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Pericles and the Athenian empire: HSC Ancient History

Syllabus dot point

“The career and policies of Pericles in the context of the Athenian empire: the transformation of the Delian League into empire; the transfer of the treasury from Delos to Athens in 454 BC; tribute (phoros) and the tribute quota lists as epigraphic evidence; the use of imperial revenue for the building program; the coercion of allies, cleruchies and the coinage decree; the Congress Decree and the panhellenic claim; and ancient and modern interpretations of Athenian imperialism”

13 min read

Quick answer

Under Pericles the Delian League, founded in 478/477 BC to fight Persia, hardened into the Athenian empire. He did not begin the subjection of the allies (Naxos and Thasos came earlier) but he institutionalised, financed and openly justified it: the treasury moved from Delos to Athens in 454 BC, tribute (phoros) was recorded on the quota lists (the one-sixtieth aparche to Athena, inscribed from 454/453 BC), cleruchies and the coinage decree tightened control, imperial revenue helped fund the Parthenon (447-432 BC, the controversy in Plutarch, Pericles 12), and Euboea (446 BC) and Samos (440-439 BC) were coerced by force. In Thucydides (2.63) Pericles called the empire "a tyranny" too dangerous to release. Historians read this record differently, from de Ste Croix's "popular imperialism" to the harsher exploitation view, with Meiggs cautiously between, all through evidence that is elite and literary or fragmentary and epigraphic, never the voice of the allies themselves.

Jump to a section
  1. What this dot point is asking
  2. The answer
  3. How to read a source on this topic
  4. Historians on Pericles' imperialism
  5. Practice questions

What this dot point is asking

This Section III dot point asks you to study Pericles as an imperial statesman: how, under his leadership, the Delian League, a voluntary anti-Persian alliance founded in 478/477 BC, hardened into the Athenian empire, and what the aims and instruments of his imperial policy actually were. You need the concrete machinery, the 454 BC transfer of the treasury to Athens, tribute (phoros) and the quota lists that recorded it, cleruchies, the coinage decree, and the diversion of imperial revenue into the building program, together with the moments of open coercion such as Euboea and Samos and the disputed panhellenic gestures such as the Congress Decree. You are then expected to EVALUATE Pericles' imperialism, weighing ancient and modern interpretations that run from benevolent hegemony to exploitation, and to handle the problems of evidence that is overwhelmingly elite, literary or administrative.

In plain English

Think of Pericles as the managing director who inherited a neighbourhood security co-op and quietly turned it into a protection business he ran for his own town. Years earlier, neighbours had pooled money to hire one strong firm (Athens) against a bully (Persia), and anyone could leave. By Pericles' day, leaving got you "dealt with", the shared safe had been moved into Athens' own boardroom (the treasury transfer of 454 BC), and the subscription (tribute) increasingly paid for Athens' own landmark buildings rather than the shared defence.

What makes Pericles interesting is that he did not hide this. He put the accounts on public display carved in stone (the quota lists), imposed Athens' own currency on everyone (the coinage decree), planted colonies of Athenian citizens to keep watch (cleruchies), and, when a big member like Samos tried to quit, sailed out and besieged it himself. He even reportedly admitted the empire was "a tyranny" that was now too dangerous to give up. The exam wants you to describe that machinery accurately and then argue about it: was this a genuinely popular arrangement that many ordinary allies accepted, or exploitation dressed up as leadership? Historians such as de Ste Croix and Meiggs answer that differently, partly because almost all our evidence comes from rich Athenian men or from weathered account-lists, not from the allies themselves.

The answer

From alliance to empire: what Pericles inherited

The coercive turn of the Delian League began before Pericles dominated Athenian politics. The League, founded in 478/477 BC under Athenian leadership to continue the war against Persia, had already forced back seceding allies at Naxos (c. 470 BC) and crushed the revolt of Thasos (465-463 BC), converting nominally free members into tribute-paying subjects stripped of their fleets. By the time Pericles rose to leadership through the 450s BC, the principle that an ally could not simply leave was established. Pericles' distinctive contribution was not to invent subjection but to institutionalise, finance and openly justify it, giving the empire a permanent administrative shape and an ideology.

The transfer of the treasury from Delos to Athens, 454 BC

The single most symbolic step was the transfer of the League treasury from the sacred island of Delos to Athens in 454 BC. The traditional justification, reported in the later tradition, was security: after the destruction of a large Athenian and allied fleet supporting an Egyptian revolt against Persia, Delos looked exposed. Whatever the motive, the effect was decisive. The allies' pooled reserve now sat on the Athenian Acropolis, under the eye of the Athenian assembly and its officials, the hellenotamiai. From the very next year (454/453 BC), the annual quota of one-sixtieth of the tribute given as first-fruits (aparche) to Athena was recorded on stone in Athens. The move turned a shared war-chest held on neutral ground into an imperial treasury administered by, and increasingly for, Athens.

Tribute (phoros) and the tribute lists as epigraphic evidence

Under Pericles the assessment and collection of tribute (phoros) became a settled bureaucratic routine. Allied cities were assessed in silver according to their capacity and paid annually; the hellenotamiai received the money, and the one-sixtieth quota for Athena was inscribed on large marble stelae set up on the Acropolis. These "quota lists" (the epigraphic core of what modern scholars call the Athenian Tribute Lists) are among the most important documents for the entire empire, because they are near-contemporary and administrative rather than literary: they record which cities paid, how much, and in which year. Their value is matched by their difficulty. The stones are broken, weathered and incomplete, so the amounts and even the membership for particular years are partly reconstructed. The monumental modern edition, The Athenian Tribute Lists of Benjamin Meritt, H.T. Wade-Gery and Malcolm McGregor (1939-1953), is itself a feat of scholarly restoration, a reminder that even our "hard" evidence for Periclean imperialism reaches us already interpreted.

How Periclean tribute worked: from allied phoros to Athenian spending A schematic flow diagram of the Athenian tribute system under Pericles. Subject allies pay phoros in silver; the hellenotamiai collect it; the flow then splits. On the left, the recorded branch: one-sixtieth (the aparche) is given to Athena and inscribed on the quota lists on the Acropolis from 454/453 BC, our key epigraphic source. On the right, the spent branch: the remainder enters the imperial treasury moved from Delos in 454 BC and funds the fleet, garrisons and cleruchies and the building program including the Parthenon of 447 to 432 BC. How Periclean tribute worked Subject allies pay phoros annual tribute in silver Hellenotamiai collect it Athenian "treasurers of the Greeks" RECORDED SPENT BY ATHENS 1/60 quota to Athena the aparche (first-fruits), one mina from each talent Quota lists on stone inscribed on the Acropolis from 454/453 BC - key epigraphic source Imperial treasury the remainder, moved from Delos to Athens, 454 BC Fleet, garrisons, cleruchies Building program Parthenon, 447-432 BC Recorded on stone for the goddess; the balance spent by Athens. The quota lists survive; allied consent does not. Schematic, not to scale.

The must-know imperial facts

The treasury moved from Delos to Athens in 454 BC; the tribute quota lists (the one-sixtieth aparche to Athena) were inscribed on the Acropolis from 454/453 BC; Pericles reduced Euboea in 446 BC and personally besieged Samos in 440-439 BC; imperial revenue helped fund the Parthenon (447-432 BC); and in Thucydides (2.63) Pericles called the empire "a tyranny" that it was now unsafe to release.

Imperial revenue and the building program: the controversy

The most debated use of imperial money was the great Periclean building program on the Acropolis, above all the Parthenon (447-432 BC). Plutarch (Pericles 12) records a genuine contemporary controversy: political opponents, led by the conservative Thucydides son of Melesias (not the historian), attacked Pericles in the assembly for taking tribute levied for the war against Persia and spending it to "gild and beautify" Athens like a vain woman decked in costly stones and temples. Pericles' reported reply is revealing: so long as Athens kept the enemy off and protected the allies, who contributed only money and not ships, Athens owed them no account of how the surplus was spent. Whether or not the Parthenon was paid directly from tribute (the building accounts and the reserve funds complicate a simple equation), the episode captures the essence of Periclean imperialism, imperial revenue treated as Athens' own to spend, defended openly rather than concealed.

Coercion of allies: cleruchies, Euboea and Samos

Behind the administration stood force. Pericles made systematic use of cleruchies, settlements of Athenian citizens who kept their citizenship and civic rights while holding allotted land abroad. Plutarch (Pericles 11) presents these as deliberate policy: they garrisoned strategic or restless territory, overawed the allies, and relieved Athens of poorer citizens by settling them on confiscated land. Cleruchies were planted in the Chersonese, on Naxos and Andros, and, after the Euboean revolt of 446 BC, at Chalcis and Histiaea (whose population was expelled outright and replaced by Athenians).

Two revolts show the coercion at its sharpest. In 446 BC the strategically vital island of Euboea rebelled; Pericles crossed with an army, reduced the island, bound Chalcis by a sworn loyalty oath, and imposed cleruchies. In 440-439 BC Samos, still one of the few autonomous, ship-providing allies, revolted after Athens intervened in its war with Miletus. Pericles personally took command, blockaded and besieged the city for roughly nine months, forced its surrender, demolished its walls, took hostages and imposed a war indemnity. That Athens would fight so hard to hold a major ally, and that Pericles led the campaign in person, shows how far the "alliance" now rested on Athenian arms.

Standardising the empire: the coinage (standards) decree

Pericles' imperialism also reached into the everyday economy of the allies. The coinage (or standards) decree required subject states to use Athenian silver coinage, weights and measures and to close their own mints. Uniform standards eased Athenian administration and trade, but they also stripped allied cities of their own coinage, one of the proudest markers of a Greek polis's independence. The decree is a good example of the evidentiary problem in this topic: it survives in fragmentary inscribed copies from several cities, and its date is genuinely disputed. Letter-forms have been read by some epigraphists as pointing to the 440s BC and by others to the 420s BC, which changes whether it belongs to Pericles' own imperial program or to the harsher wartime empire after his death. State the debate rather than assert a date.

Panhellenic gestures: the Congress Decree and Thurii

Alongside coercion, Pericles projected a panhellenic image. Around 449 BC, according to Plutarch (Pericles 17), he proposed a Congress Decree inviting all Greek states to a conference at Athens on rebuilding the temples destroyed by Persia and securing the seas; Sparta's bloc refused to attend, and the plan collapsed. Its historicity rests entirely on Plutarch writing over five centuries later, so it is itself a case study in thin evidence. In 444/443 BC Pericles helped found the colony of Thurii in southern Italy, drawing settlers from across the Greek world, a project that could be read either as genuine panhellenic leadership or as an extension of Athenian influence dressed in panhellenic clothes.

"A tyranny": Pericles' own reported admission

The most striking ancient comment on the empire comes from Pericles himself. In his last recorded speech in Thucydides (2.63), delivered as the Peloponnesian War strained Athenian resolve, Pericles reportedly told the Athenians that the empire they held was now "like a tyranny (tyrannis): to have taken it may have been wrong, but to let it go is dangerous". The remark, whether Pericles' words or Thucydides' reconstruction, concedes that the empire rested on domination while insisting that Athens could not safely release it. It is the single most quoted piece of evidence for the character of Periclean imperialism, and it comes from a source both contemporary and admiring, which is exactly why it carries weight.

Two readings of Pericles' empire: exploitation to popular hegemony An interpretive spectrum bar running from exploitation and coercion on the left to popular or benevolent hegemony on the right. Three positions are marked on the bar: the ancient hostile tradition and the evidence of allied revolts sit toward the exploitation end; Russell Meiggs sits near the centre with a cautious administrative reading of coercion and benefit together; G.E.M. de Ste Croix sits toward the popular end, arguing the empire was backed by the ordinary demos in subject cities. Two readings of Pericles' empire Exploitation coercion, tribute, revolt Popular hegemony benefit to the demos Ancient hostile tradition Naxos, Thasos, Samos revolt Meiggs (1972) coercion and benefit; administrative caution de Ste Croix (1972) "popular imperialism" Historians weigh the same tribute lists and hostile literary tradition differently.

How to read a source on this topic

Section III sources on Pericles' empire are usually extracts, real in the exam or, in your own answers, reconstructions, from three source types: epigraphic documents (the tribute quota lists, the coinage decree, cleruchy or oath inscriptions), contemporary literature (Thucydides, the "Old Oligarch", Aristophanes), and later biography (above all Plutarch). Three reading habits.

First, separate epigraphic from literary evidence. A quota list or a decree is administrative and close to contemporary, but it records what was done, not why, and reaches us broken and partly reconstructed. A literary source supplies motive, argument and reaction, but from a narrow, often hostile, and sometimes much later viewpoint.

Second, fix the author and the date precisely. Thucydides is contemporary and broadly admiring of Pericles; the "Old Oligarch" is a hostile contemporary; Plutarch wrote around AD 100, over five centuries later, compiling now-lost earlier writers. The distance between "during Pericles' career" and "half a millennium after" is itself evidence to weigh.

Third, move from content to reliability to usefulness to perspective, and reach a judgement. Treat hostility as a clue, not only a flaw: a critic who concedes a point against his own bias (as the "Old Oligarch" concedes the system worked) is often a more credible witness for that point.

Historians on Pericles' imperialism

Thucydides (History of the Peloponnesian War), a contemporary and largely admiring source, supplies the "truest cause" analysis of the war and Pericles' own reported admission (2.63) that the empire was "a tyranny". Plutarch (Life of Pericles, c. AD 100) is the fullest ancient biography, our source for the building-program controversy (Pericles 12), the cleruchy policy (Pericles 11) and the Congress Decree (Pericles 17), but late and moralising. Pseudo-Xenophon, the "Old Oligarch", gives a hostile contemporary analysis of how empire and democracy reinforced each other. Among modern historians, G.E.M. de Ste Croix (The Origins of the Peloponnesian War, 1972) argued for "popular imperialism", an empire genuinely backed by the demos in many subject cities; Russell Meiggs (The Athenian Empire, 1972) built the standard, more cautious administrative history from the inscriptions, stressing coercion and benefit together; and the editors of The Athenian Tribute Lists (Meritt, Wade-Gery and McGregor, 1939-1953) reconstructed the quota-list evidence on which both readings depend.

Model exam responses

1. Source-analysis response (using a quota-list reconstruction). "A fragment in the style of the Athenian tribute quota lists, recording the one-sixtieth first-fruits to Athena from named cities under the hellenotamiai, is highly useful for studying the administration of Pericles' empire. Its value lies in its origin: an official, near-contemporary inscription, publicly displayed on the Acropolis from 454/453 BC, it is direct evidence for how tribute was assessed, differentiated by a city's wealth, and centrally accounted for by Athenian officials. Its reliability is limited, however, because it records only the fact and amount of payment, not allied consent or resentment, and the real stelae survive broken and weathered, so some figures are reconstructed and disputed. Corroborated against the revolts at Naxos, Thasos and Samos, the lists reveal the machinery of empire but not, on their own, whether it was welcomed."

Marker's note: markers reward a clear statement of origin and purpose, a BALANCED usefulness and limitation, and corroboration with named wider evidence rather than description alone.

2. Essay paragraph (Pericles' avowed imperialism). "What distinguishes Periclean imperialism is not that it was coercive, earlier episodes such as Naxos and Thasos were already that, but that Pericles openly avowed and financed it. The transfer of the treasury to Athens in 454 BC, the inscription of the quota lists, the planting of cleruchies at Chalcis and Histiaea after 446 BC, and the diversion of tribute into the Parthenon all treated allied money as Athens' own. When critics objected, Plutarch reports, Pericles did not deny the diversion but justified it, arguing Athens owed no account so long as it kept the enemy off; and in Thucydides he called the empire a tyranny too dangerous to release. As de Ste Croix argues, this candour is compatible with real popularity among the subject demos, but Meiggs' reading of the same inscriptions, garrisons, cleruchies, forced jurisdiction, is a reminder that avowal and coercion went together."

Marker's note: this paragraph scores because it uses precise dated evidence and a named ancient source to build an argument about the CHARACTER of Pericles' imperialism, and weaves two modern historians as argument rather than decoration.

Command words and how to use a source

Watch the command word. Outline/describe wants several clearly separated points; explain wants a point, evidence and why it matters; assess/evaluate/to what extent wants a sustained judgement defended in every paragraph. For a 20-25 mark extended response, plan a one-line thesis plus three or four argument lines, each tied to dated evidence and a named historian, BEFORE you write.

Using a source properly means four moves every time: (1) content, what does it show or say; (2) reliability, who produced it, when, and for what purpose; (3) usefulness, what question can it help answer, and how far; (4) perspective, whose viewpoint it represents and what it leaves out. For this dot point, always state whether a source is epigraphic (quota list, decree) or literary, and whether it is contemporary (Thucydides, the "Old Oligarch") or late (Plutarch, c. AD 100), since that single fact usually decides its reliability.

Weaving historiography means using a historian's named position as part of the argument, for example "as de Ste Croix argues, the empire's popularity with the subject demos complicates the exploitation reading, though Meiggs' work on the inscriptions keeps the coercion in view", not dropping a name at the end for decoration.

Common exam traps
Narrating the Delian League instead of arguing about Pericles
A chronological retelling of Naxos, Thasos and the treasury transfer scores little on its own; use those events as evidence for a stated argument about Pericles' policy and its interpretation.
Describing a source instead of evaluating it
Saying what a quota list or a Plutarch passage contains is not the same as assessing its value, limitations and perspective.
Treating Plutarch as a transcript
He wrote around AD 100, over five centuries after Pericles, compiling lost sources; his vivid assembly scenes are reconstructions, not stenography.
Asserting a firm date for the coinage decree
Its date is genuinely disputed (440s versus 420s BC); state the debate rather than choose silently.
Forgetting the "tyranny" admission and named historians
An answer on Periclean imperialism without Thucydides 2.63 and at least one of de Ste Croix or Meiggs reads as opinion, not history.

Practice questions

Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.

foundation3 marks
Outline the transfer of the Delian League treasury from Delos to Athens in 454 BC and its significance for Pericles' imperial policy.
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A 3-mark "outline" rewards several correctly named points, briefly developed.

The event
In 454 BC the League's treasury was moved from the sacred island of Delos to Athens, traditionally justified by the vulnerability of Delos after the destruction of an Athenian fleet supporting a revolt in Egypt (1 mark).
What changed
The allies' pooled money now sat on the Athenian Acropolis under the direct control of the Athenian assembly and its officials, the hellenotamiai, rather than on neutral League soil (1 mark).
Significance
From 454/453 BC the annual quota of one-sixtieth (the aparche) paid to Athena was recorded on stone in Athens, and imperial revenue became available for Athenian purposes such as the building program - the pivot from shared war-chest to imperial treasury that Periclean policy exploited (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward the date, the physical relocation to Athenian control, and one consequence rather than a retelling of the Egyptian campaign.

foundation4 marks
Source A (an ExamExplained reconstruction, in the style of a fragment of the Athenian tribute quota lists inscribed on stone in the 440s BC): "...these the Hellenotamiai recorded, the first-fruits for the goddess, one mina from each talent: from Byzantion... from the cities of the Hellespont... from Aigina, five hundred drachmas..." Using Source A, outline what the tribute quota lists reveal about the administration of the Athenian empire.
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A 4-mark "outline" wants several developed points drawn from the source.

A recorded, standardised levy
Source A shows tribute (phoros) was assessed as a fixed cash amount per city and that a set fraction, one-sixtieth (one mina from each talent), was dedicated to Athena, showing a standardised, quantified system (1 mark).
Central Athenian officials
The record is kept by the hellenotamiai, the Athenian "treasurers of the Greeks", showing the collection and accounting of allied money was run from Athens, not by the allies themselves (1 mark).
Public and permanent
Inscribing the quota on stone (from 454/453 BC) put the accounts on permanent public display on the Acropolis, projecting Athenian control and Athena's share of empire (1 mark).
Differentiated by wealth
Named cities across the empire (the Hellespont, Byzantion, Aigina) appear with differing amounts, showing assessment was scaled to a city's capacity (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward points genuinely drawn from Source A - the one-sixtieth quota, the hellenotamiai, the public stone record - not a general essay on empire.

core5 marks
Explain how Pericles used cleruchies and the coinage (standards) decree to tighten Athenian control over the allies.
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A 5-mark "explain" wants the instruments defined and their controlling effect shown.

Cleruchies defined
A cleruchy was an overseas settlement of Athenian citizens who kept their Athenian citizenship and civic rights while holding allotted land in allied territory (1 mark).
Cleruchies as control
Pericles planted cleruchies at strategic or rebellious sites - Chalcis and Histiaea on Euboea after the 446 BC revolt, and settlements in the Chersonese, Naxos and Andros - so that garrisons of loyal Athenians watched sensitive territory and relieved Athens of poorer citizens (1 mark). Plutarch (Pericles 11) presents this as deliberate policy, both to steady the allies with fear and to employ the idle demos (1 mark).
The coinage decree
The coinage (or standards) decree required allied states to use Athenian silver coinage, weights and measures and to close their own mints, so that a single Athenian standard governed exchange across the empire (1 mark).
Its controlling effect
Standardisation both eased Athenian administration and asserted Athenian supremacy over a core marker of a Greek city's independence, its own coinage; its date is debated (letter-forms have been read as 440s or 420s BC), a caution worth stating (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward correct definitions plus the argument that each measure extended Athenian authority, and credit the flag on the disputed date of the coinage decree.

core6 marks
Source B (an ExamExplained reconstruction, in the style of Plutarch's report of the assembly debate over the building program, Pericles 12): "The allies are indignant, they cry, seeing the tribute levied for the war diverted to gild and bedeck our city like a vain woman, with precious stones and images and temples costing a thousand talents. To which Pericles answered that the Athenians owed the allies no account of the money, since they kept the barbarian off and guarded Greece, while the allies furnished not a horse nor a ship, but money only." Using Source B and your own knowledge, assess the value and limitations of this type of source for a historian investigating the funding of Pericles' building program.
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A 6-mark "assess" requires balanced value and limitation plus wider knowledge.

Origin and perspective
The real passage is Plutarch, Pericles 12, written around AD 100, more than five centuries after the events, drawing on earlier, now-lost fifth-century writers; Source B reconstructs its dramatised account of an assembly quarrel (1 mark).
Value
It is valuable because it preserves a genuinely contemporary controversy: that critics, led by Thucydides son of Melesias, attacked Pericles for spending allied tribute on Athens' own monuments rather than the war it was raised for, and it records Pericles' revealing justification that Athens owed no account so long as it provided protection (2 marks).
Limitation
It is late, literary and shaped for a moralising biography, not a financial record; the vivid "vain woman" image and the neat exchange of speeches are Plutarch's reconstruction, and epigraphic evidence complicates any simple claim that the Parthenon was paid straight from tribute (2 marks).
Wider knowledge
Corroborate against the building accounts inscribed on stone and the tribute quota lists (recorded on the Acropolis from 454/453 BC), which show the machinery of imperial finance directly, if not the assembly's arguments about it (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward identifying Plutarch's date and purpose, a genuine value AND a genuine limitation, and corroboration with the epigraphic evidence rather than treating Plutarch as a transcript.

core5 marks
Explain how Pericles' coercion of Euboea in 446 BC and Samos in 440-439 BC illustrates the nature of the Athenian empire.
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A 5-mark "explain" wants the events sequenced and their significance argued.

Euboea, 446 BC
When the strategically vital island of Euboea revolted, Pericles crossed with an army and reduced it; Chalcis was bound by a sworn loyalty oath and a cleruchy was planted, while the people of Histiaea were expelled and replaced with Athenian settlers (2 marks).
Samos, 440-439 BC
Samos, still one of the few autonomous ship-providing allies, revolted after an Athenian intervention in its dispute with Miletus; Pericles personally commanded the fleet, besieged the city for roughly nine months, forced its surrender, demolished its walls, took hostages and imposed an indemnity (2 marks).
Significance
Together these show that under Pericles even powerful or self-governing allies were disciplined by Athenian force, cleruchies and financial penalties; the empire rested ultimately on coercion, and Samos showed Athens would fight a major ally to hold it (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward accurate dates, Pericles' personal role at Samos, at least one concrete instrument of control (cleruchy, oath, walls, indemnity), and a stated conclusion about the empire's coercive nature.

exam20 marks
To what extent was Pericles personally responsible for transforming the Delian League into the Athenian empire? In your answer, refer to specific events and to at least one modern historian.
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A Band-6 response sustains a judgement across the essay, using dated evidence and named historiography rather than narrative.

Thesis
The subjection of the allies began before Pericles rose to leadership, but he institutionalised, funded and openly avowed the empire; his personal responsibility is therefore real but partial - he consolidated and gave ideology to a transformation already underway.
Argument line 1: the transformation predates Pericles
The crushing of Naxos (c. 470 BC) and Thasos (465-463 BC) had already converted allies into subjects before Pericles dominated policy; the League's coercive turn was not his invention.
Argument line 2: Pericles institutionalised the empire
From the 450s BC he made the machinery permanent - the treasury moved to Athens (454 BC), the quota lists were inscribed from 454/453 BC, cleruchies were planted at Chalcis and Histiaea (446 BC) and in the Chersonese, and the coinage decree standardised the allies' money.
Argument line 3: Pericles used empire for Athens
Imperial revenue funded the building program (Parthenon 447-432 BC); Plutarch (Pericles 12) reports the contemporary charge that tribute meant for the war was spent adorning Athens, and Pericles' reply that Athens owed no account shows a deliberate, avowed imperial stance.
Argument line 4: personal command and ideology
Pericles personally reduced Euboea (446 BC) and Samos (440-439 BC), proposed the Congress Decree (c. 449 BC, Plutarch Pericles 17), and, in Thucydides (2.63), openly called the empire "a tyranny" that it was now unsafe to release - responsibility he claimed rather than disowned.
Historiography
Russell Meiggs (The Athenian Empire, 1972) reads the tribute-list evidence as cumulative administrative tightening rather than one man's design; G.E.M. de Ste Croix (1972) stresses that the empire's popularity with the demos in subject cities made it a workable system, not merely a Periclean imposition.
Model paragraph
"Pericles' responsibility lies less in creating subjection than in normalising and financing it. The reduction of Naxos and Thasos shows the empire's coercive logic was already established a decade before his dominance; what Pericles added was permanence and purpose. Moving the treasury to Athens in 454 BC, inscribing the quota lists, planting cleruchies and channelling tribute into the Parthenon turned a series of ad hoc reactions into a funded institution. As Meiggs demonstrates from the inscriptions, this was steady consolidation; but Pericles' willingness, in Thucydides, to name the empire a tyranny shows a leader who owned the policy rather than drifted into it."
Judgement
To a significant but not sole extent: Pericles did not begin the transformation, but he institutionalised, exploited and openly justified it more than any other single figure.

Marker's note: markers reward a sustained thesis answering "to what extent", precise dated turning points, a named historian used as argument, and a model paragraph that argues rather than narrates.

exam25 marks
Evaluate the differing ancient and modern interpretations of Pericles' imperial policy, with reference to the problems involved in using the available evidence.
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A 25-mark evaluation needs a defended thesis, competing interpretations weighed, and explicit treatment of evidence problems.

Thesis
Interpretations of Pericles' imperialism range from benevolent hegemony to naked exploitation because historians read the same fragmentary, elite and administrative evidence through different questions; a defensible verdict holds coercion and genuine benefit together rather than choosing one, while foregrounding why the evidence resists a settled answer.
Argument line 1: the exploitation reading
An ancient hostile strand and some modern readings stress oppression: the forced tribute recorded on the quota lists, cleruchies planted on rebel land (Chalcis, Histiaea, 446 BC), the coinage decree overriding allied autonomy, and the repeated revolts (Naxos, Thasos, Samos 440-439 BC) as evidence of real resentment. Even Pericles, in Thucydides (2.63), calls the empire "a tyranny".
Argument line 2: the benevolent / popular-imperialism reading
G.E.M. de Ste Croix (The Origins of the Peloponnesian War, 1972) argued the empire was "popular imperialism": it funded the participatory institutions of Athenian democracy and, by backing democratic factions in subject cities against local oligarchs, benefited the ordinary demos abroad as well as at home, which helps explain why so many cities did not revolt.
Argument line 3: the cautious middle
Russell Meiggs (The Athenian Empire, 1972) works from the same tribute-list and inscriptional evidence but reads it as steady administrative coercion coexisting with benefit - garrisons, cleruchies and compulsory jurisdiction alongside genuine order and trade - refusing a single verdict.
Argument line 4: the problem of evidence
Almost every literary source is elite, male and partial. Thucydides was an exiled aristocratic general, broadly admiring of Pericles but critical of his successors. Plutarch (Pericles) wrote around AD 100, over five centuries later, compiling lost writers including the hostile Stesimbrotus. The quota lists are near-contemporary and administrative, but fragmentary, weathered and contested in dating (the great modern reconstruction, The Athenian Tribute Lists of Meritt, Wade-Gery and McGregor, 1939-1953, is itself an act of scholarly restoration). The allies and the excluded left almost no surviving voice of their own.
Model paragraph
"The gap between de Ste Croix and Meiggs is a gap in how to weigh silence. De Ste Croix reads the machinery of empire - tribute funding jury pay, Athenian support for democratic factions abroad - as evidence that ordinary people on both sides had reason to accept it, so that the empire was popular rather than merely imposed. Meiggs, working the same quota lists, stresses instead the cleruchies, garrisons and forced litigation, and treats Naxos, Thasos and Samos as proof that resentment was real. Neither invents evidence; both weigh a fragmentary epigraphic record and a hostile, elite literary tradition differently, which is precisely why Pericles' imperialism remains contested rather than resolved."
Judgement
Pericles' policy was neither simple oppression nor simple benevolence: it was a coercive structure that nonetheless delivered order and material benefit to many, and the evidence, elite in its literature and fragmentary in its inscriptions, cannot finally settle which weighed heavier.

Marker's note: markers reward a defended thesis, both the benevolent and exploitation interpretations named and weighed, explicit discussion of WHY the evidence is problematic, and a model paragraph that argues the historiographical disagreement rather than reporting it.

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Based on the official NESA syllabus. Not yet individually reviewed by a person; always check NESA and your school's materials for current rules.

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