had been abandoned without scruple to the vengeance of the people, and if they were still living, it was owing only to the singular moderation which chose to draw a veil over the feuds and iniquities of the past. The arguments of the Theban envoy might betray rather a selfish fear than a generous patriotism; but the Athenians, the oligarchs not less than the people, contented themselves with reminding him that the aid of the Thebans had been only passive, and decreed a defensive alliance with Thebes. It became, therefore, a serious question for Pausanias whether he should risk a battle with enemies thus strengthened with aid from Athens, when even victory could do no more than enable him to recover the body of Lysandros, while defeat in the present temper of the allies might be followed by serious, if not disastrous, results. In the council held to decide whether by asking a truce for the burial of the dead they should virtually acknowledge their defeat, a few Spartans insisted that the only thing to be feared was disgrace; but they were overborne by the vast majority who saw that the allies were not to be depended on. The issue proved that they were right for when the request for a truce was sent and the Thebans had granted it on condition that they should immediately quit Boiotia, the allies received the news with undisguised satisfaction, and submitted with meekness even to the blows of the Thebans who watched their retreat and struck all who strayed from the ranks into the cultivated grounds on either side of the road. Pausanias himself throughout the business was at least as guiltless as the Athenian generals at Argennoussai: on reaching Sparta he found that the popular temper threatened Corinthian him with the fate of those unfortunate men, and he war. promptly took sanctuary at Tegea. Here he spent the rest of his life under the sentence of death which was passed on him in his absence, his son Agesipolis being chosen king in his place. In the bitter sorrow of the moment the Spartans may have felt that in Lysandros they had lost their tutelary genius; and the feeling may have been strengthened by the tidings that Thebes, Athens, Corinth, and Argos were united against them in a confederacy which embraced among others the Chalkidians of Thrace, the Euboians, and the Akarnanians, and that the Theban Ismenias had succeeded in wresting from them their colony of Herakleia. In the synod of the confederates held at Corinth the language of the speakers was full of eager confidence. The mightiest rivers sprang from scanty sources; and the stream of Spartan power could easily be cut off at its head, although the influx of tributaries might swell it to an irresistible 394 B.C. 1 Greek morality required that be granted unconditionally. See truces for burying the dead should p. 332. volume at a distance. So said the Corinthian Timolaos, adding that as men who wish to destroy a wasp's nest apply fire to it while the wasps are within, so should Spartans be attacked in Sparta. The confederate army set out accordingly for that mysterious city; but they had not advanced beyond Nemea when they learnt that the Spartans had already passed their border. Falling back on Corinth, they awaited the coming of the enemy. In the battle which ensued the Spartans with little loss to themselves bore down all opposed to them, but their allies were not only defeated but showed by their lack of firmness how little their hearts were in the cause for which they were fighting. The indecisiveness of the battle fully justifies the step which the Ephors had already taken of recalling Agesilaos. Their decision reached him just when the full tide of success The recall of Agesilaos. was carrying him onwards, as he hoped, to Sousa. The dream would in any case have been rudely disturbed so soon as he should learn the catastrophe of Knidos; but at the moment it seemed both to himself and to his friends that he was called away from a work which would requite on the barbarian the wrongs done to Hellas by Xerxes. In the first stirrings of their grief his allies were eager to accompany him to Sparta ; and although many drew back when they remembered that he was returning to fight not against barbarians but against Greeks, yet a large body resolved to cast in their lot with his. Among these were many Cyreians, headed by Xenophon. Battle of 394 B.C. On his outward voyage Agesilaos had likened himself to Agamennon. On returning from Asia he was constrained to follow the line of march taken by Xerxes. At Amphipolis Derkyllidas met him with tidings of the victory won at Corinth; the thought of the task which he had been compelled to abandon left no room for any feeling but that of grief that so much blood had been shed to so little purpose. Bearing down all opposition made to his onward march, he reached the Boiotian Chaironeia. Here an earthquake filled him with gloomy forebodings which were realised a few days later by the news of the battle of Knidos. Taking in at once the full significance of this great event, Agesilaos, by a device not unlike that of Eteonikos after the disaster at Argennoussai,1 informed his army that the Lakedaimonian fleet had won a great victory, but that he had to mourn the death of his brother-in-law Peisandros. His next march brought him to the scene of the memorable battle which fifty-five years ago finally dispelled the dream of Athenian supremacy in Boiotia. Here in the plain of Koroneia (a name associated for the Athenians with that of their luckless 1 See p. 462. 2 See p. 253. general Tolmides) the confederate army awaited his coming, with hopes undoubtedly raised high by the tidings of Konon's success, if these had then reached them. Their confidence availed them but little. The weight of the Peloponnesian hoplites was still a force too mighty to be withstood by any but troops of the first quality. The division of Herippidas, including the Cyreians under Xenophon, bore down the men opposed to them, while on the side of the confederates the Argives without striking a blow fled up the slopes of Helikon. Thither the Thebans, who had put to flight the Orchomenians opposed to them, resolved to force their way on returning from the pursuit. Their path was barred by the hoplites of Agesilaos; the two masses met in direct encounter; and a conflict ensued which marked a new era in the history of Greek warfare. It was a strife in which the front ranks of men all of tried courage and skill received a tremendous impetus from the weight of the hinder ranks consisting of warriors not less formidable. The ghastly sight presented the next day by the battle field attested the desperate ferocity of a struggle which had been carried on not with wild and piercing cries but with the subdued murmur of men intent on business which they knew to be deadly. Return of Agesilaos to Sparta. 394 B.C. had taken In a certain sense Agesilaos had won a real victory. He was master of the battle ground, and even the Thebans formally admitted their defeat by asking a truce for the burial of the dead; but the latter on the other hand had fully carried out their purpose of forcing their way through the Spartans to the high grounds where their allies refuge, and in the mind of Agesilaos the sense of their tremendous power was even deeper than that of his own success. That success, moreover, brought him no solid fruit. He returned home by way of Delphoi and across the Corinthian Gulf, as he might have done without fighting this dreadful battle. At Sparta he was received with profound respect. The simplicity with which he still submitted himself to the public discipline not only showed that the man was unchanged, but won for him a deference not so readily paid to men like Lysandros. The rebuild ing of the Long Walls Athenian The victory of Konon at Knidos warned the harmosts of the Hellenic towns on the Egean coast that they would do well to seek a refuge elsewhere. Their rule rested, they knew, only on terror, and this they could no longer inspire. For their good fortune but for the mischief of Sparta Abydos remained obstinately faithful to the Peloponnesian cause. To Abydos therefore the harmosts fled, and there with the townsmen they held the place against all the threats and efforts of Pharnabazos. The satrap vowed vengeance and he kept 393 B.C. his word. Embarking with Konon, he sailed first to Kythêra, then to the Corinthian Isthmus, through waters where no Persian ship had been seen since the day of the fight at Salamis. Here he cheered the allies not only with promises of hearty support but with substantial aid in money, and then left his fleet with Konon for the execution of a more momentous work, which nothing but an astonishing combination of circumstances during this particular year rendered possible. The way by sea to Athens was barred to the Spartans by the destruction of their navy: the way by land was blocked for the present, but for a few months only, by the confederate lines at Corinth; and Konon availed himself of this precious opportunity to rebuild the walls thrown down by Lysandros. The Peiraieus thus again formed with Athens a single fortress, and this vast gain for her power and her commerce was directly the result of the tenacity with which Abydos held out against the satrap Pharnabazos. Mission of Antalkidas to the Per sian king. 392 B.C. But the Greek world generally had by its incessant feuds been now brought to this pass that any special benefit secured by one city was sure to excite the fears or the jealousy of others; and thus the rebuilding of the Athenian walls reawakened at Corinth the suspicions which had been .only lulled by the more immediate pressure of Spartan injustice and tyranny. The philo-Lakonian party thus stirred to activity were forming designs for betraying the city, when the ruling oligarchs anticipated them by a massacre from which some of them escaped with Pasimelos who succeeded in seizing the Akrokorinthos. Solemn promises of amnesty secured the submission of these men; but the close alliance subsequently formed with Argos again roused their wrath, nor did Pasimelos feel any scruples in betraying the city to the Spartans, who by pulling down portions of the Long Walls which joined Corinth to its port Lechaion on the Corinthian Gulf left a way open across the isthmus to Attica and Boiotia. The danger to which they were thus exposed determined the Athenians to repair the breach thus 391 B.C. made. With the rapidity which had astonished and alarmed the Syracusans they built up the shattered portion of the western wall, leaving it to their allies to restore the other. A few months only passed before they were again thrown down by the Lakedaimonians; and ambassadors appeared at Sparta both from Athens and Thebes to treat for peace. For the time the negotiations came to nothing: but the destruction of a Lakedaimonian 1 Konon rebuilt the two parallel walls joining Athens to the great harbour. The restoration of the third or Phaleric wall was rightly force by the peltasts or light-armed mercenaries of the Athenian Iphikrates awakened in the Spartan mind feelings not unlike those with which they heard of the slaughter of their hoplites in Sphakteria by the light-armed troops of Demosthenes and Kleon.' In their alarm they determined to send envoys not to the cities confederated against them, but to the Persian king whom they were ready to worship as the supreme arbiter in Hellenic affairs. Hitherto they had used the term freedom in the sense most convenient to themselves: but the effort to inforce this interpretation had failed, and the time was therefore come to play another card in the game which must at whatever cost be made to end in the profit of Sparta. This card was the absolute autonomy or independence of every Hellenic city,-in other words, the suppression of every local confederacy, except, of course, her own. Henceforth Thebes and Athens, Corinth and Argos were not to have any allies; and in theory the pettiest townships of Boiotia and Attica were to stand as completely by themselves as the most prominent cities of the Hellenic world. With these propositions the Spartan Antalkidas was despatched to Tiribazos, satrap of Armenia during the retreat of the Cyreians, now viceroy of Ionia in the place of Tithraustes. For the present his only success was the arrest and detention of the Athenian Konon, which he secured through his influence with Tiribazos. So ended the public career of a man whose loss to Athens was irreparable. He escaped, it would seem, to Kypros (Cyprus) and there died in the house of his friend Euagoras. Death of Thrasyboulos. 389 B.C. The gratitude of Athens to the Salaminian prince led soon to another loss scarcely less severe than that of Konon. The relations of Euagoras to the Persian court had undergone a great change; and the Athenian ships which in company with the Salaminian triremes had worked in alliance with the Persian fleet were now needed to fight in his quarrel with Artaxerxes. With forty triremes Thrasy boulos sailed first to Byzantion, and again made Athens the mistress of the Bosporos, and thence coasting along the eastern shores of the Egean met his death at Aspendos at the hands of natives irritated by the wrongdoing of some of his men. Athens had thus lost not only the man to whom she owed her Long Walls, but even the more devoted citizen who in the hour of his victory had deliberately chosen to throw a veil over the long catalogue of iniquities by which the Thirty and their minions had earned their title to the lasting hatred of their countrymen. These losses were sustained at a time when Athens could little afford to bear them. Aigina, the eyesore of Peiraieus,3 was again 1 See p. 323. 5 See p. 278. 2 See p. 450. |