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Some Notes on Fifth-Century History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
The appearance of the Cambridge Ancient History has revived interest in a number of problems not yet solved. Here are four of the fifth century, on which the authors of the C.A.H. take what is on the whole the prevalent view, and on which something still remains to be said.
I. The Peace of Callias
Mr. Walker (C.A.H. v. 469–471) argues that the embassy of Callias (Hdt. vii. 151–2) must have been sent about 460, for the simultaneous Argive embassy was asking for a renewal of an old friendship by Artaxerxes, and so had set out soon after the latter's accession. He forgets to add that Herodotus expresses doubts whether any such embassy was ever sent by Argos. He also says that the embassy ‘must have been sent at a time when Argos was in danger of being attacked, obviously by Sparta,’ and so before 451.
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1930
References
1 We must, however, remember that the admission as citizens of the children of citizen men and foreign women would not as such increase the population, unless there were citizens who refused to marry at all because they could not marry foreigners. Only a corresponding admission of the children of citizen women and foreign men would do this. Indeed one may suppose that one of the motives in 451 was a fear that citizens' daughters would not get married, as it almost certainly was in 403, when there were so many more women than men among the citizen population. It was the refusal of Athens (here again like every other Greek city) to naturalise the metics, even though settled for many generations, that more than anything else kept the numbers down.