but the Spartans ordered them home, fearing they might spread ideas about democracy to the slave population. Cimon was publicly humiliated and his chief political rival, Ephialtes, had him ostracised in 461.

Ephialtes and Pericles now put an end to Cimon’s policy of cooperation with Sparta, and embarked on a program of conflict with the Peloponnesian League.

Over the next twenty years, Athens attempted to establish a land empire for itself by weakening the Peloponnesian League. It forged an alliance with Sparta’s enemies Argos and Megara, made war on Aegina and forced it to join the Delian League, and sent troops to Egypt to support a revolt against Persian rule.

Most of these foreign policy ventures failed, forcing Athens to negotiate a truce with Sparta in 451. The Delian League then attacked the Persian navy off Cyprus and inflicted a devastating defeat on it. In 448 Athens and Persia signed the Peace of Callias, ending the conflict between them permanently. This was the sole example of the League returning to its original aims after 468. Even then, however, Persia would not have been seen as a threat had Athens not intervened in its affairs in Egypt.

Hence by 468, the Delian League had achieved its original aim of countering Persia. From that point on, it gradually transformed into a tool of Athenian imperialism. That transformation, Thucydides tells us, was largely irreversible. Even Pericles conceded that the empire now resembled a tyranny. “It may have been wrong of Athens to take it,” he reasoned, but “it was certainly dangerous to let it go.”