Page "Aegina" Paragraph 39

It would be a mistake to attribute the fall of Aegina solely to the development of the Athenian navy.

It is probable that the power of Aegina had steadily declined during the twenty years after Salamis, and that it had declined absolutely, as well as relatively, to that of Athens.

Commerce was the source of Aegina's greatness, and her trade, which appears to have been principally with the Levant, must have suffered seriously from the war with Persia.

Her medism in 491 is to be explained by her commercial relations with the Persian Empire.

She was forced into patriotism in spite of herself, and the glory won by Salamis was paid for by the loss of her trade and the decay of her marine.

The completeness of the ruin of so powerful a state finds an explanation in the economic conditions of the island, the prosperity of which rested upon a basis of slave-labour.

It is impossible, indeed, to accept Aristotle's ( cf.

Athenaeus vi.

272 ) estimate of 470, 000 as the number of the slave-population ; it is clear, however, that the number must have been out of all proportion to that of the free inhabitants.

In this respect the history of Aegina does but anticipate the history of Greece as a whole.

The constitutional history of Aegina is unusually simple.

So long as the island retained its independence the government was an oligarchy.

There is no trace of heroic monarchy and no tradition of a tyranny.

The story of Nicodromus, while it proves the existence of a democratic party, suggests, at the same time, that it could count upon little support.