The brilliant expansion of the power of Sparta after the King’s Peace
is intimately connected with the name of Agesilaus. Therefore in order
rightly to understand the significance and the results of the Peace of
Antalcidas, we must first form some idea of the tendencies and political
position of this eminent man. Nothing but a just appreciation of his
personality will suffice to keep us from tossing rudderless between the
Scylla and Charybdis of diametrically opposite views of the object of the
peace, and of Sparta’s policy at that period.
Agesilaus was from the outset the typical representative of the Sparta
of his time. All his thoughts and energies had their root in his own
state alone, and to exalt this state to the position of the first power
in the world, to gain for it the hegemony of Hellenic affairs, was his
object, as it was the object of the whole contemporary policy of Sparta.
To this end he laboured with admirable consistency through all his long
life, from his first campaign in Asia to his expedition into Egypt, and
all his acts, whether as a victorious monarch or an adventurous leader
of mercenaries, were directed to one end--to vindicate the authority of
Sparta. And when this end could not be attained by force of arms he was
equal to compassing it by diplomatic moves. Hence it is certain that the
Peace of Antalcidas was not concluded without his knowledge and consent,
even if circumstances rendered it desirable for him to keep in the
background during the negotiations in Asia.
Lacedæmon found herself incapable of maintaining by mere force of arms
the position which had devolved upon her through the events of the
Peloponnesian War, and if Sparta were not to abdicate the hegemony of
Greece she must perforce try to conclude an advantageous peace and an
alliance with Persia. This project was favoured by the ill-timed attempts
of Athens to regain her maritime supremacy, and the Spartans, rightly
gauging the situation, associated with these attempts their conciliatory
negotiations with Persia. That this step, which closed to him henceforth
his career of glory in Asia, was an easy one for Agesilaus to take, is
unlikely; it was a political necessity, the inevitable consequence of the
lines along which Greek policy had developed for the last thirty years.
Persia and Sparta were alike interested in preventing the revival of the
sea power of Athens, and both needed peace to regain sway in their own
dominions. This was the natural basis of the negotiations. The Great
King was appointed supreme arbitrator in the affairs of Greece, and the
possession of the Greek cities in Asia Minor was guaranteed to him. The
Spartans had never indulged in Panhellenistic sentiments. Their whole
political organisation and development made it almost impossible for
the fate of their kindred in Asia to rouse any interest in their minds.
When once their interests in Ionia were lost by the fortune of war, the
documentary recognition of the fact could have roused no scruple in the
breast of any true Spartan. And although it was these paragraphs of the
peace which stirred the profoundest indignation in such men as Plato and
Demosthenes, in the rest of Greece the time of national enthusiasm had
gone by. Even in Athens the masses had unlearned their ancient hatred of
Persia since they had been indebted to the succour of the Great King for
the only bright spot in troublous times of war, and statesmen could not
blind themselves to the fact that the political sins of Greece since the
year 411, and the constant appeal to Persia for support and mediation
which had become habitual since then, had been inexorably conducting her
to this end.
The second main paragraph dealt with the internal affairs of Greece.
Every state, great or small, was to become autonomous. If the first
article contained an important concession to the Great King, this, which
decreed the autonomy, was made primarily with a view to the advantage of
Sparta. It could have no aim but one, to assert the hegemony of Sparta
in Greece. This article, which had so enticing a sound in Greek ears,
was the death-warrant of the growing power of the Athenian maritime
confederacy, of the supremacy of Thebes in Bœotia, of the union of
Argos and Corinth; it destroyed in the germ every power that might have
imperilled the position of Sparta. Her own dominion in the Peloponnesus
was not compromised by the proclamation of liberty, as her allies were
already autonomous in name, while the authority of the hostile coalition
was shattered at a blow. Thus the victor of Cnidus shared the spoils
with the vanquished foe who had known so well how to avail himself of
the right moment for proving an indispensable ally. As suzerain of
Hellas, Artaxerxes, who could not suppress the rebels in his own country,
dictates peace there, a peace which proclaimed liberty to the states but
was nevertheless meant from the outset to enslave them, and Sparta lets
herself be appointed to execute the compact which is to procure anew for
her the supremacy of Greece. It was not the end of her projects but the
beginning.
[Sidenote: [387-386 B.C.]]
A glance at the history of the succeeding years shows how she pursued
these projects. First of all, the Spartans turned their attention to the
internal affairs of the Peloponnesus. The first thing they had to do was
to vindicate their authority at home. During the long years of war the
old ties between Sparta and her allies had grown looser; here and there
the democratic element had taken the helm; there had been attempts to
evade the obligation of military service; there had been open rejoicing
at Sparta’s ill-success. The situation called for energetic measures.
We have already seen how a beginning was made with Corinth during the
peace negotiations in Sparta. By a threat of armed invasion the Argive
garrison was forced to withdraw and the alliance between the two states
was dissolved; the Corinthian democrats left the city, the exiles were
recalled, and Corinth, more closely linked with Lacedæmon than ever,
again became her bulwark against enemies from without.
MANTINEA CRUSHED
The next step was to juggle the government of the other democratic
states back into the hands of the oligarchy. Mantinea was the first to
suffer. This city had always been an offence in the eyes of Sparta. The
_synoicismus_[11] and the fortification of Mantinea had taken place at
the instigation of Argos after the Persian wars, and friendship towards
Sparta was hardly likely to have been the leading motive for these
proceedings. After the Peace of Nicias the city had joined the league
against Sparta founded by Argos, and had taken an active part in the war.
The unfavourable issue of the campaign obliged Mantinea to submit to
Sparta once more and to conclude peace for thirty years, but nevertheless
the democratic government remained in power, and the antagonism against
Sparta persisted after, as before. The people made a parade of their
animosity, treated the obligation of military service with neglect; and
after the defeat of the _mora_ on the isthmus Agesilaus had to pass the
city under cover of fog and darkness in order to elude the scorn and
malicious satisfaction of the inhabitants.
[Sidenote: [386-385 B.C.]]
Now the day of reckoning had come. Spartan ambassadors came to Mantinea,
bringing a multitude of complaints, together with the demand for the
demolition of the walls about the city. This demand being met by a
refusal, Sparta declared war. Agesilaus begged to be excused from the
chief command of the army, as the Mantineans had rendered his father
great services during the Messenian War. Agesipolis marched against
Mantinea and endeavoured to force the people into compliance by
devastating their territory. When this expedient proved fruitless he
laid siege to the city. The inhabitants made an obstinate defence, but
they were obliged to surrender unconditionally after Agesipolis had
dammed the river Ophis, which flowed through the town, and thus caused an
inundation which brought about the fall of its walls of unbaked brick.
By the intercession of Pausanias, who was living in exile at Tegea, the
leaders of the people and the partisans of democracy, sixty in number,
were allowed to withdraw in safety, a portion of the population was
allowed to inhabit Mantinea as an unfortified place, and the remainder
was obliged to settle in four distinct unprotected villages. To each
of these villages a Spartan xenagos was appointed. Xenophon adds that
the Mantineans were at first indignant at being removed, but that they
afterwards expressed their satisfaction at what had been done, as under
an aristocratic government they could lead a quiet life near their
estates and free from troublesome demagogues. This is a reproduction of
the Spartan and oligarchic view of the matter.
[Illustration: GREEK WEAPONS]
In both ancient and modern times the treatment meted out to Mantinea has
invariably been branded as an act of most brutal and barbarous violence
and arbitrary cruelty, the outcome of the policy of Agesilaus. In this
general and (to a certain extent) just censure of the ruler of the
Spartan state at the time, one point has been overlooked. In a democratic
constitution the Spartans could see nothing but a reign of revolutionary
terrorism which oppressed the peaceful and sober part of the community,
their own friends and adherents. To help the latter, to put them in
power again, they held to be the duty of the sovereign state. Spartan
policy was sure of its aims, and in its consistency lies the secret of
Sparta’s superiority at this period. And if we are right in assuming
that a Spartan must have ceased to be a Spartan before he could conceive
otherwise of the state of affairs, there is no justification for heaping
personal abuse and scandalous imputations upon a writer who reflects the
opinions of his circle.
[Sidenote: [385-383 B.C.]]
The punishment of Mantinea produced a profound effect upon the
other Peloponnesian cities. With high hopes of an equally energetic
interference on their behalf the aristocratic exiles from Phlius
immediately turned to Sparta with the entreaty that the Spartans would
intercede for their restoration to their homes. A bare admonition from
the ephors to the municipal authorities to receive back the friends they
had cast out for no sufficient reason, was enough to evoke a decree
by which the sentence of banishment was repealed and the exiles were
promised the restoration of their property. The spirit of resistance had
been broken by the fate of Mantinea.
The Spartans next turned their attention to Bœotia. Although the Bœotian
league, not being based on the principle of autonomy, had been broken
up by the second paragraph of the peace, they felt the need of taking
precautions against any attempt on the part of Thebes--the city which
they regarded as the author of the whole ill-starred war and which had
defied them to the last to re-establish its authority. Hence, as a first
step, a Spartan garrison was retained in the friendly city of Orchomenos,
and both Thespiæ and Tanagra were induced to throw in their lot with
Sparta. But the most telling stroke at Thebes was the restoration of
Platæa. For one thing, the Thebans were thereby deprived of the usufruct
of Platæan territory, and for another, the newly founded city, being
of course wholly dependent upon Sparta, afforded an excellent base for
attack upon Thebes itself. Here again we see the relentless and energetic
policy of Sparta in action.
THE OLYNTHIAN WAR
[Sidenote: [383 B.C.]]
More serious complications in Greek affairs soon gave the Spartans their
opportunity for showing themselves masters of Hellas. In the spring of
383 ambassadors from the cities of Apollonia and Acanthus presented
themselves in Sparta to beg for support against the increasing power of
the Olyntho-Chalcidian league. Their petition was seconded by deputies
from Amyntas, king of Macedonia, who felt the security of his dominions
imperilled by the encroachments of Olynthus. The Olynthians strove
more and more vigorously to assert the authority of the league. They
had succeeded in persuading nearly all the cities of the Chalcidice
to join their confederacy; they had pushed forward towards Macedonia,
and had even brought Pella over to their interests. The league was now
in a position to hold the menace of war over any cities which refused
adherence, and to meditate far-reaching enterprises. By an agreement with
Athens and Thebes it hoped to secure an influence upon middle Greece.
By this energetic and well-considered centralisation a federal state
was created, admirably calculated to serve as a bulwark of the power of
Hellas against Thrace, and as a fresh starting-point for the civilisation
of the barbarous North.
As we look back at the lines along which the history of Greece developed,
we are inevitably forced upon the conclusion that nothing but strict
union, the formation of closely confederated states, could have checked
the rapid process of political decay. This conviction lies at the root
of the liberal recognition and sympathy which the majority of modern
scholars have accorded to the efforts of the Olynthian league. Whether
the brilliant visions of the future which Grote, in particular, sketches
for the league would ever have been realised, even if it had not fallen
upon the days of Sparta’s arbitrary dominion, remains an open question.
Centralisation and unification were repugnant to the Greek mind, and
every attempt in that direction was bound to go to wreck on the fanatical
love of autonomy among the Greek states.
The appeal of Apollonia and Acanthus, which wished to retain their
ancient constitution, and the simultaneous action of the oppressed
Amyntas, offered Sparta the desired opportunity for attacking the
Chalcidic federation. Doubtless the sea power of Olynthus and the steady
expansion of the league had long since attracted general attention there,
and had been the subject of anxious reflection. The possibility that
this league might grow more powerful still and attain an authoritative
position in middle Greece also had to be guarded against at all risks.
The policy of Sparta rendered it imperative that every considerable
development of power in other states should be repressed. The war
against the Olynthians was determined upon, and, by the desire of the
ambassadors, Eudamidas was immediately despatched with such forces as
could be equipped in haste.
THE SURPRISE OF THEBES
[Sidenote: [383-380 B.C.]]
His brother Phœbidas was to follow with the remainder of the troops
destined for the campaign in Thrace as soon as the levies were completed,
a process which was probably rendered more lengthy by the fact that the
new military system was now brought into use for the first time. By the
end of summer, 383, Phœbidas was ready to start. He took his way past
Thebes. There, as Xenophon tells, party quarrels had reached an extreme
point. The office of polemarch was held by Leontiades and Ismenias,
who were deadly enemies, each being the leader of a distinct body of
partisans. For the moment the anti-Laconian party was in the ascendant. A
decree had been promulgated that no man should be allowed to enlist for
the campaign against Olynthus. When Phœbidas appeared before the walls of
the city, Leontiades, whose family had always maintained close relations
with Sparta, endeavoured to gain his favour by every kind of service, and
then persuaded the vain and ambitious general to attempt a coup-de-main
against the Cadmea. By this means he was to bring the adherents of Sparta
into power and secure the active assistance of Thebes in the Olynthian
War.
Phœbidas fell in with the proposed plot, and the day of the feast of
the Thesmophoria was appointed for its execution. On that day the women
of the city celebrated by themselves a festival in the ancient temple
of Demeter on the Cadmea. Phœbidas was to make a feint of striking camp
and setting out on his march northwards. While the council was assembled
in a hall in the market-place and the heat of noon-day kept the rest
of the population indoors, Leontiades galloped after the departing
general, led him unobserved up to the citadel, and opened the gates to
him. He then hied to the council, announced what had taken place, and
had Ismenias arrested as a seditious person. The leaders and adherents
of the opposition, to the number of three hundred, were obliged to flee
for their lives to Athens. The occupation of the Cadmea was a political
necessity, the logical consequence of the efforts of Sparta to secure
the hegemony. The experiences of the last war had not been suffered in
vain.
While Agesilaus was pursuing his victorious career in Asia a coalition
against Sparta had been formed in Greece at the instigation of Persia,
and Thebes had shown herself most zealous in promoting this anti-Spartan
combination which was so grave a menace to the existence of Lacedæmon.
This time Sparta was once more undertaking a war on the confines of
Greece; if fortune were adverse, if a battle were lost, she had no
guarantee against the possibility--the probability even--that hostile
Thebes, still barely subdued, might revolt again, bar the way of retreat
against the Spartan army, and throw the most serious obstacles in the way
of reinforcements. “The Cadmea was the decisive point for the security
of the line of march,” says Curtius. If a prolonged war were to be
waged in the distant north it was essential that this position should
be in friendly hands. And the only way of attaining this object was to
juggle the reins of government into the hands of the oligarchical party
in Thebes and to garrison the citadel with Spartan hoplites for their
protection. The success of the expedient proves how well worth while it
had been for Phœbidas to take the circuitous route.
This act of violence, the surprise of the Theban citadel in time of
peace, called forth a storm of indignation throughout the whole of
Greece. Even in Sparta itself a clamour of popular displeasure arose
against Phœbidas, because (as Xenophon adds) he had acted without due
warrant or command. Apparently the Spartan government found it expedient
to cast the odium of the proceeding upon Phœbidas, and therefore, in
spite of Xenophon’s silence on the subject, there is probably some truth
in the story that he was deposed from his command and condemned to pay
an exorbitant fine. The wrath of Greece may well have been the reason
for this mock sentence. The payment of the fine was never exacted, and
in the following year he held the office of a Spartan harmost in Bœotia.
For the rest, the remonstrances of Leontiades and Agesilaus, the latter
of whom openly maintained that the only point to be considered in judging
the case was whether the transgression of Phœbidas were profitable
to the state or not, quickly persuaded the Spartans of the propriety
and necessity of the coup-de-main. The citadel was not evacuated, and
legal proceedings were taken against Ismenias in respect of the league.
A solemn tribunal was called together in Thebes, consisting of three
Spartan commissioners and a deputy from every town of the league, to pass
judgment upon the crimes of Ismenias. He was condemned to death. The most
repulsive feature of this judicial murder, which was merely an act of
vengeance upon the whilom leader of the anti-Spartan coalition, is the
farce of a tribunal which was supposed to represent national ideas and
interests.
The road to Thrace was now safe, and the war against Olynthus was
prosecuted with the utmost vigour.
It was probably in the spring of 382 that Teleutias, brother of
Agesilaus, marched against the city with a large army. He had made up the
number of his forces in Thebes, and had received auxiliary contingents
from Amyntas and from Derdas, prince of Elimea. This was the beginning
of a fierce and prolonged struggle. After some successes which allowed
him to press forward to Olynthus itself, devastating the country as he
went, he fell in a hotly contested battle, and his death was the signal
for a general flight. His whole army was swept away and annihilated. With
amazing perseverance the Spartans continued the war; in the spring of
380 another huge army was equipped and the leadership entrusted to the
young king, Agesipolis. He was fortunate in battle, but succumbed to a
violent fever the same summer. It was left for Polybiades, his successor
in the command, to force the starving city, cut off from access to the
sea and robbed of its harvests by the prolonged and desolating war,
into surrender. In the year 379 the league was dissolved and the proud
city compelled to render military service to the Spartans; the mighty
chief city of the Chalcidice became a humble member of the Lacedæmonian
alliance.
[Sidenote: [380-379 B.C.]]
Meanwhile the Peloponnesus itself had become the scene of a fresh
struggle. It has already been mentioned that the exiled aristocrats from
Phlius had been allowed to return at the request of Sparta and had been
promised the restoration of their property. But here, as everywhere, the
attempts at expropriation met with almost insurmountable obstacles. There
may have been a lack of good will to push on the proceedings, since it is
probable that in many cases the judges themselves were in possession of
the estates of the exiles. But in the beginning, at least, there seems to
have been no excessive difficulty or delay in giving compensation, and we
hear that, in the campaign of Agesipolis, the Phliasians distinguished
themselves as zealous allies of Sparta by the liberality and promptitude
of their contributions. After the departure of Agesipolis, as Xenophon
relates, the Phliasians hoping to be quit of Spartan intervention,
neglected the settlement of the chaotic claims. The returning
aristocrats, finding their demands disregarded by an unbiassed court of
arbitration, turned with their grievances to Sparta. The authorities of
their own city having punished them for this arbitrary proceeding, the
ephors, persuaded by exiles and by Agesilaus, the fast friend of the
latter, determined upon a campaign against Phlius. The Phliasians sued
for peace, but naturally could not accede to the demand of Agesilaus for
an unconditional surrender of their citadel.
A tedious siege then began, during which Agesilaus found himself obliged
to have recourse to every kind of artifice to allay the wrath of the
Lacedæmonians and their allies at making enemies of the large population
of the Asopus valley for the sake of a few oligarchs. It was the first
note of that discord among the Peloponnesian allies which was destined to
exercise such a paralysing effect upon the future military undertakings
of the Lacedæmonians. Thanks to the valiant defence of Delphion, to whom
Xenophon does not refuse his due meed of praise, the city held out twice
as long as had been expected. At last, in the year 379, the lack of
provisions constrained the inhabitants to treat for peace, and, unwisely
ignoring Agesilaus, they applied direct to Sparta. Sparta committed the
sole decision to the king, and the punishment in store for Phlius was
naturally not the less severe for the attempt to set Agesilaus aside. A
commission was appointed, consisting of fifty oligarchs and fifty of the
citizens, and they were empowered to decide the question which of the
inhabitants should remain alive and which should not. The further duty of
elaborating a constitution was also assigned to them. To safeguard the
new order of things a Lacedæmonian garrison was left provisionally in the
acropolis. Thus in Phlius, as in Olynthus, Sparta had won the victory.
At this point both Xenophon and Diodorus, with a view to providing a
more striking background for subsequent events, give a summary of the
expansion of the power and dominion of Sparta up to this time. And
truly, from the Peace of Antalcidas to the subjugation of Olynthus the
history of Greece is nothing but a history of the extension of Spartan
authority. Allied with the king of Persia, the tyrant of Syracuse, and
the king of Macedonia, the will of Sparta was “irresistible from the
cliffs of Taygetus to Athos.” The autonomy-paragraph had broken up
all anti-Spartan coalitions. In Corinth, the key of the Peloponnesus,
oligarchy was restored, Bœotia had become a vassal of Sparta, the
menacing Olynthian league had been annihilated, and the ruins of Mantinea
and the sanguinary tribunals at Phlius showed what punishment Sparta
was prepared to mete out to any attempt at mutiny or disobedience. The
Spartan harmosts with their garrisons commanded the citadels everywhere,
and under their protection oligarchic rulers held the populace in
fetters. In the time of Lysander, indeed, the Spartan dominions had
been more extensive, but Sparta had never borne sway in Hellas with
more authority or less restraint. Athens might strive with unflagging
perseverance to establish an ascendency at sea; she might conclude an
alliance with Chios directly after the Peace of the King, an alliance
which was the precursor of the maritime confederacy presently to be
revived; but how insignificant were such things as opposed to the
dominant position of Sparta, now at the zenith of her glory! And for the
fact that her will and her word were law in Greece, Sparta was mainly
indebted to the steady and consistent policy of Agesilaus.
The gray-haired monarch might well look with pride upon the object he had
attained. He had reared a mighty structure: though it had been built by
harshness and arbitrary power and welded together with blood and cruelty,
it is none the less a moving spectacle to see how, before the eyes of its
founder, stone after stone was cast down, till nothing but a vast expanse
of ruins remained to bear witness to its former greatness.[b]
FATE OF EVAGORAS AND THE ASIATIC GREEKS
[Sidenote: [394-380 B.C.]]
During the first years of his reign, Evagoras doubtless paid his tribute
regularly, and took no steps calculated to offend the Persian king. But
as his power increased, his ambition increased also. We find him towards
the year 390 B.C., engaged in a struggle not merely with the Persian
king, but with Amathus and Citium in his own island, and with the great
Phœnician cities on the mainland. By what steps, or at what precise
period, this war began, we cannot determine. At the time of the battle
of Cnidus (394 B.C.) Evagoras not only paid his tribute, but was mainly
instrumental in getting the Persian fleet placed under Conon to act
against the Lacedæmonians, himself serving aboard. It was in fact (if we
may believe Isocrates) to the extraordinary energy, ability, and power
displayed by him on that occasion in the service of Artaxerxes himself,
that the jealousy and alarm of the latter against him are to be ascribed.
Without any provocation, and at the very moment when he was profiting
by the zealous services of Evagoras, the Great King treacherously began
to manœuvre against him and forced him into the war in self-defence.
Evagoras accepted the challenge, in spite of the disparity of strength,
with such courage and efficiency, that he at first gained marked
successes. Seconded by his son Pnytagoras, he not only worsted and
humbled Amathus, Citium, and Soli, which cities, under the prince Agyris,
adhered to Artaxerxes, but he also equipped a large fleet, attacked the
Phœnicians on the mainland with so much vigour as even to take the great
city of Tyre; prevailing, moreover, upon some of the Cilician towns to
declare against the Persians. He received powerful aid from Acoris, the
native and independent king in Egypt, as well as from Chabrias and the
force sent out by the Athenians. Beginning apparently about 390 B.C.,
the war against Evagoras lasted something more than ten years, costing
the Persians great efforts and an immense expenditure of money. Twice
did Athens send a squadron to his assistance, from gratitude for his
long protection to Conon and his energetic efforts before in the battle
of Cnidus--though she thereby ran every risk of making the Persians her
enemies.
[Sidenote: [380-374 B.C.]]
The satrap Tiribazus saw that so long as he had on his hands a war in
Greece, it was impossible for him to concentrate his force against the
prince of Salamis and the Egyptians. Hence, in part, the extraordinary
effort made by the Persians to dictate, in conjunction with Sparta, the
Peace of Antalcidas, and to get together such a fleet in Ionia as should
overawe Athens and Thebes into submission. It was one of the conditions
of that peace that Evagoras should be abandoned; the whole island of
Cyprus being acknowledged as belonging to the Persian king. Though thus
cut off from Athens, and reduced to no other Grecian aid than such
mercenaries as he could pay, Evagoras was still assisted by Acoris of
Egypt, and even by Hecatomnus, prince of Caria, with a secret present
of money. But the Peace of Antalcidas being now executed in Asia, the
Persian satraps were completely masters of the Grecian cities on the
Asiatic seaboard, and were enabled to convey round to Cilicia and Cyprus
not only their own fleet from Ionia, but also additional contingents from
these very Grecian cities.
Evagoras defended himself with unshaken resolution, still sustained
by aid from Acoris in Egypt; while Tyre and several towns in Cilicia
also continued in revolt against Artaxerxes; so that the efforts of the
Persians were distracted, and the war was not concluded until ten years
after its commencement. It cost them on the whole (if we may believe
Isocrates) 15,000 talents in money [£3,000,000 or $15,000,000], and
such severe losses in men, that Tiribazus acceded to the propositions
of Evagoras for peace, consenting to leave him in full possession of
Salamis, under payment of a stipulated tribute.
[Illustration: STATUE OF MINERVA IN A RUINED TEMPLE AT ATHENS]
It was seemingly not very long after the peace, that a Salaminian named
Nicoreon formed a conspiracy against his life and dominion, but was
detected, by a singular accident, before the moment of execution, and
forced to seek safety in flight. He left behind him a youthful daughter
in his harem, under the care of a eunuch (a Greek, born in Elis) named
Thrasydæus; who, full of vindictive sympathy in his master’s cause,
made known the beauty of the young lady both to Evagoras himself and to
Pnytagoras, the most distinguished of his sons, partner in the gallant
defence of Salamis against the Persians. Both of them were tempted, each
unknown to the other, to make a secret assignation for being conducted to
her chamber by the eunuch: both of them were there assassinated by his
hand.
Thus perished a Greek of pre-eminent vigour and intelligence, remarkably
free from the vices usual in Grecian despots, and forming a strong
contrast in this respect with his contemporary Dionysius, whose military
energy is so deeply stained by crime and violence. Nicocles, the son
of Evagoras, reigned at Salamis after him, and showed much regard,
accompanied by munificent presents, to the Athenian Isocrates; who
compliments him as a pacific and well-disposed prince, attached to Greek
pursuits and arts, conversant by personal study with Greek philosophy,
and above all, copying his father in that just dealing and absence of
wrong towards person or property which had so much promoted the comfort
as well as the prosperity of the city.
[Sidenote: [387 B.C.]]
We now revert from the episode respecting Evagoras--interesting not
less from the eminent qualities of that prince than from the glimpse
of Hellenism struggling with the Phœnician element in Cyprus--to the
general consequences of the Peace of Antalcidas in Central Greece. For
the first time since the battle of Mycale in 479 B.C., the Persians were
now really masters of all the Greeks on the Asiatic coast. The satraps
lost no time in confirming their dominion. In all the cities which they
suspected, they built citadels and planted permanent garrisons. In some
cases, their mistrust or displeasure was carried so far as to raze the
town altogether. And thus these cities, having already once changed their
position greatly for the worse, by passing from easy subjection under
Athens to the harsh ride of Lacedæmonian harmosts and native decemvirs,
were now transferred to masters yet more oppressive and more completely
without the pale of Hellenic sympathy. Both in public extortion, and
in wrong-doing towards individuals, the commandant and his mercenaries
whom the satrap maintained, were probably more rapacious, and certainly
more unrestrained, than even the harmosts of Sparta. Moreover, the
Persian grandees required beautiful boys as eunuchs for their service,
and beautiful women as inmates of their harems. What was taken for their
convenience admitted neither of recovery nor redress. While the Asiatic
Greeks were thus made over by Sparta and the Perso-Spartan convention
of Antalcidas, to a condition in every respect worse, they were at the
same time thrown in, as reluctant auxiliaries to strengthen the hands
of the Great King against other Greeks--against Evagoras in Cyprus,
and above all, against the islands adjoining the coast of Asia--Chios,
Samos, Rhodes, etc. These islands were now exposed to the same hazard,
from their overwhelming Persian neighbours, as that from which they had
been rescued nearly a century before by the confederacy of Delos, and by
the Athenian empire into which that confederacy was transformed. All the
tutelary combination that the genius, the energy, and the Panhellenic
ardour of Athens had first organised, and so long kept up, was now broken
up; while Sparta, to whom its extinction was owing, in surrendering the
Asiatic Greeks, had destroyed the security even of the islanders.[e]
THE REVOLT OF THEBES
The ambition of making conquests in the East, which it now appeared
impossible to retain, had deprived the Lacedæmonians of an authority, or
rather dominion in Greece, acquired by the success of the Peloponnesian
War, and which they might have reasonably expected to preserve and to
confirm. Not only their power, but their safety, was threatened by the
arms of a hostile confederacy, which had been formed and fomented by the
wealth of Persia. Athens, their rival, their superior, their subject,
but always their unrelenting enemy, had recovered her walls and fleet,
and aspired to command the sea. Thebes and Argos had become sensible of
their natural strength, and disdained to acknowledge the pre-eminence,
or to follow the standard, of any foreign republic. The inferior states
of Peloponnesus were weary of obeying every idle summons to war,
from which they derived not any advantage but that of gratifying the
ambition of their Spartan masters. The valuable colonies in Macedon and
Thrace, and particularly the rich and populous cities of the Chalcidic
region, the bloodless conquests of the virtuous Brasidas, had forsaken
the interest of Sparta, when Sparta forsook the interest of justice.
Scarcely any vestige appeared of the memorable trophies erected in a
war of twenty-seven years. The eastern provinces (incomparably the most
important of all) were irrecoverably lost; and this rapid decline of
power had happened in the course of ten years, and had been chiefly
occasioned by the fatal splendour of Agesilaus’ victories in Asia.
During five years the Spartans maintained, in the Cadmea at Thebes, a
garrison of fifteen hundred men. Protected by such a body of foreign
troops, which might be reinforced on the shortest warning, the partisans
of aristocracy acquired an absolute ascendency in the affairs of the
republic, which they conducted in such a manner as best suited their own
interest, and the convenience of Sparta. Without pretending to describe
the banishments, confiscations, and murders of which they were guilty,
it is sufficient for the purpose of general history to observe, that
the miserable victims of their vengeance suffered similar calamities
to those which afflicted Athens under the Thirty Tyrants. The severity
of the government at length drove the Thebans to despair; and both the
persecuted exiles abroad, and the oppressed subjects at home, prepared to
embrace any measures, however daring and hazardous, which promised them a
faint hope of relief.
[Sidenote: [382-379 B.C.]]
Among the Theban fugitives, who had taken refuge in Athens, and whose
persons were now loudly demanded by Sparta, was Pelopidas, the son of
Hippoclus, a youth whose distinguished advantages might have justly
rendered him an object of envy, before he was involved in the misfortunes
of his country. He yielded to none in birth; he surpassed all in fortune;
he excelled in the manly exercises so much esteemed by the Greeks, and
was unrivalled in qualities still more estimable--generosity and courage.
He had an hereditary attachment to the democratic form of policy; and,
previous to the late melancholy revolution, he was marked out by his
numerous friends and adherents as the person most worthy of administering
the government. Pelopidas had often conferred with his fellow-sufferers
at Athens about the means of returning to their country, and restoring
the democracy; encouraging them by the example of the patriotic
Thrasybulus, who, with a handful of men, had issued from Thebes, and
effected a similar, but still more difficult, enterprise. While they
secretly deliberated on this important object, Mellon, one of the exiles,
introduced to their nocturnal assembly his friend Phyllidas, who had
lately arrived from Thebes; a man whose enterprising activity, singular
address, and crafty boldness, justly entitle him to the regard of history.
Phyllidas was strongly attached to the cause of the exiles; yet, by his
insinuating complaisance, and officious servility, he had acquired the
entire confidence of Leontiades, Archias, and the other magistrates, or
rather tyrants, of the republic. In business and in pleasure, he rendered
himself alike necessary to his masters; his diligence and abilities had
procured him the important office of secretary to the council; and he
had lately promised to Archias and Philip, the two most licentious of
the tyrants, that he would give them an entertainment, during which they
might enjoy the conversation and the persons of the finest women in
Thebes. The day was appointed for this infamous rendezvous, which these
magisterial debauchés awaited with the greatest impatience; and, in the
interval, Phyllidas set out for Athens, on pretence of private business.
[Sidenote: [379 B.C.]]
In Athens, the time and the means were adjusted for executing the
conspiracy. A body of Theban exiles assembled in the Thriasian plain,
on the frontier of Attica, where seven, or twelve, of the youngest and
most enterprising, voluntarily offered themselves to enter the capital,
and to co-operate with Phyllidas in the destruction of the magistrates.
The distance between Thebes and Athens was about thirty-five miles. The
conspirators had thirteen miles to march through a hostile territory.
They disguised themselves in the garb of peasants, arrived at the city
towards evening with nets and hunting poles, and passed the gates without
suspicion. During that night, and the succeeding day, the house of
Charon, a wealthy and respectable citizen, the friend of Phyllidas and a
determined enemy of the aristocracy, afforded them a secure refuge till
the favourable moment summoned them to action.
[Illustration: CHARON SUMMONED BEFORE THE MAGISTRATES]
The important evening approached, when the artful secretary had prepared
his long-expected entertainment in the treasury. Nothing had been omitted
that could flatter the senses, and lull the activity of the mind in a
dream of pleasure. But a secret and obscure rumour, which had spread in
the city, hung, like a drawn dagger, over the voluptuous joys of the
festivity. It had been darkly reported that some unknown strangers,
supposed to be a party of the exiles, had been received into the house
of Charon. All the address of Phyllidas could not divert the terror of
his guests. They despatched one of their lictors or attendants to demand
the immediate presence of Charon. The conspirators were already buckling
on their armour, in hopes of being immediately summoned to execute their
purpose. But what was their astonishment and terror, when their host
and protector was sternly ordered to appear before the magistrates! The
most sanguine were persuaded that their design had become public, and
that they must all miserably perish, without effecting anything worthy
of their courage. After a moment of dreadful reflection, they exhorted
Charon to obey the mandate without delay. But that firm and patriotic
Theban first went to the apartment of his wife, took his infant son,
an only child, and presented him to Pelopidas and Mellon, requesting
them to retain in their hands this dearest pledge of his fidelity.
They unanimously declared their entire confidence in his honour, and
entreated him to remove from danger a helpless infant, who might become,
in some future time, the avenger of his country’s wrongs. But Charon was
inflexible, declaring, “that his son could never aspire to a happier
fortune, than that of dying honourably with his father and friends.”
So saying, he addressed a short prayer to the gods, embraced his
associates, and departed. Before he arrived at the treasury, he was
met by Archias and Phyllidas. The former asked him, in the presence of
the other magistrates, whose anxiety had brought them from table, “Who
are those strangers said to have arrived the other day, and to be now
entertained in your family?” Charon had composed his countenance so
artfully, and retorted the question with such well-dissembled surprise,
as considerably quieted the solicitude of the tyrants, which was totally
removed by a whisper of Phyllidas, “that the absurd rumour had doubtless
been spread for no other purpose but that of disturbing their pleasures.”
They had scarcely returned to the banquet, when Fortune, as if she had
taken pleasure to confound the dexterity of Phyllidas, raised up a new
and most alarming danger. A courier arrived from Athens with every mark
of haste and trepidation, desiring to see Archias, to whom he delivered a
letter from an Athenian magistrate of the same name, his ancient friend
and guest. This letter revealed the conspiracy; a secret not entrusted to
the messenger, who had orders, however, to request Archias to read the
despatch immediately, as containing matters of the utmost importance.
But that careless voluptuary, whose thoughts were totally absorbed
in the expected scene of pleasure, replied with a smile, “Business
to-morrow;” deposited the letter under the pillow of the couch, on which,
according to ancient custom, he lay at the entertainment; and resumed his
conversation with Phyllidas.
Matters were now come to a crisis; Phyllidas retired for a moment; the
conspirators were put in motion; their weapons concealed under the
flowing swell of female attire, and their countenances overshadowed
and hid by a load of crowns and garlands. In this disguise they were
presented to the magistrates intoxicated with wine and folly. At a given
signal they drew their daggers, and effected their purpose. Charon and
Mellon were the principal actors in this bloody scene, which was entirely
directed by Phyllidas. But a more difficult task remained. Leontiades,
with other abettors of the tyranny, still lived, to avenge the murder
of their associates. The conspirators, encouraged by their first
success, and conducted by Phyllidas, gained admission into their houses
successively, by means of the unsuspected secretary. On the appearance of
disorder and tumult, Leontiades seized his sword, and boldly prepared for
his defence. Pelopidas had the merit of destroying the principal author
of the Theban servitude and disgrace. His associates perished without
resistance; men whose names may be consigned to just oblivion, since they
were distinguished by nothing memorable but their cruel and oppressive
tyranny.
The measures of the conspirators were equally vigorous and prudent.
Before alarming the city, they proceeded to the different prisons, which
were crowded with the unfortunate victims of arbitrary power. Every door
was open to Phyllidas. The captives, transported with joy and gratitude,
increased the strength of their deliverers. They broke open the arsenals,
and provided themselves with arms. The streets of Thebes now resounded
with alarm and terror; every house and family were filled with confusion
and uproar; the inhabitants were universally in motion; some providing
lights, others running in wild disorder to the public places, and all
anxiously wishing the return of day, that they might discover the unknown
cause of this nocturnal tumult.
During a moment of dreadful silence, which interrupted the noise of
sedition, a herald proclaimed, with a clear and loud voice, the death
of the tyrants, and summoned to arms the friends of liberty and the
republic. Among others who obeyed the welcome invitation was Epaminondas,
the son of Polymnis, a youth of the most illustrious merit; who united
the wisdom of the sage and the magnanimity of the hero, with the
practice of every mild and gentle virtue; unrivalled in knowledge and in
eloquence; in birth, valour, and patriotism, not inferior to Pelopidas,
with whom he had contracted an early friendship. The principles of the
Pythagorean philosophy, which he had diligently studied under Lysis of
Tarentum, rendered Epaminondas averse to engage in the conspiracy, lest
he might imbrue his hands in civil blood. But when the sword was once
drawn, he appeared with ardour in defence of his friends and country;
and his example was followed by many brave and generous youths who had
reluctantly endured the double yoke of domestic and foreign tyranny.
The approach of morning had brought the Theban exiles, in arms, from
the Thriasian plain. The partisans of the conspirators were continually
increased by a confluence of new auxiliaries from every quarter of the
city. Encompassed by such an invincible band of adherents, Pelopidas and
his associates proceeded to the market-place; summoned a general assembly
of the people; explained the necessity, the object, and the extent of the
conspiracy; and, with the universal approbation of their fellow-citizens,
restored the democratic form of government.
Exploits of valour and intrepidity may be discovered in the history of
every nation. But the revolution of Thebes displayed not less wisdom of
design, than enterprising gallantry in execution. Amidst the tumult of
action, and ardour of victory, the conspirators possessed sufficient
coolness and foresight to reflect that the Cadmea, or citadel, which
was held by a Lacedæmonian garrison of fifteen hundred men, would be
reinforced, on the first intelligence of danger, by the resentful
activity of Sparta. To anticipate this alarming event, which must have
rendered the consequences of the conspiracy incomplete and precarious,
they commanded the messenger, whom, immediately after the destruction of
the tyrants, they had despatched to their friends in the Thriasian plain,
to proceed to Athens, in order to communicate the news of a revolution
which could not fail to be highly agreeable to that state, and to solicit
the immediate assistance of the Athenians, whose superior skill in
attacking fortified places was acknowledged by Greeks and barbarians.
This message was attended with the most salutary effects. The acute
discernment of the Athenians eagerly seized the precious opportunity of
weakening Sparta, which, if once neglected, might never return. Several
thousand men were ordered to march; and no time was lost, either in the
preparation, or in the journey, since they reached Thebes the day after
Pelopidas had re-established the democracy.
The seasonable arrival of those auxiliaries, whose celerity exceeded the
most sanguine hopes of the Thebans, increased the ardour of the latter
to attack the citadel. The events of the siege are variously related.
According to the most probable account, the garrison made a very feeble
resistance, being intimidated by the impetuous alacrity and enthusiasm,
as well as the increasing number of the assailants, who already amounted
to fourteen thousand men, and received continual accessions of strength
from the neighbouring cities of Bœotia. Only a few days had elapsed,
when the Lacedæmonians desired to capitulate, on condition of being
allowed to depart in safety with their arms. Their proposal was readily
accepted; but they seem not to have demanded, or at least not to have
obtained, any terms of advantage or security for those unfortunate
Thebans whose attachment to the Spartan interest strongly solicited their
protection. At the first alarm of sedition, these unhappy men, with their
wives and families, had taken refuge in the citadel. The greater part of
them cruelly perished by the resentment of their countrymen; a remnant
only was saved by the humane interposition of the Athenians. So justly
had Epaminondas suspected, that the revolution could not be accomplished
without the effusion of civil blood.[f]
THE SECOND ATHENIAN LEAGUE
[Sidenote: [379-378 B.C.]]
Politics makes strange bedfellows. The petty jealousies of the little
Grecian townships, called countries, were as important and as bitter to
them as the feuds of empires. Yet, of course, when any two of them fell
by the ears they were always ready to accept aid from the bystanding
communities, on whatsoever terms they may have recently been. We are now
to see a stranger sight than the union of Athens and Sparta, and that is
the re-alliance of the polished and haughty Athenians with the citizens
of Thebes, although to the Attic mind the very word “Bœotian” had been
from time immemorial a synonym for “swine,” a by-word of treachery, of
Asiatic sympathy, and of backwoods uncouthness.
The immediate effect of the theatrical revolution at Thebes was the death
of three of the leading generals concerned. Sparta in disgust executed
two of the defeated harmosts with short shrift of trial. The Athenians
put to death one of the generals who had gone to the relief of the
Thebans, and outlawed the other. They were not yet ready to take a step
in renewal of the ancient wars with Sparta. The Thebans felt themselves
now quite left at the mercy of the Lacedæmonians, and, indeed, it was
only a Spartan who could seemingly have been of aid to them. Sphodrias,
a harmost of Thespiæ, was hot-headed enough to dream of taking Athens
unawares and seizing the Piræus. He was so slow on the march, however,
that daylight found him only at Eleusis. Thereupon, his surprise failing,
he retreated, ravaging the country through which he passed. Athens had
shown her purpose to keep the peace with Sparta by her punishment of
the rash officers who had gone to the relief of Thebes, and yet here
was a Spartan general marching against Athens and playing havoc in the
vicinity. A prompt disavowal on the part of Sparta was demanded, with
the execution of Sphodrias. Sphodrias did not dare return to Sparta
for trial, feeling that his doom was certain. And so it would have
been had it not been for the influence of Agesilaus who was notably a
tender-hearted man and could not resist the pleadings of his son who
was on terms of Grecian intimacy with the son of Sphodrias. Acquittal
followed, and Athens could not but feel herself insulted and forced into
an open declaration for Thebes. War broke out and was busy for six years.
It took the form, as usual, of a war between two leagues.
Sparta felt called upon to deal gently with her remaining confederates
after she saw Chios, Byzantium, Rhodes, and Mytilene revolt at once to
Athens. Sparta divided her league into ten classes: herself the first,
the Arcadian states second and third, Elis the fourth, the Achæans the
fifth, Corinth and Megara the sixth, Sicyon, Phlius, and the towns of the
Argolic Acte the seventh, the Acarnanians the eighth, the Phocians and
Locrians the ninth, Olynthus and the other cities on the coast of Thrace
the tenth.
To Athens it seemed as if destiny had forced her once more to the
forefront of a league against Sparta, a league which should bring her
back to her old-time mastery of the seas. This league, which is called by
Busolt[k] and others the second Athenian league, is called the third by
Beloch,[g] who writes of it as follows:
“Meanwhile Athens had striven with zeal to erect again the twice-lost
lordship of the seas. Immediately after the King’s Peace the alliance
with Chios, Mytilene, Methymna, and Byzantium was renewed: Rhodes also
entered into treaty with Athens, as her Asia Minor league had gone to
pieces at the death of Glos, about 379. The effort to resume the old
relations with the Chalcidians in Thrace had been quickly foiled by the
Spartan intervention; but instead, as we have seen, Thebes had entered
into alliance with Athens in the spring of 378. And now, after the
breach with Sparta was definite, Athens lifted up to all Hellenes and
barbarians, where they were not under Persian rule, the summons to band
together in a league against the encroachment of Sparta. The provisions
of the King’s Peace should fashion the ground plan. The autonomy of
all the states party to it was guaranteed; the Persian king was to be
recognised as lord of the continent of Asia: Athens renounced all claims
on her old colonial possessions and for the future the acquisition of
houses and lands anywhere in the confederacy should be forbidden to the
Athenians. For the administration of affairs a congress (_synedrion_)
was established which sat in Athens, and in which delegates from all
the allied states had place and vote; but Athens herself none. For the
passing of measures, the consent of both the chief city [Athens] and of
the synedrion was necessary. The funds for the fleet of the league were
defrayed through contributions (_syntaxeis_) whose amount the synedrion
would fix according to current needs. The management of this fund and the
leadership in war belonged to Athens.
“Athens made heavy sacrifices to lay the foundation for the erection of
this new league. It was a complete breach with her political practices
down to the King’s Peace, a final renunciation of the re-establishment
of the empire in its old form, as she had planned since Thrasybulus.
And more than that: thousands of Athenian citizens lost their last hope
of regaining the property outside Attica, which their fathers had lost
through the catastrophe of the year 404. But these sacrifices were not
made in vain. The states of Eubœa came at once into the new league,
except Oreus, which was held by a Spartan garrison; also the northern
Sporades, Peparethus, Sciathus and Icus; Tenedos at the mouth of the
Hellespont, Perinthus and Maronea in Thrace; Paros and other neighbouring
isles. Moreover, the previous confederates of Athens, Chios, Mytilene,
Mythimna, Byzantium, Rhodes, and Thebes came back.
“Thus at one blow Athens was again the ruling power in the Ægean Sea;
she could now take again in hand the trusteeship of the temple of Delos,
which she had lost for some years.
“At the same time the reorganisation of the Attic marine was begun.
That was strongly needful: since in the Corinthian War the material had
been rendered largely useless, and efforts at its repair had been very
insufficiently made. There existed well over one hundred triremes, but
most of them old and hardly seaworthy. The building of a great number of
new battleships was begun and pushed so skilfully that after the lapse of
twenty years (357-6) an array of 289 triremes remained in spite of the
great demands made on the Attic fleet. To cover these expenses and for
the payment of the costs of the war an extraordinary tax was levied on
the property in Attica.”
[Sidenote: [378-376 B.C.]]
Thus we find Athens again with an array of allies behind her. She no
longer has the prestige of old. The moneys that they entrust to her
are contributions (_syntaxeis_), and no longer tribute (_phoros_). So
jealous are they, indeed, of Athenian ambition that no citizen of Athens
may even acquire property among the allies. The very tablet on which
this treaty was carved is still in existence, though broken in a score
of fragments. The chief purpose of the league is, it states, to be one
of defence, a combination “to compel the Spartans to leave the Greeks
in peace and freedom with unviolated lands.” The chief agents in the
organisation of this confederacy and in the proselyting of allies were
the brilliant orator Callistratus, who has been called the Aristides of
the second confederacy, and the shrewd generals, Iphicrates, Chabrias,
and Timotheus, the worthy son of the great admiral, Conon. The chief
fault with the confederacy was that it bound Athens into an unnatural
alliance with Thebes, its inveterate enemy, who could serve little
further purpose than that of a ladder to be discarded as soon as it had
been climbed over. The war, therefore, becomes mainly a war between
Sparta and Athens, in which, as Holm[h] notes, “Athens played always the
rôle of the spectator who sits quiet, saving his strength in order to act
as peace-maker over both the antagonists.”
Thebes took up the war with a blazing enthusiasm. She had for a
controlling spirit the coming man Epaminondas, a military genius of the
very first rank, a gifted musician, a philosopher, and an orator. He
had the rare qualities of modesty, of pure patriotism, of indifference
to money and to partisanship. Allied with him was Pelopidas, who was in
command of a new organisation which stood some chance of meeting the
famous Spartan hoplite in equal combat. This _Hieros Lochos_, or Sacred
Band of sworn friends, was a curious body of three hundred young men
fighting in couples and bound together by Grecian ideas of friendship.
They were trained to a high degree of gymnastic strength, and while
chosen at first merely to serve as front-rank men, later came to be
employed as a separate regiment of irresistible momentum in a charge.
Before they had learned the power of this troop the Thebans dug a ditch
and built a rampart around the most fertile part of their territory
against the invasions of the Spartans. Soon after the revolt of the
city, in 378 B.C., the Spartan king Cleombrotus had raided the land, but
without result. Later came King Agesilaus for two expeditions, equally
fruitless, except for pillage. The Spartan Phœbidas made an inroad in
377 and was killed in a disastrous defeat. To relieve a famine due to
the destruction of two harvests, the Thebans sent for two galleys of
corn which the Spartan Alcetas captured, putting the crews in prison in
the citadel in Oreus in Eubœa. The prisoners captured the fortress and
took possession of the town, which now joined the league with Athens. In
376, Agesilaus, who was ill from the bursting of a blood-vessel, on his
previous campaign, was compelled to keep his room, and the Spartans sent
an army under Cleombrotus, who was repulsed at the passes of Cithæron.
The Spartans now sent a fleet to cut off the corn supplies of Athens and
put her port under blockade.
Athens, once more able to take the sea, fitted a fleet of eighty galleys
which she entrusted to Chabrias. In order to decoy the Spartan fleet
under Pollis away from the Piræus, he laid siege to Naxos which was
wavering towards the Athenian confederacy. Pollis accepted the challenge,
and, though he had only sixty galleys, gave battle between Paros and
Naxos. It was a hard fight and the Spartans seem to have lost all their
ships except eleven, and these would have been destroyed, says Diodorus,
had it not been for the fate of the commanders in the battle of Arginusæ,
who, as will be remembered, were in such haste to pursue the defeated
enemy that they did not stop to pick up their own wounded and dead on the
sinking wrecks of their own fleet. They had been put to death in their
hour of triumph, and the lesson was not forgotten by Chabrias in his
victory thirty years later.
[Sidenote: [376-374 B.C.]]
The glory of Naxos, however, was a sufficient. And while it was not so
momentous a success as Conon’s at the battle of Cnidus, it was more
savoury to the Athenians, because it had been won by a fleet not of
Asiatics merely commanded by an Athenian, but altogether by Athenian
ships and men. In this battle the command of the left wing was given to
Phocion, who looms large in later Athenian history. This success at Naxos
in the year 376 relieved Athens of famine, re-established her prestige
on the sea, and brought seventeen new cities around the Ægean Sea into
the confederacy, together with a large contribution. In the same year
the Athenians also punished an insurrection at Delos where the renewal
of her authority was not entirely welcome. Preparations were now made
for a circumnavigation of the Peloponnesus with a fleet under Pinotenus.
In 375 he sailed and brought over to the Athenian alliance the islands
of Corcyra and Cephallenia, a part of Acarnania, and the king of the
Molossians. At Alyzia, Timotheus with his sixty galleys was attacked by
the Spartan Nicolochus, with fifty-five galleys. The Athenian won this
encounter, but declined a later challenge, and increased his fleet to
seventy sail.
[Illustration: GREEK WARRIOR IN TRAVELLING COSTUME
(After Hope)]
The expedition had succeeded in the purpose that had led the Thebans
to suggest it, that is, it had prevented Sparta from making her usual
incursion into Bœotia. Athens, however, found the fleet a very heavy
and irksome expense, and each captain of a trireme was compelled to
advance £28 or $140 towards the payment of his crew. The Athenians now
suggested that the Thebans make some payment towards the cost of an
expedition which had been of such economy to them; but they declined the
opportunity, and Athens, in a not unnatural pique, turned towards Sparta.
In 374 a peace was agreed to, but was broken at once owing to the fact
that Timotheus interfered at Zacynthus and brought down the wrath of
Sparta. So the war went on.
Meanwhile, the year before, the Thebans had been active and growingly
successful. They turned against three near-by cities in Bœotia which
were old victims of Thebes and had been granted independence under the
Peace of Antalcidas. These towns were Platæa, Thespiæ, and Orchomenos.
They hated Thebes from bitter memories of former oppressions and
held out against her increasing presumption, although other Bœotian
towns were brought into the league, and although they were themselves
heavily assailed. It was 372 before Platæa was taken by surprise and
all the inhabitants driven out of it. They took refuge in Athens, whose
friendship for Platæa was of old times. Thebes also compelled Thespiæ to
tear down her fortifications. These things only revived in Athens the
ancient abhorrence of Thebes, but they fed the insolence of the Bœotians.
It was probably in 375 B.C., that Pelopidas, at the head of his Sacred
Band, unexpectedly fell in with two Spartan moras, each of them equal
alone to his three hundred, and each under command of a polemarch. One of
his men came flying to Pelopidas, exclaiming:
“We have fallen into the midst of the enemy.”
“Why not they into the midst of us?” answered Pelopidas. And at once he
charged home.
The first onset killed the two Spartan leaders. This threw the two moras
into confusion, and Pelopidas, after cutting his way through, instead of
retiring, turned and successfully routed each of the moras. So far as
the number engaged is concerned, it was hardly more than a serious riot,
but, as we have seen before, any blow at the prestige of the Spartan
soldier made all Greeks shudder, and here was a new organisation or club
from the unheroic city of Thebes destroying a Spartan force of twice its
strength. This was a further blow to Spartan pride and new fuel for the
increase of Theban self-confidence. In 374 an expedition against Phocis
was checked by Spartan troops under Cleombrotus, but about this time the
Athenians seem to have regained Oropus, which the Spartans had captured
in 411. This year also Lacedæmonian pride was more deeply humbled before
Corcyra.[a] Of this let Xenophon tell.
CORCYRA
[Sidenote: [375-372 B.C.]]
The Lacedæmonians preparing again to send out a fleet, collected vessels
to the number of sixty from Lacedæmon itself, from Corinth, Leucas,
Ambracia, Elis, Zacynthus, Achaia, Epidaurus, Trœzen, Hermion, and the
Halians. Appointing Mnasippus admiral, they instructed him to attend to
affairs in that sea in general, and to make an attempt upon Corcyra. They
sent also to Dionysius, representing that it was for his interest that
Corcyra should not be in the power of the Athenians.
Mnasippus, when his fleet was collected, set sail for Corcyra. He had
with him, in addition to the troops from Lacedæmon, a body of mercenaries
to the amount of not less than fifteen hundred. When he landed on the
island, he at once became master of it, and laid waste the country,
which was excellently cultivated and planted, and exhibited, throughout
the fields, fine houses and well-constructed wine-vaults; so that the
soldiers, they said, arrived at such a height of luxury, that they would
drink no wine but such as was of a fragrant odour. Slaves and cattle in
great numbers were carried off from the fields. At length he encamped
with his land-forces on a hill, distant about five stadia from the city,
and overlooking the country, so that if any of the Corcyræans should
come out into the fields, he might cut off their retreat; his ships he
stationed on the opposite side of the city, at a point where he thought
that they would observe and stop whatever vessels might approach the
coast. In addition to these arrangements, he anchored galleys, when foul
weather did not prevent, in front of the harbour. Thus he kept the city
in a state of blockade.
As the Corcyræans, in consequence, could get no supplies from their
grounds, since they were overpowered by land, while nothing could be
brought them by sea, because they were inferior in naval force, they
suffered greatly from want of provisions, and, sending to the Athenians,
entreated aid of them, and represented that “they would lose a very
valuable possession if they should be deprived of Corcyra, and would
greatly increase at the same time, the strength of their enemies; since
from no state in Greece, except Athens, could more ships or money be
raised;” they added, also, that “the island of Corcyra was favourably
situated with regard to the Gulf of Corinth, and the cities lying upon
it, and favourably, too, for ravaging the territory of Laconia, but most
favourably of all with reference to the opposite continent, and the
passage from Sicily to the Peloponnesus.” The Athenians, on hearing these
representations, were of opinion that they must pay careful attention
to the matter, and sent out Stesicles, as general, with six hundred
peltasts, requesting Alcetas to assist in conveying them over the water.
These troops were accordingly landed on the coast by night, and made
their way into the city of Corcyra.
The Athenians also resolved to fit out sixty additional ships, and
elected Timotheus as commander of them. Timotheus, not being able to
man these vessels at home, sailed about to the different islands, and
endeavoured to complete his crews from thence; thinking it would be no
light matter to sail round without due preparation against ships so well
disciplined as those of the enemy. But the Athenians, imagining that
he was wasting the whole of the season suitable for the expedition,
had no patience with him, and, depriving him of his command, appointed
Iphicrates in his room. Iphicrates, as soon as he was made commander,
manned his vessels with the utmost expedition, and obliged the trierarchs
to exert themselves. He took from the Athenians, also, whatever ships
were on the coast of Attica, as well as the Paralus and Salaminian ships,
observing that “if affairs at Corcyra were successful, he would send them
back plenty of ships.” His fleet amounted in all to about seventy.
During this time the people of Corcyra were so grievously oppressed
with famine, that, in consequence of the number of deserters, Mnasippus
made proclamation that “all deserters for the future should be sold as
slaves.” But when they continued to desert nevertheless, he at last
scourged them, and sent them back. The people in the city, however,
refused to receive any slaves into the town, and many, in consequence,
perished without the walls. Mnasippus, observing this, imagined that he
was all but in possession of the city, and began to make new arrangements
as to his mercenaries, some of whom he dismissed from his service, while
to those who remained he continued in debt two months’ pay, though not,
as it was said, for want of money, for the greater number of the towns,
in consequence of the expedition being over the sea, had sent him money
instead of men. But as the people in the city observed from their towers
that the lines of the enemy were guarded with less strictness than
before, and that the men were straggling over the country, they made a
sally upon them, and took some of them prisoners and killed some.
Mnasippus, perceiving what had happened, armed himself, and hastened,
with all the heavy-armed troops that he had, to the succour of his men,
ordering also the captains and centurions to lead out the mercenaries.
Some of the captains observing that “it was not easy for those to have
their men obedient who gave them no subsistence,” he struck one of them
with his staff, and another with the handle of his spear. Thus they all
came out without spirit, and with feelings of hatred towards their
general; a state of mind by no means favourable for fighting. However,
when he had drawn up his force, he put to flight those of the enemy that
were near the gates of the city, and pressed forward in pursuit of them;
but the pursued, when they were close to the wall, faced about, and
hurled stones and darts at him from the tombs; while others, sallying
forth from the other gates, fell, in a dense body, upon the extremity of
his line. Mnasippus’ men there, being formed but eight deep, and thinking
their wing too weak, endeavoured to wheel round, but when they began
to withdraw from their position, the enemy rushed upon them as if they
were going to flee, when they themselves no longer attempted to turn,
and those that were nearest to them took to flight. Mnasippus, at the
same time, was unable to support the party that were in difficulties, as
the enemy were pressing upon him in front, and he was continually left
with fewer and fewer men. At last the enemy, collecting in a body, made
a general attack upon those remaining with Mnasippus, now reduced to
a very small number indeed; while the people from the city, observing
how things stood, sallied forth, and, after killing Mnasippus, joined
in a general pursuit. The pursuers would probably have taken the camp
and entrenchment, had they not observed the crowd in the market, and
that of the servants and slaves, and, imagining it an efficient body of
defenders, retraced their steps. The Corcyræans however erected a trophy,
and restored the dead under a truce.
After this affair, the people in the city grew bolder, while those
without were in extreme dejection; for it was said that Iphicrates was
almost at hand; and the Corcyræans actually proceeded to fit out their
vessels. But Hypermenes, who had been second in command to Mnasippus,
manned all the Lacedæmonian ships that were there, and, sailing round
to the encampment, loaded them every one with slaves and other effects,
and sent them off. He himself, with the marines, and such of the other
soldiers as survived, stayed to guard the entrenchment; but at last these
also got on board in the utmost disorder and sailed away, leaving behind
them a great quantity of corn and wine, and a number of slaves and sick
persons; for they were extremely afraid that they would be surprised in
the island by the Athenians. However, they arrived in safety at Leucas.
Iphicrates, as soon as he commenced his voyage, continued, while he
pursued his way, to prepare everything necessary for an engagement. He
left his large sails at home at starting, as standing out for a battle,
and of his other sails, even if the wind was favourable, he made little
use; but, making his passage with the oar, caused his men, by that means,
to keep themselves in better condition, and his ships to pursue their
course better. Frequently, too, wherever the crews were going to dine
or sup, he would draw off one extremity of the fleet to a distance from
the land over against the place, and, when he had turned about, and
ranged his vessels in a line with their prows towards it, would start
them, at a signal, to race against each other to the shore; when it was
a great advantage for such as could first take their water, and whatever
else they needed, and first finish their meal; while, to such as came
last, it was a great punishment to have the disadvantage in all these
respects, since they were all obliged to put out to sea again when he
gave the signal; for it was the fortune of those that landed first to do
everything at their leisure, but of those that were last, to do all with
hurry.
If he landed to take a meal in the enemy’s country, he not only posted
sentinels, as was proper, on the shore, but also, raising the masts in
his ships, kept a lookout from thence. The men stationed on the masts,
indeed, saw much farther than those on the level ground, as they looked
down from a higher position. Wherever he supped or slept, he kindled
no fire in the camp at night, but kept a light burning in front of the
encampment, that no one might approach undiscovered. Often, moreover, if
the weather was calm, he would resume his voyage as soon as supper was
over; and, if a breeze propelled the vessels, the men reposed as they
ran on, but, if it was necessary to use the oar, he made them take rest
by turns. In his course by day, he would sometimes, at given signals,
lead his ships in a line behind one another, and sometimes in a body
side by side; so that, while they pursued their voyage, they practised
and acquired whatever was necessary for naval warfare, and thus arrived
at the sea which they believed to be occupied by the enemy. They dined
and supped, for the most part, on the enemy’s territory; but, as they
did nothing more there than what was necessary, Iphicrates escaped all
attacks by the suddenness with which he resumed his voyage, which he soon
accomplished. About the time of Mnasippus’ death he was at the Sphagiæ
in Laconia. Advancing thence to the coast of Elis, and sailing past the
mouth of the Alpheus, he came to anchor at the promontory called Icthys.
Next day he proceeded from thence to Cephallenia, with his fleet so
arranged, and keeping his course in such a manner, that he could, if it
should be requisite, get everything needful ready for battle, and engage
at once; for as to the fate of Mnasippus, he had heard no account from
any eye-witness, and suspected that it might be a report intended to
deceive him, and accordingly kept upon his guard. But when he arrived at
Cephallenia, he received a full statement of facts, and stopped there to
refresh his men.
Having reduced the towns in Cephallenia, he sailed off to Corcyra. Here
the first intelligence he received was, that ten galleys were coming from
Dionysius to reinforce the Lacedæmonians; and going in person therefore
along the coast, and considering from what points it was possible to
descry those vessels approaching, and for people making signals to render
them visible at the city, he posted sentinels in those places, arranging
with them what signals they should give when the enemy sailed up and
cast anchor. He then selected twenty of his own captains, who were to be
ready to follow him whenever he should send a messenger to them, and gave
them notice, that, if any one of them should not follow him, he must not
complain of any penalty imposed upon him. As soon as these ships, then,
were signalled as approaching, and messengers were sent to the captains,
their haste was deserving of admiration; for there was no one, of those
that were going to sail, that did not embark with the utmost speed.
Standing away to the point where the ships of the enemy were, he found
that the men from the rest of them were gone ashore, but that Melanippus,
a Rhodian captain, was exhorting the other commanders not to stay there,
and, embarking his own crew, was sailing off. Melanippus, in consequence,
though he met with the ships of Iphicrates, nevertheless escaped, but
all the ships from Syracuse were captured, with their crews. Iphicrates,
cutting off the beaks of the vessels, brought them in tow into the
harbour of Corcyra, and settled a fixed sum for each of the prisoners to
pay for his ransom, except Crinippus, the chief captain, whom he kept
under guard, as if he would exact a vast sum from him, or sell him as
a slave. He however died, through grief, by his own hands. The other
prisoners Iphicrates discharged, taking security from the Corcyræans for
the payment of their ransom.
He maintained his sailors, chiefly, by employing them in agriculture in
the service of the Corcyræans. With the peltasts, and the heavy-armed
men from the fleet, he passed over to Acarnania, where he afforded aid to
the friendly towns, if any required it, and made war upon the Thyreans,
a people of great bravery, and occupying a strongly fortified place.
Afterwards, fetching the fleet from Corcyra, consisting now of about
ninety ships, he proceeded first to Cephallenia and raised contributions
there, as well from people that were willing to give them, as from
those that were unwilling. He then prepared to commit depredations on
the territories of the Lacedæmonians; and, of the cities in those parts
attached to the enemy, to receive into alliance such as were willing to
join him, and to make war on such as rejected his advances.[c]
THE TRIAL OF TIMOTHEUS
[Sidenote: [373 B.C.]]
[Illustration: GREEK HERALD]
The happy result of the Corcyræan expedition, imparting universal
satisfaction at Athens, was not less beneficial to Timotheus than to
Iphicrates. It was in November 373 B.C., that the former, as well as his
quæstor or military treasurer, Antimachus, underwent each his trial.
Callistratus, having returned home, pleaded against the quæstor, perhaps
against Timotheus also, as one of the accusers; though probably in a
spirit of greater gentleness and moderation, in consequence of his
recent joint success and of the general good temper prevalent in the
city. And while the edge of the accusation against Timotheus was thus
blunted, the defence was strengthened not merely by numerous citizen
friends speaking in his favour with increased confidence, but also by the
unusual phenomenon of two powerful foreign supporters. At the request of
Timotheus, both Alcetas of Epirus, and Jason of Pheræ, came to Athens a
little before the trial, to appear as witnesses in his favour. They were
received and lodged by him in his house in the Hippodamian Agora, the
principal square of the Piræus. And as he was then in some embarrassment
for want of money, he found it necessary to borrow various articles of
finery in order to do them honour--clothes, bedding, and two silver
drinking-bowls--from Pasion, a wealthy banker near at hand. These two
important witnesses would depose to the zealous service and estimable
qualities of Timotheus; who had inspired them with warm interest, and had
been the means of bringing them into alliance with Athens; an alliance
which they had sealed at once by conveying Stesicles and his division
across Thessaly and Epirus to Corcyra. The minds of the dicastery would
be powerfully affected by seeing before them such a man as Jason of
Pheræ, at that moment the most powerful individual in Greece; and we are
not surprised to learn that Timotheus was acquitted. Although he was now
acquitted, his reputation suffered so much by the whole affair, that in
the ensuing spring he was glad to accept an invitation of the Persian
satraps, who offered him the command of the Grecian mercenaries in their
service for the Egyptian war; the same command from which Iphicrates had
retired a little time before.
[Sidenote: [378-373 B.C.]]
That admiral, whose naval force had been reinforced by a large number
of Corcyræan triremes, was committing without opposition incursions
against Acarnania, and the western coast of Peloponnesus; insomuch that
the expelled Messenians, in their distant exile at Hesperides in Libya,
began to conceive hopes of being restored by Athens to Naupactus, which
they had occupied under her protection during the Peloponnesian War.
And while the Athenians were thus masters at sea both east and west of
Peloponnesus, Sparta and her confederates, discouraged by the ruinous
failure of their expedition against Corcyra in the preceding year,
appear to have remained inactive. With such mental predispositions,
they were powerfully affected by religious alarm arising from certain
frightful earthquakes and inundations with which Peloponnesus was
visited during this year, and which were regarded as marks of the wrath
of the god Poseidon. More of these formidable visitations occurred this
year in Peloponnesus than had ever before been known; especially one,
the worst of all, whereby the two towns of Helice and Bura in Achaia
were destroyed, together with a large portion of their population. Ten
Lacedæmonian triremes, which happened to be moored on this shore on the
night when the calamity occurred, were destroyed by the rush of the
waters.
Under these depressing circumstances, the Lacedæmonians had recourse to
the same manœuvre which had so well served their purpose fifteen years
before, in 388-387 B.C. They sent Antalcidas again as envoy to Persia,
to entreat both pecuniary aid and a fresh Persian intervention enforcing
anew the peace which bore his name; which peace had now been infringed
(according to Lacedæmonian construction) by the reconstitution of the
Bœotian confederacy under Thebes as president. And it appears that in
the course of the autumn or winter, Persian envoys actually did come to
Greece, requiring that the belligerents should all desist from war, and
wind up their dissensions on the principles of the Peace of Antalcidas.
The Persian satraps, at this time renewing their efforts against Egypt,
were anxious for the cessation of hostilities in Greece, as a means of
enlarging their numbers of Grecian mercenaries; of which troops Timotheus
had left Athens a few months before to take the command.
Apart, however, from this prospect of Persian intervention, which
doubtless was not without effect, Athens herself was becoming more
and more disposed towards peace. That common fear and hatred of the
Lacedæmonians, which had brought her into alliance with Thebes in 378
B.C., was now no longer predominant. She was actually at the head of a
considerable maritime confederacy; and this she could hardly hope to
increase by continuing the war, since the Lacedæmonian naval power had
already been humbled. Moreover, the Athenians had become more and more
alienated from Thebes. The ancient antipathy between these two neighbours
had for a time been overlaid by common fear of Sparta. But as soon as
Thebes had re-established her authority in Bœotia, the jealousies of
Athens again began to arise.
During the last three or four years, Platæa, like the other towns of
Bœotia, had been again brought into the confederacy under Thebes.
Re-established by Sparta after the Peace of Antalcidas as a so-called
autonomous town, it had been garrisoned by her as a post against Thebes,
and was no longer able to maintain a real autonomy after the Spartans
had been excluded from Bœotia in 376 B.C. While other Bœotian cities
were glad to find themselves emancipated from their philo-Laconian
oligarchies and rejoined to the federation under Thebes, Platæa--as well
as Thespiæ--submitted to the union only by constraint; awaiting any
favourable opportunity for breaking off, either by means of Sparta or of
Athens. Aware probably of the growing coldness between the Athenians and
Thebans, the Platæans were secretly trying to persuade Athens to accept
and occupy their town, annexing Platæa to Attica; a project hazardous
both to Thebes and Athens, since it would place them at open war with
each other, while neither was yet at peace with Sparta.
[Sidenote: [373-371 B.C.]]
This intrigue, coming to the knowledge of the Thebans, determined them
to strike a decisive blow. The bœotarch Neocles conducted a Theban armed
force immediately from the assembly, by a circuitous route through Hysiæ
to Platæa; which town he found deserted by most of its male adults and
unable to make resistance. The Platæans--dispersed in the fields, finding
their walls, their wives, and their families, all in possession of the
victor--were under the necessity of accepting the terms proposed to them.
They were allowed to depart in safety and to carry away all their movable
property; but their town was destroyed and its territory again annexed
to Thebes. The unhappy fugitives were constrained for the second time
to seek refuge at Athens, where they were again kindly received, and
restored to the same qualified right of citizenship as they had enjoyed
prior to the Peace of Antalcidas.
It was not merely with Platæa, but also with Thespiæ, that Thebes
was now meddling. Mistrusting the dispositions of the Thespians, she
constrained them to demolish the fortifications of their town; as she had
caused to be done fifty-two years before, after the victory of Delium,
on suspicion of leanings favourable to Athens. Such proceedings on the
part of the Thebans in Bœotia excited strong emotion at Athens, where
the Platæans not only appeared as suppliants, with the tokens of misery
conspicuously displayed, but also laid their case pathetically before the
assembly, and invoked aid to regain their town, of which they had been
just bereft. On a question at once so touching and so full of political
consequences, many speeches were doubtless composed and delivered, one
of which has fortunately reached us; composed by Isocrates, and perhaps
actually delivered by a Platæan speaker before the public assembly. The
hard fate of this interesting little community is here impressively set
forth, including the bitterest reproaches, stated with not a little of
rhetorical exaggeration, against the multiplied wrongs done by Thebes, as
well towards Athens as towards Platæa.
The resolution was at length taken--first by Athens, and next, probably,
by the majority of the confederates assembled at Athens--to make
propositions of peace to Sparta, where it was well known that similar
dispositions prevailed towards peace. Notice of this intention was
given to the Thebans, who were moreover invited to send envoys to the
Lacedæmonian capital, if they chose to become parties.
In the spring of 371 B.C., at the time when the members of the
Lacedæmonian confederacy were assembled at Sparta, both the Athenian
and Theban envoys, and those from the various members of the Athenian
confederacy, arrived there. Among the Athenian envoys, two at
least--Callias (the hereditary _daduch_ or torchbearer of the Eleusinian
ceremonies) and Autocles--were men of great family at Athens; and they
were accompanied by Callistratus, the orator. From the Thebans, the only
man of note was Epaminondas, then one of the Bœotarchs.
THE CONGRESS AT SPARTA
[Sidenote: [371 B.C.]]
Of the debates which took place at this important congress, we have very
imperfect knowledge; and of the more private diplomatic conversations,
not less important than the debates, we have no knowledge at all.
Xenophon gives us a speech from each of the three Athenians, and from
no one else. That of Callias, who announces himself as hereditary
proxenus of Sparta at Athens, is boastful and empty, but eminently
philo-Laconian in spirit; that of Autocles is in the opposite tone, full
of severe censure on the past conduct of Sparta; that of Callistratus,
delivered after the other two--while the enemies of Sparta were elate,
her friends humiliated, and both parties silent, from the fresh effect
of the reproaches of Autocles--is framed in a spirit of conciliation,
admitting faults on both sides, but deprecating the continuance of war,
as injurious to both, and showing how much the joint interests of both
pointed towards peace.
This orator, representing the Athenian diplomacy of the time, recognises
distinctly the Peace of Antalcidas as the basis upon which Athens was
prepared to treat, autonomy to each city, small as well as great: and in
this way, coinciding with the views of the Persian king, he dismisses
with indifference the menace that Antalcidas was on his way back from
Persia with money to aid the Lacedæmonians in the war. Athens and Sparta
were to become mutual partners and guarantees; dividing the headship
of Greece by an ascertained line of demarcation, yet neither of them
interfering with the principle of universal autonomy. Thebes, and her
claim to the presidency of Bœotia, were thus to be set aside by mutual
consent.
[Illustration: GREEK JAR
(In the British Museum)]
It was upon this basis that the peace was concluded. The armaments on
both sides were to be disbanded; the harmosts and garrisons everywhere
withdrawn, in order that each city might enjoy full autonomy. If any city
should fail in observance of these conditions, and continue in a career
of force against any other, all were at liberty to take arms for the
support of the injured party; but no one who did not feel disposed, was
bound so to take arms. This last stipulation exonerated the Lacedæmonian
allies from one of their most vexatious chains.
To the conditions here mentioned, all parties agreed; and on the ensuing
day, the oaths were exchanged. Sparta took the oath for herself and her
allies; Athens took the oath for herself only--her allies afterwards took
it severally, each city for itself. Why such difference was made, we are
not told; for it would seem that the principle of severance applied to
both confederacies alike. Next came the turn of the Thebans to swear;
and here the fatal hitch was disclosed. Epaminondas, the Theban envoy,
insisted on taking the oath, not for Thebes separately, but for Thebes as
president of the Bœotian federation, including all the Bœotian cities.
The Spartan authorities, on the other hand, and Agesilaus as the foremost
of all, strenuously opposed him. They required that he should swear
for Thebes alone, leaving the Bœotian cities to take the oath each for
itself. Already in the course of the preliminary debates, Epaminondas
had spoken out boldly against the ascendency of Sparta. While most of
the deputies stood overawed by her dignity, represented by the energetic
Agesilaus as spokesman, he, like the Athenian Autocles, and with strong
sympathy from many of the deputies present, had proclaimed that nothing
kept alive the war except her unjust pretensions, and that no peace
could be durable unless such pretensions were put aside. Accepting the
conditions of peace as finally determined, he presented himself to swear
to them in the name of the Bœotian federation. But Agesilaus, requiring
that each of the Bœotian cities should take the oath for itself, appealed
to those same principles of liberty which Epaminondas himself had just
invoked, and asked him whether each of the Bœotian cities had not as
good a title to autonomy as Thebes. Epaminondas might have replied by
asking why Sparta had just been permitted to take the oath for her allies
as well as for herself. But he took a higher ground. He contended that
the presidency of Bœotia was held by Thebes on as good a title as the
sovereignty of Laconia by Sparta. He would remind the assembly that
when Bœotia was first conquered and settled by its present inhabitants,
the other towns had all been planted out from Thebes as their chief and
mother-city; that the federal union of all, administered by bœotarchs
chosen by and from all, with Thebes as president, was coeval with the
first settlement of the country; that the separate autonomy of each was
qualified by an established institution, devolving on the bœotarchs and
councils sitting at Thebes the management of the foreign relations of all
jointly.
All this had been pleaded by the Theban orator before the five Spartan
commissioners assembled to determine the fate of the captives after the
surrender of Platæa; when he required the condemnation of the Platæans
as guilty of treason to the ancestral institutions of Bœotia, and the
Spartan commissioners had recognised the legitimacy of these institutions
by a sweeping sentence of death against the transgressors. Moreover, at
a time when the ascendency of Thebes over the Bœotian cities had been
greatly impaired by her anti-Hellenic co-operation with the invading
Persians, the Spartans themselves had assisted her with all their
power to re-establish it, as a countervailing force against Athens.
Epaminondas could show that the presidency of Thebes over the Bœotian
cities was the keystone of the federation--a right not only of immemorial
antiquity, but pointedly recognised and strenuously vindicated by the
Spartans themselves. He could show further that it was as old, and as
good, as their own right to govern the Laconian townships; which latter
was acquired and held (as one of the best among their own warriors had
boastfully proclaimed) by nothing but Spartan valour and the sharpness of
the Spartan sword.
An emphatic speech of this tenor, delivered amidst the deputies
assembled at Sparta, and arraigning the Spartans not merely in their
supremacy over Greece, but even in their dominion at home, was as it
were the shadow cast before by coming events. It opened a question such
as no Greek had ever ventured to raise. It was a novelty startling to
all--extravagant probably in the eyes of Callistratus and the Athenians,
but to the Spartans themselves intolerably poignant and insulting. They
had already a long account of antipathy to clear off with Thebes; their
own wrong-doing in seizing the Cadmea; their subsequent humiliation in
losing it and being unable to recover it; their recent short-comings
and failures, in the last seven years of war against Athens and Thebes
jointly. To aggravate this deep-seated train of hostile associations,
their pride was now wounded in an unforeseen point, the tenderest of
all. Agesilaus, full to overflowing of the national sentiment, which in
the mind of a Spartan passed for the first of virtues, was stung to the
quick. Had he been an Athenian orator like Callistratus, his wrath would
have found vent in an animated harangue. But a king of Sparta was anxious
only to close these offensive discussions with scornful abruptness,
thus leaving to the presumptuous Theban no middle ground between humble
retractation and acknowledged hostility. Indignantly starting from his
seat, he said to Epaminondas: “Speak plainly,--will you, or will you not,
leave to each of the Bœotian cities its separate autonomy?” To which the
other replied, “Will you leave each of the Laconian towns autonomous?”
Without saying another word, Agesilaus immediately caused the name of the
Thebans to be struck out of the roll, and proclaimed them excluded from
the treaty.
Such was the close of this memorable congress at Sparta in June 371 B.C.
Between the Spartans and the Athenians, and their respective allies,
peace was sworn. But the Thebans were excluded, and their deputies
returned home, (if we may believe Xenophon) discouraged and mournful.
Yet such a man as Epaminondas must have been well aware that neither his
claims nor his arguments would be admitted by Sparta. If, therefore, he
was disappointed with the result, this must be because he had counted
upon, but did not obtain, support from the Athenians or others.
ATHENS ABANDONS THEBES
The leaning of the Athenian deputies had been adverse rather than
favourable to Thebes throughout the congress. They were disinclined,
from their sympathies with the Platæans, to advocate the presidential
claims of Thebes, though on the whole it was to the political interest of
Athens that the Bœotian federation should be maintained, as a bulwark to
herself against Sparta. Yet the relations of Athens with Thebes, after
the congress as before it, were still those of friendship, nominal rather
than sincere. It was only with Sparta, and her allies, that Thebes was at
war, without a single ally attached to her. On the whole, Callistratus
and his colleagues had managed the interests of Athens in this congress
with great prudence and success. They had disengaged her from the
alliance with Thebes, which had been dictated seven years before by
common fear and dislike of Sparta, but which had no longer any adequate
motive to countervail the cost of continuing the war; at the same time
the disengagement had been accomplished without bad faith. The gains of
Athens, during the last seven years of war, had been considerable. She
had acquired a great naval power, and a body of maritime confederates;
while her enemies the Spartans had lost their naval power in the like
proportion. Athens was now the ascendant leader of maritime and insular
Greece, while Sparta still continued to be the leading power on land--but
only on land; and a tacit partnership was now established between the
two, each recognising the other in their respective halves of the
Hellenic hegemony. Moreover, Athens had the prudence to draw her stake,
and quit the game, when at the maximum of acquisitions, without taking
the risk of future contingencies.[e]
FOOTNOTES
[11] [That is, the organisation of a group of settlements into one city or
capital.]
[Illustration: GREEK SEALS]