Professor Polly Lowe

Equally, you could say, well, we can't assume that everybody hated it and that no one was getting anything out of it at all.

So it's one of the things I find most interesting about studying this sort of organisation in this period because I think...

The experience of being in this empire must have been very different for different communities and for individuals within those communities.

Particularly again, thinking about those states which had been part of the Persian empire, they might still be part of an empire, the Athenian empire, but maybe it's less bad being in the Athenian empire than being in the Persian empire, at least for some people.

Yep.

So down to, we think about 454, Delos is in theory the headquarters of the League.

And sometime around then, a big change seems to happen in that the treasury of the League, so all of this money the Athenians have been collecting,

to pay for ships to fight the Persians, in theory, had the treasury been kept on Delos in the Temple of Apollo.

And sometime in the late 450s, the treasury is moved, relocated from Delos to Athens, stored on the Acropolis in the Parthenon.

And that is seen by many as a very important symbolic move because in practical terms as well, the Athenians now have much easier access to this cash, but also symbolically the centre of the league is now in Athens and no longer in Delos.

I think that is how it's usually taken.

One could put a more positive spin on it and say the reason it's moved, and we find this mentioned in Plutarch, the source you mentioned.

earlier, is that it's vulnerable.

The Persians are still a force in the Eastern Aegean, and you've got a huge amount of money sitting on an island, and the worry is that the Persians might just come and help themselves to it.

So it's a security measure to move it to Athens, which is much less exposed.

So that would be the positive interpretation of why this move happens.

But I think most people, including

don't think that's the real reason.

They think it's because the Athenians want to have the money for themselves.

So this is the Egyptian expedition, sometimes called the Egyptian disaster.