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.

Within a few days after the battle of Salamis Attica was delivered from the presence of the barbarians, and the Athenians returned to cultivate their fields and to repair their dwellings. The necessity of attending to their domestic concerns had been one of the main arguments by which Themistocles prevailed on them to desist from the pursuit of the Persian fleet. They now applied themselves to their useful labours with the greater alacrity, as they entertained a reasonable hope that their land would not again be visited by the ravages of the same invader. Sparta had been too late for Marathon, too late to save Athens; but now there was ample time for preparation, and full warning of the need. Though the enemy was yet formidable by land, still after the brilliant success that had hitherto attended the Greeks, after the example that had been given at Marathon, of what might be effected by a small number of brave and disciplined troops, it was not too much to expect that the allies would not again look on at a distance, while the barbarians overran the territory of a people which had done and suffered so much for the common cause. During the winter the Greeks remained tranquil, as if they had no enemy at their doors: but in the spring they awoke, like men who have slept upon an uneasy thought, and remembered that Mardonius was in Thessaly, and a Persian fleet still upon the sea.