There is an inevitable bias in the minds of most people towards the
brilliant and refined ideals of Athens as opposed to the obstinate
and barren creed of the Spartans. We have heard, therefore, more of
the Athenian side than of the Spartan in their wars together. As we
approach a period of Spartan glory, it is well to make a quick review and
summary of her ideals and achievements down to this period, when, as the
Spartophile Müller notes, Sparta won her advancement by discarding her
venerable creeds. What follows must be read with the knowledge that it is
from the pen of a Spartan partisan.[a]
Sparta, by the conquest of Messenia and Tegea, had obtained the first
rank in the Peloponnese, which character she confirmed by the expulsion
of the tyrants, and the overthrow of Argos. From about the year 580 B.C.
she acted as the recognised commander, not only of the Peloponnese, but
of the whole Greek name. The confederacy itself, however, was formed
by the inhabitants of that peninsula alone, on fixed and regular laws;
whereas the other Greeks only annexed themselves to it temporarily. The
order of precedence observed by the members of this league may be taken
from the inscription on the footstool of the statue of Jupiter, which was
dedicated at Olympia after the Persian War, the Ionians, who were only
allied for a time, being omitted. It is as follows: Lacedæmon, Corinth,
Sicyon, Ægina, Megara, Epidaurus, Tegea, Orchomenos, Phlius, Trœzen,
Hermione, Tiryns, Mycenæ, Lepreum, and Elis; which state was contented
with the last place, on account of the small share which it had taken in
the war.
The defenders of the isthmus are enumerated as follows: Lacedæmonians,
Arcadians, Eleans, Corinthians, Sicyonians, Epidaurians, Phliasians,
Trœzenians, and Hermionians, nearly agreeing with the other list, only
that the Arcadians, having been present with their whole force, and also
the Eleans, occupy an earlier place; and the Megarians and Æginetans are
omitted, as having had no share in the defence. This regular order of
precedence is alone a proof of a firm union. The Tegeatæ, since they had
joined the side of Lacedæmon, enjoyed several privileges, and especially
the place of honour at the left wing of the allied army. Argos remained
excluded from the nations of the Peloponnesus, as it never would submit
to the command of Sparta; the Achæans, indifferent to external affairs,
only joined themselves momentarily to the alliance: but the Mantineans,
though latterly they followed the policy of Argos, were long attached to
the Peloponnesian league; for at the end of the Persian War they sent an
army, which arrived too late for the battle of Platæa: having before,
together with the other Arcadians, helped to defend the isthmus; they had
also been engaged in the first days of the action at Thermopylæ, and
they were at this time still the faithful allies of the Lacedæmonians.
Their subsequent defection from Sparta may be attributed partly to their
endeavours to obtain the dominion of Parrhasia, which was protected by
Lacedæmon, to their hostility with Tegea, which remained true to Sparta
after the great war with Arcadia, which began about 470 B.C., and to
the strengthening of their city, and the establishment of a democratic
government, through the influence of Argos.
[Sidenote: [480-432 B.C.]]
The supremacy of Sparta was exercised in the expeditions of the whole
confederacy, and in transactions of the same nature. In the first, the
Spartan king--after it had been thought proper never to send out two
together--was commander-in-chief, in whose powers there were many remains
of the authority of the ancient Homeric princes. Occasionally, however,
Sparta was compelled to give up her privilege to other commanders,
especially at sea, as, for instance, the fleet at Salamis to Eurybiades.
When any expedition was contemplated, the Spartans sent round to the
confederate states, to desire them to have men and stores in readiness.
The highest amount which each state could be called on to supply was
fixed once for all, and it was only on each particular occasion to be
determined what part of that was required. In like manner the supplies
in money and stores were regularly appointed; so that an army, with all
its equipment, could be collected by a simple summons. But agricultural
labour, festivals, and the natural slowness of the Doric race, often very
much retarded the assembling of this army. The contributions, chiefly
perhaps voluntary, both of states and individuals, were registered on
stone: and there is still extant an inscription, found at Tegea, in which
the war-supplies of the Ephesians, Melians, etc., in money and in corn,
are recorded. But the Lacedæmonians never exacted from the Peloponnesian
confederacy a regular annual contribution, independent of circumstances;
which would have been, in fact, a tribute: a measure of this kind being
once proposed to King Archidamus, he answers, “that war did not consume
according to rule.”
Pericles, however, properly considers it as a disadvantage to the
Peloponnesians that they had no paid troops, and that they had amassed
no treasure. The object of an expedition was publicly declared:
occasionally, however, when secrecy was required, it was known neither
to the states nor to their army. The single allied states, if necessity
demanded it, could also immediately summon the army of the others; but it
is not clear to what extent this call was binding upon them. The Spartan
military constitution, which we will explain hereafter, extended to the
whole allied army; but it was doubtless variously combined with the
tactics of the several nations. To the council of war, which, moreover,
only debated, and did not decide, the Spartan king summoned the leaders
of the several states, together with other commanders, and generally the
most distinguished persons in the army.
According to the constitution of the Peloponnesian league, every common
action, such as a declaration of war, or the conclusion of a peace or
treaty, was agreed on at a congress of the confederates. But, as there
was no regular assembly of this kind, the several states sent envoys
(ἄγγελοι), like the deputies (πρόβουλοι), of the Ionians, who generally
remained together only for a short time. All the members had legally
equal votes (ἰσόψηφοι); and the majority sometimes decided against a
strong opposition; Sparta was often outvoted, Corinth being at all times
willing to raise an opposition. We have, however, little information
respecting the exact state of the confederacy; it is probable, from the
aristocratic feelings of the Peloponnesians, that, upon the whole,
authority had more weight than numbers; and for great undertakings, such
as the Peloponnesian War, the assent of the chief state was necessary, in
addition to the agreement of the other confederates. When the congress
was summoned to Sparta, the envoys often treated with a public assembly
of the Spartans.
But upon the internal affairs, laws, and institutions of the allied
states, the confederacy had legally no influence. It was a fundamental
law that every state should, according to its ancient customs, be
independent and supreme; and it is much to the credit of Sparta, that,
so long as the league was in existence, she never, not even when a
favourable opportunity offered, deprived any Peloponnesian state of this
independence. Nor were disputes between individual states brought before
the congress of the allies, which, on account of the preponderance of
Sparta, would have endangered their liberty; but they were commonly
either referred to the Delphian oracle, or to arbitrators chosen by both
states. For disputes between citizens of different states there was an
entirely free and equal intercourse of justice. The jurisdiction of the
states was also absolutely exempt from foreign interference. These are
the chief features of the constitution of the Peloponnesian confederacy;
the only one which in the flourishing times of Greece combined extensive
powers with justice, and a respect for the independence of its weaker
members.
[Sidenote: [580-479 B.C.]]
Sparta had not become the head of this league by agreement, and still
less by usurpation; but by tacit acknowledgment she was the leader,
not only of this, but of the whole of Greece; and she acted as such in
all foreign relations from about the year 580 B.C. Her alliance was
courted by Crœsus: and the Ionians, when pressed by Cyrus, had recourse
to the Spartans, who, with an amusing ignorance of the state of affairs
beyond the sea, thought to terrify the king of Persia by the threat
of hostilities. It is a remarkable fact, that there were at that time
Scythian envoys in Sparta, with whom a great plan of operations against
Persia is said to have been concerted. In the year 520 B.C. the Platæans
put themselves under the protection of Cleomenes, who referred them
to Athens; a herald from Sparta drove the Alcmæonidæ from their city:
afterwards Aristagoras sought from the protector of Greece aid against
the national enemy: and when the Æginetans gave the Persians earth and
water, the Athenians accused them of treachery before the Spartans: and
lastly, during the Persian War, Greece found in the high character of
that state the only means of effecting the union so necessary for her
safety and success.
In this war a new confederacy was formed, which was extended beyond the
Peloponnese; the community of danger and of victory having, besides a
momentary combination, also produced a union destined for some duration.
It was the assembly of this league--a fixed congress at Corinth during,
and at Sparta after, the war--that settled the internal differences of
Greece, that invited Argos, Corcyra, and Gelo to join the league, and
afterwards called upon Themistocles to answer for his proceedings. So
much it did for the present emergency. But at the same time Pausanias,
the regent of Sparta, after the great victory of Platæa, prevailed upon
the allies to conclude a further treaty. Under the auspices of the
gods of the confederacy, particularly of the Eleutherian (or Grecian)
Jupiter, they pledged themselves mutually to maintain the independence of
all states, and to many other conditions, of which the memory has been
lost. To the Platæans in particular security from danger was promised.
The Ionians also, after the battle of Mycale, were received into this
confederacy.
The splendid victories over the Persians had for some time taken Sparta,
which was fitted for a quiet and passive existence, out of her natural
sphere; and her king, Pausanias, had wished to betray his country for
the glitter of an Asiatic prince. But this state soon perceived her true
interest, and sent no more commanders to Asia, “that her generals might
not be made worse”: she likewise wished to avoid any further war with
the Persians, thinking that Athens was better fitted to carry it on than
herself. If the speech were now extant in which Hetoëmaridas the Heraclid
proved to the councillors that it was not expedient for Sparta to aim at
the mastery of the sea, we should doubtless possess a profound view, on
the Spartan side, of those things which we are now accustomed to look on
with Athenian eyes. Nor is it true that the supremacy over the Greeks
was in fact transferred at all from Sparta to Athens, if we consider
the matter as Sparta considered it, however great the influence of this
change may have been on the power of Athens. But Sparta continued to
hold its pre-eminence in the Peloponnese, and most of the nations of the
mother-country joined themselves to her: while none but the Greeks of
Asia Minor and the islands, who had previously been subjects of Persia,
and were then only partially liberated, perhaps too much despised by
Sparta, put themselves under the command of Athens. But the complete
liberation of Asia Minor from the Persian yoke, which has been considered
one of the chief exploits of Athens, was in fact never effected. The
Athenian empire did not prevent the vassals and subjects of the king of
Persia from ruling over the Greeks of Asia Minor, even down to the very
coast. We need not go any further to prove the entire falsehood of the
account commonly given by the panegyrical rhetoricians of Athens.
[Illustration: GREEK SHOVELS
(In the British Museum)]
[Sidenote: [479-465 B.C.]]
The Peloponnese took the less concern in these proceedings, as internal
differences had arisen from some unknown cause, which led to an open
war between Sparta and Arcadia. We only know that, between the battle
of Platæa (in which Tegea, as also later still, showed great fidelity
towards Sparta) and the war with the Helots (_i.e._ between 479 and
465 B.C.), the Lacedæmonians fought two great battles, the one against
the Tegeatæ and Argives at Tegea, the other against all the Arcadians,
with the exception of the Mantineans, at Dipæa (ἐν Διπαιεῦοιν), in the
Mænalian territory. Tisamenus, an Elean, of the family of the Iamidæ, was
in both battles in the Spartan army; and in both Sparta was victorious.
[Sidenote: [465-451 B.C.]]
This war had not been brought to a termination, when, in the year 465
B.C., a tremendous earthquake destroyed Sparta, and a sudden ruin
threatened to overwhelm the chief state of Greece. For, in the hope of
utterly annihilating their rulers, many helots revolted, and the war was
called the Third Messenian War. Upon this the Lacedæmonians, foreseeing
a tedious siege, called in the aid of their allies; and this call was
answered among others by the Athenians; the Spartans, however, dismissed
them, as we have seen, before the fortress was taken.
Immediately after the dismission of the Athenians from Ithome, the
injured people of Athens annulled the alliance with Sparta, which had
subsisted since the Persian War. Then followed the war with the maritime
towns of Argolis, in which Athens, after many reverses, at length
succeeded in destroying the fleet of Ægina, and subjugating that island
(457 B.C.). The inactivity of Sparta during these astonishing successes
of her enemy (for when she concluded the armistice with Athens she must
have partly foreseen its consequences) seems to prove that she was
entirely occupied with the final capture of Ithome, and the settlement of
her interests in Arcadia.
The five years’ truce in 451 B.C. was only an armistice between Athens
and the Peloponnesian confederacy, which left Bœotia to shake off the
Athenian yoke by her own exertions. At the end of these five years Megara
revolted from the Athenians, and in consequence an invasion of Attica
by the Peloponnesians took place, which, though it did not produce any
immediate result, was soon followed by the Thirty Years’ Truce, in which
Athens ceded her conquests in Megaris and the Peloponnese, and on the
mainland returned within her ancient boundaries.
If now we consider the events which have been briefly traced it will be
perceived, that the principle on which the Lacedæmonians constantly acted
was one of self-defence, of restoring what had been lost, or preserving
what was threatened with danger; whereas the Athenians were always aiming
at attack or conquest, or the change of existing institutions. While the
Spartans during this period, even after the greatest victories, did not
conquer a foot of land, subjugate one independent state, or destroy one
existing institution; the Athenians, for a longer or for a shorter time,
reduced large tracts of country under their dominion, extended their
alliance (as it was called) on all sides, and respected no connection
when it came in conflict with their plans of empire.
But the astonishing energy of the Athenians, which from one point kept
the whole of Greece in constant vibration, almost paralysed Sparta; the
natural slowness of that state became more and more apparent: which
having been, as it were, violently transplanted into a strange region,
only began by degrees to comprehend the policy of Athens. It is manifest
that the maxims of the Athenian policy were directly at variance with the
general feeling of justice entertained by the Greeks, and especially to
the respect for affinity of blood; and this fundamental difference was
the true cause of the Peloponnesian War. In the first place then, Dorians
were opposed to Ionians; and hence in the well-known oracle it was
called the Doric War. It was a union of the free Greeks against the evil
ambition of one state: of land forces against sea forces: the fleet of
the Peloponnesians was at the beginning of the war very inconsiderable.
Hence it was some time before the belligerent parties even so much as
encountered one another; the land was the means of communication for one
party, the sea for the other: hence the states friendly to Athens were
immediately compelled to build Long Walls for the purpose of connecting
the chief city with the sea, and isolating it from the land. Large bodies
of men practised in war fought against wealth: the Peloponnesians
carried on the war with natives; whereas Athens manned her fleet--the
basis of her power--chiefly with foreign seamen; so that the Corinthians
said justly that the power of Athens was rather purchased than native.
It was the main principle of Pericles’ policy, and it is also adopted by
Thucydides in the famous introduction to his _History_, that it is not
the country and people, but moveable and personal property in the proper
sense of the word, which make states great and powerful. The war meant
the maintenance of ancient custom as opposed to the desire for novelty:
the former was the chief feature of the Doric, the latter of the Ionic
race. The Dorians wished to preserve their ancient dignity and power, as
well as their customs and religious feelings: the Ionians were commonly
in pursuit of something new. It was a union of nations and tribes against
one arbitrarily formed: aristocracy was pitted against democracy:
this difference was manifested in the first half of the war by Athens
changing, while Sparta only restored governments; for in this instance
also the power of Sparta was in strictness only employed in upholding
ancient establishments, as an aristocracy may indeed be overthrown, but
cannot be formed in a moment.
[Illustration: GRECIAN TERRA-COTTA STATUETTE
(In the British Museum)]
These obvious points of difference are sufficient to substantiate the
result which we wish to arrive at. The “honesty and openness” of the
Doric character, the noble simplicity of the ancient times of Greece,
soon disappeared in this tumultuous age. Sparta therefore and the
Peloponnesians emerge from the contest, altered, and as it were reversed;
and even before its termination appear in a character of which they had
before probably contained only the first seeds.
[Sidenote: [460-405 B.C.]]
But in the second half of the war, when the Spartans gave up their great
armaments by land, and began to equip fleets with hired seamen; when
they had learnt to consider money as the chief instrument of warfare,
and begged it at the court of Persia; when they sought less to protect
the states joined to them by affinity and alliance, than to dissolve
the Athenian confederacy; when they began to secure conquered states
by harmosts of their own, and by oligarchs forced upon the people, and
found that the secret management of the political clubs was more to their
interest than open negotiation with the government; we see developed on
the one hand an energy and address, which was first manifested in the
enterprises of the great Brasidas, and on the other a worldly policy, as
was shown in Gylippus, and afterwards more strongly in Lysander; when the
descendants of Hercules found it advisable to exchange the lion’s for the
fox’s skin. And since the enterprises conducted in the spirit of earlier
times either wholly failed or else remained fruitless, this new system,
though the state had inwardly declined, brought with it, by the mockery
of fate, external fame and victory.[b]
Whatever nobility of creed the Sparta-loving Müller has, as above,
claimed for Sparta up to this time, it is certain that the sudden
accession of vast and unforeseen power changed her to a mood in which,
as Bury says, “she cynically set aside her high moral professions and
yielded to a lust for oppression.” Grote was no lover of Sparta and yet
he substantiates well his accusations against her.[a]
GROTE’S COMPARISON OF SPARTAN AND ATHENIAN RULE
[Sidenote: [405-404 B.C.]]
The Spartan empire began with the decisive victory of Ægospotami in the
Hellespont (September or October 405 B.C.). The whole power of Athens was
thus annihilated, and nothing remained for the Lacedæmonians to master
except the city itself and Piræus; a consummation certain to happen, and
actually brought to pass in April 404 B.C., when Lysander entered Athens
in triumph, dismantled Piræus, and demolished a large portion of the Long
Walls. With the exception of Athens herself--whose citizens deferred the
moment of subjection by an heroic, though unavailing, struggle against
the horrors of famine--and of Samos, no other Grecian city offered any
resistance to Lysander after the battle of Ægospotami; which in fact not
only took away from Athens her whole naval force, but transferred it all
over to him, and rendered him admiral of a larger Grecian fleet than had
ever been seen together since the battle of Salamis.
The allies, especially Thebes and Corinth, not only relented in their
hatred and fear of Athens, now that she had lost her power--but even
sympathised with her suffering exiles, and became disgusted with the
self-willed encroachments of Sparta; while the Spartan king Pausanias,
together with some of the ephors, were also jealous of the arbitrary and
oppressive conduct of Lysander.
We have learned from dark, but well-attested details, to appreciate the
auspices under which that period of history called the Lacedæmonian
empire was inaugurated. Such phenomena were by no means confined within
the walls of Athens. On the contrary, the Year of Anarchy (using that
term in the sense in which it was employed by the Athenians) arising out
of the same combination of causes and agents, was common to a very large
proportion of the cities throughout Greece. The Lacedæmonian admiral
Lysander, during his first year of naval command, had organised in most
of the allied cities factious combinations of some of the principal
citizens, corresponding with himself personally. By their efforts in
their respective cities he was enabled to prosecute the war vigorously,
and he repaid them, partly by seconding as much as he could their
injustices in their respective cities, partly by promising to strengthen
their hands still further as soon as victory should be made sure.
In the greater number of cities, he established an oligarchy of ten
citizens, or a decarchy, composed of his own partisans; while he at the
same time planted in each a Lacedæmonian harmost or governor, with a
garrison, to uphold the new oligarchy. The decarchy of ten Lysandrian
partisans, with the Lacedæmonian harmost to sustain them, became the
general scheme of Hellenic government throughout the Ægean, from Eubœa
to the Thracian coast towns, and from Miletus to Byzantium. Lysander
sailed round in person with his victorious fleet to Byzantium and
Chalcedon, to the cities of Lesbos, to Thasos, and other places--while
he sent Eteonicus to Thrace for the purpose of thus recasting the
governments everywhere. Not merely those cities which had hitherto
been on the Athenian side, but also those which had acted as allies of
Sparta, were subjected to the same intestine revolution and the same
foreign constraint. Everywhere the new Lysandrian decarchy superseded the
previous governments, whether oligarchical or democratical.
In what spirit these new decarchies would govern, consisting as they
did of picked oligarchical partisans distinguished for audacity and
ambition--who, to all the unscrupulous lust of power which characterised
Lysander himself, added a thirst for personal gain, from which he
was exempt, and were now about to reimburse themselves for services
already rendered to him--the general analogy of Grecian history would
sufficiently teach us, though we are without special details. But in
reference to this point, we have not merely general analogy to guide
us; we have further the parallel case of the Thirty at Athens, the
particulars of whose rule are well known and have already been alluded to.
Isocrates, who speaks with indignant horror of these decarchies, while he
denounces those features which they had in common with the triacontarchy
at Athens--extrajudicial murders, spoliations, and banishments--notices
one enormity besides, which we do not find in the latter: violent
outrages upon boys and women. Nothing of this kind is ascribed to Critias
and his companions; and it is a considerable proof of the restraining
force of Athenian manners, that men who inflicted so much evil in
gratification of other violent impulses, should have stopped short here.
The decemvirs named by Lysander, like the decemvir Appius Claudius at
Rome, would find themselves armed with power to satiate their lusts as
well as their antipathies, and would not be more likely to set bounds to
the former than to the latter. Lysander, in all the overweening insolence
of victory, while rewarding his most devoted partisans with an exaltation
comprising every sort of licence and tyranny, stained the dependent
cities with countless murders, perpetrated on private as well as on
public grounds. No individual Greek had ever before wielded so prodigious
a power of enriching friends or destroying enemies, as in this universal
reorganisation of Greece; nor was there ever any power more deplorably
abused.
Taking all these causes of evil together--the decarchies, the harmosts,
and the overwhelming dictatorship of Lysander--and construing other
parts of the Grecian world by the analogy of Athens under the Thirty,
we shall be warranted in affirming that the first years of the Spartan
empire, which followed upon the victory of Ægospotami, were years
of all-pervading tyranny, and multifarious intestine calamity, such
as Greece had never before endured. The hardships of war, severe in
many ways, were now at an end, but they were replaced by a state of
suffering not the less difficult to bear because it was called peace.
And what made the suffering yet more intolerable was, that it was a
bitter disappointment and a flagrant violation of promises proclaimed,
repeatedly and explicitly, by the Lacedæmonians themselves.
For more than thirty years preceding--from times earlier than the
commencement of the Peloponnesian War--the Spartans had professed to
interfere only for the purpose of liberating Greece, and of putting down
the usurped ascendency of Athens. Like the allied sovereigns of Europe in
1813, who, requiring the most strenuous efforts on the part of the people
to contend against the Emperor Napoleon, promised free constitutions, and
granted nothing after the victory had been assured--the Lacedæmonians
held out the most emphatic and repeated assurances of general autonomy in
order to enlist allies against Athens; disavowing, even ostentatiously,
any aim at empire for themselves.
The victory of Ægospotami, with its consequences, cruelly undeceived
every one. The language of Brasidas, sanctioned by the solemn oaths
of the Lacedæmonian ephors, in 424 B.C., and the proceedings of the
Lacedæmonian Lysander in 405-404 B.C., the commencing hour of Spartan
omnipotence, stand in such literal and flagrant contradiction, that we
might almost imagine the former to have foreseen the possibility of such
a successor, and to have tried to disgrace and disarm him beforehand.
There was no present necessity for conciliating allies--still less for
acting up to former engagements; so that nothing remained to oppose the
naturally ambitious inspirations of the Spartan ephors, who allowed the
admiral to carry out the details in his own way. But former assurances,
though Sparta was in a condition to disregard them, were not forgotten
by others; and the recollection of them imparted additional bitterness
to the oppressions of the decemvirs and harmosts. In perfect consistency
with her misrule throughout eastern Greece, too, Sparta identified
herself with the energetic tyranny of Dionysius at Syracuse, assisting
both to erect and to uphold it; a contradiction to her former maxims of
action which would have astounded the historian Herodotus.
[Sidenote: [405-371 B.C.]]
The empire of Sparta, thus constituted at the end of 405 B.C., maintained
itself in full grandeur for somewhat above ten years, until the naval
battle of Cnidus in 394 B.C. That defeat destroyed her fleet and
maritime ascendency, yet left her in undiminished power on land, which
she still maintained until her defeat by the Thebans, at Leuctra in 371
B.C. Throughout all this time, it was her established system to keep up
Spartan harmosts and garrisons in the dependent cities on the continent
as well as in the islands. Even the Chians, who had been her most active
allies during the last eight years of the war, were compelled to submit
to this hardship; besides having all their fleet taken away from them.
But the native decarchies, though at first established by Lysander
universally throughout the maritime dependencies, did not last as a
system so long as the harmosts. Composed as they were to a great degree
of the personal nominees and confederates of Lysander, they suffered in
part by the reactionary jealousy which in time made itself felt against
his overweening ascendency. After continuing for some time, they lost
the countenance of the Spartan ephors, who proclaimed permission to the
cities (we do not precisely know when) to resume their pre-existing
governments. Some of the decarchies thus became dissolved, or modified in
various ways, but several probably still continued to subsist, if they
had force enough to maintain themselves; for it does not appear that the
ephors ever systematically put them down as Lysander had systematically
set them up.
Such then was the result throughout Greece when that long war, which had
been undertaken in the name of universal autonomy, was terminated by the
battle of Ægospotami. In place of imperial Athens was substituted, not
the promised autonomy, but yet more imperial Sparta. An awful picture
is given by the philo-Laconian Xenophon, in 399 B.C., of the ascendency
exercised throughout all the Grecian cities, not merely by the ephors and
the public officers, but even by the private citizens, of Sparta.
We have more than one picture of the Athenian empire in speeches made by
hostile orators who had every motive to work up the strongest antipathies
in the bosoms of their audience against it. We have the addresses of
the Corinthian envoys at Sparta when stimulating the Spartan allies to
the Peloponnesian War; that of the envoys from Mytilene delivered at
Olympia to the Spartan confederates, when the city had revolted from
Athens and stood in pressing need of support; the discourse of Brasidas
in the public assembly at Acanthus; and more than one speech also from
Hermocrates, impressing upon his Sicilian countrymen hatred as well as
fear of Athens. Whoever reads these discourses, will see that they dwell
almost exclusively on the great political wrong inherent in the very fact
of her empire, robbing so many Grecian communities of their legitimate
autonomy, over and above the tribute imposed. That Athens had thus
already enslaved many cities, and was only watching for opportunities
to enslave many more, is the theme upon which they expatiate. But of
practical grievances--of cruelty, oppression, spoliation, multiplied
exiles, etc., of high-handed wrong committed by individual Athenians--not
one word is spoken. Had there been the smallest pretext for introducing
such inflammatory topics, how much more impressive would have been the
appeal of Brasidas to the sympathies of the Acanthians! How vehement
would have been the denunciations of the Mytilenean envoys, in place of
the tame and almost apologetic language which we now read in Thucydides!
Athens extinguished the autonomy of her subject-allies, and punished
revolters with severity, sometimes even with cruelty. But as to other
points of wrong, the silence of accusers, such as those just noticed,
counts as a powerful exculpation.
[Sidenote: [405-403 B.C.]]
The case is altered when we come to the period succeeding the battle of
Ægospotami. Here indeed also, we find the Spartan empire complained of
(as the Athenian empire had been before), in contrast with that state
of autonomy to which each city laid claim, and which Sparta not merely
promised to ensure, but set forth as her only ground of war. Yet this
is not the prominent grievance--other topics stand more emphatically
forward. The decemvirs and the harmosts (some of the latter being
helots), the standing instruments of Spartan empire, are felt as more
sorely painful than the empire itself; as the language held by Brasidas
at Acanthus admits them to be beforehand. At the time when Athens was
a subject city under Sparta, governed by the Lysandrian Thirty and
by the Lacedæmonian harmost in the Acropolis--the sense of indignity
arising from the fact of subjection was absorbed in the still more
terrible suffering arising from the enormities of those individual
rulers whom the imperial state had set up. Now Athens set up no local
rulers--no native Ten or native Thirty--no resident Athenian harmosts or
garrisons. This was of itself an unspeakable exemption, when compared
with the condition of cities subject, not only to the Spartan empire,
but also under that empire to native decemvirs like Critias, and Spartan
harmosts like Aristarchus or Aristodemus. A city subject to Athens had
to bear definite burdens enforced by its own government, which was
liable in case of default or delinquency to be tried before the popular
Athenian dicastery. But this same dicastery (as is distinctly stated by
Thucydides) was the harbour of refuge to each subject city; not less
against individual Athenian wrong-doers than against misconduct from
other cities. In no one point can it be shown that the substitution of
Spartan empire in place of Athenian was a gain, either for the subject
cities or for Greece generally; while in many points it was a great and
serious aggravation of suffering. And this abuse of power is the more
deeply to be regretted, as Sparta enjoyed after the battle of Ægospotami
a precious opportunity--such as Athens had never had, and such as never
again recurred--of reorganising the Grecian world on wise principles, and
with a view to Panhellenic stability and harmony.
She now stood without competitor as leader of the Grecian world, and
might at that moment have reasonably hoped to carry the members of it
along with her to any liberal and Panhellenic organisation, had she
attempted it with proper earnestness. Unfortunately she took the opposite
course, under the influence of Lysander; founding a new empire far more
oppressive and odious than that of Athens, with few of the advantages,
and none of the excuses, attached to the latter. As she soon became even
more unpopular than Athens, _her_ moment of high tide, for beneficent
Panhellenic combination, passed away also--never to return.[c]
HARSHNESS OF THE SPARTAN HEGEMONY
[Sidenote: [405-353 B.C.]]
The Peloponnesian War had been disastrous in its consequences to public
morals. Its long duration and peculiarly bloody character, arousing
everywhere mistrust, exciting passions, deifying brute force, had wrought
a deterioration in the Greek nature from which it never fully recovered.
There was ferocity on the battle-field, a ferocity in the party contests.
“This,” says Aristotle, “is the oath administered to-day in several
cities by the oligarchy: ‘I will be the enemy of the people and will do
them all the evil I can.’” We may indeed place against this homicidal
oath that taken by the heliasts of Athens after the tyranny: “I will
forget all past ills and will permit no one else to remember and give
them mention.” But Athens even in its decadence was always Athens liberal
and generous, even as its mutilated statues remain beautiful in all their
degradation.
[Illustration: GREEK URN
(In the British Museum)]
The system of warfare had also changed. We have shown how one military
revolution had already occurred; the replacing of the aristocratic army
of former times by the democratic army of the fifth and sixth centuries.
And now the age of mercenaries was being ushered in by the employment,
in all Greek cities, of hired soldiers to fight beside their citizen
troops. But to pay these hirelings money was required, and Greece applied
to Persia, who alone had money; hence her mendicant attitude towards
the Great King, and the continual intervention of Xerxes’ successors in
Hellenic affairs. This dependence on a foreign power and harshness of
the public temper were first observed during the last years of the war;
they are found again in the year after peace was concluded, the Year of
Anarchy, as the Greeks called the commencement of the Spartan dominion.
Blood flowed everywhere because everywhere were established oligarchical
governments. A massacre occurred at Thasos. At Miletus eight hundred
citizens belonging to the popularist party were lured from their retreats
by Lysander and put to death. At Byzantium, Œtœa, and the greater part
of the towns of Asia Minor similar outrages were committed. At Samos the
inhabitants were all banished, with the privilege of taking away but a
single garment. The defection of Chios and its navy had assured Sparta’s
triumph; as a reward its most prominent citizens were sent into exile
and all its triremes were seized. Lycophron, a Pheræan, made himself
master of the province of Thessaly after desperate battles. “Thereafter,”
relates Xenophon, “a Lacedæmonian’s lightest word was obeyed; even a
citizen in private life could arrange everything to his will.” Xenophon
himself appears to have shared this terror, since after the retreat
of the Ten Thousand he refused the title of general-in-chief that his
companions wished to bestow upon him, fearing that Sparta might view
with disfavour the placing of command in the hands of an Athenian. The
islanders, especially those who had betrayed the cause of Athens, hoped
that with the accession to power of Lacedæmonia who was an ally of the
Great King the duties established by Aristides and Pericles to protect
their commerce would be removed. But they found they had simply changed
masters, Sparta continuing to levy the former tribute, which amounted
annually to 1000 talents [£200,000 or $1,000,000].
Athens, more adroit in establishing her empire, had proceeded without
cruelty, violence, or spoliation, hence had not known, even in her time
of greatest misfortune, the falling-off of her supports. Sparta was not
so wise in the formation of kingdoms; force was the only instrument of
which she knew the use, and with her the use of it was the abuse of it.
Athens had also made use of force, but had always associated with it
justice. Athens had made itself the political, military, and judiciary
centre of the empire, and further, it was the metropolis of arts and
letters for all Hellas. Nothing great or glorious, nothing useful or full
of promise, could proceed from the Lacedæmonian dominion; it threatened
to topple over in the hour of its erection. A thousand causes were at
work to bring about a rapid dissolution; many of these were in Sparta or
Greece, the rest in other lands.
DEGENERACY OF SPARTA
[Sidenote: [353-240 B.C.]]
The results of Lycurgus’ institutions continued to be made manifest. The
Spartan city diminished in population from day to day, as though worn
away by the friction of its iron institutions. The narrow circle, which
it had drawn round itself, never widening but always growing smaller,
finally came to enclose but an insignificant number of Spartans. Great
numbers had perished in the wars, others cast by poverty into the lower
classes could no longer take their seats at the public tables. Aristotle
says, “Whoever is without means to contribute to the expense of these
tables must forfeit his political rights.” The Spartans knew that they
were menaced with destruction through lack of citizens; the cry that
arose when the four hundred and twenty Spartan soldiers were imprisoned
on the island of Sphacteria, still rang in every ear. Aristotle further
states: “The territory of Sparta that is capable of providing sustenance
for fifteen hundred cavalry and thirty thousand hoplites, to-day barely
supports a thousand warriors.” In the assemblies of four thousand,
there were scarcely to be seen forty Spartans; moreover, inequality of
conditions grew as the people decreased in number.
Gold and silver currency had for a long time ceased to be proscribed
and the disinterestedness of the Lacedæmonians to be extolled. Numerous
examples of their venality were known; Eurybiades had been bought by
Themistocles, Plistoanax and Cleandridas by Pericles, Leotychides by
the Aleuadæ, the admiral and captains of the fleet by Tissaphernes. The
kings, the senators, the ephors, all had repeatedly received bribes,
and Gylippus, the liberator of Syracuse, who had been charged to carry
to Sparta the plunder of Athens, kept back for his own use thirty
talents [£6000 or $30,000]. Hence the remark of an interlocutor in the
_Alcibiades_: “There is more gold and silver in Lacedæmonia than in all
the rest of Greece; money flows to it from all parts and once there
remains; the country is like a lion’s cave, one sees the footprints
of those who enter, but of footsteps leaving there is no trace.” The
commanders who returned from ports in Asia brought with them great
wealth, and more than that a taste for luxury and ease, in a word,
corruption; every one plunged into wild extravagance and the vices
engendered by the possession of riches.
[Sidenote: [405-240 B.C.]]
After the Peloponnesian War, the ephor Epitadeus had passed a law
authorising citizens to dispose of their property and land. The effects
of this rhetra were so prompt to appear that Aristotle was given cause
to write: “The land has passed into the hands of a few.” In the time
of Agis IV the entire territory was owned by a hundred Spartans. Thus
the government had become more and more oligarchical. All the national
affairs were carried on by the ephors and the senate, even the general
assembly was rarely consulted, and in consequence the rulers, being few
in number, were all the more jealous of the privileges of their station
and less disposed to suffer them to be curtailed. To open their ranks,
moreover, for the readmission of families that poverty had driven forth
would have been to expose themselves, by relinquishing the majority, to
some territorial reform tending toward a fresh division of the immense
domains now concentrated in the possession of a few. Public interest
might point this way but private interest decidedly opposed it, and
private interest won.
There resulted from this a violent hatred between the privileged and
the lower classes; the latter being formed of Spartans degraded from
their ranks, enfranchised helots, Laconians to whom had been accorded
certain rights, and the children of Spartan fathers of the higher order
and alien mothers. These classes were given denominations that kept them
separate and distinct; there was doubtless also a wide difference in
conditions. Below the Equals, who formed a restricted oligarchy, were the
Inferiors, or Spartans, who were excluded from the public tables, and the
_neodamodes_ or helots enfranchised for services rendered the state, and
lastly the _periœci_. Though they had no share in the actual government
of their country these men estimated highly the value of their services
to the state; and at different times many prominent figures, sons of
Spartan fathers and helot mothers, such as Lysander, Gylippus, and
Callicratidas had issued from this class. In a vindictive address against
Lacedæmon the Thebans at Athens declared that the Spartans recruited
their military governors from among men who had helot blood in their
veins; and indeed many of these people had amassed competencies that gave
them the ambition to leave the inferior station in which custom held
them. When Cleomenes III promised liberty to those among the helots who
could pay into the public treasury the sum of five minæ [£21 or $108],
six thousand presented themselves.
Lacedæmon’s two royal houses, however, had been retained, and it should
have been the function of these to maintain discipline in the state. But
the newly-acquired wealth of Sparta, coupled with the growing authority
of the ephors, appreciably diminished the power of the kings. Reduced to
the rôle of hereditary generals these monarchs could never depart on an
expedition without being accompanied by ten supervisors, who, under the
name of councillors, in reality directed all the military operations.
During the last years of the Peloponnesian War the decisive battles had
been fought on sea, and the fleets were commanded, captives sold, cities
ransomed and subsidies received from the Great King by men who were not
of pure Spartan blood. Aristotle in his _Politics_ calls the office of
admiral among them “a second royalty.”
Lysander was not obeying the dictates of ambition when, as Sparta’s
leading citizen, he undertook to reform for his own advantage the
political system of the city. “He could not,” says Plutarch, “see without
regret a city whose glory he had done so much to increase governed by
kings who had no more ability to rule than he, so he formed the plan of
depriving the reigning houses of their dignity to make it the common
appanage of all the Heraclids.” The discovery of the plot of Cinadon
[described later] revealed an abyss of hatred yawning beneath the social
system of Sparta, and at the same time an alarming unanimity of feeling
between the inferior classes, both free and slaves. A civil war could
easily have resulted from the situation; but Sparta, with that vigilance
which continued distrust arouses in all oligarchies, discovered and
baffled all the plots that were formed against her.
Yet in spite of this hostility between the classes, in spite of many
other difficulties, such as strife between the kings on the one hand
and the senators and the ephors on the other, in which the kings were
reduced almost to the condition of subjects, and rivalry between the
kings themselves, the Spartan government, by reason of concentration of
authority in a few hands, was powerful enough for action against other
states. At home and abroad the ephors and the harmosts, those so-called
conciliators, exercised a permanent dictatorship, maintaining garrisons
at Megara, Ægina, Tanagra, Pharsalus, Heraclea in Trachinia, at the
entrance of Thermopylæ; also Dionysius of Syracuse was Sparta’s ally. But
this power, widespread as it was, was scarcely more than an influence,
and an influence that was already on the wane, since the nation that
lacks citizens has no resources within itself.
Sparta’s exactions offended those who still loved liberty and had not,
to console them for its loss, the advantages offered by Athens to her
subjects--extensive commerce, and the splendour of public festivals, of
arts and of poetry. Sparta, equally grasping and more oppressive, robbed
her subjects of everything. She levied on them an annual tribute of one
thousand talents [£200,000 or $1,000,000] which vanished in Lacedæmon
never to be seen again, and those who had furnished her with troops, like
the Achæans and Arcadians, or with vessels, like the Corinthians, or
auxiliaries, like the Thebans, received nothing in return.
The weight of this heavy Dorian rule began shortly to be felt, and many
regretted the Athenian supremacy that was kindly even in its excesses.
That the Greeks from the coasts of Thrace or Asia, those people who
had never known how to say “No,” should tremble at sight of a Spartan
mantle or wand of office, was in no way remarkable, since they had been
accustomed to obey. Not that a double servitude, that of the oligarchs,
friends of Lysander, and that of the Lacedæmonian harmosts was not
a great burden to bear, even for them. But Sparta must not count on
such docility in the mother-country. She had not hesitated to speak as
sovereign in the matter of the Athenian exiles, nor to make decrees, as
sole authority, for all Greece. We have seen how Thebes responded.
Thebes, a continental power, had long aspired to play in central Greece
the part played by Sparta in the Peloponnesus. Between this state
and Athens there might be jealousy, but not necessarily a clash of
interests as in her relations with Lacedæmonia. In the intoxication of
victory Sparta had believed prudence no longer necessary, and, incensed
that the Thebans should have taken at Decelea the tithe belonging to
Apollo, had scornfully rejected their claims to a share in the spoils
and treasures brought back by Lysander, fourteen hundred and seventy
talents, the remainder of the advances made by Cyrus. Corinth, no better
received, made common cause with Thebes, and this formed another ground
of complaint to Sparta against that state. The Argives, in a discussion
relative to the fixing of boundaries, maintained their reasons to be
superior to those of their adversaries. “He who is strongest with this
argument,” said Lysander, drawing his sword, “reasons best about boundary
limits.” A Megarian, in conference, spoke in a very loud voice. “My
friend,” said Lysander, addressing him, “your words need a city to make
them good.” Still more unceremoniously Sparta dealt with the Eleans, as
we shall see later.
To the imperious demands of the Spartan government were added individual
acts of violence, which are often more odious because a single victim,
even though obscure, excites more pity than a whole people bowed under
defeat; and there is less peril in attacking public liberty which is the
property of all, than in endangering, by contempt of truth and right, the
honour or the life of an individual.
A kind and hospitable man of Leuctra, Scedadus, received in his house one
day two young Lacedæmonians, who were greatly struck with the beauty of
their host’s two daughters. Returning from a voyage to Delphi, whither
they had gone to consult the oracle, these two Lacedæmonians found the
daughters alone in the house and violated them, after which they murdered
them and threw their bodies into the well. When Scedadus returned next
day his daughters did not, to his surprise, come forth to meet him, and
his dog, howling plaintively, ran back and forth from his master to the
well. Alarmed, Scedadus looked into the well, discovered the crime, and
learned from his neighbours who were its perpetrators. He departed at
once for Lacedæmon. In Argolis he fell in with a man as unfortunate as
himself, whose son had fallen a victim to the brutality of a Spartan.
This father had believed in Lacedæmonian justice, but had had none
accorded him. Nevertheless Scedadus continued on his journey, and when
he arrived in Sparta, told his story to the ephors, to the kings, to all
the citizens he met, but no one would give it heed. Then wishing to call
the divine anger down upon Sparta he invoked all the gods of heaven and
earth, especially the furies of revenge, and put an end to his life. A
tomb was later erected at Leuctra to his unfortunate daughters.
As against the few facts of this nature that have come to our knowledge
how many have escaped us? We realise this more fully when we reflect on
the hatred Sparta everywhere inspired even in the Peloponnesus.
The Arcadians and the Achæans served her from motives of fear alone; she
was, they declared, a citadel placed upon their flank to keep guard over
the whole peninsula. At Lacedæmon their sentiments were well known. On
his return from an expedition in which a whole Spartan corps had been
lost, in the Corinthian War which we shall treat of shortly, Agesilaus
entered the towns only at night, leaving them at break of day, that
his men might not witness the joy exhibited by the inhabitants at this
disaster.[f]
[Illustration: GREEK PHILOSOPHER
(After Hope)]
[Illustration]