the Peloponnesian war lasted 27 years. Without the treasure on the Acropolis, the naval resources of Athens must have collapsed in a very much shorter time.
I can but touch briefly on the part which colonisation played in the policy of Pericles. His principle was to avoid enlarging the empire, but to bind the existing empire together as strongly as possible. When cities which had revolted against Athens had been subdued, their territory was in some cases confiscated by Athens. Such land was then divided into a certain number of allotments. Athenian citizens of the poorer class, who wished for allotments, were then asked to send in their names, and the holdings were assigned by ballot. A successful applicant could do either of two things. He could go out and farm the land himself; in which case the State helped him with his outfit. Or he could stay at Athens, and make the former owner of the foreign land his tenant. In either case he retained his full rights as an Athenian citizen: whereas in an ordinary colony the Athenian emigrant became a citizen of the new settlement. Moreover, the ownership of the allotment was hereditary.
All things naturally conspired at this period to make Athens the great Hellenic centre of industry and of commerce. The Peiraeus, the harbour town of Athens, with its magnificent port, was the market to which all commodities flowed from east and west. From the Euxine came cargoes of fish or of hides; papyrus came from Egypt, frankincense from Syria,
