CHAP. XXXVIII. and succeeded in sheltering some from the vengeance of their enemies. The news of the Theban insurrection was received at Sparta with the vexation which men commonly experience when they are deprived of the fruits of their injustice. It vented itself first on the harmosts who had surrendered the Cadmea.1 Hermippidas and Arcesus were put to death before they returned home, and it seems with scarcely any form of trial, at Corinth; and Lysanoridas likewise, as Plutarch leads us to suppose in his absence, was condemned to a penalty so heavy as to be equivalent to a sentence of banishment. The partisans of the tyranny, who were now in their turn driven into exile, roused the hostility of the Spartan government against the city which had so audaciously asserted its independence, and an army was ordered to march against Thebes. It was expected that Agesilaus would have taken the command, but he declined it on the plea that his age entitled him to exemption from foreign service. His real motive, Xenophon informs us, was that he shrank from the reproach which he apprehended of involving his country in war for the support of an odious cause. His excuse was admitted, and his colleague Cleombrotus, the brother of Agesipolis, was forced to con 1 Xenophon (H. v. 4. 10. 13.) speaks of only one harmost. Plutarch's statement, which was probably drawn from Theban historians (see Schneider on Xen. H. v. 4. 2.) as to the three whom he names, is better entitled to credit. If it were not that two were put to death, as equally sharing the whole responsibility, we might have supposed that they were appointed according to the practice which has been already noticed (see Vol. III. p. 480. n. ') to take the command in succession. This would reconcile Xenophon with Plutarch; and perhaps the condemnation of both officers is sufficiently explained by the extraordinary irritation produced at Sparta by the recent loss. Plut. Pel. 13. Here again one might be tempted to apply the fragment of Theopompus, which suggested the conjecture proposed in Vol. IV. p. 406. n. '; for the slight variation in the name of Lysanoridas, or Lysandridas, raises no difficulty; but the execution of the women seems to imply that they were the chief offenders. Sievers (Gesch. Gr. p. 284.) seems to consider the identity of the harmost with the person mentioned by Athenæus as unquestionable; and only intimates a doubt whether the account of the punishment inflicted on Lysanoridas and his mother and sister is derived immediately from Theopompus. duct the expedition. He seems to have engaged in it with feelings not unlike those which his father had shown towards the Athenians in similar circumstances. The road into Boeotia through Eleuthera was guarded by Chabrias the Athenian general at the head of a body of targeteers. Cleombrotus therefore crossed the mountains by the pass above Platæa, which he found occupied by a small Theban force, consisting according to Xenophon of the liberated prisoners; but they were cut down almost to a man by his light troops. He remained encamped in the Theban territory about sixteen days, but so studiously abstained from committing any damage, that his men were at a loss to understand whether they had been at war or at peace with the Thebans. On his return, he left Sphodrias as harmost at Thespiæ, with a third part of the allied forces, and all the money he had brought from home, and directed him with it to enlist mercenaries in his service. He himself descended to the sea-coast on the gulph of Creusis, and, as he pursued his march along the mountain road toward the Isthmus, was assailed by a storm of wind so violent as to carry away a considerable quantity of arms and baggage with the beasts of burden into the sea. It was considered, Xenophon says, by some, as an omen of the impending political tempest. 1 Xenophon (H. v. 4. 13. 14.) very clearly describes the beginning of the expedition of Cleombrotus as subsequent to the recovery of the Cadmea, and to the arrival of the Thebans, who made their escape after that event, at Sparta. On such a point he is certainly the best authority. Plutarch, however, represents Cleombrotus as marching to the relief of the citadel, and as having reached Megara before he heard of its surrender from the garrison which met him there. [Rehdantz, Vita Iphicratis, Chabriæ, Timothei, p. 43., thinks that Xenophon may be reconciled with Plutarch, and Diodorus, if the apayal, alluded to in v. 4. 14., are referred to the first night of the insurrection. But in the preceding § 13., Xenophon had distinctly stated that the ephors ordered the expedition (paívovσi opovpár), after having heard of the surrender of the Cadmea, and after having put to death the harmost who had not waited for succours. It seems also very improbable that any of the Theban fugitives reached Sparta before the surrender of the citadel, as the partisans of the oligarchy, who escaped from the first attack, appear to have taken refuge there. The apayal, in § 14., can hardly be any other than those described in $ 12., or the έκπεπτωκότες than the τινες, οἱ ἐκλάπησαν καὶ διεσώθης CHAP. XXXVIII. CHAP. XXXVIII. of Cleom brotus. The expedition of Cleombrotus, fruitless as it was with regard to the Thebans, seems to have made an B. C. 378. impression at Athens which could not have been exExpedition pected, and which it is difficult to explain. That the wishes of the people at large were strongly in favour of the independence of Thebes, cannot be questioned, and indeed had been distinctly declared when Chabrias was sent to guard the pass of Eleutheræ. Nevertheless after the return of Cleombrotus the two generals who had aided in the recovery of the Cadmea were brought to trial; one of them was put to death, the other, who did not abide the trial, was outlawed. It seems absolutely necessary to suppose that they had acted without the sanction of the people, and Xenophon describes their offence to have been, that they were privy to the attempt of the Theban exiles. Yet an orator of the next generation asserts, that a decree was passed on the motion of Cephalus, a leading statesman of this period, for sending succours to dislodge the Lacedæmonian garrison.1 If this was the case, we must conclude that the charge on which they were condemned was, that, by the encouragement which they gave to the exiles, they had drawn Athens into hostilities against Sparta. According to Xenophon, the expedition of Cleombrotus led the Athenians for the first time to reflect on the danger to which they had exposed themselves by their breach of the peace, now that Corinth no longer served as a barrier Incon sistent proceedings at Athens. 1 Dinarchus c. Dem. p. 95. So far I find the view here taken confirmed by Sievers (Gesch. Griech. p. 182.) and by Rehdantz (p. 43.), who has diligently compared the authorities, ancient and modern, and stated the difficulties of the question, but without offering a solution. Sievers suspects that the decree of Cephalus has been inaccurately reported by Dinarchus, and that it only directed the army to march as far as the frontier. Lachmann (1. p. 243. n.) fancies that Xenophon, while he omits to notice the troops sent under the decree of Cephalus, confounded the Theban emigrants, who returned with Pherenicus, with a band of Athenian auxiliaries. Lachmann is thus obliged to relate (p. 247.) that the sentence of death and banishment fell, not upon the generals, but upon the orators who had advised the expedition. If so, Cephalus should have been the first to suffer. XXXVIII. to protect them from invasion; and in the height of CHAP. their alarm they condemned the two unfortunate generals. Yet the character of the Athenians renders it hard to believe that they were impelled on this occasion by mere timidity. There was, as may be collected from Plutarch', a party at Athens-the relics of the oligarchy-with the popular orator Callistratus at its head, favourable to the oppressors of Thebes, and desirous of upholding the ascendancy of Sparta. It had been unable to resist the first impulse of the public feeling in behalf of Theban liberty. But when the sympathy which had been roused by the danger of the cause had been somewhat weakened by its success, it seems as if its adversaries found means to produce a temporary reaction, in which the two generals were sacrificed to the hope of reconciliation with Sparta. It must also be remembered that, for more than a century previous to the end of the Peloponnesian war, Thebes and Athens had been engaged in a fierce contest with one another, in the course of which each party had inflicted and suffered many deadly injuries. This long hostility could not but beget a deep feeling of mutual hatred, which was no doubt aggravated by the contrast of national character between the two races, and by the consciousness of superiority on the side of the Athenians, which pointed so many galling sarcasms at their gross-witted neighbours. The chains once worn by the Theban prisoners, which Herodotus saw hanging from the fire-blackened walls of the Acropolis, reminded the Athenians of the unprovoked invasion by which Thebes, in concert with Cleomenes, had endeavoured to crush their newly re 1 De Gen. Socr. c. 31. Pelopidas and his companions pretended to be the bearers of a letter from Callistratus to Leontiades. 2 ν. 77. τὰς πέδας αὐτῶν, ἐν τῇσι ἐδεδέατο, ἀνεκρέμασαν ἐς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν· αἵπερ ἔτι καὶ ἐς ἐμὲ ἦσαν περιέουσαι, κρεμάμεναι ἐκ τειχέων περιπεφλευσμένων πυρὶ ὑπὸ τοῦ CHAP. XXXVIII. covered liberty. 1 Compare Isocrates, Plat. § 34. 35. τίνων οὐκ ἐχθίους ὑμῖν καὶ δυσμενέστεροι διετέλεσαν ὄντες ; τίνα τηλικαύτην εὐεργεσίαν ἔχοιεν ἂν εἰπεῖν, ἥτις ἱκανὴ γενήσεται διαλῦσαι τὴν ἔχθραν τὴν ἐκ τούτων δικαίως ἂν ὑπάρχουσαν πρὸς αὐτούς ; 2 Plat. 31, 32. σωθέντες διὰ τῆς ὑμετέρας δυνάμεως καὶ κατελθόντες εἰς τὴν αὑτῶν οὐδένα χρόνον ἐνέμειναν, ἀλλ ̓ εὐθὺς εἰς Λακεδαίμονα πρέσβεις ἀπέστελλον, ἕτοιμοι δουλεύειν ὄντες καὶ μηδὲν κινεῖν τῶν πρότερον πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὡμολογημένων· καὶ τί δεῖ μακρολογεῖν; εἰ γὰρ μὴ προσέταττον ἐκεῖνοι τούς τε φεύγοντας καταδέχεσθαι καὶ τοὺς αὐτόχειρας εξείργειν, οὐδὲν ἂν ἐκώλυεν αὐτοὺς μετὰ τῶν ἠδικηκότων ἐφ' ὑμᾶς τοὺς εὐεργέτας στρατεύεσθαι. |