>>Killed or enslaved them. In the good cases, they were allowed to
>>rule themselves but had to hand over tribute. In mixed cases, some
>>Athenians mixed with some natives and stole some of their land.
>>But all colonies either handed over tribute or were expropriated
>>and repopulated.
>
>This sounds simply bizarre to me. I've read a good deal of Athenian
>history, and I know of several massacres, but I know nothing at all
>about such a systematic practice as Michael describes here. I would
>not trust a word of it until he gave substantial citation of sources
>in the major historians. Certainly Finley, Ostwald, and Osborne, for
>example, suggest no such systematic policy. The only examples of
>mass killings I know of occurred during the Peleponnesian War, _not_
>as part of Athenian colonial policy during the growth of the empire.
>That tribute Michael speaks of does _not_ come from colonies, it
>comes from "allies" in the alliance (which is what the empire was
>officially). Athens empire included only "allies," not "colonies,"
>and those allies were pretty independent as long as they sent in
>their annual dues to the alliance.
Michael may have the case of the Spartan conquest of Messenia in his mind, surplus produced by Messenian slave labor appropriated by the Spartans and the territory of Messenia incorporated into Sparta for nearly three hundred years: "When the arable land of Laconia, which was predominately held by aristocrats, proved too small to support the full citizen population of Sparta, the Spartans attacked their Greek neighbors to the west in the Peloponnese, the Messenians. In the First Messenian War (c. 730-710 B.C.) and then in the Second (c. 640-630 B.C.), the Spartan army captured the territory of Messenia, which amounted to forty percent of the Peloponnese, and reduced the Messenians to the status of helots. With the addition of the tens of thousands of people in Messenia, the total helot population now more than outnumbered that of Sparta, whose male citizens at this time amounted to perhaps between 8,000 and 10,000. The terrible loss felt by the Messenians at their fate is well portrayed by their legend of King Aristodemus, whom the Messenians remembered as having sacrificed his beloved daughter to the gods of the underworld in an attempt to enlist their aid against the invading Spartans. When his campaign of guerrilla warfare at last failed, Aristodemus is said to have slain himself in despair on her grave. Deprived of their freedom and their polis, the Messenian helots were ever after on the lookout for a chance to revolt against their Spartan overlords" (Thomas R. Martin, "6.7. VI. The Helots of Messenia," _An Overview of Classical Greek History from Mycenae to Alexander_, <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0009%3Ahead%3D%2371>). Sparta, however, sent out few emigrants for colonization. Being dependent on production by slaves, whom they had to oversee and against whose rebellions they had to guard themselves, the Spartan aristocrats probably couldn't afford to part with too many of their own citizens permanently. A fascinating account of what led to the founding of its only genuine colony Taras: Strabo, _Geography_, <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Strab.+6.3.1>.
As for tributes, not only did they come from "'allies,' not 'colonies,'" they may have functioned as Athens' taxes on the elites of allied states:
***** The burden of taxation via tribute grew drastically in the 420s. But the greatest gap in our knowledge is precisely who paid the tribute in each city. No source ever tells us. Finley (1978a: 125) suggested that "If the normal Greek system of taxation prevailed -- and there is no reason to believe that it did not -- then the tribute for Athens was paid by the rich, not the common people." In fact, poleis normally tried to cover public expenditures by combining regular liturgies on the rich (enkyklioi) with income derived from the sale or leasing of public property and indirect taxes on harbors and markets (Andreades 1933: 126-61). We know that for some cities this easily covered the tribute. Herodotus (6.46) says that Thasos' public revenue from mines and other properties was 200-300 talents per year, while their normal tribute payment, starting probably in 443 BC, was 30 talents per year. Given the cities' unanimous approval of Aristides' assessment, we should assume that the tribute was based on the size of the regular public revenues, not on population of the level or private wealth, and that the payment was normally less than the city would have spent for its own security. This means that before 431 the tribute was in effect a direct tax that Athens imposed on the cities, which they covered largely from their own public property and from local indirect taxes. The sharp increase in tribute in the 420s may have strained public resources, forcing cities to turn more often to irregular liturgies (prostaktai), "donations" (epidoseis), and even special direct taxes (eisphorai). If so, then under the pressure of war the tribute was partially being converted into an Athenian direct tax on the local elites.
In 413 Athens suspended the tribute and instead imposed a tax of 5 percent on all goods passing through the harbors of the subject cities (Thucydides 7.28). Thucydides suggests that this was an attempt to increase revenues. If, as is widely assumed, the tribute was bringing in roughly 900 talents each year between 418 and 414, then the Athenians may have thought that they would be able to tax more than 18,000 talents worth of seaborne trade per annum. Alternatively, in the wake of the Sicilian disaster, the Athenians may have felt that despite all the costs involved in collecting an indirect tax, it was likely to be more popular with the cities and to produce a higher yield than trying to enforce the hated tribute. But the shift to an indirect tax on trade was apparently less successful than the Athenians had hoped, because tribute-collection seems to have resumed by 410. Xenophon (Hellenica 1.1.22) says that in the same year Athens established a 10 percent tax on all goods passing through the Hellespont, although Callias' financial decree (IG i3 52.7; probably passed in 422/1) refers to a "10 percent tax," which may be the same one.
(qtd. Ian Morris, "The Athenian Empire (478-404 BC)," Third draft, April/May 2001, pp. 41-42, <http://www.stanford.edu/group/sshi/empires2/morris.pdf>) ***** -- Yoshie
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