CHAP. XXXVII. refugees, the other from the besieged 1, with power to put to death or banish as many of their fellow-citizens as they would, and then to frame a new constitution; and before he marched away he lodged a garrison in the citadel, with pay for six months, to remain until this business should be accomplished. It is to be hoped that as much regard to equity was shown in the selection of the commissioners, as in the nominal proportion assigned between the opposite parties. Xenophon does not mention the immediate result; Reduction but the permanent effect was to render Phlius a de- of Phlius voted vassal of Sparta. In the course of the same year the Olynthian war and Olynwas brought to a close by Polybiades, who had been thus. appointed to the supreme command after the death of Agesipolis, and pressed the Olynthians by sea and land, until they were reduced by famine to sue for peace. It was granted on no harder condition than that they should become members of the Peloponnesian confederacy, on the same footing of subjection to Sparta with the rest. The importance of this event could not be duly estimated at the time. It was probably considered at Sparta as a glorious triumph; and those who viewed it with different feelings were equally unable to perceive how pregnant it was with calamities both to her and to Greece. 1 Tŵv olкobev. Plass (111. p. 588) interprets this expression to mean Spartans : apparently without either grammatical or historical grounds. By a still stranger oversight he calls Delphio a native of Delphi, though he is described by Xenophon not only as Δελφίων τις, but simply as Δελφίων. [I am surprised to see the same explanation of the expression Tŵv oйkolev adopted by Sievers, Gesch. Griech. p. 153. The contrast in the context-πεντήκοντα μὲν ἄνδρας τῶν κατεληλυθότων, Tevtýkovta dè Tŵv olкоdev-renders Xenophon's meaning perfectly clear. It has been rightly understood by Lachmann, Gesch. p. 231.] 28 CHAPTER XXXVIII. FROM THE END OF THE WAR WITH OLYNTHUS TO THE of Sparta culmi nating. The Power of Sparta culminating. — Pelopidas and Epaminondas. Pythagoreans at Thebes. Leontiades and Archias. Enterprise of the Theban Exiles. Deliverance of Thebes. - Expedition of Cleombrotus. - Inconsistent Proceedings at Athens. - Attempt of Sphodrias. - He is protected by Agesilaus.-- Revival of the Athenian Confederacy. Expedition of Agesius against Thebes. - Second Expedition of Agesilaus. - Battle of Naxos. - Expedition of Timotheus toward the West. Victory of the Thebans near Tegyra. Cleombrotus sent to Phocis. - State of Thessaly. -Jason of Phere. His Plans. Treaty with Polydamas. Peace between Athens and Sparta. Hostilities renewed. Mnasippus in Corcyra. His Defeat and Death. Disgrace of Timotheus. - Expedition of Iphicrates. Destruction of Thespice and Platea. Negotiation between Athens and Sparta. Treaty of Peace. Thebes excluded from the Treaty.-Cleombrotus at Leuctra. Visions and Omens. - Battle of Leuctra.- Expedition of Archidamus. Jason's Mediation. -- The power THUS by a vigorous and dexterous use of the advantages which she gained from the peace of Antalcidas, Sparta had advanced some steps nearer than she had ever been before to a complete subjugation of Greece. If her old rival had now recovered her independence, Thebes was reduced to a state of subjection like that in which Athens had been held by the Thirty. Within the peninsula the hostility of Argos was counterpoised by the attachment of the newly-restored Corinthian oligarchy: and the fate of Mantinea and of Phlius XXXVIII. struck the smaller states with awe. The acquisition of CHAP. Olynthus raised her reputation no less than it immediately strengthened her power. To one who considers the dangers at this time completely veiled from human foresight - which really impended over the liberty of Greece, the establishment of the Spartan dominion may seem to have been, as at least the lighter evil, a desirable event. Such it would certainly have been, if it could have been effected so as not to excite irritation and alarm. But the causes which made the Spartan ascendancy generally odious, rendered it also insecure. Pleas might be found for the proceedings against Phlius, and Mantinea, and Olynthus. But the seizure of the Cadmea was so glaring an act of injustice, that even at Sparta, according to Xenophon, no attempt was made to defend it except on the score of expediency. It was probably some consolation to Spartan pride, to ascribe the reverses by which it was soon after deeply humbled to the anger of the gods: and Xenophon directs the attention of his readers to the manner in which Sparta fell from her most palmy state to one of degradation unexampled in her history, as a signal proof of a superintending Providence. Thebes, which had suffered the wrong, was chosen as the instrument of Divine wrath for punishing the guilty. But though we would not neglect the moral and religious side of the subject, there are some others which it will be fit to notice, and which Xenophon appears studiously to have kept out of sight. Thebes at this time possessed two great men, not perhaps the first or the last whom she produced, but the only ones whom the course of events permitted to take a prominent part in the affairs of Greece. These two men were not more conspicuous for their personal qualities, than for the mutual attachment by which they were united, CHAP. XXXVIII. Pelopidas. Epaminondas. Pythago reans at Thebes. a contrast in their characters and circumstances. Pelopidas was of noble birth, inherited an ample fortune, and enlarged his connections by an honourable marriage. He was wholly possessed with an ardent desire of action and glory, conscious of abilities equal to the loftiness of his aims, and valued the advantages of his rank and wealth only as they might be subservient to a generous ambition, in which his own elevation was not distinguished from his country's greatness. His friend Epaminondas was of a nature formed rather for contemplation than for action, and highly cultivated by philosophical studies; but it was also one which found a sufficient impulse to the most strenuous exertions in the light which his philosophy threw on his duties as a man and a citizen. He was it seems of a good family, indeed according to some accounts of high heroic lineage, ascending to the very origin of the city1; but he was bred and lived in poverty: poverty not merely relative to his birth and station, but real and absolute as that of Socrates. But as it did not exclude him from the best society, nor from any opportunity of serving the state, he appears to have reckoned it as one of the favours of fortune, which kept him free from useless incumbrances. His mind had been chiefly formed by his intercourse with Lysis, one of those Italian Greeks who preserved and unfolded the doctrines of Pythagoras, and who were induced by some causes which are now only matter for conjecture, to fix their residence at Thebes.2 The arrival of these learned emigrants would have been an event of no slight importance, if it had pro 1 Paus. VIII. 11. 8. ὁ δράκων ἐθέλει σημαίνειν γένους τῶν Σπαρτῶν καλουμένων εἶναι τὸν Ἐπαμινώνδαν. Boeckh (Philolaos, p. 10.) thinks they may have been descendants of the exiled Corinthian Bacchiads, and have been induced to settle at Thebes, as the city which had given shelter to Philolaus, of whom the reader will find some account, Vol. I. p. 491. duced no other effect than that of moulding the character of Epaminondas. But it seems probable that it was attended with consequences much more extensive, and that it contributed not a little to that great turn in the affairs of Greece, which we are now about to relate. We collect from Plutarch's work on the Genius of Socrates, that these Pythagoreans diffused a general taste for philosophical pursuits among the Theban youth. One tendency of these new intellectual habits may have been to soften the Theban prejudices against Athens, now the central seat of literature and philosophy, and thus to prepare for the hospitable reception of the Athenian exiles, which in its turn may be supposed to have given a fresh impulse to liberal studies at Thebes; and this was an excitement which must have rendered those who shared it the more impatient of Spartan domination, and the more indignant at the treachery by which Thebes had been subjected to it. The violence of Sparta probably united many Thebans in the cause of liberty, whose political sentiments might otherwise have kept them wide apart. There is no reason for thinking that the men who were driven into exile after the seizure of the Cadmea were in general partisans of democracy. Among them were several of the highest rank, including almost all who had filled the high office of hipparchus, or master of the horse, which at Thebes seems to have been invested by the old aristocratical institutions with somewhat of a religious, as well as a military and civil character. But whatever may have been their previous opinions, they were now naturally led to consider the independence of CHAP. XXXVIII. Plut. De Gen. Socr. 5. The secret of Dirce's sepulchre was known to them alone. Each, on going out of office, showed the place to his successor by night, and with him performed there certain sacrifices, every trace of which they carefully obliterated, and then departed before daylight by different roads. |