278 



MAECUS N. TOD, M.A.^ ON INTERNATIONAL 



and it must be remembered that throughout the course of its 

 history this was the normal and natural mode of settling 

 differences between state and state. If diplomacy failed^ 

 recourse was had to force, either in the form of armed 

 reprisals, usually of the nature of border raids, or in that of 

 open war. But at an early period the Greeks saw that the 

 appeal from negotiation directly to force was not inevitable, 

 that if each state based its claim upon justice and equity they 

 might agree to accept the decision of some neutral tribunal, 

 whether composed of an individual or of a body of men. 

 If the disputants in this way bound themselves beforehand to 

 abide by the verdict of the arbitrator, we have an instance of 

 arbitration in the proper sense of the term ; if, however, there 

 was no such agreement, but the intervention of the neutral 

 person or power took the form of a suggestion, which the two 

 states engaged in the dispute were free to accept or reject as 

 they thought fit, we have an instance of mediation, which 

 lacks the judicial character and the binding force of arbi- 

 tration. 



We are told that, as early as the eighth century before our era, 

 the Messenians sought to avoid an impending war with Sparta 

 by ofl'ering to abide by the award of an unprejudiced court, such 

 as the Argive Amphictiony or the Athenian Areopagus. We 

 have grave reasons for questioning the historical truth of this 

 statement, but there are two well-authenticated examples of 

 international arbitration in the seventh century, and another 

 probably falls very early in the sixth. From these early days 

 down to the time when the Greeks lost their independence and 

 were swallowed up in the irresistible advance of the Eoman 

 power, we have an ever-increasing volume of evidence, culmin- 

 ating in the second century before Christ, in which w^e know 

 from inscriptions alone of some forty-four cases ; if we add to 

 these the numerous instances referred to by Polybius and other 

 historians, and remember that in all probability not one-half of 

 the arbitrations which actually took place have left any trace 

 in our extant sources, we shall be in a better position to realize 

 how important was the part played, in later Greek history at 

 least, by this method of settling international disputes. Again, 

 not only is the appeal to arbitration common throughout Greek 

 history, but it is found in all parts of the Hellenic wwld, from 

 Sicily to Western Asia Minor, from Crete to the shores of the 

 Black Sea. Where it first found a home on Greek soil we 

 cannot say : we should have expected to find it practised 

 amongst the lonians earlier than elsewhere, for not only were 



