XLII. SPARTA IN ASIA…

XLII. SPARTA IN ASIA

When the Lacedæmonians put an end to the Athenian empire, they neither claimed any dominion on the continent of Asia, nor asserted the freedom of the Grecian republics there: the allegiance of the Asian Greeks was transferred from the Athenian people to the Persian king; and, under him, to the satraps, Pharnabazus and Tissaphernes. We have seen that, among the Greeks of Asia, Cyrus was popular, and Tissaphernes unpopular; insomuch that by a kind of rebellion against the satrap, the Ionians had attached themselves to the prince. The event therefore of the expedition against the king, and the appointment of Tissaphernes to the great command which Cyrus had held, could not but be highly alarming to them. But, on the other hand, the glorious retreat of the Greeks who had accompanied the prince, and the clear evidence which their return in safety bore to the superiority of the Grecian arms, afforded ground of encouragement. If the patronage of Lacedæmon could be obtained, whose councils commanded the united arms of Greece, little, it was hoped, need be apprehended from the satrap’s vengeance. Refusing therefore to acknowledge his authority, the Ionians sent ministers to Lacedæmon to solicit protection.

The Lacedæmonian government, less expecting friendship from the king and from Tissaphernes on account of their connection with Cyrus, and valuing it less as the fame of the actions of the Cyrean army taught to despise their enmity, resolved that the Ionians should be protected. Possibly circumstances at home might contribute to this determination. It might be desirable to employ a part of their people on foreign service; and for service against an enemy so famed for wealth, and so little for bravery and military skill, volunteers would be numerous among the poor commonwealths of Peloponnesus. Four thousand men were required from the allies. Only one thousand were added from Lacedæmon: and they were all of those called neodamodes, who, owing their elevation from the condition of slaves into the rank of citizens to the necessities of war, were, on the return of peace, looked upon with so invidious an eye, that occasion for sending them on foreign service would be acceptable, both to the government and to themselves. Cavalry was very desirable for war in Asia: but the utmost force that Peloponnesus could raise was very small; and the principal citizens of the wealthiest republics, who alone composed it, would not be the most willing partakers in distant adventure. Application was therefore made to Athens; where recent disorders, extreme political jealousy, and a total want of protection against any momentary caprice of the people, made the situation of men of rank and fortune so precarious that the offer of pay for three hundred horse found ready acceptance there. Thimbron was appointed commander in chief in Asia, with the title of harmost.

[Sidenote: [400-399 B.C.]]

From their attachment to the cause of Cyrus, and consequent dread of the king’s vengeance, apparently arose the revolt of those Grecian subjects of the Persian empire, which otherwise would mark gross ingratitude to a beneficent government. For the testimony here given by Xenophon, remarkably corresponding with all remaining from Herodotus and Thucydides, strongly confirms what has been heretofore observed, that there was uncommon liberality in the despotism of the Persian empire. Public faith was kept; property was not without security; it was not then, as under the present wonderfully barbarian government of the same fine country, a crime to be rich. Large estates, given even to foreigners, passed to their late posterity; and, instead of the tyranny which now depopulates towns and provinces, and against which the remaining subjects recur to the patronage of some foreign ambassador, the Persian government so extended liberal protection to all, that Grecian cities could prefer the dominion of the Persian king to that of the Athenian or Lacedæmonian commonwealths, and flourish under it. But the Persian government, though generally mild and liberal, had been, since the reign of Xerxes, always weak, and verging to dissolution. The Lacedæmonian general Thimbron, who, with comparatively a small force, had been making conquests against it, showed no considerable abilities in the field, and in camp and in quarters his discipline was very deficient. The allies suffered from the licentiousness of his army; and complaints were in consequence so urged at Lacedæmon that, on the expiration of his year, he was sentenced to banishment.

Dercyllidas, who succeeded him, was more equal to a great and difficult command. Having already served in Asia, under Lysander, he knew the characters of the two satraps, who divided between them, in almost independent sovereignty, the dominion of the western provinces. The instructions of the ephors directed him to lead the army into Caria, the hereditary government of Tissaphernes. But the desire of revenging a disgrace he had formerly incurred, when harmost of Abydos, in consequence of an accusation from Pharnabazus, assisted at least, according to the contemporary historian, his friend, in determining him to act otherwise. He negotiated with Tissaphernes; and that dastardly satrap, ill-disposed towards Pharnabazus, and always readier for negotiation than battle, instead of exerting the great power with which he was vested for the general defence of the empire, bargained for a particular peace for his own provinces, and consented that the Grecian arms should, without opposition from him, be carried into the Bithynian satrapy. Dercyllidas, having thus provided for the safety of the rich fields of Ionia, which would otherwise have been liable, in his absence, to suffer from the Persian cavalry, hastened his march northward; and, in the length of way from Caria to the borders of Æolis, he maintained an exactness of discipline that gained him the greater credit with the allies as it was contrasted with the licentiousness from which the country had suffered while Thimbron commanded.

The circumstances of Æolis might reasonably have invited the attention of the general, though revenge had not instigated him. According to that liberal policy, more than once already noticed as ordinary among the Persians, Pharnabazus had appointed Zenis, a Greek of Dardanus, to be governor, or, according to Xenophon’s phrase, satrap of that fine country, so interesting, in earliest history, as the kingdom of Priam, and the seat of the Trojan War. Zenis died young, leaving a widow, Mania, also a Dardanian. This extraordinary woman solicited the succession to her late husband’s command; and supported her solicitations with presents so agreeable to the satrap’s fancy, and proofs so pregnant of her own talents and spirit, that she obtained her suit. Being accordingly vested with the government, she did not disappoint, but, on the contrary, far exceeded, the satrap’s expectation. She not only held all in due obedience, but, raising a body of Grecian mercenaries, she reduced the maritime towns of Larissa, Hamaxitus, and Colonæ, which had hitherto resisted the Persian dominion. Herself attended the sieges, viewing the operations from her chariot, and by praises and presents judiciously bestowed she excited such emulation that her army acquired repute superior to any other body of mercenaries in Asia. Pharnabazus requiring troops for suppressing the incursions of the rebellious Mysians and Pisidians, she attended in person. In consequence of her able conduct and high reputation, he always treated her with great respect, and sometimes even desired her assistance in his council.

[Sidenote: [399 B.C.]]

Mania was another Artemisia; and the weighty authority of Xenophon for the history of the Dardanian satrapess not a little supports the account given by Herodotus of the Halicarnassian queen. But, though Mania could govern provinces and conduct armies, yet, amid the encouragement which the gross defects, both of Grecian and Persian government, offered for daring villainy, she could not secure herself against domestic treachery. Scarcely had she passed her fortieth year when she was murdered in her palace by Midias, who had married her daughter. But a single murder would not answer the execrable villain’s purpose. Her son, a most promising youth of seventeen, was cut off. The assassin had then the impudence to ask of the satrap the succession to the government held by the deceased Mania, supporting his solicitation by large presents. But he seems to have founded his hopes on a knowledge rather of the general temper and practice of the Persian great than of the particular character of Pharnabazus. He, with a generous indignation, refused the presents, and declared he would not live unless he could revenge Mania. Midias prepared to support himself by force or intrigue, as circumstances might direct. He had secured Gergis and Scepsis, fortified towns in which Mania’s treasures were deposited; but the other towns of the province, with one consent, refusing to acknowledge his authority, adhered to Pharnabazus.

Dercyllidas arrived upon the borders in this critical conjuncture. The satrap was unprepared; the Lacedæmonian name was popular; and the towns of Larissa, Hamaxitus, and Colonæ, in one day opened their gates. A declaration was then circulated, that the purpose of Dercyllidas and the Lacedæmonian government was to give perfect independency to the Æolian cities; desiring only alliance defensive and offensive, with quarters for the army within their walls whenever it might become requisite in that service whose object was the common liberty of all Grecian people. The garrisons were composed mostly of Greeks, attached to Mania, but indifferent to the interest of Pharnabazus. The towns of Neandria, Ilium, and Cocylium acceded to the Spartan general’s invitation. Hope of large reward for his fidelity induced the governor of Cebrene to adhere to the satrap; but, upon the approach of the army, the people soon compelled him to surrender.

Dercyllidas then marched towards Scepsis. The assassin Midias, fearful, at the same time, of the Spartan general, the Persian satrap, and the Scepsian citizens, conceived his best hope to lie in accommodation with the former. He proposed a conference, to which Dercyllidas consented. Acquitting himself then of that miscreant by restoring all his private property, with liberal allowance for all his claims, he seized the wealth of Mania, as now belonging to the satrap, the common enemy; and it was his boast, a grateful boast to the army, that he had enriched the military chest with a twelvemonth’s pay for eight thousand men.

[Sidenote: [399-398 B.C.]]

Having thus, according to Xenophon’s expression, in eight days, taken nine cities, he sent proposals of truce to Pharnabazus. That generous satrap, unassisted from the capital of the empire, and deserted and betrayed by the great neighbouring officer whose more peculiar duty it was to afford him assistance, readily accepted them. Xenophon indeed says, that he was little disturbed with the loss of Æolis; esteeming that province, under Lacedæmonian protection, while he had himself peace with Lacedæmon, rather a useful barrier against other enemies. The meaning of this apparently is to be collected only from what follows. The Bithynians, though as tributary subjects of the empire he had assisted them against the Cyrean army, were always licentious, sometimes perhaps rebellious, and they frequently carried hostile depredation among the more peaceful and settled inhabitants of his satrapy. Among these people Dercyllidas resolved to take his winter quarters, as in a hostile territory, and Pharnabazus expressed no dissatisfaction.

Since he had been in Asia, Dercyllidas had fought no great battle, nor taken any town by assault; but, in an army which, under his predecessor, had been so lawless as to be a terror more to friends than enemies, he had restored exact discipline, and yet was the favourite of that army. With that army then he had awed the two great satraps, each commanding a province equal to a powerful kingdom, and both together acting under the mightiest empire in the world; so that, after having given independency and security to the long line of Ionian and Æolian colonies, he could direct his views another way for the benefit of the Grecian name.

The Thracian Chersonese, once the principality of the renowned Miltiades, lately, in large proportion, the property of another great and singular character, Alcibiades, and by its fertility, its many harbours, and its advantageous situation for trade, always a great object for industrious adventurers from Greece, was however always subject to dreadful incursions from the wild hordes of Thracians, who made it their glory to live by rapine. The Chersonesites, in a petition to Lacedæmon for protection, declared that, unless it were granted, they must abandon the country. Dercyllidas, informed of this, before orders could come to himself from Lacedæmon, or another could be sent with the commission, resolved to execute the service. He sent to Pharnabazus a proposal for prolonging the existing truce, which was immediately accepted; and, having so far provided tranquillity for Asia, he transported his army to the European shore. Immediately he visited the Thracian prince Seuthes, by whom he was very hospitably entertained; and having arranged, apparently to his satisfaction, those matters in which his commonwealth and that prince had a common concern, he marched to the Chersonese. There he employed his army, not in plunder and destruction, but in raising a rampart across the isthmus, to secure the peace of the rich country and industrious people within. Begun in spring, it was completed before autumn, and the army was reconveyed into Asia. Dercyllidas then made a progress through the Asiatic cities, to inspect the state of things, and had the satisfaction to find everywhere peace, prosperity, and general content.

Now the ephors sent orders for war to be carried into Caria; for the army under Dercyllidas to march thither; and for the fleet, then commanded by Pharax, to co-operate with it. The first effect of these ill-concerted measures appears to have been to produce, or at least to hasten, a union between the two satraps, Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus; whose long variance had in no small degree contributed to those great successes which the Greeks, with a force otherwise inadequate to contention with the Persian empire, had been enabled to obtain. Pharnabazus, unsupported by the court of Susa, and basely deserted, or worse than deserted, by Tissaphernes, his immediate superior in command, had acquiesced under the loss of Æolis. But, as soon as the threatened attack of Caria afforded a probability that Tissaphernes would be disposed to change his conduct, Pharnabazus went to him, and declared his readiness to co-operate zealously in measures for driving the Greeks out of Asia. This proposal, to which the jealousy and pusillanimity of Tissaphernes otherwise would scarcely have listened, was made acceptable by the indiscreet violence of the Spartan government. The two satraps went together into Caria, and, having arranged matters for the defence of that country, returned to take the command of an army which threatened Ionia with destruction.

[Sidenote: [398-397 B.C.]]

Dercyllidas was already marching for Caria, when information reached him that all his hitherto successful labours for the welfare of the colonies were upon the point of being rendered utterly vain. In these alarming circumstances the interested pusillanimity of Tissaphernes relieved him. Pharnabazus was desirous of engaging; but Tissaphernes already more than half satisfied, since his property in Caria was no longer in immediate danger, would first try the effect of a conference. A herald was therefore sent to the Grecian general. The conference being held accordingly, Dercyllidas insisted on the simple proposition, “that all Grecian cities should be independent.” To this the satraps consented, with the conditions, “that the Grecian army should quit the king’s territory” (by which seems to have been meant Asia, including the Grecian colonies), “and that the Lacedæmonian governors should quit the Grecian towns.” Upon these terms a truce was concluded, to hold till the pleasure of the king and of the Lacedæmonian government could be known.

This was the first treaty, reported on any authentic or even probable testimony, by which, since the early times of the Lydian monarchy, it was provided that the Asian Greeks should be completely emancipated from foreign dominion. All the Ionian and Æolian cities, it appears, thus gained immediate enjoyment of independency in peace: the Carian seem to have waited the confirmation of the treaty by the king of Persia and the Lacedæmonian government. But it was a quiet revolution: no great battle gave it splendour; none of those striking events attended which invite the attention of the writer in proportion as they are fitted to impress the fancy of the reader. It forms, nevertheless, a memorable and interesting era in Grecian history; and the fame of Dercyllidas, less brilliant, but far purer, than that of most of the great men of Greece, though, being recorded by the pen of Xenophon, it is indeed secured against perishing, yet deserves to have been more generally and more pointedly noticed, than we find it, by writers whose theme has been Grecian history, or panegyric of the Grecian character.

WAR OF LACEDÆMON AND ELIS

[Sidenote: [420-399 B.C.]]

In that system, if it may be so called, by which the various members of the Greek nation were in some degree held together, we find a strange mixture of undefined, and sometimes repugnant claims, more or less generally admitted. While the Lacedæmonians presided, with authority far too little defined, over the political and military affairs of Greece, the Eleans asserted a prescriptive right to a kind of religious supremacy; also too little defined; universally allowed nevertheless, in a certain degree, but, like the Lacedæmonian supremacy, not always to the extent to which the claimants pretended. In the schism of Peloponnesus, which occurred during the Peloponnesian War, we have seen the imperial state of Lacedæmon summoned to the Elean tribunal, as a British corporation might be summoned to the courts at Westminster; a fine imposed, its citizens interdicted the common games and sacrifices of the nation, an opprobrious punishment publicly inflicted upon an aged and respectable Spartan, who, but by implication, offended against the Elean decrees; and, finally, these measures supported by avowed hostilities, and alliance with the enemies of Sparta. The necessity of the times induced the Lacedæmonians to make peace with these affronts unrevenged; but their smothered resentment had been revived and increased by what they esteemed a new indignity. Before the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War, Agis, king of Lacedæmon, had been sent, in pursuance of a supposed prophetical direction, to perform a sacrifice to Jupiter at Olympia. The Eleans forbade the ceremony, alleging that, according to ancient law, no oracle should be consulted for success in wars between Greeks and Greeks, and they would allow no prayer for victory in such a war. There is a beneficence, a liberal and extended patriotism in this idea, so consonant to the spirit with which Iphitus is said to have founded the Olympian festival, and so opposite to the tenets afterwards generally prevailing in Greece, that they seem to mark the law for ancient and genuine. The Lacedæmonians however were not the less offended with the Eleans for bringing forward, upon such an occasion, what, if those maxims only were considered which had prevailed through succeeding ages, would carry much the appearance of a complete novelty.

The judgment passed against the Lacedæmonians and the fine imposed, the interdiction of the games, the punishment of Lichas, the confederacy with Athens and Argos, the hostilities ensuing, and finally the refusal of permission for sacrifice at Olympia, are stated by the contemporary historian as the motives which disposed the Lacedæmonians to war. We gather from him however that others existed; the democratical party at this time governed Elis, and Elis held many towns of Elea in subjection. The Lacedæmonians did not absolutely require oligarchy in every state of Greece; for they had lately permitted the restoration of democracy in Athens; and even their own government had a mixture of democracy: but they always beheld, with peculiar jealousy, dominion exercised by a democratical commonwealth.

[Sidenote: [399 B.C.]]

In pursuance of this resolution, ministers were sent to Elis with a declaration that “the Lacedæmonians deemed it just and proper that the towns held in subjection by the Eleans be restored to independency.” The Eleans, alleging the right of conquest, refused to resign their sovereignty; and upon this the ephors ordered the king, Agis, to march into their country. The usual ravage of Grecian armies presently followed, but an earthquake, imagined a divine admonition, alarming the aged prince and his superstitious people, they retired out of Elea,[7] and the troops were dismissed to their several homes. Whether as marking the favour of the gods or the weakness of their enemies, this conduct greatly encouraged the Eleans. In either view it improved the hope of gaining to their cause many Grecian states, known to be disaffected towards Lacedæmon. But if the Lacedæmonian sovereignty was tyrannical, theirs apparently was not less so; and while they were cherishing the hope of foreign assistance, they did not take wiser precautions than other Grecian states for securing the attachment of their subjects. In the next spring Agis again entered Elea with an army to which all the allies had contributed, excepting Corinth and Bœotia. Immediately Lepreum revolted to him; Macistus and Epitalium quickly followed the example; and these were imitated, as he advanced into the country, by Leprine, Amphidolia, and Marganeæ. In this defection of their towns, the Eleans were utterly unable to face the Lacedæmonian army in the field. Agis proceeded unopposed to Olympia and sacrificed, now unforbidden, on the altar of Jupiter. The territories of the revolting towns of course had been spared; but rapine and devastation marked the way from Olympia to Elis, whither the king next directed his march. Nor did the country suffer only from the conquering army. The opportunity of freebooting invited the neighbouring Arcadians and Achæans; and slaves and cattle and corn were carried off to such an amount that all the markets of Peloponnesus were glutted with Elean plunder. It was supposed that Agis would not, rather than that he could not, take Elis itself, which was unfortified. After destroying many fair buildings of the outskirts he proceeded to Cyllene, the principal seaport of the Eleans, and ravage was extended from the mountains to the sea.

Occasion has already frequently occurred to remark, that scarcely any misfortune could befall a Grecian state which would not bring advantage, or at least the hope of advantage, to some considerable portion of its subjects. The aristocratical party in Elis, oppressed by the demagogue Thrasydæus, looked to the present sufferings of their country as the means of relief; but with no better consideration of any political or moral principle than might have guided the wildest savages, or the most profligate among the lowest populace in civilised nations. They proposed to assassinate Thrasydæus, with a few of his confidential friends; and then, in the name of the commonwealth, to open a negotiation with Lacedæmon. The people, they trusted, deprived of their leader, and dreading the arms of the Lacedæmonians, would acquiesce; and thus the principal power in the state would of course come into their hands. The plot failed through a mistake, by which another was murdered for Thrasydæus. The people, however, supposing their favourite killed, rested in silent dejection: but, while the conspirators were arming, and stationing their party, the demagogue awoke, where drunkenness and supervening sleep had overnight checked his way. The people immediately flocked about him; a battle followed, and the conspirators, overpowered, fled to the Lacedæmonian camp.

[Sidenote: [398 B.C.]]

The conduct of the war was such as we have so often seen in Greece. When plunder no longer remained to employ the Lacedæmonian army profitably, Agis marched home, leaving only a garrison in Epitalium on the Alpheus, where he established the Elean fugitives. Hence rapine was occasionally prosecuted through the autumn and winter. Elis could not, like Athens, support itself under the continual ravage of its territory. In spring therefore Thrasydæus opened a negotiation with Lacedæmon, and at once offered the independency of all the towns over which the Eleans claimed sovereignty by right of conquest; proposing only to keep Epium, whose territory they had purchased from the inhabitants for thirty talents fairly paid. The Lacedæmonians however, considering, or affecting to consider, the purchase as forced, required that Epium should be free like the rest. The disposition thus apparent in the Lacedæmonians to depress Elis encouraged the villagers of the Pisan territory to assert their claim to the superintendency of the Olympian temple, violently taken from their ancestors, as they contended, by the Eleans, when their city was destroyed. But, whatever might have been the ancient right, the Lacedæmonian administration, thinking those uneducated pretenders unfit for an office of much solemnity and dignity in the eyes of all Greece, would not interfere. Upon the condition therefore that every town of Elea should be, as a free republic, a separate member of the Lacedæmonian confederacy, which was, in effect, to be subjects of Lacedæmon, peace was made; and Elis, according to the Lacedæmonian decree preceding the war, humbled and chastened, was itself also restored to its place in that confederacy.

The imputation of impiety, under which the Lacedæmonians began the war, perhaps urged them to a more ostentatious display of respect for the gods at the end of it. Agis himself was deputed to offer, at Delphi, the tenth of the spoil. On his return, he was taken ill at Heræa, and he died soon after his arrival at Lacedæmon. In the magnificence of his funeral the Lacedæmonians probably meant also to exhibit their own piety, as well as to testify their opinion of the deceased prince’s merit. They failed however in their estimate of the prevailing prejudices of the Grecian people. Honour to the gods indeed was supposed to be best shown, and religion principally to consist, in pompous processions and expensive spectacles; but general opinion condemned the splendour of the funeral of Agis, as greater than could become the most illustrious mortal.[b]

When the days for the funeral solemnities were past and it was necessary for another king to be appointed, Leotychides, who said that he was the son of Agis, and Agesilaus his brother, stood forward as competitors for the throne. Leotychides saying, “The law, Agesilaus, directs, not that the brother, but that the son of the king is to reign; though if there happen to be no son, the brother may in that case become king.” Agesilaus rejoined, “Then I must be king.” “How,” said Leotychides, “when I am alive?” “Because,” returned Agesilaus, “he whom you call your father, said that you were not his son.”[8] “But my mother, who knows much better than he, still declares that I am.” “Neptune, however,” said Agesilaus, “showed that what you assert is false, as he drove your father abroad by an earthquake from her chamber; and time, which is said to be the truest of witnesses, gives testimony with him to the same effect; for you were born in the tenth month after he fled from her, and was never after seen in her chamber.” In this manner they disputed. But Diopithes, a man who paid great attention to oracles, supported Leotychides, and said that there was an oracle of Apollo enjoining them “to beware of a halting reign.” Lysander however said in reply to him, on behalf of Agesilaus, that “he did not think the god desired them to beware lest their king should stumble and halt, but rather lest one who was not of the royal family should reign; for that the royal power would assuredly be lame whenever men not descended from Hercules should rule the state.” The people, after hearing such arguments from both sides, chose Agesilaus for their king.

CINADON’S PLOT

[Sidenote: [398-397 B.C.]]

Agesilaus had not yet been a year on the throne, when, as he was offering one of the sacrifices appointed for the city, the augur told him that the gods indicated some conspiracy of the most dangerous kind. Within five days after the conclusion of this sacrifice, somebody gave information to the ephors of a conspiracy, and said that “Cinadon was leader in the affair.” Cinadon was a man of vigorous frame, and of powerful mind, but not one of the Equals. When the ephors asked the informer what account he could give of the way in which the plot would be carried into effect, he said that “Cinadon, having conducted him to the outside of the forum, desired him to count how many Spartans there were in the forum; and I,” continued he, “having counted the king, the ephors, the senators, and about forty others, asked him, ‘And why, Cinadon, have you told me to count them?’ ‘Consider these,’ he replied, ‘as enemies, and all the rest now in the forum, who are more than four thousand, as allies.’” He said also that Cinadon pointed out to him in the streets sometimes one, and sometimes two, that were enemies, and said that all the other people were auxiliaries, and that whatever Spartans were on their estates in the country, one, namely the master, was an enemy, while on every estate there were numbers of allies. The ephors then inquiring how many Cinadon said were privy to the plot, he replied that he told him, as to that point, that “there were not very many in concert with the principal agents, but that they were trustworthy, and declared that they were in communication with all the helots, the newly-enfranchised, the inferior citizens, and the people in the parts about the city; for whenever any mention of the Spartans was made among them, no one could forbear from showing that he would willingly eat them up alive.” When the ephors further asked “whence they said they would get arms,” he answered, that Cinadon had stated to him, “Those of us who are already united, say we have arms enough;” and for the multitude, he said that Cinadon, conducting him into the iron-market, had pointed out numbers of daggers, swords, spits, axes, hatchets, and scythes, and added that “all the instruments with which men cultivate the ground, or hew wood or stone, would serve as weapons, while the greater part of the artificers had sufficient tools to fight with, especially against unarmed enemies.” The informer being finally interrogated “at what time the scheme was to be carried into execution,” replied that “directions had been given him to be in readiness at home.”

The ephors, after listening to his statement, were of opinion that he had given information of a well-concerted plot, and were greatly alarmed; nor did they summon even what was called the lesser assembly, but some of the senators, conferring together here and there, resolved to send Cinadon to Aulon, accompanied by some others of the younger men, with directions to bring back with him certain inhabitants of that place, and some helots, whose names were written on his scytale. They desired him also to bring with him a certain woman, who was said to be the handsomest in the place, and was thought to corrupt all the Lacedæmonians, old as well as young, that went thither. Cinadon had executed similar commissions for the ephors before; and they now delivered to him the scytale on which were written the names of the persons that were to be apprehended. As he asked “which of the young men he should take with him,” they said to him, “Go, and desire the eldest of the hippagretæ to send with you six or seven of such of his men as may be at hand.” They had previously taken care that the hippagretæ should know whom he was to send, and that those who were sent should be apprized that they were to secure Cinadon. They moreover acquainted Cinadon that they would send three carriages, that they might not bring away their prisoners on foot, concealing from him as carefully as possible that they sent them with a view to his security alone. They did not apprehend him in the city, because they were uncertain how far the plot might have spread, and wished first to hear from Cinadon himself who were his accomplices in it, before they themselves should be aware that information was given against them, lest they should make their escape. The party who took him were to keep him prisoner, and when they had learned from him the names of his accomplices, were to send them in writing to the ephors as speedily as possible. So intent indeed were the ephors on effecting their object, that they even despatched a troop of horse to support the party that was gone to Aulon.

As soon as Cinadon was secured, and a horseman arrived with the names of those whom he had put on his list, they instantly apprehended Tisamenus the soothsayer, and the other principal conspirators; and when Cinadon was brought back and examined, and had made a full confession and specified his accomplices, they at last asked him “with what object he had engaged in such a scheme.” He replied, “in order that he might be inferior to no man in Lacedæmon.” Soon after he was fastened, arms and neck, in a wooden collar, and scourged and pricked with lances; and in this condition he and his accomplices were led round the city. Thus they suffered the penalty of the law.[c]

AGESILAUS IN ASIA

[Sidenote: [396 B.C.]]

Not long after this event news was brought to Sparta by a Syracusan named Herodes, who had just returned from Phœnicia, of preparations which he had witnessed in the Phœnician ports for a great armament, which he had learned was to consist of three hundred galleys. He had not been able to ascertain its object, but it had induced him to quicken his departure, that he might bear the tidings to Greece. The Spartan government was alarmed, and called a congress of the allies to deliberate on preventive measures. But to Lysander the intelligence afforded a highly welcome opportunity of resuming his ambitious plans, and recovering his influence among the Asiatic Greeks. He seems however to have been aware that he was himself viewed with jealousy at home, and that a proposal coming directly from himself, and immediately tending to his own aggrandisement, would probably be ill received. He resolved therefore to make use of his friend Agesilaus, to accomplish his purpose, and easily prevailed on him to undertake, with a small force, to give such employment to the Persian arms in Asia, as would secure Greece from the threatened invasion.

Agesilaus, who was in the prime of life, was no less eager to display his military talents in such a brilliant field, than Lysander to renew his intrigues, and to replace his creatures in the posts from which they had been dislodged. He therefore offered to take the command of an expedition to Asia, for which he required no more than two thousand neodamode troops, and six thousand of the allies, and desired to be accompanied by a council of thirty Spartans--which he probably knew would, according to usage, be forced upon him--and by Lysander among them. His offer was accepted, and all his requests granted, with the addition of six months’ pay for the army. Corinth, Thebes, and Athens, were called upon to contribute their forces, but they all refused.

It was the first time since the expedition of Menelaus that a king of Sparta had undertaken to invade Asia; and Agesilaus, partly perhaps for the sake of the omen, and partly for the sake of his own renown, was willing to associate his enterprise with the recollection of that heroic adventure. He therefore stopped at Aulis, to sacrifice there after the example of Agamemnon. But before he had completed the rite, the Bœotarchs sent a party of horse to enjoin him to desist, and the men did not merely deliver the message, but scattered the parts of the victim which they found on the altar. He however stifled his resentment, and embarked again for Geræstus, where he found the bulk of his armament assembled, and sailed with it to Ephesus.

Soon after his arrival he received a message from Tissaphernes, calling on him to explain the design of his coming. Agesilaus replied, that his object was to restore the Asiatic Greeks to the independence which their brethren enjoyed on the other side of the Ægean. The satrap on this proposed a truce until the king’s pleasure could be taken on this demand; he engaged himself to support it with all the credit he possessed, and professed to believe that the court would comply with it. Agesilaus consented to the proposal, only requiring security for the observance of the engagement, and even this security was no more than the oath of Tissaphernes, which he pledged with due solemnity to Dercyllidas, and two other Spartan commissioners, who were sent to ratify the convention. Nothing however was farther from the mind of either party than the thought of peace. Tissaphernes, as soon as he had taken the oath, sent to the king for a reinforcement to enable him to take the field; and Agesilaus, who was well aware of his intentions, and probably would not otherwise have granted the truce, though he observed it with strict fidelity, undoubtedly did not suffer the time to be lost with regard to the progress of his own preparations.

During this interval a breach, which the characters and views of the two men rendered almost inevitable, rose between him and Lysander. The rumour of the expedition, and of the part which Lysander was to take in it, seems to have rekindled the flames of discord in the Asiatic cities, which after the expulsion of his creatures had for a time been kept tranquil by the wise forbearance of the ephors and the prudent administration of Dercyllidas. When he came to Ephesus, his door was immediately besieged by a crowd of petitioners, who desired a license to oppress their countrymen under his patronage. After the victory of Ægospotami, Lysander, as the man who for the time wielded the irresistible power of Sparta, had been courted with extravagant servility by the Asiatic Greeks. They did not content themselves with the ordinary honours of golden crowns and statues, but raised altars and offered sacrifices, and sang pæans, and consecrated festivals to him as a god: the first example of that grossest kind of adulation, which afterwards became common among the Greeks, and was reduced to a system by the Romans. When he now appeared again in Asia, though in the train of a Spartan king, it was still supposed that the substance of power resided with him, and that he would direct the exercise of the royal authority, as he thought fit. He did not discountenance this persuasion, for he shared it himself. He had calculated on the subserviency of Agesilaus, whom he considered as mainly indebted to his friendship, first for the throne, and then--an obligation little inferior--for the command in Asia. But his colleagues, the rest of the Thirty, felt that the homage paid to him by the allies was derogatory, not only to the royal dignity, but to their own; and they complained to Agesilaus of his presumption.

The king himself had been hurt by it, and resolved to check it, not by a friendly remonstrance, but in a way the most grating to Lysander’s feelings. He rejected all applications which were made to him in reliance on Lysander’s interest; and his purpose at length became so evident, that Lysander was obliged to inform his clients, that his intercession, instead of furthering, would only obstruct their suits. He had however sufficient self-command to stifle or disguise his resentment; and, after a very mild expostulation with Agesilaus on the harshness of his conduct, requested to be removed from the scene of his humiliation to some other place, where he might still be employed in the public service. The king very willingly complied, and sent him to the Hellespont, where not long after he achieved an acquisition of some moment to the Spartan arms. He prevailed on a Persian of high rank, named Spithridates, who had been offended by Pharnabazus, to revolt, and come with his family, his treasures, and two hundred horse, to Cyzicus, and thence sailed with him and his son to Ephesus, and presented them to Agesilaus, who received them with great pleasure, and took this opportunity of gaining information about the state of Pharnabazus. This incident produced an apparent reconciliation between him and Lysander; but we shall see reason to suspect that on one side, at least, it was not sincere.

Tissaphernes had no sooner received such an addition to his forces, as appeared to him sufficient to overpower Agesilaus, than he threw aside the mask, and sent a message to the Spartan king, bidding him immediately quit Asia, or prepare for war. The council and the allies were somewhat daunted by his arrogant tone, and apparent strength; but Agesilaus, who had expected this result, and desired no other, told the envoys to carry back his thanks to their master, for the advantage he had given the Greeks by his perjury. He then ordered his troops to put themselves in readiness for a long march; sent word to the towns which lay on the road to Caria to lay in provisions for the use of his army; and called on the cities of Ionia, Æolis, and the Hellespont, for their contingents. Agesilaus had reckoned upon this effect of the satrap’s selfish fears, and, instead of seeking him in Caria, marched in the opposite direction toward the residence of Pharnabazus. As this invasion was quite unexpected, he found the towns on his road unprepared for resistance, and collected an immense booty. He penetrated nearly to Dascylium without encountering an enemy. But in that neighbourhood he fell in with a body of Persian horse, and, by the issue of a skirmish which ensued, was made to feel its superiority in equipments and training over his own. The next day when he sacrificed, observes Xenophon--as if he was relating a providential warning, not a human contrivance--the victims were found imperfect; and Agesilaus advanced no farther, but retreated towards Ephesus.

[Sidenote: [396-395 B.C.]]

There he spent the winter in preparations for the next campaign, and more particularly applied himself to the raising of a body of cavalry, which he perceived would be indispensable to the success and the safety of his future operations. For this purpose he made a list of the most opulent men in the Greek cities, and compelled each of them, as the condition of his exemption from personal service, to furnish a trooper. In the spring he collected his forces at Ephesus, and put them into an active course of training, rousing their emulation by the prizes which he proposed for the most gallant show, and the highest degree of expertness, in every department of the service. Xenophon, as an old soldier, is delighted with the recollection of the military bustle which prevailed during this season at Ephesus; where the wrestling schools and the hippodrome were constantly enlivened by the exercises of the men, the market was abundantly supplied with horses, and arms of every kind, and all the trades subservient to war were kept in full employment. Among other devices for raising the spirits of his troops, Agesilaus borrowed a hint, it would seem, from one of Cimon’s stratagems, and ordered his Persian prisoners to be exposed to sale naked, that the Greeks might contrast the delicacy of their persons with the robustness of frames hardened by the exercises of the palæstra.

Before he took the field again, a year having now elapsed from the commencement of his expedition, Lysander and his colleagues were superseded by a new body of councillors, and returned home. Agesilaus then gave public notice, that he meant to take the shortest road into the richest part of the enemy’s country. The notice was designed not more for the preparation of his own troops, than for Tissaphernes, who concluded that if this had been the intention of Agesilaus, he would not have disclosed it, and that now Caria was certainly his real mark. He therefore repeated the dispositions of the preceding summer. But while he waited for the enemy with his cavalry in the vale of the Mæander, Agesilaus directed his march towards the plains of Sardis, the richest of Western Asia. During three days he traversed them without seeing an enemy; but on the fourth the Persian cavalry, which Tissaphernes seems to have sent forward as soon as he heard of the movements of Agesilaus, suddenly came up, and cut off many of the followers of the camp, as they were ranging over the country in quest of plunder.

Tissaphernes had already arrived at Sardis; and his countrymen, many of whom had probably suffered considerable loss from the invasion, bitterly censured him for leaving them unprotected, and even it seems charged him with treachery. The complaints were carried up to the court, where he had one implacable and powerful enemy in the fiendish Parysatis, who thirsted to revenge herself on him for his enmity to her favourite son. She had already found that Artaxerxes was weak enough to sacrifice his most faithful servants to her resentment, even when he knew that it was inflamed by the very services which they had rendered to himself; and according to the most probable account, it was in compliance with her request that he now ordered Tissaphernes to be put to death. The execution of the sentence was committed to Tithraustes, who was appointed to succeed Tissaphernes in his satrapy, and was instructed to open a negotiation with Agesilaus. Accordingly, after executing the first part of his commission, which he did in the Turkish style by the hands of an underling, who surprised Tissaphernes in his bath, Tithraustes sent envoys to treat with the Spartan king. He affected to consider Tissaphernes as the author of the quarrel between his master and the Greeks, and, as if the end of their expedition was now answered by their enemy’s death, proposed that Agesilaus should return home. As to the Asiatic Greeks, Artaxerxes was willing to acknowledge their independence, on condition that they would pay their ancient tribute. Agesilaus replied, that he had no authority to conclude peace without the sanction of the government at home: but he would transmit the Persian overtures to Sparta. In the meanwhile Tithraustes was very anxious that hostilities should be suspended in his province, and, pleading his own merits in the execution of Tissaphernes, begged Agesilaus, while he waited for an answer to the terms proposed, to turn his arms against the satrapy of Pharnabazus. To this Agesilaus consented on condition that Tithraustes would defray the expense of the march; and he received thirty talents [£6000 or $30,000] on that score. This was a step beyond former precedents: for even Tissaphernes, though he had not scrupled to conclude a separate truce, had not paid the enemy a subsidy for invading another part of his master’s dominions.

[Sidenote: [395 B.C.]]

On his march towards the territories of Pharnabazus, Agesilaus received a flattering testimony of the approbation with which his proceedings were viewed at Sparta, and of the disposition which prevailed there to support him in the prosecution of the war. By a despatch which reached him as he lay near Cyme, he learned that he had been invested with the administration of naval affairs, that he was empowered to appoint whom he would to the office of admiral, and still to regulate the operations of the fleet at his discretion. Thus to unite the supreme command of the army and of the navy in one person, was an unexampled mark of confidence, and a striking indication of the new energy which ambition had infused into the Spartan counsels. Agesilaus immediately took measures for raising a fleet; and by a judicious distribution of the burden among the maritime allies, and his influence with wealthy individuals, collected 120 new galleys. But he was less prudent and fortunate in the choice of an admiral, and instead of seeking the highest qualifications, consulted his private affection in the appointment of his wife’s brother Pisander. When this business was despatched, he continued his march to the satrapy of Pharnabazus.

PERSIAN GOLD

These preparations, combined perhaps with other tokens, convinced Tithraustes that Agesilaus had no intention of withdrawing from Asia, but was inclined rather to extend than contract his views, and cherished strong hopes of effecting the conquest of the empire. He perceived that he had only purchased a temporary relief, and bethought himself how he might employ the gold, which was his last remaining stay, to greater advantage. The history of the contest between Greece and Persia afforded several instructive lessons, which were now peculiarly applicable. At the time when the first Artaxerxes was embarrassed by the success of the Athenians in Egypt, he sent an agent, as we have seen, with bribes to Sparta, to procure a diversion in his favour. Tithraustes now resorted to a similar expedient. He sent a Rhodian named Timocrates to Greece, with a sum of fifty talents, which he was charged to distribute, with proper precautions, among the leading persons in the states which might be most easily induced to interrupt the progress of Agesilaus by kindling a war against Sparta at home. Not only was this mission itself a notorious and unquestionable fact; but Xenophon professes an equal degree of certainty as to the names of the persons who received the money. We may at least venture to believe that, though it may have roused them to greater activity, it produced no change in their political sentiments: and we even doubt whether it gave rise to any events which would not have occurred nearly as soon without it. It was indeed natural enough for Agesilaus and his friends to attribute the disappointment of his hopes to the venality of their adversaries. But Xenophon himself observes that the Athenians, though they did not receive any share of the gold, were eager for war in the hope of recovering their independence. And it is clear from his own narrative that similar feelings of jealousy or resentment towards Sparta already prevailed at Thebes, Corinth, and Argos, and were only waiting for an opportunity of displaying themselves in open hostility, but needed no corrupt influence to excite them.

The anti-Laconian party at Thebes--the same no doubt which had sheltered the Athenian exiles, and had contrived the affront offered to Agesilaus at Aulis, and which had therefore reason to dread his resentment if he should ever return to Europe as the conqueror of Asia--set the first springs of hostility in motion. The disposition to war they found already existing; a pretext only was wanting, and this they easily devised. Means were found to induce the Locrians of Opus to make an inroad upon a tract of land which had been long the subject of contention between them and their neighbours the Phocians. The Phocians retaliated by the invasion of the Opuntian Locris, and the Thebans were soon persuaded to take part with the Locrians, and invade Phocis. The Phocians, as was foreseen, applied for succour to Sparta, where, as Xenophon admits, there was the utmost readiness to lay hold on any pretence for a war with Thebes; and the present season of prosperity seemed to the Spartan government the most favourable for humbling a power which had given so many proofs of ill-will towards it.

WAR RISES IN GREECE

War therefore was decreed, and Lysander was sent into Phocis with instructions to collect all the forces he could raise there, and among the tribes seated about Mount Œta, and to march with them to Haliartus in Bœotia, where Pausanias, with the Peloponnesian troops, was to join him on an appointed day. Lysander discharged his commission with his usual activity, and besides succeeded in inducing Orchomenos, which was subject to Thebes, to assert its independence. Pausanias, having crossed the Laconian border, waited at Tegea for the contingents which he had demanded from the allies. They seem to have come in slowly, and Corinth refused to take any part in the expedition. The Thebans, seeing themselves threatened with invasion, sent an embassy to prevail on the Athenians to make common cause with them against Sparta. There were many feelings to be overcome at Athens, before this resolution could be adopted: recollections of a long hereditary grudge, of the animosity displayed by Thebes during the last war, and especially at its close; the sense of weakness, and the dread of provoking a power, by which Athens had so lately been brought to the brink of destruction. The Athenians desired to recover their pre-eminence in Greece, and their readiest way to that end was to declare themselves the protectors of all who suffered under Spartan tyranny. If they were inclined to dread the enemy’s power, they had only to reflect by what means their own had been overthrown. Sparta likewise now ruled over unwilling subjects, and offended allies, who only wanted a leader to encourage them to revolt from her. Indeed she had not one sincere friend left. Argos had always been hostile; Elis had just been deeply wronged. Corinth, Arcadia, and Achaia saw the services which they had rendered in the war requited with insolent ingratitude, and were subject to the control of harmosts, who were not even citizens of Sparta, but helots; bondmen at home, masters abroad. The cities once subject to Athens, which had been tempted to revolt by the prospect of liberty, found themselves cheated of their hopes, and groaned under the double yoke of a foreign governor, and a domestic oligarchy. The Persian king, to whom Sparta mainly owed her victory, she had immediately afterwards treated as an enemy. Athens might now place herself at the head of a confederacy much more powerful than the empire which she had lost; and the Spartan dominion would be more easily overthrown than the Athenian had been, in proportion as the allies of Sparta were stronger than the subjects of Athens.

These arguments found a willing audience; they were seconded by many voices, and the assembly was unanimous in favour of the alliance with Thebes. Thrasybulus, who moved the decree, reminded the Thebans that Athens was about to repay the obligation which they had laid on her when they refused to concur in riveting her chains, by active exertions, and at a great risk. For she would have to face the enmity of Sparta while Piræus remained still unfortified. Both states prepared for war.

Lysander, having collected all the forces he could raise in the north, marched to Haliartus; but he found that Pausanias had not yet arrived there. It was not in his character to remain anywhere inactive, and he was desirous of making himself master of the town. He first tried negotiation to engage it to revolt. But there were some Theban and Athenian troops in the place, whose presence overawed the disaffected; and he then resolved to venture on an assault. A battle took place close to the walls, in which Lysander was slain. It seems clear from a comparison of all accounts, that he was intercepted between the main body of the Thebans and the garrison, which made a sally; and he was known to have fallen by the hand of a citizen of Haliartus. His troops were put to flight, and betook themselves to the hills--a branch of the range of Helicon--which rose at no great distance behind the town. The conquerors pursued with great vigour, and incautiously pressed forward up the rising ground, until the difficulties of the ground brought them to a stand, and the fugitives, perceiving their perplexity, turned upon them, assailed them with a shower of missiles, rolled down masses of rock on their heads, and finally drove them in disorder, with the loss of more than two hundred men, into the plain. The dejection caused by this disaster was relieved the next day by the discovery that the remains of Lysander’s army had dispersed during the night.

But the exultation of the Thebans at this fruit of their victory was damped in the course of a few hours by the appearance of Pausanias, who had received the news of the battle on the road from Platæa to Thespiæ, and had hastened his march to Haliartus. Yet, according to Diodorus, he brought with him no more than six thousand men; but so small a force could scarcely have produced the alarm described by Xenophon, who, with a slight touch of humour, exhibits the Theban camp as fluctuating between the extremes of presumption and despondency. For the next day their spirits were again raised by the arrival of Thrasybulus and an Athenian army; and their confidence was heightened when they perceived that Pausanias showed no disposition to seek an engagement. His situation was extremely embarrassing. According to Greek usage it was absolutely necessary for him to recover the bodies of the slain, who are said to have amounted to a thousand, either by force or by consent of the victors. The greater part lay so near to the town walls that the attempt to carry them away by force would be one of great difficulty and danger, even if he should gain a victory; and the enemy was so strong in cavalry, that the event of a battle would be very uncertain, especially as his own troops had engaged in the expedition with reluctance. He therefore held a council of war; and after mature deliberation the majority came to the decision--if indeed it was not unanimous--to apply for permission to carry away the dead. The Thebans however were not satisfied with this confession of their superiority, and refused to grant a truce, except on condition that the invaders should withdraw from Bœotia. These terms were gladly accepted by Pausanias and his council, though they were felt by the troops as a degradation, such as a Lacedæmonian army had never before experienced. The general dejection and ill-humour which prevailed in the retreat, were heightened by the insulting demeanour of the Thebans, who accompanied them on their march through Bœotia, and drove back all who deviated in the least from the line, with blows, into the road.

The conduct of Pausanias appears to have been in the whole of this affair perfectly blameless. He had failed indeed to reach Haliartus by the preconcerted day, but he arrived the day after; and when it is considered that he had to collect his army from many quarters, and that the allies were generally averse to the expedition, he may seem rather to have deserved praise, for bringing it up so nearly within the appointed time. The disastrous issue could only be attributed to Lysander’s imprudence; and the decision of the council of war with regard to the recovery of the slain, even if it was not clearly required by the circumstances of the case, could not reasonably be imputed as a crime to Pausanias. Yet on his return to Sparta he was capitally impeached; and the nature of the charges brought against him showed that he could not expect a fair trial, but was foredoomed to be sacrificed to public prejudice or to private passion; for the accusation embraced not merely his conduct in his last expedition, but the indulgence which he had granted to the Athenian refugees in Piræus; though his measures on that occasion seem to have been viewed with general approbation at the time, and had only been proved to be impolitic by the event. But under the irritation produced by the recent shame and disappointment, the Spartan senate was no more capable of listening to reason and justice, than the Athenian assembly on some similar occasions; and it is probable that Lysander’s friends did the utmost to inflame the public feelings against his old adversary. Pausanias did not appear at the trial; he was condemned to death, and was obliged to seek shelter in the venerated sanctuary of Athene Alea at Tegea, where he ended his days. His son Agesipolis succeeded to the throne.

Lysander left his family in a state of poverty, which proved that his ambition was quite pure from all sordid ingredients. But, if we may believe a story which became current after his death, and is related upon such authority, that we can scarcely suppose it to have been without foundation, he was not satisfied either with fame, or with the substance of power. He is said to have conceived the project of levelling the privileges of the two royal houses, and of making the kingly office elective, and open to all Spartans, no doubt with the hope of obtaining it for himself.[d]

LYSANDER’S PLOT

[Sidenote: [404-395 B.C.]]

The melodramatic scheme to secure the throne, which has been credited to Lysander, was discredited by Thirlwall, and Mitford, but Grote, Bury, and others accept it, and it is curious enough to deserve chronicle here:

When the Heraclidæ mixed with Dorians, and settled in Peloponnesus, there was a large and flourishing tribe of them at Sparta. The whole, however, were not entitled to the regal succession, but only two families, the Eurytionidæ and the Agidæ; while the rest had no share in the administration on account of their high birth. For as to the common rewards of virtue, they were open to all men of distinguished merit. Lysander, who was of this lineage, no sooner saw himself exalted by his great actions, and supported with friends and power, but he became uneasy to think that a city which owed its grandeur to him, should be ruled by others no better descended than himself. Hence he entertained a design to alter the settlement which confined the succession to two families only, and to lay it open to all the Heraclidæ. Some say, his intention was to extend this high honour not only to all the Heraclidæ, but to all the citizens of Sparta; that it might not so much belong to the posterity of Hercules, as to those who resembled Hercules in that virtue which numbered him with the gods. He hoped, too, that when the crown was settled in this manner, no Spartan would have better pretensions than himself.

At first he prepared to draw the citizens into his scheme, and committed to memory an oration written by Cleon of Halicarnassus for that purpose. But he soon saw that so great and difficult a reformation required bolder and more extraordinary methods to bring it to bear. And as in tragedy machinery is made use of, where more natural means will not do, so he resolved to strike the people with oracles and prophecies; well knowing that the eloquence of Cleon would avail but little, unless he first subdued their minds with divine sanctions and the terrors of superstition. Ephorus tells us, he first attempted to corrupt the priestess of Delphi, and afterwards those of Dodona by means of one Pherecles; and having no success in either application, he went himself to the oracle of Ammon, and offered the priests large sums of gold. They too rejected his offers with indignation, and sent deputies to Sparta to accuse him of that crime. When these Libyans found he was acquitted, they took their leave of the Spartans in this manner: “We will pass better judgments, when you come to live among us in Libya.” It seems there was an ancient prophecy, that the Lacedæmonians would some time or other settle in Africa. This whole scheme of Lysander was of no ordinary texture, nor took its rise from accidental circumstances, but was laid deep and conducted with uncommon art and address: so that it may be compared to a mathematical demonstration, in which, from some principles first assumed, the conclusion is deduced through a variety of abstruse and intricate steps. We shall, therefore, explain it at large, taking Ephorus, who was both an historian and philosopher, for our guide.

[Sidenote: [400-395 B.C.]]

There was a woman in Pontus who gave it out that she was pregnant by Apollo. Many rejected her assertion, and many believed it. So that when she was delivered of a son, several persons of the greatest eminence took particular care of his education, and for some reason or other gave him the name of Silenus. Lysander took this miraculous birth for a foundation, and raised all his building upon it. He made choice of such assistants, as might bring the story into reputation, and put it beyond suspicion. Then he got another story propagated at Delphi and spread at Sparta, that certain ancient oracles were kept in the private registers of the priests, which it was not lawful to touch or to look upon, till in some future age a person should arise, who could clearly prove himself the son of Apollo, and he was to interpret and publish these oracles. The way thus prepared, Silenus was to make his appearance, as the son of Apollo, and demand the oracles. The priests, who were in combination, were to inquire into every article, and examine him strictly as to his birth. At last they were to pretend to be convinced of his divine parentage, and to show him the books. Silenus then was to read in public all those prophecies, particularly that for which the whole design was set on foot; namely, that it would be more for the honour and interest of Sparta to set aside the present race of kings, and choose others out of the best and most worthy men in the commonwealth. But when Silenus was grown up, and came to undertake his part, Lysander had the mortification to see his piece miscarry by the cowardice of one of the actors, whose heart failed him just as the thing was going to be put in execution. However, nothing of this was discovered while Lysander lived.

Lysander’s poverty, which was discovered after his death, added lustre to his virtue. It was then found, that notwithstanding the money which had passed through his hands, the authority he had exercised over so many cities, and indeed the great empire he had been possessed of, he had not in the least improved his family fortune. Ephorus tells us that, afterwards, upon some disputes between the confederates and the Spartans, it was thought necessary to inspect the writings of Lysander, and for that purpose Agesilaus went to his house. Among the other papers he found that political one, calculated to show how proper it would be to take the right of succession from the Eurytionidæ and Agidæ, and to elect kings from among persons of the greatest merit. He was going to produce it before the citizens, and to show what the real principles of Lysander were. But Lacratides, a man of sense, and the principal of the ephors, kept him from it, by representing how wrong it would be to dig Lysander out of his grave, when this oration, which was written in so artful and persuasive a manner, ought rather to be buried with him.

Among the other honours paid to the memory of Lysander, that which we shall mention is none of the least. Some persons who had contracted themselves to his daughters in his lifetime, when they found he died poor, fell off from their engagement. The Spartans fined them for courting the alliance while they had riches in view, and breaking off when they discovered that poverty which was the best proof of Lysander’s probity and justice. It seems, at Sparta there was a law which punished, not only those who continued in a state of celibacy, or married too late, but those that married ill; and it was levelled chiefly at persons who married into rich rather than good families.[e]

AGESILAUS RECALLED

[Sidenote: [395 B.C.]]

While these movements were taking place in Greece, Agesilaus was carrying on the war in Asia, with an activity and success which might well have alarmed the Persian court, and proved the wisdom of the precautions adopted by Tithraustes. On his march into the province of Pharnabazus, he was accompanied by Spithridates, who urged him to advance into Paphlagonia, and undertook to make Cotys, the king of that country, his ally. Cotys, who is elsewhere named Corylas, was one of those powerful hereditary vassals of the Persian king, whose subjection had become merely nominal, and he had lately renounced even the appearance of submission. Artaxerxes, imprudently or insidiously, had put his obedience to the test, by summoning or inviting him to court. But the Paphlagonian prince was too wary, and knew the character of the Persian government too well, to trust himself in its power, and he had openly refused to obey the royal command. It would add nothing to his offence, though something to his security, to treat with the enemies of Artaxerxes. Nothing could be more agreeable to Agesilaus than the opportunity of gaining so powerful an ally; he gladly accepted the mediation of Spithridates, who not only fulfilled his promise, and engaged Cotys to come to the Greek camp, and conclude an alliance with Sparta in person, but prevailed on him, before his departure, to leave a reinforcement of one thousand cavalry, and two thousand targeteers, with the army of Agesilaus.

To reward Spithridates for this important service, in a manner which would strengthen the Greek interest in Asia, Agesilaus, with great address, negotiated a match between Cotys and the daughter of Spithridates, so as to lead each party to consider himself as under obligations to the other, and both to look upon him as their benefactor. As the season was too far advanced for a journey by land across the Paphlagonian mountains, the young lady was sent by sea, under the charge of a Spartan officer, to the dominions of her intended consort; and Agesilaus returned to take up his winter quarters in the territories of Pharnabazus, and in the satrap’s own residence of Dascylium. Here were parks, chases, and forests abounding in game of every kind, and round about were many large villages plentifully stocked with provisions for the ordinary supply of the princely household. The domain was skirted by the windings of a river, full of various kinds of fish. Here therefore the Greek army passed the winter in ease and plenty, making excursions, as occasion invited, into the surrounding country far and wide, while Pharnabazus was forced to range over it as a houseless fugitive, carrying with him his family and his treasures, for which he could find no place of permanent shelter, and, even in this Scythian mode of life, never free from apprehensions for his personal safety.

Sometimes, however, he hovered in the neighbourhood of the Greeks, and once surprised them in one of their marauding excursions; and though he had with him only two scythe-chariots, and about four hundred cavalry, he dispersed a body of seven hundred Greek horse with his chariots, and drove them, with the loss of one hundred men, to seek shelter from their heavy infantry. A few days after this skirmish Spithridates learned that the satrap was encamped in the village of Cava, about twenty miles off, and communicated the discovery to Herippidas. Herippidas, who loved a brilliant enterprise, was immediately fired with the hope of making himself master of the satrap’s camp and person, and requested Agesilaus to grant him, for this purpose, two thousand heavy infantry, as many targeteers, the Paphlagonian cavalry, and those of Spithridates, and as many of the Greek horse as might be willing to take part in the adventure. He obtained all he asked; but at night, at the hour of departure, he found that not half of his volunteers appeared at the appointed place. Nevertheless, fearing the raillery of his colleagues, if he should desist, he persevered in his undertaking, and after marching all night, arrived at daybreak at the encampment of Pharnabazus. He overpowered a body of Mysians at the outpost; but their resistance afforded time for the escape of Pharnabazus and his family, who however left the camp, with a great treasure of drinking vessels and costly furniture, in the possession of the assailants. But Herippidas, being anxious, for the sake of his own honour, to deliver the whole booty into the hands of the officers who in the Spartan army answered to the Roman quæstors, took precautions to exclude his allies from all share in it; and he thus deprived the Spartan arms of an advantage much more important than the value of the spoil. For Spithridates and the Paphlagonians, indignant at this treatment, deserted the camp the next night, and repairing to Sardis entered the service of Ariæus, who had again revolted, and was at war with the king: Agesilaus was more deeply affected by this loss than by any mischance that he met with in the course of his expedition: and he seems to have regretted it still more on private than on public grounds.

Not long after, a prospect seemed to be opened to him of gaining a much more valuable ally. A Greek of Cyzicus, who was connected by ties of hospitality with Pharnabazus, and had recently entered into the same relation with Agesilaus, proposed to him to bring about an interview between him and the satrap. The preliminaries were arranged, and a place of meeting appointed in the open air, to which Agesilaus came accompanied by the Thirty, and they seated themselves on the grass to wait for Pharnabazus. He came attended by a train of servants, who, according to the Persian fashion, proceeded to lay down a carpet and cushions for their master. But the intelligent Persian, struck by the contrast of the Spartan simplicity, in a fortune at present so much more prosperous than his own, ordered these instruments of luxury to be removed, and, in his splendid attire, took his seat without ceremony on the green-sward by the side of Agesilaus.

[Sidenote: [395-394 B.C.]]

After the forms of a friendly greeting had been interchanged, Pharnabazus opened the conference with an expostulation on the hard treatment which he had suffered. He reminded his hearers of the zeal and constancy with which he had espoused the cause of Sparta in the war with Athens. Nevertheless Spartan hostility had now reduced him to such a condition that even in his own territory he did not know how to find a meal, except such as he could collect, like a dog, from the orts and leavings of their rapine; while his fair patrimonial mansions, his pleasant woods and parks, had been all burned, and felled, and spoiled. If, he concluded, it was his ignorance that made him unable to reconcile such conduct with the obligations of justice and gratitude, he desired that the Spartans would enlighten him.

This address, Xenophon says, struck the Thirty with shame, and it was some time before Agesilaus broke the silence that ensued. Private friendship, he said, must give way to reasons of state. The Spartans, being at war with the king of Persia, were compelled to treat all his subjects as their enemies; and Pharnabazus among the rest, however glad they might be to gain him for their friend. And what they had now to propose was not that he should exchange one master for another, but that he should at once become their ally, and independent of every superior. Nor was it a poor or barren independence that they held out to him, but a rich addition to his hereditary possessions, which their aid would enable him to make at the expense of his fellow subjects, who would then be forced to own him as their master. Pharnabazus, in answer to these overtures, said that he would frankly declare his mind to them. If the king should attempt to place any other general in authority over him, he would renounce his allegiance, and ally himself to Sparta; but if his master entrusted him with the supreme command in that part of his domains, he would do his best to defend them. Agesilaus grasped his hand, and assured him of his warmest regard, and, under the excitement of a generous feeling, forgetting the excuse he had just before made for his past conduct, promised to withdraw immediately from his territories, and, though they should continue at war, to abstain from invading them, as long as there was any other quarter in which he could employ his forces. So the interview ended.

Agesilaus kept his word, and withdrew his forces from the satrapy of Pharnabazus, where indeed it is probable he would not otherwise have stayed much longer, as the spring was coming on, and he was meditating a new expedition, in which he meant to advance as far as he could into the interior. By this movement, if he gained no more decisive advantage, he expected that he should at least separate all the provinces which he left behind him from the Persian empire. With this design he proceeded to the plain of Thebe, where he encamped, and began to collect all the forces he could raise from the allied cities. He was in the midst of these preparations, when he received a message from the ephors, which was brought by a Spartan named Epicydidas, who apprised him of the new turn which affairs had taken in Greece, and summoned him to march with the utmost speed for the defence of his country. Agesilaus received this intelligence with fortitude, though it stopped him at the outset of the most brilliant career that had ever yet been opened by a Greek, and obeyed the command of the ephors with as much promptness as if he had been present in their council-room at Sparta.[d]

FOOTNOTES

[7] [Elea is used here to denote the district of which the city of Elis was the capital.]

[8] [It was commonly believed that Alcibiades was the father of Leotychides.]

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XLIII. THE CORINTHIAN WAR

[Sidenote: [394 B.C.]]

Two cares principally engaged Agesilaus before his departure; to provide security for the Asian Greeks in his absence, and to have a numerous and well-appointed army to lead into Greece. For the former purpose, naming Euxenus to preside, with the title of harmost, he placed a body of four thousand men under his orders. With the latter view, he proposed prizes for the cities which should furnish the best troops; and for commanders of mercenaries, horse, heavy-armed, bowmen, and targeteers, whose bands should be the best chosen, best appointed, and best disciplined. The prizes were mostly arms, elegantly wrought; but, for higher merit, or the merit of those of higher rank, there were some golden crowns; and Xenophon mentions it, as a large sum for the occasion, that the expense amounted to four talents, less than a thousand pounds sterling. Three Lacedæmonians, with one officer from each Asiatic city, were named for judges; but the decision, or the declaration of it, was judiciously referred to the arrival of the army in the Thracian Chersonesus.

Unable as the leading men in the Lacedæmonian administration were, either to conduct a war against the powerful confederacy formed against them, or, upon any tolerable terms, to prevent it, the recall of Agesilaus seems to have been a necessary measure. The army assembled by their enemies was such as had not often been seen in wars within Greece. Argos furnished seven thousand heavy-armed; Athens had already recovered strength to send six thousand, and add six hundred horse; Bœotia, Corinth, Eubœa, and Locris made the whole of the army twenty-four thousand heavy-armed, with above fifteen hundred cavalry; to which was added a large body of the best light-armed of Greece, Acarnanians, Ozolian Locrians, and Malians. The fighting men of all descriptions must have amounted to fifty thousand. The avowed purpose was to invade Laconia. “The Lacedæmonian state,” said the Corinthian Timolaus, in a debate on the plan of operations, “resembles a river, which, near the source, is easily forded, but the farther it flows, other streams joining, the depth and power of the current increases. Thus the Lacedæmonians always march from home with their own troops only; but as they proceed, being reinforced from other cities, their army swells and grows formidable. I hold it therefore advisable to attack them, if possible, in Lacedæmon itself; otherwise, the nearer to Lacedæmon the better.”

Against so powerful a league, the allies, whom the Lacedæmonians could now command, were principally from the smaller Grecian cities, and none beyond Peloponnesus. Marching themselves six thousand foot and six hundred horse, and being joined by the Mantineans and Tegeans, whose numbers are not reported, they were farther reinforced by no more than seven thousand five hundred heavy-armed, from Epidaurus, Hermione, Trœzen, Sicyon, Achaia, and Elis. Aristodemus, of the blood royal, as regent, commanded for the king, Agesipolis, yet a boy.

Circumstances commonly occur to render confederate armies less efficacious, in proportion to their strength, than those under a single authority. A dispute about the command in chief, with some difference of opinion about their order of battle, some of the generals being for deeper, others for more extended phalanges, gave opportunity for the Lacedæmonians to collect their forces, and march far beyond their own frontier, so as to meet the enemy near Corinth. In the account of the preparatory sacrifices there drops from Xenophon a remarkable confession, that those ceremonies were sometimes engines of policy. While the Bœotians, he says, held the left of their army, they were in no haste to engage; but, as soon as they had prevailed to have their situation in the line changed, so that the Athenians would be opposed to the Lacedæmonians, and themselves to the Achæans, then they declared that the symptoms of the victims were favourable. They saved themselves perhaps some slaughter by this disingenuous artifice. In the battle which ensued the Achæans fled, and all the allies of Lacedæmon equally yielded to those opposed to them. But the Athenians were defeated with considerable slaughter; and the superior discipline of the Lacedæmonians so prevailed against superior numbers that, with the loss of only eight of their own body, they remained finally masters of the field; in which, if we may trust Xenophon’s panegyric of Agesilaus for what he has omitted to state in his general history, no less than ten thousand of the confederate army fell.[9] Probably however, though the Lacedæmonians themselves suffered little, their allies suffered much; for the victory seems to have been little farther decisive than to prevent the invasion of Peloponnesus.

Meanwhile Agesilaus was hastening his march from Asia. He crossed the Hellespont about the middle of July. At Amphipolis he met Dercyllidas, who had been sent to inform him of the victory obtained near Corinth. Immediately he forwarded that able and popular officer into Asia, to communicate the grateful news among the Grecian cities there, and to prepare them for his early return, of which there seemed now fair promise.

Through Thrace and Macedonia the country was friendly, or feared to avow hostility. Thessaly, inimically disposed, and powerful through population and wealth resulting from the natural productiveness of the soil, was however too ill-governed to give any systematical opposition. The defiles of the mountains against Macedonia, where a small force might efficaciously oppose a large one, seem to have been left open. But the influence of the principal towns, Larissa, Cranon, Scotussa, and Pharsalus, in close alliance with the Bœotians, decided the rest, and as the Lacedæmonian army crossed the plain a body of horse, raised from the whole province, infested the march. It was singularly gratifying to Agesilaus that, with his horse, promiscuously collected, and entirely formed by himself, supporting it judiciously with his infantry, he defeated and dispersed the Thessalian, the most celebrated cavalry of Greece.

On the day after this success he reached the highlands of Phthia; and thence the country was friendly quite to the border of Bœotia. But there news met him, unwelcome for the public, unwelcome on his private account, and such as instantly almost to blot out his once bright prospect, which, as the historian, his friend and the companion of his march, shows, he had thus far been fondly cherishing, of conquest in Asia, and glory over the world. While the misconduct of the Lacedæmonian administration had excited a confederacy within Greece, which proposed to overwhelm Lacedæmon by superiority of land-force, and, with that view, to carry war directly into Laconia, a hostile navy had arisen in another quarter, powerful enough to have already deprived her, by one blow, of her new dominion of the sea. The train of circumstances which had produced this event, though memorials fail for a complete investigation of it, will require some attention.

We have seen Cyprus, at a very early age, from a Phœnician, become a Grecian island, and Salamis the first Grecian city founded there. We have then observed the Cyprian Greeks yielding to the Persian power. The ruin of the marine, the inertness of the court, and the distraction in the councils of Persia, which followed, would afford opportunity and temptation for the Cypriots, beyond other subjects of the empire, again to revolt; and the Persian interest, and the Greek, and the Phœnician, and the tyrannic, and the oligarchal, and the democratical, would be likely to fall into various contest. Such, as far as may be gathered, was the state of things which first invited Athenian ambition to direct its view to Cyprus, when the Athenian navy, rising on the ruins of the Persian, was extending dominion for Athens on all sides, under the first administration of Pericles. This view, quickly diverted to other objects, was however, after a change in the Athenian administration, resumed; and Cimon, as we have seen, died in command in Cyprus. The policy of Athens would of course propose to hold dominion, there as elsewhere, through support given to the democratical interest. But after the death of Cimon wars so engaged the Athenian government as to prevent the extension of any considerable exertion to such a distance; and the Cyprian cities were mostly governed by their several princes or tyrants, under the paramount sovereignty of Persia.

Among the fugitive Greeks was Evagoras, a youth who claimed descent from the ancient princes of Salamis, of the race of Teucer. Informed of the state of things, this young man formed the bold resolution, with only about fifty fellow-sufferers in exile, devoted to his cause, to attempt the recovery of what he claimed as his paternal principality. From Soli in Cilicia, their place of refuge, they passed to the Cyprian shore, and proceeded to Salamis by night. Knowing the place well, they forced a small gate, probably as in peace, unguarded, marched directly to the palace, and, after a severe conflict, overcoming the tyrant’s guard, while the people mostly kept aloof, they remained masters of the city, and Evagoras resumed the sovereignty.

This little revolution, in a distant island, became, through a chain of events out of all human foresight, a principal source of great revolutions in Greece. An extraordinary intimacy grew between the Athenian democracy and the tyrant of Salamis (for that was the title which Evagoras commonly bore among the Greeks), insomuch that the tyrant was associated among the Athenian citizens. In the ruin of Athens, impending from the defeat of Ægospotami, Conon fled thither with eight triremes, saved from the general destruction of the fleet. Conon had previous acquaintance with Evagoras; and eight triremes at his orders, equipped and ably manned, would enable him, in seeking refuge, to offer important service. The Athenian refugee became the most confidential minister of the Cyprian prince, or rather his associate in enterprise. Undertaking negotiation with Pharnabazus, he conciliated that satrap’s friendship for Evagoras; which so availed him that, without resentment from the court, or opposition from other satraps, he could add several towns of the island to his dominion.

While Agesilaus was threatening the conquest of Asia, and Pharnabazus, having obtained, in a manner from his generosity and mercy, a respite from the pressure upon himself, was nevertheless apprehensive that this satrapy, separated from the body of the empire, might become dependent upon the Lacedæmonian commonwealth, Conon suggested that the progress of the Lacedæmonian arms, which seemed irresistible by land, would be most readily and efficaciously checked by a diversion by sea. A considerable fleet of Phœnician ships was at the satrap’s orders: Evagoras had a fleet which might co-operate with it; the Athenian interest, still considerable in the island and Asiatic Grecian cities, would favour the purpose; and Conon himself had consideration among those cities, and especially among their seamen. Even before Agesilaus left Asia, a project, founded on these suggestions, seems to have been in forwardness. Soon after his departure, through the combined exertions of Pharnabazus, Evagoras, and Conon, a fleet very superior to the Lacedæmonian was assembled; and the generous Pharnabazus formed the resolution, extraordinary for a Persian satrap, to take the nominal command in person, having the good sense apparently to leave the effective command to the superior abilities and experience of Conon.

BATTLE OF CNIDUS

Near Cnidus they met the Lacedæmonian fleet, and the brave but inexperienced Pisander, brother-in-law of Agesilaus, would not avoid a battle. Conon and Evagoras led the Grecian force against him: Pharnabazus took the particular command of the Phœnician, forming a second line. The Grecian force alone, according to report, though Xenophon does not speak of it as certain, outnumbered the Lacedæmonian fleet. The allies in the left of the Lacedæmonian line, alarmed at the view of the enemy’s great superiority, presently fled. Pisander was then quickly overpowered. His galley being driven on the Cnidian shore, the crew mostly escaped; but, refusing himself to quit his ship, he was killed aboard. The victory of Conon was complete: according to Diodorus fifty ships were taken.

Such was the disastrous event, the news of which met Agesilaus on his arrival on the confines of Bœotia. The first information struck him with extreme anguish and dejection. Presently, however, the consideration occurring how disadvantageous, in the existing circumstances, the communication of it might be, he had command enough of himself to check all appearance of his feelings. His army consisted mostly of volunteers, attached indeed to his character, but more to his good fortune; and bound, as by no necessity, so by no very firm principle, to partake in expected distress. With such an army he was to meet, within a few days, the combined forces of one of the most powerful confederacies ever formed in Greece. To support, or, if possible, raise, the confidence and zeal of his troops, though by a device of efficacy to be of short duration, might be greatly important. He therefore directed report to be authoritatively circulated that Pisander, though at the expense of his life, had gained a complete victory; and, to give sanction to the story, he caused the ceremony of the evangelian sacrifice to be performed, and distributed the offered oxen among the soldiers.

Resuming then his march, in the vale of Coronea he met the confederate army, consisting of the flower of the Bœotian, Athenian, Argive, Corinthian, Eubœan, Locrian, and Ænian forces. Expecting this formidable assemblage, he had been attentive to all opportunity for acquiring addition to his own strength. Some he had gained from the Grecian towns on his march through Thrace. On the Bœotian border he was joined by the strength of Phocis, and also of the Bœotian Orchomenos, always inimical to Thebes. A Lacedæmonian mora had been sent from Peloponnesus to reinforce him, with half a mora which had been in garrison in Orchomenos. The numbers of the two armies were thus nearly equal; but the Asiatic Grecian troops, which made a large part of that under Agesilaus, were reckoned very inferior to the European. It was in the spirit of the institutions of Lycurgus that Agesilaus, otherwise simple, even as a Spartan, in his dress and manner, paid much attention to what our great dramatic poet has called “the pomp and circumstance of war”; aware how much it attaches the general mind, gives the soldier to be satisfied with himself, and binds his fancy to the service he is engaged in. Scarlet or crimson appears to have been a common uniform of the Greeks, and the army of Agesilaus appeared, in Xenophon’s phrase, all brass and scarlet.

THE BATTLE OF CORONEA

According to the usual manner of war among the Greeks, when the armies approached a battle soon followed. On the present occasion both quitted advantageous ground; Agesilaus moving from the bank of the Cephissus, and the confederates from the roots of Helicon, to meet in a plain. Perfect silence was observed by both armies till within nearly a furlong of each other, when the confederates gave the military shout, and advanced running. At a somewhat smaller distance the opposite army ran to meet the charge. The Lacedæmonians, on its right, where Agesilaus took post, instantly overthrew the Argives, their immediate opponents, who, scarcely waiting the assault, fled toward Helicon. The Cyreans supported in Greece the reputation they had acquired in Asia; and were so emulated by the Ionians, Æolians, and Hellespontines, from whom less was expected, that, all coming to push of spear together, they compelled the centre of the confederate army to retreat. The victory seemed so decided that some of the Asiatics were for paying Agesilaus the usual compliment of crowning on the occasion; when information was brought him, that the Thebans had routed the Orchomenians, who held the extreme of his left wing, and had penetrated to the baggage. Immediately changing his front, he proceeded toward them.

The Thebans perceived they were cut off from their allies, who had already fled far from the field. It was a common practice of the Thebans to charge in column, directing their assault, not against the whole, but a chosen point of the enemy’s line. Thus they had gained the battle of Delium against the Athenians, in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian War. To such a formation their able leaders had recourse now; resolving upon the bold attempt to pierce the line of the conquering Lacedæmonians; not any longer with the hope of victory, but with the view to join their defeated allies in retreat. Xenophon praises the bravery, evidently not without meaning some reflection on the judgment, of Agesilaus; who chose to engage them, he says, front to front, when, if he had opened his line and given them passage, their flanks and rear would have been exposed to him.

A most fierce conflict ensued. Shield pressed against shield, stroke was returned for stroke; amid wounds and death no clamour was heard; neither, says the historian, who accompanied the Spartan king, was there complete silence, for the mutterings of rage were mixed with the din of weapons. The perseverance, the discipline, and the skill in arms of the Thebans were such, and such the force of their solid column, that, after many had fallen, a part actually pierced the Lacedæmonian line, and reached the highlands of Helicon; but the greater part, compelled to retreat, were mostly put to the sword. In this obstinate action Agesilaus was severely wounded. His attendants were bearing him from the field when a party of horse came to ask orders concerning about eighty Thebans, who, with their arms, had reached a temple. Mindful, amid his suffering, of respect due to the deity, he commanded that liberty should be granted to them to pass unhurt, whithersoever they pleased. In the philosopher-historian’s manner of relating this anecdote is implied that, among the Greeks, in such circumstances, revenge would have prompted an ordinary mind; and, even in Agesilaus, the generous action is attributed, not to humanity, but to superstition; not to an opinion of the deity’s regard for mercy and charity among men, but to the fear, unless it were rather the desire of inculcating the fear, of his resentment for any want of respectful attention to himself. When pursuit ended, the victorious army anxiously employed itself in dragging the enemy’s slain within its own lines: a remarkable testimony, from the same great writer, to the prevalence still, in a degree that may surprise us, of that barbarism in war, which in Homer’s description is striking, though in his age less a matter for wonder.

Next morning early the troops were ordered to parade with arms, all wearing chaplets. Agesilaus himself being unable to attend, the polemarch Gylis commanded at the ceremony of raising the trophy; which was performed with all the music of the army playing, and every circumstance of pomp, that might most inspire, among the soldiery, alacrity and self-satisfaction.

Why then no measures were taken to profit from the advantages, which victory apparently should have laid open, is not shown. The Thebans sending, in usual form, for permission to bury their dead, a truce was granted them, evidently for a longer time than for that purpose alone, could be wanted. Meanwhile the Lacedæmonian army withdrew into Phocis, a country friendly or neutral, to perform a ceremony to which Grecian superstition indeed attached much importance, the dedication of the tenth of the spoil collected by Agesilaus in his Asiatic command. It amounted to a hundred talents; perhaps something more than twenty thousand pounds.

After this second triumphal rite the army, committed to the orders of Gylis, proceeded into the neighbouring hostile province of Ozolian Locris, where the object seems to have been little more than to collect plunder, which, according to the Grecian manner, might serve the soldiers instead of pay. Corn, goods, whatever the rapacious troops could find in the villages, were taken. The Locrians, unable to prevent the injury, did nevertheless what they best could to revenge it. Occupying the defiles which, in returning into Phocis, were necessarily to be repassed, they gave such annoyance that Gylis was provoked to take the command of a select body in pursuit of them.

Entangled among the mountains, he was himself killed, and the whole party would have been cut off, had not the officers left with the command of the main body brought seasonable relief. Agesilaus, still from his wounds unfit for fatigue, passed by sea to Laconia, and the army was distributed in quarters.

If any other writer had ever given any authority for the supposition, we might suspect that Xenophon’s account of the battle of Coronea was written under the influence of partiality for his friend and patron, and that the victory was less complete than he has described it.[10] Yet we are not without information of circumstances which may have given occasion for the line of conduct which Agesilaus pursued. The defeat of Cnidus produced a great and rapid revolution in Asiatic Greece.

And thus the fabric of the Lacedæmonian empire, seemingly so established by the event of the Peloponnesian War, and since so extended by the ability of the commanders in Asia, was in large proportion almost instantly overthrown.

Most of the principal officers, and many inferior men, of the numerous Asiatic troops under Agesilaus, would be deeply interested in this revolution. The principal sources of pay for all would cease; and hence the plain of Coronea seems to have been the last field of fame for the Cyreans. We find no mention of them afterwards from Xenophon: apparent proof that their following fortunes were not brilliant; not such as he could have any satisfaction in reporting. Probably they dispersed, some to their homes, some to seek new service, and never more assembled.[b]

LAND AFFAIRS OF THE CORINTHIAN WAR

[Sidenote: [394-392 B.C.]]

Xenophon was no such student of the accurate arrangement of events as was Thucydides, and the history recounted hereafter is differently ordered by different historians; by some the massacre at Corinth is postponed two years, to 392 B.C. The massacre which Xenophon with his Spartan sympathies makes so cold-blooded a butchery is by sober historians credited merely to the government’s anticipation of a similar step on the part of the opposition.[a]

Corinth still continued to be the theatre of war. A Lacedæmonian garrison occupied Sicyon, and made frequent inroads into the Corinthian territory. The allies of Corinth were well pleased to see themselves thus exempt from the calamities of war at her expense. But the party among the Corinthians which, on political grounds, desired to renew their connection with Sparta, derived new motives from this state of things to encourage them in their designs; and they began to hold private meetings to concert measures for restoring peace. Their movements were observed by their adversaries, who determined to counteract them by one of those atrocious massacres which so frequently disfigure the pages of Greek history. We do not know what credit may be due to Xenophon, when he intimates that all the principal allies of Corinth,--the Argives, and Bœotians, and Athenians,--had an equal share in the conspiracy, or whether he is only speaking of the foreign garrison. His horror is chiefly excited by the impiety of the murderers, who selected a holiday for the deed, that they might be the more likely to find their enemies out of doors, and in the execution of their purpose paid no regard to the most sacred things and places, but stained even the altars and images of the gods with the blood of their victims.

Unhappily this was no new excess of party rage: but perhaps few scenes of this kind had been planned with more ferocious coolness, or accompanied with a greater number of shocking circumstances; though it must not be forgotten that it is Xenophon who describes it. Suspicions however had been previously entertained of the plot by Pasimelus, one of the persecuted party, and at the time of the tumult a body of the younger citizens was assembled with him in a place of exercise outside the walls. They immediately ran up to seize the Acrocorinthus, where they maintained themselves for a time against the attacks of their enemies. But an unpropitious omen, probably strengthening the consciousness of their weakness, made them resolve to withdraw, and to seek safety in exile. Yet, notwithstanding the impious treachery of their enemies, they were induced by the persuasions of their friends and relatives, and by the oaths of the leading men of the opposite party, to abandon this intention, and return to their homes.

But their fears for their personal safety had no sooner subsided, than the state of public affairs again began to appear insupportable, and they were ready to run any risk for the sake of a change. The opposite party had gone so far in their enmity to Sparta, or in their zeal for democracy, as to do their utmost towards establishing a complete unity, both of civil rights and of territory, between Corinth and Argos. The land-marks which separated the two states had been removed; so that the name either of Corinth or of Argos might be applied to the whole. But since it was Argive influence that had brought about this union, since the Argive institutions had been adopted, and the Argive franchise communicated to the Corinthians, the discontented had some reason to complain, that Corinth had lost her independence and dignity, while Argos had gained an increase of territory by the transaction. But what they bore still more impatiently, was the loss of their own rank and influence, which were totally extinguished by the union; they no longer enjoyed any exclusive privileges, any rights which they did not share with the whole Argive-Corinthian commonalty; and this was a franchise which they valued no more than the condition of an alien. They therefore resolved on a desperate effort for restoring Corinth to her former station in Greece, and for recovering their own station in Corinth.

[Sidenote: [392 B.C.]]

Pasimelus and Alcimenes took the lead in this enterprise. They obtained a secret interview with Praxitas, the Spartan commander at Sicyon, and proposed to admit him and his troops within the walls that joined Corinth with Lechæum, her port on the western gulf. He knew the men, and embraced their offer; and at an appointed hour of night came with a mora of Lacedæmonians, and a body of Sicyonians and of Corinthian exiles, to a gate where the conspirators had contrived to get themselves placed on duty. He was introduced without any opposition; but as the space between the walls was large, and he had brought but a small force with him, he threw up a slight entrenchment, to secure himself until the succours which he expected should arrive. During the next day he remained quiet, and was not attacked; though, besides the garrison of the city, there was a body of Bœotians behind him at Lechæum. But aid had been summoned from Argos, and on the day following the Argive forces arrived, and, confident in their numbers, immediately sought the enemy. They were supported by their Corinthian partisans, and by a body of mercenaries commanded by Iphicrates, an Athenian general, who in this war laid the foundation of his military renown.

The superiority of the Lacedæmonian troops over the other Greeks, and the terror they inspired even when they were greatly outnumbered, was again strikingly manifested in the engagement which ensued. The Argives forced their way through the entrenchment, and drove the handful of Sicyonians before them down to the sea. But when the Lacedæmonians came up, they took to flight, without offering any resistance, and made for the city. But, meeting with the Corinthian exiles, who had defeated the mercenaries, and were returning from the pursuit, they were driven back, and those who did not make their escape by ladders over the wall, were slaughtered by the Lacedæmonians like a flock of sheep. Lachæum was taken, and the Bœotian garrison was put to the sword. After his victory Praxitas was joined by the expected contingents of the allies, and he made use of them first to demolish the Long Walls, for a space sufficient to afford a passage for an army. Next, crossing the isthmus, he took and garrisoned the towns of Sidus and Crommyon. On his return he fortified the heights of Epieicea, which commanded one of the most important passes, and then disbanded his army, and returned to Sparta.

Two important consequences of the long series of hostilities in which all the Greek states had been engaged now became apparent. The number of persons who were thrown upon war as a means of subsistence had so much increased, that the contending powers were able to carry on the struggle with mercenary troops. Another result of the long practice of war was, that it had begun to be more and more studied as an art, and cultivated with new refinements.

Thus Iphicrates had been led to devote his attention to the improvement of a branch of the light infantry, which had hitherto been accounted of little moment in the Greek military system. He had formed a new body of targeteers, which in some degree combined the peculiar advantages of the heavy and light troops, and was equally adapted for combat and pursuit. To attain these objects, he had substituted a linen corslet for the ancient coat of mail, and had reduced the size of the shield, while he doubled the length of the spear and the sword. At the head of this corps he made frequent inroads into Peloponnesus, and in the territory of Phlius he surprised the forces of the little state in an ambuscade, and made so great a slaughter of them that the Phliasians were obliged to admit a Lacedæmonian garrison into their town. But in Arcadia such was the terror inspired by the troops of Iphicrates, that they were suffered to plunder the country with impunity, and the Arcadians did not venture to meet them in the field. On the other hand they were themselves no less in dread of the Lacedæmonians, who had taught them to keep aloof in a manner which proved the peculiar excellence of the Spartan military training.

A Lacedæmonian mora, stationed at Lechæum, accompanied by the Corinthian exiles, ranged the country round about Corinth without interruption. Yet it was not able to prevent the Athenians from repairing the breach which Praxitas had made in the Long Walls, which they regarded as a barrier that screened Attica from invasion. The whole serviceable population of Athens, with a company of carpenters and masons, sallied forth to the isthmus, and having restored the western wall in a few days, completed the other at their leisure. Their work, however, was destroyed in the course of the same summer by Agesilaus, on his return from an expedition which he had made into Argolis, for the purpose of letting the Argives taste the fruits of the war which they had helped to stir, and were most forward to keep up. After having carried his ravages into every part of their territory, he marched to Corinth, stormed the newly repaired walls, and recovered Lechæum. Here he met his brother Teleutias, who, through his influence, which in this case was better exerted than in that of Pisander, had been appointed to the command of the fleet, and having come with a small squadron to support his operations, made some prizes in the harbour and the docks.

[Sidenote: [392-391 B.C.]]

But the appearance of Teleutias in the Corinthian Gulf was connected with other events, more important than any which took place in Peloponnesus after the return of Agesilaus from Asia. That we exhibit them in an uninterrupted series, together with their consequences, we shall follow Xenophon’s order, and return to them after having briefly related how the war was carried on in Greece, in the campaigns which ensued down to its close.

In the spring of 392, Agesilaus made a fresh expedition for the purpose of bringing the Corinthians to terms, by cutting off one of their chief resources, the fortress of Piræum, at the foot of Mount Geranea on the western gulf. The captures and the booty were brought out, and passed in review before Agesilaus, as he sat in an adjacent building on the margin of a small lake. His triumph was heightened by the presence of envoys from various states, among the rest from Thebes, where the party which desired peace had succeeded in procuring an embassy to be sent for the purpose of ascertaining the terms which Sparta would grant. Agesilaus, the more fully to enjoy their humiliation, affected to take no notice of their presence, while Pharax, their proxenus, stood by him, waiting for an opportunity to present them. Just at this juncture a horseman came up, his horse covered with foam, and informed the king of a disaster which had just befallen the garrison of Lechæum, the loss of almost a whole mora, which had been intercepted and cut off by Iphicrates and his targeteers. The action was in itself so trifling, that it would scarcely have deserved mention, but for the importance attached to it at the time, and the celebrity which it retained for many generations.

After all, the whole loss of the Lacedæmonians amounted to no more than 250 men. Yet it produced a degree of consternation and dejection on the one side, and of exultation on the other, which is significant in the same proportion that the disaster appears to us slight and the exploit inconsiderable.

Nothing more clearly shows the weakness of Sparta and the power of her name than the importance attributed both by herself and by her enemies to this petty affair. Agesilaus, having accomplished the object of his expedition, now set out homeward. He took with him the remnant of the defeated mora, leaving another in its room at Lechæum. But his march through Peloponnesus was like that of the Roman army on its return from the Caudine Forks. He would only enter the towns, where he was forced to rest, as late as he could in the evening, and left them again at break of day. At Mantinea, though it was dark when he reached it, he would not stop at all, that his men might not have to endure the insulting joy of their ill-affected allies. On the other hand Iphicrates was emboldened by his success to aim at fresh advantages; and he recovered Sidus, Crommyon, and Œnoe, where Agesilaus had left a garrison.

His achievement so terrorised the Corinthian exiles at Sicyon, that they no longer ventured to repeat their marauding excursions by land, but crossed over the gulf, and landed near Corinth, where they saw opportunity of giving annoyance. Even in later times the destruction of the Lacedæmonian mora, 250 men, continued to be mentioned as the great military action of his life, and was not thought unworthy to be named in the same page with Marathon and Platæa.

It is not improbable that this victory of Iphicrates was attended with another result, which Xenophon has not thought fit to notice. It seems not only to have prevented the Theban envoys from discharging their commission, but to have put a stop to a negotiation which was proceeding at the same time between Athens and Sparta, after it had reached a very advanced stage. Minute as these occurrences are, they are perhaps, both in themselves and for the impression they produced, the most momentous that took place in Greece before the end of the war. We should have been glad indeed to know a little more of the causes which withdrew Iphicrates from this scene of action shortly after his victory: for they would perhaps have thrown some light on the internal state of Corinth. But Xenophon only informs us that he was dismissed by the Argives, after he had put to death some Corinthians of their party; from what motive and on what pretext we do not learn, nor does it appear whether this transaction had any influence on the relations between Athens and Argos.

[Sidenote: [391-390 B.C.]]

In the year following no military operations seem to have taken place in Peloponnesus, except the petty combats or alternate inroads between Sicyon and Corinth, which Xenophon himself does not think worth more than a general notice. But the arms of Agesilaus were turned against Acarnania, where he displayed his usual ability, and established the Spartan supremacy almost without bloodshed. An Athenian squadron was lying at Œniadæ, to intercept him, if, as was expected, he should attempt to cross the gulf from any part of the coast immediately below Calydon. To avoid it he marched to Rhium through the heart of Ætolia, by roads along which, Xenophon observes, no army, great or small, could have passed without the consent of the Ætolians. They permitted his passage, because they hoped to be aided by his influence in recovering Naupactus. At Rhium he crossed the straits, and returned home.

The event proved the policy of the moderation which he had shown against the wish of his allies. The next spring, as he was preparing for a second invasion of Acarnania, the Acarnanians, alarmed by the prospect of again losing a harvest, on which the subsistence of the people, who were but little conversant with arts or commerce, mainly depended, sent envoys to Sparta to treat for peace, and submitted to the terms which Agesilaus had dictated. The same year his young colleague Agesipolis, who had now reached his majority, was entrusted with the command of an expedition against Argos. The expedition yielded no fruits but the plunder, with which he returned to Sparta. In the meanwhile, through the ambition of Sparta and the patriotic efforts of Conon, Athens had been enabled to take some great steps towards securing her independence, and recovering a part at least of her ancient power.[e]

THE GREAT DEEDS OF CONON

Three great battles had been fought in little more than the space of a month (July and August)--those of Corinth, Cnidus, and Coronea: the first and third on land, the second at sea. In each of the two land-battles the Lacedæmonians had gained a victory: they remained masters of the field, and were solicited by the enemy to grant the burial-truce. But if we inquire what results these victories had produced, the answer must be that both were totally barren. Even the narrative of Xenophon, deeply coloured as it is both by his sympathies and his antipathies, indicates to us that the predominant impression carried off by every one from the field of Coronea was that of the tremendous force and obstinacy of the Theban hoplites--a foretaste of what was to come at Leuctra!

If the two land-victories of Sparta were barren of results, the case was far otherwise with her naval defeat at Cnidus. That defeat was pregnant with consequences following in rapid succession, and of the most disastrous character. As with Athens at Ægospotami--the loss of her fleet, serious as that was, served only as the signal for countless following losses. Pharnabazus and Conon, with their victorious fleet, sailed from island to island, and from one continental seaport to another, in the Ægean, to expel the Lacedæmonian harmosts, and terminate the empire of Sparta. So universal was the odium which it had inspired, that the task was found easy beyond expectation. Conscious of their unpopularity, the harmosts in almost all the towns, on both sides of the Hellespont, deserted their posts and fled, on the mere news of the battle of Cnidus. Everywhere Pharnabazus and Conon found themselves received as liberators, and welcomed with presents of hospitality. They pledged themselves not to introduce any foreign force or governor, nor to fortify any separate citadel, but to guarantee to each city its own genuine autonomy. This policy was adopted by Pharnabazus at the urgent representation of Conon, who warned him that if he manifested any design of reducing the cities to subjection, he would find them all his enemies; that each of them severally would cost him a long siege; and that a combination would ultimately be formed against him. Such liberal and judicious ideas, when seen to be sincerely acted upon, produced a strong feeling of friendship and even of gratitude, so that the Lacedæmonian maritime empire was dissolved without a blow, by the almost spontaneous movements of the cities themselves. Though the victorious fleet presented itself in many different places, it was nowhere called upon to put down resistance, or to undertake a single siege. Cos, Nisyrus, Teos, Chios, Erythræ, Ephesus, Mytilene, Samos, all declared themselves independent, under the protection of the new conquerors. Pharnabazus presently disembarked at Ephesus and marched by land northward to his own satrapy, leaving a fleet of forty triremes under the command of Conon.

[Sidenote: [394-393 B.C.]]

To this general burst of anti-Spartan feeling, Abydos, on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont, formed the solitary exception; and it happened by a fortunate accident for Sparta that the able and experienced Dercyllidas was harmost in the town at the moment of the battle of Cnidus. Dercyllidas assembled the Abydenes, heartened them up against the reigning contagion, and exhorted them to earn the gratitude of Sparta by remaining faithful to her while others were falling off; assuring them that she would still be found capable of giving them protection. His exhortations were listened to with favour. Abydos remained attached to Sparta, was put in a good state of defence, and became the only harbour of safety for the fugitive harmosts out of the other cities, Asiatic and European.

Dercyllidas maintained his position effectively both at Abydos and at Sestos; defying the requisition of Pharnabazus that he should forthwith evacuate them. The satrap threatened war, and actually ravaged the lands round Abydos; but without any result. His wrath against the Lacedæmonians, already considerable, was so aggravated by disappointment when he found that he could not yet expel them from his satrapy, that he resolved to act against them with increased energy, and even to strike a blow at them near their own home. For this purpose he transmitted orders to Conon to prepare a commanding naval force for the ensuing spring, and in the meantime to keep both Abydos and Sestos under blockade.

As soon as spring arrived, Pharnabazus embarked on board a powerful fleet equipped by Conon; directing his course to Melos, to various islands among the Cyclades, and lastly to the coast of Peloponnesus. They here spent some time on the coast of Laconia and Messenia, disembarking at several points to ravage the country. They next landed on the island of Cythera, which they captured, granting safe retirement to the Lacedæmonian garrison, and leaving in the island a garrison under the Athenian Nicophemus. Quitting then the harbourless, dangerous, and ill-provided coast of Laconia, they sailed up the Saronic Gulf to the Isthmus of Corinth. Here they found the confederates--Corinthian, Bœotian, Athenian, etc.--carrying on war, with Corinth as their central post, against the Lacedæmonians at Sicyon. The line across the isthmus from Lechæum to Cenchreæ (the two ports of Corinth) was now made good by a defensive system of operations, so as to confine the Lacedæmonians within Peloponnesus; just as Athens, prior to her great losses in 446 B.C., while possessing both Megara and Pegæ, had been able to maintain the inland road midway between them, where it crosses the high and difficult crest of Mount Geranea, thus occupying the only three roads by which a Lacedæmonian army could march from the Isthmus of Corinth into Attica or Bœotia. Pharnabazus communicated in the most friendly manner with the allies, assured them of his strenuous support against Sparta, and left with them a considerable sum of money.

The appearance of a Persian satrap with a Persian fleet, as master of the Peloponnesian Sea and the Saronic Gulf, was a phenomenon astounding to Grecian eyes. And if it was not equally offensive to Grecian sentiment, this was in itself a melancholy proof of the degree to which Panhellenic patriotism had been stifled by the Peloponnesian War and the Spartan empire. No Persian tiara had been seen near the Saronic Gulf since the battle of Salamis; nor could anything short of the intense personal wrath of Pharnabazus against the Lacedæmonians, and his desire to revenge upon them the damage inflicted by Dercyllidas and Agesilaus, have brought him now as far away from his own satrapy. It was this wrathful feeling of which Conon took advantage to procure from him a still more important boon.

Since 404 B.C., a space of eleven years, Athens had continued without any walls round her seaport town Piræus, and without any Long Walls to connect her city with Piræus. To this state she had been condemned by the sentence of her enemies, in the full knowledge that she could have little trade--few ships either armed or mercantile--poor defence even against pirates, and no defence at all against aggression from the mistress of the sea. Conon now entreated Pharnabazus, who was about to go home, to leave the fleet under his command, and to permit him to use it in rebuilding the fortifications of Piræus as well as the Long Walls of Athens. While he engaged to maintain the fleet by contributions from the islands, he assured the satrap that no blow could be inflicted upon Sparta so destructive or so mortifying, as the renovation of Athens and Piræus with their complete and connected fortifications. Sparta would thus be deprived of the most important harvest which she had reaped from the long struggle of the Peloponnesian War. Indignant as he now was against the Lacedæmonians, Pharnabazus sympathised cordially with these plans, and on departing not only left the fleet under the command of Conon, but also furnished him with a considerable sum of money towards the expense of the fortifications.

CONON REBUILDS THE LONG WALLS

[Sidenote: [393 B.C.]]

Conon betook himself to the work energetically and without delay. He had quitted Athens in 407 B.C., as one of the joint admirals nominated after the disgrace of Alcibiades. He had parted with his countrymen finally at the catastrophe of Ægospotami in 405 B.C., preserving the miserable fraction of eight or nine ships out of that noble fleet which otherwise would have passed entire into the hands of Lysander. He now returned, in 393 B.C., as a second Themistocles, the deliverer of his country, and the restorer of her lost strength and independence. All hands were set to work; carpenters and masons being hired with the funds furnished by Pharnabazus, to complete the fortifications as quickly as possible. The Bœotians and other neighbours lent their aid zealously as volunteers--the same who eleven years before had danced to the sound of joyful music when the former walls were demolished; so completely had the feelings of Greece altered since that period. By such hearty co-operation, the work was finished during the course of the present summer and autumn without any opposition; and Athens enjoyed again her fortified Piræus and harbour, with a pair of long walls, straight and parallel, joining it securely to the city. The Athenian people not only inscribed on a pillar a public vote gratefully recording the exploits of Conon, but also erected a statue to his honour.

The importance of this event in reference to the future history of Athens was unspeakable. Though it did not restore to her either her former navy, or her former empire, it reconstituted her as a city not only self-determining but even partially ascendant. It reanimated her, if not into the Athens of Pericles, at least into that of Isocrates and Demosthenes: it imparted to her a second fill of strength, dignity, and commercial importance, during the half century destined to elapse before she was finally overwhelmed by the superior military force of Macedon. Those who recollect the extraordinary stratagem whereby Themistocles had contrived (eighty-five years before) to accomplish the fortification of Athens, in spite of the base but formidable jealousy of Sparta and her Peloponnesian allies, will be aware how much the consummation of the Themistoclean project had depended upon accident. Now, also, Conon in his restoration was favoured by unusual combinations such as no one could have predicted. So strangely did events run, that the energy, by which Dercyllidas preserved Abydos, brought upon Sparta, indirectly, the greater mischief of the new Cononian walls. It would have been better for Sparta that Pharnabazus should at once have recovered Abydos as well as the rest of his satrapy; in which case he would have had no wrongs remaining unavenged to incense him, and would have kept on his own side of the Ægean; feeding Conon with a modest squadron sufficient to keep the Lacedæmonian navy from again becoming formidable on the Asiatic side, but leaving the walls of Piræus (if we may borrow an expression of Plato) “to continue asleep in the bosom of the earth.”

The presence of Pharnabazus and Conon with their commanding force in the Saronic Gulf, and the liberality with which the former furnished pecuniary aid to the latter for rebuilding the full fortifications of Athens, as well as to the Corinthians for the prosecution of the war--seem to have given preponderance to the confederates over Sparta for that year. The plans of Conon were extensive. He was the first to organise, for the defence of Corinth, a mercenary force which was afterwards improved and conducted with greater efficiency by Iphicrates; and after he had finished the fortifications of Piræus with the Long Walls, he employed himself in showing his force among the islands, for the purpose of laying the foundations of renewed maritime power for Athens.[f]

While this work was proceeding, the Corinthians, with the subsidy they had received, fitted out a squadron, with which their admiral Agathinus scoured the Corinthian Gulf. The Spartans sent Polemarchus with some galleys to oppose him: but their commander was soon after slain, and Pollis, who took his place, was compelled by a wound which he received in another engagement, to resign it to Herippidas. Herippidas seems to have driven the Corinthians from their station at Rhium: and Teleutias, who succeeded him, recovered the complete mastery of the gulf, and was thus enabled, as we have seen, to co-operate with Agesilaus at Lechæum.

THE EMBASSY OF ANTALCIDAS

[Sidenote: [393-390 B.C.]]

But this partial success did not diminish the alarm with which the Spartan government viewed the operations of Conon, who was proceeding to restore the Athenian dominion on the coasts and in the islands of the Ægean. It perceived that it was necessary to change its policy with regard to the court of Persia, and for the present at least to drop the design of conquest in Asia, and to confine itself to the object of counteracting the efforts of the Athenians, and establishing its own supremacy among the European Greeks. And it did not despair of making the Persian court subservient to these ends. For this purpose Antalcidas, a dexterous politician of Lysander’s school, was sent to Tiribazus, who was now occupying the place of Tithraustes in Western Asia, to negotiate a peace. His mission awakened the apprehensions of the hostile confederacy; and envoys [including Conon] were sent from Athens, Bœotia, Corinth, and Argos, to defeat his attempts, and to support the interests of the allies at the satrap’s court. Antalcidas however made proposals highly agreeable to Tiribazus, and accompanied them with arguments which convinced the satrap that his master’s interest perfectly coincided with that of Sparta. He renounced all claim on the part of his government to the Greek cities in Asia, and was willing that they should remain subject to the king’s authority. For the islands, and the other towns, he asked nothing but independence. Thus, he observed, no motive for war between Greece and Persia would be left. The king could gain nothing by it, and would have no reason to fear either Athens or Sparta, so long as the other Greek states remained independent. Tiribazus was perfectly satisfied, but had not authority to close with these overtures, at least against the will of the states which were at present in alliance with his master; and they refused to accede to a treaty on these terms.

But, though the satrap did not venture openly to enter into alliance with Sparta without his master’s consent, he did not scruple privately to supply Antalcidas with money for the purpose of raising a navy to carry on the war with the states which were still acknowledged as allies of Persia: and having drawn Conon to Sardis, he threw him into prison, on the pretext that he had abused his trust, and had employed the king’s forces for the aggrandisement of Athens. He then repaired to court to report his proceedings and to consult the royal pleasure. It was perhaps rather through some court intrigue, or vague suspicion, than a deliberate purpose of adopting a line of policy opposite to that of Tiribazus, that Artaxerxes detained him at court, and sent Struthas down to fill his place. Struthas had perhaps witnessed the Asiatic campaigns of Agesilaus, and could not all at once get rid of the impression that the Spartans were his master’s most formidable enemies. He therefore immediately made known his intention of siding with the Athenians and their allies.

The Spartan government, perhaps too hastily, concluding that their prospect of amicable dealings with Persia was now quite closed, determined to renew hostilities in Asia, and sent Thimbron--apparently the same officer whom we have already seen commanding there, and who had been fined on his return to Sparta for misconduct--to invade the king’s territory. Struthas took advantage of his failings, and, one day that he had gone out at the head of a small party to attack some of the Persian cavalry who had been purposely thrown in his way, suddenly appeared with a superior force, slew him, and a flute-player named Thersander, the favourite companion of his convivial hours, and defeated the rest of his army, as it came up after him, with great slaughter. Diphridas was sent from Sparta to collect the scattered remains of his army, and to raise fresh troops, to defend the allied cities, and carry on the war with Struthas. Teleutias was ordered to sail to Asia with the twelve galleys which he had with him in the Corinthian Gulf, to supersede Ecdicus, and to prosecute the war, in Rhodes or elsewhere, as he found opportunity. His first adventure, after he had taken the command at Cnidus, illustrates the complicated relations and the unsettled state of Greek politics at this period. Teleutias, whose force had been raised, by some additions which it received at Samos, to seven-and-twenty galleys, on his way from Cnidus to Rhodes, fell in with a squadron of ten, sent by the Athenians to aid Evagoras, who had revolted from the king of Persia, their ally, and the enemy of Sparta, whose admiral nevertheless destroyed or captured the whole.

[Sidenote: [390-388 B.C.]]

The Athenians now thought it necessary to interpose in defence of their Rhodian friends, and sent Thrasybulus--the hero of Phyle--with forty galleys to check the operations of Teleutias. He thought that he might render more important services to the commonwealth in the north of the Ægean, and the Hellespont, where he would have no enemy to encounter on the sea. Sailing therefore first to the coast of Thrace, he composed the feud of the two Odrysian princes, Amadocus and Seuthes, and engaged them both in a treaty of alliance with Athens. He proceeded to Byzantium, and, throwing his weight into the scale of the democratical party, established its predominance, and with it that of the Athenian interest; and he was thus enabled to restore a main source of the Athenian revenue, the duty of a tenth on vessels coming out of the Euxine. Before he quitted the Bosporus, he also brought over Chalcedon to the Athenian alliance. Thrasybulus now reduced several of the Lesbian towns, and collected much plunder from the lands of those which refused to submit. He then prepared to return to Rhodes; but first sailed eastward to levy contributions on the southern coast of Asia. Here his career was abruptly terminated. He anchored in the Eurymedon near Aspendus, where he obtained a supply of money. But the Aspendians fell upon him by night, and killed him in his tent. Xenophon’s remark, that he died with the reputation of a very good man, may be admitted as sufficient proof that the great services he had rendered to his country were not his only claim to the esteem of his contemporaries, and that the suspicions excited against him were wholly unfounded.

The flourishing condition to which Thrasybulus had restored the affairs of Athens in the Hellespont, excited uneasiness at Sparta. Anaxibius obtained three galleys, and a grant of money sufficient to raise one thousand mercenaries. On his arrival in the Hellespont he waged a successful war with the neighbouring towns, subject to Pharnabazus, or allied to Athens, and did much damage to the Athenian commerce. The Athenians were at length induced to send Iphicrates, with eight galleys and about twelve hundred targeteers, mostly those who had served under him at Corinth, to counteract the movements of Anaxibius. Anaxibius was surprised by an ambush. He bade his men seek their safety in flight; for himself, he said, his part was to die there; and, calling for his shield, fought until he fell, with a few of his Spartan companions. The rest fled in disorder to Abydos with the loss of about 250 men.

Notwithstanding the successes of the Athenians in the Hellespont the enemy found means of annoying and threatening them at home. They had hitherto maintained a peaceful intercourse with Ægina; but the Spartans now resolved to make use of the island for the purpose of infesting the coasts of Attica. Teleutias was soon after superseded by Hierax, the new Spartan admiral, and returned home. Hierax sailed to Rhodes, leaving Gorgopas, his vice-admiral, with twelve galleys at Ægina. The Athenians in the fort were soon reduced to greater straits than the Æginetans in the city; and, in the fifth month after their arrival, a strong squadron was sent out from Athens to carry them home. In the meanwhile the Spartan government had resumed its project of attaining its object by means of negotiation, and once more sent out Antalcidas, as the person whose influence with Tiribazus would open the readiest access to the Persian court, as admiral in the room of Hierax. Antalcidas was escorted to Ephesus by Gorgopas and his squadron, and on his arrival sent Gorgopas with ten galleys back to Ægina. The remainder of the fleet which joined him at Ephesus, he placed under the command of his lieutenant Nicolochus, while he himself proceeded on more important business to the court of Artaxerxes.

Gorgopas on his return fell in with the Athenian squadron under Eunomus, and was chased by him into the port of Ægina, where he arrived a little before sunset. Eunomus sailed away soon after dark, with a light in the stern of his galley, to keep his squadron together. Gorgopas, whose men in the meanwhile had landed and refreshed themselves, now embarked again, and pushed across the gulf in the enemy’s wake, guided by his light, with every precaution for suppressing or weakening the usual sounds of galleys in motion. At Cape Zoster, as the Athenians were landing, the silence of the night was broken by the sound of the trumpet, and after a short engagement by moonlight, Gorgopas captured four of their galleys; the rest made their escape into Piræus. But not long after, Chabrias, having been sent with a squadron of ten galleys and eight hundred targeteers to the aid of Evagoras, landed by night on Ægina, and posted his targeteers in an ambush. The next day, according to a preconcerted plan, a body of heavy-armed infantry which had come over with him under the command of Demænetus, advanced into the interior of the island. Gorgopas marched to meet them with all the forces he could muster, and passing by the ambuscade was routed and fell in the action, with some other Spartans and between three and four hundred of the other troops. By this victory the Attic commerce was for a time freed from annoyance; for though Eteonicus still remained in Ægina, he had no money to pay the seamen, and therefore could exert no authority.

[Sidenote: [388-387 B.C.]]

In this emergency Teleutias was sent to take the command. His arrival was hailed with delight by the men, who had already served under him, and expected an immediate supply of pay. He however called them together, and informed them that he had brought no money with him, and that they had no resource to look to for the relief of their necessities, but their own activity and courage. It was best that they should not depend for subsistence upon the favour either of Greek or barbarian, but should provide for themselves at the enemy’s expense. The men expressed entire confidence in his guidance, and promised to obey all his commands. That very night, after they had ended their evening meal, he ordered them to embark with a day’s provision, and with twelve galleys crossed the gulf towards Piræus. When they were within about half a mile of the harbour, they rested till daybreak, and then sailed in. He gave orders to strike none but the ships of war which might be lying in the harbour, to capture as many merchant vessels as could be conveniently taken in tow, and to carry away as many prisoners as could be taken from the rest. Not only were these orders executed with alacrity and success, but some of his men, landing on the quay, seized some of the merchants and shipowners who were assembled there, and hurried them on board. While the military force of Athens marched down to the relief of Piræus, which was supposed to have been taken, he made his retreat from the harbour, sent three or four of his galleys with the prizes to Ægina, and with the rest proceeded along the coast as far as Sunium. He made the more captures on his way, as his squadron, having been seen to issue from the port of Athens, was believed to be friendly. At Sunium he found a number of vessels laden with corn, and other valuable cargoes, with which he sailed away to Ægina. The produce of this adventure yielded a month’s pay to the men, raised their spirits, and increased their devotion for their commander, who continued to employ them in this predatory warfare: the only kind to which his small force was adequate.

The Athenians however still retained the ascendency in the Hellespont, where Nicolochus, who after the departure of Antalcidas had sailed northward with five-and-twenty galleys, was blockaded at Abydos by an Athenian squadron of two and thirty, which was stationed on the opposite coast of the Chersonesus, under the command of Diotimus and Iphicrates. But the aspect of affairs was completely changed by the arrival of Antalcidas, who returned in 387 with Tiribazus from the Persian court, where he had been treated with marks of distinguished favour by Artaxerxes, and had fully succeeded in the main object of his mission, having prevailed on the king to aid Sparta in carrying on the war, until the Athenians and their allies should accept a peace to be dictated in the king’s name on terms previously arranged between him and the Spartan ambassador. Being informed of the situation of Nicolochus, he proceeded by land to Abydos, and took the command of the blockaded squadron, with which he sailed out in the night. Additions raised his fleet to eighty sail, and gave him the complete command of the sea, so that he was enabled to divert the commerce of the Euxine from Athens into the ports of the allies of Sparta.

The Athenians now saw themselves not only exposed to constant annoyance from Ægina, but in danger of falling again under the power of the enemy, and losing all the benefit of Conon’s victory. They were therefore heartily desirous of an honourable peace. Most of the other states were probably still more anxious for the termination of a contest from which they could expect no advantage. When therefore Tiribazus, in his master’s name, summoned a congress of deputies to listen to the proposals which he was commissioned to announce, all the belligerents readily sent their ministers to attend it. In the presence of this assembly Tiribazus, having shown the royal seal, read his master’s decree, which ran in the following imperial style:

“King Artaxerxes thinks it right that the Greek cities in Asia, and the islands of Clazomenæ and Cyprus, should belong to himself; but that all the other Greek cities, both small and great, should be left independent, with the exception of Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, and that these should as of old belong to the Athenians. If any state refuse to accept this peace, I will make war against it, with those who consent to these terms, by land and by sea, with ships and with money.”

THE KING’S PEACE

[Sidenote: [387-386 B.C.]]

The treaty founded on these conditions was ratified by all the parties almost without opposition. A little delay arose from the Thebans, who were reluctant to part with the sovereignty they had hitherto exercised over many of the Bœotian towns, and wished, for the sake of at least retaining their pretensions, to ratify in the name of all the other Bœotians. But Agesilaus, who was charged to receive the oath of their ministers, refused to accept it in this form, and required them strictly to conform to the Persian ordinance, and expressly to acknowledge the independence of all other states. One impediment to the general peace still remained. The governments of Corinth and Argos did not consider themselves bound by the treaty to alter the relations which had hitherto subsisted between them; and it was only when Agesilaus threatened them with war, that they consented, the one to dismiss, and the other to withdraw, the Argive garrison from Corinth. Its departure was attended by an immediate reaction in the state of the Corinthian parties. The authors of the massacre, knowing themselves to be generally odious to their fellow citizens, thought themselves no longer safe at home, and left the city. Most of them found refuge at Athens, where they met with a much more honourable reception than they deserved. The exiles of the opposite faction were recalled; and their return dissolved the union with Argos, and restored the influence of Sparta, and the oligarchical institutions.

This treaty, which was long celebrated under the name of the Peace of Antalcidas, was undoubtedly a masterpiece of policy, nor does it appear to deserve the censure which it incurred from the Attic orators and from Plutarch, and which has been repeated by some modern writers, as a breach of political morality. Sparta in her transactions with Persia during the Peloponnesian War, had more than once acknowledged the title of the Persian king to the dominion of the Asiatic Greeks; she had never pledged herself to maintain their independence; and even if she had done so, the revival of the maritime power of Athens, and its union with that of Persia, would have afforded a fair plea for receding from an engagement which she was no longer able to fulfil. The clause in favour of Athens was perhaps only designed to excite jealousy and discord between Athens and the hated Bœotians. It has been attributed to a deeper policy; it has been considered as a device, by which Sparta reserved a pretext for eluding the conditions of the treaty which she rigorously enforced in the case of other states. But it is doubtful whether the exception expressly made concerning the three islands which Athens was allowed to retain, could have been needed, or if needful could have availed, as a colour under which Sparta, while she stripped Thebes of her sovereignty in Bœotia, might keep possession of Messenia and the subject districts of Laconia. Sparta did not permit a question to be raised on this point. She was constituted the interpreter of the treaty; she expounded it by the rule, not of reason, but of might, with the sword in hand, and the power of Persia at her back.[e]

This momentous treaty, which is sometimes called the Peace of Antalcidas after its chief Grecian agent, is nowadays more commonly called the King’s Peace, and wisely, since it was the king who chiefly profited by it. Thirlwall, who can always be relied upon to take an impartial view of the question, says of it: “And thus the Peace of Antalcidas, which professed to establish the independence of the Greek states, subjected them more than ever to the will of one. It was not in this respect only that appearances were contrary to the real state of things. The position of Sparta, though seemingly strong, was artificial and precarious; while the majestic attitude in which the Persian king dictated terms to Greece, disguised a profound consciousness, that his throne subsisted only by sufferance, and that its best security was the disunion of the people with whom he assumed so lordly an air.” Niebuhr, to whom the Spartans were almost always hypocrites, has this to say: “Painful as this peace was to the feelings of the Greeks, who were obliged to leave the dominion over their countrymen to barbarians, yet the hypocrisy of the Spartans, who, by this peace, allowed the Persians to interfere in the internal affairs of Greece, was worse.”

Grote, whose history is a glowing brief for Athens, the type of democracy, as against Sparta, the type of oligarchy, cannot be expected to approve of an agreement leading to such degradation for the Athenians, as well as for all the Greek world. He says: “The peace or convention, which bears the name of Antalcidas, 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 laconising.’ 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 Antalcidas, 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. While Sparta and Persia were both great gainers, no other Grecian state gained anything as the convention was originally framed.”

George W. Cox, in his General History of Greece, recognises in the treaty a humiliation for Sparta as well as for the rest of Greece, since the peace was not drawn up in the form of an agreement, but rather forced upon Greece by the edict of Persia. It was indeed a fiat “sent down from Susa,” like another royal decree to the subjects whom the Persian king looked down upon with oriental disdain. Cox writes thus fervidly:

“The Persian king chose to regard the acceptance of the peace by the Spartans as an act of submission not less significant than the offering of earth and water. In the disgrace which it involved the one was as ignominious as the other; but Sparta had now not even the poor excuse which long ago she had put forward for calling in the aid of the barbarian. She was no longer struggling for self-preservation. In short, by Sparta the Peace of Antalcidas was adopted with the settled resolution to divide and govern; and all of those of her acts, which might seem at first sight to have a different meaning, carry out in every instance this golden rule of despotism. It was the curse of the Hellenic race, and the ruin ultimately of Sparta itself, that this maxim flattered an instinct which they had cherished with blind obstinacy, until it became their bane. But for Sparta, the consolidation of the Athenian empire would long ago have restrained this self-isolating sentiment within its proper limits. In theory the Spartans by enforcing the Peace of Antalcidas restored to the several Greek states the absolute power of managing their own affairs, and of making war upon one another. In practice Sparta was resolved that their armies should move only at her dictation, that into her treasury should flow the tribute, the gathering of which was denounced as the worst crime of imperial Athens, and that in the government of the oligarchical factions she should have the strongest material guarantee for the absolute submission of the Greek cities. To secure this result the Hellenic states of Lesser Asia were abandoned to the tender mercies of Persian tax-gatherers, and left to feel the full bitterness of the slavery from which Athens had rescued them some ninety years ago.”

An outcome which none could have foreseen from the acceptance of this humiliating title-deed to Grecian independence was the sudden and rocket-like rise of the city of Thebes, a city which had heretofore been a second-or third-rate town chiefly distinguished for being on the wrong side of Hellenic questions. Thebes is now about to break forth into flame with a fire-brand named Epaminondas, one of the noblest and most splendid names in all the glitter of Grecian history.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[9] [This statement of Xenophon is, according to Grote, either a mis-reading or a wild exaggeration. Diodorus says that the Spartans lost 1100; the allies 2800.]

[10] [On this point Bury says: “Though the battle of Coronea, like the battle of Corinth, was a technical victory for the Spartans, history must here again offer her congratulations to the side which was superficially defeated.… It was a great moral encouragement to Thebes for future warfare with Lacedæmon.”]

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