7. The splendid victories over the Persians had for some time taken Sparta, which was fitted for a quiet and passive existence, out of her natural sphere; and her king Pausanias had wished to betray his country for the glitter of an Asiatic prince. But this state soon perceived her true interest, and sent no more commanders to Asia, “that her generals might not be made worse:” she likewise decided to avoid any further war with the Persians, thinking that Athens was better fitted to carry it on than herself.(808) The decision of the Spartans was doubtless influenced by the defection of the Ionians from Pausanias, and their refusal to obey Dorcis, whom the Spartans had sent with a small body of men in his place. Nevertheless, the chief motives which determined them must have lain deeper; for without the Greeks of Asia Minor, they could, by the assistance of the naval powers of Peloponnesus, Corinth, Ægina, &c, have continued a war which promised more gain and plunder than trouble and danger. If the speech were now extant in which Hetoëmaridas the Heraclid proved to the councillors that it was not expedient for Sparta to aim at the mastery of the sea,(809) we should doubtless possess a profound view, on the Spartan side, of those things which we are now accustomed to look on with Athenian eyes. Nor is it true that the supremacy over the Greeks was in fact transferred at all from Sparta to Athens, if we consider the matter as Sparta considered it, however great the influence of this change may have been on the power of Athens. But Sparta continued to hold her pre-eminence in Peloponnesus, and most of the nations of the mother-country joined themselves to her: while none but the Greeks of Asia Minor and the islands, who had previously been subjects of Persia, and were then only partially liberated, perhaps too much despised by Sparta, put themselves under the command of Athens.(810)
8. But the _complete_ liberation of Asia Minor from the Persian yoke, which has been considered one of the chief exploits of Athens, was in fact never effected. Without entering into the discussion respecting the problematical treaty of Cimon,(811) we will merely seek to ascertain the actual state of the Asiatic Greeks at this period. Herodotus states, that Artaphernes, the satrap at Sardes under Darius, fixed the tribute to be paid by the Ionians as it remained until the time of the writer,(812) _i.e._ about the end of the Peloponnesian war. It is evident that this was a tribute to be paid to the king of Persia: the exactions of the Athenians were clearly not regulated by any Persian register of property. Again, in the nineteenth year of the war, Tissaphernes sought for assistance against Athens, that he might be able to pay to the king of Persia the tribute due from the Grecian maritime towns, which the Athenians had prevented him from collecting.(813) From this it is plain that the shah of Susa was ignorant that the majority of those cities had for more than sixty years paid to the Athenians and not to him, and attributed the arrears only to the negligence of his viceroys. I say only the majority; for the Athenians had been far from completing the glorious work of the great Cimon; and after the war-contributions had become a most oppressive tribute, these cities might not themselves be very desirous to change their master. Hence Themistocles, as a vassal of Persia, possessed undisturbed, at the accession of Artaxerxes, the beautiful towns of Magnesia on the Mæander, Lampsacus, Myus, Percote, and ancient Scepsis.(814) At a still later period the descendants of king Demaratus, Eurysthenes, and Procles, ruled by the same title over Halisarna in Mysia.(815) The neighbouring towns of Gambrium, Palægambrium, Myrina, and Grynium had been given by Darius to Gongylus, and his descendants still dwelt there after the Peloponnesian war.(816) When Athens unjustly expelled the Delians from their island, they found a place of refuge at Adramytteum, on the coast of Æolis, which was granted them by the satrap Pharnaces.(817) Thus the Athenian empire did not prevent the vassals and subjects of the king of Persia from ruling over the Greeks of Asia Minor, even down to the very coast. We need not go any further to prove the entire falsehood of the account commonly given by the panegyrical rhetoricians of Athens.