In the last video, where I discussed how the  Delian league was formed, I mentioned that the  

Ionians were impressed by Aristedes quick and just  actions against the conspiracy within the Hellenic  

army before the battle of Plataea in 479 BCE.  This event confirmed to the Ionians that Aristides  

reputation of being the quote unquote “just  Aristides” was accurate, and so, a year later,  

when it came to deciding how much will each city  pay to the treasury of the newly formed Delian  

League, Aristedes was chosen by the allies, who  where mostly Ionians, to conduct ‘the assessments  

according to each member's worth and ability to  pay.’ According to a Roman era historian Diodorus,  

Aristides ‘distributed the sum so accurately and  justly that all the cities consented to it.’ This  

overly positive view of Aristides assessment could  be Athenian propaganda at play, however, from the  

sources it does seem like a lot of the city states  did initially go into the Delian League willingly  

which they probably wouldn’t have if the initially  determined payments were exorbitantly high.

The total initial sum of the payments to the  treasury, at least according to Thucydedis,  

turned out to be 460 talents a year. To put that  into perspective, there are 6,000 drachmi in a  

talent and it is said that a citizen could easily  sustain himself with half a drachma a day and a  

just an ideal number the Athenians came up  with, when in reality the money that got  

eventually collected by the Hellenotamiai,  the Athenian treasures, was smaller,  

as the ideal Athenian number didn’t account  for cities defaulting on the payments or, being  

unable to pay the full amount or, even refusing  to pay the full amount, or paying late, etc.

Going back to Thucydides, he also mentioned  that not all states paid into the treasury. Yes,  

most states, in lieu of not  sending their own citizens to war,  

paid into the treasury, however, some  city states, like Samos for example,  

contributed ships and soldiers to the League  rather than money. The city states that  

contributed ships and soldiers rather than money  saw this as a point of pride, they didn’t have to  

pay into the treasury for they were at the front  lines fighting the Persians with the Athenians.

Now that the payments and military obligations  of the newly formed league were sorted,  

Athens’ first order of business was to  decide who should be in charge of the  

league’s military expeditions. Since Athens  was designated as the Delian League’s hegemon,  

it was the responsibility of the Athenians  to appoint a leader for the leagues military.  

As you may recall, the last person in charge  of the combined Hellenic League’s military,  

which preceded the Delian League, was  the hated Spartan general Pausanias  

who eventually got booted out by the  Greek city states for his behaviour.

A quick side note here about Pausanias. He  wasn’t very liked in Sparta at this point because  

not only did he lose them the leadership of the  Hellenic League but there were also many rumours  

about him trying to incite a slave rebellion in  Sparta all while being allied with the Persian  

king. With that said, Pausanias was safe for now  as these were just rumours with no real evidence,  

but then, one day, one of these rumours got  substantiated by a messenger who claimed to  

be highered by Pausanias to deliver a message  to the Persian King. This, combined with the  

already circulating rumours, didn’t look good  for Pausanias and so when he found out that his  

messenger conspired against him he knew that he  was in trouble and, therefore, quickly, before  

he could be arrested, ran into a nearby Temple  of Athena in Sparta. Now the Greeks couldn’t,  

well more accurately shouldn’t, arrest someone  in a temple who asked for sanctuary, as the said  

person was deemed to be under the protection of  the god the temple was enshrined to. Therefore,  

the Spartan officials just stood outside of the  temple hoping to wait out Pausanias. According  

to Diodorus, Pausanias’ mother showed  up at the scene, with a brick in hand,  

and placed it in front of the entrance while  stating ‘You are unworthy to be a Spartan,  

you are not my son’. The Spartan officials  then followed her lead and placed more bricks  

in front of the entrance until Pausanias was  completely walled off inside the Temple. After  

a while Pausanias starved to death. This  act was un-welcomed by the goddess Athena,  

as the Spartans, even though indirectly,  just killed someone who was supposed to be  

under Athenas protection. Athena, through  the oracle at Delphi, voiced her anger at the  

Spartans. To apiece Athena, the Spartans buried  Pausanias in the consecrated grounds of the temple  

where he died and erected two bronze statues in  the temple “and dedicated them as a substitute  

for Pausanias’ [death].” Angering the patron god  of your biggest rival perhaps wasn’t the best  

tactic for the Spartans as the Athenians  continued to grow in power during this time.

Back in Athens. Themistocles was trying to control most  

of Athenian politics, which also likely included  the military leadership of the Delian League. 

However, Aristides, ever the rival to  Themistocles, championed his ally named Cimon  

as the new head of the league's military. Cimon  was well known in Athens, he was the son of the  

famous Miltiades, and very successfully partook  in the various battles of the Greco Persian Wars.  

Plus, the fact that Aristedes was so well liked  by the other members of the Delian League meant  

that many Athenians saw him as the reason why  Athens ended up in such a politically lucrative  

position as the leaders of the Delian League and,  therefore, Aristides’ championing of Cimon swayed  

a lot of votes towards Cimon’s way. In the end,  unsurprisingly, Cimon became the new leader of  

the League’s military over Themistocles and  the Greek attacks upon Persia could resume.

The first expedition of the league was in c. 476  against the city of Eion which was one of the most  

important Persian strongholds in Thrace. Cimon  defeated the local Persian leader in a battle  

and then besieged the city. After a while the  local Persian leader saw that there was no hope  

of victory for him and, in an act of desperation,  layed fire to the city and then committed suicide.  

Cimon tried to salvage as much of the burning city  as possible and enslaved most of its population.  

It is important to understand here, and for the  rest of the video series, that people were often  

seen as part of the booty that could be gotten  in a war. A slave was a commodity that could be  

used or sold just like metals or grains, and  if the captured slave happened to be a high  

ranking person, you could even sell them back  to their family for a high ransom. So capturing  

slaves in a war was very valuable. In fact  there’s an anecdote about Cimon and slaves.

According to Plutarch. After one particular  battle where the Athenians and the allies managed  

to capture a lot of Persians, Cimon stripped  the Persians of all their valuables and placed  

the valuables on a pile next to the Persians.  Then he turned to the allies and asked them to  

pick which they wanted. All the scraggly  looking Persians or their “gold anklets and  

armlets and collars and jackets and purple robes  for display”. The allies without hesitation chose  

the valuables of the Persians while the Athenian  got the Persians themselves. The Athenians were  

extremely unhappy with Cimon as they saw his  distribution of booty as completely unbalanced,  

but then, after a couple of months. Families  of the enslaved Persians came to Athens  

asking to buyout their family members, each and  every one of them. After the deals were made,  

it turned out that the amount of money the  Athenians made was far greater than the actual  

gold and silver the allies got, and so Cimon  was praised in Athens as a cunning genius.

Anyways, back to Eion. After this fairly  violent capture of Eion, where much of the  

population was enslaved, other Threcian cities  surrendered to the league fairly quickly.

The loot acquired from this expedition  was divided among the allies, and an  

aparche was given to the gods as per the  foundation agreement of the league, however,  

the city of Eion itself, and the surrounding  area, was retained under direct Athenian control.  

This probably didn’t sit well with many of  the league members as the whole foundation  

point of the league was to protect existing  Greek cities from Persian attacks and free  

other Greek cities from Persian control. But here,  on one of the first expeditions of the league,  

Athens was already taking control of a Greek city  which it quote unquote “freed” from the Persians.

Likely the most angered city state about  this was Thasos which, before the Persian  

conquest of Thrace, controlled Eion and  the surrounding area as it’s peraia,  

basically a colony, but now that the  area was liberated from the Persians,  

Athenians didn’t give it back to Thasos, they  just kept it. There were several very obvious  

economic reasons for why Athenians decided  to keep control of this area for themselves  

despite the harrumphing it caused in the league.  First the control of the area gave Athens access  

to the Thracian markets through the Strymon  river. Second the area had ample supply of  

Threcian timber which was absolutely necessary  for the large Athenian shipbuilding projects.  

Attica was kind of devoid of good shipbuilding  lumber at this point. And third, the “access to  

precious metals from the mines around Mount  Pangaion” was just too valuable to give up.

Right after this expedition in Thrace, Athens  turned its sight on the island of Scyros.

The reasons for Athens  attacking Skyros were multiple.  

For one it layed close to a strategically  important trade route between Athens  

and the Black Sea and the island also  harboured a lot of annoying pirates which,  

not just Athens, but also the rest of the  cities in the league wanted to get rid of.

However, there was also a religious aspect  for this Athenian Expedition. The Athenians,  

at some point in the past, received an oracle from  Delphi bidding them to bring back “the bones of  

Theseus to the city and honor him as befit of a  hero” for it is their fault that he ran away to  

Skyros and died. If you don’t know the specific  myth of Theseus that is being referred to here,  

basically. Long ago, Theseus was the king of  Athens who, along with his friend Pirithous,  

went into the underworld to try to quote  unquote “rescue” Persephone. Persephone  

was the goddess of grains and crops who  got abducted by Hades in order that he  

could marry her. We don’t have time to get  into the details of this myth but in the end  

Theseus and Pirithous were unsuccessful  and Theseus got trapped in the underworld  

where he stayed until Heracles saved him during  his 12th task. When Theseus returned from the  

underworld he found Athens in an active rebellion  against his rule and subsequently got dethroned by  

his enemies. Theseus had no choice but to flee  Athens for the island of Skyros which he hoped  

to use as a base for his plan to retake Athens.  However, the king of Skyros was afraid of Theseus  

and distrusted him, therefore, through deceit  hidden behind charming hospitality the king  

of Skyros managed to lure Theseus into a trap  and kill him. Hence the bones of Theseus, which  

the Athenians have been told by the oracle to  retrieve, were somewhere on the island of Scyros.

Now, a reasonable person might think it is a  bit ridiculous to attack an island because it  

allegedly has some bones of a mythical Athenian  figure, but you have to realize that in Ancient  

Greece the Greek myths, we read today for  entertainment, were a religion to the ancient  

Greeks. People believed these things happened,  they followed them, literally, religiously. Just  

like bones of saints in medieval Europe, bones  of Theseus were a big deal to ancient Athenians.

With that said, as mentioned before, there were  also plenty of other more practical reasons for  

why Athens decided to conquer Skyros, which they  did under the leadership of Cimon in c. 476.

Plutarch tells us that when Cimon conquered  Skyros he was having a very hard time finding  

the bones of Theseus. However, during one of the  searches for the bones, Cimon spotted an eagle  

which landed on a suspiciously looking mound of  dirt. Cimon realized this must have been a sign  

from the gods, and so started digging into the  mound and, there, found the bones of Theseus.  

“When these relics were brought home on Theseus’  trireme by Cimon, the Athenians were delighted,  

and received them with splendid processions  and sacrifices, as though Theseus himself were  

returning to his city.” Here, the mentioned  “Theseus’ trireme”, better known as the  

“Ship of Theseus”, was an actual ship the  Athenians had in their city. It was a bronze  

age trireme believed by the Athenians to be the  original ship of Theseus and, therefore, they  

maintained the ship in working sailing condition  for centuries. So, this bronze age trireme,  

maintained in working condition by Athenians for  centuries, was used by Cimon to bring the bones  

of Theseus back to Athens. This must have been  a very momentous occasion for the Athenians.

Going back to Skyros. The inhabitants of  the island were either killed, enslaved,  

or driven out by the Athenians, after which the  Athenians set up their own colony on the island.

After Skyros, in c. 472, Cimon attacked and  conquered Carystus on Euboea. This attack  

was a continuation of Athenian efforts dating  back to the 6th century to subjugate the whole  

island. The island was a natural barrier to any  northern attack on Attica and, therefore, the  

Athenians were very keen on taking control of it.  They would succeed in their goals of conquering  

the whole island at some point in the following  decade. It is often very hard to pinpoint exact  

dates in classical antiquity, hence I always use  the word circa before almost every date I say.

While these military expeditions lead  by Cimon were occuring in the 470s,  

Themistocles and Aristides continued  governing Athens as the two most  

prominent, and at this point also  senior, Athenian politicians.

Aristides, during this time, was mainly involved  with the politics of the Delian League since,  

as mentioned, he was very well liked  by the allies but, with that said,  

he seems to have not been as active in politics  as before because he had to deal with living in  

poverty. This was due to the fact that Aristides  lost a great deal of his wealth during the Persian  

destruction of Athens in the Greco Persian  Wars. According to Plutarch when Aristides,  

nearing the end of his life, was asked  about his state of wealth, he said  

“It became him better to be proud of his poverty  than Callias of his wealth; since there are many  

to be seen that make a good or bad use of  riches, but it is difficult, comparatively,  

to meet with one who supports poverty in a noble  spirit; those only should be ashamed of it who  

incurred it against their wills.” Basically  saying that he lost his wealth willingly,  

serving Athens, and so he is not ashamed of  living in poverty. Aristides then died most  

likely in Athens in c. 468 which was, however, not  before the ostracism of Themistocles in c. 471.

Before the ostracism, Themistocles  continued with his pro maritime policy,  

first he pushed for tax cuts to the merchants  and artisans so that Athens could become a  

great mercantile city, and second he stressed that  Athens should build at least 20 military triremes  

a year to keep up its maritime dominance. However,  he also suggested, after the Greco Persian Wars,  

that Athens should destroy the fleets of all the  allied cities while they were defenceless and  

anchored in a port. If this happened Athens could  finally rule all the seas unchallenged. Naturally,  

this was refused by the Athenians and such drastic  suggestions didn’t make him many friends. He was  

also hated by the Spartans for that whole trickery  over the wall building project and some other  

stuff, the Delian League members didn’t like him  either who preferred Aristides, and over time even  

the Athenian populace started to find Themistocles  too arrogant; and what do you with arrogant  

politicians in Athens? You ostracise them;  and so in c. 471 Themistocles was ostracized.

At some point after Themistocles ostracism and  around Aristides’ death, between c. 470 and  

467 the first rebellion of the Delian  League occurred. Naxians living on Naxos,  

the largest island of the Cyclades, decided  they had enough of the Delian League and  

left. Why did they decide to leave? We don’t  really know. Most likely the Naxians didn’t feel  

like it was worth paying the tribute or supplying  ships and soldiers to a league which increasingly  

seemed like it was solely runned by Athens for  Athenian benefit. Plus there was no precedent  

on whether a city state could leave the league  or not, no one had tried it before. But fun fact,  

No. The Athenians decided you can’t leave the  league without their consent and so Athens  

besieged and conquered Naxos. A former  founding ally of the league. Afterwards  

the Athenians took down the Naxian walls,  forced them to pay higher tribute to the  

Delian treasury and settled some Athenians on  the island to discourage any further descent.

And so slowly but surely, under  the military leadership of Cimon,  

the Delian League was starting to  look more like an Athenian arche  

than a League of equal city states  formed to fight a bigger Persian enemy.

I know the first video in this series didn’t  do too well, but I decided to continue the  

series because, honestly, despite me being  a medievalist, I enjoy classical Greece a  

lot. Going back to it for this video was really  fun so I am probably just going to continue the  

series despite it not doing too well. Hopefully  you won't have to wait almost two years for the  

next video in the series to come out, in fact, I  can guarantee you won't have to wait that long. I  

already started writing a bit of the script for  the next video. Anyways, thank you so much to  

my Patrons and YouTube supporters, my name is M.  Laser, and as always, stick around for history.