The foundation of the Delian League in 478 BC, its original aims and organisation, the role of Aristides, the recall of Pausanias, and the early campaigns under Cimon (Eurymedon)

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to describe the founding of the Delian League in 478/7 BC, the political circumstances (Spartan withdrawal, allied appeal to Athens), the organisation (synod, treasury at Delos, hellenotamiai, tribute assessment), the early campaigns under Cimon, and the League's original aims as an anti-Persian alliance.

The answer

The Spartan withdrawal

After the victories of 479 BC the Hellenic League fleet continued operations in the Aegean under the Spartan regent Pausanias. The campaigns of 478 BC reached Cyprus and Byzantium. Pausanias's conduct discredited Spartan leadership:

Personal arrogance. Pausanias adopted Persian dress and Persian guards. Thucydides (1.130) records that he became "haughty" and "scorned the allies."

Suspected medism. Pausanias released Persian prisoners taken at Byzantium and corresponded with Xerxes. The letters (later discovered) suggested he was negotiating to marry Xerxes's daughter and rule Greece as a Persian client.

Sparta's response. The ephors recalled Pausanias in 478 BC. He was acquitted at his first trial but the suspicion lingered. He later starved to death in the temple of Athena Chalkioikos, walled in by the ephors after the conspiracy with the helots was uncovered (around 470 BC).

Sparta's withdrawal. Sparta sent Dorcis to replace Pausanias but the allies refused to accept him. Sparta, troubled by helot rebellion and disinclined to maintain a long campaign overseas, withdrew from the eastern Aegean. The Peloponnesian League continued as a separate body.

The allied appeal to Athens

The Ionian and Aegean states, kin of Athens through the Ionian migration of the eleventh and tenth centuries BC, asked Athens to take command of the continuing war against Persia. The Athenians accepted. Aristides (the politician "Aristides the Just," recalled from ostracism for Salamis) organised the new league.

The foundation at Delos (478/7 BC)

Aristides assembled the allies at Delos in 478/7 BC. Delos was:

Religiously central. The traditional Ionian sanctuary of Apollo, with the panionian festival.

Politically neutral. Not the territory of any major state.

Geographically central. Mid-Aegean, accessible to all members.

The treasury was deposited in the temple of Apollo at Delos. The League took an oath: to have the same friends and enemies, to drop lumps of iron into the sea, and to maintain the alliance until the iron should float (Aristotle, Constitution of Athens 23.5).

Organisation

The synod. A congress of allied delegates met at Delos. Each member, including Athens, had one vote. The synod determined policy and finance.

The hegemon. Athens was hegemon (leader): commanded the fleet, set the agenda, and provided the magistrates who administered the league.

The hellenotamiai. Athenian officials elected to assess and collect the tribute. The first board was elected in 478/7 BC.

Tribute assessment. Aristides assessed each member's contribution either in ships (the larger maritime states) or in cash (phoros, the smaller). The first total was 460 talents (Thucydides 1.96), although this figure is debated: some historians argue 460 talents was a later assessment, and the original was smaller.

Athenian sailors. As cash-paying allies grew, Athens built the ships and recruited the crews. Athenian sailors increasingly manned the League fleet.

Original aims

Thucydides (1.96) states the aims:

Continue the war against Persia. Operations against Persian-held coasts and islands.

Liberate the Greeks of Asia. Free the Ionian cities still under Persian rule.

Take revenge. Compensate for Persian damage (the burning of Athens and other cities). Thucydides reports "to ravage the territory of the king."

The League was framed as a Greek alliance under Athenian leadership, not a Persian-style empire. Members were originally autonomous (Thucydides 1.97). The transformation came over the next quarter century.

Membership

The initial membership was around 150 states (Aristotle, Athenian Constitution 24.3), although the precise count is uncertain. Members included:

• The Ionian cities of Asia Minor (Miletus, Ephesus, Samos, Chios)
• The Aegean islands (Lesbos, Naxos, Paros, the Cyclades)
• The Hellespontine and Propontic cities (Byzantium, Cyzicus, Lampsacus)
• Coastal cities of Thrace and the Chalcidice
• Some Carian and Lycian cities

Sparta and the Peloponnesian League (Corinth, Megara, Sicyon, Mantinea, etc.) and Aegina were not members. Boeotia (Thebes) was not. The League was a maritime alliance of the Aegean and Ionian east.

Early campaigns under Cimon

Cimon son of Miltiades (victor of Marathon) emerged as the leading Athenian commander of the 470s and 460s BC. His campaigns transformed the League's military scope.

Eion (476 BC). Captured from the Persian commander Boges at the mouth of the Strymon river. The town was repopulated and became a Greek settlement.

Scyros (around 475 BC). Captured from Dolopian pirates. Cimon "recovered" the bones of Theseus (a mythical Athenian hero) on the island and returned them to Athens; the Theseion was built to house them.

Naxos (around 470 BC). The first revolt of an ally. Naxos tried to leave the League. The fleet (under Cimon) reduced Naxos by siege; the city was forced to remain, lost its fleet, and was reduced to tribute-payer status. Thucydides (1.98) treats this as the first step toward empire.

Eurymedon (around 466 BC). Cimon's masterpiece. A League fleet of around 200 triremes met a Persian fleet at the mouth of the Eurymedon river in Pamphylia (southern Asia Minor). The Persian fleet of about 200 ships was destroyed. Cimon then landed and defeated the Persian land force. Two battles in one day. The Persian fleet was driven out of the eastern Mediterranean.

Thasos (465 to 463 BC). Revolted over silver mines and a trading post (Eion). The fleet under Cimon reduced Thasos by siege. The fortifications were razed, the fleet handed over, and tribute imposed. The Spartans secretly promised the Thasians invasion of Attica; the Spartan earthquake and helot revolt of 464 BC made this impossible.

Continuing the war against Persia

By around 466 BC the League had:

• Cleared the Aegean of Persian garrisons
• Defeated Persian fleets at Eurymedon
• Freed most of the Ionian cities
• Forced the first allied state (Naxos) to remain in the alliance

The original aim was being achieved. The Persian war was not formally over (the Peace of Callias is dated to around 449 BC), but Persian power on the Aegean coast was broken.

The sources

Thucydides, Pentecontaetia (Histories 1.89 to 117). The major source. Compressed and selective; designed to explain the rise of Athenian power as the cause of the Peloponnesian War.

Aristotle, Athenian Constitution 23. Brief account of the League's origins; provides the figure of 460 talents and the Aristides oath.

Plutarch, Aristides and Cimon. Later lives, drawing on lost fourth- and third-century BC sources.

Inscriptions. The Athenian Tribute Lists (from 454 BC onward, after the treasury was moved to Athens). The lists record allied payments and assessments year by year. The fifth-century BC inscriptions are the foundation of modern reconstruction.

Coinage. The "owls" of Athens spread through the Aegean as the League currency. Allied coinages contracted from the 450s BC.

Historiography

Russell Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (1972). The standard modern reconstruction. Treats the League as transitioning toward empire from the 470s BC.

G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (1972). Defends the rule of Athens as more popular than Thucydides allows.

John Ma, Polly Low, and other editors of the Athenian Tribute Lists project. Continuing reassessment of the inscriptions.

How to read a source on this topic

Section IV sources on the Delian League typically include extracts from Thucydides 1.96 to 99, the Athenian Tribute Lists, or Plutarch. Three reading habits.

First, distinguish the League's original aims from its later character. The 478 BC alliance was anti-Persian; the 440 BC empire was Athenian rule.

Second, watch for Thucydides's argument. The Pentecontaetia is not a neutral history but a structured argument that the growth of Athenian power was the cause of the Peloponnesian War. The transitions (Naxos, Thasos, the Egyptian disaster, the move to Athens) are selected to make that point.

Third, integrate the inscriptions. The Athenian Tribute Lists (from 454 BC) are the documentary foundation. They record what allies paid and (after 451 BC) what was assessed.

Common exam traps

Treating "Delian League" and "Athenian Empire" as the same thing. They are the same institution at different stages.

Forgetting Aristides. The original organisation was the work of Aristides, not Cimon or Pericles.

Confusing Pausanias the regent with Pausanias the second-century AD travel writer. Different people.

Underestimating the religious dimension. Delos as religious centre, the oath, the temple-treasury. The League was a sacral as well as a military alliance.

In one sentence

The Delian League was founded at Delos in 478/7 BC after the Spartan recall of the regent Pausanias and the allied appeal to Athens, organised by Aristides with a synod of allies, a tribute system (originally 460 talents) collected by the Athenian hellenotamiai, and the original aims of continuing the war against Persia, freeing the Ionian Greeks, and taking revenge for Persian damage, and prosecuted in the 470s and 460s BC by Cimon in campaigns at Eion, Scyros, Naxos, Eurymedon (around 466 BC), and Thasos that broke Persian power in the Aegean and began the transition toward Athenian empire.