To an enlightened and patriotic Greek the prospects of his country must have appeared more gloomy after the battle of Mantinea than at any previous epoch. The most desirable of all conditions for Greece would have been, to be united in a confederacy, strong enough to prevent intestine warfare among its members, and so constituted as to guard against all unnecessary encroachment on their independence. This was the mark toward which the aims of the nation would have been most wisely directed. But though the Amphictyonies, particularly that of Delphi, afforded not only a hint, but a ground-work, which might have been enlarged and adapted to this purpose: though the Lycian colonies exhibited an admirable example of a similar union: though the Persian invasion held out a strong motive, and a fair opportunity for such an undertaking; it is doubtful whether the thought had ever occurred to a single Greek statesman; and it is probable that, if it had suggested itself, it would have been rejected as a chimera. The next good to this would have been the supremacy of some Grecian state, powerful enough to enforce peace, but not to crush liberty. Nearly such had been that which Sparta exercised over the Peloponnesian confederacy before the Persian war. And, for a few years after, the division of power between Sparta and Athens might have seemed to promise the attainment of the blessing, in a different form indeed, but in one which afforded better security for freedom than could have been enjoyed under the sway of either alone.

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 struck the smaller states with awe. The acquisition of 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.

The ill-humour with which the news of the battle of Leuctra was received at Athens, seems to have arisen merely out of the old jealousy and animosity with which the Athenians had been used to regard their northern neighbours, and which revived as soon as the affairs of Thebes became prosperous. For in the event itself, considered with respect to their own interests, they could have seen nothing to deplore. And they proceeded without delay to take advantage of the shock which it had given to the influence of Sparta. It seems to have been the prevailing opinion throughout Greece, and not least at Sparta itself, that the Spartan power had suffered a fatal blow; and Xenophon intimates that the Athenians were surprised to find that any of the Peloponnesian states still adhered to the ancient chief of their confederacy. They believed that the time had now come when Athens might step into the place of Sparta, as guardian of the peace of Antalcidas, and might transfer all the advantages which her rival had reaped from that title to herself. They therefore assembled a congress in their own city, to which they invited deputies not only from their old allies, but from all the states of Greece which were willing to adopt the peace of Antalcidas as the basis of their mutual relations.

The storm had passed over Sparta, and, chiefly perhaps through the prudence and energy displayed at this critical juncture by Agesilaus, had left her standing erect; but it had shaken her power to the centre, had stript her of the fairest half of her territories, and converted it into a strong-hold for a foe from whom she had to expect implacable and active hostility, and who possessed the means of offering her continual annoyance. The prospect of the internal disorders likely to be produced by the blow which deprived so many of her citizens of the whole or the greater part of their property, was sufficient to excite alarm for the safety of her institutions; and she still saw herself exposed to the recurrence of the same danger which had lately threatened her very existence. The whole line of her frontier was encompassed by enemies, who might again invite and support an invader; and within the peninsula her allies were few and feeble. Beyond the Isthmus there was no power to which she could look for efficacious assistance, but her ancient rival; and one of the first measures of the government, when Laconia was relieved from the enemy's presence, was to send an embassy to Athens, for the purpose of cementing the alliance between the two states, and of concerting plans for mutual defence. The Athenian council, in compliance with the views of the Peloponnesian ministers — for envoys came from Phlius and other allied states — proposed a decree to the assembly, by which it was to be declaied, that the naval armaments of the confederacy were to be under the control of Athens, the land forces to be commanded by Sparta.

When the Athenian orators wished to rouse the spirit of their countrymen in their contest with Philip, they sometimes reminded them that Macedonia had once been subject and tributary to Athens. This was indeed a rhetorical figure; but yet not without a substantial meaning: nor was it, as has sometimes been imagined, only applicable to the state of things in the reign of one of Philip's remote predecessors. Arrian has put a speech into the mouth of Alexander the Great, in which he mentions among the benefits which his father had conferred upon his people, that instead of paying tribute to the Athenians, he had reduced them to depend upon Macedonian protection. It seems clear that these expressions can only relate to the maritime part of Macedonia; and even in that sense it is not easy to assign their exact value. It is certain however that Philip, at the beginning of his reign, did not possess a single place of any importance on the coast. Several maritime towns which had belonged to his predecessors, were then subject to Athens, and probably contributed to the common fund of her revived confederacy. And though it does not appear that after the Peloponnesian war the Athenian government levied any duties in any foreign port, except at Byzantium, still those with which the Macedonian commerce was burdened in the towns dependent on Athens, might, in vague language, be described as tribute which she received from Macedonia; and, so long as her fleets commanded the sea, nothing could be directly exported or imported without her permission.

The position in which Sparta was standing at the end of the Peloponnesian war was so strong and commanding, that only a little moderation and prudence on her part seemed to be wanting, to secure her dominion over Greece, and the general tranquillity, for a long course of years. Yet not many, as we have seen, had passed, before she found herself engaged in a new struggle, which at one time threatened her safety, and, even when most prosperously conducted, added little to her glory, and did not compensate by any solid advantage for the sacrifices which it required. It is not easy to determine, how far this result must be ascribed to errors of policy committed by the Spartan government, or to causes which it could not control, or to the nature of the constitution, which every year changed the officers of state who had the principal share in the administration of affairs. But after making full abatement for unavoidable adverse circumstances, it can hardly be questioned that the Spartans were too much elated by success, that they overlooked the bounds of a reasonable ambition, and neglected the steps and the instruments by which they had risen to their lofty station. Their treatment of Athens was clearly injudicious.

The news of the disaster which had befallen the Athenian arms in Sicily, was no doubt soon conveyed by many channels to Greece; but, if we may believe an anecdote preserved by Plutarch, it did not reach Athens until it was generally known elsewhere. He relates, that a foreigner who had landed at Piræus, as he took his seat in a rber's shop, happened to mention the event of the Sicilian expedition as a subject of conversation which he supposed to be commonly notorious; and the barber, having hastened to the city to convey the intelligence to the archons, was immediately brought before an assembly of the people, which they summoned to hear his report but as he was unable to give any account of his informer, he was put to the rack, as the author of a false alarm, until the truth was confirmed by other witnesses. According to another story, in itself not more improbable, the multitude was assembled in the theatre, listening with unusual delight to a burlesque poem of the Thasian Hegemon, the client of Alcibiades, which by a singular coincidence turned on the overthrow of the Giants, when the sad tidings arrived, and soon spread through the spectators: yet, though almost each had some private loss to bewail, beside the public calamity, they both kept their seats, and hid their tears, that their grief might not be observed by the foreigners present, and would not even suffer the poet to leave off.

The despondency with which the Greeks viewed the situation in which they were left by the loss of their generals, can only be estimated, if we consider not only its real dangers, but the reluctance with which they had been induced to follow Cyrus on to the goal of his enterprise, and the opinion which Clearchus himself had expressed, on the desperate difficulty of making good their retreat against the will of the enemy, who had just given such a proof of his implacable hostility, as utterly precluded all further attempts at negotiation, and all possibility of compromise. On the other hand the whole amount of the loss which had been actually sustained through the perfidy of Tissaphernes might be looked upon as confined to the person of Clearchus. Yet this loss might well seem irreparable. For he was the only man who had hitherto displayed the abilities and acquirements requisite for the station which he had filled among his colleagues, whose deference was a tacit acknowledgment of their own incapacity. Even he had despaired of conducting them home in defiance of the Persian power. They were now in the case which he had described, left, at the distance of at least 1200 miles from Greece, without provisions, without guides, without a single horseman, to find and fight their way through an enemy's country, across unfordable rivers, with a hostile army watching their movements, and ready to seize every opportunity of falling upon them with advantage: and beside all this, they were without a chief.

In the interval between the battle of Miletus and the interview of Tissaphernes with the Spartan commissioners at Cnidus, some transactions had taken place, which were pregnant with very important changes, and gave a singular complexity to the affairs of the contending parties. Alcibiades, as we have seen, not only fought against his countrymen at Miletus, but exerted himself with great apparent earnestness and activity to deprive them of the fruits of their victory. Up to this moment there is no reason to doubt that he was seriously bent on serving the cause of the Peloponnesians, as that which was the sole foundation of his ambitious or vindictive hopes. But henceforth his conduct was entirely changed, and his views appear to have taken an opposite direction.

Though he had attracted great admiration at Sparta by his talents and address, and especially by the flexibility with which he adapted himself to the national character and habits, he does not seem to have gained any friends, and he made at least one implacable enemy, in king Agis. Thucydides only mentions the fact, without explaining the cause of his animosity. One quite adequate, and perfectly probable, is assigned by later writers, who relate that Agis suspected Alcibiades of having dishonoured his queen Timæa. The silence of Thucydides, on a point of this nature, cannot cast any doubt on the story, and since it is certain that Agis was convinced of his wife's infidelity, it would be an absurd stretch of incredulity to doubt that he believed Alcibiades to be her paramour.

The motives which induced the Spartan government to declare itself in favour of Cyrus in his contest with his elder brother, were not perhaps without a mixture of personal feelings, but they were certainly not pure gratitude and goodwill. It no doubt perceived that it would be conferring a weighty obligation on one of the rivals, who might become a still more powerful and useful ally than he had hitherto been, while its forbearance would be but little prized by the other. The issue of the enterprise of Cyrus could not inspire it with much uneasiness. If he should not fully succeed, there might still be a prospect of dividing or weakening the Persian empire; and if he should utterly fail, it had nothing to dread but a war with Persia; an event to which it had probably begun already to look forward more with hope than with fear. The victory of Artaxerxes soon afforded it an occasion for manifesting the new spirit which animated its councils. While the Greeks were on their return, Tissaphernes was sent down to the West to receive the reward of his signal services, having been appointed to the government of the provinces which had been before subject to Cyrus, in addition to his own satrapy, and invested with the like superintending authority as had been given to the prince. He now claimed the dominion of the Ionian cities as included within his new province; but he found them very unwilling to submit to him.

When Conon came to Samos, he found the fleet under his command superior in numbers to the enemy: but despondency was prevailing among the men; partly perhaps a consequence of the recent defeat: it was however probably still more owing to the want of full and regular pay, and to the contrast which they saw in this respect between their own prospects and those of the Peloponnesians, who were provided with an ample and unfailing supply from the inexhaustible riches of the Persian treasury. The Athenian crews appear to have been thinned, as Lysander predicted, by frequent desertions, and Conon deemed it expedient to reduce the numbers of his armament from above a hundred to seventy galleys that each might have its proper complement. His next care was to provide for its immediate exigencies; and he was compelled, as Alcibiades had been, to employ it in expeditions which had no other object than the plunder to be collected in the descents which he made on the enemy's coasts. The autumn and winter passed without any more important operations; for Lysander did not stir from Ephesus. He probably did not feel himself strong enough to seek an engagement; but his attention was also deeply engaged by affairs of a different nature. His ambition was not such as commonly animated a Spartan general: the desire of glory earned in his country's service.

While the revolution just described was taking place, the operations of the hostile fleets, which had hitherto been opposed to each other on the south coast of Ionia, were transferred to a new theatre of war. The Peloponnesians found Tamos no more attentive to their wants than Tissaphernes had been; and at length even the scanty and irregular supplies which they at first received, wholly ceased. At the same time Mindarus was informed by despatches both from Philippus, and from another Spartan named Hippocrates, who had been sent to Phaselis, that it was now evident Tissaphernes had no intention of fulfilling his promise with regard to the Phœnician fleet. He therefore resolved to accept the invitation of Pharnabazus, who continued to urge him to bring up his whole force to the Hellespont, and effect the revolt of all the other towns which remained subject to Athens in the satrap's province. Having first despatched Dorieus with thirteen galleys to Rhodes, where some movements were apprehended from the party adverse to the Peloponnesian or aristocratical interest, he set sail from Miletus with seventy-three galleys. His orders for sailing were given so suddenly as to prevent any notice of his design from being conveyed to the enemy. But having, like Clearchus, put out into the open sea to escape observation, he was driven by a gale to the isle of Icarus, and detained there five or six days, but at length arrived safe at Chios.

In the capitulation on which Athens surrendered, so far as its terms are reported by Xenophon, no mention appears to have been made of any change which was to take place in its form of government; and, if we might believe Diodorus, one article expressly provided, that the Athenians should enjoy their hereditary constitution. This is probably an error; but if such language was used in the treaty it was apparently designed rather to insult than to deceive the people; and the framers of the article, who were also to be its expounders, had in their view not the free constitution under which the city had flourished since the time of Solon, but some ancient form of misrule, which had been long forgotten, but might still be recovered from oblivion by the industry of such antiquarians as Nicomachus. It is at least not to be doubted that the Spartan government, if it did not stipulate for the subversion of the democracy, looked forward to such a revolution as one of the most certain and important results of its victory. But it may have believed that its Athenian partisans would be strong enough to effect it without its interference. And we gather from a statement of Lysias, which Xenophon does not contradict, that Lysander, after he had seen the demolition of the walls begun, leaving his friends to complete their work, sailed away to Samos, now the only place in the Ægean where the authority of Sparta was not acknowledged.

The state of Athens after the expulsion of the Thirty was in some respects apparently less desolate than that in which she had been left after the battle of Platæa. It is possible indeed that the invasions of Xerxes and Mardonius may have inflicted less injury on her territory than the methodical and lingering ravages of the Peloponnesians during the Decelean war. But in 479 the city, as well as the country, had been, for a part of two consecutive years, in the power of an irritated enemy. All that it required both for ornament and defence was to be raised afresh from the ground. Yet the treasury was empty: commerce had probably never yet yielded any considerable supplies, and it had been deeply disturbed by the war; the state possessed no dependent colonies or tributary allies, and was watched with a jealous eye by the most powerful of its confederates. Nevertheless it was impossible for an Athenian patriot to compare the situation and prospects of his country at these two epochs without a sigh. In 479 Athens was mistress of a navy which gave her the pre-eminence over all the maritime states of Greece, and enabled her to carry her arms against any part of the enemy's coasts, to which she might be invited by the propects of plunder or conquest; and a little vigour and prudence was sufficient to secure the city itself against the hostility of Sparta.

ON THE DEVELOPEMENT OF THE SPARTAN CONSTITUTION

Since the publication of the First Volume of this History, in which (Appendix I.) several works relating to the Spartan constitution were mentioned, another has appeared in Germany which may be classed with the most valuable on the subject. Its title is: Die Spartanische Staats-verfassung in ihrer Entwickelung und ihrem Verfalle von Dr. Karl Heinrich Lachmann. Breslau. 1836. Though it was published early in the year, it came into my hands too late to be noticed in the preceding pages. But several readers may be interested in an account of the author's views on some of the more difficult and important questions which have been already discussed in the course of this work.

The foundation of his theory is laid in an Introduction on the origin of the Greek religions, and on the early history of the Ionians, whom he conceives to have been closely allied to the Minyans, and of the Archæans, including an inquiry into the legends of the Pelopids, and of the Trojan war. (With respect to the historical substance of the latter legend, he adopts a hypothesis proposed by Voelcker in a German periodical, which seems not to differ very widely in its leading features from the view taken of the same subject in this history.) The main object of these preliminary investigations is to ascertain the state of Laconia before the Dorian invasion.

Before we proceed with the history of the period which followed the close of the Peloponnesian war, our attention must for a time be turned to a series of events, which, though they took place for the most part far beyond the limits of Greece, and did not immediately affect its interests, will be found to be most intimately connected with its final destinies, and with some of the greatest revolutions of the ancient civilised world; and, in the brief account which we are about to give of them, we shall be chiefly guided by this view of their relative importance.

They arose out of the ambition of Cyrus, of whose abilities and enterprising spirit some specimens have been already seen, and were the results of an attempt which he made to place himself on the throne of Persia. He was the second of the four sons of Darius and Parysatis, and, according to the customs of the monarchy, his elder brother Artaxerxes was the legitimate heir apparent. But Cyrus was the first son born to Darius after his accession to the throne, and he was his mother's favourite. She had encouraged him to hope that as Xerxes, through the influence of Atossa, had been preferred to his elder brother who was born while their father was yet in a private station, so she should be able to persuade Darius to set aside Artaxerxes, and declare Cyrus his successor.

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 1000 cavalry, and 2000 targeteers, with the army of Agesilaus.