ARBITRATION IN THE GREEK WORLD. 



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they ia the closest touch with the Oriental Empires, but they 

 proved themselves the pioneers in many branches of Greek 

 thought and activity. But the historical records of early Ionia 

 are very scanty, and we cannot test this conjecture. One piece 

 of evidence does, indeed, seem to tell against it : Herodotus 

 (vi, 42) tells us how, about 493 B.C., at the close of the Ionian 

 Eevolt, the Persian governor, Artaphernes, summoned envoys 

 from all the Ionian cities, newly reduced to their allegiance to 

 Persia, and compelled them to conclude treaties with each 

 other, agreeing to submit to arbitration disputes which should in 

 future arise between them, instead of seeking reparation by 

 reprisals or war. The lonians, it is said, at the beginning of 

 the fifth century, require a Persian to teach them the lesson of 

 arbitration. But this is not a necessary inference : it may well 

 be the case that Artaphernes was merely taking steps to secure 

 the peace and tranquillity of this portion of the Persian 

 Empire by making it obligatory upon the lonians in all 

 disputes to adopt a procedure which they had themselves 

 previously employed, though only in isolated instances. We 

 may notice, however, that this action of Artaphernes marks a 

 decided advance on previous Greek usage, so far as we know it. 

 Hitherto, they had waited for the dispute to rise, and then, if 

 negotiation failed to discover a solution of the difficulty, they 

 had turned their thoughts to arbitration, and had employed 

 that means of averting war provided that both the states 

 concerned agreed to submit the case to such and such an 

 arbitrator. ISTow, however, the states enter into a compact, 

 each with each, binding themselves to settle in this way the 

 differences which might arise between them in future. The 

 second half of the fifth century witnessed the extension of this 

 principle to the free states of Hellas itself, and we have several 

 examples of the insertion of such a compromise-clause in Greek 

 treaties recorded by Thucydides, notably in the Thirty Years' 

 Peace, concluded between Athens and Sparta early in 445 B.C. 

 It may be that some of the more sanguine members of the 

 peace-party in either state thought that a new era of peace had 

 been ushered in : if so, they were cruelly undeceived. The 

 treaty had not been in existence for half its stipulated term of 

 years when difficulties and recriminations arose between the 

 contracting parties. Kepeatedly Athens appealed to the Peace 

 and demanded arbitration ; Sparta as repeatedly refused. 

 What her excuse was — if, indeed, she had any — we do not 

 know ; perhaps it was that the questions at issue were too 

 important to be left to the settlement of an arbitral court, or 



