GREECE UNDER THE LACEDÆMONIAN EMPIRE
The three preceding Chapters have been devoted exclusively to the
narrative of the Expedition and Retreat, immortalized by Xenophon,
occupying the two years intervening between about April 401 B.C.
and June 399 B.C. That event, replete as it is with interest and
pregnant with important consequences, stands apart from the general
sequence of Grecian affairs,—which sequence I now resume.
It will be recollected that as soon as Xenophon with his Ten Thousand
warriors descended from the rugged mountains between Armenia and the
Euxine to the hospitable shelter of Trapezus, and began to lay their
plans for returning to Central Greece,—they found themselves within
the Lacedæmonian empire, unable to advance a step without consulting
Lacedæmonian dictation, and obliged, when they reached the Bosphorus,
to endure without redress the harsh and treacherous usage of the
Spartan officers, Anaxibius and Aristarchus.
Of that empire the first origin has been set forth in my last
preceding volume. It began with the decisive victory of Ægospotami
in the Hellespont (September or October 405 B.C.), where the
Lacedæmonian Lysander, without the loss of a man, got possession of
the entire Athenian fleet and a large portion of their crews,—with
the exception of eight or nine triremes with which the Athenian
admiral Konon effected his escape to Euagoras at Cyprus. The whole
power of Athens was thus annihilated, and nothing remained for
the Lacedæmonians to master except the city itself and Peiræus; a
consummation certain to happen, and actually brought to pass in
April 404 B.C., when Lysander entered Athens in triumph, dismantled
Peiræus, and demolished a large portion of the Long Walls. With the
exception of Athens herself,—whose citizens deferred the moment of
subjection by an heroic, though unavailing, struggle against the
horrors of famine,—and of Samos,—no other Grecian city offered any
resistance to Lysander after the battle of Ægospotami; which in fact
not only took away from Athens her whole naval force, but transferred
it all over to him, and rendered him admiral of a larger Grecian
fleet than had ever been seen together since the battle of Salamis.
I have recounted in my sixty-fifth chapter, the sixteen months
of bitter suffering undergone by Athens immediately after her
surrender. The loss of her fleet and power was aggravated by an
extremity of internal oppression. Her oligarchical party and her
exiles, returning after having served with the enemy against her,
extorted from the public assembly, under the dictation of Lysander
who attended it in person, the appointment of an omnipotent council
of thirty for the ostensible purpose of framing a new constitution.
These thirty rulers,—among whom Kritias was the most violent, and
Theramenes (seemingly) the most moderate, or at least the soonest
satiated,—perpetrated cruelty and spoliation on the largest scale,
being protected against all resistance by a Lacedæmonian harmost and
garrison established in the acropolis. Besides numbers of citizens
put to death, so many others were driven into exile with the loss
of their property, that Thebes and the neighboring cities became
crowded with them. After about eight months of unopposed tyranny, the
Thirty found themselves for the first time attacked by Thrasybulus
at the head of a small party of these exiles coming out of Bœotia.
His bravery and good conduct,—combined with the enormities of the
Thirty, which became continually more nefarious, and to which even
numerous oligarchical citizens, as well as Theramenes himself,
successively became victims,—enabled him soon to strengthen himself,
to seize the Peiræus, and to carry on a civil war which ultimately
put down the tyrants.
These latter were obliged to invoke the aid of a new Lacedæmonian
force. And had that force still continued at the disposal of
Lysander, all resistance on the part of Athens would have been
unavailing. But fortunately for the Athenians, the last few months
had wrought material change in the dispositions both of the allies
of Sparta and of many among her leading men. The allies, especially
Thebes and Corinth, not only relented in their hatred and fear of
Athens, now that she had lost her power,—but even sympathized with
her suffering exiles, and became disgusted with the self-willed
encroachments of Sparta; while the Spartan king Pausanias, together
with some of the ephors, were also jealous of the arbitrary
and oppressive conduct of Lysander. Instead of conducting the
Lacedæmonian force to uphold at all price the Lysandrian oligarchy,
Pausanias appeared rather as an equitable mediator to terminate
the civil war. He refused to concur in any measure for obstructing
the natural tendency towards a revival of the democracy. It was in
this manner that Athens, rescued from that sanguinary and rapacious
_regime_ which has passed into history under the name of the Thirty
Tyrants, was enabled to reappear as a humble and dependent member
of the Spartan alliance,—with nothing but the recollection of her
former power, yet with her democracy again in vigorous and tutelary
action for internal government. The just and gentle bearing of her
democratical citizens, and the absence of reactionary antipathies,
after such cruel ill-treatment,—are among the most honorable
features in her history.
The reader will find in my last volume, what I can only rapidly
glance at here, the details of that system of bloodshed, spoliation,
extinction of free speech and even of intellectual teaching, efforts
to implicate innocent citizens as agents in judicial assassination,
etc.,—which stained the year of Anarchy (as it was termed in
Athenian annals[300]) immediately following the surrender of the
city. These details depend on evidence perfectly satisfactory; for
they are conveyed to us chiefly by Xenophon, whose sympathies are
decidedly oligarchical. From him too we learn another fact, not less
pregnant with instruction; that the knights or horsemen, the body of
richest proprietors at Athens, were the mainstay of the Thirty from
first to last, notwithstanding all the enormities of their career.
[300] Xen. Hellen. ii, 3, 1.
We learn from these dark, but well-attested details, to appreciate
the auspices under which that period of history called the
Lacedæmonian empire was inaugurated. Such phenomena were by no means
confined within the walls of Athens. On the contrary, the year of
Anarchy (using that term in the sense in which it was employed by the
Athenians) arising out of the same combination of causes and agents,
was common to a very large proportion of the cities throughout
Greece. The Lacedæmonian admiral Lysander, during his first year of
naval command, had organized in most of the allied cities factious
combinations of some of the principal citizens, corresponding with
himself personally; by whose efforts in their respective cities he
was enabled to prosecute the war vigorously, and whom he repaid,
partly by seconding as much as he could their injustices in their
respective cities,—partly by promising to strengthen their hands
still farther as soon as victory should be made sure.[301] This
policy, while it served as a stimulus against the common enemy,
contributed still more directly to aggrandize Lysander himself;
creating for him an ascendency of his own, and imposing upon him
personal obligations towards adherents, apart from what was required
by the interests of Sparta.
[301] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 5.
The victory of Ægospotami, complete and decisive beyond all
expectations either of friend or foe, enabled him to discharge these
obligations with interest. All Greece at once made submission to the
Lacedæmonians,[302] except Athens and Samos,—and these two only held
out a few months. It was now the first business of the victorious
commander to remunerate his adherents, and to take permanent
security for Spartan dominion as well as for his own. In the greater
number of cities, he established an oligarchy of ten citizens, or a
dekarchy,[303] composed of his own partisans; while he at the same
time planted in each a Lacedæmonian harmost or governor, with a
garrison to uphold the new oligarchy. The dekarchy of ten Lysandrian
partisans, with the Lacedæmonian harmost to sustain them, became the
general scheme of Hellenic government throughout the Ægean, from
Eubœa to the Thracian coast-towns, and from Myletus to Byzantium.
Lysander sailed round in person, with his victorious fleet, to
Byzantium and Chalkêdon, to the cities of Lesbos, to Thasos, and
other places,—while he sent Eteonikus to Thrace, for the purpose of
thus recasting the governments everywhere. Not merely those cities
which had hitherto been on the Athenian side, but also those which
had acted as allies of Sparta, were subjected to the same intestine
revolution and the same foreign constraint.[304] Everywhere the new
Lysandrian dekarchy superseded the previous governments, whether
oligarchical or democratical.
[302] Xen. Hellen. ii, 2, 6.
[303] These Councils of Ten, organized by Lysander, are sometimes
called _Dekarchies_—sometimes _Dekadarchies_. I use the former
word by preference; since the word _Dekadarch_ is also employed
by Xenophon in another and very different sense—as meaning an
officer who commands a _dekad_.
[304] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 13.
Καταλυών δὲ τοὺς δήμους καὶ τὰς ἄλλας πολιτείας, ἕνα μὲν ἁρμοστὴν
ἑκάστῃ Λακεδαιμόνιον κατέλιπε, δέκα δὲ ἄρχοντας ἐκ τῶν ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ
συγκεκροτημένων κατὰ πόλιν ἑταιρειῶν. Καὶ ταῦτα πράττων ~ὁμοίως
ἔν τε ταῖς πολεμίαις καὶ ταῖς συμμάχοις γεγενημέναις πόλεσι~,
παρέπλει σχολαίως τρόπον τινα κατασκευαζόμενος ἑαυτῷ τὴν τῆς
Ἑλλάδος ἡγεμονίαν. Compare Xen. Hellen. ii, 2, 2-5; Diodor. xiii,
3, 10, 13.
At Thasus, as well as in other places, this revolution was not
accomplished without much bloodshed as well as treacherous stratagem,
nor did Lysander himself scruple to enforce, personally and by his
own presence, the execution and expulsion of suspected citizens.[305]
In many places, however, simple terrorism probably sufficed. The
new Lysandrian Ten overawed resistance and procured recognition of
their usurpation by the menace of inviting the victorious admiral
with his fleet of two hundred sail, and by the simple arrival of
the Lacedæmonian harmost. Not only was each town obliged to provide
a fortified citadel and maintenance for this governor with his
garrison, but a scheme of tribute, amounting to one thousand talents
annually, was imposed for the future, and assessed ratably upon each
city by Lysander.[306]
[305] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 13. πολλαῖς παραγινόμενος αὐτὸς
σφαγαῖς καὶ συνεκβάλλων τοὺς τῶν φίλων ἐχθροὺς, οὐκ ἐπιεικὲς
ἐδίδου τοῖς Ἕλλησι δεῖγμα τῆς Λακεδαιμονίων ἀρχῆς, etc.
Plutarch, Lysand. c. 14. Καὶ τῶν μὲν ἄλλων πόλεων ὁμαλῶς ἁπασῶν
κατέλυε τὰς πολιτείας καὶ καθίστη δεκαδαρχίας· πολλῶν μὲν ἐν
ἑκάστῃ σφαττομένων, πολλῶν δὲ φευγόντων, etc.
About the massacre at Thasus, see Cornelius Nepos, Lysand. c. 2;
Polyæn. i, 45, 4. Compare Plutarch, Lysand. c. 19; and see Vol.
VIII, Ch. lxv, p. 220 of this History.
[306] Diodor. xiv, 10. Compare Isokrates, Or. iv, (Panegyr.) s.
151; Xen. Hellen. iv, 8, 1.
In what spirit these new dekarchies would govern, consisting as they
did of picked oligarchical partisans distinguished for audacity and
ambition,[307]—who, to all the unscrupulous lust of power which
characterized Lysander himself, added a thirst for personal gain,
from which he was exempt, and were now about to reimburse themselves
for services already rendered to him,—the general analogy of Grecian
history would sufficiently teach us, though we are without special
details. But in reference to this point, we have not merely general
analogy to guide us; we have farther the parallel case of the Thirty
at Athens, the particulars of whose rule are well known and have
already been alluded to. These Thirty, with the exception of the
difference of number, were to all intents and purposes a Lysandrian
dekarchy; created by the same originating force, placed under the
like circumstances, and animated by the like spirit and interests.
Every subject town would produce its Kritias and Theramenes, and
its body of wealthy citizens like the knights or horsemen at Athens
to abet their oppressions, under Lacedæmonian patronage and the
covering guard of the Lacedæmonian harmost. Moreover, Kritias,
with all his vices, was likely to be better rather than worse, as
compared with his oligarchical parallel in any other less cultivated
city. He was a man of letters and philosophy, accustomed to the
conversation of Sokrates, and to the discussion of ethical and
social questions. We may say the same of the knights or horsemen
at Athens. Undoubtedly they had been better educated, and had been
exposed to more liberalizing and improving influences, than the
corresponding class elsewhere. If, then, these knights at Athens
had no shame in serving as accomplices to the Thirty throughout all
their enormities, we need not fear to presume that other cities would
furnish a body of wealthy men yet more unscrupulous, and a leader at
least as sanguinary, rapacious, and full of antipathies, as Kritias.
As at Athens, so elsewhere; the dekarchs would begin by putting to
death notorious political opponents, under the name of “the wicked
men;”[308] they would next proceed to deal in the same manner
with men of known probity and courage, likely to take a lead in
resisting oppression.[309] Their career of blood would continue,—in
spite of remonstrances from more moderate persons among their own
number, like Theramenes,—until they contrived some stratagem for
disarming the citizens, which would enable them to gratify both their
antipathies and their rapacity by victims still more numerous,—many
of such victims being wealthy men, selected for purposes of pure
spoliation.[310] They would next despatch by force any obtrusive
monitor from their own number, like Theramenes; probably with far
less ceremony than accompanied the perpetration of this crime at
Athens, where we may trace the effect of those judicial forms and
habits to which the Athenian public had been habituated,—overruled
indeed, yet still not forgotten. There would hardly remain any fresh
enormity still to commit, over and above the multiplied executions,
except to banish from the city all but their own immediate partisans,
and to reward these latter with choice estates confiscated from
the victims.[311] If called upon to excuse such tyranny, the
leader of a dekarchy would have sufficient invention to employ the
plea of Kritias,—that all changes of government were unavoidably
death-dealing, and that nothing less than such stringent measures
would suffice to maintain his city in suitable dependence upon
Sparta.[312]
[307] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 13. τοῦ Λυσάνδρου τῶν ὀλίγων τοῖς
θρασυτάτοις καὶ φιλονεικοτάτοις τὰς πόλεις ἐγχειρίζοντος.
[308] Xen. Hellen. ii, 3, 13.
... ἔπεισαν Λύσανδρον φρουροὺς σφίσι ξυμπρᾶξαι ἐλθεῖν, ἕως δὴ
~τοὺς πονηροὺς~ ἐκποδὼν ποιησάμενοι καταστήσαιντο τὴν πολιτείαν,
etc.
[309] Xen. Hellen. ii, 3, 14. Τῶν δὲ φρουρῶν τούτου (the harmost)
συμπέμποντος αὐτοῖς, οὓς ἐβούλοντο, συνελάμβανον οὐκέτι τοὺς
πονηροὺς καὶ ὀλίγου ἀξίους, ἀλλ᾽ ἤδη οὓς ἐνόμιζον ἥκιστα
μὲν παρωθουμένους ἀνέχεσθαι, ἀντιπράττειν δέ τι ἐπιχειροῦντας
πλείστους τοὺς συνεθέλοντας λαμβάνειν.
[310] Xen. Hellen. ii, 3, 21.
[311] Xen. Hellen. ii, 4, 1.
[312] Xen. Hellen. ii, 3, 24-32. Καὶ εἰσὶ μὲν δήπου πᾶσαι
μεταβολαὶ πολιτειῶν θανατήφοροι, etc.
Of course, it is not my purpose to affirm that in any other city,
precisely the same phenomena took place as those which occurred in
Athens. But we are nevertheless perfectly warranted in regarding
the history of the Athenian Thirty as a fair sample, from whence to
derive our idea of those Lysandrian dekarchies which now overspread
the Grecian world. Doubtless, each had its own peculiar march; some
were less tyrannical; but, perhaps, some even more tyrannical,
regard being had to the size of the city. And in point of fact,
Isokrates, who speaks with indignant horror of these dekarchies,
while he denounces those features which they had in common with the
triakontarchy at Athens,—extrajudicial murders, spoliations, and
banishments,—notices one enormity besides, which we do not find
in the latter, violent outrages upon boys and women.[313] Nothing
of this kind is ascribed to Kritias and his companions;[314] and
it is a considerable proof of the restraining force of Athenian
manners, that men who inflicted so much evil in gratification of
other violent impulses, should have stopped short here. The decemvirs
named by Lysander, like the decemvir Appius Claudius at Rome, would
find themselves armed with power to satiate their lusts as well as
their antipathies, and would not be more likely to set bounds to the
former than to the latter. Lysander, in all the overweening insolence
of victory, while rewarding his most devoted partisans with an
exaltation comprising every sort of license and tyranny, stained the
dependent cities with countless murders, perpetrated on private as
well as on public grounds.[315] No individual Greek had ever before
wielded so prodigious a power of enriching friends or destroying
enemies, in this universal reorganization of Greece;[316] nor was
there ever any power more deplorably abused.
[313] Isokrates Orat. iv, (Panegyr.) s. 127-132 (c. 32).
He has been speaking, at some length, and in terms of energetic
denunciation, against the enormities of the dekarchies. He
concludes by saying—Φυγὰς δὲ καὶ στάσεις καὶ νόμων συγχύσεις καὶ
πολιτειῶν μεταβολὰς, ~ἔτι δὲ παιδῶν ὕβρεις καὶ γυναικῶν αἰσχύνας
καὶ χρημάτων ἁρπαγὰς~, τίς ἂν δύναιτο διεξελθεῖν· πλὴν τοσοῦτον
εἰπεῖν ἔχω καθ᾽ ἁπάντων, ὅτι τὰ μὲν ἐφ᾽ ἡμῶν δεινὰ ῥᾳδίως ἄν τις
ἑνὶ ψηφίσματι διέλυσε, τὰς δὲ σφαγὰς καὶ τὰς ἀνομίας τὰς ἐπὶ
τούτων γενομένας οὐδεὶς ἂν ἰάσασθαι δύναιτο.
See also, of the same author, Isokrates, Orat. v, (Philipp.) s.
110; Orat. viii, (de Pace) s. 119-124; Or. xii, (Panath.) s. 58,
60, 106.
[314] We may infer that if Xenophon had heard anything of the
sort respecting Kritias, he would hardly have been averse to
mention it; when we read what he says (Memorab. i, 2, 29.)
Compare a curious passage about Kritias in Dion. Chrysostom. Or.
xxi, p. 270.
[315] Plutarch Lysand. c. 19. Ἦν δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι
δημοτικῶν φόνος οὐκ ἀριθμητὸς, ἅτε δὴ μὴ κατ᾽ ἰδίας μόνον
αἰτίας αὐτοῦ κτείνοντος, ἀλλὰ πολλαῖς μὲν ἔχθραις, πολλαῖς δὲ
πλεονεξίαις, τῶν ἑκασταχόθι φίλων χαριζομένου τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ
συνεργοῦντος; also Pausanias, vii, 10, 1; ix, 32, 6.
[316] Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 7.
It was thus that the Lacedæmonian empire imposed upon each of the
subject cities a double oppression;[317] the native decemvirs, and
the foreign harmost; each abetting the other, and forming together an
aggravated pressure upon the citizens, from which scarce any escape
was left. The Thirty at Athens paid the greatest possible court to
the harmost Kallibius,[318] and put to death individual Athenians
offensive to him, in order to purchase his coöperation in their own
violences. The few details which we possess respecting these harmosts
(who continued throughout the insular and maritime cities for about
ten years, until the battle of Knidus, or as long as the maritime
empire of Sparta lasted,—but in various continental dependencies
considerably longer, that is, until the defeat of Leuktra in 371
B.C.), are all for the most part discreditable. We have seen in the
last chapter the description given by the philo-Laconian Xenophon,
of the harsh and treacherous manner in which they acted towards the
returning Cyreian soldiers, combined with their corrupt subservience
to Pharnabazus. We learn from him that it depended upon the fiat of
a Lacedæmonian harmost whether these soldiers should be proclaimed
enemies and excluded forever from their native cities; and Kleander,
the harmost of Byzantium, who at first threatened them with this
treatment, was only induced by the most unlimited submission,
combined with very delicate management, to withdraw his menace. The
cruel proceeding of Anaxibius and Aristarchus, who went so far as to
sell four hundred of these soldiers into slavery, has been recounted
a few pages above. Nothing can be more arbitrary or reckless than
their proceedings. If they could behave thus towards a body of Greek
soldiers full of acquired glory, effective either as friends or as
enemies, and having generals capable of prosecuting their collective
interests and making their complaints heard,—what protection would
a private citizen of any subject city, Byzantium or Perinthus, be
likely to enjoy against their oppression?
[317] See the speech of the Theban envoys at Athens, about eight
years after the surrender of Athens (Xen. Hellen. iii, 5, 13).
... Οὐδὲ γὰρ φυγεῖν ἐξῆν (Plutarch, Lysand. c. 19).
[318] Xen. Hellen. ii, 3, 13.
τὸν μὲν Καλλίβιον ἐθεράπευον πάσῃ θεραπείᾳ, ὡς πάντα ἐπαινοίῃ, ἃ
πράττοιεν, etc. (Plutarch, Lysand. c. 15).
The Thirty seem to have outdone Lysander himself. A young
Athenian of rank, distinguished as a victor in the pankratium,
Autolykus,—having been insulted by Kallibius, resented it,
tripped him up, and threw him down. Lysander, on being appealed
to, justified Autolykus, and censured Kallibius, telling him
that he did not know how to govern freemen. The Thirty, however,
afterwards put Autolykus to death, as a means of courting
Kallibius (Plutarch, Lysand. c. 15). Pausanius mentions Eteonikus
(not Kallibius) as the person who struck Autolykus; but he
ascribes the same decision to Lysander (ix, 32, 3).
The story of Aristodemus, the harmost of Oreus in Eubœa, evinces that
no justice could be obtained against any of their enormities from
the ephors of Sparta. That harmost, among many other acts of brutal
violence, seized a beautiful youth, son of a free citizen at Oreus,
out of the palæstra,—carried him off,—and after vainly endeavoring
to overcome his resistance, put him to death. The father of the
youth went to Sparta, made known the atrocities, and appealed to
the ephors and Senate for redress. But a deaf ear was turned to his
complaints, and in anguish of mind he slew himself. Indeed, we know
that these Spartan authorities would grant no redress, not merely
against harmosts, but even against private Spartan citizens, who
had been guilty of gross crime out of their own country. A Bœotian
near Leuktra, named Skedasus, preferred complaint that two Spartans,
on their way from Delphi, after having been hospitably entertained
in his house, had first violated, and afterwards killed, his two
daughters; but even for so flagitious an outrage as this, no redress
could be obtained.[319] Doubtless, when a powerful foreign ally, like
the Persian satrap Pharnabazus,[320] complained to the ephors of the
conduct of a Lacedæmonian harmost or admiral, his representations
would receive attention; and we learn that the ephors were thus
induced not merely to recall Lysander from the Hellespont, but to put
to death another officer, Thorax, for corrupt appropriation of money.
But for a private citizen in any subject city, the superintending
authority of Sparta would be not merely remote but deaf and
immovable, so as to afford him no protection whatever, and to leave
him altogether at the mercy of the harmost. It seems, too, that
the rigor of Spartan training, and peculiarity of habits, rendered
individual Lacedæmonians on foreign service more self-willed, more
incapable of entering into the customs or feelings of others, and
more liable to degenerate when set free from the strict watch of
home,—than other Greeks generally.[321]
[319] Plutarch, Amator. Narration, p. 773; Plutarch, Pelopidas,
c. 20. In Diodorus (xv, 54) and Pausanias, (ix, 13, 2), the
damsels thus outraged are stated to have slain themselves.
Compare another story in Xenoph. Hellen. v, 4, 56, 57.
[320] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 19.
[321] This seems to have been the impression not merely of
the enemies of Sparta, but even of the Spartan authorities
themselves. Compare two remarkable passages of Thucydides, i,
77, and i, 95. Ἄμικτα γὰρ (says the Athenian envoy at Sparta) τά
τε καθ᾽ ὑμᾶς αὐτοὺς νόμιμα τοῖς ἄλλοις ἔχετε, καὶ προσέτι εἷς
ἕκαστος ἐξιὼν οὔτε τούτοις χρῆται, οὐθ᾽ οἷς ἡ ἄλλη Ἑλλὰς νομίζει.
After the recall of the regent Pausanias and of Dorkis from the
Hellespont (in 477 B.C.), the Lacedæmonians refuse to send
out any successor, φοβούμενοι μὴ σφίσιν οἱ ἐξιόντες χείρους
γίγνωνται, ὅπερ καὶ ἐν τῷ Παυσανίᾳ ἐνεῖδον, etc. (i, 95.)
Compare Plutarch, Apophtheg. Laconic. p. 220 F.
Taking all these causes of evil together,—the dekarchies, the
harmosts, and the overwhelming dictatorship of Lysander,—and
construing other parts of the Grecian world by the analogy of Athens
under the Thirty,—we shall be warranted in affirming that the first
years of the Spartan Empire, which followed upon the victory of
Ægospotami, were years of all-pervading tyranny and multifarious
intestine calamity, such as Greece had never before endured. The
hardships of war, severe in many ways, were now at an end, but they
were replaced by a state of suffering not the less difficult to bear
because it was called peace. And what made the suffering yet more
intolerable was, that it was a bitter disappointment, and a flagrant
violation of promises proclaimed, repeatedly and explicitly, by the
Lacedæmonians themselves.
For more than thirty years preceding,—from times earlier than the
commencement of the Peloponnesian war,—the Spartans had professed to
interfere only for the purpose of liberating Greece, and of putting
down the usurped ascendency of Athens. All the allies of Sparta
had been invited into strenuous action,—all those of Athens had
been urged to revolt,—under the soul-stirring cry of “Freedom to
Greece.” The earliest incitements addressed by the Corinthians to
Sparta in 432 B.C., immediately after the Korkyræan dispute, called
upon her to stand forward in fulfilment of her recognized function
as “Liberator of Greece,” and denounced her as guilty of connivance
with Athens if she held back.[322] Athens was branded as the “despot
city;” which had already absorbed the independence of many Greeks,
and menaced that of all the rest. The last formal requisition borne
by the Lacedæmonian envoys to Athens in the winter immediately
preceding the war, ran thus,—“If you desire the continuance of
peace with Sparta, restore to the Greeks their autonomy.”[323] When
Archidamus, king of Sparta, approached at the head of his army to
besiege Platæa, the Platæans laid claim to autonomy as having been
solemnly guaranteed to them by King Pausanias after the great victory
near their town. Upon which Archidamus replied,—“Your demand is
just; we are prepared to confirm _your_ autonomy,—but we call upon
you to aid us in securing the like for those other Greeks who have
been enslaved by Athens. This is the sole purpose of our great
present effort.”[324] And the banner of general enfranchisement,
which the Lacedæmonians thus held up at the outset of the war,
enlisted in their cause encouraging sympathy and good wishes
throughout Greece.[325]
[322] Thucyd. i, 69. οὐ γὰρ ὁ δουλωσάμενος, ἀλλ᾽ ὁ δυνάμενος μὲν
παῦσαι, περιορῶν δὲ, ἀληθέστερον αὐτὸ δρᾷ, εἴπερ καὶ τὴν ἀξίωσιν
τῆς ἀρετῆς ὡς ἐλευθερῶν τὴν Ἑλλάδα φέρεται.
To the like purpose the second speech of the Corinthian envoys
at Sparta, c. 122-124—μὴ μέλλετε Ποτιδαιάταις τε ποιεῖσθαι
τιμωρίαν. ... καὶ τῶν ἄλλων μετελθεῖν τὴν ἐλευθερίαν, etc.
[323] Thucyd. i, 139. Compare Isokrates, Or. iv, Panegyr. c. 34,
s. 140; Or. v, (Philipp.) s. 121; Or. xiv, (Plataic.) s. 43.
[324] Thucyd. ii, 72. Παρασκευὴ δὲ τόσηδε καὶ πόλεμος γεγένηται
αὐτῶν ἕνεκα καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐλευθερώσεως.
Read also the speech of the Theban orator, in reply to the
Platæan, after the capture of the town by the Lacedæmonians (iii,
63).
[325] Thucyd. ii, 8. ἡ δὲ εὔνοια παρὰ πολὺ ἐποίει τῶν ἀνθρώπων
μᾶλλον ἐς τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, ἄλλως τε καὶ προειπόντων ὅτι τὴν
Ἑλλάδα ἐλευθεροῦσιν.
See also iii, 13, 14—the speech of the envoys from the revolted
Mitylênê, to the Lacedæmonians.
The Lacedæmonian admiral Alkidas with his fleet, is announced as
crossing over the Ægean to Ionia for the purpose of “liberating
Greece;” accordingly, the Samian exiles remonstrate with him
for killing his prisoners, as in contradiction with that object
(iii, 32)—ἔλεγον οὐ καλῶς τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἐλευθεροῦν αὐτὸν, εἰ ἄνδρας
διέφθειρεν, etc.
But the most striking illustration by far, of the seductive promises
held out by the Lacedæmonians, was afforded by the conduct of
Brasidas in Thrace, when he first came into the neighborhood of the
Athenian allies during the eighth year of the war (424 B.C.). In his
memorable discourse addressed to the public assembly at Akanthus, he
takes the greatest pains to satisfy them that he came only for the
purpose of realizing the promise of enfranchisement proclaimed by
the Lacedæmonians at the beginning of the war.[326] Having expected,
when acting in such a cause, nothing less than a hearty welcome,
he is astonished to find their gates closed against him. “I am come
(said he) not to injure, but to liberate the Greeks; after binding
the Lacedæmonian authorities by the most solemn oaths, that all
whom I may bring over shall be dealt with as autonomous allies.
We do not wish to obtain you as allies either by force or fraud,
but to act as your allies at a time when you are enslaved by the
Athenians. You ought not to suspect my purposes, in the face of these
solemn assurances; least of all ought any man to hold back through
apprehension of private enmities, and through fear lest I should put
the city into the hands of a few chosen partisans. I am not come to
identify myself with local faction: I am not the man to offer you
an unreal liberty by breaking down your established constitution,
for the purpose of enslaving either the Many to the Few, or the
Few to the Many. That would be more intolerable even than foreign
dominion; and we Lacedæmonians should incur nothing but reproach,
instead of reaping thanks and honor for our trouble. We should draw
upon ourselves those very censures, upon the strength of which we
are trying to put down Athens; and that, too, in aggravated measure,
worse than those who have never made honorable professions; since to
men in high position, specious trick is more disgraceful than open
violence.[327]—If (continued Brasidas) in spite of my assurances,
you still withhold from me your coöperation, I shall think myself
authorized to constrain you by force. We should not be warranted in
forcing freedom on any unwilling parties, except with a view to some
common good. But as we seek not empire for ourselves,—as we struggle
only to put down the empire of others,—as we offer autonomy to each
and all,—so we should do wrong to the majority if we allowed you to
persist in your opposition.”[328]
[326] Thucyd. iv, 85. Ἡ μὲν ἔκπεμψίς μου καὶ τῆς στρατιᾶς ὑπὸ
Λακεδαιμονίων, ὦ Ἀκάνθιοι, γεγένηται τὴν αἰτίαν ἐπαληθεύουσα ἣν
ἀρχόμενοι τοῦ πολέμου προείπομεν, ~Ἀθηναίοις ἐλευθεροῦντες τὴν
Ἑλλάδα πολεμήσειν~.
[327] Thucyd. iv, 85. Αὐτός τε οὐκ ἐπὶ κακῷ, ἐπ᾽ ἐλευθερώσει δὲ
τῶν Ἑλλήνων παρελήλυθα, ὅρκοις τε Λακεδαιμονίων καταλαβὼν τὰ τέλη
τοῖς μεγίστοις, ἦ μὴν οὓς ἂν ἔγωγε προσαγάγωμαι ξυμμάχους ἔσεσθαι
αὐτονόμους.... Καὶ εἴ τις ἰδίᾳ τινὰ δεδιὼς ἄρα, μὴ ἐγώ τισι
προσθῶ τὴν πόλιν, ἀπρόθυμός ἐστι, ~πάντων μάλιστα πιστευσάτω. Οὐ
γὰρ συστασιάσων ἥκω~, οὐδὲ ἀσαφῆ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν νομίζω ἐπιφέρειν,
εἰ, ~τὸ πάτριον παρεὶς, τὸ πλέον τοῖς ὀλίγοις~, ἢ τὸ ἔλασσον τοῖς
πᾶσι, δουλώσαιμι. ~Χαλεπώτερα γὰρ ἂν τῆς ἀλλοφύλου ἀρχῆς εἴη~,
καὶ ἡμῖν τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις οὐκ ἂν ἀντὶ πόνων χάρις καθίσταιτο,
ἀντὶ δὲ τιμῆς καὶ δόξης αἰτία μᾶλλον· ~οἷς τε τοὺς Ἀθηναίους
ἐγκλήμασι καταπολεμοῦμεν, αὐτοὶ ἂν φαινοίμεθα ἐχθίονα ἢ ὁ μὴ
ὑποδείξας ἀρετὴν κατακτώμενοι~.
[328] Thucyd. iv, 87. Οὐδὲ ὀφείλομεν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι μὴ ~κοινοῦ
τινος αγαθοῦ αἰτίᾳ τοὺς μὴ βουλομένους ἐλευθεροῦν. Οὐδ᾽ αὖ ἀρχῆς
ἐφιέμεθα~, παῦσαι δὲ μᾶλλον ἑτέρους σπεύδοντες τοὺς πλείους
ἂν ἀδικοῖμεν, ~εἰ ξύμπασιν αὐτονομίαν ἐπιφέροντες~ ὑμᾶς τοὺς
ἐναντιουμένους περιΐδοιμεν. Compare Isokrates, Or. iv, (Panegyr.)
s. 140, 141.
Like the allied sovereigns of Europe in 1813, who, requiring the
most strenuous efforts on the part of the people to contend against
the Emperor Napoleon, promised free constitutions and granted
nothing after the victory had been assured,—the Lacedæmonians
thus held out the most emphatic and repeated assurances of general
autonomy in order to enlist allies against Athens; disavowing, even
ostentatiously, any aim at empire for themselves. It is true, that
after the great catastrophe before Syracuse, when the ruin of Athens
appeared imminent, and when the alliance with the Persian satraps
against her was first brought to pass, the Lacedæmonians began to
think more of empire,[329] and less of Grecian freedom; which,
indeed, so far as concerned the Greeks on the continent of Asia,
was surrendered to Persia. Nevertheless the old watchword still
continued. It was still currently believed, though less studiously
professed, that the destruction of the Athenian empire was aimed at
as a means to the liberation of Greece.[330]
[329] Feelings of the Lacedæmonians during the winter immediately
succeeding the great Syracusan catastrophe (Thuc. viii. 2)—καὶ
καθελόντες ἐκείνους (the Athenians) αὐτοὶ τῆς πάσης Ἑλλάδος ἤδη
ἀσφαλῶς ἡγήσεσθαι.
[330] Compare Thucyd. viii, 43, 3; viii, 46, 3.
The victory of Ægospotami with its consequences cruelly undeceived
every one. The language of Brasidas, sanctioned by the solemn oaths
of the Lacedæmonian ephors, in 424 B.C.—and the proceedings
of the Lacedæmonian Lysander in 405-404 B.C., the commencing
hour of Spartan omnipotence,—stand in such literal and flagrant
contradiction, that we might almost imagine the former to have
foreseen the possibility of such a successor, and to have tried to
disgrace and disarm him beforehand. The dekarchies of Lysander
realized that precise ascendency of a few chosen partisans which
Brasidas repudiates as an abomination worse than foreign dominion;
while the harmosts and garrison, installed in the dependent cities
along with the native decemvirs, planted the second variety of
mischief as well as the first, each aggravating the other. Had the
noble-minded Kallikratidas gained a victory at Arginusæ, and lived
to close the war, he would probably have tried, with more or less of
success, to make some approach to the promises of Brasidas. But it
was the double misfortune of Greece, first that the closing victory
was gained by such an admiral as Lysander, the most unscrupulous
of all power-seekers, partly for his country, and still more for
himself,—next, that the victory was so decisive, sudden and
imposing, as to leave no enemy standing, or in a position to insist
upon terms. The fiat of Lysander, acting in the name of Sparta,
became omnipotent, not merely over enemies, but over allies; and
to a certain degree even over the Spartan authorities themselves.
There was no present necessity for conciliating allies,—still
less for acting up to former engagements; so that nothing remained
to oppose the naturally ambitious inspirations of the Spartan
ephors, who allowed the admiral to carry out the details in his own
way. But former assurances, though Sparta was in a condition to
disregard them, were not forgotten by others; and the recollection
of them imparted additional bitterness to the oppressions of the
decemvirs and harmosts.[331] In perfect consistency with her misrule
throughout Eastern Greece,[332] too, Sparta identified herself with
the energetic tyranny of Dionysius at Syracuse, assisting both to
erect and to uphold it; a contradiction to her former maxims of
action which would have astounded the historian Herodotus.
[331] This is emphatically set forth in a fragment of Theopompus
the historian, preserved by Theodorus Metochita, and printed at
the end of the collection of the Fragments of Theopompus the
historian, both by Wichers and by M. Didot. Both these editors,
however, insert it only as Fragmentum Spurium, on the authority
of Plutarch (Lysander, c. 13), who quotes the same sentiment
from the comic writer Theopompus. But the passage of Theodorus
Metochita presents the express words Θεόπομπος ὁ ἱστορικός.
We have, therefore, his distinct affirmation against that of
Plutarch; and the question is, which of the two we are to believe.
Now if any one will read attentively the so-called Fragmentum
Spurium as it stands at the end of the collections above referred
to, he will see (I think) that it belongs much more naturally
to the historian than to the comic writer. It is a strictly
historical statement, illustrated by a telling, though coarse,
comparison. The Fragment is thus presented by Theodorus Metochita
(Fragm. Theopomp. 344, ed. Didot).
Θεόπομπος ὁ ἱστορικὸς ἀποσκώπτων εἰς τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, εἴκαζεν
αὐτοὺς ταῖς φαύλαις καπηλίσιν, αἳ τοῖς χρωμένοις ἐγχέουσαι
τὴν ἀρχὴν οἶνον ἡδύν τε καὶ εὔχρηστον σοφιστικῶς ἐπὶ τῇ λήψει
τοῦ ἀργυρίου, μεθύστερον φαυλόν τινα καὶ ἐκτροπίαν καὶ ὀξίνην
κατακρινῶσι καὶ παρέχονται· καὶ τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους τοίνυν
ἔλεγε, τὸν αὐτὸν ἐκείναις τρόπον, ἐν τῷ κατὰ τῶν Ἀθηναίων
πολέμῳ, τὴν ἀρχὴν ἡδίστῳ πόματι τῆς ἀπ᾽ Ἀθηναίων ἐλευθερίας καὶ
προγράμματι καὶ κηρύγματι τοὺς Ἕλληνας δελεάσαντας, ὕστερον
πικρότατα σφίσιν ἐγχέαι καὶ ἀηδέστατα κράματα βιοτῆς ἐπωδύνου καὶ
χρήσεως πραγμάτων ἀλγεινῶν, πάνυ τοι κατατυραννοῦντας τὰς πόλεις
δεκαρχίαις καὶ ἁρμοσταῖς βαρυτάτοις, καὶ πραττομένους, ἃ δυσχερὲς
εἶναι σφόδρα καὶ ἀνύποιστον φέρειν, καὶ ἀποκτιννύναι.
Plutarch, ascribing the statement to the comic Theopompus,
affirms him to be silly (ἔοικε ληρεῖν) in saying that the
Lacedæmonian empire began by being sweet and pleasant, and
afterwards was corrupted and turned into bitterness and
oppression; whereas the fact was, that it was bitterness and
oppression from the very first.
Now if we read the above citation from Theodorus, we shall see
that Theopompus did not really put forth that assertion which
Plutarch contradicts as silly and untrue.
What Theopompus stated was, that the first Lacedæmonians, _during
the war against Athens_, tempted the Greeks with a most delicious
draught and _programme_ and _proclamation_ of freedom from the
rule of Athens,—and that they afterwards poured in the most
bitter and repulsive mixtures of hard oppression and tyranny, etc.
The sweet draught is asserted to consist—not, as Plutarch
supposes, in the first taste of the actual Lacedæmonian empire
after the war, but—in the seductive promises of freedom held
out by them to the allies _during the war_. Plutarch’s charge of
ἔοικε ληρεῖν has thus no foundation. I have written δελεάσαντας
instead of δελεάσοντας which stands in Didot’s Fragment, because
it struck me that this correction was required to construe the
passage.
[332] Isokrates, Or. iv, (Panegr.) s. 145; Or. viii, (de Pace) s.
122; Diodor. xiv, 10-44; xv, 23. Compare Herodot. v, 92; Thucyd.
i, 18; Isokrates, Or. iv, (Panegyr.) s. 144.
The empire of Sparta thus constituted at the end of 405 B.C.,
maintained itself in full grandeur for somewhat above ten years,
until the naval battle of Knidus,[333] in 394 B.C. That defeat
destroyed her fleet and maritime ascendency, yet left her in
undiminished power on land, which she still maintained until her
defeat by the Thebans[334] at Leuktra in 371 B.C. Throughout all
this time, it was her established system to keep up Spartan harmosts
and garrisons in the dependent cities on the continent as well as in
the islands. Even the Chians, who had been her most active allies
during the last eight years of the war, were compelled to submit
to this hardship; besides having all their fleet taken away from
them.[335] But the native dekarchies, though at first established
by Lysander universally throughout the maritime dependencies, did
not last as a system so long as the harmosts. Composed as they were
to a great degree of the personal nominees and confederates of
Lysander, they suffered in part by the reactionary jealousy which
in time made itself felt against his overweening ascendency. After
continuing for some time, they lost the countenance of the Spartan
ephors, who proclaimed permission to the cities (we do not precisely
know when) to resume their preëxisting governments.[336] Some of the
dekarchies thus became dissolved, or modified in various ways, but
several probably still continued to subsist, if they had force enough
to maintain themselves; for it does not appear that the ephors ever
systematically put them down, as Lysander had systematically set them
up.
[333] Isokrates, Panathen. s. 61. Σπαρτιᾶται μὲν γὰρ ἔτη δέκα
μόλις ἐπεστάτησαν αὐτῶν, ἡμεῖς δὲ πέντε καὶ ἑξήκοντα συνεχῶς
κατέσχομεν τὴν ἀρχήν. I do not hold myself bound to make out the
exactness of the chronology of Isokrates. But here we may remark
that his “hardly ten years” is a term, though less than the truth
by some months, if we may take the battle of Ægospotami as the
beginning, is very near the truth if we take the surrender of
Athens as the beginning, down to the battle of Knidus.
[334] Pausanias, viii, 52, 2; ix, 6, 1.
[335] Diodor. xiv, 84; Isokrates, Orat. viii, (de Pace) s. 121.
[336] Xen. Hellen. iii, 4, 2.
Lysander accompanied King Agesilaus (when the latter was going
to his Asiatic command in 396 B.C.). His purpose was—ὅπως
τὰς δεκαρχίας τὰς κατασταθείσας ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνου ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν,
ἐκπεπτωκυίας δὲ διὰ τοὺς ἐφόρους, οἱ τὰς πατρίους πολιτείας
παρήγγειλαν, πάλιν καταστήσειε μετ᾽ Ἀγησιλάου.
It shows the careless construction of Xenophon’s Hellenica, or
perhaps his reluctance to set forth the discreditable points of
the Lacedæmonian rule, that this is the first mention which he
makes (and that too, indirectly) of the dekarchies, nine years
after they had been first set up by Lysander.
The government of the Thirty at Athens would never have been
overthrown if the oppressed Athenians had been obliged to rely
on a tutelary interference of the Spartan ephors to help them in
overthrowing it. My last volume has shown that this nefarious
oligarchy came to its end by the unassisted efforts of Thrasybulus
and the Athenian democrats themselves. It is true, indeed, that the
arrogance and selfishness of Sparta and of Lysander had alienated
the Thebans, Corinthians, Megarians, and other neighboring allies,
and induced them to sympathize with the Athenian exiles against the
atrocities of the Thirty,—but they never rendered any positive
assistance of moment. The inordinate personal ambition of Lysander
had also offended King Pausanias and the Spartan ephors, so that
they too became indifferent to the Thirty, who were his creatures.
But this merely deprived the Thirty of that foreign support which
Lysander, had he still continued in the ascendent, would have
extended to them in full measure. It was not the positive cause
of their downfall. That crisis was brought about altogether by
the energy of Thrasybulus and his companions, who manifested such
force and determination as could not have been put down without
an extraordinary display of Spartan military power; a display not
entirely safe when the sympathies of the chief allies were with
the other side,—and at any rate adverse to the inclinations of
Pausanias. As it was with the Thirty at Athens, so it probably
was also with the dekarchies in the dependent cities. The Spartan
ephors took no steps to put them down; but where the resistance of
the citizens was strenuous enough to overthrow them, no Spartan
intervention came to prop them up, and the harmost perhaps received
orders not to consider his authority as indissolubly linked with
theirs. The native forces of each dependent city being thus left to
find their own level, the decemvirs, once installed, would doubtless
maintain themselves in a great number; while in other cases they
would be overthrown,—or, perhaps, would contrive to perpetuate their
dominion by compromise and alliance with other oligarchical sections.
This confused and unsettled state of the dekarchies,—some still
existing, others half-existing, others again defunct,—prevailed in
396 B.C., when Lysander accompanied Agesilaus into Asia, in the
full hope that he should have influence enough to reorganize them
all.[337] We must recollect that no other dependent city would
possess the same means of offering energetic resistance to its local
decemvirs, as Athens offered to the Thirty; and that the insular
Grecian cities were not only feeble individually, but naturally
helpless against the lords of the sea.[338]
[337] Compare the two passages of Xenophon’s Hellenica, iii, 4,
7; iii, 5, 13.
Ἅτε συντεταραγμένων ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι τῶν πολιτειῶν, καὶ οὔτε
δημοκρατίας ἔτι οὔσης, ὥσπερ ἐπ᾽ Ἀθηναίων, οὔτε δεκαρχίας, ὥσπερ
ἐπὶ Λυσάνδρου.
But that some of these dekarchies still continued, we know from
the subsequent passage. The Theban envoys say to the public
assembly at Athens, respecting the Spartans:—
Ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ οὓς ὑμῶν ἀπέστησαν φανεροί εἰσιν ἐξηπατηκότες· ὑπό
τε γὰρ τῶν ἁρμοστῶν ~τυραννοῦνται~, καὶ ὑπὸ δέκα ἀνδρῶν, οὓς
Λύσανδρος κατέστησεν ἐν ἑκάστῃ πόλει—where the decemvirs are
noted as still subsisting, in 395 B.C. See also Xen. Agesilaus,
i, 37.
[338] Xen. Hellen. iii, 5, 15.
Such then was the result throughout Greece, when that long war,
which had been undertaken in the name of universal autonomy, was
terminated by the battle of Ægospotami. In place of imperial Athens
was substituted, not the promised autonomy, but yet more imperial
Sparta. An awful picture is given by the philo-Laconian Xenophon,
in 399 B.C., of the ascendency exercised throughout all the
Grecian cities, not merely by the ephors and the public officers,
but even by the private citizens, of Sparta. “The Lacedæmonians
(says he in addressing the Cyreian army) are now the presidents of
Greece; and even any single private Lacedæmonian can accomplish
what he pleases.”[339] “All the cities (he says in another place)
then obeyed whatever order they might receive from a Lacedæmonian
citizen.”[340] Not merely was the general ascendency thus omnipresent
and irresistible, but it was enforced with a stringency of detail,
and darkened by a thousand accompaniments of tyranny and individual
abuse, such as had never been known under the much-decried empire of
Athens.
[339] Xen. Anab. vi, 6, 12. Εἰσὶ μὲν γὰρ ἤδη ἐγγὺς αἱ Ἑλληνίδες
πόλεις· (this was spoken at Kalpê in Bithynia) τῆς δὲ Ἑλλάδος
Λακεδαιμόνιοι προεστήκασιν· ~ἱκανοὶ δέ εἰσι καὶ εἷς ἕκαστος
Λακεδαιμονίων ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν ὅ,τι βούλονται διαπράττεσθαι~.
[340] Xen. Hellen. iii, 1, 5. Πᾶσαι γὰρ τότε αἱ πόλεις ἐπείθοντο,
ὅ,τι Λακεδαιμόνιος ἀνὴρ ἐπιτάττοι.
We have more than one picture of the Athenian empire, in speeches
made by hostile orators who had every motive to work up the strongest
antipathies in the bosoms of their audience against it. We have the
addresses of the Corinthian envoys at Sparta when stimulating the
Spartan allies to the Peloponnesian war,[341]—that of the envoys
from Mitylênê delivered at Olympia to the Spartan confederates,
when the city had revolted from Athens and stood in pressing need
of support,—the discourse of Brasidas in the public assembly at
Akanthus,—and more than one speech also from Hermokrates, impressing
upon his Sicilian countrymen hatred as well as fear of Athens.[342]
Whoever reads these discourses, will see that they dwell almost
exclusively on the great political wrong inherent in the very fact of
her empire, robbing so many Grecian communities of their legitimate
autonomy, over and above the tribute imposed. That Athens had thus
already enslaved many cities, and was only watching for opportunities
to enslave many more, is the theme upon which they expatiate. But
of practical grievances,—of cruelty, oppression, spoliation,
multiplied exiles, etc., of high-handed wrong committed by individual
Athenians,—not one word is spoken. Had there been the smallest
pretext for introducing such inflammatory topics, how much more
impressive would have been the appeal of Brasidas to the sympathies
of the Akanthians! How vehement would have been the denunciations of
the Mitylenæan envoys, in place of the tame and almost apologetic
language which we now read in Thucydides! Athens extinguished the
autonomy of her subject-allies, and punished revolters with severity,
sometimes even with cruelty. But as to other points of wrong, the
silence of accusers, such as those just noticed, counts as a powerful
exculpation.
[341] Thucyd. i, 68-120.
[342] Thucyd. iii, 9; iv, 59-85; vi, 76.
The case is altered when we come to the period succeeding the
battle of Ægospotami. Here indeed also, we find the Spartan empire
complained of (as the Athenian empire had been before), in contrast
with that state of autonomy to which each city laid claim, and which
Sparta had not merely promised to ensure, but set forth as her only
ground of war. Yet this is not the prominent grievance,—other topics
stand more emphatically forward. The decemvirs and the harmosts (some
of the latter being Helots), the standing instruments of Spartan
empire, are felt as more sorely painful than the empire itself;
as the language held by Brasidas at Akanthus admits them to be
beforehand. At the time when Athens was a subject-city under Sparta,
governed by the Lysandrian Thirty and by the Lacedæmonian harmost
in the acropolis,—the sense of indignity arising from the fact of
subjection was absorbed in the still more terrible suffering arising
from the enormities of those individual rulers whom the imperial
state had set up. Now Athens set up no local rulers,—no native
Ten or native Thirty,—no resident Athenian harmosts or garrisons.
This was of itself an unspeakable exemption, when compared with
the condition of cities subject, not only to the Spartan empire,
but also under that empire to native decemvirs like Kritias, and
Spartan harmosts like Aristarchus or Aristodemus. A city subject to
Athens had to bear definite burdens enforced by its own government,
which was liable in case of default or delinquency to be tried
before the popular Athenian Dikastery. But this same dikastery (as
I have shown in a former volume, and as is distinctly stated by
Thucydides)[343] was the harbor of refuge to each subject-city; not
less against individual Athenian wrong-doers than against misconduct
from other cities. Those who complained of the hardship suffered by
a subject-city, from the obligation of bringing causes to be tried
in the dikastery of Athens,—even if we take the case as they state
it, and overlook the unfairness of omitting those numerous instances
wherein the city was thus enabled to avert or redress wrong done to
its own citizens,—would have complained both more loudly and with
greater justice of an ever-present Athenian harmost; especially
if there were coexistent a native government of Ten oligarchs,
exchanging with him guilty connivances, like the partnership of the
Thirty at Athens with the Lacedæmonian harmost Kallibius.[344]
[343] See the remarkable speech of Phrynichus in Thucyd. viii,
48, 5, which I have before referred to.
[344] Xen. Hellen. ii, 3, 14. Compare the analogous case of
Thebes, after the Lacedæmonians had got possession of the Kadmeia
(v. 2, 34-36).
In no one point can it be shown that the substitution of Spartan
empire in place of Athenian was a gain, either for the subject-cities
or for Greece generally; while in many points, it was a great and
serious aggravation of suffering. And this abuse of power is the
more deeply to be regretted, as Sparta enjoyed after the battle of
Ægospotami a precious opportunity,—such as Athens had never had,
and such as never again recurred,—of reorganizing the Grecian
world on wise principles, and with a view to Pan-hellenic stability
and harmony. It is not her greatest sin to have refused to grant
universal autonomy. She had indeed promised it; but we might pardon a
departure from specific performance, had she exchanged the boon for
one far greater, which it was within her reasonable power, at the
end of 405 B.C., to confer. That universal town autonomy, towards
which the Grecian instinct tended, though immeasurably better than
universal subjection, was yet accompanied by much internal discord,
and by the still more formidable evil of helplessness against any
efficient foreign enemy. To ensure to the Hellenic world external
safety as well as internal concord, it was not a new empire which
was wanted, but a new political combination on equitable and
comprehensive principles; divesting each town of a portion of its
autonomy, and creating a common authority, responsible to all, for
certain definite controlling purposes. If ever a tolerable federative
system would have been practicable in Greece, it was after the
battle of Ægospotami. The Athenian empire,—which, with all its
defects, I believe to have been much better for the subject-cities
than universal autonomy would have been,—had already removed many
difficulties, and shown that combined and systematic action of
the maritime Grecian world was no impossibility. Sparta might now
have substituted herself for Athens, not as heir to the imperial
power, but as president and executive agent of a new Confederacy of
Delos,—reviving the equal, comprehensive, and liberal principles, on
which that confederacy had first been organized.
It is true that sixty years before, the constituent members of the
original synod at Delos had shown themselves insensible to its value.
As soon as the pressing alarm from Persia had passed over, some had
discontinued sending deputies, others had disobeyed requisitions,
others again had bought off their obligations, and forfeited their
rights as autonomous and voting members, by pecuniary bargain
with Athens; who, being obliged by the duties of her presidency
to enforce obedience to the Synod against all reluctant members,
made successively many enemies, and was gradually converted, almost
without her own seeking, from President into Emperor, as the only
means of obviating the total dissolution of the Confederacy. But
though such untoward circumstances had happened before, it does not
follow that they would now have happened again, assuming the same
experiment to have been retried by Sparta, with manifest sincerity
of purpose and tolerable wisdom. The Grecian world, especially the
maritime portion of it, had passed through trials not less painful
than instructive, during this important interval. Nor does it seem
rash to suppose, that the bulk of its members might now have been
disposed to perform steady confederate duties, at the call and under
the presidency of Sparta, had she really attempted to reorganize a
liberal confederacy, treating every city as autonomous and equal,
except in so far as each was bound to obey the resolutions of the
general synod. However impracticable such a scheme may appear,
we must recollect that even Utopian schemes have their transient
moments, if not of certain success, at least of commencement
not merely possible but promising. And my belief is, that had
Kallikratidas, with his ardent Pan-hellenic sentiment and force of
resolution, been the final victor over imperial Athens, he would
not have let the moment of pride and omnipotence pass over without
essaying some noble project like that sketched above. It is to be
remembered that Athens had never had the power of organizing any
such generous Pan-hellenic combination. She had become depopularized
in the legitimate execution of her trust, as president of the
Confederacy of Delos, against refractory members;[345] and had been
obliged to choose between breaking up the Confederacy, and keeping
it together under the strong compression of an imperial chief. But
Sparta had not yet become depopularized. She now stood without
competitor as leader of the Grecian world, and might at that moment
have reasonably hoped to carry the members of it along with her to
any liberal and Pan-hellenic organization, had she attempted it with
proper earnestness. Unfortunately she took the opposite course, under
the influence of Lysander; founding a new empire far more oppressive
and odious than that of Athens, with few of the advantages, and none
of the excuses, attached to the latter. As she soon became even
more unpopular than Athens, her moment of high tide, for beneficent
Pan-hellenic combination, passed away also,—never to return.
[345] Such is the justification offered by the Athenian envoy
at Sparta, immediately before the Peloponnesian war (Thucyd. i,
75, 76). And it is borne out in the main by the narrative of
Thucydides himself (i, 99).
Having thus brought all the maritime Greeks under her empire, with
a tribute of more than one thousand talents imposed upon them,—and
continuing to be chief of her landed alliance in Central Greece,
which now included Athens as a simple unit,—Sparta was the
all-pervading imperial power in Greece.[346] Her new empire was
organized by the victorious Lysander; but with so much arrogance, and
so much personal ambition to govern all Greece by means of nominees
of his own, decemvirs and harmosts,—that he raised numerous rivals
and enemies, as well at Sparta itself as elsewhere. The jealousy
entertained by king Pausanias, the offended feelings of Thebes and
Corinth, and the manner in which these new phenomena brought about
(in spite of the opposition of Lysander) the admission of Athens as
a revived democracy into the Lacedæmonian confederacy,—has been
already related.
[346] Xen. Hellen. iii, 1, 3. πάσης τὴς Ἑλλάδος προστάται, etc.
In the early months of 403 B.C., Lysander was partly at home, partly
in Attica, exerting himself to sustain the falling oligarchy of
Athens against the increasing force of Thrasybulus and the Athenian
exiles in Peiræus. In this purpose he was directly thwarted by
the opposing views of king Pausanias, and three out of the five
ephors.[347] But though the ephors thus checked Lysander in regard
to Athens, they softened the humiliation by sending him abroad to
a fresh command on the Asiatic coast and the Hellespont; a step
which had the farther advantage of putting asunder two such marked
rivals as he and Pausanias had now become. That which Lysander had
tried in vain to do at Athens, he was doubtless better able to do
in Asia, where he had neither Pausanias nor the ephors along with
him. He could lend effective aid to the dekarchies and harmosts in
the Asiatic cities, against any internal opposition with which they
might be threatened. Bitter were the complaints which reached Sparta,
both against him and against his ruling partisans. At length the
ephors were prevailed upon to disavow the dekarchies; and to proclaim
that they would not hinder the cities from resuming their former
governments at pleasure.[348]
[347] Xen. Hellen. ii, 4, 28-30.
[348] Xen. Hellen. iii, 4, 2.
But all the crying oppressions set forth in the complaints of the
maritime cities would have been insufficient to procure the recall
of Lysander from his command in the Hellespont, had not Pharnabazus
joined his remonstrances to the rest. These last representations so
strengthened the enemies of Lysander at Sparta, that a peremptory
order was sent to recall him. Constrained to obey, he came back to
Sparta; but the comparative disgrace, and the loss of that boundless
power which he had enjoyed on his command was so insupportable
to him, that he obtained permission to go on a pilgrimage to the
temple of Zeus Ammon in Libya, under the plea that he had a vow
to discharge.[349] He appears also to have visited the temples
of Delphi and Dodona,[350] with secret ambitious projects which
will be mentioned presently. This politic withdrawal softened the
jealousy against him, so that we shall find him, after a year or
two, reëstablished in great influence and ascendency. He was sent as
Spartan envoy, at what precise moment we do not know, to Syracuse,
where he lent countenance and aid to the recently established
despotism of Dionysius.[351]
[349] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 19, 20, 21.
The facts, which Plutarch states respecting Lysander, cannot be
reconciled with the chronology which he adopts. He represents
the recall of Lysander at the instance of Pharnabazus, with all
the facts which preceded it, as having occurred prior to the
reconstitution of the Athenian democracy, which event we know to
have taken place in the summer of 403 B.C.