Note 86 — Chapter LXXVI · FROM THE PEACE OF ANTALKIDAS DOWN TO THE SUBJUGATION OF OLYNTHUS BY SPARTA.

Diodorus indeed affirms, that this was really done, for a short time; that the cities which had before been dependent allies of Sparta were now emancipated and left to themselves; that a reaction immediately ensued against those dekarchies or oligarchies which had hitherto managed the cities in the interests of Sparta; that this reaction was so furious, as everywhere to kill, banish, or impoverish, the principal partisans of Spartan supremacy; and that the accumulated complaints and sufferings of these exiles drove the Spartans, after having “endured the peace like a heavy burthen” (ὥσπερ βαρὺ φόρτιον—xv, 5) for a few months, to shake it off, and to reëstablish by force their own supremacy as well as the government of their friends in all the various cities. In this statement there is nothing intrinsically improbable. After what we have heard of the dekarchies under Sparta, no extent of violence in the reaction against them is incredible, nor can we doubt that such reaction would carry with it some new injustice, along with much well-merited retribution. Hardly any but Athenian citizens were capable of the forbearance displayed by Athens both after the Four Hundred and after the Thirty. Nevertheless, I believe that Diodorus is here mistaken, and that he has assigned to the period immediately succeeding the peace of Antalkidas, those reactionary violences which took place in many cities about sixteen years subsequently, after the battle of Leuktra. For Xenophon, in recounting what happened after the peace of Antalkidas, mentions nothing about any real autonomy granted by Sparta to her various subject-allies, and subsequently revoked; which he would never have omitted to tell us, had the fact been so, because it would have supplied a plausible apology for the high-handed injustice of the Spartans, and would have thus lent aid to the current of partiality which manifests itself in his history.