Volume 9 — CHAPTER LXXIII. AGESILAUS KING OF SPARTA. — THE CORINTHIAN WAR.

The close of the Peloponnesian war, with the victorious organization of the Lacedæmonian empire by Lysander, has already been described as a period carrying with it increased sufferings to those towns which had formerly belonged to the Athenian empire, as compared with what they had endured under Athens,—and harder dependence, unaccompanied by any species of advantage, even to those Peloponnesians and inland cities which had always been dependent allies of Sparta. To complete the melancholy picture of the Grecian world during these years, we may add (what will be hereafter more fully detailed) that calamities of a still more deplorable character overtook the Sicilian Greeks; first, from the invasion of the Carthaginians, who sacked Himera, Selinus, Agrigentum, Gela, and Kamarina,—next from the overruling despotism of Dionysius at Syracuse.

Sparta alone had been the gainer; and that to a prodigious extent, both in revenue and power. It is from this time, and from the proceedings of Lysander, that various ancient authors dated the commencement of her degeneracy, which they ascribe mainly to her departure from the institutions of Lykurgus by admitting gold and silver money. These metals had before been strictly prohibited; no money being tolerated except heavy pieces of iron, not portable except to a very trifling amount. That such was the ancient institution of Sparta, under which any Spartan having in his possession gold and silver money, was liable, if detected, to punishment, appears certain. How far the regulation may have been in practice evaded, we have no means of determining. Some of the ephors strenuously opposed the admission of the large sum brought home by Lysander as remnant of what he had received from Cyrus towards the prosecution of the war. They contended that the admission of so much gold and silver into the public treasury was a flagrant transgression of the Lykurgean ordinances. But their resistance was unavailing and the new acquisitions were received; though it still continued to be a penal offence (and was even made a capital offence, if we may trust Plutarch) for any individual to be found with gold and silver in his possession.[403] To enforce such a prohibition, however, even if practicable before, ceased to be practicable so soon as these metals were recognized and tolerated in the possession, and for the purposes of the government.

There can be no doubt that the introduction of a large sum of coined gold and silver into Sparta was in itself a striking and important phenomenon, when viewed in conjunction with the peculiar customs and discipline of the state. It was likely to raise strong antipathies in the bosom of an old fashioned Spartan, and probably king Archidamus, had he been alive, would have taken part with the opposing ephors. But Plutarch and others have criticised it too much as a phenomenon by itself; whereas, it was really one characteristic mark and portion of a new assemblage of circumstances, into which Sparta had been gradually arriving during the last years of the war, and which were brought into the most effective action by the decisive success at Ægospotami. The institutions of Lykurgus, though excluding all Spartan citizens, by an unremitting drill and public mess, from trade and industry, from ostentation, and from luxury,—did not by any means extinguish in their bosoms the love of money;[404] while it had a positive tendency to exaggerate, rather than to abate, the love of power. The Spartan kings, Leotychides and Pleistoanax, had both been guilty of receiving bribes; Tissaphernes had found means (during the twentieth year of the Peloponnesian war) to corrupt not merely the Spartan admiral Astyochus, but also nearly all the captains of the Peloponnesian fleet, except the Syracusan Hermokrates; Gylippus, as well as his father Kleandrides, had degraded himself by the like fraud; and Anaxibius at Byzantium was not at all purer. Lysander, enslaved only by his appetite for dominion, and himself a remarkable instance of superiority to pecuniary corruption, was thus not the first to engraft that vice on the minds of his countrymen. But though he found it already diffused among them, he did much to impart to it a still more decided predominance, by the immense increase of opportunities, and enlarged booty for peculation, which his newly-organized Spartan empire furnished. Not merely did he bring home a large residue in gold and silver, but there was a much larger annual tribute imposed by him on the dependent cities, combined with numerous appointments of harmosts to govern these cities. Such appointments presented abundant illicit profits, easy to acquire, and even difficult to avoid, since the decemvirs in each city were eager thus to purchase forbearance or connivance for their own misdeeds. So many new sources of corruption were sufficient to operate most unfavorably on the Spartan character, if not by implanting any fresh vices, at least by stimulating all its inherent bad tendencies.

To understand the material change thus wrought in it, we have only to contrast the speeches of king Archidamus and of the Corinthians, made in 432 B.C. at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, with the state of facts at the end of the war,—during the eleven years between the victory of Ægospotami and the defeat of Knidus (405-394 B.C.). At the former of the two epochs, Sparta had no tributary subjects, nor any funds in her treasury, while her citizens were very reluctant to pay imposts.[405] About 334 B.C., thirty-seven years after her defeat at Leuktra and her loss of Messenia, Aristotle remarks the like fact, which had then again become true;[406] but during the continuance of her empire between 405 and 394 B.C., she possessed a large public revenue, derived from the tribute of the dependent cities. In 432 B.C., Sparta is not merely cautious but backward; especially averse to any action at a distance from home.[407] In 404 B.C., after the close of the war, she becomes aggressive, intermeddling, and ready for dealing with enemies, or making acquisitions remote as well as near.[408] In 432 B.C., her unsocial and exclusive manners, against the rest of Greece, with her constant expulsion of other Greeks from her own city, stand prominent among her attributes;[409] while at the end of the war, her foreign relations had acquired such great development as to become the principal matter of attention for her leading citizens as well as for her magistrates; so that the influx of strangers into Sparta, and the efflux of Spartans into other parts of Greece became constant and inevitable. Hence the strictness of the Lykurgean discipline gave way on many points, and the principal Spartans especially struggled by various shifts to evade its obligations. It was to these leading men that the great prizes fell, enabling them to enrich themselves at the expense either of foreign subjects or of the public treasury, and tending more and more to aggravate that inequality of wealth among the Spartans which Aristotle so emphatically notices in his time;[410] since the smaller citizens had no similar opportunities opened to them, nor any industry of their own, to guard their properties against gradual subdivision and absorption, and to keep them in a permanent state of ability to furnish that contribution to the mess-table, for themselves and their sons, which formed the groundwork of Spartan political franchise. Moreover, the spectacle of such newly-opened lucrative prizes,—accessible only to that particular section of influential Spartan families who gradually became known apart from the rest under the title of the Equals or Peers,—embittered the discontent of the energetic citizens beneath that privileged position, in such a manner as to menace the tranquillity of the state,—as will presently be seen. That sameness of life, habits, attainments, aptitudes, enjoyments, fatigues, and restraints, which the Lykurgean regulations had so long enforced, and still continued to prescribe,—divesting wealth of its principal advantages, and thus keeping up the sentiment of personal equality among the poorer citizens,—became more and more eluded by the richer, through the venality as well as the example of ephors and senators;[411] while for those who had no means of corruption, it continued unrelaxed, except in so far as many of them fell into a still more degraded condition by the loss of their citizenship.

It is not merely Isokrates,[412] who attests the corruption wrought in the character of the Spartans by the possession of that foreign empire which followed the victory of Ægospotami,—but also their earnest panegyrist Xenophon. After having warmly extolled the laws of Lykurgus or the Spartan institutions, he is constrained to admit that his eulogies, though merited by the past, have become lamentably inapplicable to that present which he himself witnessed. “Formerly (says he,[413]) the Lacedæmonians used to prefer their own society and moderate way of life at home, to appointments as harmosts in foreign towns, with all the flattery and all the corruption attending them. Formerly, they were afraid to be seen with gold in their possession; now, there are some who make even an ostentatious display of it. Formerly, they enforced their (Xenêlasy or) expulsion of strangers, and forbade foreign travel, in order that their citizens might not be filled with relaxed habits of life from contact with foreigners; but now, those who stand first in point of influence among them, study above all things to be in perpetual employment as harmosts abroad. There was a time when they took pains to be worthy of headship; but now they strive much rather to get and keep the command, than to be properly qualified for it. Accordingly, the Greeks used in former days to come and solicit, that the Spartans would act as their leaders against wrong-doers; but now they are exhorting each other to concert measures for shutting out Sparta from renewed empire. Nor can we wonder that the Spartans have fallen into this discredit, when they have manifestly renounced obedience both to the Delphian god, and to the institutions of Lykurgus!”

This criticism (written at some period between 394-371 B.C.) from the strenuous eulogist of Sparta is highly instructive. We know from other evidences how badly the Spartan empire worked for the subject cities; we here learn how badly it worked for the character of the Spartans themselves, and for those internal institutions which even an enemy of Sparta, who detested her foreign policy, still felt constrained to admire.[414] All the vices, here insisted upon by Xenophon, arise from various incidents connected with her empire. The moderate, home-keeping, old-fashioned, backward disposition,—of which the Corinthians complain,[415] but for which king Archidamus takes credit, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war,—is found exchanged, at the close of the war, for a spirit of aggression and conquest, for ambition public as well as private, and for emancipation of the great men from the subduing[416] equality of the discipline enacted by Lykurgus.

Agis the son of Archidamus (426-399 B.C.), and Pausanias son of Pleistoanax (408-394 B.C.), were the two kings of Sparta at the end of the war. But Lysander, the admiral or commander of the fleet, was for the time[417] greater than either of the two kings, who had the right of commanding only the troops on land. I have already mentioned how his overweening dictation and insolence offended not only Pausanias, but also several of the ephors and leading men at Sparta, as well as Pharnabazus the Persian satrap; thus indirectly bringing about the emancipation of Athens from the Thirty, the partial discouragement of the dekarchies throughout Greece, and the recall of Lysander himself from his command. It was not without reluctance that the conqueror of Athens submitted to descend again to a private station. Amidst the crowd of flatterers who heaped incense on him at the moment of his omnipotence, there were not wanting those who suggested that he was much more worthy to reign than either Agis or Pausanias; that the kings ought to be taken, not from the first-born of the lineage of Eurysthenês and Proklês, but by selection out of all the Herakleids, of whom Lysander himself was one;[418] and that the person elected ought to be not merely a descendant of Hêraklês, but a worthy parallel of Hêraklês himself, while pæans were sung to the honor of Lysander at Samos,[419]—while Chœrilus and Antilochus composed poems in his praise,—while Antimachus (a poet highly esteemed by Plato) entered into a formal competition of recited epic verses called Lysandria, and was surpassed by Nikêratus, there was another warm admirer, a rhetor or sophist of Halikarnassus, named Kleon,[420] who wrote a discourse proving that Lysander had well earned the regal dignity,—that personal excellence ought to prevail over legitimate descent, and that the crown ought to be laid open to election from the most worthy among the Herakleids. Considering that rhetoric was neither employed nor esteemed at Sparta, we cannot reasonably believe that Lysander really ordered the composition of this discourse as an instrument of execution for projects preconceived by himself, in the same manner as an Athenian prosecutor or defendant before the dikastery used to arm himself with a speech from Lysias or Demosthenes. Kleon would make his court professionally through such a prose composition, whether the project were first recommended by himself, or currently discussed among a circle of admirers; while Lysander would probably requite the compliment by a reward not less munificent than that which he gave to the indifferent poet Antilochus.[421] And the composition would be put into the form of an harangue from the admiral to his countrymen, without any definite purpose that it should be ever so delivered. Such hypothesis of a speaker and an audience was frequent with the rhetors in their writings, as we may see in Isokrates,—especially in his sixth discourse, called Archidamus.

Either from his own ambition, or from the suggestions of others, Lysander came now to conceive the idea of breaking the succession of the two regal families, and opening for himself a door to reach the crown. His projects have been characterized as revolutionary; but there seems nothing in them which fairly merits the appellation, in the sense which that word now bears, if we consider accurately what the Spartan kings were in the year 400 B.C. In this view the associations connected with the title of king, are to a modern reader misleading. The Spartan kings were not kings at all, in any modern sense of the term; not only they were not absolute, but they were not even constitutional kings. They were not sovereigns, nor was any Spartan their subject; every Spartan was the member of a free Grecian community. The Spartan king did not govern; nor did he reign, in the sense of having government carried on in his name and by his delegates. The government of Sparta was carried on by the ephors, with frequent consultation of the senate, and occasional, though rare appeals, to the public assembly of citizens. The Spartan king was not legally inviolable. He might be, and occasionally was, arrested, tried, and punished for misbehavior in the discharge of his functions. He was a self-acting person, a great officer of state; enjoying certain definite privileges, and exercising certain military and judicial functions, which passed as an universitas by hereditary transmission in his family; but subject to the control of the ephors as to the way in which he performed these duties.[422] Thus, for example, it was his privilege to command the army when sent on foreign service; yet a law was made, requiring him to take deputies along with him, as a council of war, without whom nothing was to be done. The ephors recalled Agesilaus when they thought fit; and they brought Pausanias to trial and punishment, for alleged misconduct in his command.[423] The only way in which the Spartan kings formed part of the sovereign power in the state, or shared in the exercise of government properly so called, was that they had votes ex officio in the Senate, and could vote there by proxy when they were not present. In ancient times, very imperfectly known, the Spartan kings seem really to have been sovereigns; the government having then been really carried on by them, or by their orders. But in the year 400 B.C., Agis and Pausanias had become nothing more than great and dignified hereditary officers of state, still bearing the old title of their ancestors. To throw open these hereditary functions to all the members of the Herakleid Gens, by election from their number, might be a change better or worse; it was a startling novelty (just as it would have been to propose, that any of the various priesthoods, which were hereditary in particular families, should be made elective), because of the extreme attachment of the Spartans to old and sanctified customs; but it cannot properly be styled revolutionary. The ephors, the senate, and the public assembly, might have made such a change in full legal form, without any appeal to violence; the kings might vote against it, but they would have been outvoted. And if the change had been made, the Spartan government would have remained, in form as well as in principle, just what it was before; although the Eurystheneid and Prokleid families would have lost their privileges. It is not meant here to deny that the Spartan kings were men of great importance in the state, especially when (like Agesilaus) they combined with their official station a marked personal energy. But it is not the less true, that the associations, connected with the title of king in the modern mind, do not properly apply to them.

To carry his point at Sparta, Lysander was well aware that agencies of an unusual character must be employed. Quitting Sparta soon after his recall, he visited the oracles of Delphi, Dodona, and Zeus Ammon in Libya,[424] in order to procure, by persuasion or corruption, injunctions to the Spartans, countenancing his projects. So great was the general effect of oracular injunctions on the Spartan mind, that Kleomenes had thus obtained the deposition of king Demaratus, and the exiled Pleistoanax, his own return;[425] bribery having been in both cases the moving impulse. But Lysander was not equally fortunate. None of these oracles could be induced, by any offers, to venture upon so grave a sentence as that of repealing the established law of succession to the Spartan throne. It is even said that the priests of Ammon, not content with refusing his offers, came over to Sparta to denounce his proceeding; upon which accusation Lysander was put on his trial, but acquitted. The statement that he was thus tried and acquitted, I think untrue. But his schemes so far miscarried,—and he was compelled to resort to another stratagem, yet still appealing to the religious susceptibilities of his countrymen. There had been born some time before, in one of the cities of the Euxine, a youth named Silenus, whose mother affirmed that he was the son of Apollo; an assertion which found extensive credence, notwithstanding various difficulties raised by the sceptics. While making at Sparta this new birth of a son to the god, the partisans of Lysander also spread abroad the news that there existed sacred manuscripts and inspired records, of great antiquity, hidden and yet unread, in the custody of the Delphian priests; not to be touched or consulted until some genuine son of Apollo should come forward to claim them. With the connivance of some among the priests, certain oracles were fabricated agreeable to the views of Lysander. The plan was concerted that Silenus should present himself at Delphi, tender the proofs of his divine parentage, and then claim the inspection of these hidden records; which the priests, after an apparently rigid scrutiny, were prepared to grant. Silenus would then read them aloud in the presence of all the spectators; and one would be found among them, recommending to the Spartans to choose their kings out of all the best citizens.[426]

So nearly did this project approach to consummation, that Silenus actually presented himself at Delphi, and put in his claim. But one of the confederates either failed in his courage, or broke down, at the critical moment; so that the hidden records still remained hidden. Yet though Lysander was thus compelled to abandon his plan, nothing was made public about it until after his death. It might probably have succeeded, had he found temple-confederates of proper courage and cunning,—when we consider the profound and habitual deference of the Spartans to Delphi; upon the sanction of which oracle the Lykurgean institutions themselves were mainly understood to rest. And an occasion presently arose, on which the proposed change might have been tried with unusual facility and pertinence; though Lysander himself, having once miscarried, renounced his enterprise, and employed his influence, which continued unabated, in giving the sceptre to another instead of acquiring it for himself,[427]—like Mucian in reference to the emperor Vespasian.

It was apparently about a year after the campaigns in Elis, that king Agis, now an old man, was taken ill at Heræa in Arcadia, and carried back to Sparta, where he shortly afterwards expired. His wife Mimæa had given birth to a son named Leotychides, now a youth about fifteen years of age.[428] But the legitimacy of this youth had always been suspected by Agis, who had pronounced, when the birth of the child was first made known to him, that it could not be his. He had been frightened out of his wife’s bed by the shock of an earthquake, which was construed as a warning from Poseidon, and was held to be a prohibition of intercourse for a certain time; during which interval Leotychides was born. This was one story; another was, that the young prince was the son of Alkibiades, born during the absence of Agis in his command at Dekeleia. On the other hand, it was alleged that Agis, though originally doubtful of the legitimacy of Leotychides, had afterwards retracted his suspicions, and fully recognized him; especially, and with peculiar solemnity, during his last illness.[429] As in the case of Demaratus about a century earlier,[430]—advantage was taken of these doubts by Agesilaus, the younger brother of Agis, powerfully seconded by Lysander, to exclude Leotychides, and occupy the throne himself.

Agesilaus was the son of king Archidamus, not by Lampito the mother of Agis, but by a second wife named Eupolia. He was now at the mature age of forty,[431] and having been brought up without any prospect of becoming king,—at least until very recent times,—had passed through the unmitigated rigor of Spartan drill and training. He was distinguished for all Spartan virtues; exemplary obedience to authority, in the performance of his trying exercises, military as well as civil,—intense emulation, in trying to surpass every competitor,—extraordinary courage, unremitting energy, as well as facility in enduring hardship,—perfect simplicity and frugality in all his personal habits,—extreme sensibility to the opinion of his fellow-citizens. Towards his personal friends or adherents, he was remarkable for fervor of attachment, even for unscrupulous partisanship, with a readiness to use all his influence in screening their injustices or short-comings; while he was comparatively placable and generous in dealing with rivals at home, notwithstanding his eagerness to be first in every sort of competition.[432] His manners were cheerful and popular, and his physiognomy pleasing; though in stature he was not only small but mean, and though he labored under the additional defect of lameness on one leg,[433] which accounts for his constant refusal to suffer his statue to be taken.[434] He was indifferent to money, and exempt from excess of selfish feeling, except in his passion for superiority and power.

In spite of his rank as brother of Agis, Agesilaus had never yet been tried in any military command, though he had probably served in the army either at Dekeleia or in Asia. Much of his character, therefore, lay as yet undisclosed. And his popularity may perhaps have been the greater at the moment when the throne became vacant, inasmuch as, having never been put in a position to excite jealousy, he stood distinguished only for accomplishments, efforts, endurances, and punctual obedience, wherein even the poorest citizens were his competitors on equal terms. Nay, so complete was the self-constraint, and the habit of smothering emotions, generated by a Spartan training, that even the cunning Lysander himself did not at this time know him. He and Agesilaus had been early and intimate friends,[435] both having been placed as boys in the same herd or troop for the purposes of discipline; a strong illustration of the equalizing character of this discipline, since we know that Lysander was of poor parents and condition.[436] He made the mistake of supposing Agesilaus to be of a disposition particularly gentle and manageable; and this was his main inducement for espousing the pretensions of the latter to the throne, after the decease of Agis. Lysander reckoned, if by his means Agesilaus became king, on a great increase of his own influence, and especially on a renewed mission to Asia, if not as ostensible general, at least as real chief under the tutelar headship of the new king.

Accordingly, when the imposing solemnities which always marked the funeral of a king of Sparta were terminated,[437] and the day arrived for installation of a new king, Agesilaus, under the promptings of Lysander, stood forward to contest the legitimacy and the title of Leotychides, and to claim the sceptre for himself,—a true Herakleid, brother of the late king Agis. In the debate, which probably took place not merely before the ephors and the senate but before the assembled citizens besides, Lysander warmly seconded his pretensions. Of this debate unfortunately we are not permitted to know much. We cannot doubt that the mature age and excellent reputation of Agesilaus would count as a great recommendation, when set against an untried youth; and this was probably the real point (since the relationship of both was so near) upon which decision turned;[438] for the legitimacy of Leotychides was positively asseverated by his mother Timæa,[439] and we do not find that the question of paternity was referred to the Delphian oracle, as in the case of Demaratus.

There was, however, one circumstance which stood much in the way of Agesilaus,—his personal deformity. A lame king of Sparta had never yet been known. And if we turn back more than a century to the occurrence of a similar deformity in one of the Battiad princes at Kyrênê,[440] we see the Kyrenians taking it so deeply to heart, that they sent to ask advice from Delphi, and invited over the Mantineian reformer Demônax. Over and above this sentiment of repugnance, too, the gods had specially forewarned Sparta to beware of “a lame reign.” Deiopeithes, a prophet and religious adviser of high reputation, advocated the cause of Leotychides. He produced an ancient oracle, telling Sparta, that “with all her pride she must not suffer a lame reign to impair her stable footing;[441] for if she did so, unexampled suffering and ruinous wars would long beset her.” This prophecy had already been once invoked, about eighty years earlier,[442] but with a very different interpretation. To Grecian leaders, like Themistokles or Lysander, it was an accomplishment of no small value to be able to elude inconvenient texts or intractable religious feelings, by expository ingenuity. And Lysander here raised his voice (as Themistokles had done on the momentous occasion before the battle of Salamis),[443] to combat the professional expositors; contending that by “a lame reign,” the god meant, not a bodily defect in the king,—which might not even be congenital, but might arise from some positive hurt,[444]—but the reign of any king who was not a genuine descendant of Hêraklês.

The influence of Lysander,[445] combined doubtless with a preponderance of sentiment already tending towards Agesilaus, caused this effort of interpretative subtlety to be welcomed as convincing, and led to the nomination of the lame candidate as king. There was, however, a considerable minority, to whom this decision appeared a sin against the gods and a mockery of the oracle. And though the murmurs of such dissentients were kept down by the ability and success of Agesilaus during the first years of his reign; yet when, in his ten last years, calamity and humiliation were poured thickly upon this proud city, the public sentiment came decidedly round to their view. Many a pious Spartan then exclaimed, with feelings of bitter repentance, that the divine word never failed to come true at last,[446] and that Sparta was justly punished for having wilfully shut her eyes to the distinct and merciful warning vouchsafed to her, about the mischiefs of a “lame reign.”[447]

Besides the crown, Agesilaus at the same time acquired the large property left by the late king Agis; an acquisition which enabled him to display his generosity by transferring half of it at once to his maternal relatives,—for the most part poor persons.[448] The popularity acquired by this step was still farther increased by his manner of conducting himself towards the ephors and senate. Between these magistrates and the kings, there was generally a bad understanding. The kings, not having lost the tradition of the plenary power once enjoyed by their ancestors, displayed as much haughty reserve as they dared, towards an authority now become essentially superior to their own. But Agesilaus,—not less from his own preëstablished habits, than from anxiety to make up for the defects of his title,—adopted a line of conduct studiously opposite. He not only took pains to avoid collision with the ephors, but showed marked deference both to their orders and to their persons. He rose from his seat whenever they appeared; he conciliated both ephors and senators by timely presents.[449] By such judicious proceeding, as well as by his exact observance of the laws and customs,[450] he was himself the greatest gainer. Combined with that ability and energy in which he was never deficient, it ensured to him more real power than had ever fallen to the lot of any king of Sparta; power not merely over the military operations abroad which usually fell to the kings,—but also over the policy of the state at home. On the increase and maintenance of that real power, his chief thoughts were concentrated; new dispositions generated by kingship, which had never shown themselves in him before. Despising, like Lysander, both money, luxury, and all the outward show of power,—he exhibited, as a king, an ultra-Spartan simplicity, carried almost to affectation, in diet, clothing, and general habits. But like Lysander also, he delighted in the exercise of dominion through the medium of knots or factions of devoted partisans, whom he rarely scrupled to uphold in all their career of injustice and oppression. Though an amiable man, with no disposition to tyranny, and still less to plunder, for his own benefit,—Agesilaus thus made himself the willing instrument of both, for the benefit of his various coadjutors and friends, whose power and consequence he identified with his own.[451]

At the moment when Agesilaus became king, Sparta was at the maximum of her power, holding nearly all the Grecian towns as subject allies, with or without tribute. She was engaged in the task (as has already been mentioned) of protecting the Asiatic Greeks against the Persian satraps in their neighborhood. And the most interesting portion of the life of Agesilaus consists in the earnestness with which he espoused, and the vigor and ability with which he conducted, this great Pan-hellenic duty. It will be seen that success in his very promising career was intercepted[452] by his bad, factious subservience to partisans, at home and abroad,—by his unmeasured thirst for Spartan omnipotence,—and his indifference or aversion to any generous scheme of combination with the cities dependent on Sparta.

His attention, however, was first called to a dangerous internal conspiracy with which Sparta was threatened. The “lame reign” was as yet less than twelve months old, when Agesilaus, being engaged in sacrificing at one of the established state solemnities, was apprised by the officiating prophet, that the victims exhibited menacing symptoms, portending a conspiracy of the most formidable character. A second sacrifice gave yet worse promise; and on the third, the terrified prophet exclaimed, “Agesilaus, the revelation before us imports that we are actually in the midst of our enemies.” They still continued to sacrifice, but victims were now offered to the averting and preserving gods, with prayers that these latter, by tutelary interposition, would keep off the impending peril. At length, after much repetition, and great difficulty, favorable victims were obtained; the meaning of which was soon made clear. Five days afterwards, an informer came before the ephors, communicating the secret, that a dangerous conspiracy was preparing, organized by a citizen named Kinadon.[453]

The conspirator thus named was a Spartan citizen, but not one of that select number called The Equals or The Peers. It has already been mentioned that inequalities had been gradually growing up among qualified citizens of Sparta, tending tacitly to set apart a certain number of them under the name of The Peers, and all the rest under the correlative name of The Inferiors. Besides this, since the qualification of every family lasted only so long as the citizen could furnish a given contribution for himself and his sons to the public mess-table, and since industry of every kind was inconsistent with the rigid personal drilling imposed upon all of them,—the natural consequence was, that in each generation a certain number of citizens became disfranchised and dropped off. But these disfranchised men did not become Periœki or Helots. They were still citizens, whose qualification, though in abeyance, might be at any time renewed by the munificence of a rich man;[454] so that they too, along with the lesser citizens, were known under the denomination of The Inferiors. It was to this class that Kinadon belonged. He was a young man of remarkable strength and courage, who had discharged with honor his duties in the Lykurgean discipline,[455] and had imbibed from it that sense of personal equality, and that contempt of privilege, which its theory as well as its practice suggested. Notwithstanding all exactness of duty performed, he found that the constitution, as practically worked, excluded him from the honors and distinctions of the state; reserving them for the select citizens known under the name of Peers. And this exclusion had become more marked and galling since the formation of the Spartan empire after the victory of Ægospotami; whereby the number of lucrative posts (harmosties and others) all monopolized by the Peers, had been so much multiplied. Debarred from the great political prizes, Kinadon was still employed by the ephors, in consequence of his high spirit and military sufficiency, in that standing force which they kept for maintaining order at home.[456] He had been the agent ordered on several of those arbitrary seizures which they never scrupled to employ towards persons whom they regarded as dangerous. But this was no satisfaction to his mind; nay, probably, by bringing him into close contact with the men in authority, it contributed to lessen his respect for them. He desired “to be inferior to no man in Sparta,”[457] and his conspiracy was undertaken to realize this object by breaking up the constitution.

It has already been mentioned that amidst the general insecurity which pervaded the political society of Laconia, the ephors maintained a secret police and system of espionage which reached its height of unscrupulous efficiency under the title of the Krypteia. Such precautions were now more than ever requisite; for the changes in the practical working of Spartan politics tended to multiply the number of malcontents, and to throw the Inferiors as well as the Periœki and the Neodamodes (manumitted Helots), into one common antipathy with the Helots, against the exclusive partnership of the Peers. Informers were thus sure of encouragement and reward, and the man who now came to the ephors either was really an intimate friend of Kinadon, or had professed himself such in order to elicit the secret. “Kinadon (said he to the ephors) brought me to the extremity of the market-place, and bade me count how many Spartans there were therein. I reckoned up about forty, besides the king, the ephors and the senators. Upon my asking him why he desired me to count them, he replied,—Because these are the men, and the only men, whom you have to look upon as enemies;[458] all others in the market-place, more than four thousand in number, are friends and comrades. Kinadon also pointed out to me the one or two Spartans whom we met in the roads, or who were lords in the country districts, as our only enemies; every one else around them being friendly to our purpose.” “How many did he tell you were the accomplices actually privy to the scheme?”—asked the ephors. “Only a few (was the reply); but those thoroughly trustworthy; these confidants themselves, however, said that all around them were accomplices,—Inferiors, Periœki, Neodamodes, and Helots, all alike; for whenever any one among the classes talked about a Spartan, he could not disguise his intense antipathy,—he talked as if he could eat the Spartans raw.”[459]

“But how (continued the ephors) did Kinadon reckon upon getting arms?” “His language was (replied the witness)—We of the standing force have our own arms all ready; and here are plenty of knives, swords, spits, hatchets, axes and scythes—on sale in this market-place, to suit an insurgent multitude; besides, every man who tills the earth, or cuts wood and stone, has tools by him which will serve as weapons in case of need; especially in a struggle with enemies themselves unarmed.” On being asked what was the moment fixed for execution, the witness could not tell; he had been instructed only to remain on the spot, and be ready.[460]

It does not appear that this man knew the name of any person concerned, except Kinadon himself. So deeply were the ephors alarmed, that they refrained from any formal convocation even of what was called the Lesser Assembly,—including the senate, of which the kings were members ex officio, and, perhaps, a few other principal persons besides. But the members of this assembly were privately brought together to deliberate on the emergency; Agesilaus, probably, among them. To arrest Kinadon at once in Sparta appeared imprudent; since his accomplices, of number as yet unknown, would be thus admonished either to break out in insurrection, or at least to make their escape. But an elaborate stratagem was laid for arresting him out of Sparta, without the knowledge of his accomplices. The ephors, calling him before them, professed to confide to him (as they had done occasionally before) a mission to go to Aulon (a Laconian town on the frontier towards Arcadia and Triphylia) and there to seize some parties designated by name in a formal skytalê or warrant; including some of the Aulonite Periœki,—some Helots,—and one other person by name, a woman of peculiar beauty, resident at the place, whose influence was understood to spread disaffection among all the Lacedæmonians who came thither, old as well as young.[461] When Kinadon inquired what force he was to take with him on the mission, the ephors, to obviate all suspicion that they were picking out companions with views hostile to him, desired him to go to the Hippagretês (or commander of the three hundred youthful guards called horsemen, though they were not really mounted) and ask for the first six or seven men of the guard[462] who might happen to be in the way. But they (the ephors) had already held secret communication with the Hippagretês, and had informed him both whom they wished to be sent, and what the persons sent were to do. They then despatched Kinadon on his pretended mission telling him that they should place at his disposal three carts, in order that he might more easily bring home the prisoners.

Kinadon began his journey to Aulon, without the smallest suspicion of the plot laid for him by the ephors; who, to make their purpose sure, sent an additional body of the guards after him, to quell any resistance which might possibly arise. But their stratagem succeeded as completely as they could desire. He was seized on the road, by those who accompanied him ostensibly for his pretended mission. These men interrogated him, put him to the torture,[463] and heard from his lips the names of his accomplices; the list of whom they wrote down, and forwarded by one of the guards to Sparta. The ephors, on receiving it, immediately arrested the parties principally concerned, especially the prophet Tisamenus; and examined them along with Kinadon, as soon as he was brought prisoner. They asked the latter, among other questions, what was his purpose in setting on foot the conspiracy; to which he replied,—“I wanted to be inferior to no man at Sparta.” His punishment was not long deferred. Having been manacled with a clog round his neck to which his hands were made fast,—he was in this condition conducted round the city, with men scourging and pricking him during the progress. His accomplices were treated in like manner, and at length all of them were put to death.[464]

Such is the curious narrative, given by Xenophon, of this unsuccessful conspiracy. He probably derived his information from Agesilaus himself; since we cannot easily explain how he could have otherwise learnt so much about the most secret manœuvres of the ephors, in a government proverbial for constant secrecy, like that of Sparta. The narrative opens to us a glimpse, though sadly transient and imperfect, of the internal dangers of the Spartan government. We were aware, from earlier evidences, of great discontent prevailing among the Helots, and to a certain extent among the Periœki. But the incident here described presents to us the first manifestation of a body of malcontents among the Spartans themselves; malcontents formidable both from energy and position, like Kinadon and the prophet Tisamenus. Of the state of disaffected feeling in the provincial townships of Laconia, an impressive proof is afforded by the case of that beautiful woman who was alleged to be so active in political proselytism at Aulon; not less than by the passionate expressions of hatred revealed in the deposition of the informer himself. Though little is known about the details, yet it seems that the tendency of affairs at Sparta was to concentrate both power and property in the hands of an oligarchy ever narrowing among the citizens; thus aggravating the dangers at home, even at the time when the power of the state was greatest abroad, and preparing the way for that irreparable humiliation which began with the defeat of Leuktra.

It can hardly be doubted that much more wide-spread discontent came to the knowledge of the ephors than that which is specially indicated in Xenophon. And such discovery may probably have been one of the motives (as had happened in 424 B.C. on occasion of the expedition of Brasidas into Thrace) which helped to bring about the Asiatic expedition of Agesilaus, as an outlet for brave malcontents on distant and lucrative military service.

Derkyllidas had now been carrying on war in Asia Minor for near three years, against Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus, with so much efficiency and success, as both to protect the Asiatic Greeks on the coast, and to intercept all the revenues which those satraps either transmitted to court or enjoyed themselves. Pharnabazus had already gone up to Susa (during his truce with Derkyllidas in 397 B.C.), and besides obtaining a reinforcement which acted under himself and Tissaphernes in 396 B.C. against Derkyllidas in Lydia, had laid schemes for renewing the maritime war against Sparta.[465]

It is now that we hear again mentioned the name of Konon, who, having saved himself with nine triremes from the defeat of Ægospotami, had remained for the last seven years under the protection of Evagoras, prince of Salamis, in Cyprus. Konon, having married at Salamis, and having a son[466] born to him there, indulged but faint hopes of ever returning to his native city, when, fortunately for him as well as for Athens, the Persians again became eager for an efficient admiral and fleet on the coast of Asia Minor. Through representations from Pharnabazus, as well as from Evagoras in Cyprus,—and through correspondence of the latter with the Greek physician Ktesias, who wished to become personally employed in the negotiation, and who seems to have had considerable influence with queen Parysatis,[467]—orders were obtained, and funds provided, to equip in Phœnicia and Kilikia a numerous fleet, under the command of Konon. While that officer began to show himself, and to act with such triremes as he found in readiness (about forty in number) along the southern coast of Asia Minor from Kilikia to Kaunus,[468]—further preparations were vigorously prosecuted in the Phœnician ports, in order to make up the fleet to three hundred sail.[469]

It was by a sort of accident that news of such equipment reached Sparta,—in an age of the world when diplomatic residents were as yet unknown. A Syracusan merchant named Herodas, having visited the Phœnician ports for trading purposes, brought back to Sparta intelligence of the preparations which he had seen, sufficient to excite much uneasiness. The Spartans were taking counsel among themselves, and communicating with their neighboring allies, when Agesilaus, at the instance of Lysander, stood forward as a volunteer to solicit the command of a land-force for the purpose of attacking the Persians in Asia. He proposed to take with him only thirty full Spartan citizens or peers, as a sort of Board or Council of Officers; two thousand Neodamodes or enfranchised Helots, whom the ephors were probably glad to send away, and who would be selected from the bravest and most formidable; and six thousand hoplites from the land-allies, to whom the prospect of a rich service against Asiatic enemies would be tempting. Of these thirty Spartans, Lysander intended to be the leader; and thus, reckoning on his preëstablished influence over Agesilaus, to exercise the real command himself, without the name. He had no serious fear of the Persian arms, either by land or sea. He looked upon the announcement of the Phœnician fleet to be an empty threat, as it had so often proved in the mouth of Tissaphernes during the late war; while the Cyreian expedition had inspired him further with ardent hopes of another successful Anabasis, or conquering invasion of Persia from the sea-coast inwards. But he had still more at heart to employ his newly-acquired ascendency in reëstablishing everywhere the dekarchies, which had excited such intolerable hatred and exercised so much oppression, that even the ephors had refused to lend positive aid in upholding them, so that they had been in several places broken up or modified.[470] If the ambition of Agesilaus was comparatively less stained by personal and factious antipathies, and more Pan-hellenic in its aim, than that of Lysander,—it was at the same time yet more unmeasured in respect to victory over the Great King, whom he dreamed of dethroning, or at least of expelling from Asia Minor and the coast.[471] So powerful was the influence exercised by the Cyreian expedition over the schemes and imagination of energetic Greeks: so sudden was the outburst of ambition in the mind of Agesilaus, for which no one before had given him credit.

Though this plan was laid by two of the ablest men in Greece, it turned out to be rash and improvident, so far as the stability of the Lacedæmonian empire was concerned. That empire ought to have been made sure by sea, where its real danger lay, before attempts were made to extend it by new inland acquisitions. And except for purposes of conquest, there was no need of farther reinforcements in Asia Minor; since Derkyllidas was already there with a force competent to make head against the satraps. Nevertheless, the Lacedæmonians embraced the plan eagerly; the more so, as envoys were sent from many of the subject cities, by the partisans of Lysander and in concert with him, to entreat that Agesilaus might be placed at the head of the expedition, with as large a force as he required.[472]

No difficulty probably was found in levying the proposed number of men from the allies, since there was great promise of plunder for the soldiers in Asia. But the altered position of Sparta with respect to her most powerful allies was betrayed by the refusal of Thebes, Corinth, and Athens to take any part in the expedition. The refusal of Corinth, indeed, was excused professedly on the ground of a recent inauspicious conflagration of one of the temples in the city; and that of Athens, on the plea of weakness and exhaustion not yet repaired. But the latter, at least, had already begun to conceive some hope from the projects of Konon.[473]

The mere fact that a king of Sparta was about to take the command and pass into Asia, lent peculiar importance to the enterprise. The Spartan kings, in their function of leaders of Greece, conceived themselves to have inherited the sceptre of Agamemnon and Orestes;[474] and Agesilaus, especially, assimilated his expedition to a new Trojan war,—an effort of united Greece, for the purpose of taking vengeance on the common Asiatic enemy of the Hellenic name. The sacrifices having been found favorable, Agesilaus took measures for the transit of the troops from various ports to Ephesus. But he himself, with one division, touched in his way at Geræstus, the southern point of Eubœa; wishing to cross from thence and sacrifice at Aulis, (the port of Bœotia nearly opposite to Geræstus on the other side of the strait) where Agamemnon had offered his memorable sacrifice immediately previous to departure for Troy. It appears that he both went to the spot, and began the sacrifice, without asking permission from the Thebans; moreover, he was accompanied by his own prophet, who conducted the solemnities in a manner not consistent with the habitual practice of the temple or chapel of Artemis at Aulis. On both these grounds, the Thebans, resenting the proceeding as an insult, sent a body of armed men, and compelled him to desist from the sacrifice.[475] Not taking part themselves in the expedition, they probably considered that the Spartan king was presumptuous in assuming to himself the Pan-hellenic character of a second Agamemnon; and they thus inflicted a humiliation which Agesilaus never forgave.

Agesilaus seems to have reached Asia about the time when Derkyllidas had recently concluded his last armistice with Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus; an armistice, intended to allow time for mutual communication both with Sparta and the Persian court. On being asked by the satrap what was his purpose in coming, Agesilaus merely renewed the demand which had before been made by Derkyllidas—of autonomy for the Asiatic Greeks. Tissaphernes replied by proposing a continuation of the same armistice, until he could communicate with the Persian court,—adding that he hoped to be empowered to grant the demand. A fresh armistice was accordingly sworn to on both sides, for three months; Derkyllidas (who with his army came now under the command of Agesilaus) and Herippidas being sent to the satrap to receive his oath, and take oaths to him in return.[476]

While the army was thus condemned to temporary inaction at Ephesus, the conduct and position of Lysander began to excite intolerable jealousy in the superior officers; and most of all Agesilaus. So great and established was the reputation of Lysander,—whose statue had been erected at Ephesus itself in the temple of Artemis,[477] as well as in many other cities,—that all the Asiatic Greeks looked upon him as the real chief of the expedition. That he should be real chief, under the nominal command of another, was nothing more than what had happened before, in the year wherein he gained the great victory of Ægospotami,—the Lacedæmonians having then also sent him out in the ostensible capacity of secretary to the admiral Arakus, in order to save the inviolability of their own rule, that the same man should not serve twice as admiral.[478] It was through the instigation of Lysander, and with a view to his presence, that the decemvirs and other partisans in the subject cities had sent to Sparta to petition for Agesilaus; a prince as yet untried and unknown. So that Lysander,—taking credit, with truth, for having ensured to Agesilaus first the crown, next this important appointment,—intended for himself, and was expected by others, to exercise a fresh turn of command, and to renovate in every town the discomfited or enfeebled dekarchies. Numbers of his partisans came to Ephesus to greet his arrival, and a crowd of petitioners were seen following his steps everywhere; while Agesilaus himself appeared comparatively neglected. Moreover, Lysander resumed all that insolence of manner which he had contracted during his former commands, and which on this occasion gave the greater offence, since the manner of Agesilaus was both courteous and simple in a peculiar degree.[479]

The thirty Spartan counsellors, over whom Lysander had been named to preside, finding themselves neither consulted by him, nor solicited by others, were deeply dissatisfied. Their complaints helped to encourage Agesilaus, who was still more keenly wounded in his own personal dignity, to put forth a resolute and imperious strength of will, such as he had not before been known to possess. He successively rejected every petition preferred to him by or through Lysander; a systematic purpose which, though never formally announced,[480] was presently discerned by the petitioners, by the Thirty, and by Lysander himself. The latter thus found himself not merely disappointed in all his calculations, but humiliated to excess, though without any tangible ground of complaint. He was forced to warn his partisans, that his intervention was an injury and not a benefit to them; that they must desist from obsequious attentions to him, and must address themselves directly to Agesilaus. With that prince he also remonstrated on his own account,—“Truly, Agesilaus, you know how to degrade your friends.”—“Ay, to be sure (was the reply), those among them who want to appear greater than I am; but such as seek to uphold me, I should be ashamed if I did not know how to repay with due honor.”—Lysander was constrained to admit the force of this reply, and to request, as the only means of escape from present and palpable humiliation, that he might be sent on some mission apart; engaging to serve faithfully in whatever duty he might be employed.[481]

This proposition, doubtless even more agreeable to Agesilaus than to himself, being readily assented to, he was despatched on a mission to the Hellespont. Faithful to his engagement of forgetting past offences and serving with zeal, he found means to gain over a Persian grandee named Spithridates, who had received some offence from Pharnabazus. Spithridates revolted openly, carrying a regiment of two hundred horse to join Agesilaus; who was thus enabled to inform himself fully about the satrapy of Pharnabazus, comprising the territory called Phrygia, in the neighborhood of the Propontis and the Hellespont.[482]

The army under Tissaphernes had been already powerful at the moment when his timidity induced him to conclude the first armistice with Derkyllidas. But additional reinforcements, received since the conclusion of the second and more recent armistice, had raised him to such an excess of confidence, that even before the stipulated three months had expired, he sent to insist on the immediate departure of Agesilaus from Asia, and to proclaim war forthwith, if such departure were delayed. While this message, accompanied by formidable reports of the satrap’s force, filled the army at Ephesus with mingled alarm and indignation, Agesilaus accepted the challenge with cheerful readiness; sending word back that he thanked the satrap for perjuring himself in so flagrant a manner, as to set the gods against him and ensure their favor to the Greek side.[483] Orders were forthwith given, and contingents summoned from the Asiatic Greeks, for a forward movement southward, to cross the Mæander, and attack Tissaphernes in Karia, where he usually resided. The cities on the route were required to provide magazines, so that Tissaphernes, fully anticipating attack in this direction, caused his infantry to cross into Karia, for the purpose of acting on the defensive; while he kept his numerous cavalry in the plain of the Mæander, with a view to overwhelm Agesilaus, who had no cavalry, in his march over that level territory towards the Karian hills and rugged ground. But the Lacedæmonian king, having put the enemy on this false scent, suddenly turned his march northward towards Phrygia and the satrapy of Pharnabazus. Tissaphernes took no pains to aid his brother satrap, who on his side had made few preparations for defence. Accordingly Agesilaus, finding little or no resistance, took many towns and villages, and collected abundance of provisions, plunder, and slaves. Profiting by the guidance of the revolted Spithridates, and marching as little as possible over the plains, he carried on lucrative and unopposed incursions as far as the neighborhood of Daskylium, the residence of the satrap himself, near the Propontis. Near the satrapic residence, however, his small body of cavalry, ascending an eminence, came suddenly upon an equal detachment of Persian cavalry, under Rhathines and Bagæus; who attacked them vigorously, and drove them back with some loss, until they were protected by Agesilaus himself coming up with the hoplites. The effect of such a check (and there were probably others of the same kind, though Xenophon does not specify them) on the spirits of the army was discouraging. On the next morning, the sacrifices being found unfavorable for farther advance, Agesilaus gave orders for retreating towards the sea. He reached Ephesus about the close of autumn; resolved to employ the winter in organizing a more powerful cavalry, which experience proved to be indispensable.[484]

This autumnal march through Phrygia was more lucrative than glorious. Yet it enables Xenophon to bring to view different merits of his hero Agesilaus; in doing which he exhibits to us ancient warfare and Asiatic habits on a very painful side. In common both with Kallikratidas and Lysander, though not with the ordinary Spartan commanders, Agesilaus was indifferent to the acquisition of money for himself. But he was not the less anxious to enrich his friends, and would sometimes connive at unwarrantable modes of acquisition for their benefit. Deserters often came in to give information of rich prizes or valuable prisoners; which advantages, if he had chosen, he might have appropriated to himself. But he made it a practice to throw both the booty and the honor in the way of some favorite officer; just as we have seen (in a former chapter) that Xenophon himself was allowed by the army to capture Asidates and enjoy a large portion of his ransom.[485] Again, when the army in the course of its march was at a considerable distance from the sea, and appeared to be advancing farther inland, the authorized auctioneers, whose province it was to sell the booty, found the buyers extremely slack. It was difficult to keep or carry what was bought, and opportunity for resale did not seem at hand. Agesilaus, while he instructed the auctioneers to sell upon credit, without insisting on ready money,—at the same time gave private hints to a few friends that he was very shortly about to return to the sea. The friends thus warned, bidding for the plunder on credit and purchasing at low prices, were speedily enabled to dispose of it again at a seaport, with large profits.[486]

We are not surprised to hear that such lucrative graces procured for Agesilaus many warm admirers; though the eulogies of Xenophon ought to have been confined to another point in his conduct, now to be mentioned. Agesilaus, while securing for his army the plunder of the country over which he carried his victorious arms, took great pains to prevent both cruelty and destruction of property. When any town surrendered to him on terms, his exactions were neither ruinous nor grossly humiliating.[487] Amidst all the plunder realized, too, the most valuable portion was the adult natives of both sexes, hunted down and brought in by the predatory light troops of the army, to be sold as slaves. Agesilaus was vigilant in protecting these poor victims from ill-usage; inculcating upon his soldiers the duty, “not of punishing them like wrong-doers, but simply of keeping them under guard as men.[488]” It was the practice of the poorer part of the native population often to sell their little children for exportation to travelling slave-merchants, from inability to maintain them. The children thus purchased, if they promised to be handsome, were often mutilated, and fetched large prices as eunuchs, to supply the large demand for the harems and religious worship of many Asiatic towns. But in their haste to get out of the way of a plundering army, these slave-merchants were forced often to leave by the way-side the little children whom they had purchased, exposed to the wolves, the dogs, or starvation. In this wretched condition, they were found by Agesilaus on his march. His humane disposition prompted him to see them carried to a place of safety, where he gave them in charge of those old natives whom age and feebleness had caused to be left behind as not worth carrying off. By such active kindness, rare, indeed, in a Grecian general, towards the conquered, he earned the gratitude of the captives, and the sympathies of every one around.[489]

This interesting anecdote, imparting a glimpse of the ancient world in reference to details which Grecian historians rarely condescend to unveil, demonstrates the compassionate disposition of Agesilaus. We find in conjunction with it another anecdote, illustrating the Spartan side of his character. The prisoners who had been captured during the expedition were brought to Ephesus, and sold during the winter as slaves for the profit of the army. Agesilaus,—being then busily employed in training his troops to military efficiency, especially for the cavalry service during the ensuing campaign,—thought it advisable to impress them with contempt for the bodily capacity and prowess of the natives. He therefore directed the heralds who conducted the auction, to put the prisoners up to sale in a state of perfect nudity. To have the body thus exposed, was a thing never done, and even held disgraceful by the native Asiatics; while among the Greeks the practice was universal for purposes of exercise,—or at least, had become universal during the last two or three centuries,—for we are told that originally the Asiatic feeling on this point had prevailed throughout Greece. It was one of the obvious differences between Grecian and Asiatic customs,[490]—that in the former, both the exercises of the palæstra, as well as the matches in the solemn games, required competitors of every rank to contend naked. Agesilaus himself stripped thus habitually; Alexander, prince of Macedon, had done so, when he ran at the Olympic stadium,[491]—also the combatants out of the great family of the Diagorids of Rhodes, when they gained their victories in the Olympic pankratium,—and all those other noble pugilists, wrestlers, and runners, descended from gods and heroes, upon whom Pindar pours forth his complimentary odes.

On this occasion at Ephesus, Agesilaus gave special orders to put up the Asiatic prisoners to auction naked; not at all by way of insult, but in order to exhibit to the eye of the Greek soldier, as he contemplated them, how much he gained by his own bodily training and frequent exposure, and how inferior was the condition of men whose bodies never felt the sun or wind. They displayed a white skin, plump and soft limbs, weak and undeveloped muscles, like men accustomed to be borne in carriages instead of walking or running; from whence we indirectly learn that many of them were men in wealthy circumstances. And the purpose of Agesilaus was completely answered; since his soldiers, when they witnessed such evidences of bodily incompetence, thought that “the enemies against whom they had to contend were not more formidable than women.”[492] Such a method of illustrating the difference between good and bad physical training, would hardly have occurred to any one except a Spartan, brought up under the Lykurgean rules.

While Agesilaus thus brought home to the vision of his soldiers the inefficiency of untrained bodies, he kept them throughout the winter under hard work and drill, as well in the palæstra as in arms. A force of cavalry was still wanting. To procure it, he enrolled all the richest Greeks in the various Asiatic towns, as conscripts to serve on horseback; giving each of them leave to exempt himself, however, by providing a competent substitute and equipment,—man, horse, and arms.[493] Before the commencement of spring, an adequate force of cavalry was thus assembled at Ephesus, and put into tolerable exercise. Throughout the whole winter, that city became a place of arms, consecrated to drilling and gymnastic exercises. On parade as well as in the palæstra, Agesilaus himself was foremost in setting the example of obedience and hard work. Prizes were given to the diligent and improving among hoplites, horsemen, and light troops; while the armorers, braziers, leather-cutters, etc.,—all the various artisans, whose trade lay in muniments of war, were in the fullest employment. “It was a sight full of encouragement (says Xenophon, who was doubtless present and took part in it), to see Agesilaus and the soldiers leaving the gymnasium, all with wreaths on their heads, and marching to the temple of Artemis to dedicate their wreaths to the goddess.”[494]

Before Agesilaus was in condition to begin his military operations for the spring, the first year of his command had passed over. Thirty fresh counsellors reached Ephesus from Sparta, superseding the first thirty under Lysander, who forthwith returned home. The army was now not only more numerous, but better trained, and more systematically arranged than in the preceding campaign. Agesilaus distributed the various divisions under the command of different members of the new Thirty; the cavalry being assigned to Xenoklês, the Neodamode hoplites to Skythês, the Cyreians to Herippidas, the Asiatic contingents to Migdon. He then gave out that he should march straight against Sardis. Nevertheless, Tissaphernes, who was in that place, construing this proclamation as a feint, and believing that the real march would be directed against Karia, disposed his cavalry in the plain of the Mæander as he had done in the preceding campaign; while his infantry were sent still farther southward within the Karian frontier. On this occasion, however, Agesilaus marched as he had announced, in the direction of Sardis. For three days he plundered the country without seeing an enemy; nor was it until the fourth day that the cavalry of Tissaphernes could be summoned back to oppose him; the infantry being even yet at a distance. On reaching the banks of the river Paktôlus, this Persian cavalry found the Greek light troops dispersed for the purpose of plunder, attacked them by surprise, and drove them in with considerable loss. Presently, however, Agesilaus came up, and ordered his cavalry to charge, anxious to bring on a battle before the Persian infantry could arrive in the field. In efficiency, it appears, the Persian cavalry was a full match for his cavalry, and in number apparently superior. But when he brought up his infantry, and caused his peltasts and younger hoplites to join the cavalry in a vigorous attack,—victory soon declared on his side. The Persians were put to flight and many of them drowned in the Paktôlus. Their camp, too, was taken, with a valuable booty; including several camels, which Agesilaus afterwards took with him into Greece. This success ensured to him the unopposed mastery of all the territory around Sardis. He carried his ravages to the very gates of that city, plundering the gardens and ornamented ground, proclaiming liberty to those within, and defying Tissaphernes to come out and fight.[495]

The career of that timid and treacherous satrap now approached its close. The Persians in or near Sardis loudly complained of him as leaving them undefended, from cowardice and anxiety for his own residence in Karia; while the court of Susa was now aware that the powerful reinforcement which had been sent to him last year, intended to drive Agesilaus out of Asia, had been made to achieve absolutely nothing. To these grounds of just dissatisfaction was added a court intrigue; to which, and to the agency of a person yet more worthless and cruel than himself, Tissaphernes fell a victim. The queen mother, Parysatis, had never forgiven him for having been one of the principal agents in the defeat and death of her son Cyrus. Her influence being now reëstablished over the mind of Artaxerxes, she took advantage of the existing discredit of the satrap to get an order sent down for his deposition and death. Tithraustes, the bearer of this order, seized him by stratagem at Kolossæ in Phrygia, while he was in the bath, and caused him to be beheaded.[496]

The mission of Tithraustes to Asia Minor was accompanied by increased efforts on the part of Persia for prosecuting the war against Sparta with vigor, by sea as well as by land; and also for fomenting the anti-Spartan movement which burst out into hostilities this year in Greece. At first, however, immediately after the death of Tissaphernes, Tithraustes endeavored to open negotiations with Agesilaus, who was in military possession of the country around Sardis, while that city itself appears to have been occupied by Ariæus, probably the same Persian who had formerly been general under Cyrus, and who had now again revolted from Artaxerxes.[497] Tithraustes took credit to the justice of the king for having punished the late satrap; out of whose perfidy (he affirmed) the war had arisen. He then summoned Agesilaus, in the king’s name, to evacuate Asia, leaving the Asiatic Greeks to pay their original tribute to Persia, but to enjoy complete autonomy, subject to that one condition. Had this proposition been accepted and executed, it would have secured these Greeks against Persian occupation or governors; a much milder fate for them than that to which the Lacedæmonians had consented in their conventions with Tissaphernes sixteen years before,[498] and analogous to the position in which the Chalkidians of Thrace had been placed with regard to Athens, under the peace of Nikias;[499] subject to a fixed tribute, yet autonomous,—with no other obligation or interference. Agesilaus replied that he had no power to entertain such a proposition without the authorities at home, whom he accordingly sent to consult. But in the interim he was prevailed upon by Tithraustes to conclude an armistice for six months, and to move out of his satrapy into that of Pharnabazus; receiving a contribution of thirty talents towards the temporary maintenance of the army.[500] These satraps generally acted more like independent or even hostile princes, than coöperating colleagues; one of the many causes of the weakness of the Persian empire.

When Agesilaus had reached the neighborhood of Kymê, on his march northward to the Hellespontine Phrygia, he received a despatch from home, placing the Spartan naval force in the Asiatic seas under his command, as well as the land-force, and empowering him to name whomsoever he chose as acting admiral.[501] For the first time since the battle of Ægospotami, the maritime empire of Sparta was beginning to be threatened, and increased efforts on her part were becoming requisite. Pharnabazus, going up in person to the court of Artaxerxes, had by pressing representations obtained a large subsidy for fitting out a fleet in Cyprus and Phœnicia, to act under the Athenian admiral Konon against the Lacedæmonians.[502] That officer,—with a fleet of forty triremes, before the equipment of the remainder was yet complete,—had advanced along the southern coast of Asia Minor to Kaunus, at the south-western corner of the peninsula, on the frontier of Karia and Lykia. In this port he was besieged by the Lacedæmonian fleet of one hundred and twenty triremes under Pharax. But a Persian reinforcement strengthened the fleet of Konon to eighty sail, and put the place out of danger; so that Pharax, desisting from the siege, retired to Rhodes.

The neighborhood of Konon, however, who was now with his fleet of eighty sail near the Chersonesus of Knidus, emboldened the Rhodians to revolt from Sparta. It was at Rhodes that the general detestation of the Lacedæmonian empire, disgraced in so many different cities by the local dekarchies and by the Spartan harmosts, first manifested itself. And such was the ardor of the Rhodian population, that their revolt took place while the fleet of Pharax was (in part at least) actually in the harbor, and they drove him out of it.[503] Konon, whose secret encouragements had helped to excite this insurrection, presently sailed to Rhodes with his fleet, and made the island his main station. It threw into his hands an unexpected advantage; for a numerous fleet of vessels arrived there shortly afterwards, sent by Nephareus, the native king of Egypt (which was in revolt against the Persians), with marine stores and grain to the aid of the Lacedæmonians. Not having been apprized of the recent revolt, these vessels entered the harbor of Rhodes as if it were still a Lacedæmonian island; and their cargoes were thus appropriated by Konon and the Rhodians.[504]

In recounting the various revolts of the dependencies of Athens which took place during the Peloponnesian war, I had occasion to point out more than once that all of them took place not merely in the absence of any Athenian force, but even at the instigation (in most cases) of a present hostile force,—by the contrivance of a local party,—and without privity or previous consent of the bulk of the citizens. The present revolt of Rhodes, forming a remarkable contrast on all these points, occasioned the utmost surprise and indignation among the Lacedæmonians. They saw themselves about to enter upon a renewed maritime war, without that aid which they had reckoned on receiving from Egypt, and with aggravated uncertainty in respect to their dependencies and tribute. It was under this prospective anxiety that they took the step of nominating Agesilaus to the command of the fleet as well as of the army, in order to ensure unity of operations;[505] though a distinction of functions, which they had hitherto set great value upon maintaining, was thus broken down,—and, though the two commands had never been united in any king before Agesilaus.[506] Pharax, the previous admiral, was recalled.[507]

But the violent displeasure of the Lacedæmonians against the revolted Rhodians was still better attested by another proceeding. Among all the great families at Rhodes, none were more distinguished than the Diagoridæ. Its members were not only generals and high political functionaries in their native island, but had attained even Pan-hellenic celebrity by an unparalleled series of victories at the Olympic and other great solemnities. Dorieus, a member of this family, had gained the victory in the pankration at Olympia on three successive solemnities. He had obtained seven prizes in the Nemean, and eight in the Isthmian games. He had carried off the prize at one Pythian solemnity without a contest,—no one daring to stand up against him in the fearful struggle of the pankration. As a Rhodian, while Rhodes was a subject ally of Athens during the Peloponnesian war, he had been so pronounced in his attachment to Sparta as to draw on himself a sentence of banishment; upon which he had retired to Thurii, and had been active in hostility to Athens after the Syracusan catastrophe. Serving against her in ships fitted out at his own cost, he had been captured in 407 B.C. by the Athenians, and brought in as prisoner to Athens. By the received practice of war in that day, his life was forfeited; and over and above such practice, the name of Dorieus was peculiarly odious to the Athenians. But when they saw before the public assembly a captive enemy, of heroic lineage, as well as of unrivalled athletic majesty and renown, their previous hatred was so overpowered by sympathy and admiration, that they liberated him by public vote, and dismissed him unconditionally.[508]

This interesting anecdote, which has already been related in my eighth volume,[509] is here again noticed as a contrast to the treatment which the same Dorieus now underwent from the Lacedæmonians. What he had been doing since, we do not know; but at the time when Rhodes now revolted from Sparta, he was not only absent from the island, but actually in or near Peloponnesus. Such, however, was the wrath of the Lacedæmonians against Rhodians generally, that Dorieus was seized by their order, brought to Sparta, and there condemned and executed.[510] It seems hardly possible that he can have had any personal concern in the revolt. Had such been the fact, he would have been in the island,—or would at least have taken care not to be within the reach of the Lacedæmonians when the revolt happened. Perhaps, however, other members of the Diagoridæ, his family, once so much attached to Sparta, may have taken part in it; for we know, by the example of the Thirty at Athens, that the Lysandrian dekarchies and Spartan harmosts made themselves quite as formidable to oligarchical as to democratical politicians, and it is very conceivable that the Diagoridæ may have become less philo-Laconian in their politics.

This extreme difference in the treatment of the same man by Athens and by Sparta raises instructive reflections. It exhibits the difference both between Athenian and Spartan sentiment, and between the sentiment of a multitude and that of a few. The grand and sacred personality of the Hieronike Dorieus, when exhibited to the senses of the Athenian multitude,—the spectacle of a man in chains before them, who had been proclaimed victor and crowned on so many solemn occasions before the largest assemblages of Greeks ever brought together,—produced an overwhelming effect upon their emotions; sufficient not only to efface a strong preëstablished antipathy founded on active past hostility, but to countervail a just cause of revenge, speaking in the language of that day. But the same appearance produced no effect at all on the Spartan ephors and senate; not sufficient even to hinder them from putting Dorieus to death, though he had given them no cause for antipathy or revenge, simply as a sort of retribution for the revolt of the island. Now this difference depended partly upon the difference between the sentiment of Athenians and Spartans, but partly also upon the difference between the sentiment of a multitude and that of a few. Had Dorieus been brought before a select judicial tribunal at Athens, instead of before the Athenian public assembly,—or, had the case been discussed before the assembly in his absence,—he would have been probably condemned, conformably to usage, under the circumstances; but the vehement emotion worked by his presence upon the multitudinous spectators of the assembly, rendered such a course intolerable to them. It has been common with historians of Athens to dwell upon the passions of the public assembly as if it were susceptible of excitement only in an angry or vindictive direction; whereas, the truth is, and the example before us illustrates, that they were open-minded in one direction as well as in another, and that the present emotion, whatever it might be, merciful or sympathetic as well as resentful, was intensified by the mere fact of multitude. And thus, where the established rule of procedure happened to be cruel, there was some chance of moving an Athenian assembly to mitigate it in a particular case, though the Spartan ephors or senate would be inexorable in carrying it out,—if, indeed, they did not, as seems probable in the case of Dorieus, actually go beyond it in rigor.

While Konon and the Rhodians were thus raising hostilities against Sparta by sea, Agesilaus, on receiving at Kymê the news of his nomination to the double command, immediately despatched orders to the dependent maritime cities and islands, requiring the construction and equipment of new triremes. Such was the influence of Sparta, and so much did the local governments rest upon its continuance, that these requisitions were zealously obeyed. Many leading men incurred considerable expense, from desire to acquire his favor; so that a fleet of one hundred and twenty new triremes was ready by the ensuing year. Agesilaus, naming his brother-in-law, Peisander, to act as admiral, sent him to superintend the preparations; a brave young man, but destitute both of skill and experience.[511]

Meanwhile, he himself pursued his march (about the beginning of autumn) towards the satrapy of Pharnabazus,—Phrygia south and south-east of the Propontis. Under the active guidance of his new auxiliary, Spithridates, he plundered the country, capturing some towns, and reducing others to capitulate; with considerable advantage to his soldiers. Pharnabazus, having no sufficient army to hazard a battle in defence of his satrapy, concentrated all his force near his own residence at Daskylium, offering no opposition to the march of Agesilaus; who was induced by Spithridates to traverse Phrygia and enter Paphlagonia, in hopes of concluding an alliance with the Paphlagonian prince Otys. That prince, in nominal dependence on Persia, could muster the best cavalry in the Persian empire. But he had recently refused to obey an invitation from the court at Susa, and he now not only welcomed the appearance of Agesilaus, but concluded an alliance with him, strengthening him with an auxiliary body of cavalry and peltasts. Anxious to requite Spithridates for his services, and vehemently attached to his son, the beautiful youth Megabates,—Agesilaus persuaded Otys to marry the daughter of Spithridates. He even caused her to be conveyed by sea in a Lacedæmonian trireme,—probably from Abydos to Sinôpê.[512]

Reinforced by the Paphlagonian auxiliaries, Agesilaus prosecuted the war with augmented vigor against the satrapy of Pharnabazus. He now approached the neighborhood of Daskylium, the residence of the satrap himself, inherited from his father Pharnakês, who had been satrap before him. This was a well-supplied country, full of rich villages, embellished with parks and gardens for the satrap’s hunting and gratification: the sporting tastes of Xenophon lead him also to remark that there were plenty of birds for the fowler, with rivers full of fish.[513] In this agreeable region Agesilaus passed the winter. His soldiers, abundantly supplied with provisions, became so careless, and straggled with so much contempt of their enemy, that Pharnabazus, with a body of four hundred cavalry and two scythed chariots, found an opportunity of attacking seven hundred of them by surprise; driving them back with considerable loss, until Agesilaus came up to protect them with the hoplites.

This partial misfortune, however, was speedily avenged. Fearful of being surrounded and captured, Pharnabazus refrained from occupying any fixed position. He hovered about the country, carrying his valuable property along with him, and keeping his place of encampment as secret as he could. The watchful Spithridates, nevertheless, having obtained information that he was encamped for the night in the village of Kanê, about eighteen miles distant, Herippidas (one of the thirty Spartans) undertook a night-march with a detachment to surprise him. Two thousand Grecian hoplites, the like number of light-armed peltasts, and Spithridates with the Paphlagonian horse, were appointed to accompany him. Though many of these soldiers took advantage of the darkness to evade attendance, the enterprise proved completely successful. The camp of Pharnabazus was surprised at break of day; his Mysian advanced guards were put to the sword, and he himself, with all his troops, was compelled to take flight with scarcely any resistance. All his stores, plate, and personal furniture, together with a large baggage-train and abundance of prisoners, fell into the hands of the victors. As the Paphlagonians under Spithridates formed the cavalry of the victorious detachment, they naturally took more spoil and more prisoners than the infantry. They were proceeding to carry off their acquisitions, when Herippidas interfered and took everything away from them; placing the entire spoil of every description, under the charge of Grecian officers, to be sold by formal auction in a Grecian city; after which the proceeds were to be distributed or applied by public authority. The orders of Herippidas were conformable to the regular and systematic proceeding of Grecian officers; but Spithridates and the Paphlagonians were probably justified by Asiatic practice in appropriating that which they had themselves captured. Moreover, the order, disagreeable in itself, was enforced against them with Lacedæmonian harshness of manner,[514] unaccompanied by any guarantee that they would be allowed, even at last, a fair share of the proceeds. Resenting the conduct of Herippidas as combining injury with insult, they deserted in the night and fled to Sardis, where the Persian Ariæus was in actual revolt against the court of Susa. This was a serious loss, and still more serious chagrin, to Agesilaus. He was not only deprived of valuable auxiliary cavalry, and of an enterprizing Asiatic informant; but the report would be spread that he defrauded his Asiatic allies of their legitimate plunder, and others would thus be deterred from joining him. His personal sorrow too was aggravated by the departure of the youth Megabazus, who accompanied his father Spithridates to Sardis.[515]

It was towards the close of this winter that a personal conference took place between Agesilaus and Pharnabazus, managed by the intervention of a Greek of Kyzikus named Apollophanês; who was connected by ties of hospitality with both, and served to each as guarantee for the good faith of the other. We have from Xenophon, himself probably present, an interesting detail of this interview. Agesilaus, accompanied by his thirty Spartan counsellors, being the first to arrive at the place of appointment, all of them sat down upon the grass to wait. Presently came Pharnabazus, with splendid clothing and retinue. His attendants were beginning to spread fine carpets for him, when the satrap, observing how the Spartans were seated, felt ashamed of such a luxury for himself, and sat down on the grass by the side of Agesilaus. Having exchanged salutes, they next shook hands; after which Pharnabazus, who as the older of the two had been the first to tender his right hand, was also the first to open the conversation. Whether he spoke Greek well enough to dispense with the necessity of an interpreter, we are not informed. “Agesilaus (said he), I was the friend and ally of you Lacedæmonians while you were at war with Athens; I furnished you with money to strengthen your fleet, and fought with you myself ashore on horseback, chasing your enemies into the sea. You cannot charge me with having ever played you false, like Tissaphernes, either by word or deed. Yet, after this behavior, I am now reduced by you to such a condition, that I have not a dinner in my own territory, except by picking up your leavings, like the beasts of the field. I see the fine residences, parks, and hunting-grounds, bequeathed to me by my father, which formed the charm of my life, cut up or burnt down by you. Is this the conduct of men mindful of favors received, and eager to requite them? Pray answer me this question; for, perhaps, I have yet to learn what is holy and just.”

The thirty Spartan counsellors were covered with shame by this emphatic appeal. They all held their peace; while Agesilaus, after a long pause, at length replied,—“You are aware, Pharnabazus, that in Grecian cities, individuals become private friends and guests of each other. Such guests, if the cities to which they belong go to war, fight with each other, and sometimes by accident even kill each other, each in behalf of his respective city. So then it is that we, being at war with your king, are compelled to hold all his dominions as enemy’s land. But in regard to you, we would pay any price to become your friends. I do not invite you to accept us as masters, in place of your present master; I ask you to become our ally, and to enjoy your own property as a freeman—bowing before no man and acknowledging no master. Now freedom is in itself a possession of the highest value. But this is not all. We do not call upon you to be a freeman, and yet poor. We offer you our alliance, to acquire fresh territory, not for the king, but for yourself; by reducing those who are now your fellow-slaves to become your subjects. Now tell me,—if you thus continue a freeman and become rich, what can you want farther to make you a thoroughly prosperous man?”

“I will speak frankly to you in reply (said Pharnabazus). If the king shall send any other general, and put me under him, I shall willingly become your friend and ally. But if he imposes the duty of command on me, so strong is the point of honor, that I shall continue to make war upon you to the best of my power. Expect nothing else.”[516]

Agesilaus, struck with this answer, took his hand and said,—“Would that with such high-minded sentiments you could become our friend! At any rate, let me assure you of this,—that I will immediately quit your territory; and for the future, even should the war continue, I will respect both you and all your property, as long as I can turn my arms against any other Persians.”

Here the conversation closed; Pharnabazus mounted his horse, and rode away. His son by Parapita, however,—at that time still a handsome youth,—lingered behind, ran up to Agesilaus, and exclaimed,—“Agesilaus, I make you my guest.”—“I accept it with all my heart,”—was the answer. “Remember me by this,”—rejoined the young Persian,—putting into the hands of Agesilaus the fine javelin which he carried. The latter immediately took off the ornamental trappings from the horse of his secretary Idæus, and gave them as a return present; upon which the young man rode away with them, and rejoined his father.[517]

There is a touching interest and emphasis in this interview as described by Xenophon, who here breathes into his tame Hellenic chronicle something of the romantic spirit of the Cyropædia. The pledges exchanged between Agesilaus and the son of Pharnabazus were not forgotten by either. The latter,—being in after days impoverished and driven into exile by his brother, during the absence of Pharnabazus in Egypt,—was compelled to take refuge in Greece; where Agesilaus provided him with protection and a home, and even went so far as to employ influence in favor of an Athenian youth, to whom the son of Pharnabazus was attached. This Athenian youth had outgrown the age and size of the boy-runners in the Olympic stadium; nevertheless Agesilaus, by strenuous personal interference, overruled the reluctance of the Eleian judges, and prevailed upon them to admit him as a competitor with the other boys.[518] The stress laid by Xenophon upon this favor illustrates the tone of Grecian sentiment, and shows us the variety of objects which personal ascendency was used to compass. Disinterested in regard to himself, Agesilaus was unscrupulous both in promoting the encroachments, and screening the injustices, of his friends.[519] The unfair privilege which he procured for this youth, though a small thing in itself, could hardly fail to offend a crowd of spectators familiar with the established conditions of the stadium, and to expose the judges to severe censure.

Quitting the satrapy of Pharnabazus,—which was now pretty well exhausted, while the armistice concluded with Tithraustes must have expired,—Agesilaus took up his camp near the temple of Artemis, at Astyra in the plain of Thêbê (in the region commonly known as Æolis), near the Gulf of Elæus. He here employed himself in bringing together an increased number of troops, with a view to penetrate farther into the interior of Asia Minor during the summer. Recent events had greatly increased the belief entertained by the Asiatics in his superior strength; so that he received propositions from various districts in the interior, inviting his presence, and expressing anxiety to throw off the Persian yoke. He sought also to compose the dissensions and misrule which had arisen out of the Lysandrian dekarchies in the Greco-Asiatic cities, avoiding as much as possible sharp inflictions of death or exile. How much he achieved in this direction, we cannot tell,[520] nor can it have been possible, indeed, to achieve much, without dismissing the Spartan harmosts and lessening the political power of his own partisans; neither of which he did.

His plans were now all laid for penetrating farther than ever into the interior, and for permanent conquest, if possible, of the western portion of Persian Asia. What he would have permanently accomplished towards this scheme, cannot be determined; for his aggressive march was suspended by a summons home, the reason of which will appear in the next chapter.

Meanwhile, Pharnabazus had been called from his satrapy to go and take the command of the Persian fleet in Kilikia and the south of Asia Minor, in conjunction with Konon. Since the revolt of Rhodes from the Lacedæmonians, (in the summer of the preceding year, 395 B.C.) that active Athenian had achieved nothing. The burst of activity, produced by the first visit of Pharnabazus at the Persian court, had been paralyzed by the jealousies of the Persian commanders, reluctant to serve under a Greek,—by peculation of officers who embezzled the pay destined for the troops,—by mutiny in the fleet from absence of pay,—and by the many delays arising while the satraps, unwilling to spend their own revenues in the war, waited for orders and remittances from court.[521] Hence Konon had been unable to make any efficient use of his fleet, during those months when the Lacedæmonian fleet was increased to nearly double its former number. At length he resolved,—seemingly at the instigation of his countrymen at home[522] as well as of Euagoras prince of Salamis in Cyprus, and through the encouragement of Ktesias, one of the Grecian physicians resident at the Persian court,—on going himself into the interior to communicate personally with Artaxerxes. Landing on the Kilikian coast, he crossed by land to Thapsakus on the Euphrates (as the Cyreian army had marched), from whence he sailed down the river in a boat to Babylon. It appears that he did not see Artaxerxes, from repugnance to that ceremony of prostration which was required from all who approached the royal person. But his messages, transmitted through Ktesias and others,—with his confident engagement to put down the maritime empire of Sparta and counteract the projects of Agesilaus, if the Persian forces and money were put into efficient action,—produced a powerful effect on the mind of the monarch; who doubtless was not merely alarmed at the formidable position of Agesilaus in Asia Minor, but also hated the Lacedæmonians as main agents in the aggressive enterprise of Cyrus. Artaxerxes not only approved his views, but made to him a large grant of money, and transmitted peremptory orders to the coast that his officers should be active in prosecuting the maritime war.

What was of still greater moment, Konon was permitted to name any person whom he chose, as admiral jointly with himself. It was by his choice that Pharnabazus was called from his satrapy, and ordered to act jointly as commander of the fleet. This satrap, the bravest and most straightforward among all the Persian grandees, and just now smarting with resentment at the devastation of his satrapy[523] by Agesilaus, coöperated heartily with Konon. A powerful fleet, partly Phœnician, partly Athenian or Grecian, was soon equipped, superior in number even to the newly-organized Lacedæmonian fleet under Peisander.[524] Euagoras, prince of Salamis in Cyprus,[525] not only provided many triremes, but served himself, personally, on board.

It was about the month of July, 394 B.C., that Pharnabazus and Konon brought their united fleet to the south-western corner of Asia Minor; first, probably, to the friendly island of Rhodes, next, off Loryma[526] and the mountain called Dorion on the peninsula of Knidus.[527] Peisander, with the fleet of Sparta and her allies, sailed out from Knidus to meet them, and both parties prepared for a battle. The numbers of the Lacedæmonians are reported by Diodorus at eighty-five triremes; those of Konon and Pharnabazus at above ninety. But Xenophon, without particularizing the number on either side, seems to intimate the disparity as far greater; stating that the entire fleet of Peisander was considerably inferior even to the Grecian division under Konon, without reckoning the Phœnician ships under Pharnabazus.[528] In spite of such inferiority, Peisander did not shrink from the encounter. Though a young man without military skill, he possessed a full measure of Spartan courage and pride; moreover,—since the Spartan maritime empire was only maintained by the assumed superiority of his fleet,—had he confessed himself too weak to fight, his enemies would have gone unopposed around the islands to excite revolt. Accordingly, he sailed forth from the harbor of Knidus. But when the two fleets were ranged opposite to each other, and the battle was about to commence,—so manifest and alarming was the superiority of the Athenians and Persians, that his Asiatic allies on the left division, noway hearty in the cause, fled almost without striking a blow. Under such discouraging circumstances, he nevertheless led his fleet into action with the greatest valor. But his trireme was overwhelmed by numbers, broken in various places by the beaks of the enemy’s ships, and forced back upon the land, together with a large portion of his fleet. Many of the crews jumped out and got to land, abandoning their triremes to the conquerors. Peisander, too, might have escaped in the same way; but disdaining either to survive his defeat or to quit his ship, fell gallantly fighting aboard. The victory of Konon and Pharnabazus was complete. More than half of the Spartan ships were either captured or destroyed, though the neighborhood of the land enabled a large proportion of the crews to escape to Knidus, so that no great number of prisoners were taken.[529] Among the allies of Sparta, the chief loss of course fell upon those who were most attached to her cause; the disaffected or lukewarm were those who escaped by flight at the beginning.