[Sidenote: [394 B.C.]]
Two cares principally engaged Agesilaus before his departure; to provide
security for the Asian Greeks in his absence, and to have a numerous and
well-appointed army to lead into Greece. For the former purpose, naming
Euxenus to preside, with the title of harmost, he placed a body of four
thousand men under his orders. With the latter view, he proposed prizes
for the cities which should furnish the best troops; and for commanders
of mercenaries, horse, heavy-armed, bowmen, and targeteers, whose bands
should be the best chosen, best appointed, and best disciplined. The
prizes were mostly arms, elegantly wrought; but, for higher merit, or
the merit of those of higher rank, there were some golden crowns; and
Xenophon mentions it, as a large sum for the occasion, that the expense
amounted to four talents, less than a thousand pounds sterling. Three
Lacedæmonians, with one officer from each Asiatic city, were named for
judges; but the decision, or the declaration of it, was judiciously
referred to the arrival of the army in the Thracian Chersonesus.
Unable as the leading men in the Lacedæmonian administration were,
either to conduct a war against the powerful confederacy formed against
them, or, upon any tolerable terms, to prevent it, the recall of
Agesilaus seems to have been a necessary measure. The army assembled
by their enemies was such as had not often been seen in wars within
Greece. Argos furnished seven thousand heavy-armed; Athens had already
recovered strength to send six thousand, and add six hundred horse;
Bœotia, Corinth, Eubœa, and Locris made the whole of the army twenty-four
thousand heavy-armed, with above fifteen hundred cavalry; to which was
added a large body of the best light-armed of Greece, Acarnanians,
Ozolian Locrians, and Malians. The fighting men of all descriptions
must have amounted to fifty thousand. The avowed purpose was to invade
Laconia. “The Lacedæmonian state,” said the Corinthian Timolaus, in
a debate on the plan of operations, “resembles a river, which, near
the source, is easily forded, but the farther it flows, other streams
joining, the depth and power of the current increases. Thus the
Lacedæmonians always march from home with their own troops only; but
as they proceed, being reinforced from other cities, their army swells
and grows formidable. I hold it therefore advisable to attack them, if
possible, in Lacedæmon itself; otherwise, the nearer to Lacedæmon the
better.”
Against so powerful a league, the allies, whom the Lacedæmonians could
now command, were principally from the smaller Grecian cities, and none
beyond Peloponnesus. Marching themselves six thousand foot and six
hundred horse, and being joined by the Mantineans and Tegeans, whose
numbers are not reported, they were farther reinforced by no more than
seven thousand five hundred heavy-armed, from Epidaurus, Hermione,
Trœzen, Sicyon, Achaia, and Elis. Aristodemus, of the blood royal, as
regent, commanded for the king, Agesipolis, yet a boy.
Circumstances commonly occur to render confederate armies less
efficacious, in proportion to their strength, than those under a single
authority. A dispute about the command in chief, with some difference
of opinion about their order of battle, some of the generals being for
deeper, others for more extended phalanges, gave opportunity for the
Lacedæmonians to collect their forces, and march far beyond their own
frontier, so as to meet the enemy near Corinth. In the account of the
preparatory sacrifices there drops from Xenophon a remarkable confession,
that those ceremonies were sometimes engines of policy. While the
Bœotians, he says, held the left of their army, they were in no haste
to engage; but, as soon as they had prevailed to have their situation
in the line changed, so that the Athenians would be opposed to the
Lacedæmonians, and themselves to the Achæans, then they declared that the
symptoms of the victims were favourable. They saved themselves perhaps
some slaughter by this disingenuous artifice. In the battle which ensued
the Achæans fled, and all the allies of Lacedæmon equally yielded to
those opposed to them. But the Athenians were defeated with considerable
slaughter; and the superior discipline of the Lacedæmonians so prevailed
against superior numbers that, with the loss of only eight of their own
body, they remained finally masters of the field; in which, if we may
trust Xenophon’s panegyric of Agesilaus for what he has omitted to state
in his general history, no less than ten thousand of the confederate army
fell.[9] Probably however, though the Lacedæmonians themselves suffered
little, their allies suffered much; for the victory seems to have been
little farther decisive than to prevent the invasion of Peloponnesus.
Meanwhile Agesilaus was hastening his march from Asia. He crossed the
Hellespont about the middle of July. At Amphipolis he met Dercyllidas,
who had been sent to inform him of the victory obtained near Corinth.
Immediately he forwarded that able and popular officer into Asia, to
communicate the grateful news among the Grecian cities there, and to
prepare them for his early return, of which there seemed now fair promise.
Through Thrace and Macedonia the country was friendly, or feared to
avow hostility. Thessaly, inimically disposed, and powerful through
population and wealth resulting from the natural productiveness of the
soil, was however too ill-governed to give any systematical opposition.
The defiles of the mountains against Macedonia, where a small force
might efficaciously oppose a large one, seem to have been left open. But
the influence of the principal towns, Larissa, Cranon, Scotussa, and
Pharsalus, in close alliance with the Bœotians, decided the rest, and
as the Lacedæmonian army crossed the plain a body of horse, raised from
the whole province, infested the march. It was singularly gratifying to
Agesilaus that, with his horse, promiscuously collected, and entirely
formed by himself, supporting it judiciously with his infantry, he
defeated and dispersed the Thessalian, the most celebrated cavalry of
Greece.
On the day after this success he reached the highlands of Phthia; and
thence the country was friendly quite to the border of Bœotia. But there
news met him, unwelcome for the public, unwelcome on his private account,
and such as instantly almost to blot out his once bright prospect, which,
as the historian, his friend and the companion of his march, shows, he
had thus far been fondly cherishing, of conquest in Asia, and glory
over the world. While the misconduct of the Lacedæmonian administration
had excited a confederacy within Greece, which proposed to overwhelm
Lacedæmon by superiority of land-force, and, with that view, to carry
war directly into Laconia, a hostile navy had arisen in another quarter,
powerful enough to have already deprived her, by one blow, of her new
dominion of the sea. The train of circumstances which had produced this
event, though memorials fail for a complete investigation of it, will
require some attention.
[Illustration: A CORINTHIAN VASE
(In the Museum of Napoleon III)]
We have seen Cyprus, at a very early age, from a Phœnician, become a
Grecian island, and Salamis the first Grecian city founded there. We
have then observed the Cyprian Greeks yielding to the Persian power.
The ruin of the marine, the inertness of the court, and the distraction
in the councils of Persia, which followed, would afford opportunity and
temptation for the Cypriots, beyond other subjects of the empire, again
to revolt; and the Persian interest, and the Greek, and the Phœnician,
and the tyrannic, and the oligarchal, and the democratical, would be
likely to fall into various contest. Such, as far as may be gathered,
was the state of things which first invited Athenian ambition to direct
its view to Cyprus, when the Athenian navy, rising on the ruins of the
Persian, was extending dominion for Athens on all sides, under the first
administration of Pericles. This view, quickly diverted to other objects,
was however, after a change in the Athenian administration, resumed; and
Cimon, as we have seen, died in command in Cyprus. The policy of Athens
would of course propose to hold dominion, there as elsewhere, through
support given to the democratical interest. But after the death of Cimon
wars so engaged the Athenian government as to prevent the extension of
any considerable exertion to such a distance; and the Cyprian cities were
mostly governed by their several princes or tyrants, under the paramount
sovereignty of Persia.
Among the fugitive Greeks was Evagoras, a youth who claimed descent from
the ancient princes of Salamis, of the race of Teucer. Informed of the
state of things, this young man formed the bold resolution, with only
about fifty fellow-sufferers in exile, devoted to his cause, to attempt
the recovery of what he claimed as his paternal principality. From Soli
in Cilicia, their place of refuge, they passed to the Cyprian shore,
and proceeded to Salamis by night. Knowing the place well, they forced
a small gate, probably as in peace, unguarded, marched directly to the
palace, and, after a severe conflict, overcoming the tyrant’s guard,
while the people mostly kept aloof, they remained masters of the city,
and Evagoras resumed the sovereignty.
This little revolution, in a distant island, became, through a chain
of events out of all human foresight, a principal source of great
revolutions in Greece. An extraordinary intimacy grew between the
Athenian democracy and the tyrant of Salamis (for that was the title
which Evagoras commonly bore among the Greeks), insomuch that the tyrant
was associated among the Athenian citizens. In the ruin of Athens,
impending from the defeat of Ægospotami, Conon fled thither with eight
triremes, saved from the general destruction of the fleet. Conon had
previous acquaintance with Evagoras; and eight triremes at his orders,
equipped and ably manned, would enable him, in seeking refuge, to offer
important service. The Athenian refugee became the most confidential
minister of the Cyprian prince, or rather his associate in enterprise.
Undertaking negotiation with Pharnabazus, he conciliated that satrap’s
friendship for Evagoras; which so availed him that, without resentment
from the court, or opposition from other satraps, he could add several
towns of the island to his dominion.
While Agesilaus was threatening the conquest of Asia, and Pharnabazus,
having obtained, in a manner from his generosity and mercy, a respite
from the pressure upon himself, was nevertheless apprehensive that this
satrapy, separated from the body of the empire, might become dependent
upon the Lacedæmonian commonwealth, Conon suggested that the progress of
the Lacedæmonian arms, which seemed irresistible by land, would be most
readily and efficaciously checked by a diversion by sea. A considerable
fleet of Phœnician ships was at the satrap’s orders: Evagoras had a fleet
which might co-operate with it; the Athenian interest, still considerable
in the island and Asiatic Grecian cities, would favour the purpose;
and Conon himself had consideration among those cities, and especially
among their seamen. Even before Agesilaus left Asia, a project, founded
on these suggestions, seems to have been in forwardness. Soon after his
departure, through the combined exertions of Pharnabazus, Evagoras, and
Conon, a fleet very superior to the Lacedæmonian was assembled; and the
generous Pharnabazus formed the resolution, extraordinary for a Persian
satrap, to take the nominal command in person, having the good sense
apparently to leave the effective command to the superior abilities and
experience of Conon.
BATTLE OF CNIDUS
Near Cnidus they met the Lacedæmonian fleet, and the brave but
inexperienced Pisander, brother-in-law of Agesilaus, would not avoid a
battle. Conon and Evagoras led the Grecian force against him: Pharnabazus
took the particular command of the Phœnician, forming a second line. The
Grecian force alone, according to report, though Xenophon does not speak
of it as certain, outnumbered the Lacedæmonian fleet. The allies in the
left of the Lacedæmonian line, alarmed at the view of the enemy’s great
superiority, presently fled. Pisander was then quickly overpowered. His
galley being driven on the Cnidian shore, the crew mostly escaped; but,
refusing himself to quit his ship, he was killed aboard. The victory of
Conon was complete: according to Diodorus fifty ships were taken.
Such was the disastrous event, the news of which met Agesilaus on his
arrival on the confines of Bœotia. The first information struck him with
extreme anguish and dejection. Presently, however, the consideration
occurring how disadvantageous, in the existing circumstances, the
communication of it might be, he had command enough of himself to check
all appearance of his feelings. His army consisted mostly of volunteers,
attached indeed to his character, but more to his good fortune; and
bound, as by no necessity, so by no very firm principle, to partake in
expected distress. With such an army he was to meet, within a few days,
the combined forces of one of the most powerful confederacies ever formed
in Greece. To support, or, if possible, raise, the confidence and zeal of
his troops, though by a device of efficacy to be of short duration, might
be greatly important. He therefore directed report to be authoritatively
circulated that Pisander, though at the expense of his life, had gained
a complete victory; and, to give sanction to the story, he caused the
ceremony of the evangelian sacrifice to be performed, and distributed the
offered oxen among the soldiers.
Resuming then his march, in the vale of Coronea he met the confederate
army, consisting of the flower of the Bœotian, Athenian, Argive,
Corinthian, Eubœan, Locrian, and Ænian forces. Expecting this formidable
assemblage, he had been attentive to all opportunity for acquiring
addition to his own strength. Some he had gained from the Grecian towns
on his march through Thrace. On the Bœotian border he was joined by the
strength of Phocis, and also of the Bœotian Orchomenos, always inimical
to Thebes. A Lacedæmonian mora had been sent from Peloponnesus to
reinforce him, with half a mora which had been in garrison in Orchomenos.
The numbers of the two armies were thus nearly equal; but the Asiatic
Grecian troops, which made a large part of that under Agesilaus, were
reckoned very inferior to the European. It was in the spirit of the
institutions of Lycurgus that Agesilaus, otherwise simple, even as a
Spartan, in his dress and manner, paid much attention to what our great
dramatic poet has called “the pomp and circumstance of war”; aware how
much it attaches the general mind, gives the soldier to be satisfied with
himself, and binds his fancy to the service he is engaged in. Scarlet or
crimson appears to have been a common uniform of the Greeks, and the army
of Agesilaus appeared, in Xenophon’s phrase, all brass and scarlet.
THE BATTLE OF CORONEA
According to the usual manner of war among the Greeks, when the armies
approached a battle soon followed. On the present occasion both quitted
advantageous ground; Agesilaus moving from the bank of the Cephissus, and
the confederates from the roots of Helicon, to meet in a plain. Perfect
silence was observed by both armies till within nearly a furlong of
each other, when the confederates gave the military shout, and advanced
running. At a somewhat smaller distance the opposite army ran to meet
the charge. The Lacedæmonians, on its right, where Agesilaus took post,
instantly overthrew the Argives, their immediate opponents, who, scarcely
waiting the assault, fled toward Helicon. The Cyreans supported in Greece
the reputation they had acquired in Asia; and were so emulated by the
Ionians, Æolians, and Hellespontines, from whom less was expected, that,
all coming to push of spear together, they compelled the centre of the
confederate army to retreat. The victory seemed so decided that some of
the Asiatics were for paying Agesilaus the usual compliment of crowning
on the occasion; when information was brought him, that the Thebans had
routed the Orchomenians, who held the extreme of his left wing, and had
penetrated to the baggage. Immediately changing his front, he proceeded
toward them.
The Thebans perceived they were cut off from their allies, who had
already fled far from the field. It was a common practice of the Thebans
to charge in column, directing their assault, not against the whole, but
a chosen point of the enemy’s line. Thus they had gained the battle of
Delium against the Athenians, in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian
War. To such a formation their able leaders had recourse now; resolving
upon the bold attempt to pierce the line of the conquering Lacedæmonians;
not any longer with the hope of victory, but with the view to join their
defeated allies in retreat. Xenophon praises the bravery, evidently not
without meaning some reflection on the judgment, of Agesilaus; who chose
to engage them, he says, front to front, when, if he had opened his line
and given them passage, their flanks and rear would have been exposed to
him.
[Illustration: RUINS OF ANCIENT WALL, AT CORA
(With Modern Structure Superimposed)]
A most fierce conflict ensued. Shield pressed against shield, stroke was
returned for stroke; amid wounds and death no clamour was heard; neither,
says the historian, who accompanied the Spartan king, was there complete
silence, for the mutterings of rage were mixed with the din of weapons.
The perseverance, the discipline, and the skill in arms of the Thebans
were such, and such the force of their solid column, that, after many had
fallen, a part actually pierced the Lacedæmonian line, and reached the
highlands of Helicon; but the greater part, compelled to retreat, were
mostly put to the sword. In this obstinate action Agesilaus was severely
wounded. His attendants were bearing him from the field when a party of
horse came to ask orders concerning about eighty Thebans, who, with their
arms, had reached a temple. Mindful, amid his suffering, of respect due
to the deity, he commanded that liberty should be granted to them to
pass unhurt, whithersoever they pleased. In the philosopher-historian’s
manner of relating this anecdote is implied that, among the Greeks, in
such circumstances, revenge would have prompted an ordinary mind; and,
even in Agesilaus, the generous action is attributed, not to humanity,
but to superstition; not to an opinion of the deity’s regard for mercy
and charity among men, but to the fear, unless it were rather the desire
of inculcating the fear, of his resentment for any want of respectful
attention to himself. When pursuit ended, the victorious army anxiously
employed itself in dragging the enemy’s slain within its own lines: a
remarkable testimony, from the same great writer, to the prevalence
still, in a degree that may surprise us, of that barbarism in war, which
in Homer’s description is striking, though in his age less a matter for
wonder.
Next morning early the troops were ordered to parade with arms, all
wearing chaplets. Agesilaus himself being unable to attend, the polemarch
Gylis commanded at the ceremony of raising the trophy; which was
performed with all the music of the army playing, and every circumstance
of pomp, that might most inspire, among the soldiery, alacrity and
self-satisfaction.
Why then no measures were taken to profit from the advantages, which
victory apparently should have laid open, is not shown. The Thebans
sending, in usual form, for permission to bury their dead, a truce was
granted them, evidently for a longer time than for that purpose alone,
could be wanted. Meanwhile the Lacedæmonian army withdrew into Phocis,
a country friendly or neutral, to perform a ceremony to which Grecian
superstition indeed attached much importance, the dedication of the tenth
of the spoil collected by Agesilaus in his Asiatic command. It amounted
to a hundred talents; perhaps something more than twenty thousand pounds.
After this second triumphal rite the army, committed to the orders of
Gylis, proceeded into the neighbouring hostile province of Ozolian
Locris, where the object seems to have been little more than to collect
plunder, which, according to the Grecian manner, might serve the soldiers
instead of pay. Corn, goods, whatever the rapacious troops could find in
the villages, were taken. The Locrians, unable to prevent the injury, did
nevertheless what they best could to revenge it. Occupying the defiles
which, in returning into Phocis, were necessarily to be repassed, they
gave such annoyance that Gylis was provoked to take the command of a
select body in pursuit of them.
Entangled among the mountains, he was himself killed, and the whole party
would have been cut off, had not the officers left with the command of
the main body brought seasonable relief. Agesilaus, still from his wounds
unfit for fatigue, passed by sea to Laconia, and the army was distributed
in quarters.
If any other writer had ever given any authority for the supposition,
we might suspect that Xenophon’s account of the battle of Coronea was
written under the influence of partiality for his friend and patron, and
that the victory was less complete than he has described it.[10] Yet
we are not without information of circumstances which may have given
occasion for the line of conduct which Agesilaus pursued. The defeat of
Cnidus produced a great and rapid revolution in Asiatic Greece.
And thus the fabric of the Lacedæmonian empire, seemingly so established
by the event of the Peloponnesian War, and since so extended by the
ability of the commanders in Asia, was in large proportion almost
instantly overthrown.
Most of the principal officers, and many inferior men, of the numerous
Asiatic troops under Agesilaus, would be deeply interested in this
revolution. The principal sources of pay for all would cease; and hence
the plain of Coronea seems to have been the last field of fame for the
Cyreans. We find no mention of them afterwards from Xenophon: apparent
proof that their following fortunes were not brilliant; not such as he
could have any satisfaction in reporting. Probably they dispersed, some
to their homes, some to seek new service, and never more assembled.[b]
LAND AFFAIRS OF THE CORINTHIAN WAR
[Sidenote: [394-392 B.C.]]
Xenophon was no such student of the accurate arrangement of events as was
Thucydides, and the history recounted hereafter is differently ordered
by different historians; by some the massacre at Corinth is postponed
two years, to 392 B.C. The massacre which Xenophon with his Spartan
sympathies makes so cold-blooded a butchery is by sober historians
credited merely to the government’s anticipation of a similar step on the
part of the opposition.[a]
Corinth still continued to be the theatre of war. A Lacedæmonian
garrison occupied Sicyon, and made frequent inroads into the Corinthian
territory. The allies of Corinth were well pleased to see themselves
thus exempt from the calamities of war at her expense. But the party
among the Corinthians which, on political grounds, desired to renew
their connection with Sparta, derived new motives from this state of
things to encourage them in their designs; and they began to hold private
meetings to concert measures for restoring peace. Their movements were
observed by their adversaries, who determined to counteract them by one
of those atrocious massacres which so frequently disfigure the pages of
Greek history. We do not know what credit may be due to Xenophon, when
he intimates that all the principal allies of Corinth,--the Argives,
and Bœotians, and Athenians,--had an equal share in the conspiracy,
or whether he is only speaking of the foreign garrison. His horror is
chiefly excited by the impiety of the murderers, who selected a holiday
for the deed, that they might be the more likely to find their enemies
out of doors, and in the execution of their purpose paid no regard to the
most sacred things and places, but stained even the altars and images of
the gods with the blood of their victims.
Unhappily this was no new excess of party rage: but perhaps few scenes of
this kind had been planned with more ferocious coolness, or accompanied
with a greater number of shocking circumstances; though it must not
be forgotten that it is Xenophon who describes it. Suspicions however
had been previously entertained of the plot by Pasimelus, one of the
persecuted party, and at the time of the tumult a body of the younger
citizens was assembled with him in a place of exercise outside the
walls. They immediately ran up to seize the Acrocorinthus, where they
maintained themselves for a time against the attacks of their enemies.
But an unpropitious omen, probably strengthening the consciousness of
their weakness, made them resolve to withdraw, and to seek safety in
exile. Yet, notwithstanding the impious treachery of their enemies, they
were induced by the persuasions of their friends and relatives, and by
the oaths of the leading men of the opposite party, to abandon this
intention, and return to their homes.
But their fears for their personal safety had no sooner subsided, than
the state of public affairs again began to appear insupportable, and
they were ready to run any risk for the sake of a change. The opposite
party had gone so far in their enmity to Sparta, or in their zeal for
democracy, as to do their utmost towards establishing a complete unity,
both of civil rights and of territory, between Corinth and Argos. The
land-marks which separated the two states had been removed; so that the
name either of Corinth or of Argos might be applied to the whole. But
since it was Argive influence that had brought about this union, since
the Argive institutions had been adopted, and the Argive franchise
communicated to the Corinthians, the discontented had some reason to
complain, that Corinth had lost her independence and dignity, while
Argos had gained an increase of territory by the transaction. But what
they bore still more impatiently, was the loss of their own rank and
influence, which were totally extinguished by the union; they no longer
enjoyed any exclusive privileges, any rights which they did not share
with the whole Argive-Corinthian commonalty; and this was a franchise
which they valued no more than the condition of an alien. They therefore
resolved on a desperate effort for restoring Corinth to her former
station in Greece, and for recovering their own station in Corinth.
[Sidenote: [392 B.C.]]
Pasimelus and Alcimenes took the lead in this enterprise. They obtained
a secret interview with Praxitas, the Spartan commander at Sicyon,
and proposed to admit him and his troops within the walls that joined
Corinth with Lechæum, her port on the western gulf. He knew the men, and
embraced their offer; and at an appointed hour of night came with a mora
of Lacedæmonians, and a body of Sicyonians and of Corinthian exiles, to
a gate where the conspirators had contrived to get themselves placed on
duty. He was introduced without any opposition; but as the space between
the walls was large, and he had brought but a small force with him, he
threw up a slight entrenchment, to secure himself until the succours
which he expected should arrive. During the next day he remained quiet,
and was not attacked; though, besides the garrison of the city, there was
a body of Bœotians behind him at Lechæum. But aid had been summoned from
Argos, and on the day following the Argive forces arrived, and, confident
in their numbers, immediately sought the enemy. They were supported by
their Corinthian partisans, and by a body of mercenaries commanded by
Iphicrates, an Athenian general, who in this war laid the foundation of
his military renown.
The superiority of the Lacedæmonian troops over the other Greeks, and
the terror they inspired even when they were greatly outnumbered, was
again strikingly manifested in the engagement which ensued. The Argives
forced their way through the entrenchment, and drove the handful of
Sicyonians before them down to the sea. But when the Lacedæmonians came
up, they took to flight, without offering any resistance, and made for
the city. But, meeting with the Corinthian exiles, who had defeated the
mercenaries, and were returning from the pursuit, they were driven back,
and those who did not make their escape by ladders over the wall, were
slaughtered by the Lacedæmonians like a flock of sheep. Lachæum was
taken, and the Bœotian garrison was put to the sword. After his victory
Praxitas was joined by the expected contingents of the allies, and he
made use of them first to demolish the Long Walls, for a space sufficient
to afford a passage for an army. Next, crossing the isthmus, he took and
garrisoned the towns of Sidus and Crommyon. On his return he fortified
the heights of Epieicea, which commanded one of the most important
passes, and then disbanded his army, and returned to Sparta.
Two important consequences of the long series of hostilities in which
all the Greek states had been engaged now became apparent. The number of
persons who were thrown upon war as a means of subsistence had so much
increased, that the contending powers were able to carry on the struggle
with mercenary troops. Another result of the long practice of war was,
that it had begun to be more and more studied as an art, and cultivated
with new refinements.
Thus Iphicrates had been led to devote his attention to the improvement
of a branch of the light infantry, which had hitherto been accounted of
little moment in the Greek military system. He had formed a new body
of targeteers, which in some degree combined the peculiar advantages
of the heavy and light troops, and was equally adapted for combat and
pursuit. To attain these objects, he had substituted a linen corslet for
the ancient coat of mail, and had reduced the size of the shield, while
he doubled the length of the spear and the sword. At the head of this
corps he made frequent inroads into Peloponnesus, and in the territory
of Phlius he surprised the forces of the little state in an ambuscade,
and made so great a slaughter of them that the Phliasians were obliged to
admit a Lacedæmonian garrison into their town. But in Arcadia such was
the terror inspired by the troops of Iphicrates, that they were suffered
to plunder the country with impunity, and the Arcadians did not venture
to meet them in the field. On the other hand they were themselves no
less in dread of the Lacedæmonians, who had taught them to keep aloof in
a manner which proved the peculiar excellence of the Spartan military
training.
A Lacedæmonian _mora_, stationed at Lechæum, accompanied by the
Corinthian exiles, ranged the country round about Corinth without
interruption. Yet it was not able to prevent the Athenians from repairing
the breach which Praxitas had made in the Long Walls, which they regarded
as a barrier that screened Attica from invasion. The whole serviceable
population of Athens, with a company of carpenters and masons, sallied
forth to the isthmus, and having restored the western wall in a few days,
completed the other at their leisure. Their work, however, was destroyed
in the course of the same summer by Agesilaus, on his return from an
expedition which he had made into Argolis, for the purpose of letting
the Argives taste the fruits of the war which they had helped to stir,
and were most forward to keep up. After having carried his ravages into
every part of their territory, he marched to Corinth, stormed the newly
repaired walls, and recovered Lechæum. Here he met his brother Teleutias,
who, through his influence, which in this case was better exerted than
in that of Pisander, had been appointed to the command of the fleet, and
having come with a small squadron to support his operations, made some
prizes in the harbour and the docks.
[Sidenote: [392-391 B.C.]]
But the appearance of Teleutias in the Corinthian Gulf was connected with
other events, more important than any which took place in Peloponnesus
after the return of Agesilaus from Asia. That we exhibit them in an
uninterrupted series, together with their consequences, we shall follow
Xenophon’s order, and return to them after having briefly related how the
war was carried on in Greece, in the campaigns which ensued down to its
close.
In the spring of 392, Agesilaus made a fresh expedition for the purpose
of bringing the Corinthians to terms, by cutting off one of their chief
resources, the fortress of Piræum, at the foot of Mount Geranea on the
western gulf. The captures and the booty were brought out, and passed in
review before Agesilaus, as he sat in an adjacent building on the margin
of a small lake. His triumph was heightened by the presence of envoys
from various states, among the rest from Thebes, where the party which
desired peace had succeeded in procuring an embassy to be sent for the
purpose of ascertaining the terms which Sparta would grant. Agesilaus,
the more fully to enjoy their humiliation, affected to take no notice of
their presence, while Pharax, their proxenus, stood by him, waiting for
an opportunity to present them. Just at this juncture a horseman came
up, his horse covered with foam, and informed the king of a disaster
which had just befallen the garrison of Lechæum, the loss of almost a
whole mora, which had been intercepted and cut off by Iphicrates and his
targeteers. The action was in itself so trifling, that it would scarcely
have deserved mention, but for the importance attached to it at the time,
and the celebrity which it retained for many generations.
After all, the whole loss of the Lacedæmonians amounted to no more than
250 men. Yet it produced a degree of consternation and dejection on the
one side, and of exultation on the other, which is significant in the
same proportion that the disaster appears to us slight and the exploit
inconsiderable.
Nothing more clearly shows the weakness of Sparta and the power of her
name than the importance attributed both by herself and by her enemies
to this petty affair. Agesilaus, having accomplished the object of his
expedition, now set out homeward. He took with him the remnant of the
defeated mora, leaving another in its room at Lechæum. But his march
through Peloponnesus was like that of the Roman army on its return from
the Caudine Forks. He would only enter the towns, where he was forced to
rest, as late as he could in the evening, and left them again at break
of day. At Mantinea, though it was dark when he reached it, he would not
stop at all, that his men might not have to endure the insulting joy of
their ill-affected allies. On the other hand Iphicrates was emboldened by
his success to aim at fresh advantages; and he recovered Sidus, Crommyon,
and Œnoe, where Agesilaus had left a garrison.
His achievement so terrorised the Corinthian exiles at Sicyon, that
they no longer ventured to repeat their marauding excursions by land,
but crossed over the gulf, and landed near Corinth, where they saw
opportunity of giving annoyance. Even in later times the destruction of
the Lacedæmonian mora, 250 men, continued to be mentioned as the great
military action of his life, and was not thought unworthy to be named in
the same page with Marathon and Platæa.
It is not improbable that this victory of Iphicrates was attended with
another result, which Xenophon has not thought fit to notice. It seems
not only to have prevented the Theban envoys from discharging their
commission, but to have put a stop to a negotiation which was proceeding
at the same time between Athens and Sparta, after it had reached a very
advanced stage. Minute as these occurrences are, they are perhaps, both
in themselves and for the impression they produced, the most momentous
that took place in Greece before the end of the war. We should have been
glad indeed to know a little more of the causes which withdrew Iphicrates
from this scene of action shortly after his victory: for they would
perhaps have thrown some light on the internal state of Corinth. But
Xenophon only informs us that he was dismissed by the Argives, after he
had put to death some Corinthians of their party; from what motive and on
what pretext we do not learn, nor does it appear whether this transaction
had any influence on the relations between Athens and Argos.
[Sidenote: [391-390 B.C.]]
In the year following no military operations seem to have taken place
in Peloponnesus, except the petty combats or alternate inroads between
Sicyon and Corinth, which Xenophon himself does not think worth more
than a general notice. But the arms of Agesilaus were turned against
Acarnania, where he displayed his usual ability, and established the
Spartan supremacy almost without bloodshed. An Athenian squadron was
lying at Œniadæ, to intercept him, if, as was expected, he should attempt
to cross the gulf from any part of the coast immediately below Calydon.
To avoid it he marched to Rhium through the heart of Ætolia, by roads
along which, Xenophon observes, no army, great or small, could have
passed without the consent of the Ætolians. They permitted his passage,
because they hoped to be aided by his influence in recovering Naupactus.
At Rhium he crossed the straits, and returned home.
The event proved the policy of the moderation which he had shown against
the wish of his allies. The next spring, as he was preparing for a second
invasion of Acarnania, the Acarnanians, alarmed by the prospect of again
losing a harvest, on which the subsistence of the people, who were but
little conversant with arts or commerce, mainly depended, sent envoys to
Sparta to treat for peace, and submitted to the terms which Agesilaus
had dictated. The same year his young colleague Agesipolis, who had now
reached his majority, was entrusted with the command of an expedition
against Argos. The expedition yielded no fruits but the plunder, with
which he returned to Sparta. In the meanwhile, through the ambition of
Sparta and the patriotic efforts of Conon, Athens had been enabled to
take some great steps towards securing her independence, and recovering a
part at least of her ancient power.[e]
[Illustration: GREEK DOOR KEYS]
THE GREAT DEEDS OF CONON
Three great battles had been fought in little more than the space of a
month (July and August)--those of Corinth, Cnidus, and Coronea: the first
and third on land, the second at sea. In each of the two land-battles
the Lacedæmonians had gained a victory: they remained masters of the
field, and were solicited by the enemy to grant the burial-truce. But if
we inquire what results these victories had produced, the answer must be
that both were totally barren. Even the narrative of Xenophon, deeply
coloured as it is both by his sympathies and his antipathies, indicates
to us that the predominant impression carried off by every one from the
field of Coronea was that of the tremendous force and obstinacy of the
Theban hoplites--a foretaste of what was to come at Leuctra!
If the two land-victories of Sparta were barren of results, the case
was far otherwise with her naval defeat at Cnidus. That defeat was
pregnant with consequences following in rapid succession, and of the
most disastrous character. As with Athens at Ægospotami--the loss of
her fleet, serious as that was, served only as the signal for countless
following losses. Pharnabazus and Conon, with their victorious fleet,
sailed from island to island, and from one continental seaport to
another, in the Ægean, to expel the Lacedæmonian harmosts, and terminate
the empire of Sparta. So universal was the odium which it had inspired,
that the task was found easy beyond expectation. Conscious of their
unpopularity, the harmosts in almost all the towns, on both sides of
the Hellespont, deserted their posts and fled, on the mere news of the
battle of Cnidus. Everywhere Pharnabazus and Conon found themselves
received as liberators, and welcomed with presents of hospitality. They
pledged themselves not to introduce any foreign force or governor, nor
to fortify any separate citadel, but to guarantee to each city its own
genuine autonomy. This policy was adopted by Pharnabazus at the urgent
representation of Conon, who warned him that if he manifested any design
of reducing the cities to subjection, he would find them all his enemies;
that each of them severally would cost him a long siege; and that a
combination would ultimately be formed against him. Such liberal and
judicious ideas, when seen to be sincerely acted upon, produced a strong
feeling of friendship and even of gratitude, so that the Lacedæmonian
maritime empire was dissolved without a blow, by the almost spontaneous
movements of the cities themselves. Though the victorious fleet presented
itself in many different places, it was nowhere called upon to put down
resistance, or to undertake a single siege. Cos, Nisyrus, Teos, Chios,
Erythræ, Ephesus, Mytilene, Samos, all declared themselves independent,
under the protection of the new conquerors. Pharnabazus presently
disembarked at Ephesus and marched by land northward to his own satrapy,
leaving a fleet of forty triremes under the command of Conon.
[Sidenote: [394-393 B.C.]]
To this general burst of anti-Spartan feeling, Abydos, on the Asiatic
side of the Hellespont, formed the solitary exception; and it happened
by a fortunate accident for Sparta that the able and experienced
Dercyllidas was harmost in the town at the moment of the battle of
Cnidus. Dercyllidas assembled the Abydenes, heartened them up against the
reigning contagion, and exhorted them to earn the gratitude of Sparta by
remaining faithful to her while others were falling off; assuring them
that she would still be found capable of giving them protection. His
exhortations were listened to with favour. Abydos remained attached to
Sparta, was put in a good state of defence, and became the only harbour
of safety for the fugitive harmosts out of the other cities, Asiatic and
European.
Dercyllidas maintained his position effectively both at Abydos and at
Sestos; defying the requisition of Pharnabazus that he should forthwith
evacuate them. The satrap threatened war, and actually ravaged the
lands round Abydos; but without any result. His wrath against the
Lacedæmonians, already considerable, was so aggravated by disappointment
when he found that he could not yet expel them from his satrapy, that he
resolved to act against them with increased energy, and even to strike a
blow at them near their own home. For this purpose he transmitted orders
to Conon to prepare a commanding naval force for the ensuing spring, and
in the meantime to keep both Abydos and Sestos under blockade.
As soon as spring arrived, Pharnabazus embarked on board a powerful fleet
equipped by Conon; directing his course to Melos, to various islands
among the Cyclades, and lastly to the coast of Peloponnesus. They here
spent some time on the coast of Laconia and Messenia, disembarking
at several points to ravage the country. They next landed on the
island of Cythera, which they captured, granting safe retirement to
the Lacedæmonian garrison, and leaving in the island a garrison under
the Athenian Nicophemus. Quitting then the harbourless, dangerous,
and ill-provided coast of Laconia, they sailed up the Saronic Gulf to
the Isthmus of Corinth. Here they found the confederates--Corinthian,
Bœotian, Athenian, etc.--carrying on war, with Corinth as their central
post, against the Lacedæmonians at Sicyon. The line across the isthmus
from Lechæum to Cenchreæ (the two ports of Corinth) was now made good
by a defensive system of operations, so as to confine the Lacedæmonians
within Peloponnesus; just as Athens, prior to her great losses in 446
B.C., while possessing both Megara and Pegæ, had been able to maintain
the inland road midway between them, where it crosses the high and
difficult crest of Mount Geranea, thus occupying the only three roads by
which a Lacedæmonian army could march from the Isthmus of Corinth into
Attica or Bœotia. Pharnabazus communicated in the most friendly manner
with the allies, assured them of his strenuous support against Sparta,
and left with them a considerable sum of money.
The appearance of a Persian satrap with a Persian fleet, as master of the
Peloponnesian Sea and the Saronic Gulf, was a phenomenon astounding to
Grecian eyes. And if it was not equally offensive to Grecian sentiment,
this was in itself a melancholy proof of the degree to which Panhellenic
patriotism had been stifled by the Peloponnesian War and the Spartan
empire. No Persian tiara had been seen near the Saronic Gulf since the
battle of Salamis; nor could anything short of the intense personal wrath
of Pharnabazus against the Lacedæmonians, and his desire to revenge upon
them the damage inflicted by Dercyllidas and Agesilaus, have brought him
now as far away from his own satrapy. It was this wrathful feeling of
which Conon took advantage to procure from him a still more important
boon.
Since 404 B.C., a space of eleven years, Athens had continued without
any walls round her seaport town Piræus, and without any Long Walls
to connect her city with Piræus. To this state she had been condemned
by the sentence of her enemies, in the full knowledge that she could
have little trade--few ships either armed or mercantile--poor defence
even against pirates, and no defence at all against aggression from the
mistress of the sea. Conon now entreated Pharnabazus, who was about to
go home, to leave the fleet under his command, and to permit him to use
it in rebuilding the fortifications of Piræus as well as the Long Walls
of Athens. While he engaged to maintain the fleet by contributions from
the islands, he assured the satrap that no blow could be inflicted upon
Sparta so destructive or so mortifying, as the renovation of Athens and
Piræus with their complete and connected fortifications. Sparta would
thus be deprived of the most important harvest which she had reaped from
the long struggle of the Peloponnesian War. Indignant as he now was
against the Lacedæmonians, Pharnabazus sympathised cordially with these
plans, and on departing not only left the fleet under the command of
Conon, but also furnished him with a considerable sum of money towards
the expense of the fortifications.
CONON REBUILDS THE LONG WALLS
[Sidenote: [393 B.C.]]
Conon betook himself to the work energetically and without delay. He had
quitted Athens in 407 B.C., as one of the joint admirals nominated after
the disgrace of Alcibiades. He had parted with his countrymen finally
at the catastrophe of Ægospotami in 405 B.C., preserving the miserable
fraction of eight or nine ships out of that noble fleet which otherwise
would have passed entire into the hands of Lysander. He now returned, in
393 B.C., as a second Themistocles, the deliverer of his country, and
the restorer of her lost strength and independence. All hands were set
to work; carpenters and masons being hired with the funds furnished by
Pharnabazus, to complete the fortifications as quickly as possible. The
Bœotians and other neighbours lent their aid zealously as volunteers--the
same who eleven years before had danced to the sound of joyful music
when the former walls were demolished; so completely had the feelings
of Greece altered since that period. By such hearty co-operation, the
work was finished during the course of the present summer and autumn
without any opposition; and Athens enjoyed again her fortified Piræus
and harbour, with a pair of long walls, straight and parallel, joining
it securely to the city. The Athenian people not only inscribed on a
pillar a public vote gratefully recording the exploits of Conon, but also
erected a statue to his honour.
The importance of this event in reference to the future history of
Athens was unspeakable. Though it did not restore to her either her
former navy, or her former empire, it reconstituted her as a city not
only self-determining but even partially ascendant. It reanimated her,
if not into the Athens of Pericles, at least into that of Isocrates and
Demosthenes: it imparted to her a second fill of strength, dignity, and
commercial importance, during the half century destined to elapse before
she was finally overwhelmed by the superior military force of Macedon.
Those who recollect the extraordinary stratagem whereby Themistocles had
contrived (eighty-five years before) to accomplish the fortification
of Athens, in spite of the base but formidable jealousy of Sparta and
her Peloponnesian allies, will be aware how much the consummation of
the Themistoclean project had depended upon accident. Now, also, Conon
in his restoration was favoured by unusual combinations such as no one
could have predicted. So strangely did events run, that the energy, by
which Dercyllidas preserved Abydos, brought upon Sparta, indirectly, the
greater mischief of the new Cononian walls. It would have been better
for Sparta that Pharnabazus should at once have recovered Abydos as well
as the rest of his satrapy; in which case he would have had no wrongs
remaining unavenged to incense him, and would have kept on his own side
of the Ægean; feeding Conon with a modest squadron sufficient to keep the
Lacedæmonian navy from again becoming formidable on the Asiatic side, but
leaving the walls of Piræus (if we may borrow an expression of Plato) “to
continue asleep in the bosom of the earth.”
[Illustration: REMAINS OF A GREAT WALL AT MESSENE]
The presence of Pharnabazus and Conon with their commanding force in
the Saronic Gulf, and the liberality with which the former furnished
pecuniary aid to the latter for rebuilding the full fortifications
of Athens, as well as to the Corinthians for the prosecution of the
war--seem to have given preponderance to the confederates over Sparta
for that year. The plans of Conon were extensive. He was the first
to organise, for the defence of Corinth, a mercenary force which was
afterwards improved and conducted with greater efficiency by Iphicrates;
and after he had finished the fortifications of Piræus with the Long
Walls, he employed himself in showing his force among the islands, for
the purpose of laying the foundations of renewed maritime power for
Athens.[f]
While this work was proceeding, the Corinthians, with the subsidy they
had received, fitted out a squadron, with which their admiral Agathinus
scoured the Corinthian Gulf. The Spartans sent Polemarchus with some
galleys to oppose him: but their commander was soon after slain, and
Pollis, who took his place, was compelled by a wound which he received in
another engagement, to resign it to Herippidas. Herippidas seems to have
driven the Corinthians from their station at Rhium: and Teleutias, who
succeeded him, recovered the complete mastery of the gulf, and was thus
enabled, as we have seen, to co-operate with Agesilaus at Lechæum.
THE EMBASSY OF ANTALCIDAS
[Sidenote: [393-390 B.C.]]
But this partial success did not diminish the alarm with which the
Spartan government viewed the operations of Conon, who was proceeding
to restore the Athenian dominion on the coasts and in the islands of
the Ægean. It perceived that it was necessary to change its policy with
regard to the court of Persia, and for the present at least to drop
the design of conquest in Asia, and to confine itself to the object of
counteracting the efforts of the Athenians, and establishing its own
supremacy among the European Greeks. And it did not despair of making the
Persian court subservient to these ends. For this purpose Antalcidas, a
dexterous politician of Lysander’s school, was sent to Tiribazus, who was
now occupying the place of Tithraustes in Western Asia, to negotiate a
peace. His mission awakened the apprehensions of the hostile confederacy;
and envoys [including Conon] were sent from Athens, Bœotia, Corinth, and
Argos, to defeat his attempts, and to support the interests of the allies
at the satrap’s court. Antalcidas however made proposals highly agreeable
to Tiribazus, and accompanied them with arguments which convinced the
satrap that his master’s interest perfectly coincided with that of
Sparta. He renounced all claim on the part of his government to the Greek
cities in Asia, and was willing that they should remain subject to the
king’s authority. For the islands, and the other towns, he asked nothing
but independence. Thus, he observed, no motive for war between Greece and
Persia would be left. The king could gain nothing by it, and would have
no reason to fear either Athens or Sparta, so long as the other Greek
states remained independent. Tiribazus was perfectly satisfied, but had
not authority to close with these overtures, at least against the will of
the states which were at present in alliance with his master; and they
refused to accede to a treaty on these terms.
But, though the satrap did not venture openly to enter into alliance with
Sparta without his master’s consent, he did not scruple privately to
supply Antalcidas with money for the purpose of raising a navy to carry
on the war with the states which were still acknowledged as allies of
Persia: and having drawn Conon to Sardis, he threw him into prison, on
the pretext that he had abused his trust, and had employed the king’s
forces for the aggrandisement of Athens. He then repaired to court
to report his proceedings and to consult the royal pleasure. It was
perhaps rather through some court intrigue, or vague suspicion, than
a deliberate purpose of adopting a line of policy opposite to that of
Tiribazus, that Artaxerxes detained him at court, and sent Struthas down
to fill his place. Struthas had perhaps witnessed the Asiatic campaigns
of Agesilaus, and could not all at once get rid of the impression that
the Spartans were his master’s most formidable enemies. He therefore
immediately made known his intention of siding with the Athenians and
their allies.
The Spartan government, perhaps too hastily, concluding that their
prospect of amicable dealings with Persia was now quite closed,
determined to renew hostilities in Asia, and sent Thimbron--apparently
the same officer whom we have already seen commanding there, and who had
been fined on his return to Sparta for misconduct--to invade the king’s
territory. Struthas took advantage of his failings, and, one day that he
had gone out at the head of a small party to attack some of the Persian
cavalry who had been purposely thrown in his way, suddenly appeared with
a superior force, slew him, and a flute-player named Thersander, the
favourite companion of his convivial hours, and defeated the rest of
his army, as it came up after him, with great slaughter. Diphridas was
sent from Sparta to collect the scattered remains of his army, and to
raise fresh troops, to defend the allied cities, and carry on the war
with Struthas. Teleutias was ordered to sail to Asia with the twelve
galleys which he had with him in the Corinthian Gulf, to supersede
Ecdicus, and to prosecute the war, in Rhodes or elsewhere, as he found
opportunity. His first adventure, after he had taken the command at
Cnidus, illustrates the complicated relations and the unsettled state of
Greek politics at this period. Teleutias, whose force had been raised, by
some additions which it received at Samos, to seven-and-twenty galleys,
on his way from Cnidus to Rhodes, fell in with a squadron of ten, sent by
the Athenians to aid Evagoras, who had revolted from the king of Persia,
their ally, and the enemy of Sparta, whose admiral nevertheless destroyed
or captured the whole.
[Sidenote: [390-388 B.C.]]
The Athenians now thought it necessary to interpose in defence of their
Rhodian friends, and sent Thrasybulus--the hero of Phyle--with forty
galleys to check the operations of Teleutias. He thought that he might
render more important services to the commonwealth in the north of the
Ægean, and the Hellespont, where he would have no enemy to encounter on
the sea. Sailing therefore first to the coast of Thrace, he composed the
feud of the two Odrysian princes, Amadocus and Seuthes, and engaged them
both in a treaty of alliance with Athens. He proceeded to Byzantium, and,
throwing his weight into the scale of the democratical party, established
its predominance, and with it that of the Athenian interest; and he
was thus enabled to restore a main source of the Athenian revenue, the
duty of a tenth on vessels coming out of the Euxine. Before he quitted
the Bosporus, he also brought over Chalcedon to the Athenian alliance.
Thrasybulus now reduced several of the Lesbian towns, and collected much
plunder from the lands of those which refused to submit. He then prepared
to return to Rhodes; but first sailed eastward to levy contributions on
the southern coast of Asia. Here his career was abruptly terminated. He
anchored in the Eurymedon near Aspendus, where he obtained a supply of
money. But the Aspendians fell upon him by night, and killed him in his
tent. Xenophon’s remark, that he died with the reputation of a very good
man, may be admitted as sufficient proof that the great services he had
rendered to his country were not his only claim to the esteem of his
contemporaries, and that the suspicions excited against him were wholly
unfounded.
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF OLYMPIAN JOVE]
The flourishing condition to which Thrasybulus had restored the affairs
of Athens in the Hellespont, excited uneasiness at Sparta. Anaxibius
obtained three galleys, and a grant of money sufficient to raise one
thousand mercenaries. On his arrival in the Hellespont he waged a
successful war with the neighbouring towns, subject to Pharnabazus, or
allied to Athens, and did much damage to the Athenian commerce. The
Athenians were at length induced to send Iphicrates, with eight galleys
and about twelve hundred targeteers, mostly those who had served under
him at Corinth, to counteract the movements of Anaxibius. Anaxibius was
surprised by an ambush. He bade his men seek their safety in flight; for
himself, he said, his part was to die there; and, calling for his shield,
fought until he fell, with a few of his Spartan companions. The rest fled
in disorder to Abydos with the loss of about 250 men.
Notwithstanding the successes of the Athenians in the Hellespont the
enemy found means of annoying and threatening them at home. They had
hitherto maintained a peaceful intercourse with Ægina; but the Spartans
now resolved to make use of the island for the purpose of infesting the
coasts of Attica. Teleutias was soon after superseded by Hierax, the new
Spartan admiral, and returned home. Hierax sailed to Rhodes, leaving
Gorgopas, his vice-admiral, with twelve galleys at Ægina. The Athenians
in the fort were soon reduced to greater straits than the Æginetans in
the city; and, in the fifth month after their arrival, a strong squadron
was sent out from Athens to carry them home. In the meanwhile the Spartan
government had resumed its project of attaining its object by means of
negotiation, and once more sent out Antalcidas, as the person whose
influence with Tiribazus would open the readiest access to the Persian
court, as admiral in the room of Hierax. Antalcidas was escorted to
Ephesus by Gorgopas and his squadron, and on his arrival sent Gorgopas
with ten galleys back to Ægina. The remainder of the fleet which joined
him at Ephesus, he placed under the command of his lieutenant Nicolochus,
while he himself proceeded on more important business to the court of
Artaxerxes.
Gorgopas on his return fell in with the Athenian squadron under Eunomus,
and was chased by him into the port of Ægina, where he arrived a little
before sunset. Eunomus sailed away soon after dark, with a light in the
stern of his galley, to keep his squadron together. Gorgopas, whose men
in the meanwhile had landed and refreshed themselves, now embarked again,
and pushed across the gulf in the enemy’s wake, guided by his light, with
every precaution for suppressing or weakening the usual sounds of galleys
in motion. At Cape Zoster, as the Athenians were landing, the silence
of the night was broken by the sound of the trumpet, and after a short
engagement by moonlight, Gorgopas captured four of their galleys; the
rest made their escape into Piræus. But not long after, Chabrias, having
been sent with a squadron of ten galleys and eight hundred targeteers to
the aid of Evagoras, landed by night on Ægina, and posted his targeteers
in an ambush. The next day, according to a preconcerted plan, a body of
heavy-armed infantry which had come over with him under the command of
Demænetus, advanced into the interior of the island. Gorgopas marched
to meet them with all the forces he could muster, and passing by the
ambuscade was routed and fell in the action, with some other Spartans and
between three and four hundred of the other troops. By this victory the
Attic commerce was for a time freed from annoyance; for though Eteonicus
still remained in Ægina, he had no money to pay the seamen, and therefore
could exert no authority.
[Sidenote: [388-387 B.C.]]
In this emergency Teleutias was sent to take the command. His arrival was
hailed with delight by the men, who had already served under him, and
expected an immediate supply of pay. He however called them together, and
informed them that he had brought no money with him, and that they had
no resource to look to for the relief of their necessities, but their
own activity and courage. It was best that they should not depend for
subsistence upon the favour either of Greek or barbarian, but should
provide for themselves at the enemy’s expense. The men expressed entire
confidence in his guidance, and promised to obey all his commands. That
very night, after they had ended their evening meal, he ordered them to
embark with a day’s provision, and with twelve galleys crossed the gulf
towards Piræus. When they were within about half a mile of the harbour,
they rested till daybreak, and then sailed in. He gave orders to strike
none but the ships of war which might be lying in the harbour, to capture
as many merchant vessels as could be conveniently taken in tow, and to
carry away as many prisoners as could be taken from the rest. Not only
were these orders executed with alacrity and success, but some of his
men, landing on the quay, seized some of the merchants and shipowners
who were assembled there, and hurried them on board. While the military
force of Athens marched down to the relief of Piræus, which was supposed
to have been taken, he made his retreat from the harbour, sent three or
four of his galleys with the prizes to Ægina, and with the rest proceeded
along the coast as far as Sunium. He made the more captures on his way,
as his squadron, having been seen to issue from the port of Athens, was
believed to be friendly. At Sunium he found a number of vessels laden
with corn, and other valuable cargoes, with which he sailed away to
Ægina. The produce of this adventure yielded a month’s pay to the men,
raised their spirits, and increased their devotion for their commander,
who continued to employ them in this predatory warfare: the only kind to
which his small force was adequate.
The Athenians however still retained the ascendency in the Hellespont,
where Nicolochus, who after the departure of Antalcidas had sailed
northward with five-and-twenty galleys, was blockaded at Abydos by an
Athenian squadron of two and thirty, which was stationed on the opposite
coast of the Chersonesus, under the command of Diotimus and Iphicrates.
But the aspect of affairs was completely changed by the arrival of
Antalcidas, who returned in 387 with Tiribazus from the Persian court,
where he had been treated with marks of distinguished favour by
Artaxerxes, and had fully succeeded in the main object of his mission,
having prevailed on the king to aid Sparta in carrying on the war, until
the Athenians and their allies should accept a peace to be dictated in
the king’s name on terms previously arranged between him and the Spartan
ambassador. Being informed of the situation of Nicolochus, he proceeded
by land to Abydos, and took the command of the blockaded squadron, with
which he sailed out in the night. Additions raised his fleet to eighty
sail, and gave him the complete command of the sea, so that he was
enabled to divert the commerce of the Euxine from Athens into the ports
of the allies of Sparta.
The Athenians now saw themselves not only exposed to constant annoyance
from Ægina, but in danger of falling again under the power of the enemy,
and losing all the benefit of Conon’s victory. They were therefore
heartily desirous of an honourable peace. Most of the other states were
probably still more anxious for the termination of a contest from which
they could expect no advantage. When therefore Tiribazus, in his master’s
name, summoned a congress of deputies to listen to the proposals which he
was commissioned to announce, all the belligerents readily sent their
ministers to attend it. In the presence of this assembly Tiribazus,
having shown the royal seal, read his master’s decree, which ran in the
following imperial style:
“King Artaxerxes thinks it right that the Greek cities in Asia, and the
islands of Clazomenæ and Cyprus, should belong to himself; but that all
the other Greek cities, both small and great, should be left independent,
with the exception of Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, and that these should
as of old belong to the Athenians. If any state refuse to accept this
peace, I will make war against it, with those who consent to these terms,
by land and by sea, with ships and with money.”
THE KING’S PEACE
[Sidenote: [387-386 B.C.]]
The treaty founded on these conditions was ratified by all the parties
almost without opposition. A little delay arose from the Thebans, who
were reluctant to part with the sovereignty they had hitherto exercised
over many of the Bœotian towns, and wished, for the sake of at least
retaining their pretensions, to ratify in the name of all the other
Bœotians. But Agesilaus, who was charged to receive the oath of their
ministers, refused to accept it in this form, and required them strictly
to conform to the Persian ordinance, and expressly to acknowledge the
independence of all other states. One impediment to the general peace
still remained. The governments of Corinth and Argos did not consider
themselves bound by the treaty to alter the relations which had hitherto
subsisted between them; and it was only when Agesilaus threatened them
with war, that they consented, the one to dismiss, and the other to
withdraw, the Argive garrison from Corinth. Its departure was attended by
an immediate reaction in the state of the Corinthian parties. The authors
of the massacre, knowing themselves to be generally odious to their
fellow citizens, thought themselves no longer safe at home, and left the
city. Most of them found refuge at Athens, where they met with a much
more honourable reception than they deserved. The exiles of the opposite
faction were recalled; and their return dissolved the union with Argos,
and restored the influence of Sparta, and the oligarchical institutions.
This treaty, which was long celebrated under the name of the Peace of
Antalcidas, was undoubtedly a masterpiece of policy, nor does it appear
to deserve the censure which it incurred from the Attic orators and from
Plutarch, and which has been repeated by some modern writers, as a breach
of political morality. Sparta in her transactions with Persia during
the Peloponnesian War, had more than once acknowledged the title of the
Persian king to the dominion of the Asiatic Greeks; she had never pledged
herself to maintain their independence; and even if she had done so,
the revival of the maritime power of Athens, and its union with that of
Persia, would have afforded a fair plea for receding from an engagement
which she was no longer able to fulfil. The clause in favour of Athens
was perhaps only designed to excite jealousy and discord between Athens
and the hated Bœotians. It has been attributed to a deeper policy; it
has been considered as a device, by which Sparta reserved a pretext for
eluding the conditions of the treaty which she rigorously enforced in the
case of other states. But it is doubtful whether the exception expressly
made concerning the three islands which Athens was allowed to retain,
could have been needed, or if needful could have availed, as a colour
under which Sparta, while she stripped Thebes of her sovereignty in
Bœotia, might keep possession of Messenia and the subject districts of
Laconia. Sparta did not permit a question to be raised on this point. She
was constituted the interpreter of the treaty; she expounded it by the
rule, not of reason, but of might, with the sword in hand, and the power
of Persia at her back.[e]
This momentous treaty, which is sometimes called the Peace of Antalcidas
after its chief Grecian agent, is nowadays more commonly called the
King’s Peace, and wisely, since it was the king who chiefly profited by
it. Thirlwall, who can always be relied upon to take an impartial view
of the question, says of it: “And thus the Peace of Antalcidas, which
professed to establish the independence of the Greek states, subjected
them more than ever to the will of one. It was not in this respect only
that appearances were contrary to the real state of things. The position
of Sparta, though seemingly strong, was artificial and precarious; while
the majestic attitude in which the Persian king dictated terms to Greece,
disguised a profound consciousness, that his throne subsisted only by
sufferance, and that its best security was the disunion of the people
with whom he assumed so lordly an air.” Niebuhr, to whom the Spartans
were almost always hypocrites, has this to say: “Painful as this peace
was to the feelings of the Greeks, who were obliged to leave the dominion
over their countrymen to barbarians, yet the hypocrisy of the Spartans,
who, by this peace, allowed the Persians to interfere in the internal
affairs of Greece, was worse.”
Grote, whose history is a glowing brief for Athens, the type of
democracy, as against Sparta, the type of oligarchy, cannot be expected
to approve of an agreement leading to such degradation for the Athenians,
as well as for all the Greek world. He says: “The peace or convention,
which bears the name of Antalcidas, was an incident of serious and
mournful import in Grecian history. Its true character cannot be better
described than in a brief remark and reply which we find cited in
Plutarch. ‘Alas, for Hellas (observed some one to Agesilaus) when we see
our Laconians _medising_!’ ‘Nay (replied the Spartan king), say rather
the Medes _laconising_.’ These two propositions do not exclude each
other. Both were perfectly true. The convention emanated from a separate
partnership between Spartan and Persian interests. It was solicited by
the Spartan Antalcidas, and propounded by him to Tiribazus on the express
ground that it was exactly calculated to meet the Persian king’s purposes
and wishes, as we learn even from the philo-Laconian Xenophon. While
Sparta and Persia were both great gainers, no other Grecian state gained
anything as the convention was originally framed.”
George W. Cox, in his _General History of Greece_, recognises in the
treaty a humiliation for Sparta as well as for the rest of Greece, since
the peace was not drawn up in the form of an agreement, but rather forced
upon Greece by the edict of Persia. It was indeed a fiat “sent down from
Susa,” like another royal decree to the subjects whom the Persian king
looked down upon with oriental disdain. Cox writes thus fervidly:
“The Persian king chose to regard the acceptance of the peace by the
Spartans as an act of submission not less significant than the offering
of earth and water. In the disgrace which it involved the one was as
ignominious as the other; but Sparta had now not even the poor excuse
which long ago she had put forward for calling in the aid of the
barbarian. She was no longer struggling for self-preservation. In short,
by Sparta the Peace of Antalcidas was adopted with the settled resolution
to divide and govern; and all of those of her acts, which might seem at
first sight to have a different meaning, carry out in every instance
this golden rule of despotism. It was the curse of the Hellenic race,
and the ruin ultimately of Sparta itself, that this maxim flattered
an instinct which they had cherished with blind obstinacy, until it
became their bane. But for Sparta, the consolidation of the Athenian
empire would long ago have restrained this self-isolating sentiment
within its proper limits. In theory the Spartans by enforcing the Peace
of Antalcidas restored to the several Greek states the absolute power
of managing their own affairs, and of making war upon one another. In
practice Sparta was resolved that their armies should move only at her
dictation, that into her treasury should flow the tribute, the gathering
of which was denounced as the worst crime of imperial Athens, and that in
the government of the oligarchical factions she should have the strongest
material guarantee for the absolute submission of the Greek cities. To
secure this result the Hellenic states of Lesser Asia were abandoned to
the tender mercies of Persian tax-gatherers, and left to feel the full
bitterness of the slavery from which Athens had rescued them some ninety
years ago.”
An outcome which none could have foreseen from the acceptance of this
humiliating title-deed to Grecian independence was the sudden and
rocket-like rise of the city of Thebes, a city which had heretofore been
a second-or third-rate town chiefly distinguished for being on the wrong
side of Hellenic questions. Thebes is now about to break forth into flame
with a fire-brand named Epaminondas, one of the noblest and most splendid
names in all the glitter of Grecian history.[a]
FOOTNOTES
[9] [This statement of Xenophon is, according to Grote, either a
mis-reading or a wild exaggeration. Diodorus says that the Spartans lost
1100; the allies 2800.]
[10] [On this point Bury says: “Though the battle of Coronea, like the
battle of Corinth, was a technical victory for the Spartans, history must
here again offer her congratulations to the side which was superficially
defeated.… It was a great moral encouragement to Thebes for future warfare
with Lacedæmon.”]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: GREEK PINS AND BUCKLE
(In the British Museum)]