Volume 10 — CHAPTER LXXVI. FROM THE PEACE OF ANTALKIDAS DOWN TO THE SUBJUGATION OF OLYNTHUS BY SPARTA.

The peace or convention[1] which bears the name of Antalkidas, was an incident of serious and mournful import in Grecian history. Its true character cannot be better described than in a brief remark and reply which we find cited in Plutarch. “Alas for Hellas (observed some one to Agesilaus) when we see our Laconians medising!”—“Nay (replied the Spartan king), say rather the Medes (Persians) laconising.”[2]

These two propositions do not exclude each other. Both were perfectly true. The convention emanated from a separate partnership between Spartan and Persian interests. It was solicited by the Spartan Antalkidas, and propounded by him to Tiribazus on the express ground, that it was exactly calculated to meet the Persian king’s purposes and wishes,—as we learn even from the philo-Laconian Xenophon.[3] While Sparta and Persia were both great gainers, no other Grecian state gained anything, as the convention was originally framed. But after the first rejection, Antalkidas saw the necessity of conciliating Athens by the addition of a special article providing that Lemnos, Imbros, and Skyros should be restored to her.[4] This addition seems to have been first made in the abortive negotiations which form the subject of the discourse already mentioned, pronounced by Andokides. It was continued afterwards and inserted in the final decree which Antalkidas and Tiribazus brought down in the king’s name from Susa; and it doubtless somewhat contributed to facilitate the adherence of Athens, though the united forces of Sparta and Persia had become so overwhelming, that she could hardly have had the means of standing out, even if the supplementary article had been omitted. Nevertheless, this condition undoubtedly did secure to Athens a certain share in the gain, conjointly with the far larger shares both of Sparta and Persia. It is, however, not less true, that Athens, as well as Thebes,[5] assented to the peace only under fear and compulsion. As to the other states of Greece, they were interested merely in the melancholy capacity of partners in the general loss and degradation.

That degradation stood evidently marked in the form, origin, and transmission, of the convention, even apart from its substance. It was a fiat issued from the court of Susa; as such it was ostentatiously proclaimed and “sent down” from thence to Greece. Its authority was derived from the king’s seal, and its sanction from his concluding threat, that he would make war against all recusants. It was brought down by the satrap Tiribazus (along with Antalkidas), read by him aloud, and heard with submission by the assembled Grecian envoys, after he had called their special attention to the regal seal.[6] Such was the convention which Sparta, the ancient president of the Grecian world had been the first to solicit at the hands of the Persian king, and which she now not only set the example of sanctioning by her own spontaneous obedience, but even avouched as guarantee and champion against all opponents; preparing to enforce it at the point of the sword against any recusant state, whether party to it or not. Such was the convention which was now inscribed on stone, and placed as a permanent record in the temples of the Grecian cities;[7] nay, even in the common sanctuaries,—the Olympic, Pythian, and others,—the great foci and rallying points of Pan-hellenic sentiment. Though called by the name of a convention, it was on the very face of it a peremptory mandate proceeding from the ancient enemy of Greece, an acceptance of which was nothing less than an act of obedience. While to him it was a glorious trophy, to all Pan-hellenic patriots it was the deepest disgrace and insult.[8] Effacing altogether the idea of an independent Hellenic world, bound together and regulated by the self-acting forces and common sympathies of its own members,—even the words of the convention proclaimed it as an act of intrusive foreign power, and erected the barbarian king into a dictatorial settler of Grecian differences; a guardian[9] who cared for the peace of Greece more than the Greeks themselves. And thus, looking to the form alone, it was tantamount to that symbol of submission—the cession of earth and water—which had been demanded a century before by the ancestor of Artaxerxes from the ancestors of the Spartans and Athenians; a demand, which both Sparta and Athens then not only repudiated, but resented so cruelly, as to put to death the heralds by whom it was brought,—stigmatizing the Æginetans and others as traitors to Hellas for complying with it.[10] Yet nothing more would have been implied in such cession than what stood embodied in the inscription on that “colonna infame,” which placed the peace of Antalkidas side by side with the Pan-hellenic glories and ornaments at Olympia.[11]

Great must have been the change wrought by the intermediate events, when Sparta, the ostensible president of Greece,—in her own estimation even more than in that of others,[12]—had so lost all Pan-hellenic conscience and dignity, as to descend into an obsequious minister, procuring and enforcing a Persian mandate for political objects of her own. How insane would such an anticipation have appeared to Æschylus, or the audience who heard the Persæ! to Herodotus or Thucydides! to Perikles and Archidamus! nay, even to Kallikratidas or Lysander! It was the last consummation of a series of previous political sins, invoking more and more the intervention of Persia to aid her against her Grecian enemies.

Her first application to the Great King for this purpose dates from the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, and is prefaced by an apology, little less than humiliating, from king Archidamus; who, not unconscious of the sort of treason which he was meditating, pleads that Sparta, when the Athenians are conspiring against her, ought not to be blamed for asking from foreigners as well as from Greeks aid for her own preservation.[13] From the earliest commencement to the seventh year of the war, many separate and successive envoys were despatched by the Spartans to Susa; two of whom were seized in Thrace, brought to Athens, and there put to death. The rest reached their destination, but talked in so confused a way, and contradicted each other so much, that the Persian court, unable to understand what they meant,[14] sent Artaphernes with letters to Sparta (in the seventh year of the war) complaining of such stupidity, and asking for clearer information. Artaphernes fell into the hands of an Athenian squadron at Eion on the Strymon, and was conveyed to Athens; where he was treated with great politeness, and sent back (after the letters which he carried had been examined) to Ephesus. What is more important to note is, that Athenian envoys were sent along with him, with a view of bringing Athens into friendly communication with the Great King; which was only prevented by the fact that Artaxerxes Longimanus just then died. Here we see the fatal practice, generated by intestine war, of invoking Persian aid; begun by Sparta as an importunate solicitor,—and partially imitated by Athens, though we do not know what her envoys were instructed to say, had they been able to reach Susa.

Nothing more is heard about Persian intervention until the year of the great Athenian disasters before Syracuse. Elate with the hopes arising out of that event, the Persians required no solicitation, but were quite as eager to tender interference for their own purposes, as Sparta was to invite them for hers. How ready Sparta was to purchase their aid by the surrender of the Asiatic Greeks, and that too without any stipulations in their favor,—has been recounted in my last volume.[15] She had not now the excuse,—for it stands only as an excuse and not as a justification—of self-defence against aggression from Athens, which Archidamus had produced at the beginning of the war. Even then it was only a colorable excuse, not borne out by the reality of the case; but now, the avowed as well as the real object was something quite different,—not to repel, but to crush, Athens. Yet to accomplish that object, not even of pretended safety, but of pure ambition, Sparta sacrificed unconditionally the liberty of her Asiatic kinsmen; a price which Archidamus at the beginning of the war would certainly never have endured the thoughts of paying, notwithstanding the then formidable power of Athens. Here, too, we find Athens following the example; and consenting, in hopes of procuring Persian aid, to the like sacrifice, though the bargain was never consummated. It is true that she was then contending for her existence. Nevertheless, the facts afford melancholy proof how much the sentiment of Pan-hellenic independence became enfeebled in both the leaders, amidst the fierce intestine conflict terminated by the battle of Ægospotami.[16]

After that battle, the bargain between Sparta and Persia would doubtless have been fulfilled, and the Asiatic Greeks would have passed at once under the dominion of the latter,—had not an entirely new train of circumstances arisen out of the very peculiar position and designs of Cyrus. That young prince did all in his power to gain the affections of the Greeks, as auxiliaries for his ambitious speculations; in which speculations both Sparta and the Asiatic Greeks took part, compromising themselves irrevocably against Artaxerxes, and still more against Tissaphernes. Sparta thus became unintentionally the enemy of Persia, and found herself compelled to protect the Asiatic Greeks against his hostility, with which they were threatened; a protection easy for her to confer, not merely from the unbounded empire which she then enjoyed over the Grecian world, but from the presence of the renowned Cyreian Ten Thousand, and the contempt for Persian military strength which they brought home from their retreat. She thus finds herself in the exercise of a Pan-hellenic protectorate or presidency, first through the ministry of Derkyllidas, next of Agesilaus, who even sacrifices at Aulis, takes up the sceptre of Agamemnon, and contemplates large schemes of aggression against the Great King. Here, however, the Persians play against her the same game which she had invoked them to assist in playing against Athens. Their fleet, which fifteen years before she had invited for her own purposes, is now brought in against herself, and with far more effect, since her empire was more odious as well as more oppressive than the Athenian. It is now Athens and her allies who call in Persian aid; without any direct engagement, indeed, to surrender the Asiatic Greeks, for we are told that after the battle of Knidus, Konon incurred the displeasure of the Persians by his supposed plans for reuniting them with Athens,[17] and Athenian aid was still continued to Evagoras,—yet, nevertheless, indirectly paving the way for that consummation. If Athens and her allies here render themselves culpable of an abnegation of Pan-hellenic sentiment, we may remark, as before, that they act under the pressure of stronger necessities than could ever be pleaded by Sparta; and that they might employ on their own behalf, with much greater truth, the excuse of self-preservation preferred by king Archidamus.

But never on any occasion did that excuse find less real place than in regard to the mission of Antalkidas. Sparta was at that time so powerful, even after the loss of her maritime empire, that the allies at the Isthmus of Corinth, jealous of each other and held together only by common terror, could hardly stand on the defensive against her, and would probably have been disunited by reasonable offers on her part; nor would she have needed even to recall Agesilaus from Asia. Nevertheless, the mission was probably dictated in great measure by a groundless panic, arising from the sight of the revived Long Walls and refortified Piræus, and springing at once to the fancy, that a new Athenian empire, such as had existed forty years before, was about to start into life; a fancy little likely to be realized, since the very peculiar circumstances which had created the first Athenian empire were now totally reversed. Debarred from maritime empire herself, the first object with Sparta was, to shut out Athens from the like; the next, to put down all partial federations or political combinations, and to enforce universal autonomy, or the maximum of political isolation; in order that there might nowhere exist a power capable of resisting herself, the strongest of all individual states. As a means to this end, which was no less in the interest of Persia than in hers, she outbid all prior subserviences to the Great King, betrayed to him not only one entire division of her Hellenic kinsmen, but also the general honor of the Hellenic name in the most flagrant manner,—and volunteered to medise in order that the Persians might repay her by laconising.[18] To ensure fully the obedience of all the satraps, who had more than once manifested dissentient views of their own, Antalkidas procured and brought down a formal order signed and sealed at Susa; and Sparta undertook, without shame or scruple, to enforce the same order,—“the convention sent down by the king,”—upon all her countrymen; thus converting them into the subjects, and herself into a sort of viceroy or satrap, of Artaxerxes. Such an act of treason to the Pan-hellenic cause was far more flagrant and destructive than that alleged confederacy with the Persian king, for which the Theban Ismenias was afterwards put to death, and that, too, by the Spartans themselves.[19] Unhappily it formed a precedent for the future, and was closely copied afterwards by Thebes;[20] foreboding but too clearly the short career which Grecian political independence had to run.

That large patriotic sentiment, which dictated the magnanimous answer sent by the Athenians[21] to the offers of Mardonius in 479 B.C., refusing in the midst of ruin present and prospective, all temptation to betray the sanctity of Pan-hellenic fellowship,—that sentiment which had been during the two following generations the predominant inspiration of Athens, and had also been powerful, though always less powerful, at Sparta,—was now, in the former, overlaid by more pressing apprehensions, and in the latter completely extinguished. Now it was to the leading states that Greece had to look, for holding up the great banner of Pan-hellenic independence; from the smaller states nothing more could be required than that they should adhere to and defend it, when upheld.[22] But so soon as Sparta was seen to solicit and enforce, and Athens to accept (even under constraint), the proclamation under the king’s hand and seal brought down by Antalkidas,—that banner was no longer a part of the public emblems of Grecian political life. The grand idea represented by it,—of collective self-determining Hellenism,—was left to dwell in the bosoms of individual patriots.

If we look at the convention of Antalkidas apart from its form and warranty, and with reference to its substance, we shall find that though its first article was unequivocally disgraceful, its last was at least popular as a promise to the ear. Universal autonomy, to each city, small or great, was dear to Grecian political instinct. I have already remarked more than once that the exaggerated force of this desire was the chief cause of the short duration of Grecian freedom. Absorbing all the powers of life to the separate parts, it left no vital force or integrity to the whole; especially, it robbed both each and all of the power of self-defence against foreign assailants. Though indispensable up to a certain point and under certain modifications, yet beyond these modifications, which Grecian political instinct was far from recognizing, it produced a great preponderance of mischief. Although, therefore, this item of the convention was in its promise acceptable and popular,—and although we shall find it hereafter invoked as a protection in various individual cases of injustice,—we must inquire how it was carried into execution, before we can pronounce whether it was good or evil, the present of a friend or of an enemy.

The succeeding pages will furnish an answer to this inquiry. The Lacedæmonians, as “presidents (guarantees or executors) of the peace, sent down by the king,”[23] undertook the duty of execution; and we shall see that from the beginning they meant nothing sincerely. They did not even attempt any sincere and steady compliance with the honest, though undistinguishing, political instinct of the Greek mind; much less did they seek to grant as much as was really good, and to withhold the remainder. They defined autonomy in such manner, and meted it out in such portions, as suited their own political interests and purposes. The promise made by the convention, except in so far as it enabled them to increase their own power by dismemberment or party intervention, proved altogether false and hollow. For if we look back to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when they sent to Athens to require general autonomy throughout Greece, we shall find that the word had then a distinct and serious import; demanding that the cities held in dependence by Athens should be left free, which freedom Sparta might have ensured for them herself at the close of the war, had she not preferred to convert it into a far harsher empire. But in 387 (the date of the peace of Antalkidas) there were no large body of subjects to be emancipated, except the allies of Sparta herself, to whom it was by no means intended to apply. So that in fact, what was promised, as well as what was realized, even by the most specious item of this disgraceful convention, was—“that cities should enjoy autonomy, not for their own comfort and in their own way, but for Lacedæmonian convenience;” a significant phrase (employed by Perikles,[24] in the debates preceding the Peloponnesian war) which forms a sort of running text for Grecian history during the sixteen years between the peace of Antalkidas and the battle of Leuktra.

I have already mentioned that the first two applications of the newly-proclaimed autonomy, made by the Lacedæmonians, were to extort from the Corinthian government the dismissal of its Argeian auxiliaries, and to compel Thebes to renounce her ancient presidency of the Bœotian federation. The latter especially was an object which they had long had at heart;[25] and by both, their ascendency in Greece was much increased. Athens, too, terrified by the new development of Persian force as well as partially bribed by the restoration of her three islands, into an acceptance of the peace,—was thus robbed of her Theban and Corinthian allies, and disabled from opposing the Spartan projects. But before we enter upon these projects, it will be convenient to turn for a short time to the proceedings of the Persians.

Even before the death of Darius Nothus (father of Artaxerxes and Cyrus) Egypt had revolted from the Persians, under a native prince named Amyrtæus. To the Grecian leaders who accompanied Cyrus in his expedition against his brother, this revolt was well known to have much incensed the Persians; so that Klearchus, in the conversation which took place after the death of Cyrus about accommodation with Artaxerxes, intimated that the Ten Thousand could lend him effectual aid in reconquering Egypt.[26] It was not merely these Greeks who were exposed to danger by the death of Cyrus, but also the various Persians and other subjects who had lent assistance to him; all of whom made submission and tried to conciliate Artaxerxes, except Tamos, who had commanded the fleet of Cyrus on the coasts both of Ionia and Kilikia. Such was the alarm of Tamos when Tissaphernes came down in full power to the coast, that he fled with his fleet and treasures to Egypt, to seek protection from king Psammetichus, to whom he had rendered valuable service. This traitor, however, having so valuable a deposit brought to him, forgot every thing else in his avidity to make it sure, and put to death Tamos with all his children.[27] About 395 B.C., we find Nephereus king of Egypt lending aid to the Lacedæmonian fleet against Artaxerxes.[28] Two years afterwards (392-390 B.C.), during the years immediately succeeding the victory of Knidus, and the voyage of Pharnabazus across the Ægean to Peloponnesus,—we hear of that satrap as employed with Abrokomas and Tithraustes in strenuous but unavailing efforts to reconquer Egypt.[29] Having thus repulsed the Persians, the Egyptian king Akoras is found between 390-380 B.C.,[30] sending aid to Evagoras in Cyprus against the same enemy. And in spite of farther efforts made afterwards by Artaxerxes to reconquer Egypt, the native kings in that country maintained their independence for about sixty years in all, until the reign of his successor Ochus.

But it was a Grecian enemy,—of means inferior, yet of qualities much superior, to any of these Egyptians,—who occupied the chief attention of the Persians immediately after the peace of Antalkidas: Evagoras, despot of Salamis in Cyprus. Respecting that prince we possess a discourse of the most glowing and superabundant eulogy, composed after his death for the satisfaction (and probably paid for with the money) of his son and successor Nikoklês, by the contemporary Isokrates. Allowing as we must do for exaggeration and partiality, even the trustworthy features of the picture are sufficiently interesting.

Evagoras belonged to a Salaminian stock or Gens called the Teukridæ, which numbered among its ancestors the splendid legendary names of Teukrus, Telamon, and Æakus; taking its departure, through them, from the divine name of Zeus. It was believed that the archer Teukrus, after returning from the siege of Troy to (the Athenian) Salamis, had emigrated under a harsh order from his father Telamon, and given commencement to the city of that name on the eastern coast of Cyprus.[31] As in Sicily, so in Cyprus, the Greek and Phœnician elements were found in near contact, though in very different proportions. Of the nine or ten separate city communities, which divided among them the whole sea-coast, the inferior towns being all dependent upon one or other of them,—seven pass for Hellenic, the two most considerable being Salamis and Soli; three for Phœnician,—Paphos, Amathus, and Kitium. Probably, however, there was in each a mixture of Greek and Phœnician population, in different proportions.[32] Each was ruled by its own separate prince or despot, Greek or Phœnician. The Greek immigrations (though their exact date cannot be assigned) appear to have been later in date than the Phœnician. At the time of the Ionic revolt (B.C. 496), the preponderance was on the side of Hellenism; yet with considerable intermixture of Oriental custom. Hellenism was, however, greatly crushed by the Persian reconquest of the revolters, accomplished through the aid of the Phœnicians[33] on the opposite continent. And though doubtless the victories of Kimon and the Athenians (470-450 B.C.) partially revived it, yet Perikles, in his pacification with the Persians, had prudently relinquished Cyprus as well as Egypt;[34] so that the Grecian element in the former, receiving little extraneous encouragement, became more and more subordinate to the Phœnician.

It was somewhere about this time that the reigning princes of Salamis, who at the time of the Ionic revolt had been Greeks of the Teukrid Gens,[35] were supplanted and dethroned by a Phœnician exile who gained their confidence and made himself despot in their place.[36] To insure his own sceptre, this usurper did everything in his power to multiply and strengthen the Phœnician population, as well as to discourage and degrade the Hellenic. The same policy was not only continued by his successor at Salamis, but seems also to have been imitated in several of the other towns; insomuch that during most part of the Peloponnesian war, Cyprus became sensibly dis-hellenized. The Greeks in the island were harshly oppressed; new Greek visitors and merchants were kept off by the most repulsive treatment, as well as by threats of those cruel mutilations of the body which were habitually employed as penalties by the Orientals; while Grecian arts, education, music, poetry, and intelligence, were rapidly on the decline.[37]

Notwithstanding such untoward circumstances, in which the youth of the Teukrid Evagoras at Salamis was passed, he manifested at an early age so much energy both of mind and body, and so much power of winning popularity, that he became at once a marked man both among Greeks and Phœnicians. It was about this time that the Phœnician despot was slain, through a conspiracy formed by a Kitian or Tyrian named Abdêmon, who got possession of his sceptre.[38] The usurper, mistrustful of his position, and anxious to lay hands upon all conspicuous persons who might be capable of doing him mischief, tried to seize Evagoras; but the latter escaped and passed over to Soli and Kilikia. Though thus to all appearance a helpless exile, he found means to strike a decisive blow, while the new usurpation, stained by its first violences and rapacity, was surrounded by enemies, doubters, or neutrals, without having yet established any firm footing. He crossed over from Soli in Kilikia, with a small but determined band of about fifty followers,—obtained secret admission by a postern gate of Salamis,—and assaulted Abdêmon by night in his palace. In spite of a vastly superior number of guards, this enterprise was conducted with such extraordinary daring and judgment, that Abdêmon perished, and Evagoras became despot in his place.[39]

The splendor of this exploit was quite sufficient to seat Evagoras unopposed on the throne, amidst a population always accustomed to princely government; while among the Salaminian Greeks he was still farther endeared by his Teukrid descent.[40] His conduct fully justified the expectations entertained. Not merely did he refrain from bloodshed, or spoliation, or violence for the gratification of personal appetite; abstinences remarkable enough in any Grecian despot to stamp his reign with letters of gold, and the more remarkable in Evagoras, since he had the susceptible temperament of a Greek, though his great mental force always kept it under due control.[41] But he was also careful in inquiring into, and strict in punishing crime, yet without those demonstrations of cruel infliction by which an Oriental prince displayed his energy.[42] His government was at the same time highly popular and conciliating, as well towards the multitude as towards individuals. Indefatigable in his own personal supervision, he examined everything for himself, shaped out his own line of policy, and kept watch over its execution.[43] He was foremost in all effort and in all danger. Maintaining undisturbed security, he gradually doubled the wealth, commerce, industry, and military force, of the city, while his own popularity and renown went on increasing.

Above all, it was his first wish to renovate, both in Salamis and in Cyprus, that Hellenism which the Phœnician despots of the last fifty years had done so much to extinguish or corrupt. For aid in this scheme, he seems to have turned his thoughts to Athens, with which city he was connected as a Teukrid, by gentile and legendary sympathies,—and which was then only just ceasing to be the great naval power of the Ægean. For though we cannot exactly make out the date at which Evagoras began to reign, we may conclude it to have been about 411 or 410 B.C. It seems to have been shortly after that period that he was visited by Andokides the Athenian;[44] moreover, he must have been a prince not merely established, but powerful, when he ventured to harbor Konon in 405 B.C., after the battle of Ægospotami. He invited to Salamis fresh immigrants from Attica and other parts of Greece, as the prince Philokyprus of Soli had done under the auspices of Solon,[45] a century and a half before. He took especial pains to revive and improve Grecian letters, arts, teaching, music, and intellectual tendencies. Such encouragement was so successfully administered, that in a few years, without constraint or violence, the face of Salamis was changed. The gentleness and sociability, the fashions and pursuits, of Hellenism, became again predominant; with great influence of example over all the other towns of the island.

Had the rise of Evagoras taken place a few years earlier, Athens might perhaps have availed herself of the opening to turn her ambition eastward, in preference to that disastrous impulse which led her westward to Sicily. But coming as he did only at that later moment when she was hard pressed to keep up even a defensive war, he profited rather by her weakness than by her strength. During those closing years of the war, when the Athenian empire was partially broken up, and when the Ægean, instead of the tranquillity which it had enjoyed for fifty years under Athens, became a scene of contest between two rival money-levying fleets,—many out-settlers from Athens, who had acquired property in the islands, the Chersonesus, or elsewhere, under her guarantee, found themselves insecure in every way, and were tempted to change their abodes. Finally, by the defeat of Ægospotami (B.C. 405), all such out-settlers as then remained were expelled, and forced to seek shelter either at Athens (at that moment the least attractive place in Greece), or in some other locality. To such persons, not less than to the Athenian admiral Konon with his small remnant of Athenian triremes saved out of the great defeat, the proclaimed invitations of Evagoras would present a harbor of refuge nowhere else to be found. Accordingly, we learn that numerous settlers of the best character, from different parts of Greece, crowded to Salamis.[46] Many Athenian women, during the years of destitution and suffering which preceded as well as followed the battle of Ægospotami, were well pleased to emigrate and find husbands in that city;[47] while throughout the wide range of the Lacedæmonian empire, the numerous victims exiled by the harmosts and dekarchies had no other retreat on the whole so safe and tempting. The extensive plain of Salamis afforded lands for many colonists. On what conditions, indeed, they were admitted, we do not know; but the conduct of Evagoras as a ruler, gave universal satisfaction.

During the first years of his reign, Evagoras doubtless paid his tribute regularly, and took no steps calculated to offend the Persian king. But as his power increased, his ambition increased also. We find him towards the year 390 B.C., engaged in a struggle not merely with the Persian king, but with Amathus and Kitium in his own island, and with the great Phœnician cities on the mainland. By what steps, or at what precise period, this war began, we cannot determine. At the time of the battle of Knidus (394 B.C.) Evagoras had not only paid his tribute, but was mainly instrumental in getting the Persian fleet placed under Konon to act against the Lacedæmonians, himself serving aboard.[48] It was in fact (if we may believe Isokrates) to the extraordinary energy, ability, and power, displayed by him on that occasion in the service of Artaxerxes himself, that the jealousy and alarm of the latter against him are to be ascribed. Without any provocation, and at the very moment when he was profiting by the zealous services of Evagoras, the Great King treacherously began to manœuvre against him, and forced him into the war in self-defence.[49] Evagoras accepted the challenge, in spite of the disparity of strength, with such courage and efficiency, that he at first gained marked successes. Seconded by his son Pnytagoras, he not only worsted and humbled Amathus, Kitium, and Soli, which cities, under the prince Agyris, adhered to Artaxerxes,—but also equipped a large fleet, attacked the Phœnicians on the mainland with so much vigor as even to take the great city of Tyre; prevailing, moreover, upon some of the Kilikian towns to declare against the Persians.[50] He received powerful aid from Akoris, the native and independent king in Egypt, as well as from Chabrias and the force sent out by the Athenians.[51] Beginning apparently about 390 B.C., the war against Evagoras lasted something more than ten years, costing the Persians great efforts and an immense expenditure of money. Twice did Athens send a squadron to his assistance, from gratitude for his long protection to Konon and his energetic efforts before and in the battle of Knidus,—though she thereby ran every risk of making the Persians her enemies.

The satrap Tiribazus saw that so long as he had on his hands a war in Greece, it was impossible for him to concentrate his force against the prince of Salamis and the Egyptians. Hence, in part, the extraordinary effort made by the Persians to dictate, in conjunction with Sparta, the peace of Antalkidas, and to get together such a fleet in Ionia as should overawe Athens and Thebes into submission. It was one of the conditions of that peace that Evagoras should be abandoned;[52] the whole island of Cyprus being acknowledged as belonging to the Persian king. Though thus cut off from Athens, and reduced to no other Grecian aid than such mercenaries as he could pay, Evagoras was still assisted by Akoris of Egypt, and even by Hekatomnus prince of Karia with a secret present of money.[53] But the peace of Antalkidas being now executed in Asia, the Persian satraps were completely masters of the Grecian cities on the Asiatic sea-board, and were enabled to convey round to Kilikia and Cyprus not only their whole fleet from Ionia, but also additional contingents from these very Grecian cities. A large portion of the Persian force acting against Cyprus was thus Greek, yet seemingly acting by constraint, neither well paid nor well used,[54] and therefore not very efficient.

The satraps Tiribazus and Orontes commanded the land force, a large portion of which was transported across to Cyprus; the admiral Gaos was at the head of the fleet, which held its station at Kitium in the south of the island. It was here that Evagoras, having previously gained a battle on land, attacked them. By extraordinary efforts he had got together a fleet of two hundred triremes, nearly equal in number to theirs; but after a hard-fought contest, in which he at first seemed likely to be victorious, he underwent a complete naval defeat, which disqualified him from keeping the sea, and enabled the Persians to block up Salamis as well by sea as by land.[55] Though thus reduced to his own single city, however, Evagoras defended himself with unshaken resolution, still sustained by aid from Akoris in Egypt; while Tyre and several towns in Kilikia also continued in revolt against Artaxerxes; so that the efforts of the Persians were distracted, and the war was not concluded until ten years after its commencement.[56] It cost them on the whole (if we may believe Isokrates)[57] fifteen thousand talents in money, and such severe losses in men, that Tiribazus acceded to the propositions of Evagoras for peace, consenting to leave him in full possession of Salamis, under payment of a stipulated tribute, “like a slave to his master.” These last words were required by the satrap to be literally inserted in the convention; but Evagoras peremptorily refused his consent, demanding that the tribute should be recognized as paid by “one king to another.” Rather than concede this point of honor, he even broke off the negotiation, and resolved again to defend himself to the uttermost. He was rescued, after the siege had been yet farther prolonged, by a dispute which broke out between the two commanders of the Persian army. Orontes, accusing Tiribazus of projected treason and rebellion against the king, in conjunction with Sparta, caused him to be sent for as prisoner to Susa, and thus became sole commander. But as the besieging army was already wearied out by the obstinate resistance of Salamis, he consented to grant the capitulation, stipulating only for the tribute, and exchanging the offensive phrase enforced by Tiribazus, for the amendment of the other side.[58]

It was thus that Evagoras was relieved from his besieging enemies, and continued for the remainder of his life as tributary prince of Salamis under the Persians. He was no farther engaged in war, nor was his general popularity among the Salaminians diminished by the hardships which they had gone through along with him.[59] His prudence calmed the rankling antipathy of the Great King, who would gladly have found a pretext for breaking the treaty. His children were numerous, and lived in harmony as well with him as with each other. Isokrates specially notices this fact, standing as it did in marked contrast with the family-relations of most of the Grecian despots, usually stained with jealousies, antipathies, and conflict, often with actual bloodshed.[60] But he omits to notice the incident whereby Evagoras perished; an incident not in keeping with that superhuman good fortune and favor from the gods, of which the Panegyrical Oration boasts as having been vouchsafed to the hero throughout his life.[61] It was seemingly not very long after the peace, that a Salaminian named Nikokreon formed a conspiracy against his life and dominion, but was detected, by a singular accident, before the moment of execution, and forced to seek safety in flight. He left behind him a youthful daughter in his harem, under the care of an eunuch (a Greek, born in Elis) named Thrasydæus; who, full of vindictive sympathy in his master’s cause, made known the beauty of the young lady both to Evagoras himself and to Pnytagoras, the most distinguished of his sons, partner in the gallant defence of Salamis against the Persians. Both of them were tempted, each unknown to the other, to make a secret assignation for being conducted to her chamber by the eunuch; both of them were there assassinated by his hand.[62]

Thus perished a Greek of preëminent vigor and intelligence, remarkably free from the vices usual in Grecian despots, and forming a strong contrast in this respect with his contemporary Dionysius, whose military energy is so deeply stained by crime and violence. Nikoklês, the son of Evagoras, reigned at Salamis after him, and showed much regard, accompanied by munificent presents, to the Athenian Isokrates; who compliments him as a pacific and well-disposed prince, attached to Greek pursuits and arts, conversant by personal study with Greek philosophy, and above all, copying his father in that just dealing and absence of wrong towards person or property, which had so much promoted the comfort as well as the prosperity of the city.[63]

We now revert from the episode respecting Evagoras,—interesting not less from the eminent qualities of that prince than from the glimpse of Hellenism struggling with the Phœnician element in Cyprus,—to the general consequences of the peace of Antalkidas in Central Greece. For the first time since the battle of Mykalê in 479 B.C., the Persians were now really masters of all the Greeks on the Asiatic coast. The satraps lost no time in confirming their dominion. In all the cities which they suspected, they built citadels and planted permanent garrisons. In some cases, their mistrust or displeasure was carried so far as to raze the town altogether.[64] And thus these cities, having already once changed their position greatly for the worse, by passing from easy subjection under Athens to the harsh rule of Lacedæmonian harmosts and native decemvirs,—were now transferred to masters yet more oppressive and more completely without the pale of Hellenic sympathy. Both in public extortion, and in wrong doing towards individuals, the commandant and his mercenaries, whom the satrap maintained, were probably more rapacious, and certainly more unrestrained, than even the harmosts of Sparta. Moreover, the Persian grandees required beautiful boys as eunuchs for their service, and beautiful women as inmates of their harems.[65] What was taken for their convenience admitted neither of recovery nor redress; and Grecian women, if not more beautiful than many of the native Asiatics, were at least more intelligent, lively, and seductive,—as we may read in the history of that Phokæan lady, the companion of Cyrus, who was taken captive at Kunaxa. Moreover, these Asiatic Greeks, when passing into the hands of Oriental masters, came under the maxims and sentiment of Orientals, respecting the infliction of pain or torture,—maxims not only more cruel than those of the Greeks, but also making little distinction between freemen and slaves.[66] The difference between the Greeks and Phœnicians in Cyprus, on this point, has been just noticed; and doubtless the difference between Greeks and Persians was still more marked. While the Asiatic Greeks were thus made over by Sparta and the Perso-Spartan convention of Antalkidas, to a condition in every respect worse, they were at the same time thrown in, as reluctant auxiliaries, to strengthen the hands of the Great King against other Greeks,—against Evagoras in Cyprus,—and above all, against the islands adjoining the coast of Asia,—Chios, Samos, Rhodes, etc.[67] These islands were now exposed to the same hazard, from their overwhelming Persian neighbors, as that from which they had been rescued nearly a century before by the Confederacy of Delos, and by the Athenian empire into which that Confederacy was transformed. All the tutelary combination that the genius, the energy, and the Pan-hellenic ardor, of Athens had first organized, and so long kept up,—was now broken up; while Sparta, to whom its extinction was owing, in surrendering the Asiatic Greeks, had destroyed the security even of the islanders.

It soon appeared, however, how much Sparta herself had gained by this surrender in respect to dominion nearer home. The government of Corinth,—wrested from the party friendly to Argos, deprived of Argeian auxiliaries, and now in the hands of the restored Corinthian exiles who were the most devoted partisans of Sparta,—looked to her for support, and made her mistress of the Isthmus, either for offence or for defence. She thus gained the means of free action against Thebes, the enemy upon whom her attention was first directed. Thebes was now the object of Spartan antipathy, not less than Athens had formerly been; especially on the part of King Agesilaus, who had to avenge the insult offered to himself at the sacrifice near Aulis, as well as the strenuous resistance on the field of Koroneia. He was at the zenith of his political influence; so that his intense miso-Theban sentiment made Sparta, now becoming aggressive on all sides, doubly aggressive against Thebes. More prudent Spartans, like Antalkidas, warned him[68] that his persevering hostility would ultimately kindle in the Thebans a fatal energy of military resistance and organization. But the warning was despised until it was too fully realized in the development of the great military genius of Epaminondas, and in the defeat of Leuktra.

I have already mentioned that in the solemnity of exchanging oaths to the peace of Antalkidas, the Thebans had hesitated at first to recognize the autonomy of the other Bœotian cities; upon which Agesilaus had manifested a fierce impatience to exclude them from the treaty, and attack them single-handed.[69] Their timely accession balked him in this impulse; but it enabled him to enter upon a series of measures highly humiliating to the dignity as well as to the power of Thebes. All the Bœotian cities were now proclaimed autonomous under the convention. As solicitor, guarantee, and interpreter, of that convention, Sparta either had, or professed to have, the right of guarding their autonomy against dangers, actual or contingent, from their previous Vorort or presiding city. For this purpose she availed herself of this moment of change to organize in each of them a local oligarchy, composed of partisans adverse to Thebes as well as devoted to herself, and upheld in case of need by a Spartan harmost and garrison.[70] Such an internal revolution grew almost naturally out of the situation; since the previous leaders, and the predominant sentiment in most of the towns, seem to have been favorable to Bœotian unity, and to the continued presidency of Thebes. These leaders would therefore find themselves hampered, intimidated, and disqualified, under the new system, while those who had before been an opposition minority would come forward with a bold and decided policy, like Kritias and Theramenes at Athens after the surrender of the city to Lysander. The new leaders doubtless would rather invite than repel the establishment of a Spartan harmost in their town, as a security to themselves against resistance from their own citizens as well as against attacks from Thebes, and as a means of placing them under the assured conditions of a Lysandrian dekarchy. Though most of the Bœotian cities were thus, on the whole, favorable to Thebes,—and though Sparta thrust upon them the boon, which she called autonomy, from motives of her own, and not from their solicitation,—yet, Orchomenus and Thespiæ, over whom the presidency of Thebes appears to have been harshly exercised, were adverse to her, and favorable to the Spartan alliance.[71] These two cities were strongly garrisoned by Sparta, and formed her main stations in Bœotia.[72]

The presence of such garrisons, one on each side of Thebes,—the discontinuance of the Bœotarchs, with the breaking up of all symbols and proceedings of the Bœotian federation,—and the establishment of oligarchies devoted to Sparta in the other cities,—was doubtless a deep wound to the pride of the Thebans. But there was another wound still deeper, and this the Lacedæmonians forthwith proceeded to inflict,—the restoration of Platæa.

A melancholy interest attaches both to the locality of this town, as one of the brightest scenes of Grecian glory,—and to its brave and faithful population, victims of an exposed position combined with numerical feebleness. Especially, we follow with a sort of repugnance the capricious turns of policy which dictated the Spartan behavior towards them. One hundred and twenty years before, the Platæans had thrown themselves upon Sparta, to entreat her protection against Thebes. The Spartan king Kleomenes had then declined the obligation as too distant, and had recommended them to ally themselves with Athens.[73] This recommendation, though dictated chiefly by a wish to raise contention between Athens and Thebes, was complied with; and the alliance, severing Platæa altogether from the Bœotian confederacy, turned out both advantageous and honorable to her until the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. At that time, it suited the policy of the Spartans to uphold and strengthen in every way the supremacy of Thebes over the Bœotian cities; it was altogether by Spartan intervention, indeed, that the power of Thebes was reëstablished, after the great prostration as well as disgrace which she had undergone, as traitor to Hellas and zealous in the service of Mardonius.[74] Athens, on the other hand, was at that time doing her best to break up the Bœotian federation, and to enrol its various cities as her allies; in which project, though doubtless suggested by and conducive to her own ambition, she was at that time (460-445 B.C.) perfectly justifiable on Pan-hellenic grounds; seeing that Thebes as their former chief had so recently enlisted them all in the service of Xerxes, and might be expected to do the same again if a second Persian invasion should be attempted. Though for a time successful, Athens was expelled from Bœotia by the defeat of Korôneia; and at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, the whole Bœotian federation (except Platæa, was united under Thebes, in bitter hostility against her. The first blow of the war, even prior to any declaration, was struck by Thebes in her abortive nocturnal attempt to surprise Platæa. In the third year of the war, king Archidamus, at the head of the full Lacedæmonian force, laid siege to the latter town; which, after an heroic defence and a long blockade, at length surrendered under the extreme pressure of famine; yet not before one half its brave defenders had forced their way out over the blockading wall, and escaped to Athens, where all the Platæan old men, women, and children, had been safely lodged before the siege. By a cruel act which stands among the capital iniquities of Grecian warfare, the Lacedæmonians had put to death all the Platæan captives, two hundred in number, who fell into their hands; the town of Platæa had been razed, and its whole territory, joined to Thebes, had remained ever since cultivated on Theban account.[75] The surviving Platæans had been dealt with kindly and hospitably by the Athenians. A qualified right of citizenship was conceded to them at Athens, and when Skionê was recaptured in 420 B.C., that town (vacant by the slaughter of its captive citizens) was handed over to the Platæans as a residence.[76] Compelled to evacuate Skionê, they were obliged at the close of the Peloponnesian war,[77] to return to Athens, where the remainder of them were residing at the time of the peace of Antalkidas; little dreaming that those who had destroyed their town and their fathers forty years before, would now turn round and restore it.[78]

Such restoration, whatever might be the ostensible grounds on which the Spartans pretended to rest it, was not really undertaken either to carry out the convention of Antalkidas, which guaranteed only the autonomy of existing towns,—or to repair previous injustice, since the prior destruction had been the deliberate act of themselves, and of King Archidamus the father of Agesilaus,—but simply as a step conducive to the present political views of Sparta. And towards this object it was skilfully devised. It weakened the Thebans, not only by wresting from them what had been, for about forty years, a part of their territory and property; but also by establishing upon it a permanent stronghold in the occupation of their bitter enemies, assisted by a Spartan garrison. It furnished an additional station for such a garrison in Bœotia, with the full consent of the newly-established inhabitants. And more than all, it introduced a subject of contention between Athens and Thebes, calculated to prevent the two from hearty coöperation afterwards against Sparta. As the sympathy of the Platæans with Athens was no less ancient and cordial than their antipathy against Thebes, we may probably conclude that the restoration of the town was an act acceptable to the Athenians; at least, at first, until they saw the use made of it, and the position which Sparta came to occupy in reference to Greece generally. Many of the Platæans, during their residence at Athens, had intermarried with Athenian women,[79] who now, probably, accompanied their husbands to the restored little town on the north of Kithæron, near the southern bank of the river Asôpus.

Had the Platæans been restored to a real and honorable autonomy, such as they enjoyed in alliance with Athens before the Peloponnesian war, we should have cordially sympathized with the event. But the sequel will prove—and their own subsequent statement emphatically sets forth—that they were a mere dependency of Sparta, and an outpost of Spartan operations against Thebes.[80] They were a part of the great revolution which the Spartans now brought about in Bœotia; whereby Thebes was degraded from the president of a federation into an isolated autonomous city, while the other Bœotian cities, who had been before members of the federation, were elevated each for itself into the like autonomy; or rather (to substitute the real truth[81] in place of Spartan professions) they became enrolled and sworn in as dependent allies of Sparta, under oligarchical factions devoted to her purposes and resting upon her for support. That the Thebans should submit to such a revolution, and, above all, to the sight of Platæa as an independent neighbor with a territory abstracted from themselves,—proves how much they felt their own weakness, and how irresistible at this moment was the ascendency of their great enemy, in perverting to her own ambition the popular lure of universal autonomy held out by the peace of Antalkidas. Though compelled to acquiesce, the Thebans waited in hopes of some turn of fortune which would enable them to reörganize the Bœotian federation; while their hostile sentiment towards Sparta was not the less bitter for being suppressed. Sparta on her part kept constant watch to prevent the reunion of Bœotia;[82] an object in which she was for a time completely successful, and was even enabled, beyond her hopes, to become possessed of Thebes itself,[83] through a party of traitors within,—as will presently appear.

In these measures regarding Bœotia, we recognize the vigorous hand, and the miso-Theban spirit, of Agesilaus. He was at this time the great director of Spartan foreign policy, though opposed by his more just and moderate colleague king Agesipolis,[84] as well as by a section of the leading Spartans, who reproached Agesilaus with his project of ruling Greece by means of subservient local despots or oligarchies in the various cities,[85] and who contended that the autonomy promised by the peace of Antalkidas ought to be left to develop itself freely, without any coërcive intervention on the part of Sparta.[86]

Far from any wish thus to realize the terms of peace which they had themselves imposed, the Lacedæmonians took advantage of an early moment after becoming free from their enemies in Bœotia and Corinth, to strain their authority over their allies beyond its previous limits. Passing in review[87] the conduct of each during the war, they resolved to make an example of the city of Mantinea. Some acts, not of positive hostility, but of equivocal fidelity, were imputed to the Mantineans. They were accused of having been slack in performance of their military obligations, sometimes even to the length of withholding their contingent altogether, under pretence of a season of religious truce; of furnishing corn in time of war to the hostile Argeians; and of plainly manifesting their disaffected feeling towards Sparta,—chagrin at every success which she obtained,—satisfaction, when she chanced to experience a reverse.[88] The Spartan ephors now sent an envoy to Mantinea, denouncing all such past behavior, and peremptorily requiring that the walls of the city should be demolished, as the only security for future penitence and amendment. As compliance was refused, they despatched an army, summoning the allied contingents generally for the purpose of enforcing the sentence. They intrusted the command to king Agesipolis, since Agesilaus excused himself from the duty, on the ground that the Mantineans had rendered material service to his father Archidamus in the dangerous Messenian war which had beset Sparta during the early part of his reign.[89]

Having first attempted to intimidate the Mantineans by ravaging their lands, Agesipolis commenced the work of blockade by digging a ditch around the town; half of his soldiers being kept on guard, while the rest worked with the spade. The ditch being completed, he prepared to erect a wall of circumvallation. But being apprised that the preceding harvest had been so good, as to leave a large stock of provision in the town, and to render the process of starving it out tedious both for Sparta and for her allies,—he tried a more rapid method of accomplishing his object. As the river Ophis, of considerable breadth for a Grecian stream, passed through the middle of the town, he dammed up its efflux on the lower side;[90] thus causing it to inundate the interior of the city and threaten the stability of the walls; which seem to have been of no great height, and built of sun-burnt bricks. Disappointed in their application to Athens for aid,[91] and unable to provide extraneous support for their tottering towers, the Mantineans were compelled to solicit a capitulation. But Agesipolis now refused to grant the request, except on condition that not only the fortifications of their city, but the city itself, should be in great part demolished; and that the inhabitants should be re-distributed into those five villages, which had been brought together, many years before, to form the aggregate city of Mantinea. To this also the Mantineans were obliged to submit, and the capitulation was ratified.

Though nothing was said in the terms of it about the chiefs of the Mantinean democratical government, yet these latter, conscious that they were detested both by their own oligarchical opposition and by the Lacedæmonians, accounted themselves certain of being put to death. And such would assuredly have been their fate, had not Pausanias (the late king of Sparta, now in exile at Tegea), whose good opinion they had always enjoyed, obtained as a personal favor from his son Agesipolis the lives of the most obnoxious, sixty in number, on condition that they should depart into exile. Agesipolis had much difficulty in accomplishing the wishes of his father. His Lacedæmonian soldiers were ranged in arms on both sides of the gate by which the obnoxious men went out; and Xenophon notices it as a signal mark of Lacedæmonian discipline, that they could keep their spears unemployed when disarmed enemies were thus within their reach; especially as the oligarchical Mantineans manifested the most murderous propensities, and were exceedingly difficult to control.[92] As at Peiræus before, so here at Mantinea again,—the liberal, but unfortunate, king Pausanias is found interfering in the character of mediator to soften the ferocity of political antipathies.

The city of Mantinea was now broken up, and the inhabitants were distributed again into the five constituent villages. Out of four-fifths of the population, each man pulled down his house in the city, and rebuilt it in the village near to which his property lay. The remaining fifth continued to occupy Mantinea as a village. Each village was placed under oligarchical government, and left unfortified. Though at first (says Xenophon) the change proved troublesome and odious, yet presently, when men found themselves resident upon their landed properties,—and still more, when they felt themselves delivered from the vexatious demagogues,—the new situation became more popular than the old. The Lacedæmonians were still better satisfied. Instead of one city of Mantinea, five distinct Arcadian villages now stood enrolled in their catalogue of allies. They assigned to each a separate xenâgus (Spartan officer destined to the command of each allied contingent), and the military service of all was henceforward performed with the utmost regularity.[93]

Such was the dissection or cutting into parts of the ancient city Mantinea; one of the most odious acts of high-handed Spartan despotism. Its true character is veiled by the partiality of the historian, who recounts it with a confident assurance, that after the trouble of moving was over, the population felt themselves decidedly bettered by the change. Such an assurance is only to be credited, on the ground that, being captives under the Grecian laws of war, they may have been thankful to escape the more terrible liabilities of death or personal slavery, at the price of forfeiting their civic community. That their feelings towards the change were those of genuine aversion, is shown by their subsequent conduct after the battle of Leuktra. As soon as the fear of Sparta was removed, they flocked together, with unanimous impulse, to reconstitute and refortify their dismantled city.[94] It would have been strange indeed had the fact been otherwise; for attachment to a civic community was the strongest political instinct of the Greek mind. The citizen of a town was averse—often most unhappily averse—to compromise the separate and autonomous working of his community by joining in any larger political combination, however equitably framed, and however it might promise on the whole an increase of Hellenic dignity. But still more vehemently did he shrink from the idea of breaking up his town into separate villages, and exchanging the character of a citizen for that of a villager, which was nothing less than great social degradation, in the eyes of Greeks generally, Spartans not excepted.[95]

In truth the sentence executed by the Spartans against Mantinea was in point of dishonor, as well as of privation, one of the severest which could be inflicted on free Greeks. All the distinctive glory and superiority of Hellenism,—all the intellectual and artistic manifestations,—all that there was of literature and philosophy, or of refined and rational sociality,—depended upon the city-life of the people. And the influence of Sparta, during the period of her empire, was peculiarly mischievous and retrograde, as tending not only to decompose the federations such as Bœotia into isolated towns, but even to decompose suspected towns such as Mantinea into villages; all for the purpose of rendering each of them exclusively dependent upon herself. Athens, during her period of empire, had exercised no such disuniting influence; still less Thebes, whom we shall hereafter find coming forward actively to found the new and great cities of Megalopolis and Messênê. The imperial tendencies of Sparta are worse than those of either Athens or Thebes; including less of improving or Pan-hellenic sympathies, and leaning the most systematically upon subservient factions in each subordinate city. In the very treatment of Mantinea just recounted, it is clear that the attack of Sparta was welcomed at least, if not originally invited, by the oligarchical party of the place, who sought to grasp the power into their own hands and to massacre their political opponents. In the first object they completely succeeded, and their government probably was more assured in the five villages than it would have been in the entire town. In the second, nothing prevented them from succeeding except the accidental intervention of the exile Pausanias; an accident, which alone rescued the Spartan name from the additional disgrace of a political massacre, over and above the lasting odium incurred by the act itself; by breaking up an ancient autonomous city, which had shown no act of overt enmity, and which was so moderate in its democratical manifestations as to receive the favorable criticism of judges rather disinclined towards democracy generally.[96] Thirty years before, when Mantinea had conquered certain neighboring Arcadian districts, and had been at actual war with Sparta to preserve them, the victorious Spartans exacted nothing more than the reduction of the city to its original district;[97] now they are satisfied with nothing less than the partition of the city into unfortified villages, though there had been no actual war preceding. So much had Spartan power, as well as Spartan despotic propensity, progressed during this interval.

The general language of Isokrates, Xenophon, and Diodorus,[98] indicates that this severity towards Mantinea was only the most stringent among a series of severities, extended by the Lacedæmonians through their whole confederacy, and operating upon all such of its members as gave them ground for dissatisfaction or mistrust. During the ten years after the surrender of Athens, they had been lords of the Grecian world both by land and sea, with a power never before possessed by any Grecian state; until the battle of Knidus, and the combination of Athens, Thebes, Argos, and Corinth, seconded by Persia, had broken up their empire at sea, and much endangered it on land. At length the peace of Antalkidas, enlisting Persia on their side (at the price of the liberty of the Asiatic Greeks), had enabled them to dissolve the hostile combination against them. The general autonomy, of which they were the authorized interpreters, meant nothing more than a separation of the Bœotian cities from Thebes,[99] and of Corinth from Argos,—being noway intended to apply to the relation between Sparta and her allies. Having thus their hands free, the Lacedæmonians applied themselves to raise their ascendency on land to the point where it had stood before the battle of Knidus, and even to regain as much as possible of their empire at sea. To bring back a dominion such as that of the Lysandrian harmosts and dekarchies, and to reconstitute a local oligarchy of their most devoted partisans, in each of those cities where the government had been somewhat liberalized during the recent period of war,—was their systematic policy.

Those exiles who had incurred the condemnation of their fellow-citizens for subservience to Sparta, now found the season convenient for soliciting Spartan intervention to procure their return. It was in this manner that a body of exiled political leaders from Phlius,—whose great merit it was that the city when under their government had been zealous in service to Sparta, but had now become lukewarm or even disaffected in the hands of their opponents,—obtained from the ephors a message, polite in form but authoritative in substance, addressed to the Phliasians, requiring that the exiles should be restored, as friends of Sparta banished without just cause.[100]

While the Spartan power, for the few years succeeding the peace of Antalkidas, was thus decidedly in ascending movement on land, efforts were also made to reëstablish it at sea. Several of the Cyclades and other smaller islands were again rendered tributary. In this latter sphere, however, Athens became her competitor. Since the peace, and the restoration of Lemnos, Imbros and Skyros, combined with the refortified Peiræus and its Long Walls,—Athenian commerce and naval power had been reviving, though by slow and humble steps. Like the naval force of England compared with France, the warlike marine of Athens rested upon a considerable commercial marine, which latter hardly existed at all in Laconia. Sparta had no seamen except constrained Helots or paid foreigners;[101] while the commerce of Peiræus had both required and maintained a numerous population of this character. The harbor of Peiræus was convenient in respect of accommodation, and well-stocked with artisans,—while Laconia had few artisans, and was notoriously destitute of harbors.[102] Accordingly, in this maritime competition, Athens, though but the shadow of her former self, started at an advantage as compared with Sparta, and in spite of the superiority of the latter on land, was enabled to compete with her in acquiring tributary dependencies among the smaller islands of the Ægean. To these latter, who had no marine of their own, and who (like Athens herself) required habitual supplies of imported corn, it was important to obtain both access to Peiræus and protection from the Athenian triremes against that swarm of pirates, who showed themselves after the peace of Antalkidas, when there was no predominant maritime state; besides which, the market of Peiræus was often supplied with foreign corn from the Crimea, through the preference shown by the princes of Bosphorus to Athens, at a time when vessels from other places could obtain no cargo.[103] A moderate tribute paid to Athens would secure to the tributary island greater advantages than if paid to Sparta,—with at least equal protection. Probably, the influence of Athens over these islanders was farther aided by the fact, that she administered the festivals, and lent out the funds, of the holy temple at Delos. We know by inscriptions remaining, that large sums were borrowed at interest from the temple-treasure, not merely by individual islanders, but also by the island-cities collectively,—Naxos, Andros, Tenos, Siphnos, Seriphos. The Amphiktyonic council who dispensed these loans (or at least the presiding members) were Athenians named annually at Athens.[104] Moreover, these islanders rendered religious homage and attendance at the Delian festivals, and were thus brought within the range of a central Athenian influence, capable, under favorable circumstances, of being strengthened and rendered even politically important.

By such helps, Athens was slowly acquiring to herself a second maritime confederacy, which we shall presently find to be of considerable moment, though never approaching the grandeur of her former empire; so that in the year 380 B.C., when Isokrates published his Panegyrical Discourse (seven years after the peace of Antalkidas), though her general power was still slender compared with the overruling might of Sparta,[105] yet her navy had already made such progress, that he claims for her the right of taking the command by sea, in that crusade which he strenuously enforces, of Athens and Sparta in harmonious unity at the head of all Greece, against the Asiatic barbarians.[106]

It would seem that a few years after the peace of Antalkidas, Sparta became somewhat ashamed of having surrendered the Asiatic Greeks to Persia; and that king Agesipolis and other leading Spartans encouraged the scheme of a fresh Grecian expedition against Asia, in compliance with propositions from some disaffected subjects of Artaxerxes.[107] Upon some such project, currently discussed though never realized, Isokrates probably built his Panegyrical Oration, composed in a lofty strain of patriotic eloquence (380 B.C.) to stimulate both Sparta and Athens in the cause, and calling on both, as joint chiefs of Greece, to suspend dissensions at home for a great Pan-hellenic manifestation against the common enemy abroad. But whatever ideas of this kind the Spartan leaders may have entertained, their attention was taken off, about 382 B.C. by movements in a more remote region of the Grecian world, which led to important consequences.

Since the year 414 B.C. (when the Athenians were engaged in the siege of Syracuse), we have heard nothing either of the kings of Macedonia, or of the Chalkidic Grecian cities in the peninsula of Thrace adjoining Macedonia. Down to that year, Athens still retained a portion of her maritime empire in those regions. The Platæans were still in possession of Skiônê (on the isthmus of Pallênê) which she had assigned to them; while the Athenian admiral Euetion, seconded by many hired Thracians, and even by Perdikkas king of Macedonia, undertook a fruitless siege to reconquer Amphipolis on the Strymon.[108] But the fatal disaster at Syracuse having disabled Athens from maintaining such distant interests, they were lost to her along with her remaining empire,—perhaps earlier; though we do not know how. At the same time, during the last years of the Peloponnesian war, the kingdom of Macedonia greatly increased in power; partly, we may conceive, from the helpless condition of Athens,—but still more from the abilities and energy of Archelaus, son and successor of Perdikkas.

The course of succession among the Macedonian princes seems not to have been settled, so that disputes and bloodshed took place at the death of several of them. Moreover, there were distinct tribes of Macedonians, who, though forming part, really or nominally, of the dominion of the Temenid princes, nevertheless were immediately subject to separate but subordinate princes of their own. The reign of Perdikkas had been troubled in this manner. In the first instance, he had stripped his own brother Alketas of the crown,[109] who appears (so far as we can make out) to have had the better right to it; next he had also expelled his younger brother Philippus from his subordinate principality. To restore Amyntas the son of Philippus, was one of the purposes of the Thrakian prince Sitalkês, in the expedition undertaken conjointly with Athens, during the second year of the Peloponnesian war.[110] On the death of Perdikkas (about 413 B.C.), his eldest or only legitimate son was a child of seven years old; but his natural son[111] Archelaus was of mature age and unscrupulous ambition. The dethroned Alketas was yet alive, and had now considerable chance of reëstablishing himself on the throne; Archelaus, inviting him and his son under pretence that he would himself bring about their reëstablishment, slew them both amidst the intoxication of a banquet. He next despatched the boy, his legitimate brother, by suffocating him in a well; and through these crimes made himself king. His government, however, was so energetic and able, that Macedonia reached a degree of military power such as none of his predecessors had ever possessed. His troops, military equipments, and fortified places, were much increased in numbers; while he also cut straight roads of communication between the various portions of his territory,—a novelty seemingly everywhere, at that time.[112] Besides such improved organization (which unfortunately we are not permitted to know in detail), Archelaus founded a splendid periodical Olympic festival, in honor of the Olympian Zeus and the Muses,[113] and maintained correspondence with the poets and philosophers of Athens. He prevailed upon the tragic poets Euripides and Agathon, as well as the epic poet Chœrilus, to visit him in Macedonia, where Euripides especially was treated with distinguished favor and munificence,[114] remaining there until his death in 406 or 405 B.C. Archelaus also invited Sokrates, who declined the invitation,—and appears to have shown some favor to Plato.[115] He perished in the same year as Sokrates (399 B.C.), by a violent death; two Thessalian youths, Krateuas and Hellanokrates, together with a Macedonian named Dekamnichus, being his assassins during a hunting-party. The first two were youths to whom he was strongly attached, but whose dignity he had wounded by insulting treatment and non-performance of promises; the third was a Macedonian, who, for having made an offensive remark upon the bad breath of Euripides, had been given up by the order of Archelaus to the poet, in order that he might be flogged for it. Euripides actually caused the sentence to be inflicted; but it was not till six years after his death that Dekamnichus, who had neither forgotten nor forgiven the affront, found the opportunity of taking revenge by instigating and aiding the assassins of Archelaus.[116]

These incidents, recounted on the authority of Aristotle, and relating as well to the Macedonian king Archelaus as to the Athenian citizen and poet Euripides, illustrate the political contrast between Macedonia and Athens. The government of the former is one wholly personal,—dependent on the passions, tastes, appetites, and capacities, of the king. The ambition of Archelaus leads both to his crimes for acquiring the throne, and to his improved organization of the military force of the state afterwards; his admiration for the poets and philosophers of Athens makes him sympathize warmly with Euripides, and ensure to the latter personal satisfaction for an offensive remark; his appetites, mingling license with insult, end by drawing upon him personal enemies of a formidable character. L’Etat, c’est moi—stands marked in the whole series of proceedings; the personality of the monarch is the determining element. Now at Athens, no such element exists. There is, on the one hand, no easy way of bringing to bear the ascendency of an energetic chief to improve the military organization,—as Athens found to her cost, when she was afterwards assailed by Philip, the successor after some interval, and in many respects the parallel, of Archelaus. But on the other hand, neither the personal tastes nor the appetites, of any individual Athenian, count as active causes in the march of public affairs, which is determined by the established law and by the pronounced sentiments of the body of citizens. However gross an insult might have been offered to Euripides at Athens, the dikasts would never have sentenced that the offender should be handed over to him to be flogged. They would have inflicted such measure of punishment as the nature of the wrong, and the preëxisting law appeared to them to require. Political measures, or judicial sentences, at Athens, might be well or ill-judged; but at any rate, they were always dictated by regard to a known law and to the public conceptions entertained of state-interests, state-dignity, and state-obligations, without the avowed intrusion of any man’s personality. To Euripides,—who had throughout his whole life been the butt of Aristophanes and other comic writers, and who had been compelled to hear, in the crowded theatre, taunts far more galling than what is ascribed to Dekamnichus,—the contrast must have been indeed striking, to have the offender made over to him, and the whip placed at his disposal, by order of his new patron. And it is little to his honor, that he should have availed himself of the privilege, by causing the punishment to be really administered; a punishment which he could never have seen inflicted, during the fifty years of his past life, upon any free Athenian citizen.

Krateuas did not survive the deed more than three or four days, after which Orestes, son of Archelaus, a child, was placed on the throne, under the guardianship of Æropus. The latter, however, after about four years, made away with his ward, and reigned in his stead for two years. He then died of sickness, and was succeeded by his son Pausanias; who, after a reign of only one year, was assassinated and succeeded by Amyntas.[117] This Amyntas (chiefly celebrated as the father of Philip and the grandfather of Alexander the Great), though akin to the royal family, had been nothing more than an attendant of Æropus,[118] until he made himself king by putting to death Pausanias.[119] He reigned, though with interruptions, twenty-four years (393-369 B.C.); years, for the most part, of trouble and humiliation for Macedonia, and of occasional exile for himself. The vigorous military organization introduced by Archelaus appears to have declined; while the frequent dethronements and assassinations of kings, beginning even with Perdikkas the father of Archelaus, and continued down to Amyntas, unhinged the central authority and disunited the various portions of the Macedonian name; which naturally tended to separation, and could only be held together by a firm hand.

The interior regions of Macedonia were bordered, to the north, north-east, and north-west, by warlike barbarian tribes, Thracian and Illyrian, whose invasions were not unfrequent and often formidable. Tempted, probably, by the unsettled position of the government, the Illyrians poured in upon Amyntas during the first year of his reign; perhaps they may have been invited by other princes of the interior,[120] and at all events their coming would operate as a signal for malcontents to declare themselves. Amyntas,—having only acquired the sceptre a few months before by assassinating his predecessor, and having little hold on the people,—was not only unable to repel them, but found himself obliged to evacuate Pella, and even to retire from Macedonia altogether. Despairing of his position, he made over to the Olynthians a large portion of the neighboring territory,—Lower Macedonia or the coast and cities round the Thermaic Gulf.[121] As this cession is represented to have been made at the moment of his distress and expatriation, we may fairly suspect that it was made for some reciprocal benefit or valuable equivalent; of which Amyntas might well stand in need, at a moment of so much exigency.

It is upon this occasion that we begin to hear again of the Chalkidians of Olynthus, and the confederacy which they gradually aggregated around their city as a centre. The confederacy seems to have taken its start from this cession of Amyntas,—or rather, to speak more properly, from his abdication; for the cession of what he could not keep was of comparatively little moment, and we shall see that he tried to resume it as soon as he acquired strength. The effect of his flight was, to break up the government of Lower or maritime Macedonia, and to leave the cities therein situated defenceless against the Illyrians or other invaders from the interior. To these cities, the only chance of security, was to throw themselves upon the Greek cities on the coast, and to organize in conjunction with the latter a confederacy for mutual support. Among all the Greeks on that coast, the most strenuous and persevering (so they had proved themselves in their former contentions against Athens when at the summit of her power) as well as the nearest, were the Chalkidians of Olynthus. These Olynthians now put themselves forward,—took into their alliance and under their protection the smaller towns of maritime Macedonia immediately near them,—and soon extended their confederacy so as to comprehend all the larger towns in this region,—including even Pella, the most considerable city of the country.[122] As they began this enterprise at a time when the Illyrians were masters of the country so as to drive Amyntas to despair and flight, we may be sure that it must have cost them serious efforts, not without great danger if they failed. We may also be sure that the cities themselves must have been willing, not to say eager, coadjutors; just as the islanders and Asiatic Greeks clung to Athens at the first formation of the confederacy of Delos. The Olynthians could have had no means of conquering even the less considerable Macedonian cities, much less Pella, by force and against the will of the inhabitants.

How the Illyrians were compelled to retire, and by what steps the confederacy was got together, we are not permitted to know. Our information (unhappily very brief) comes from the Akanthian envoy Kleigenês, speaking at Sparta about ten years afterwards (B.C. 383), and describing in a few words the confederacy as it then stood. But there is one circumstance which this witness,—himself hostile to Olynthus and coming to solicit Spartan aid against her,—attests emphatically; the equal, generous, and brotherly principles, upon which the Olynthians framed their scheme from the beginning. They did not present themselves as an imperial city enrolling a body of dependent allies, but invited each separate city to adopt common laws and reciprocal citizenship with Olynthus, with full liberty of intermarriage, commercial dealing, and landed proprietorship. That the Macedonian cities near the sea should welcome so liberal a proposition as this, coming from the most powerful of their Grecian neighbors, cannot at all surprise us; especially at a time when they were exposed to the Illyrian invaders, and when Amyntas had fled the country. They had hitherto always been subjects;[123] their cities had not (like the Greek cities) enjoyed each its own separate autonomy within its own walls; the offer, now made to them by the Olynthians, was one of freedom in exchange for their past subjection under the Macedonian kings, combined with a force adequate to protect them against Illyrian and other invaders. Perhaps also these various cities,—Anthemus, Therma, Chalastra, Pella, Alôrus, Pydna, etc.,—may have contained, among the indigenous population, a certain proportion of domiciliated Grecian inhabitants, to whom the proposition of the Olynthians would be especially acceptable.

We may thus understand why the offer of Olynthus was gladly welcomed by the Macedonian maritime cities. They were the first who fraternized as voluntary partners in the confederacy; which the Olynthians, having established this basis, proceeded to enlarge farther, by making the like liberal propositions to the Greek cities in their neighborhood. Several of these latter joined voluntarily; others were afraid to refuse; insomuch that the confederacy came to include a considerable number of Greeks,—especially, Potidæa, situated on the Isthmus of Pallênê, and commanding the road of communication between the cities within Pallênê and the continent. The Olynthians carried out with scrupulous sincerity their professed principles of equal and intimate partnership, avoiding all encroachment or offensive preëminence in favor of their own city. But in spite of this liberal procedure, they found among their Grecian neighbors obstructions which they had not experienced from the Macedonian. Each of the Grecian cities had been accustomed to its own town-autonomy and separate citizenship, with its peculiar laws and customs. All of them were attached to this kind of distinct political life, by one of the most tenacious and universal instincts of the Greek mind; all of them would renounce it with reluctance, even on consenting to enter the Olynthian confederacy, with its generous promise, its enlarged security, and its manifest advantages; and there were even some who, disdaining every prospective consideration, refused to change their condition at all except at the point of the sword.

Among these last were Akanthus and Apollonia, the largest cities (next to Olynthus) in the Chalkidic peninsula, and, therefore, the least unable to stand alone. To these the Olynthians did not make application, until they had already attracted within their confederacy a considerable number of other Grecian as well as Macedonian cities. They then invited Akanthus and Apollonia to come in, upon the same terms of equal union and fellow-citizenship. The proposition being declined, they sent a second message intimating that, unless it were accepted within a certain time, they would enforce it by compulsory measures. So powerful already was the military force of the Olynthian confederacy, that Akanthus and Apollonia, incompetent to resist without foreign aid, despatched envoys to Sparta to set forth the position of affairs in the Chalkidic peninsula, and to solicit intervention against Olynthus.

Their embassy reached Sparta about B.C. 383, when the Spartans, having broken up the city of Mantinea into villages, and coërced Phlius, were in the full swing of power over Peloponnesus,—and when they had also dissolved the Bœotian federation, placing harmosts in Platæa and Thespiæ as checks upon any movement of Thebes. The Akanthian Kleigenês, addressing himself to the Assembly of Spartans and their allies, drew an alarming picture of the recent growth and prospective tendencies of Olynthus, invoking the interference of Sparta against that city. The Olynthian confederacy (he said) already comprised many cities, small and great, Greek as well as Macedonian,—Amyntas having lost his kingdom. Its military power, even at present great, was growing every day.[124] The territory, comprising a large breadth of fertile corn-land, could sustain a numerous population. Wood for ship-building was close at hand, while the numerous harbors of the confederate cities ensured a thriving trade as well as a steady revenue from custom-duties. The neighboring Thracian tribes would be easily kept in willing dependence, and would thus augment the military force of Olynthus; even the gold mines of Mount Pangæus would speedily come within her assured reach. “All that I now tell you (such was the substance of his speech) is matter of public talk among the Olynthian people, who are full of hope and confidence. How can you Spartans, who are taking anxious pains to prevent the union of the Bœotian cities,[125] permit the aggregation of so much more formidable a power, both by land and by sea, as this of Olynthus? Envoys have already been sent thither from Athens and Thebes,—and the Olynthians have decreed to send an embassy in return for contracting alliance with those cities; hence, your enemies will derive a large additional force. We of Akanthus and Apollonia, having declined the proposition to join the confederacy voluntarily, have received notice that, if we persist, they will constrain us. Now we are anxious to retain our paternal laws and customs, continuing as a city by ourselves.[126] But if we cannot obtain aid from you, we shall be under the necessity of joining them,—as several other cities have already done, from not daring to refuse; cities, who would have sent envoys along with us, had they not been afraid of offending the Olynthians. These cities, if you interfere forthwith, and with a powerful force, will now revolt from the new confederacy. But if you postpone your interference, and allow time for the confederacy to work, their sentiments will soon alter. They will come to be knit together in attached unity, by the co-burgership, the intermarriage, and the reciprocity of landed possessions, which have already been enacted prospectively. All of them will become convinced that they have a common interest both in belonging to, and in strengthening the confederacy,—just as the Arcadians, when they follow you, Spartans, as allies, are not only enabled to preserve their own property, but also to plunder others. If, by your delay, the attractive tendencies of the confederacy should come into real operation, you will presently find it not so much within your power to dissolve.[127]”

This speech of the Akanthian envoy is remarkable in more than one respect. Coming from the lips of an enemy, it is the best of all testimonies to the liberal and comprehensive spirit in which the Olynthians were acting. They are accused,—not of injustice, nor of selfish ambition, nor of degrading those around them,—but literally, of organizing a new partnership on principles too generous and too seductive; of gently superseding, instead of violently breaking down, the barriers between the various cities, by reciprocal ties of property and family among the citizens of each; of uniting them all into a new political aggregate, in which not only all would enjoy equal rights, but all without exception would be gainers. The advantage, both in security and in power, accruing prospectively to all, is not only admitted by the orator, but stands in the front of his argument. “Make haste and break up the confederacy (he impresses upon Sparta) before its fruit is ripe, so that the confederates may never taste it nor find out how good it is; for if they do, you will not prevail on them to forego it.” By implication, he also admits,—and he says nothing tending even to raise a doubt,—that the cities which he represents, Akanthus and Apollonia, would share along with the rest in this same benefit. But the Grecian political instinct was nevertheless predominant,—“We wish to preserve our paternal laws, and to be a city by ourselves.” Thus nakedly is the objection stated; when the question was, not whether Akanthus should lose its freedom and become subject to an imperial city like Athens,—but whether it should become a free and equal member of a larger political aggregate, cemented by every tie which could make union secure, profitable, and dignified. It is curious to observe how perfectly the orator is conscious that this repugnance, though at the moment preponderant, was nevertheless essentially transitory, and would give place to attachment when the union came to be felt as a reality; and how eagerly he appeals to Sparta to lose no time in clenching the repugnance, while it lasted. He appeals to her, not for any beneficial or Pan-hellenic objects, but in the interests of her own dominion, which required that the Grecian world should be as it were pulverized into minute, self-acting, atoms without cohesion,—so that each city, or each village, while protected against subjection to any other, should farther be prevented from equal political union or fusion with any other; being thus more completely helpless and dependent in reference to Sparta.

It was not merely from Akanthus and Apollonia, but also from the dispossessed Macedonian king Amyntas, that envoys reached Sparta to ask for aid against Olynthus. It seems that Amyntas, after having abandoned the kingdom and made his cession to the Olynthians, had obtained some aid from Thessaly and tried to reinstate himself by force. In this scheme he had failed, being defeated by the Olynthians. Indeed we find another person named Argæus, mentioned as competitor for the Macedonian sceptre, and possessing it for two years.[128]

After hearing these petitioners, the Lacedæmonians first declared their own readiness to comply with the prayer, and to put down Olynthus; next, they submitted the same point to the vote of the assembled allies.[129] Among these latter, there was no genuine antipathy against the Olynthians, such as that which had prevailed against Athens before the Peloponnesian war, in the synod then held at Sparta. But the power of Sparta over her allies was now far greater than it had been then. Most of their cities were under oligarchies, dependent upon her support for authority over their fellow-citizens; moreover, the recent events in Bœotia and at Mantinea had operated as a serious intimidation. Anxiety to keep the favor of Sparta was accordingly paramount, so that most of the speakers as well as most of the votes, declared for war,[130] and a combined army of ten thousand men was voted to be raised. To make up such total, a proportional contingent was assessed upon each confederate; combined with the proviso now added for the first time, that each might furnish money instead of men, at the rate of three Æginæan oboli (half an Æginæan drachma) for each hoplite. A cavalry-soldier, to those cities which furnished such, was reckoned as equivalent to four hoplites; a hoplite, as equivalent to two peltasts; or pecuniary contribution on the same scale. All cities in default were made liable to a forfeit of one stater (four drachmæ) per day, for every soldier not sent; the forfeit to be enforced by Sparta.[131] Such licensed substitution of pecuniary payment for personal service, is the same as I have already described to have taken place nearly a century before in the confederacy of Delos under the presidency of Athens.[132] It was a system not likely to be extensively acted upon among the Spartan allies, who were at once poorer and more warlike than those of Athens. But in both cases it was favorable to the ambition of the leading state; and the tendency becomes here manifest, to sanction, by the formality of a public resolution, that increased Lacedæmonian ascendency which had already grown up in practice.

The Akanthian envoys, while expressing their satisfaction with the vote just passed, intimated that the muster of these numerous contingents would occupy some time, and again insisted on the necessity of instant intervention, even with a small force; before the Olynthians could find time to get their plans actually in work or appreciated by the surrounding cities. A moderate Lacedæmonian force (they said), if despatched forthwith, would not only keep those who had refused to join Olynthus, steady to their refusal, but also induce others, who had joined reluctantly, to revolt. Accordingly the ephors appointed Eudamidas at once, assigning to him two thousand hoplites,—Neodamodes (or enfranchised Helots), Periœki, and Skiritæ or Arcadian borderers. Such was the anxiety of the Akanthians for haste, that they would not let him delay even to get together the whole of this moderate force. He was put in march immediately, with such as were ready; while his brother Phœbidas was left behind to collect the remainder and follow him. And it seems that the Akanthians judged correctly. For Eudamidas, arriving in Thrace after a rapid march, though he was unable to contend against the Olynthians in the field, yet induced Potidæa to revolt from them, and was able to defend those cities, such as Akanthus and Apollonia, which resolutely stood aloof.[133] Amyntas brought a force to coöperate with him.

The delay in the march of Phœbidas was productive of consequences no less momentous than unexpected. The direct line from Peloponnesus to Olynthus lay through the Theban territory; a passage which the Thebans, whatever might have been their wishes, were not powerful enough to refuse, though they had contracted an alliance with Olynthus,[134] and though proclamation was made that no Theban citizens should join the Lacedæmonian force. Eudamidas, having departed at a moment’s notice, passed through Bœotia without a halt, in his way to Thrace. But it was known that his brother Phœbidas was presently to follow; and upon this fact the philo-Laconian party in Thebes organized a conspiracy.

They obtained from the ephors, and from the miso-Theban feelings of Agesilaus, secret orders to Phœbidas, that he should coöperate with them in any party movement which they might find opportunity of executing;[135] and when he halted with his detachment near the gymnasium a little way without the walls, they concerted matters as well with him as among themselves. Leontiades, Hypatês, and Archias, were the chiefs of the party in Thebes favorable to Sparta; a party decidedly in minority, yet still powerful, and at this moment so strengthened by the unbounded ascendency of the Spartan name, that Leontiades himself was one of the polemarchs of the city. Of the anti-Spartan, or predominant sentiment in Thebes,—which included most of the wealthy and active citizens, those who came successively into office as hipparchs or generals of the cavalry,[136]—the leaders were Ismenias and Androkleides. The former, especially, the foremost as well as ablest conductor of the late war against Sparta, was now in office as Polemarch, conjointly with his rival Leontiades.

While Ismenias, detesting the Spartans, kept aloof from Phœbidas, Leontiades assiduously courted him and gained his confidence. On the day of the Thesmophoria,[137] a religious festival celebrated by the women apart from the men, during which the acropolis or Kadmeia was consecrated to their exclusive use,—Phœbidas, affecting to have concluded his halt, put himself in march to proceed as if towards Thrace; seemingly rounding the walls of Thebes, but not going into it. The Senate was actually assembled in the portico of the agora, and the heat of a summer’s noon had driven every one out of the streets, when Leontiades, stealing away from the Senate, hastened on horseback to overtake Phœbidas, caused him to face about, and conducted the Lacedæmonians straight up to the Kadmeia; the gates of which, as well as those of the town, were opened by his order as polemarch. There were not only no citizens in the streets, but none even in the Kadmeia; no male person being permitted to be present at the feminine Thesmophoria; so that Phœbidas and his army became possessed of the Kadmeia without the smallest opposition. At the same time they became possessed of an acquisition of hardly less importance,—the persons of all the assembled Theban women; who served as hostages for the quiet submission, however reluctant, of the citizens in the town below. Leontiades handed to Phœbidas the key of the gates, and then descended into the town, giving orders that no man should go up without his order.[138]