Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, December (2005)
Abstract
In this paper I raise 3 questions: (1) How, and how much, did the Athenian Empire change Greek society? (2) Why did the Athenian Empire (or a competitor state) not become a multiethnic empire like Persia or Rome? (3) In the long run, how much did the Athenian Empire’s failure matter? I conclude: (1) The Athenian Empire increased the tempo of state formation in classical Greece and is best understood as an example of state formation not imperialism. (2) Counterfactual analysis suggests that Athens failed to become the capital of a multi-city state because of human error, and as late as 406 BC the most predictable outcome was that Athens would emerge as capital of an Ionian state. (3) Not much.
I begin with three observations about the fifth-century Athenian Empire (Fig. 4.1; also known as the First Athenian Empire, or the Delian League), and then ask three questions about it. First, by the standards of the other empires discussed in this book, it was tiny. It covered just a couple of thousand square miles, barely enough to make a respectable Roman province. Its total revenues were probably between 1 and 2 percent of those of the early Roman Empire. Fewer than a million people lived in the Athenian Empire at its height, and, compared to Assyria, Persia, Rome, or (in most periods) Byzantium, they were ethnically and culturally remarkably homogeneous—not just all Greeks, but almost all Ionian Greeks. The other empires discussed in this book dwarfed it in almost every sense, and lasted much longer.
Ian Morris (Stanford University)
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, December (2005)
Abstract
In this paper I raise 3 questions: (1) How, and how much, did the Athenian Empire change Greek society? (2) Why did the Athenian Empire (or a competitor state) not become a multiethnic empire like Persia or Rome? (3) In the long run, how much did the Athenian Empire’s failure matter? I conclude: (1) The Athenian Empire increased the tempo of state formation in classical Greece and is best understood as an example of state formation not imperialism. (2) Counterfactual analysis suggests that Athens failed to become the capital of a multi-city state because of human error, and as late as 406 BC the most predictable outcome was that Athens would emerge as capital of an Ionian state. (3) Not much.
I begin with three observations about the fifth-century Athenian Empire (Fig. 4.1; also known as the First Athenian Empire, or the Delian League), and then ask three questions about it. First, by the standards of the other empires discussed in this book, it was tiny. It covered just a couple of thousand square miles, barely enough to make a respectable Roman province. Its total revenues were probably between 1 and 2 percent of those of the early Roman Empire. Fewer than a million people lived in the Athenian Empire at its height, and, compared to Assyria, Persia, Rome, or (in most periods) Byzantium, they were ethnically and culturally remarkably homogeneous—not just all Greeks, but almost all Ionian Greeks. The other empires discussed in this book dwarfed it in almost every sense, and lasted much longer.
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