The History of Greece from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Hellenistic Age. John Bagnell Bury

less decisive, with the horsemen of Chalcis. The defeat of the Chalcidians was so crushing that and the they were forced to cede to Athens a large part of that rich Lelantine plain whose possession in old days they had disputed so hotly with Eretria. But this was not all. A multitude of Chalcidians and Boeotians had been made prisoners; they were kept fettered in bitter bondage until their countrymen ransomed them at two minas a man. We cannot withhold our sympathy from the Athenian people if they dealt out hard measure to those whom the Spartan king had so unjustly stirred up against them. The “gloomy iron chains” in which “they quenched the insolence” of their foes were proudly preserved on the Acropolis, and with a tithe of the ransom they dedicated to Athena a bronze chariot.

      A portico commemorative of this victory was set up within the sanctuary of Delphi. “The Athenians dedicated the portico, with the arms and figureheads which they took from their foes—so runs the dedicatory inscription found in recent years on a step of the ruined building. It would appear from this that the Athenians captured and destroyed the ships of Chalcis. If the victory had been some twenty years later, Athens would have added them to her own fleet; but she had not yet come to discern that her true element was the sea.

      The democracy had not only brilliantly defended itself, but had won a new territory. The richest part of the Chalcidian plain was divided into lots among two thousand Athenian citizens, who transported their homes to the fertile region beyond the straits—probably under the same conditions as the cleruchs of Salamis.

      These outsettlers retained all their rights as citizens; they remained members of their demes and tribes. The Salaminians were so near Athens that it was easier for them than for most of the inhabitants of Attica to attend a meeting of the Ecclesia; and the plain of Chalcis was not farther than Sunium from Athens.

      And not only beyond the sea was new territory acquired, but on the borders of Attica itself. This at least is the only occasion to which we can well assign the annexation of the march district of Oropus, the land of the people who gave to the Hellenic race its European name. It had come under the sway of Eretria, had adopted the Eretrian dialect which it was to retain throughout all future vicissitudes, and was the last part of Boeotia to be annexed by the Boeotian power of Thebes. This fertile little plain was destined to be a constant subject of discord between Boeotia and Athens, as it had before been a source of strife between Eretria and Boeoti; but it was now to remain subject to Athens for nearly a hundred years. Subject to Athens, not Athenian; the men of Oropus, like the men of Eleutherae, never became Athenian citizens.