Note 400 — Chapter LXXII · GREECE UNDER THE LACEDÆMONIAN EMPIRE.

Xen. Hellen. iii, 2, 30; Diodor. xiv, 34; Pausan. iii, 8, 2.

This war between Sparta and Elis reaches over three different years; it began in the first, occupied the whole of the second, and was finished in the third. Which years these three were (out of the seven which separate B.C. 403-396), critics have not been unanimous.

Following the chronology of Diodorus, who places the beginning of the war in 402 B.C., I differ from Mr. Clinton, who places it in 401 B.C. (Fasti Hellen. ad ann.), and from Sievers (Geschichte von Griechenland bis zur Schlacht von Mantinea, p. 382), who places it in 398 B.C.

According to Mr. Clinton’s view, the principal year of the war would have been 400 B.C., the year of the Olympic festival. But surely, had such been the fact, the coincidence of war in the country with the Olympic festival, must have raised so many complications, and acted so powerfully on the sentiments of all parties, as to be specifically mentioned. In my judgment, the war was brought to a close in the early part of 400 B.C., before the time of the Olympic festival arrived. Probably the Eleians were anxious, on this very ground, to bring it to a close before the festival did arrive.

Sievers, in his discussion of the point, admits that the date assigned by Diodorus to the Eleian war, squares both with the date which Diodorus gives for the death of Agis, and with that which Plutarch states about the duration of the reign of Agesilaus,—better than the chronology which he himself (Sievers) prefers. He founds his conclusion on Xenophon, Hell. iii, 2, 21. Τούτων δὲ πραττομένων ἐν τῇ Ἀσίᾳ ὑπὸ Δερκυλλίδα, Λακεδαιμόνιοι κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν χρόνον πάλαι ὀργιζόμενοι τοῖς Ἠλείοις, etc.

This passage is certainly of some weight; yet I think in the present case it is not to be pressed with rigid accuracy as to date. The whole third Book down to these very words, has been occupied entirely with the course of Asiatic affairs. Not a single proceeding of the Lacedæmonians in Peloponnesus, since the amnesty at Athens, has yet been mentioned. The command of Derkyllidas included only the last portion of the Asiatic exploits, and Xenophon has here loosely referred to it as if it comprehended the whole. Sievers moreover compresses the whole Eleian war into one year and a fraction; an interval, shorter, I think, than that which is implied in the statements of Xenophon.