Attack of Teleutias on the Peiraieus. 388 B.C. held by such of the old inhabitants of the island as Lysandros could find after the fall of the imperial city. These Aiginetans whose inclinations would have kept them quiet were goaded by the Spartan harmost to assaults on Athenian shipping. By way of reprisal the Athenian Chabrias, on his way with ten triremes to the aid of Euagoras, landed on the island and taking the Spartan troops under Gorgôpas by surprise, slew their leader and put them to flight with severe loss. Defeat and lack of pay roused among these troops a discontent which threatened to be dangerous, when Teleutias, the brother of Agesilaos, sent from Sparta to quiet them, told them that brave men had always a ready mode of winning their pay by their swords, and pledged himself to win it for them if only they would agree to follow him. Their destination was the Peiraieus, but unlike Brasidas1 Teleutias kept it a secret, and leaving Aigina after nightfall found himself before dawn close to the entrance of the harbour, open still as in the days of Brasidas. No such attacks were looked for, nor had any preparations been made to meet them. The cries of those who even at that early hour chanced to be stirring sent the news through Peiraieus: from Peiraieus it was carried to Athens where the general belief was that the harbour had been actually taken. But before the hoplites could hurry down, Teleutias had sailed away with many merchant ships, with some triremes, and with enormous plunder. The Peace of Antalkidas. 387 B.C. Oppressed with the burden of carrying on a wearisome and unprofitable war, the Athenians became almost helpless against Spartan intrigues. On all sides there was a widespread feeling of mingled disgust and fear; and when at length Antalkidas returned with a peace sent down, so the phrase ran, from Sousa, it was accepted by all in the sense which Sparta chose to put upon it. The Thebans alone claimed to take the oath in the name of the Boiotian confederacy. The claim seemed to Agesilaos to furnish that opportunity for revenge against Thebes for which he had long been yearning. If you do not swear for yourselves and yourselves only,' he said, 'you will be shut out from the treaty.' In the feverish hope that they would thus bar themselves, he hastened to lead an army across the border. At Tegea he was met by Theban envoys who declared themselves ready to swear for Thebes alone. Agesilaos was baulked of his vengeance in blood; but he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had left the proud Boiotian city a mere unit amongst a crowd of paltry towns and villages. The Persian king chose to regard the acceptance of the peace by the Spartans as an act of submission not less significant than Effects of the Peace of Antalkidas on the position of Sparta. 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 ago2 she had put forward for calling in the aid of the barbarian. She was no longer struggling for self-preservation. The fear that Athens might be once more on the road to empire, absurd though under the changed conditions of the Greek world such fear must be, may together with the consciousness of her own unpopularity have prompted that cession of the islands of Lemnos, Imbros, and Skyros, which gave to Athens a faint semblance of maritime power. Otherwise the purposes of Sparta were fully achieved. She had obtained the sanction of the Persian king to a policy which isolated the Hellenic cities, at a time when there was no confederate empire to break up except her own; and that the provisions of the peace should be applied within the limits of her own alliance was no part of her intention. Freedom and independence were words which she still used, which she had always used, in the sense which, as Perikles had told his countrymen, meant nothing but her own aggrandisement. That the people in each city was to determine its own form of government, was a thing not to be thought of; and refusal to pay the yearly tribute was to be punished as treason or rebellion. In short, by Sparta the peace of Antalkidas was adopted with the settled resolution to divide and govern; and all 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. When the Lesbians meditated revolt, their envoys at Olympia had nothing more to say for themselves than that Athens had offended this feeling; and we shall see by-and-by in a signal instance how thoroughly even the men who professed to resent this offence most keenly were conscious of its transient and therefore worthless character. In theory the Spartans by inforcing the peace of Antalkidas 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 2 See p. 275. 3 1 See P. 147. 5 See p. 296 factions she should have the strongest material guarantee for the absolute submission of the Greek cities. tion of Pla taiai. 386 B.C. To secure this result the Hellenic states of Lesser Asia were abandoned to the tender mercies of Persian taxgatherers, and left to The restora- feel the full bitterness of the slavery from which Athens had rescued them some ninety years ago. The work was not so easy as the Spartans had hoped that it might be. Thebes had been willing, if not eager, to see Athens humbled but she was not willing to give up her own Hegemonia over the Boiotian cities,—a primacy which she claimed by a title as ancient as that of Athens to her demoi or townships, and in which, with the exception of Thespiai1 and Orchomenos, all the existing towns readily acquiesced. There was danger in the disaffection of these cities; and the Spartans resolved therefore on a measure which they might proclaim as an act of homage to the dearest feelings of the Greek heart. The fugitive Plataians had been driven by Lysandros after the catastrophe of Aigospotamoi from their abode in Skione. They were now living in Athens, when they were invited to return with their families to their old home under the heights of Kithairon. If the Plataians returned thither with any thought of enjoying again the measure of freedom which their alliance with Athens had secured to them, they soon found themselves mistaken. Their city was restored simply to be a thorn in the side of the Thebans: and a Spartan garrison inforced its obedience to the rules imposed on Spartan allies. 386-5 B.C. Their hand fell next on the Mantineians, who were accused of friendly feelings towards the Argives, shown by supplying them Breaking up with corn in time of war, and by their evident satisof the city of faction at such reverses as befell the Spartan arms. Mantineia. Nothing more was needed to justify the appearance of envoys at Mantineia with a demand not merely that the walls of the city should be thrown down, but that four-fifths of its inhabitants should make for themselves a home in four distinct townships. The rejection of these terms was followed by a siege which Agesipolis speedily brought to an end by damming upon the lower side the stream which flowed through the town. The walls and houses, built of sun-dried bricks, were tottering on their foundations, when the Mantineians yielded to their fate, to find themselves soon, as Xenophon would have us believe, vastly the better and happier for the change. They were now freed from the rule of their hateful demagogues, and Sparta, instead of the single city of Mantineia, had five distinct allies to each of which 1 The Thebans had done little to win their love, and much to excite their wrath. Thuc. iv. 133. • Thục. v. 32. she paid the compliment of sending her Xenagos. If his picture be true, it is strange that after the fight at Leuktra, barely fifteen years later, they should run with such feverish haste to restore the city from which they had been driven. Elsewhere things were going not altogether as the Spartans would have wished. Athens, strengthened by the possession of Lemnos, Imbros, and Skyros, was gradually increasing The harbour of Peiraieus with its her scanty fleet. crowd of merchant vessels exhibited something like the stirring industry of former times. The islanders Formation of the Olynthian Confederacy. 384-3 B.C. of the Egean, vexed by the raids of pirates who, in the absence of any dominant maritime power, could sweep the seas almost at their will, were learning that tribute paid for the protection of Athens whose interest it was to put down these marauders was a less costly burden than tribute paid to Sparta which cared nothing whether they were put down or not. Thus the influence of Athens was becoming constantly more widely felt, when Kleigenes, sent with other envoys from Akanthos, appeared at Sparta with the air of a man oppressed with a mysterious and dreadful secret. The Spartans could not be aware, he thought, of the terrible things then going on in Hellas, or of the dangers which threatened them if they failed to take strong measures of repression. The danger came from no less a city than the Chalkidian Olynthos, a city which had taken advantage of the troubles of the Makedonian King Amyntas to lay the foundations of a confederacy, which extended to all its members the benefits of a common law and a common citizenship, of unrestricted intermarriage, of unfettered commerce and acquisition of property in land. These terms were gladly accepted by some of their weaker and by some too of their less insignificant neighbours; nor were they less cheerfully welcomed even by the Makedonian cities which had known hitherto no other system than that of despotism varied only by a somewhat frequent change of masters. of Akanthos and Apollo The paramount need of securing a free area for the action of the new confederacy had after this great success compelled the Olynthians to invite the adhesion of Akanthos and Apol- Opposition lonia; but the people of these cities had no mind to give up the theories of which Brasidas during his sojourn among them had been so earnest a preacher.3 They wished to keep strictly to their own customs and to have nothing to do with their neighbours. Nor was this all. The Spartans might in some measure estimate the peril of the crisis, 1 This officer commanded the contingents furnished by the allies or subjects of Sparta. 2 See p. 64. nia. 383 B.C. when they learnt that Boiotian and Athenian envoys were already at Olynthos, and that the Olynthians had resolved to add their own voice to that of Thebes and Athens in calling upon all the Greek cities to enter into the new alliance. In any case they could not but see the absurdity of trying to keep the Boiotian cities disunited, while they allowed the Olynthians to form a society which, if not broken up, must become an empire. Let the Spartans look to it. It would soon be too late: but at present many of the members had not yet shaken off the true Greek sentiment of self-isolation, and might easily be detached from the pernicious company of the Olynthians. Still if anything was to be done, it must be done at once. The exclusive bigotry of the good old times was a plant apt to wither away under a moderate amount of sunshine; and if this sentiment failed them, there would be nothing left to which the Spartans could appeal. Amyntas The picture drawn by Kleigenes was strictly true. It brings before us one of the few honest efforts of the more soberminded Greeks, which make us for the moment dream that a real Hellenic nation might have been formed, and a barrier raised against the overgrowth of Makedonian and Roman power. It was quite true that the Olynthians had resolved to defend themselves and to rescue their neighbours from oppression, at a time when a horde of Illyrian savages had driven off the usurper Amyntas, who had worked his way to the Makedonian throne by murder. Amyntas had slain Pausanias the son of Aëropos, and Aëropos had slain Orestes, the infant son of Archelaos, who, having for years ruled the country vigorously, had fallen a victim to the passions of two young men with whom he had been connected in an unspeakably loathsome intimacy. But Archelaos had become King only by slaying his brother, the legitimate son of his father, that King Perdikkas whose chief contributions to Athens took the form, it was said, of shiploads of lies.1 These usurpers and murderers belonged, it is asserted, to the royal race; but, however this may be, the Amyntas with whose subjects the Olynthians had to deal is at least notorious as the father of Philip and the grandfather of Alexander the Great. It is painful to think of the bright dawn of the Olynthian confederacy as closing in darkness and blood; but in such a case the Resolution of Sparta to suppress the Olynthian Spartans were not likely to hesitate. The picture drawn by Kleigenes was one every detail of which would rouse their fiercest antipathy. The work which it Confederacy. depicted was the work of Athens, purged, it may be, of many defects and some blots which the circumstances attending the growth of her empire made it impossible for 1 See p. 352. 383 B.C. |