[12] Thucyd. i, 80. The foresight of the Athenian people, in abstaining from immediate use of public money and laying it up for future wants, would be still more conspicuously demonstrated, if the statement of Æschinês, the orator, were true, that they got together seven thousand talents between the peace of Nikias and the Sicilian expedition. M. Boeckh believes this statement, and says: “It is not impossible that one thousand talents might have been laid by every year, as the amount of tribute received was so considerable.” (Public Economy of Athens, ch. xx. p. 446, Eng. Trans.) I do not believe the statement: but M. Boeckh and others, who do admit it, ought in fairness to set it against the many remarks which they pass in condemnation of the democratical prodigality. Though we do not know the exact amount of the other sources of Athenian revenue, however, we know that the tribute received from the allies was by far the largest item in it.[13] And altogether the exercise of empire abroad became a prominent feature in Athenian life, and a necessity to Athenian sentiment, not less than democracy at home. Athens was no longer, as she had been once, a single city, with Attica for her territory: she was a capital or imperial city,—a despot city, was the expression used by her enemies, and even sometimes by her own citizens,[14]—with many dependencies attached to her, and bound to follow her orders. Such was the manner in which not merely Periklês and the other leading statesmen, but even the humblest Athenian citizen, conceived the dignity of Athens; and the sentiment was one which carried with it both personal pride and stimulus to active patriotism. To establish Athenian interests among the dependent territories, was one important object in the eyes of Periklês, and while he discountenanced all distant[15] and rash enterprises, such as invasions of Egypt or Cyprus, he planted out many kleruchies and colonies of Athenian citizens, intermingled with allies, on islands, and parts of the coast. He conducted one thousand citizens to the Thracian Chersonese, five hundred to Naxos, and two hundred and fifty to Andros. In the Chersonese, he farther repelled the barbarous Thracian invaders from without, and even undertook the labor of carrying a wall of defence across the isthmus, which connected the peninsula with Thrace; since the barbarous Thracian tribes, though expelled some time before by Kimon,[16] had still continued to renew their incursions from time to time. Ever since the occupation of the elder Miltiadês, about eighty years before, there had been in this peninsula many Athenian proprietors, apparently intermingled with half-civilized Thracians: the settlers now acquired both greater numerical strength and better protection, though it does not appear that the cross-wall was permanently maintained. The maritime expeditions of Periklês even extended into the Euxine