CHAPTER LXXX.

FROM THE DEATH OF PELOPIDAS TO THE BATTLE OF MANTINEA.

It was during this period,—while Epaminondas was absent with the fleet, and while Pelopidas was engaged in that Thessalian campaign from whence he never returned,—that the Thebans destroyed Orchomenus. That city, the second in the Bœotian federation, had always been disaffected towards Thebes; and the absence of the two great leaders, as well as of a large Theban force in Thessaly, seems to have been regarded by the Orchomenian Knights or Horsemen (the first and richest among the citizens, three hundred in number) as a favorable moment for attack. Some Theban exiles took part in this scheme, with a view to overthrow the existing government; and a day, appointed for a military review near Thebes, was fixed for execution. A large number of conspirators joined, with apparent ardor. But before the day arrived, several of them repented and betrayed the plot to the Bœotarchs; upon which the Orchomenian horsemen were seized, brought before the Theban assembly, condemned to death, and executed. But besides this, the resolution was taken to destroy the town, to kill the male adults, and to sell the women and children into slavery.[670] This barbarous decree was executed, though probably a certain fraction found means to escape, forming the kernel of that population which was afterwards restored. The full measure of ancient Theban hatred was thus satiated; a hatred, tracing its origin even to those mythical times when Thebes was said to have paid tribute to Orchomenus. But the erasure of this venerable city from the list of autonomous units in Hellas, with the wholesale execution and sale of so many free kinsmen into slavery, excited strong sympathy throughout the neighbors, as well as repugnance against Theban cruelty;[671] a sentiment probably aggravated by the fact, which we must presume to have been concurrent,—that the Thebans appropriated the territory among their own citizens. It would seem that the neighboring town of Koroneia shared the same fate; at least the two are afterwards spoken of together in such manner as to make us suppose so.[672] Thebes thus absorbed into herself these two towns and territories to the north of her own city, as well as Platæa and Thespiæ to the south.

[670] Diodor. xv, 79.

[671] See the sentiment expressed by Demosthenes cont. Leptinem, p. 489, s. 121,—an oration delivered in 355 B.C.; eight years after the destruction of Orchomenus.

[672] Demosth. De Pace, p. 62, s. 21; Philippic. II, p. 69, s. 13; s. 15; Fals. Leg. p. 375, s. 122; p. 387, s. 162; p. 445, s. 373.

We must recollect that during the supremacy of Sparta and the period of Theban struggle and humiliation, before the battle of Leuktra, Orchomenus had actively embraced the Spartan cause. Shortly after that victory, the Thebans had been anxious under their first impulse of resentment to destroy the city, but had been restrained by the lenient recommendations of Epaminondas.[673] All their half-suppressed wrath was revived by the conspiracy of the Orchomenian Knights; yet the extreme severity of the proceeding would never have been consummated, but for the absence of Epaminondas, who was deeply chagrined on his return.[674] He well knew the bitter censures which Thebes would draw upon herself by punishing the entire city for the conspiracy of the wealthy Knights, and in a manner even more rigorous than Platæa and Thespiæ; since the inhabitants of these two latter were expelled with their families out of Bœotia, while the Orchomenian male adults were slain, and the women and children sold into slavery.

[673] Diodor. xv, 57.

[674] Pausan. ix, 15, 2.

Diodorus places in the same year all the three facts:—1. The maritime expedition of Epaminondas. 2. The expedition of Pelopidas into Thessaly, his death, and the following Theban victories over Alexander of Pheræ. 3. The conspiracy of the Orchomenian Knights, and the destruction of Orchomenus.

The year in which he places them is, the archonship of Timokrates,—from Midsummer 364 to Midsummer 363 B.C.

That the destruction of Orchomenus occurred during the absence of Epaminondas, and that he was greatly distressed at it on his return,—is distinctly stated by Pausanias; who however is (in my judgment) so far mistaken, that he refers the absence of Epaminondas to that previous occasion when he had gone into Thessaly to rescue Pelopidas from the dungeon of Alexander, 366 B.C.

This date is not so probable as the date assigned by Diodorus; nor do the chronological conceptions of Pausanias seem to me exact.

On returning from his maritime expedition at the end of 363 B.C., Epaminondas was reëlected one of the Bœotarchs. He had probably intended to renew his cruise during the coming year. But his chagrin for the Orchomenian affair, and his grief for the death of Pelopidas,—an intimate friend, as well as a political colleague whom he could trust,—might deter him from a second absence; while the affairs of Peloponnesus also were now becoming so complicated, as to render the necessity of renewed Theban interference again probable.

Since the peace concluded in 366 B.C. with Corinth, Phlius, etc., Thebes had sent no army into that peninsula; though her harmost and garrison still continued at Tegea, perhaps at Megalopolis and Messênê also. The Arcadians, jealous of her as well as disunited among themselves, had even gone so far as to contract an alliance with her enemy Athens. The main conflict however now was, between the Arcadians and the Eleians, respecting the possession of Triphylia and the Pisatid. The Eleians about this time (365 B.C.) came into alliance again with Sparta,[675] relinquishing their alliance with Thebes; while the Achæans, having come into vigorous coöperation with Sparta[676] ever since 367 B.C. (by reaction against the Thebans, who, reserving the judicious and moderate policy of Epaminondas, violently changed the Achæan governments), allied themselves with Elis also, in or before 365 B.C.[677] And thus Sparta, though robbed by the pacification of 366 B.C. of the aid of Corinth, Phlius, Epidaurus, etc., had now acquired in exchange Elis and Achaia,—confederates not less valuable.

[675] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 19.

[676] Xen. Hellen. vii, 1, 43.

[677] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 17.

Triphylia, the territory touching the western coast of Peloponnesus, immediately north of the river Neda,—and the Pisatid (including the lower course of the river Alpheius and the plain of Olympia), immediately north of Triphylia,—both of them between Messenia and Elis,—had been in former times conquered and long held by the Eleians, but always as discontented subjects. Sparta, in the days of her unquestioned supremacy, had found it politic to vindicate their independence, and had compelled the Eleians, after a war of two or three years, to renounce formally all dominion over them.[678] No sooner, however, had the battle of Leuktra disarmed Sparta, than the Eleians reclaimed their lost dominion;[679] while the subjects on their side found new protectors in the Arcadians, and were even admitted, under pretence of kindred race, into the Pan-Arcadian confederacy.[680] The Persian rescript brought down by Pelopidas (367-366 B.C.) seems to have reversed this arrangement, recognizing the imperial rights of the Eleians.[681] But as the Arcadians had repudiated the rescript, it remained for the Eleians to enforce their imperial rights by arms, if they could. They found Sparta in the same interest as themselves; not only equally hostile to the Arcadians, but also complaining that she had been robbed of Messênê, as they complained of the loss of Triphylia. Sparta had just gained a slight advantage over the Arcadians, in the recapture of Sellasia; chiefly through the aid of a Syracusan reinforcement of twelve triremes, sent to them by the younger Dionysius, but with orders speedily to return.[682]

[678] Xen. Hellen. iii, 3, 30, 31.

[679] Xen. Hellen. vi, 5, 2.

[680] Xen. Hellen. vii, 2, 26.

[681] Xen. Hellen. vii, 1, 38.

[682] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 12.

Besides the imperial claims over Triphylia and the Pisatid, which thus placed Elis in alliance with Sparta and in conflict with Arcadia,—there was also a territory lying north of the Alpheius (on the hilly ground forming the western or Eleian side of Mount Erymanthus, between Elis and the north-western portion of Arcadia), which included Lasion and the highland townships called Akroreii, and which was disputed between Elis and Arcadia. At this moment, it was included as a portion of the Pan-Arcadian aggregate;[683] but the Eleians, claiming it as their own and suddenly marching in along with a body of Arcadian exiles, seized and occupied Lasion as well as some of the neighboring Akroreii. The Arcadians were not slow in avenging the affront. A body of their Pan-Arcadian militia called the epariti, collected from the various cities and districts, marched to Lasion, defeated the Eleian hoplites with considerable loss both of men and arms, and drove them out of the district. The victors recovered both Lasion and all the Akroreii, except Thraustus; after which they proceeded to the sacred ground of Olympia, and took formal possession of it, planting a garrison, protected by a regular stockaded circle, on the hill called Kronion. Having made good this position, they marched on even to the city of Elis itself, which was unfortified (though it had a tenable acropolis), so that they were enabled to enter it, finding no resistance until they reached the agora. Here they found mustered the Eleian horsemen and the chosen hoplites, who repulsed them with some loss. But Elis was in great consternation; while a democratical opposition now manifested itself against the ruling oligarchy,—seizing the acropolis in hopes of admitting the Arcadians. The bravery of the horsemen and hoplites, however, put down this internal movement, recovered the acropolis, and forced the malcontents, to the number of four hundred, to evacuate the city. Thus expelled, the latter seized and established themselves at Pylus (in the Eleian territory, about nine miles from Elis towards the Arcadian border[684]), where they were reinforced not only by a body of Arcadians, but also by many of their partisans who came from the city to join them. From this fortified post, planted in the country like Dekeleia in Attica, they carried on harassing war against the Eleians in the city, and reduced them after some time to great straits. There were even hopes of compelling the city to surrender, and a fresh invasion of the Arcadians was invited to complete the enterprise. The Eleians were only rescued by a reinforcement from their allies in Achaia, who came in large force and placed the city in safety; so that the Arcadians could do nothing more than lay waste the territory around.[685]

[683] It had been taken from Elis by Agis, at the peace of 399 B.C. after his victorious war (Xen. Hellen. iii, 2, 31).

[684] Pausanias, vi, 22, 3.

[685] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 13-18; Diodor. xv, 77.

Retiring on this occasion, the Arcadians renewed their invasion not long afterwards; their garrison still occupying Olympia, and the exiles continuing at Pylus. They now marched all across the country, even approaching Kyllênê, the harbor of Elis on the western sea. Between the harbor and the city, the Eleians ventured to attack them, but were defeated with such loss, that their general Andromachus (who had prompted the attack) fell upon his sword in despair. The distress of the Eleians became greater than ever. In hopes of drawing off the Arcadian invaders, they sent an envoy to Sparta, entreating that the Lacedæmonians would make a diversion on their side of Arcadia. Accordingly, the Spartan prince Archidamus (son of king Agesilaus), invading the south-western portion of Arcadia, occupied a hill-town or post called Kromnus (seemingly in the territory of Megalopolis, and cutting off the communication between that city and Messênê), which he fortified and garrisoned with about two hundred Spartans and Periœki. The effect which the Eleians contemplated was produced. The Arcadian army (except the garrison of Olympia) being withdrawn home, they had leisure to act against Pylus. The Pylian exiles had recently made an abortive attempt upon Thalamæ, on their return from which they were overtaken and worsted by the Eleians, with severe loss in killed, and two hundred of their number ultimately made prisoners. Among these latter, all the Eleian exiles were at once put to death; all the remainder sold for slaves.[686]

[686] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 26.

Meanwhile the main Arcadian force, which had returned from Elis, was joined by allies,—Thebans,[687] Argeians, and Messenians,—and marched at once to Kromnus. They there blocked up the Lacedæmonian garrison by a double palisade carried all around, which they kept a numerous force to occupy. In vain did Archidamus attempt to draw them off, by carrying his devastations into the Skiritis and other portions of Arcadia; for the Skiritæ, in former days dependents of Sparta and among the most valuable constituents of the Lacedæmonian armies,[688] had now become independent Arcadians. The blockade was still continued without interruption. Archidamus next tried to get possession of a hill-top which commanded the Arcadian position. But in marching along the road up, he encountered the enemy in great force, and was repulsed with some loss; himself being thrust through the thigh with a spear, and his relatives Polyænidas and Chilon slain.[689] The Lacedæmonian troops retreated for some space into a wider breadth of ground, where they were again formed in battle order, yet greatly discouraged both by the repulse and by the communication of the names of the slain, who were among the most distinguished soldiers of Sparta. The Arcadians on the contrary were advancing to the charge in high spirits, when an ancient Spartan, stepping forth from the ranks, shouted with a loud voice “What need to fight, gentlemen? Is it not better to conclude a truce and separate?” Both armies accepted the proposition joyfully. The truce was concluded; the Lacedæmonians took up their dead and retired: the Arcadians also retreated to the spot where they had gained their advantage, and there erected their trophy.[690]

[687] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 27.

The Thebans who are here mentioned must have been soldiers in garrison at Tegea, Megalopolis, or Messênê. No fresh Theban troops had come into Peloponnesus.

[688] Thucyd. v, 68; Xen. Rep. Laced, xii, 3; xiii, 6.

[689] The seizure of Kromnus by the Lacedæmonians, and the wound received by Archidamus, are alluded to by Justin, vi, 6.

[690] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 20-25. Ὡς δὲ, πλησίον ὄντων, ἀναβοήσας τις τῶν πρεσβυτέρων εἶπε—Τί δεῖ ἡμᾶς, ὦ ἄνδρες, μάχεσθαι, ἀλλ’ οὐ σπεισαμένους διαλυθῆναι; ἄσμενοι δὴ ἀμφότεροι ἀκούσαντες, ἐσπείσαντο.

Under the graphic description here given by Xenophon, seems to be concealed a defeat of the Lacedæmonians more serious than he likes to enunciate. The Arcadians completely gained their point, by continuing the blockade without interruption. One more attempt was made by the Lacedæmonians for the relief of their countrymen. Suddenly assailing the palisade at night, they succeeded in mastering the portion of it guarded by the Argeians.[691] They broke down an opening, and called to the besieged to hasten out. But the relief had come unexpected, so that only a few of those near at hand could profit by it to escape. The Arcadians, hurrying to the spot in large force, drove off the assailants and reënclosed the besieged, who were soon compelled to surrender for want of provisions. More than a hundred prisoners, Spartans and Periœki together, were distributed among the captors,—Argeians, Thebans, Arcadians, and Messenians,—one share to each.[692] Sixty years before, the capture of two hundred and twenty Spartans and Lacedæmonians in Sphakteria, by Kleon and Demosthenes, had excited the extreme of incredulous wonder throughout all Greece; emphatically noted by the impartial Thucydides.[693] Now, not a trace of such sentiment appears, even in the philo-Laconian Xenophon. So sadly had Spartan glory declined!

[691] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 27. The conjecture of Palmerius,—τοῦ κατὰ τοὺς Ἀργείους,—seems here just and necessary.

[692] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 27.

[693] Thucyd. iv, 40.

Having thus put an end to the Spartan attack, the Arcadians resumed their aggression against Elis, in conjunction with a new project of considerable moment. It was now the spring immediately preceding the celebration of the great quadrennial Olympic festival, which came about midsummer. The presidency over this sacred ceremony had long been the cherished privilege of the Eleians, who had acquired it when they conquered the Pisatans—the inhabitants of the region immediately around Olympia, and the first curators of the festival in its most primitive state. These Pisatans, always reluctant subjects of Elis, had never lost the conviction that the presidency of the festival belonged to them of right; and had entreated Sparta to restore to them their right, thirty-five years before, when Agis as conqueror imposed terms of peace upon the Eleians.[694] Their request had been then declined, on the ground that they were too poor and rude to do worthy honor to the ceremony. But on now renewing it, they found the Arcadians more compliant than the Spartans had been. The Arcadian garrison, which had occupied the sacred plain of Olympia for more than a year, being strongly reinforced, preparation was made for celebrating the festival by the Pisatans under Arcadian protection.[695] The Grecian states would receive with surprise, on this occasion, two distinct notices from official heralds, announcing to them the commencement of the hieromenia or sacred season, and the precise day when the ceremonies would begin: for doubtless the Eleians, though expelled by force from Olympia, still asserted their rights and sent round their notices as usual.

[694] Xen. Hellen. iii, 2, 31.

[695] Xen. Hellen. vii, 2, 29. Compare Pausanias, vi, 22, 2.

It was evident that this memorable plain, consecrated as it was to Hellenic brotherhood and communion, would on the present occasion be dishonored by dispute and perhaps by bloodshed: for the Arcadians summoned to the spot, besides their own military strength, a considerable body of allies: two thousand hoplites from Argos, and four hundred horsemen from Athens. So imposing a force being considered sufficient to deter the unwarlike Eleians from any idea of asserting their rights by arms, the Arcadians and Pisatans began the festival with its ordinary routine of sacrifice and matches. Having gone through the chariot-race, they entered upon the pentathlon, or quintuple contest, wherein the running match and the wrestling-match came first in order. The running-match had already been completed, and those who had been successful enough in it to go on contending for the prize in the other four points, had begun to wrestle in the space between the stadium and the great altar,[696]—when suddenly the Eleians were seen entering the sacred ground in arms, accompanied by their allies the Achæans, and marching up to the opposite bank of the little river Kladeus,—which flowed at a little distance to the westward of the Altis, or interior enclosed precinct of Zeus, falling afterwards into the Alpheius. Upon this the Arcadians drew up in armed order, on their own side of the Kladeus, to resist the farther approach of the Eleians.[697] The latter, with a boldness for which no one gave them credit, forded the rivulet, headed by Stratolas with his chosen band of three hundred, and vigorously charged first the Arcadians, next the Argeians; both of whom were defeated and driven back. The victorious Eleians forced their way into the Altis, and pressed forward to reach the great altar. But at every step of their advance the resistance became stronger, aided as it was by numerous buildings,—the senate-house, the temple of Zeus, and various porticos,—which both deranged their ranks, and furnished excellent positions of defence for darters and archers on the roofs. Stratolas was here slain; while his troops, driven out of the sacred ground, were compelled to recross the Kladeus. The festival was then resumed and prosecuted in its usual order. But the Arcadians were so afraid of a renewed attack on the following day, that they not only occupied the roofs of all the buildings more completely than before, but passed the night in erecting a palisade of defence; tearing down for that purpose the temporary booths which had been carefully put up to accommodate the crowd of visitors.[698] Such precautions rendered the place unassailable, so that the Eleians were obliged to return home on the next day; not without sympathy and admiration among many of the Greeks, for the unwonted boldness which they had displayed. They revenged themselves by pronouncing the 104th Olympiad to be no Olympiad at all, and by registering it as such in their catalogue, when they regained power; preserving however the names of those who had been proclaimed victors, which appeared in the lists like the rest.[699]

[696] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 29. Καὶ τὴν μὲν ἱπποδρομίαν ἤδη ἐπεποιήκεσαν, καὶ τὰ δρομικὰ τοῦ πεντάθλου· οἱ δ’ εἰς πάλην ἀφικόμενοι ~οὐκέτι ἐν τῷ δρόμῳ~, ἀλλὰ μεταξὺ τοῦ δρόμου καὶ τοῦ βωμοῦ ἐπάλαιον. ~Οἱ γὰρ Ἠλεῖοι~ παρῆσαν ἤδη, etc.

Diodorus erroneously represents (xv, 78) the occurrence as if the Eleians had been engaged in celebrating the festival, and as if the Pisatans and Arcadians had marched up and attacked them while doing so. The Eleians were really the assailants.

[697] Xen. Hellen. _l. c._ Οἱ γὰρ Ἠλεῖοι παρῆσαν σὺν τοῖς ὅπλοις ~εἰς τὸ τέμενος~. Οἱ δὲ Ἀρκάδες ποῤῥωτέρω μὲν οὐκ ἀπήντησαν, ἐπὶ δὲ τοῦ Κλαδάου ποτάμου παρετάξαντο, ὃς παρὰ τὴν Ἄλτιν καταῤῥέων εἰς τὸν Ἄλφειον ἐμβάλλει. Καὶ μὴν ~οἱ Ἠλεῖοι τἀπὶ θάτερα τοῦ ποτάμου παρετάξαντο~, σφαγιασάμενοι δὲ εὐθὺς ἐχώρουν.

The τέμενος must here be distinguished from the Altis; as meaning the entire breadth of consecrated ground at Olympia, of which the Altis formed a smaller interior portion enclosed with a wall. The Eleians entered into the τέμενος before they crossed the river Kladeus, which flowed _through_ the τέμενος, but _alongside_ of the Altis. The tomb of Œnomaus, which was doubtless included in the τέμενος, was on the right bank of the Kladeus (Pausan. vi, 21, 3); while the Altis was on the left bank of the river.

Colonel Leake (in his Peloponnesiaca, pp. 6, 107) has given a copious and instructive exposition of the ground of Olympia, as well as of the notices left by Pausanias respecting it. Unfortunately, little can be made out certainly, except the position of the great temple of Zeus in the Altis. Neither the positions assigned to the various buildings, the Stadion, or the Hippodrome, by Colonel Leake,—nor those proposed by Kiepert in the plan comprised in his maps—nor by Ernst Curtius, in the Plan annexed to his recent Dissertation called _Olympia_ (Berlin, 1852)—rest upon very sufficient evidence. Perhaps future excavations may hereafter reveal much that is now unknown.

I cannot agree with Colonel Leake however in supposing that Pisa was at any time a _city_, and afterwards deserted.

[698] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4. 32. ὥστε οὐδ’ ἀνεπαύσαντο τῆς νυκτὸς ἐκκόπτοντες τὰ διαπεπονημένα σκηνώματα, etc.

[699] Diodor. xv, 78; Pausanias, vi, 8, 2.

Such was the unholy combat which dishonored the sanctuary of Pan-hellenic brotherhood, and in which the great temple, with its enthroned inmate the majestic Zeus of Pheidias, was for the first time turned into a fortress against its habitual presidents the Eleians. It was a combat wherein, though both Thebes and Sparta, the competing leaders of Greece, stand clear, Athens as well as most of the Peloponnesian chief states were implicated. It had been brought on by the rapacious ambition of the Arcadians, and its result seemed to confirm them, under color of Pisatan presidency, in the permanent mastery of Olympia. But in spite of such apparent promise, it was an event which carried in itself the seeds of violent reaction. We cannot doubt that the crowd of Grecian spectators present were not merely annoyed by the interruption of the proceedings and by the demolition of their tents, but also deeply shocked by the outrage to the sacred ground,—“imminentium templorum religio.”[700] Most of them probably believed the Eleians to be the rightful presidents, having never either seen or heard of any one else in that capacity. And they could hardly help feeling strong sympathy for the unexpected courage of these dispossessed presidents; which appeared so striking to Xenophon (himself perhaps a spectator) that he ascribes it to a special inspiration of the gods.[701]

[700] Tacitus, Hist. i, 40. He is describing the murder of Galba in the Forum at Rome, by the Othonian soldiers:—

“Igitur milites Romani, quasi Vologesen aut Pacorum avito Arsacidarum solio depulsuri, ac non Imperatorem suum, inermem et senem, trucidare pergerent—disjectâ plebe, proculcato Senatu, truces armis, rapidis equis, forum irrumpunt: nec illos Capitolii aspectus, et imminentium templorum religio, et priores et futuri Principes, terruere, quominus facerent scelus, cujus ultor est quisquis successit.”

[701] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 32.

If they disapproved of the conduct of the Arcadians and Pisatans as an unjust intrusion, they would disapprove yet more of that spoliation of the rich temples at Olympia, whereby the intruders rewarded themselves. The Arcadians, always on the look-out for plunder and pay as mercenary soldiers, found themselves supplied with both, in abundant measure, from this war: the one from the farms, the stock, and the field-laborers, of the Eleian neighborhood generally, more plentiful than in any part of Peloponnesus;[702] the other from the ample accumulation, both of money and of precious offerings, distributed over the numerous temples at Olympia. The Pisatans, now installed as administrators, would readily consent to appropriate these treasures to the pay of their own defenders, whom they doubtless considered as acting in the service of the Olympian Zeus. Accordingly the Epariti, the militia of joint Arcadia, were better paid than ever they had been before so that the service attracted numerous volunteers of the poorer class.[703]

[702] Xen. Hellen. iii, 2, 20; Polybius, iv, 73.

[703] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 33, 34.

At the outset of the Peloponnesian war, the Corinthians and Spartans had talked of prosecuting it in part by borrowed money from the treasuries of Delphi and Olympia.[704] How far the project had ever been executed, we have no information. But at least, it had not been realized in any such way as to form a precedent for the large sums now appropriated by the Pisatans and Arcadians; which appropriation accordingly excited much outcry, as flagrant rapacity and sacrilege. This sentiment was felt with peculiar force among many even of the Arcadians themselves, the guilty parties. Moreover some of the leaders employed had made important private acquisitions for themselves, so as to provoke both resentment and jealousy among their rivals. The Pan-Arcadian communion, recently brought together and ill-cemented, was little calculated to resist the effect of any strong special cause of dissension. It was composed of cities which had before been accustomed to act apart and even in hostility to each other; especially Mantinea and Tegea. These two cities now resumed their ancient rivalry.[705] The Mantineans, jealous both of Tegea and Megalopolis, began to labor underhand against Arcadian unity and the Theban alliance,—with a view to renewed connection with Sparta; though only five years before, they had owed to Thebes the reëstablishment of their own city, after it had been broken up into villages by Spartan force. The appropriation of the sacred funds, offensive as it was to much of sincere sentiment, supplied them with a convenient ground for commencing opposition. In the Mantinean assembly, a resolution was passed, renouncing all participation in the Olympic treasures; while at the same time an adequate sum was raised among the citizens, to furnish pay for all members of the Epariti who came from their city. This sum was forwarded to the officers in command; who however not only refused to receive it; but even summoned the authors of the proceeding to take their trial before the Pan-Arcadian assembly,—the Ten Thousand at Megalopolis,—on the charge of breaking up the integrity of Arcadia.[706] The Mantinean leaders thus summoned, having refused to appear, and being condemned in their absence by the Ten Thousand,—a detachment of the epariti was sent to Mantinea to secure their persons. But the gates were found shut, and the order was set at defiance. So much sympathy was manifested in Arcadia towards the Mantineans, that many other towns copied their protest. Nay, even the majority of the Ten Thousand themselves, moved by repeated appeals made to them in the name of the offended gods, were gradually induced to adopt it also, publicly renouncing and interdicting all farther participation in the Olympian treasures.

[704] Thucyd. i, 121.

Perikles in his speech at Athens alludes to this understood purpose of the Spartans and their confederacy (Thucyd. i, 143).

[705] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 33, 34; Diodor. xv, 82; Pausanias, vii, 8, 6.

[706] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 33. φάσκοντες αὐτοὺς λυμαίνεσθαι τὸ Ἀρκαδικὸν, ἀνεκαλοῦντο εἰς τοὺς μυρίους τοὺς προστάτας αὐτῶν, etc.

Here was a just point carried, and an important advantage gained, in desisting from a scandalous misappropriation. The party which had gained it immediately sought to push it farther. Beginning as the advocates of justice and of the Olympian Zeus, the Mantineans speedily pronounced themselves more clearly as the champions of oligarchy; friendly to Sparta and adverse to Thebes. Supplies from Olympia being no longer obtained, the means presently failed, of paying the epariti or public militia. Accordingly, such members of that corps as were too poor to continue without pay, gradually relinquished the service; while on the other hand, the more wealthy and powerful citizens, by preconcerted understanding with each other, enrolled themselves in large numbers, for the purpose of getting the national force out of the hands of the opposite party and into their own.[707] The leaders of that opposite party saw plainly, that this oligarchical movement would not only bring them to severe account for the appropriation of the sacred treasure, but would also throw Arcadia again into alliance with Sparta. Accordingly they sent intimation to the Thebans of the impending change of policy, inviting them to prevent it by an immediate expedition into Arcadia. Informed of this proceeding,[708] the opposite leaders brought it before the Pan-Arcadian assembly; in which they obtained a resolution, that envoys should be despatched to Thebes, desiring that no Theban army might enter into Arcadia until formally summoned,—and cancelling the preceding invitation as unauthorized. At the same time, the assembly determined to conclude peace with the Eleians, and to restore to them the locality of Olympia with all their previous rights. The Eleians gladly consented, and peace was accordingly concluded.[709]

[707] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 34.

[708] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 34. ~Οἱ δὲ τὰ κράτιστα τῇ Πελοποννήσῳ βουλευόμενοι~ ἔπεισαν τὸ κοινὸν τῶν Ἀρκάδων, πέμψαντας πρέσβεις εἰπεῖν τοῖς Θηβαίοις, etc.

The phrase here used by Xenophon, to describe the oligarchical party, marks his philo-Laconian sentiment. Compare vii, 5, 1. οἱ κηδόμενοι τῆς Πελοποννήσου, etc.

[709] Xen. Hellen. _l. c._

The transactions just recounted occupied about one year and nine or ten months, from Midsummer 364 B.C. (the time of the battle at Olympia) to about April 362 B.C. The peace was generally popular throughout Arcadia, seemingly even among the cities which adhered to Thebes, though it had been concluded without consulting the Thebans. Even at Tegea, the centre of Theban influence, satisfaction was felt at the abandonment of the mischievous aggression and spoliation of Olympia, wherein the Thebans had had no concern. Accordingly when the peace, having been first probably sworn in other Arcadian cities, came to be sworn also at Tegea,—not only the city authorities, but also the Theban harmost, who occupied the town with a garrison of three hundred Bœotians, were present and took part in the ceremony. After it had been finished, most of the Mantineans went home; their city being both unfriendly to Tegea and not far distant. But many other Arcadians passed the evening in the town, celebrating the peace by libations, pæans, and feasting. On a sudden the gates were shut by order, and the most prominent of the oligarchical party were arrested as they sat at the feast, by the Bœotian garrison and the Arcadian Epariti of the opposite party. The leaders seized were in such considerable number, as to fill both the prison and the government-house; though there were few Mantineans among them, since most of these last had gone home. Among the rest the consternation was extreme. Some let themselves down from the walls, others escaped surreptitiously by the gates. Great was the indignation excited at Mantinea on the following morning, when the news of this violent arrest was brought thither. The authorities,—while they sent round the intelligence to the remaining Arcadian cities, inviting them at once to arms,—despatched heralds to Tegea, demanding all the Mantinean prisoners there detained. They at the same time protested emphatically against the arrest or the execution of any Arcadian, without previous trial before the Pan-Arcadian community; and they pledged themselves in the name of Mantinea, to answer for the appearance of any Arcadian against whom charges might be preferred.[710]

[710] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 37, 38.

Upon receiving this requisition, the Theban harmost forthwith released all his prisoners. He then called together an assembly,—seemingly attended by only a few persons, from feelings of mistrust,[711]—wherein he explained that he had been misled, and that he had ordered the arrest upon a false report that a Lacedæmonian force was on the borders, prepared to seize the city in concert with treacherous correspondents within. A vote was passed accepting the explanation, though (according to Xenophon) no one believed it. Yet envoys were immediately sent to Thebes probably from the Mantineans and other Arcadians, complaining loudly of his conduct, and insisting that he should be punished with death.

[711] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 39. συγκαλέσας τῶν Ἀρκάδων ὁπόσοι γε δὴ συνελθεῖν ἠθέλησαν, ἀπελογεῖτο, ὡς ἐξαπατηθείη.

On a review of the circumstances, there seems reason for believing that the Theban officer gave a true explanation of the motives under which he had acted. The fact of his releasing the prisoners at the first summons, is more consistent with this supposition than with any other. Xenophon indeed says that his main object was to get possession of the Mantineans, and that, when he found but few of the latter among the persons seized, he was indifferent to the detention of the rest. But if such had been his purpose, he would hardly have set about it in so blind and clumsy a manner. He would have done it while the Mantineans were still in the town, instead of waiting until after their departure. He would not have perpetrated an act offensive as well as iniquitous, without assuring himself that it was done at a time when the determining purpose was yet attainable. On the other hand, nothing can be more natural than the supposition that the more violent among the Arcadian epariti believed in the existence of a plot to betray Tegea to the Lacedæmonians, and impressed the Theban with a persuasion of the like impending danger. To cause a revolution in Tegea, would be a great point gained for the oligarchical party, and would be rendered comparatively practicable by the congregation of a miscellaneous body of Arcadians in the town. It is indeed not impossible, that the idea of such a plot may really have been conceived; but it is at least highly probable, that the likelihood of such an occurrence was sincerely believed in by opponents.[712]

[712] The representation of Diodorus (xv, 82), though very loose and vague, gives us to understand that the two opposing parties at Tegea came to an actual conflict of arms, on occasion of the peace.

The explanation of the Theban governor, affirming that his order for arrest had either really averted, or appeared to him indispensable to avert, a projected treacherous betrayal,—reached Thebes at the same time as the complaints against him. It was not only received as perfectly satisfactory, but Epaminondas even replied to the complainants by counter-complaints of his own,—“The arrest (he said) was an act more justifiable than the release of those arrested. You Arcadians have already committed treason against us. It was on your account, and at your request, that we carried the war into Peloponnesus,—and you now conclude peace without consulting us! Be assured that we shall presently come in arms into Arcadia, and make war to support our partisans in the country.”[713]

[713] Xen. Hellen. vii, 4, 40.

Such was the peremptory reply which the Arcadian envoy brought back from Thebes, announcing to his countrymen that they must prepare for war forthwith. They accordingly concerted measures for resistance with the Eleians and Achæans. They sent an invitation to the Lacedæmonians to march into Arcadia, and assist in repelling any enemy who should approach for the purpose of subjugating Peloponnesus,—yet with the proviso, as to headship, that each state should take the lead when the war was in its own territory; and they farther sent to solicit aid from Athens. Such were the measures taken by the Mantineans and their partisans, now forming the majority in the Pan-Arcadian aggregate, who (to use the language of Xenophon) “were really solicitous for Peloponnesus.”[714] “Why do these Thebans (said they) march into our country when we desire them not to come? For what other purpose, except to do us mischief? to make us do mischief to each other, in order that both parties may stand in need of _them_? to enfeeble Peloponnesus as much as possible, in order that they may hold it the more easily in slavery?”[715] Such is the language which Xenophon repeats, with a sympathy plainly evincing his philo-Laconian bias. For when we follow the facts as he himself narrates them, we shall find them much more in harmony with the reproaches which he puts into the mouth of Epaminondas. Epaminondas had first marched into Peloponnesus (in 369 B.C.) at the request of both Arcadians and Eleians, for the purpose of protecting them against Sparta. He had been the first to give strength and dignity to the Arcadians, by organizing them into a political aggregate, and by forming a strong frontier for them against Sparta, in Messênê and Megalopolis. When thus organized, the Arcadians had manifested both jealousy of Thebes, and incompetence to act wisely for themselves. They had caused the reversal of the gentle and politic measures adopted by Epaminondas towards the Achæan cities, whom they had thus thrown again into the arms of Sparta. They had, of their own accord, taken up the war against Elis and the mischievous encroachment at Olympia. On the other hand, the Thebans had not marched into Peloponnesus since 367 B.C.—an interval now of nearly five years. They had tried to persuade the Arcadians to accept the Persian rescript, and to desist from the idea of alliance with Athens; but when refused, they had made no attempt to carry either of these points by force. Epaminondas had a fair right now to complain of them for having made peace with Elis and Achaia, the friends and allies of Sparta, without any consultation with Thebes. He probably believed that there had been a real plot to betray Tegea to the Lacedæmonians, as one fruit of this treacherous peace; and he saw plainly that the maintenance of the frontier line against Sparta,—Tegea, Megalopolis, and Messênê,—could no longer be assured without a new Theban invasion.

[714] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 1. Οἱ κηδόμενοι τῆς Πελοποννήσου.

[715] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 2, 3.

This appears to me the reasonable estimate of the situation in Peloponnesus, in June 362 B.C.—immediately before the last invasion of Epaminondas. We cannot trust the unfavorable judgment of Xenophon with regard either to this great man or to the Thebans. It will not stand good, even if compared with the facts related by himself; still less probably would it stand, if we had the facts from an impartial witness.

I have already recounted as much as can be made out of the proceedings of the Thebans, between the return of Pelopidas from Persia with the rescript (in the winter 367-366 B.C.) to the close of 363 B.C. In 366-365 B.C., they had experienced great loss and humiliation in Thessaly connected with the detention of Pelopidas, whom they had with difficulty rescued from the dungeon of Pheræ. In 364-363 B.C., Pelopidas had been invested with a fresh command in Thessaly, and though he was slain, the Theban arms had been eminently successful, acquiring more complete mastery of the country than ever they possessed before; while Epaminondas, having persuaded his countrymen to aim at naval supremacy, had spent the summer of 363 B.C. as admiral of a powerful Theban fleet on the coast of Asia. Returning to Thebes at the close of 363 B.C., he found his friend Pelopidas slain; while the relations of Thebes, both in Peloponnesus and in Thessaly, were becoming sufficiently complicated to absorb his whole attention on land, without admitting farther aspirations towards maritime empire. He had doubtless watched, as it went on, the gradual change of politics in Arcadia (in the winter and spring of 363-362 B.C.), whereby the Mantinean and oligarchical party, profiting by the reaction of sentiment against the proceedings at Olympia, had made itself a majority in the Pan-Arcadian assembly and militia, so as to conclude peace with Elis, and to present the prospect of probable alliance with Sparta, Elis, and Achaia. This political tendency was doubtless kept before Epaminondas by the Tegean party in Arcadia, opposed to the party of Mantinea; being communicated to him with partisan exaggerations even beyond the reality. The danger, actual or presumed, of Tegea, with the arrest which had been there operated, satisfied him that a powerful Theban intervention could be no longer deferred. As Bœotarch, he obtained the consent of his countrymen to assemble a Bœotian force, to summon the allied contingents, and to conduct this joint expedition into Peloponnesus.

The army with which he began his march was numerous and imposing. It comprised all the Bœotians and Eubœans, with a large number of Thessalians (some even sent by Alexander of Pheræ, who had now become a dependent ally of Thebes), the Lokrians, Malians, Ænianes, and probably various other allies from Northern Greece; though the Phokians declined to join, alleging that their agreement with Thebes was for alliance purely defensive.[716] Having passed the line of Mount Oneium,—which was no longer defended, as it had been at his former entrance,—he reached Nemea, where he was probably joined by the Sikyonian contingent,[717] and where he halted, in hopes of intercepting the Athenian contingent in their way to join his enemies. He probably had information which induced him to expect them;[718] but the information turned out false. The Athenians never appeared, and it was understood that they were preparing to cross by sea to the eastern coast of Laconia. After a fruitless halt, he proceeded onward to Tegea, where his Peloponnesian allies all presently joined him: the Arcadians of Tegea, Pallantium, Asea, and Megalopolis, the Messenians—(all these forming the line of frontier against Laconia)—and the Argeians.

[716] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 5; Diodor. xv, 85.

[717] Diodor. xv, 85.

[718] The explanation which Xenophon gives of this halt at Nemea,—as if Epaminondas was determined to it by a peculiar hatred of Athens (Hellen. vii, 5, 6)—seems alike fanciful and ill-tempered.

The halt at Nemea, since Epaminondas missed its direct purpose, was injurious in another way, as it enabled the main body of his Peloponnesian enemies to concentrate at Mantinea; which junction might probably have been prevented, had he entered Arcadia without delay. A powerful Peloponnesian army was there united, consisting of the Mantineans with the major part of the other Arcadians,—the Eleians,—and the Achæans. Invitation had been sent to the Spartans; and old Agesilaus, now in his eightieth year, was in full march with the Lacedæmonian forces to Mantinea. Besides this, the Athenian contingent was immediately expected; especially valuable from its cavalry, since the Peloponnesians were not strong in that description of force,—some of them indeed having none at all.

Epaminondas established his camp and place of arms within the walls of Tegea; a precaution which Xenophon praises, as making his troops more secure and comfortable, and his motions less observable by the enemy.[719] He next marched to Mantinea, to provoke the enemy to an action before the Spartans and Athenians joined; but they kept carefully on their guard, close to Mantinea, too strongly posted to be forced.[720] On returning to his camp in Tegea, he was apprised that Agesilaus with the Spartan force, having quitted Sparta on the march to Mantinea, had already made some progress and reached Pellênê. Upon this he resolved to attempt the surprise of Sparta by a sudden night-march from Tegea, which lay in the direct road from Sparta to Mantinea, while Agesilaus in getting from Sparta to Mantinea had to pursue a more circuitous route to the westward. Moving shortly after the evening meal, Epaminondas led the Theban force with all speed towards Sparta; and he had well-nigh come upon that town, “like a nest of unprotected young birds,” at a moment when no resistance could have been made. Neither Agesilaus, nor any one else, expected so daring and well-aimed a blow, the success of which would have changed the face of Greece. Nothing saved Sparta except the providential interposition of the gods,[721] signified by the accident that a Kretan runner hurried to Agesilaus, with the news that the Thebans were in full march southward from Tegea, and happened to arrest in time his farther progress towards Mantinea. Agesilaus instantly returned back with the troops around him to Sparta, which was thus put in a sufficient posture of defence before the Thebans arrived. Though sufficient for the emergency, however, his troops were not numerous; for the Spartan cavalry and mercenary forces were still absent, having been sent forward to Mantinea. Orders were sent for the main army at that city to hasten immediately to the relief of Sparta.[722]

[719] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 8.

[720] Plutarch, De Gloriâ Athen. p. 346 B.

[721] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 10. Καὶ εἰ μὴ Κρὴς, θείᾳ τινὶ μοίρᾳ προσελθὼν, ἐξήγγειλε τῷ Ἀγησιλάῳ προσιὸν τὸ στράτευμα, ἔλαβεν ἂν τὴν πόλιν ὥσπερ νεοττιὰν, παντάπασιν ἔρημον τῶν ἀμυνουμένων.

Diodorus coincides in the main fact (xv, 82, 83), though with many inaccuracies of detail. He gives a very imperfect idea of this narrow escape of Sparta, which is fully attested by Xenophon, even against his own partialities.

Kallisthenes asserted that the critical intelligence had been conveyed to Agesilaus by a Thespian named Euthynus (Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 34).

[722] Xenophon (Hellen. vii, 5, 10, 11) describes these facts in a manner different on several points from Polybius (ix, 8), and from Diodorus (xv, 83). Xenophon’s authority appears to me better in itself, while his narrative is also more probable. He states distinctly that Agesilaus heard the news of the Theban march while he was yet at Pellênê (on the road to Mantinea, to which place a large portion of the Spartan troops had already gone forward),—that he turned back forthwith, and reached Sparta before Epaminondas, with a division not numerous, yet sufficient to put the town in a state of defence. Whereas Polybius affirms, that Agesilaus heard the news when he was at Mantinea,—that he marched from thence with the whole army to Sparta, but that Epaminondas reached Sparta before him, had already attacked the town and penetrated into the market-place, when Agesilaus arrived and drove him back. Diodorus relates that Agesilaus never left Sparta, but that the other king Agis, who had been sent with the army to Mantinea, divining the plans of Epaminondas, sent word by some swift Kretan runners to Agesilaus and put him upon his guard.

Wesseling remarks justly, that the mention of Agis must be a mistake; that the second king of Sparta at that time was named Kleomenes.

Polyænus (ii, 3, 10) states correctly that Agesilaus reached Sparta before Epaminondas; but he adds many other details which are too uncertain to copy.

The march of Epaminondas had been undertaken only on the probability, well-nigh realized, of finding Sparta undefended. He was in no condition to assault the city, if tolerably occupied,—still less to spend time before it; for he knew that the enemy from Mantinea would immediately follow him into Laconia, within which he did not choose to hazard a general action. He found it impracticable to take this unfortified, yet unassailable city, Sparta, even at his former invasion of 370-369 B.C.; when he had most part of Peloponnesus in active coöperation with him, and when the Lacedæmonians had no army in the field. Accordingly, though he crossed the Eurotas and actually entered into the city of Sparta[723] (which had no walls to keep him out), yet as soon as he perceived the roofs manned with soldiers and other preparations for resistance, he advanced with great caution, not adventuring into the streets and amidst the occupied houses. He only tried to get possession of various points of high ground commanding the city, from whence it might be possible to charge down upon the defenders with advantage. But even here, though inferior in number they prevented him from making any impression. And Archidamus son of Agesilaus, sallying forth unexpectedly beyond the line of defence, with a small company of one hundred hoplites, scrambled over some difficult ground in his front, and charged the Thebans even up the hill, with such gallantry, that he actually beat them back with some loss; pursuing them for a space, until he was himself repulsed and forced to retreat.[724] The bravery of the Spartan Isidas, too, son of Phœbidas the captor of the Theban Kadmeia, did signal honor to Sparta, in this day of her comparative decline. Distinguished for beauty and stature, this youth sallied forth naked and unshielded, with his body oiled as in the palæstra. Wielding in his right hand a spear and in his left a sword, he rushed among the enemy, dealing death and destruction; in spite of which he was suffered to come back unwounded: so great was the awe inspired by his singular appearance and desperate hardihood. The ephors decorated him afterwards with a wreath of honor, but at the same time fined him for exposing himself without defensive armor.[725]

[723] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 11. Ἐπεὶ δὲ ἐγένετο Ἐπαμινώνδας ~ἐν τῇ πόλει~ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν, etc.

[724] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 12, 13.

Justin (vi, 7) greatly exaggerates the magnitude and violence of the contest. He erroneously represents that Agesilaus did not reach Sparta till after Epaminondas.

[725] Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 34.

Though the Spartans displayed here an honorable gallantry, yet these successes, in themselves trifling, are magnified into importance only by the partiality of Xenophon. The capital fact was, that Agesilaus had been accidentally forewarned so as to get back to Sparta and put it in defence before the Thebans arrived. As soon as Epaminondas ascertained this, he saw that his project was no longer practicable; nor did he do more than try the city round, to see if he could detect any vulnerable point, without involving himself in a hazardous assault. Baffled in his first scheme, he applied himself, with equal readiness of resource and celerity of motion, to the execution of a second. He knew that the hostile army from Mantinea would be immediately put in march for Sparta, to ward off all danger from that city. Now the straight road from Mantinea to Sparta (a course nearly due south all the way) lying through Tegea, was open to Epaminondas, but not to the enemy, who would be forced to take another and more circuitous route, probably by Asea and Pallantion; so that he was actually nearer to Mantinea than they. He determined to return to Tegea forthwith, while they were on their march towards Sparta, and before they could be apprised of his change of purpose. Breaking up accordingly, with scarce any interval of rest, he marched back to Tegea; where it became absolutely indispensable to give repose to his hoplites, after such severe fatigue. But he sent forward his cavalry without any delay, to surprise Mantinea, which would be now (he well knew) unprepared and undefended; with its military force absent on the march to Sparta, and its remaining population, free as well as slave, largely engaged in the fields upon the carrying of harvest. Nothing less than the extraordinary ascendency of Epaminondas,—coupled with his earnestness in setting forth the importance of the purpose, as well as the probable plunder,—could have prevailed upon the tired horsemen to submit to such additional toil, while their comrades were enjoying refreshment and repose at Tegea.[726]

[726] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 14. Πάλιν δὲ πορευθεὶς ὡς ἐδύνατο τάχιστα εἰς τὴν Τεγέαν, τοὺς μὲν ὁπλίτας ἀνέπαυσε, τοὺς δὲ ἱππέας ἔπεμψεν εἰς τὴν Μαντίνειαν, δεηθεὶς αὐτῶν προσκαρτερῆσαι, καὶ διδάσκων ὡς πάντα μὲν εἰκὸς ἔξω εἶναι τὰ τῶν Μαντινέων βοσκήματα, πάντας δὲ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, ἄλλως τε καὶ σίτου συγκομιδῆς οὔσης.

Everything near Mantinea was found in the state which Epaminondas anticipated. Yet the town was preserved, and his well-laid scheme defeated, by an unexpected contingency which the Mantineans doubtless ascribed to the providence of the gods,—as Xenophon regards the previous warning given to Agesilaus. The Athenian cavalry had arrived, not an hour before, and had just dismounted from their horses within the walls of Mantinea. Having departed from Eleusis (probably after ascertaining that Epaminondas no longer occupied Nemea), they took their evening meal and rested at the isthmus of Corinth, where they seem to have experienced some loss or annoyance.[727] They then passed forward through Kleonæ to Mantinea, arriving thither without having broken fast, either themselves or their horses, on that day. It was just after they reached Mantinea, and when they had yet taken no refreshment,—that the Theban and Thessalian cavalry suddenly made their appearance, having advanced even to the temple of Poseidon, within less than a mile of the gates.[728]

[727] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 15, 16.

The words—δυστυχήματος γεγενημένου ἐν Κορίνθῳ τοῖς ἱππεῦσιν—allude to something which we have no means of making out. It is possible that the Corinthians, who were at peace with Thebes and had been ill-used by Athens (vii, 4, 6-10), may have seen with displeasure, and even molested, the Athenian horsemen while resting on their territory.

[728] Polybius, ix, 8.

The Mantineans were terror-struck at this event. Their military citizens were absent on the march to Sparta, while the remainder were dispersed about the fields. In this helpless condition, they implored aid from the newly-arrived Athenian cavalry; who, though hungry and tired, immediately went forth,—and indeed were obliged to do so, since their own safety depended upon it. The assailants were excellent cavalry, Thebans and Thessalians, and more numerous than the Athenians. Yet such was the gallantry with which the latter fought, in a close and bloody action, that on the whole they gained the advantage, forced the assailants to retire, and had the satisfaction to preserve Mantinea with all its citizens and property. Xenophon extols[729] (and doubtless with good reason) the generous energy of the Athenians, in going forth hungry and fatigued. But we must recollect that the Theban cavalry had undergone yet more severe hunger and fatigue,—that Epaminondas would never have sent them forward in such condition, had he expected any serious resistance; and that they probably dispersed to some extent, for the purpose of plundering and seizing subsistence in the fields through which they passed, so that they were found in disorder when the Athenians sallied out upon them. The Athenian cavalry-commander Kephisodôrus,[730] together with Gryllus (son of the historian Xenophon), then serving with his brother Diodorus among the Athenian horse, were both slain in the battle. A memorable picture at Athens by the contemporary painter Euphranor, commemorated both the battle and the personal gallantry of Gryllus, to whose memory the Mantineans also paid distinguished honors.

[729] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 15, 16, 17.

Plutarch (De Gloriâ Athen. p. 346 D.—E.) recounts the general fact of this battle and the rescue of Mantinea; yet with several inaccuracies which we refute by means of Xenophon.

Diodor. (xv, 84) mentions the rescue of Mantinea by the unexpected arrival of the Athenians; but he states them as being six thousand soldiers, that is hoplites, under Hegelochus; and he says nothing about the cavalry battle. Hegesilaus is named by Ephorus (ap. Diog. Laert. ii, 54,—compare Xenoph. De Vectigal. iii, 7) as the general of the entire force sent out by Athens on this occasion, consisting of infantry as well as cavalry. The infantry must have come up somewhat later.

Polybius also (ix, 8), though concurring in the main with Xenophon, differs in several details. I follow the narrative of Xenophon.

[730] Harpokration v, Κηφισόδωρος, Ephorus ap. Diogen. Laert. ii, 53; Pausan. 1, 3, 4; viii, 9, 8; viii, 11, 5.

There is a confusion, on several points, between this cavalry battle near Mantinea,—and the great or general battle, which speedily followed it, wherein Epaminondas was slain. Gryllus is sometimes said to have been slain in the battle of Mantinea, and even to have killed Epaminondas with his own hand. It would seem as if the picture of Euphranor represented Gryllus in the act of killing the Theban commander; and as if the latter tradition of Athens as well as of Thebes, erroneously bestowed upon that Theban commander the name of Epaminondas.

See this confusion discussed and cleared up, in a good article on the Battle of Mantinea, by Arnold Schäfer, p. 58, 59, in the Rheinisches Museum für Philologie (1846—Fünfter Jahrgang, Erstes Heft).

Here were two successive movements of Epaminondas, both well-conceived, yet both disappointed by accident, without any omission of his own. He had his forces concentrated at Tegea, while his enemies on their side, returning from Sparta, formed a united camp in the neighborhood of Mantinea. They comprised Lacedæmonians, Eleians, Arcadians, Achæans, and Athenians; to the number, in all, of twenty thousand foot and two thousand horse, if we could trust the assertion of Diodorus;[731] who also gives the numbers of Epaminondas as thirty thousand foot and three thousand horse. Little value can be assigned to either of these estimates; nor is it certain which of the two armies was the more numerous. But Epaminondas saw that he had now no chance left for striking a blow except through a pitched battle, nor did he at all despair of the result.[732] He had brought out his northern allies for a limited time; which time they were probably not disposed to prolong, as the season of harvest was now approaching. Moreover, his stock of provisions was barely sufficient;[733] the new crop being not yet gathered in, while the crop of the former year was probably almost exhausted. He took his resolution therefore to attack the enemy forthwith.

[731] Diodor. xv, 84.

[732] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 8. καὶ μὴν οἰόμενος κρείττων τῶν ἀντιπάλων εἶναι, etc.

[733] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 19. σπάνια δὲ τὰ ἐπιτήδεια ἔχοντας ὅμως πείθεσθαι ἐθέλειν, etc.

But I cannot adopt the view of Xenophon, that such resolution was forced upon Epaminondas, against his own will, by a desperate position, rendering it impossible for him to get away without fighting,—by the disappointment of finding so few allies on his own side, and so many assembled against him,—and by the necessity of wiping off the shame of his two recent failures (at Sparta and at Mantinea) or perishing in the attempt.[734] This is an estimate of the position of Epaminondas, not consistent with the facts narrated by Xenophon himself. It could have been no surprise to the Theban general that the time had arrived for ordering a battle. With what other view had he come into Peloponnesus? Or for what other purpose could he have brought so numerous an army? Granting that he expected greater support in Peloponnesus than he actually found, we cannot imagine him to have hoped that his mere presence, without fighting, would suffice to put down enemies courageous as well as powerful. Xenophon exaggerates the importance of the recent defeats (as he terms them) before Sparta and Mantinea. These were checks or disappointments rather than defeats. On arriving at Tegea, Epaminondas had found it practicable (which he could not have known beforehand) to attempt a _coup de main_, first against Sparta, next against Mantinea. Here were accidental opportunities which his genius discerned and turned to account. Their success, so near to actual attainment, would have been a prodigious point gained;[735] but their accidental failure left him not worse off than he was before. It remained for him then, having the enemy before him in the field, and no farther opportunities of striking at them unawares by side-blows, to fight them openly; which he and all around him must have contemplated, from their first entrance into Peloponnesus, as the only probable way of deciding the contest.

[734] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 18. αὐτὸς δὲ λελυμασμένος παντάπασι τῇ ἑαυτοῦ δόξῃ ἔσοιτο, ἡττημένος μὲν ἐν Λακεδαιμόνι σὺν πολλῷ ὁπλιτικῷ ὑπ’ ὀλίγων, ἡττημένος δὲ ἐν Μαντινείᾳ ἱππομαχίᾳ, αἴτιος δὲ γεγενημένος διὰ τὴν ἐς Πελοπόννησον στράτειαν τοῦ συνεστάναι Λακεδαιμονίους καὶ Ἀρκάδας καὶ Ἠλείους καὶ Ἀθηναίους· ὥστε οὐκ ἐδόκει δυνατὸν εἶναι ἀμαχεὶ παρελθεῖν, etc.

[735] Polybius, ix. 8, 2.

The army of Epaminondas, far from feeling that sentiment of disappointed hope and stern necessity which Xenophon ascribes to their commander, were impatient to fight under his orders, and full of enthusiastic alacrity when he at last proclaimed his intention. He had kept them within the walls of Tegea, thus not only giving them better quarters and fuller repose, but also concealing his proceedings from the enemy; who on their side were encamped on the border of the Mantinean territory. Rejoicing in the prospect of going forth to battle, the horsemen and hoplites of Epaminondas all put themselves in their best equipment. The horsemen whitened their helmets,—the hoplites burnished up their shields, and sharpened their spears and swords. Even the rustic and half-armed Arcadian villagers, who had nothing but clubs in place of sword or spear, were eager to share the dangers of the Thebans, and inscribed upon their shields (probably nothing but miserable squares of wood) the Theban ensign.[736] The best spirit and confidence animated all the allies, as they quitted the gates of Tegea, and disposed themselves in the order of march commanded by Epaminondas.

[736] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 20. Προθύμως μὲν ἐλευκοῦντο οἱ ἱππεῖς τὰ κράνη, κελεύοντος ἐκείνου· ἐπεγράφοντο δὲ καὶ οἱ τῶν Ἀρκάδων ὁπλῖται, ῥόπαλα ἔχοντες, ὡς Θηβαῖοι ὄντες· πάντες δὲ ἠκονῶντο καὶ λόγχας καὶ μαχαίρας, καὶ ἐλαμπρύνοντο τὰς ἀσπίδας.

There seems a sort of sneer in these latter words, both at the Arcadians and Thebans. The Arcadian club-men are called ὁπλῖται; and are represented as passing themselves off to be as good as Thebans.

Sievers (Geschicht. p. 342) and Dr. Thirlwall (Hist. Gr. c. 40, p. 200) follow Eckhel in translating this passage to mean that “the Arcadian hoplites inscribed upon their shields the figure of a club, that being the ensign of the Thebans.” I cannot think this interpretation is the best,—at least until some evidence is produced, that the Theban symbol on the shield was a club. Xenophon does not disdain on other occasions to speak sneeringly of the Theban hoplites,—see vii, 5, 12. The mention of λόγχας καὶ μαχαίρας, immediately afterwards, sustains the belief that ῥόπαλα ἔχοντες, immediately before, means “men armed with clubs”; the natural sense of the words.

The horsemen are said to have “whitened their helmets (or head-pieces).” Hence I presume that these head-pieces were not made of metal, but of wood or wicker-work. Compare Xen. Hellen. ii, 4, 25.

The lofty Mantinico-Tegeatic plain, two thousand feet above the level of the sea (now known as the plain of Tripolitza)—“is the greatest of that cluster of valleys in the centre of Peloponnesus, each of which is so closely shut in by the intersecting mountains that no outlet is afforded to the waters except through the mountains themselves.”[737] Its length stretches from north to south, bordered by the mountain range of Mænalus on the west, and of Artemisium and Parthenion on the east. It has a breadth of about eight miles in the broadest part, and of one mile in the narrowest. Mantinea is situated near its northern extremity, Tegea near its southern; the direct distance between the two cities, in a line not much different from north and south, being about ten English miles. The frontier line between their two domains was formed by a peculiarly narrow part of the valley, where a low ridge projecting from the range of Mænalus on the one side, and another from Artemisium on the opposite, contract the space and make a sort of defensible pass near four miles south of Mantinea;[738] thus about six miles distant from Tegea. It was at this position, covering the whole Mantinean territory, that the army opposed to Epaminondas was concentrated; the main Lacedæmonian force as well as the rest having now returned from Sparta.[739]

[737] See Colonel Leake’s Travels in the Morea, vol. iii, ch. 24, p. 45.

[738] Three miles from Mantinea (Leake, ib. p. 51-94) “a low ridge of rocks, which, advancing into the plain from a projecting part of the Mænalium, formed a natural division between the districts of Tegea and Mantineia.”

Compare the same work, vol. i, ch. 3, p. 100, 112, 114, and the recent valuable work of Ernst Curtius, Peloponnesos (Gotha, 1851), pp. 232-247. Gell says that a wall has once been carried across the plain at this boundary (Itinerary of the Morea, p. 141-143).

[739] See the indications of the locality of the battle in Pausanias, viii, 11, 4, 5; and Colonel Leake—as above referred to.

Epaminondas, having marched out from Tegea by the northern gate, arrayed his army in columns proper for advancing towards the enemy; himself with the Theban columns forming the van. His array being completed, he at first began his forward march in a direction straight towards the enemy. But presently he changed his course, turning to the left towards the Mænalian range of mountains which forms the western border of the plain, and which he probably reached somewhere near the site of the present Tripolitza. From thence he pursued his march northward, skirting the flank of the mountain on the side which lies over against or fronts towards Tegea;[740] until at length he neared the enemy’s position, upon their right flank. He here halted, and caused his columns to face to the right; thus forming a line, or phalanx of moderate depth, fronting towards the enemy. During the march, each lochus or company had marched in single file with the lochage or captain (usually the strongest and best soldier in it), at the head; though we do not know how many of these lochages marched abreast, or what was the breadth of the column. When the phalanx or front towards the enemy was formed, each lochage was of course in line with his company, and at its left hand; while the Thebans and Epaminondas himself were at the left of the whole line. In this position, Epaminondas gave the order to ground arms.[741]

[740] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 21.

Tripolitza is reckoned by Colonel Leake as about three miles and a half from the site of Tegea; Mr. Dodwell states it as about four miles, and Gell’s Itinerary of the Morea much the same.

Colonel Leake reckons about eight miles from Tripolitza to Mantinea. Gell states it as two hours and three minutes, Dodwell as two hours and five minutes,—or seven miles.

Colonel Leake, Travels in Morea, vol. i, p. 88-100; Gell’s Itinerary, p. 141; Dodwell’s Travels, vol. ii, p. 418-422.

It would seem that Epaminondas, in this latter half of his march, must have followed nearly the road from Mantinea to Pallantium. Pallantium was situated west by south from Tegea.

[741] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 22.

The enemy, having watched him ever since he had left Tegea and formed his marching array, had supposed at first that he was coming straight up to the front of their position, and thus expected speedy battle. But when he turned to the left towards the mountains, so that for some time he did not approach sensibly nearer to their position, they began to fancy that he had no intention of fighting on that day. Such belief, having been once raised, still continued, even though, by advancing along the skirts of the mountain, he gradually arrived very close upon their right flank. They were farther confirmed in the same supposition, when they saw his phalanx ground arms; which they construed as an indication that he was about to encamp on the spot where he stood. It is probable that Epaminondas may have designedly simulated some other preliminaries of encampment, since his march from Tegea seems to have been arranged for the purpose partly of raising such false impression in his enemies, partly of getting upon their right flank instead of their front. He completely succeeded in his object. The soldiers on the Lacedæmonian side, believing that there would be no battle until the next day, suffered their ranks to fall into disorder, and scattered about the field. Many of the horsemen even took off their breast-plates and unbridled their horses. And what was of hardly less consequence,—that mental preparation of the soldier, whereby he was wound up for the moment of action, and which provident commanders never omitted, if possible, to inflame by a special harangue at the moment,—was allowed to slacken and run down.[742] So strongly was the whole army persuaded of the intention of Epaminondas to encamp, that they suffered him not only without hindrance, but even without suspicion, to make all his movements and dispositions preparatory to immediate attack.

[742] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 22. Καὶ γὰρ δὴ, ὡς πρὸς τῷ ὄρει ἐγένετο, ἐπεὶ ἐξετάθη αὐτῷ ἡ φάλαγξ, ὑπὸ τοῖς ὑψηλοῖς ἔθετο τὰ ὅπλα· ὥστε εἰκάσθη στρατοπεδευομένῳ. Τοῦτο δὲ ποιήσας, ἔλυσε μὲν τῶν πλείστων πολεμίων τὴν ἐν ταῖς ψυχαῖς πρὸς μάχην παρασκευήν, ἔλυσε δὲ τὴν ἐν ταῖς συντάξεσιν.

Such improvidence is surprising, when we recollect that the ablest commander and the best troops in Greece were so close upon the right of their position. It is to be in part explained, probably, by the fact that the Spartan headship was now at an end, and that there was no supreme chief to whom the whole body of Lacedæmonian allies paid deference. If either of the kings of Sparta was present,—a point not distinctly ascertainable,—he would have no command except over the Lacedæmonian troops. In the entire allied army, the Mantineans occupied the extreme right (as on a former occasion, because the battle was in their territory,[743] and because the Lacedæmonians had lost their once-recognized privilege), together with the other Arcadians. On the right-centre and centre were the Lacedæmonians, Eleians, and Achæans; on the extreme left, the Athenians.[744] There was cavalry on both the wings; Athenian on the left,—Eleian on the right; spread out with no more than the ordinary depth, and without any intermixture of light infantry along with the horsemen.[745]

[743] Thucyd. v, 67; Pausanias, viii, 9, 5; viii. 10, 4.

[744] Diodor. xv. 85.

That the Athenians were on the left, we also know from Xenophon (Hell. vii, 5, 24), though he gives no complete description of the arrangement of the allies on either side.

[745] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 23.

In the phalanx of Epaminondas, he himself with the Thebans and Bœotians was on the left; the Argeians on the right; the Arcadians, Messenians, Eubœans, Sikyonians and other allies in the centre.[746] It was his purpose to repeat the same general plan of attack which had succeeded so perfectly at Leuktra; to head the charge himself with his Bœotians on the left against the opposing right or right-centre, and to bear down the enemy on that side with irresistible force, both of infantry and cavalry; while he kept back his right and centre, composed of less trustworthy troops, until the battle should have been thus wholly or partially decided. Accordingly, he caused the Bœotian hoplites,—occupying the left of his line in lochi or companies, with the lochage or captain at the left extremity of each,—to wheel to the right and form in column fronting the enemy, in advance of his remaining line. The Theban lochages thus became placed immediately in face of the enemy, as the heads of a column of extraordinary depth; all the hoplites of each lochus, and perhaps of more than one lochus, being ranged in file behind them.[747] What the actual depth was, or what was the exact number of the lochus, we do not know. At Leuktra, Epaminondas had attacked with fifty shields of depth; at Mantinea, the depth of his column was probably not less. Himself, with the chosen Theban warriors, were at the head of it, and he relied upon breaking through the enemy’s phalanx at whatever point he charged; since their files would hardly be more than eight deep, and very inadequate to resist so overwhelming a shock. His column would cut through the phalanx of the enemy, like the prow of a trireme impelled in sea-fight against the midships of her antagonist.

[746] Here again, we know from Xenophon that the Thebans were on the left; but the general arrangement of the other contingents we obtain only from Diodorus (xv, 85).

The Tactica of Arrian, also (xi, 2) inform us that Epaminondas formed his attacking column, at Leuktra, of the Thebans—at Mantinea, of all the Bœotians.

About the practice of the Thebans, both at and after the battle of Leuktra, to make their attack with the left, see Plutarch. Quæst. Roman. p. 282 D.

[747] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 22. Ἐπεί γε μὴν, παραγαγὼν τοὺς ἐπὶ κέρως πορευομένους λόχους εἰς μέτωπον, ἰσχυρὸν ἐποιήσατο τὸ περὶ ἑαυτὸν ἔμβολον, τότε δὴ ἀναλαβεῖν παραγγείλας τὰ ὅπλα, ἡγεῖτο· οἱ δ’ ἠκολούθουν ... Ὁ δὲ τὸ στράτευμα ἀντίπρωρον ὥσπερ τριήρη προσῆγε, νομίζων, ὅπη ἐμβαλὼν διακόψειε, διαφθερεῖν ὅλον τὸ τῶν ἐναντίων στράτευμα, etc.

It was apparently only the Bœotian hoplites who were thus formed in column, projecting forward in advance; while the remaining allies were still left in their ordinary phalanx or lines.[748] Epaminondas calculated, that when he should have once broken through the enemy’s phalanx at a single point, the rest would either take flight, or become so dispirited, that his allies coming up in phalanx could easily deal with them.

[748] I agree with Folard (Traité de la Colonne, p. lv-lxi, prefixed to the translation of Polybius) in considering ἔμβολον to be a column,—rather than a wedge tapering towards the front. And I dissent from Schneider’s explanation, who says,—“Epaminondas phalangem contrahit sensim et colligit in frontem, ut cunei seu rostri navalis formam efficeret. Copiæ igitur ex utroque latere explicatæ transeunt in frontem; hoc est, παράγειν εἰς μέτωπον.” It appears to me that the troops which Epaminondas caused to wheel into the front and to form the advancing column, consisted only of the left or Theban division, the best troops in the army,—τῷ μὲν ἰσχυροτάτῳ παρεσκευάζετο ἀγωνίζεσθαι, τὸ δὲ ἀσθενέστατον πόῤῥω ἀπέστησεν. Moreover, the whole account of Xenophon implies that Epaminondas made the attack from his own left against the enemy’s right, or right-centre. He was afraid that the Athenians would take him in flank from their own left.

Against the cavalry on the enemy’s right, which was marshaled only with the ordinary depth of a phalanx of hoplites (four, six, or perhaps eight deep),[749] and without any light infantry intermingled with the ranks—the Theban general opposed on his left his own excellent cavalry, Theban and Thessalian, but in strong and deep column, so as to ensure to them also a superior weight of attack. He farther mingled in their ranks some active footmen, darters and slingers, of whom he had many from Thessaly and the Maliac Gulf.[750]

[749] Compare a similar case in Xen. Hellen. iii, 4, 13, where the Grecian cavalry, in the Asiatic army of Agesilaus, is said to be drawn up ὥσπερ φάλαγξ ἐπὶ τεσσάρων, etc.

[750] These πέζοι ἅμιπποι—light-armed footmen, intermingled with the ranks of the cavalry,—are numbered as an important item in the military establishment of the Syracusan despot Gelon (Herodot. vii. 158).

There remained one other precaution to take. His deep Theban and Bœotian column, in advancing to the charge, would be exposed on its right or unshielded side to the attack of the Athenians, especially the Athenian cavalry, from the enemy’s left. To guard against any such movement, he posted, upon some rising ground near his right, a special body of reserve, both horse and foot, in order to take the Athenians in the rear if they should attempt it.

All these fresh dispositions for attack, made on the spot, must have occupied time, and caused much apparent movement. To constitute both the column of infantry, and the column of cavalry, for attack on his left—and to post the body of reserve on the rising ground at his right against the Athenians—were operations which the enemy from their neighboring position could not help seeing. Yet they either did not heed, or did not understand, what was going on.[751] Nor was it until Epaminondas, perceiving all to be completed, actually gave the word of command to “take up arms,” that they had any suspicion of the impending danger. As soon as they saw him in full march moving rapidly towards them, surprise and tumultuous movement pervaded their body. The scattered hoplites ran to their places; the officers exerted every effort to establish regular array; the horsemen hastened to bridle their horses and resume their breast-plates.[752] And though the space dividing the two armies was large enough to allow such mischief to be partially corrected,—yet soldiers thus taken unawares, hurried, and troubled, were not in condition to stand the terrific shock of chosen Theban hoplites in deep column.

[751] Perhaps Epaminondas may have contrived in part to conceal what was going on by means of cavalry-movements in his front. Something of the kind seems alluded to by Polyænus (ii, 3, 14).

[752] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 22.

The grand force of attack, both of cavalry and infantry, which Epaminondas organized on his left, was triumphant in both its portions. His cavalry, powerfully aided by the intermingled darters and light troops from Thessaly, broke and routed the enemy’s cavalry opposed to them, and then restraining themselves from pursuit, turned to fall upon the phalanx of infantry. Epaminondas, on his part, with his Theban column, came into close conflict with the Mantinean and Lacedæmonian line of infantry, whom, after a desperate struggle of shield, spear, and sword, he bore down by superior force and weight. He broke through the enemy’s line of infantry at this point, compelling the Lacedæmonians opposed to him, after a brave and murderous resistance, to turn their backs and take to flight. The remaining troops of the enemy’s line, seeing the best portion of their army defeated and in flight, turned and fled also. The centre and right of Epaminondas, being on a less advanced front, hardly came into conflict with the enemy until the impression of his charge had been felt, and therefore found the troops opposed to them already wavering and disheartened. The Achæan, Eleian, and other infantry on that side, gave way after a short resistance; chiefly as it would appear, from contagion and alarm, when they saw the Lacedæmonians broken. The Athenians however, especially the cavalry, on the left wing of their own army, seem to have been engaged in serious encounter with the cavalry opposite to them. Diodorus affirms them to have been beaten, after a gallant fight,[753] until the Eleian cavalry from the right came to their aid. Here, as on many other points, it is difficult to reconcile his narrative with Xenophon, who plainly intimates that the stress of the action fell on the Theban left and Lacedæmonian right and centre,—and from whose narrative we should rather have gathered, that the Eleian cavalry, beaten on their own right, may have been aided by the Athenian cavalry from the left; reversing the statement of Diodorus.

[753] Diodor. xv, 85.

The orator Æschines fought among the Athenian hoplites on this occasion (Æschines, Fals. Leg. p. 300. c. 53.)

In regard to this important battle, however, we cannot grasp with confidence anything beyond the capital determining feature and the ultimate result.[754] The calculations of Epaminondas were completely realized. The irresistible charge, both of infantry and cavalry, made by himself with his left wing, not only defeated the troops immediately opposed, but caused the enemy’s whole army to take flight. It was under these victorious circumstances, and while he was pressing on the retiring enemy at the head of his Theban column of infantry, that he received a mortal wound with a spear in the breast. He was by habit and temper, always foremost in braving danger, and on this day probably exposed himself preëminently, as a means of encouraging those around him, and ensuring the success of his own charge, on which so much depended; moreover, a Grecian general fought on foot in the ranks, and carried the same arms (spear, shield, etc.) as a private soldier. Diodorus tells us that the Lacedæmonian infantry were making a prolonged resistance, when Epaminondas put himself at the head of the Thebans for a fresh and desperate effort; that he stepped forward, darted his javelin, and slew the Lacedæmonian commander; that having killed several warriors, and intimidated others, he forced them to give way; that the Lacedæmonians, seeing him in advance of his comrades, turned upon him and overwhelmed him with darts, some of which he avoided, others he turned off with his shield, while others, after they had actually entered his body and wounded him, he plucked out and employed them in repelling the enemy. At length he received a mortal wound in his breast with a spear.[755] I cannot altogether admit to notice these details; which once passed as a portion of Grecian history, though they seem rather the offspring of an imagination fresh from the perusal of the Iliad than a recital of an actual combat of Thebans and Lacedæmonians, both eminent for close-rank fighting, with long spear and heavy shield. The mortal wound of Epaminondas, with a spear in the breast, is the only part of the case which we really know. The handle of the spear broke, and the point was left sticking in his breast. He immediately fell, and as the enemy were at that moment in retreat, fell into the arms of his own comrades. There was no dispute for the possession of his body, as there had been for Kleombrotus at Leuktra.

[754] The remark made by Polybius upon this battle deserves notice. He states that the description given of the battle by Ephorus was extremely incorrect and absurd, arguing great ignorance both of the ground where it was fought and of the possible movements of the armies. He says that Ephorus had displayed the like incompetence also in describing the battle of Leuktra; in which case, however, his narrative was less misleading, because that battle was simple and easily intelligible, involving movements only of one wing of each army. But in regard to the battle of Mantinea (he says), the misdescription of Ephorus was of far more deplorable effect; because that battle exhibited much complication and generalship, which Ephorus did not at all comprehend, as might be seen by any one who measured the ground and studied the movements reported in his narrative (Polybius, xii, 25).

Polybius adds that Theopompus and Timæus were as little to be trusted in the description of land-battles as Ephorus. Whether this remark has special application to the battle of Mantinea, I do not clearly make out. He gives credit however to Ephorus for greater judgment and accuracy, in the description of naval battles.

Unfortunately, Polybius has not given us his own description of this battle of Mantinea. He only says enough to make us feel how imperfectly we know its details. There is too much reason to fear that the account which we now read in Diodorus may be borrowed in large proportion from that very narrative of Ephorus here so much disparaged.

[755] Diodor. xv, 87. Cornelius Nepos (Epam. c. 9) seems to copy the same authority as Diodorus, though more sparing of details. He does not seem to have read Xenophon.

I commend the reader again to an excellent note of Dr. Arnold, on Thucydides, iv, 11; animadverting upon similar exaggerations and embellishments of Diodorus, in the description of the conduct of Brasidas at Pylus.

The news of his mortal wound spread like wild-fire through his army; and the effect produced is among the most extraordinary phenomena in all Grecian military history. I give it in the words of the contemporary historian. “It was thus (says Xenophon) that Epaminondas arranged his order of attack; and he was not disappointed in his expectation. For having been victorious, on the point where he himself charged, he caused the whole army of the enemy to take flight. But so soon as he fell, those who remained had no longer any power even of rightly using the victory. Though the phalanx of the enemy’s infantry was in full flight, the Theban hoplites neither killed a single man more, nor advanced a step beyond the actual ground of conflict. Though the enemy’s cavalry was also in full flight, yet neither did the Theban horsemen continue their pursuit, nor kill any more either of horsemen or of hoplites, but fell back through the receding enemies with the timidity of beaten men. The light troops and peltasts, who had been mingled with the Theban cavalry and had aided in their victory, spread themselves over towards the enemy’s left with the security of conquerors; but there (being unsupported by their own horsemen) they were mostly cut to pieces by the Athenians.”[756]

[756] Xen. Hellen. vii, 5, 25. Τὴν μὲν δὴ συμβολὴν οὕτως ἐποιήσατο, καὶ οὐκ ἐψεύσθη τῆς ἐλπίδος· ~κρατήσας γὰρ ἧ προσέβαλεν, ὅλον ἐποίησε~ φεύγειν τὸ τῶν ἐναντίων. Ἐπεί γε μὴν ἐκεῖνος ἔπεσεν, οἱ λοιποὶ οὐδὲ τῇ νίκῃ ὀρθῶς ἔτι ἐδυνάσθησαν χρήσασθαι, ἀλλὰ φυγούσης μὲν αὐτοῖς τῆς ἐναντίας φάλαγγος, οὐδένα ἀπέκτειναν οἱ ὁπλῖται, οὐδὲ προῆλθον ἐκ τοῦ χωρίου ἔνθα ἡ συμβολὴ ἐγένετο· φυγόντων δ’ αὐτοῖς καὶ τῶν ἱππέων, ἀπέκτειναν μὲν οὐδὲ οἱ ἱππεῖς διώκοντες οὔτε ἱππέας οὔθ’ ὁπλίτας, ὥσπερ δὲ ἡττώμενοι πεφοβημένως διὰ τῶν φευγόντων πολεμίων διέπεσον. Καὶ μὴν οἱ ἅμιπποι καὶ οἱ πελτασταὶ, συννενικηκότες τοῖς ἱππεῦσιν, ἀφίκοντο μὲν ἐπὶ τοῦ εὐωνύμου, ὡς κρατοῦντες· ἐκεῖ δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀθηναίων οἱ πλεῖστοι αὐτῶν ἀπέθανον.

Astonishing as this recital is, we cannot doubt that it is literally true, since it contradicts the sympathies of the reciting witness. Nothing but the pressure of undeniable evidence could have constrained Xenophon to record a scene so painful to him as the Lacedæmonian army beaten, in full flight, and rescued from destruction only by the untimely wound of the Theban general. That Epaminondas would leave no successor either equal or second to himself, now that Pelopidas was no more,—that the army which he commanded should be incapable of executing new movements or of completing an unfinished campaign,—we can readily conceive. But that on the actual battle-field, when the moment of dangerous and doubtful struggle has been already gone through, and when the soldier’s blood is up, to reap his reward in pursuit of an enemy whom he sees fleeing before him—that at this crisis of exuberant impatience, when Epaminondas, had he been unwounded, would have found it difficult to restrain his soldiers from excessive forwardness, they should have become at once paralyzed and disarmed on hearing of his fall,—this is what we could not have believed, had we not found it attested by a witness at once contemporary and hostile. So striking a proof has hardly ever been rendered, on the part of soldiers towards their general, of devoted and absorbing sentiment. All the hopes of this army, composed of such diverse elements, were centred in Epaminondas; all their confidence of success, all their security against defeat, were derived from the idea of acting under his orders; all their power, even of striking down a defeated enemy, appeared to vanish when those orders were withdrawn. We are not indeed to speak of such a proceeding with commendation. Thebes and her allied cities had great reason to complain of their soldiers, for a grave dereliction of military duty, and a capital disappointment of well-earned triumph,—whatever may be our feelings about the motive. Assuredly the man who would be most chagrined of all, and whose dying moments must have been embittered if he lived to hear it,—was Epaminondas himself. But when we look at the fact simply as a mark and measure of the ascendency established by him over the minds of his soldiers, it will be found hardly paralleled in history. I have recounted, a few pages ago, the intense grief displayed by the Thebans and their allies in Thessaly over the dead body of Pelopidas[757] on the hill of Kynoskephalæ. But all direct and deliberate testimonies of attachment to a dead or dying chief (and doubtless these too were abundant on the field of Mantinea) fall short of the involuntary suspension of arms in the tempting hour of victory.

[757] Plutarch, Pelopidas, c. 33, 34.

That the real victory, the honors of the day, belonged to Epaminondas and the Thebans, we know from the conclusive evidence of Xenophon. But as the vanquished, being allowed to retire unpursued, were only separated by a short distance from the walls of Mantinea, and perhaps rallied even before reaching the town,—as the Athenian cavalry had cut to pieces some of the straggling light troops,—they too pretended to have gained a victory. Trophies were erected on both sides. Nevertheless the Thebans were masters of the field of battle; so that the Lacedæmonians, after some hesitation, were forced to send a herald to solicit truce for the burial of the slain, and to grant for burial such Theban bodies as they had in their possession.[758] This was the understood confession of defeat.

[758] The statement of Diodorus (xv, 87) on this point appears to me more probable than that of Xenophon (vii, 5, 26).

The Athenians boasted much of this slight success with their cavalry, enhancing its value by acknowledging that all their allies had been defeated around them (Plutarch, De Gloriâ Athen. p. 350 A.).

The surgeons, on examining the wound of Epaminondas, with the spear-head yet sticking in it, pronounced that he must die as soon as that was withdrawn. He first inquired whether his shield was safe; and his shield-bearer, answering in the affirmative, produced it before his eyes. He next asked about the issue of the battle, and was informed that his own army was victorious.[759] He then desired to see Iolaidas and Daiphantus, whom he intended to succeed him as commanders; but received the mournful reply, that both of them had been slain.[760] “Then (said he) you must make peace with the enemy.” He ordered the spear-head to be withdrawn, when the efflux of blood speedily terminated his life.

[759] Diodor. xv, 88; Cicero, De Finibus, ii, 30, 97; Epistol. ad Familiares, v, 12, 5.

[760] Plutarch, Apophthegm. Regum, p. 194 C.; Ælian, V. H. xii, 3.

Both Plutarch and Diodorus talk of Epaminondas being carried back to the _camp_. But it seems that there could hardly have been any camp. Epaminondas had marched out only a few hours before from Tegea. A tent may have been erected on the field to receive him. Five centuries afterwards, the Mantineans showed to the traveller Pausanias a spot called Skiopê near the field of battle, to which (they affirmed) the wounded Epaminondas had been carried off, in great pain, and with his hand on his wound—from whence he had looked with anxiety on the continuing battle (Pausan. viii, 11, 4).

Of the three questions here ascribed to the dying chief, the third is the gravest and most significant. The death of these two other citizens, the only men in the camp whom Epaminondas could trust, shows how aggravated and irreparable was the Theban loss, not indeed as to number, but as to quality. Not merely Epaminondas himself, but the only two men qualified in some measure to replace him, perished in the same field; and Pelopidas had fallen in the preceding year. Such accumulation of individual losses must be borne in mind when we come to note the total suspension of Theban glory and dignity, after this dearly-bought victory. It affords emphatic evidence of the extreme forwardness with which their leaders exposed themselves, as well as of the gallant resistance which they experienced.

The death of Epaminondas spread rejoicing in the Lacedæmonian camp proportioned to the sorrow of the Theban. To more than one warrior was assigned the honor of having struck the blow. The Mantineans gave it to their citizen Machærion; the Athenians, to Gryllus son of Xenophon; the Spartans, to their countryman Antikrates.[761] At Sparta, distinguished honor was shown, even in the days of Plutarch, to the posterity of Antikrates, who was believed to have rescued the city from her most formidable enemy. Such tokens afford precious testimony, from witnesses beyond all suspicion, to the memory of Epaminondas.

[761] Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 35; Pausanias, i, 3, 3; viii, 9, 2-5; viii, 11, 4; ix, 15, 3.

The reports however which Pausanias gives, and the name of Machærion which he heard both at Mantinea and at Sparta, are confused, and are hardly to be reconciled with the story of Plutarch.

Moreover, it would seem that the subsequent Athenians did not clearly distinguish between the first battle fought by the Athenian cavalry, immediately after their arrival at Mantinea, when they rescued that town from being surprised by the Thebans and Thessalians—and the general action which followed a few days afterwards wherein Epaminondas was slain.

How the news of his death was received at Thebes, we have no positive account. But there can be no doubt that the sorrow, so paralysing to the victorious soldiers on the field of Mantinea, was felt with equal acuteness, and with an effect not less depressing, in the senate-house and market-place of Thebes. The city, the citizen-soldiers, and the allies, would be alike impressed with the mournful conviction, that the dying injunction of Epaminondas must be executed. Accordingly, negotiations were opened, and peace was concluded,—probably at once, before the army left Peloponnesus. The Thebans and their Arcadian allies exacted nothing more than the recognition of the _statu quo;_ to leave everything exactly as it was, without any change or reactionary measure, yet admitting Megalopolis, with the Pan-Arcadian constitution attached to it,—and admitting also Messênê as an independent city. Against this last article Sparta loudly and peremptorily protested. But not one of her allies sympathized with her feelings. Some, indeed, were decidedly against her; to such a degree, that we find the maintenance of independent Messênê against Sparta ranking shortly afterwards as an admitted principle in Athenian foreign politics.[762] Neither Athenians, nor Eleians, nor Arcadians, desired to see Sparta strengthened. None had any interest in prolonging the war, with prospects doubtful to every one; while all wished to see the large armies now in Arcadia dismissed. Accordingly, the peace was sworn to on these conditions, and the autonomy of Messênê guaranteed, by all, except the Spartans; who alone stood out, keeping themselves without friends or auxiliaries, in the hope for better times,—rather than submit to what they considered as an intolerable degradation.[763]

[762] See the oration of Demosthenes on behalf of the Megalopolitans (Orat. xvi, s. 10, p. 204; s. 21, p. 206).

[763] Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 35; Diodor. xv, 89; Polybius, iv, 33.

Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fasti Hellen. B.C. 361) assigns the conclusion of peace to the succeeding year. I do not know however what ground there is for assuming such an interval between the battle and the peace. Diodorus appears to place the latter immediately after the former. This would not count for much, indeed, against any considerable counter-probability; but the probability here (in my judgment) is rather in favor of immediate sequence between the two events.

Under these conditions, the armies on both sides retired. Xenophon is right in saying, that neither party gained anything, either city, territory, or dominion; though before the battle, considering the magnitude of the two contending armies, every one had expected that the victors, whichever they were, would become masters, and the vanquished, subjects. But his assertion,—that “there was more disturbance, and more matter of dispute, in Greece, after the battle than before it,”—must be interpreted, partly as the inspiration of a philo-Laconian sentiment, which regards a peace not accepted by Sparta as no peace at all,—partly as based on the circumstance, that no definite headship was recognized as possessed by any state. Sparta had once enjoyed it, and had set the disgraceful example of suing out a confirmation of it from the Persian king at the peace of Antalkidas. Both Thebes and Athens had aspired to the same dignity, and both by the like means, since the battle of Leuktra; neither of them had succeeded. Greece was thus left without a head, and to this extent the affirmation of Xenophon is true. But it would not be correct to suppose that the last expedition of Epaminondas into Peloponnesus was unproductive of any results,—though it was disappointed of its great and brilliant fruits by his untimely death. Before he marched in, the Theban party in Arcadia, (Tegea, Megalopolis, etc.), was on the point of being crushed by the Mantineans and their allies. His expedition, though ending in an indecisive victory, nevertheless broke up the confederacy enlisted in support of Mantinea; enabling Tegea and Megalopolis to maintain themselves against their Arcadian opponents, and thus leaving the frontier against Sparta unimpaired. While therefore we admit the affirmation of Xenophon,—that Thebes did not gain by the battle either city, or territory, or dominion,—we must at the same time add, that she gained the preservation of her Arcadian allies, and of her anti-Spartan frontier, including Messênê.

This was a gain of considerable importance. But dearly, indeed, was it purchased, by the blood of her first hero, shed on the field of Mantinea; not to mention his two seconds, whom we know only from his verdict,—Daiphantus and Iolaidas.[764] He was buried on the field of battle, and a monumental column was erected on his tomb.

[764] Pausanias, viii, 11, 4, 5.

Scarcely any character in Grecian history has been judged with so much unanimity as Epaminondas. He has obtained a meed of admiration,—from all, sincere and hearty,—from some, enthusiastic. Cicero pronounces him to be the first man of Greece.[765] The judgment of Polybius, though not summed up so emphatically in a single epithet, is delivered in a manner hardly less significant and laudatory. Nor was it merely historians or critics who formed this judgment. The best men of action, combining the soldier and the patriot, such as Timoleon and Philopœmen,[766] set before them Epaminondas as their model to copy. The remark has been often made, and suggests itself whenever we speak of Epaminondas, though its full force will be felt only when we come to follow the subsequent history,—that with him the dignity and commanding influence of Thebes both began and ended. His period of active political life comprehends sixteen years, from the resurrection of Thebes into a free community, by the expulsion of the Lacedæmonian harmost and garrison, and the subversion of the ruling oligarchy,—to the fatal day of Mantinea (379-362 B.C.). His prominent and unparalleled ascendency belongs to the last eight years, from the victory of Leuktra (371 B.C.). Throughout this whole period, both all that we know and all that we can reasonably divine, fully bears out the judgment of Polybius and Cicero, who had the means of knowing much more. And this too,—let it be observed,—though Epaminondas is tried by a severe canon: for the chief contemporary witness remaining is one decidedly hostile. Even the philo-Laconian Xenophon finds neither misdeeds nor omissions to reveal in the capital enemy of Sparta,—mentions him only to record what is honorable,—and manifests the perverting bias mainly by suppressing or slurring over his triumphs. The man whose eloquence bearded Agesilaus at the congress immediately preceding the battle of Leuktra,[767]—who in that battle stripped Sparta of her glory, and transferred the wreath to Thebes,—who a few months afterwards, not only ravaged all the virgin territory of Laconia, but cut off the best half of it for the restitution of independent Messênê, and erected the hostile Arcadian community of Megalopolis on its frontier,—the author of these fatal disasters inspires to Xenophon such intolerable chagrin and antipathy, that in the two first he keeps back the name, and in the third, suppresses the thing done. But in the last campaign, preceding the battle of Mantinea (whereby Sparta incurred no positive loss, and where the death of Epaminondas softened every predisposition against him), there was no such violent pressure upon the fidelity of the historian. Accordingly, the concluding chapter of Xenophon’s ‘Hellenica’ contains a panegyric,[768] ample and unqualified, upon the military merits of the Theban general; upon his daring enterprise, his comprehensive foresight, his care to avoid unnecessary exposure of soldiers, his excellent discipline, his well-combined tactics, his fertility of aggressive resource in striking at the weak points of the enemy, who content themselves with following and parrying his blows (to use a simile of Demosthenes[769]) like an unskilful pugilist, and only succeed in doing so by signal aid from accident. The effort of strategic genius, then for the first time devised and applied, of bringing an irresistible force of attack to bear on one point of the hostile line, while the rest of his army was kept comparatively back until the action had been thus decided,—is clearly noted by Xenophon, together with its triumphant effect, at the battle of Mantinea; though the very same combination on the field of Leuktra is slurred over in his description, as if it were so commonplace as not to require any mention of the chief with whom it originated. Compare Epaminondas with Agesilaus,—how great is the superiority of the first,—even in the narrative of Xenophon, the earnest panegyrist of the other! How manifestly are we made to see that nothing except the fatal spear-wound at Mantinea, prevented him from reaping the fruit of a series of admirable arrangements, and from becoming arbiter of Peloponnesus, including Sparta herself!

[765] Cicero, Tusculan. i, 2, 4; De Orator. iii, 34, 139. “Epaminondas, princeps, meo judicio, Græciæ,” etc.

[766] Plutarch, Philopœmen, c. 3; Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 36.

[767] See the inscription of four lines copied by Pausanias from the statue of Epaminondas at Thebes (Paus. ix, 16, 3):—

Ἡμετέραις βουλαῖς Σπάρτη μὲν ἐκείρατο δόξαν, etc.

[768] Xenoph. Hellen. vii, 5, 8, 9.

[769] Demosthenes, Philipp. I, p. 51, s. 46.

The military merits alone of Epaminondas, had they merely belonged to a general of mercenaries, combined with nothing praiseworthy in other ways,—would have stamped him as a man of high and original genius, above every other Greek, antecedent or contemporary. But it is the peculiar excellence of this great man that we are not compelled to borrow from one side of his character in order to compensate deficiencies in another.[770] His splendid military capacity was never prostituted to personal ends: neither to avarice, nor ambition, nor overweening vanity. Poor at the beginning of his life, he left at the end of it not enough to pay his funeral expenses; having despised the many opportunities for enrichment which his position afforded, as well as the richest offers from foreigners.[771] Of ambition he had so little, by natural temperament, that his friends accused him of torpor. But as soon as the perilous exposure of Thebes required it, he displayed as much energy in her defence as the most ambitious of her citizens, without any of that captious exigence, frequent in ambitious men, as to the amount of glorification or deference due to him from his countrymen. And his personal vanity was so faintly kindled, even after the prodigious success at Leuktra, that we find him serving in Thessaly as a private hoplite in the ranks, and in the city as an ædile or inferior street-magistrate, under the title of Telearchus. An illustrious specimen of that capacity and goodwill, both to command and to be commanded, which Aristotle pronounces to form in their combination the characteristic feature of the worthy citizen.[772] He once incurred the displeasure of his fellow-citizens, for his wise and moderate policy in Achaia, which they were ill-judged enough to reverse. We cannot doubt also that he was frequently attacked by political censors and enemies,—the condition of eminence in every free state; but neither of these causes ruffled the dignified calmness of his political course. As he never courted popularity by unworthy arts, so he bore unpopularity without murmurs, and without angry renunciation of patriotic duty.[773]

[770] The remark of Diodorus (xv, 88) upon Epaminondas is more emphatic than we usually find in him,—Παρὰ μὲν γὰρ ἑκάστῳ τῶν ἄλλων ἓν ἂν εὕροι προτέρημα τῆς δόξης, παρὰ δὲ τούτῳ πάσας τὰς ἀρετὰς ἠθροισμένας.

[771] Polybius, xxxii, 8, 6. Cornelius Nepos (Epaminondas, c. 4) gives one anecdote, among several which he affirms to have found on record, of large pecuniary presents tendered to, and repudiated by, Epaminondas; an anecdote recounted with so much precision of detail, that it appears to deserve credit, though we cannot assign the exact time when the alleged briber Diomedon of Kyzicus, came to Thebes.

Plutarch (De Genio Socratis, p. 583 F.) relates an incident about Jason of Pheræ tendering money in vain to Epaminondas, which cannot well have happened before the liberation of the Kadmeia (the period to which Plutarch’s dialogue assigns it), but may have happened afterwards.

Compare Plutarch, Apophthegm. Reg. p. 193 C.; and Plutarch’s Life of Fabius Maximus, c. 27.

[772] Aristotel. Politic. iii, 2, 10.

[773] Plutarch, Compar. Alkibiad. and Coriolanus, c. 4. Ἐπεὶ τό γε μὴ λιπαρῆ μηδὲ θεραπευτικὸν ὄχλων εἶναι, καὶ Μέτελλος εἶχε καὶ Ἀριστείδης καὶ Ἐπαμεινώνδας· ἀλλὰ τῷ καταφρονεῖν ὡς ἀληθῶς ὧν δῆμός ἐστι καὶ δοῦναι καὶ ἀφελέσθαι κύριος, ἐξοστρακιζόμενοι καὶ ἀποχειροτονούμενοι καὶ καταδικαζόμενοι πολλάκις οὐκ ὠργίζοντο τοῖς πολίταις ἀγνωμονοῦσιν, ἀλλ’ ἠγάπων αὖθις μεταμελομένους καὶ διηλλάττοντο παρακαλούντων.

The mildness of his antipathies against political opponents at home was undeviating; and, what is even more remarkable, amidst the precedence and practice of the Grecian world, his hostility against foreign enemies, Bœotian dissentients, and Theban exiles, was uniformly free from reactionary vengeance. Sufficient proofs have been adduced in the preceding pages of this rare union of attributes in the same individual; of lofty disinterestedness, not merely as to corrupt gains, but as to the more seductive irritabilities of ambition, combined with a just measure of attachment towards partisans, and unparalleled gentleness towards enemies. His friendship with Pelopidas was never disturbed during the fifteen years of their joint political career; an absence of jealousy signal and creditable to both, though most creditable to Pelopidas, the richer, as well as the inferior, man of the two. To both, and to the harmonious coöperation of both, Thebes owed her short-lived splendor and ascendency. Yet when we compare the one with the other, we not only miss in Pelopidas the transcendent strategic genius and conspicuous eloquence, but even the constant vigilance and prudence, which never deserted his friend. If Pelopidas had had Epaminondas as his companion in Thessaly, he would hardly have trusted himself to the good faith, nor tasted the dungeon, of the Pheræan Alexander; nor would he have rushed forward to certain destruction, in a transport of phrensy, at the view of that hated tyrant in the subsequent battle.

In eloquence, Epaminondas would doubtless have found superiors at Athens; but at Thebes, he had neither equal, nor predecessor, nor successor. Under the new phase into which Thebes passed by the expulsion of the Lacedæmonians out of the Kadmeia, such a gift was second in importance only to the great strategic qualities; while the combination of both elevated their possessor into the envoy, the counsellor, the debater, of his country,[774] as well as her minister at war and commander-in-chief. The shame of acknowledging Thebes as leading state in Greece, embodied in the current phrases about Bœotian stupidity, would be sensibly mitigated, when her representative in an assembled congress spoke with the flowing abundance of the Homeric Odysseus, instead of the loud, brief, and hurried bluster of Menelaus.[775] The possession of such eloquence, amidst the uninspiring atmosphere of Thebes, implied far greater mental force than a similar accomplishment would have betokened at Athens. In Epaminondas, it was steadily associated with thought and action,—that triple combination of thinking, speaking, and acting, which Isokrates and other Athenian sophists[776] set before their hearers as the stock and qualification for meritorious civic life. To the bodily training and soldier-like practice, common to all Thebans, Epaminondas added an ardent intellectual impulse and a range of discussion with the philosophical men around, peculiar to himself. He was not floated into public life by the accident of birth or wealth,—nor hoisted and propped up by oligarchical clubs,—nor even determined to it originally by any spontaneous ambition of his own. But the great revolution of 379 B.C., which expelled from Thebes both the Lacedæmonian garrison and the local oligarchy who ruled by its aid, forced him forward by the strongest obligations both of duty and interest; since nothing but an energetic defence could rescue both him and every other free Theban from slavery. It was by the like necessity that the American revolution, and the first French revolution, thrust into the front rank the most instructed and capable men of the country, whether ambitious by temperament or not. As the pressure of the time impelled Epaminondas forward, so it also disposed his countrymen to look out for a competent leader wherever he was to be found; and in no other living man could they obtain the same union of the soldier, the general, the orator, and the patriot. Looking through all Grecian history, it is only in Perikles that we find the like many-sided excellence; for though much inferior to Epaminondas as a general, Perikles must be held superior to him as a statesman. But it is alike true of both,—and the remark tends much to illustrate the sources of Grecian excellence,—that neither sprang exclusively from the school of practice and experience. They both brought to that school minds exercised in the conversation of the most instructed philosophers and sophists accessible to them,—trained to varied intellectual combinations and to a larger range of subjects than those that came before the public assembly,—familiarized with reasonings which the scrupulous piety of Nikias forswore, and which the devoted military patriotism of Pelopidas disdained.

[774] See an anecdote about Epaminondas as the diplomatist and negotiator on behalf of Thebes against Athens—δικαιολογούμενος, etc. Athenæus, xiv, p. 650 E.

[775] Homer, Iliad, iii, 210-220 (Menelaus and Odysseus)—

Ἀλλ’ ὅτε δὴ Τρώεσσιν ἀγειρομένοισιν ἔμιχθεν, Ἤτοι μὲν Μενέλαος ἐπιτροχάδην ἀγόρευε, Παῦρα μὲν, ἀλλὰ μάλα λιγέως· ἐπεὶ οὐ πολύμυθος, etc. ... Ἀλλ’ ὅτε δή ῥ’ ὄπα τε μεγάλην ἐκ στήθεος ἵει (Odysseus), Καὶ ἔπεα νιφάδεσσιν ἐοικότα χειμερίῃσιν, Οὐκέτ’ ἔπειτ’ Ὀδυσῆΐ γ’ ἐρίσσειε βροτὸς ἄλλος, etc.

[776] See Vol. VIII. of this History, Ch. lxvii, p. 357-397—φρονεῖν, λέγειν, καὶ πράττειν, etc.

On one point, as I have already noticed, the policy recommended by Epaminondas to his countrymen appears of questionable wisdom,—his advice to compete with Athens for transmarine and naval power. One cannot recognize in this advice the same accurate estimate of permanent causes,—the same long-sighted view, of the conditions of strength to Thebes and of weakness to her enemies, which dictated the foundation of Messênê and Megalopolis. These two towns, when once founded, took such firm root, that Sparta could not persuade even her own allies to aid in effacing them; a clear proof of the sound reasoning on which their founder had proceeded. What Epaminondas would have done,—whether he would have followed out maxims equally prudent and penetrating,—if he had survived the victory of Mantinea,—is a point which we cannot pretend to divine. He would have found himself then on a pinnacle of glory, and invested with a plenitude of power, such as no Greek ever held without abusing. But all that we know of Epaminondas justifies the conjecture that he would have been found equal, more than any other Greek, even to this great trial; and that his untimely death shut him out from a future not less honorable to himself, than beneficial to Thebes and to Greece generally.

Of the private life and habits of Epaminondas we know scarcely anything. We are told that he never married; and we find brief allusions, without any details, to attachments in which he is said to have indulged.[777] Among the countrymen of Pindar,[778] devoted attachment between mature men and beautiful youths was more frequent than in other parts of Greece. It was confirmed by interchange of mutual oaths at the tomb of Iolaus, and was reckoned upon as the firmest tie of military fidelity in the hour of battle. Asopichus and Kaphisodorus are named as youths to whom Epaminondas was much devoted. The first fought with desperate bravery at the battle of Leuktra, and after the victory caused an image of the Leuktrian trophy to be carved on his shield, which he dedicated at Delphi;[779] the second perished along with his illustrious friend and chief on the field of Mantinea, and was buried in a grave closely adjacent to him.[780]

[777] Plutarch, Apophtheg. Reg. p. 192 E. Athenæ. xiii, p. 590 C.

[778] Hieronymus ap. Athenæ. xiii, p. 602 A.; Plutarch, Pelopidas, c. 18; Xen. Rep. Lacedæmon. ii, 12.

See the striking and impassioned fragment of Pindar, addressed by him when old to the youth Theoxenus of Tenedos, Fragm. 2 of the Skolia, in Dissen’s edition, and Boeckh’s edition of Pindar, vol. iii, p. 611, ap. Athenæum, xiii, p. 605 C.

[779] See Theopompus, Frag. 182, ed. Didot, ap. Athenæ. xiii, p. 605 A.

[780] Plutarch, Pelopid. _ut sup._; Plutarch, Amatorius, p. 761 D.; compare Xenoph. Hellen. iv, 8, 39.

It rather appears that the Spartans, deeply incensed against their allies for having abandoned them in reference to Messênê, began to turn their attention away from the affairs of Greece to those of Asia and Egypt. But the dissensions in Arcadia were not wholly appeased even by the recent peace. The city of Megalopolis had been founded only eight years before by the coalescence of many smaller townships, all previously enjoying a separate autonomy more or less perfect. The vehement anti-Spartan impulse, which marked the two years immediately succeeding the battle of Leuktra, had overruled to so great a degree the prior instincts of these townships, that they had lent themselves to the plans of Lykomedes and Epaminondas for an enlarged community in the new city. But since that period, reaction had taken place. The Mantineans had come to be at the head of an anti-Megalopolitan party in Arcadia; and several of the communities which had been merged in Megalopolis, counting upon aid from them and from the Eleians, insisted on seceding, and returning to their original autonomy. But for foreign aid, Megalopolis would now have been in great difficulty. A pressing request was sent to the Thebans, who despatched into Arcadia three thousand hoplites under Pammenes. This force enabled the Megalopolitans, though not without measures of considerable rigor, to uphold the integrity of their city, and keep the refractory members in communion.[781] And it appears that the interference thus obtained was permanently efficacious, so that the integrity of this recent Pan-Arcadian community was no farther disturbed.

[781] Diodor. xv, 94.

I venture here to depart from Diodorus, who states that these three thousand men were _Athenians_, not _Thebans_; that the Megalopolitans sent to ask aid from _Athens_, and that the _Athenians_ sent these three thousand men under Pammenes.

That Diodorus (or the copyist) has here mistaken Thebans for Athenians, appears to me, on the following grounds:—

1. Whoever reads attentively the oration delivered by Demosthenes in the Athenian assembly (about ten years after this period) respecting the propriety of sending an armed force to defend Megalopolis against the threats of Sparta—will see, I think, that Athens can never before have sent any military assistance to Megalopolis. Both the arguments which Demosthenes urges, and those which he combats as having been urged by opponents, exclude the reality of any such previous proceeding.

2. Even at the time when the above-mentioned oration was delivered, the Megalopolitans were still (compare Diodorus, xvi, 39) under special alliance with, and guardianship of, Thebes—though the latter had then been so much weakened by the Sacred War and other causes, that it seemed doubtful whether she could give them complete protection against Sparta. But in the year next after the battle of Mantinea, the alliance between Megalopolis and Thebes, as well as the hostility between Megalopolis and Athens, was still fresher and more intimate. The Thebans (then in unimpaired power), who had fought for them in the preceding year,—not the Athenians, who had fought against them,—would be the persons invoked for aid to Megalopolis; nor had any positive reverses as yet occurred to disable the Thebans from furnishing aid.

3. Lastly, Pammenes is a _Theban_ general, friend of Epaminondas. He is mentioned as such not only by Diodorus himself in another place (xvi, 34), but also by Pausanias (viii, 27, 2), as the general who had been sent to watch over the building of Megalopolis, by Plutarch (Plutarch, Pelopidas, c. 26; Plutarch, Reipub. Gerend. Præcept. p. 805 F.), and by Polyænus (v, 16, 3). We find a private Athenian citizen named Pammenes, a goldsmith, mentioned in the oration of Demosthenes against Meidias (s. 31. p. 521); but no Athenian officer or public man of that time so named.

Upon these grounds, I cannot but feel convinced that Pammenes and his troops were Thebans, and not Athenians.

I am happy to find myself in concurrence with Dr. Thirlwall on this point (Hist. Gr. vol. v, ch. xliii, p. 368 note).

The old king Agesilaus was compelled, at the age of eighty, to see the dominion of Sparta thus irrevocably narrowed, her influence in Arcadia overthrown, and the loss of Messênê formally sanctioned even by her own allies. All his protests, and those of his son Archidamus, so strenuously set forth by Isokrates, had only ended by isolating Sparta more than ever from Grecian support and sympathy. Archidamus probably never seriously attempted to execute the desperate scheme which he had held out as a threat some two or three years before the battle of Mantinea; that the Lacedæmonians would send away their wives and families, and convert their military population into a perpetual camp, never to lay down arms until they should have reconquered Messênê or perished in the attempt.[782] Yet he and his father, though deserted by all Grecian allies, had not yet abandoned the hope that they might obtain aid, in the shape of money for levying mercenary troops, from the native princes in Egypt and the revolted Persian satraps in Asia, with whom they seem to have been for some time in a sort of correspondence.[783]

[782] See Isokrates, Orat. vi, (Archidamus) s. 85-93.

[783] Isokrates, Or. vi, (Archid.) s. 73.

About the time of the battle of Mantinea,—and as it would seem, for some years before,—a large portion of the western dominions of the Great King were in a state partly of revolt, partly of dubious obedience. Egypt had been for some years in actual revolt, and under native princes, whom the Persians had vainly endeavored to subdue (employing for that purpose the aid of the Athenian generals Iphikrates and Timotheus) both in 374 and 371 B.C. Ariobarzanes, satrap of the region near the Propontis and the Hellespont, appears to have revolted about the year 367-366 B.C. In other parts of Asia Minor, too,—Paphlagonia, Pisidia, etc.,—the subordinate princes or governors became disaffected to Artaxerxes. But their disaffection was for a certain time kept down by the extraordinary ability and vigor of a Karian named Datames, commander for the king in a part of Kappadokia, who gained several important victories over them by rapidity of movement and well-combined stratagem. At length the services of Datames became so distinguished as to excite the jealousy of many of the Persian grandees; who poisoned the royal mind against him, and thus drove him to raise the standard of revolt in his own district of Kappadokia, under alliance and concert with Ariobarzanes. It was in vain that Autophradates, satrap of Lydia, was sent by Artaxerxes with a powerful force to subdue Datames. The latter resisted all the open force of Persia, and was at length overcome only by the treacherous conspiracy of Mithridates (son of Ariobarzanes), who, corrupted by the Persian court and becoming a traitor both to his father Ariobarzanes and to Datames, simulated zealous coöperation, tempted the latter to a confidential interview, and there assassinated him.[784]

[784] Cornelius Nepos has given a biography of Datames at some length, recounting his military exploits and stratagems. He places Datames, in point of military talent, above all _barbari_, except Hamilcar Barca and Hannibal (c. 1). Polyænus also (vii, 29) recounts several memorable proceedings of the same chief. Compare too Diodorus, xv, 91; and Xen. Cyropæd. viii, 8, 4.

We cannot make out with any certainty either the history, or the chronology, of Datames. His exploits seem to belong to the last ten years of Artaxerxes Mnemon, and his death seems to have taken place a little before the death of that prince; which last event is to be assigned to 359-358 B.C. See Mr. Fynes Clinton, Fast. Hell. ch. 18. p. 316, Appendix.

Still, however, there remained powerful princes and satraps in Asia Minor, disaffected to the court; Mausôlus, prince of Karia; Orontes, satrap of Mysia, and Autophradates, satrap of Lydia,—the last having now apparently joined the revolters, though he had before been active in upholding the authority of the king. It seems too that the revolt extended to Syria and Phœnicia, so that all the western coast with its large revenues, as well as Egypt, was at once subtracted from the empire. Tachos, native king of Egypt, was prepared to lend assistance to this formidable combination of disaffected commanders, who selected Orontes as their chief; confiding to him their united forces, and sending Rheomithres to Egypt to procure pecuniary aid. But the Persian court broke the force of this combination by corrupting both Orontes and Rheomithres, who betrayed their confederates, and caused the enterprise to fail. Of the particulars we know little or nothing.[785]

[785] Diodor. xv, 91, 92; Xenophon, Cyropæd. viii, 8, 4.

Our information about these disturbances in the interior of the Persian empire is so scanty and confused, that few of the facts can be said to be certainly known. Diodorus has evidently introduced into the year 362-361 B.C. a series of events, many of them belonging to years before and after. Rehdantz (Vit. Iphicrat. Chabr. et. Timoth. p. 154-161) brings together all the statements; but unfortunately with little result.

Both the Spartan king Agesilaus, with a thousand Lacedæmonian or Peloponnesian hoplites,—and the Athenian general Chabrias, were invited to Egypt to command the forces of Tachos; the former on land, the latter at sea. Chabrias came simply as a volunteer, without any public sanction or order from Athens. But the service of Agesilaus was undertaken for the purposes and with the consent of the authorities at home, attested by the presence of thirty Spartans who came out as his counsellors. The Spartans were displeased with the Persian king for having sanctioned the independence of Messênê; and as the prospect of overthrowing or enfeebling his empire appeared at this moment considerable, they calculated on reaping a large reward for their services to the Egyptian prince, who would in return lend them assistance towards their views in Greece. But dissension and bad judgment marred all the combinations against the Persian king. Agesilaus, on reaching Egypt,[786] was received with little respect. The Egyptians saw with astonishment, that one, whom they had invited as a formidable warrior, was a little deformed old man, of mean attire, and sitting on the grass with his troops, careless of show or luxury. They not only vented their disappointment in sarcastic remarks, but also declined to invest him with the supreme command, as he had anticipated. He was only recognized as general of the mercenary land force, while Tachos himself commanded in chief, and Chabrias was at the head of the fleet. Great efforts were made to assemble a force competent to act against the Great King; and Chabrias is said to have suggested various stratagems for obtaining money from the Egyptians.[787] The army having been thus strengthened, Agesilaus, though discontented and indignant, nevertheless accompanied Tachos on an expedition against the Persian forces in Phœnicia; from whence they were forced to return by the revolt of Nektanebis, cousin of Tachos, who caused himself to be proclaimed king of Egypt. Tachos was now full of supplications to Agesilaus to sustain him against his competitor for the Egyptian throne; while Nektanebis, also on his side, began to bid high for the favor of the Spartans. With the sanction of the authorities at home, but in spite of the opposition of Chabrias, Agesilaus decided in favor of Nektanebis, withdrawing the mercenaries from the camp of Tachos,[788] who was accordingly obliged to take flight. Chabrias returned home to Athens; either not choosing to abandon Tachos, whom he had come to serve,—or recalled by special order of his countrymen, in consequence of the remonstrance of the Persian king. A competitor for the throne presently arose in the Mendesian division of Egypt. Agesilaus, vigorously maintaining the cause of Nektanebis, defeated all the efforts of his opponent. Yet his great schemes against the Persian empire were abandoned, and nothing was effected as the result of his Egyptian expedition except the establishment of Nektanebis; who, having in vain tried to prevail upon him to stay longer, dismissed him in the winter season with large presents, and with a public donation to Sparta of two hundred and thirty talents. Agesilaus marched from the Nile towards Kyrênê, in order to obtain from that town and its ports ships for the passage home. But he died on the march, without reaching Kyrênê. His body was conveyed home by his troops, for burial, in a preparation of wax, since honey was not to be obtained.[789]

[786] Plutarch, Agesil. c. 36; Athenæus, xiv, p. 616 D.; Cornelius Nepos, Agesil. c. 8.

[787] See Pseudo-Aristotel. Œconomic. ii, 25.

[788] Diodorus (xv, 93) differs from Plutarch and others (whom I follow) in respect to the relations of Tachos and Nektanebis with Agesilaus; affirming that Agesilaus supported Tachos, and supported him with success, against Nektanebis.

Compare Cornelius Nepos, Chabrias, c. 2, 3.

We find Chabrias serving Athens in the Chersonese—in 359-358 B.C. (Demosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 677, s. 204).

[789] Diodor. xv, 93; Plutarch, Agesil. c. 38-40; Cornelius Nepos, Agesil. 8.

Thus expired, at an age somewhat above eighty, the ablest and most energetic of the Spartan kings. He has enjoyed the advantage, denied to every other eminent Grecian leader, that his character and exploits have been set out in the most favorable point of view by a friend and companion,—Xenophon. Making every allowance for partiality in this picture, there will still remain a really great and distinguished character. We find the virtues of a soldier, and the abilities of a commander, combined with strenuous personal will and decision, in such measure as to ensure for Agesilaus constant ascendency over the minds of others far beyond what was naturally incident to his station; and that, too, in spite of conspicuous bodily deformity, amidst a nation eminently sensitive on that point. Of the merits which Xenophon ascribes to him, some are the fair results of a Spartan education;—his courage, simplicity of life, and indifference to indulgences,—his cheerful endurance of hardship under every form. But his fidelity to engagements, his uniform superiority to pecuniary corruption, and those winning and hearty manners which attached to him all around—were virtues not Spartan but personal to himself. We find in him, however, more analogy to Lysander—a man equally above reproach on the score of pecuniary gain—than to Brasidas or Kallikratidas. Agesilaus succeeded to the throne, with a disputed title, under the auspices and through the intrigues of Lysander; whose influence, at that time predominant both at Sparta and in Greece, had planted everywhere dekarchies and harmosts as instruments of ascendency for imperial Sparta—and under the name of Sparta, for himself. Agesilaus, too high-spirited to comport himself as second to any one, speedily broke through so much of the system as had been constructed to promote the personal dominion of Lysander; yet without following out the same selfish aspirations, or seeking to build up the like individual dictatorship, on his own account. His ambition was indeed unbounded, but it was for Sparta in the first place, and for himself only in the second. The misfortune was, that in his measures for upholding and administering the imperial authority of Sparta, he still continued that mixture of domestic and foreign coërcion (represented by the dekarchy and the harmost) which had been introduced by Lysander; a sad contrast with the dignified equality, and emphatic repudiation of partisan interference, proclaimed by Brasidas, as the watchword of Sparta, at Akanthus and Torônê—and with the still nobler Pan-hellenic aims of Kallikratidas.

The most glorious portion of the life of Agesilaus was that spent in his three Asiatic campaigns, when acting under the miso-Persian impulse for which his panegyrist gives him so much credit.[790]

[790] Xenoph. Encom. Ages. vii, 7. Εἰ δ’ αὖ καλὸν καὶ μισοπέρσην εἶναι, etc.

He was here employed in a Pan-hellenic purpose, to protect the Asiatic Greeks against that subjection to Persia which Sparta herself had imposed upon them a few years before, as the price of Persian aid against Athens.

The Persians presently succeeded in applying the lessons of Sparta against herself, and in finding Grecian allies to make war upon her near home. Here was an end of the Pan-hellenic sentiment, and of the truly honorable ambition, in the bosom of Agesilaus. He was recalled to make war nearer home. His obedience to the order of recall is greatly praised by Plutarch and Xenophon—in my judgment, with little reason, since he had no choice but to come back. But he came back an altered man. His miso-Persian feeling had disappeared, and had been exchanged for a miso-Theban sentiment which gradually acquired the force of a passion. As principal conductor of the war between 394-387 B.C., he displayed that vigor and ability which never forsook him in military operations. But when he found that the empire of Sparta near home could not be enforced except by making her the ally of Persia and the executor of a Persian rescript, he was content to purchase such aid, in itself dishonorable, by the still greater dishonor of sacrificing the Asiatic Greeks. For the time, his policy seemed to succeed. From 387-379 B.C. (that is, down to the time of the revolution at Thebes, effected by Pelopidas and his small band), the ascendency of Sparta on land, in Central Greece, was continually rising. But her injustice and oppression stand confessed even by her panegyrist Xenophon; and this is just the period when the influence of Agesilaus was at its maximum. Afterwards we find him personally forward in sheltering Sphodrias from punishment, and thus bringing upon his countrymen a war with Athens as well as with Thebes. In the conduct of that war his military operations were, as usual, strenuous and able, with a certain measure of success. But on the whole, the war turns out unfavorably for Sparta. In 371 B.C., she is obliged to accept peace on terms very humiliating, as compared with her position in 387 B.C.; and the only compensation which she receives, is, the opportunity of striking the Thebans out of the treaty, thus leaving them to contend single-handed against what seemed overwhelming odds. Of this intense miso-Theban impulse, which so speedily brought about the unexpected and crushing disaster at Leuktra, Agesilaus stands out as the prominent spokesman. In the days of Spartan misfortune which followed, we find his conduct creditable and energetic, so far as the defensive position, in which Sparta then found herself, allowed; and though Plutarch seems displeased with him[791] for obstinacy in refusing to acknowledge the autonomy of Messênê (at the peace concluded after the battle of Mantinea), when acknowledged by all the other Greeks,—yet it cannot be shown that this refusal brought any actual mischief to Sparta; and circumstances might well have so turned out, that it would have been a gain.

[791] Plutarch, Agesil. c. 35.

On the whole, in spite of the many military and personal merits of Agesilaus, as an adviser and politician he deserves little esteem. We are compelled to remark the melancholy contrast between the state in which he found Sparta at his accession, and that wherein he left her at his death—“Marmoream invenit, lateritiam reliquit.” Nothing but the death of Epaminondas at Mantinea saved her from something yet worse; though it would be unfair to Agesilaus, while we are considering the misfortunes of Sparta during his reign, not to recollect that Epaminondas was an enemy more formidable than she had ever before encountered.

The efficient service rendered by Agesilaus during his last expedition to Egypt, had the effect of establishing firmly the dominion of Nektanebis the native king, and of protecting that country for the time from being reconquered by the Persians; an event that did not happen until a few years afterwards, during the reign of the next Persian king. Of the extensive revolt, however, which at one time threatened to wrest from the Persian crown Asia Minor as well as Egypt, no permanent consequence remained. The treachery of Orontes and Rheomithres so completely broke up the schemes of the revolters, that Artaxerxes Mnemon still maintained the Persian empire (with the exception of Egypt), unimpaired.

He died not long after the suppression of the revolt (apparently about a year after it, in 359-358 B.C.), having reigned forty-five or forty-six years.[792] His death was preceded by one of those bloody tragedies which so frequently stained the transmission of a Persian sceptre. Darius, the eldest son of Artaxerxes, had been declared by his father successor to the throne. According to Persian custom, the successor thus declared was entitled to prefer any petition which he pleased; the monarch being held bound to grant it. Darius availed himself of the privilege to ask for one of the favorite inmates of his father’s harem, for whom he had contracted a passion. The request so displeased Artaxerxes, that he seemed likely to make a new appointment as to the succession; discarding Darius and preferring his younger son Ochus, whose interests were warmly espoused by Atossa, wife as well as daughter of the monarch. Alarmed at this prospect, Darius was persuaded by a discontented courtier, named Teribazus, to lay a plot for assassinating Artaxerxes; but the plot was betrayed, and the king caused both Darius and Teribazus to be put to death. By this catastrophe the chance of Ochus was improved, and his ambition yet farther stimulated. But there still remained two princes, older than he—Arsames and Ariaspes. Both these brothers he contrived to put out of the way; the one by a treacherous deceit, entrapping him to take poison,—the other by assassination. Ochus thus stood next as successor to the crown, which was not long denied to him,—for Artaxerxes, now very old and already struck down by the fatal consummation respecting his eldest son, Darius, did not survive the additional sorrow of seeing his two other sons die so speedily afterwards.[793] He expired, and his son Ochus, taking the name of Artaxerxes, succeeded to him without opposition; manifesting as king the same sanguinary dispositions as those by which he had placed himself on the throne.

[792] Diodor. xv, 93.

There is a difference between Diodorus and the Astronomical Canon, in the statements about the length of reign, and date of death, of Artaxerxes Mnemon, of about two years—361 or 359 B.C. See Mr. Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici, Appendix, ch. 18. p. 316—where the statements are brought together and discussed. Plutarch states the reign of Artaxerxes Mnemon to have lasted sixty-two years (Plutarch, Artax. c. 33); which cannot be correct, though in what manner the error is to be amended, we cannot determine.

An Inscription of Mylasa in Karia recognizes the forty-fifth year of the reign of Artaxerxes, and thus supports the statement in the Astronomical Canon, which assigns to him forty-six years of reign. See Boeckh, Corp. Inscr. No. 2691, with his comments, p. 470.

This same inscription affords ground of inference respecting the duration of the revolt; for it shows that the Karian Mausolus recognized himself as satrap, and Artaxerxes as his sovereign, in the year beginning November 359 B.C., which corresponds with the forty-fifth year of Artaxerxes Mnemon. The revolt therefore must have been suppressed before that period: see Sievers, Geschichte von Griechenland bis zur Schlacht von Mantineia, p. 373, note.

[793] Plutarch, Artaxerx. c. 29, 30; Justin, x, 1-3.

Plutarch states that the lady whom the prince Darius asked for, was, Aspasia of Phokæa—the Greek mistress of Cyrus the younger, who had fallen into the hands of Artaxerxes after the battle of Kunaxa, and had acquired a high place in the monarch’s affections.

But if we look at the chronology of the case, it will appear hardly possible that the lady who inspired so strong a passion to Darius, in or about 361 B.C., as to induce him to risk the displeasure of his father—and so decided a reluctance on the part of Artaxerxes to give her up—can have been the person who accompanied Cyrus to Kunaxa _forty years_ before; for the battle of Kunaxa was fought in 401 B.C. The chronological improbability would be still greater, if we adopted Plutarch’s statement that Artaxerxes reigned sixty-two years; for it is certain that the battle of Kunaxa occurred very near the beginning of his reign, and the death of his son Darius near the end of it.

Justin states the circumstances which preceded the death of Artaxerxes Mnemon in a manner yet more tragical. He affirms that the plot against the life of Artaxerxes was concerted by Darius in conjunction with several of his brothers; and that, on the plot being discovered, all these brothers, together with their wives and children, were put to death. Ochus, on coming to the throne, put to death a great number of his kinsmen and of the principal persons about the court, together with their wives and children—fearing a like conspiracy against himself.

During the two years following the battle of Mantinea, Athens, though relieved by the general peace from land-war, appears to have been entangled in serious maritime contests and difficulties. She had been considerably embarrassed by two events; by the Theban naval armament under Epaminondas, and by the submission of Alexander of Pheræ to Thebes,—both events belonging to 364-363 B.C. It was in 363-362 B.C. that the Athenian Timotheus,—having carried on war with eminent success against Olynthus and the neighboring cities in the Thermaic Gulf, but with very bad success against Amphipolis,—transferred his forces to the war against Kotys king of Thrace near the Thracian Chersonese. The arrival of the Theban fleet in the Hellespont greatly distracted the Athenian general, and served as a powerful assistance to Kotys; who was moreover aided by the Athenian general Iphikrates, on this occasion serving his father-in-law against his country.[794] Timotheus is said to have carried on war against Kotys with advantage, and to have acquired for Athens a large plunder.[795] It would appear that his operations were of an aggressive character, and that during his command in those regions the Athenian possessions in the Chersonese were safe from Kotys; for Iphikrates would only lend his aid to Kotys towards defensive warfare; retiring from his service when he began to attack the Athenian possessions in the Chersonese.[796]

[794] Demosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 664, s. 153.

[795] The affirmation of Cornelius Nepos (Timotheus, c. 1), that Timotheus made war on Kotys with such success as to bring into the Athenian treasury twelve hundred talents, appears extravagant as to amount; even if we accept it as generally true.

[796] Demosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 664, s. 155.

We do not know what circumstances brought about the dismissal or retirement of Timotheus from the command. But in the next year, we find Ergophilus as Athenian commander in the Chersonese, and Kallisthenes (seemingly) as Athenian commander against Amphipolis.[797] The transmarine affairs of Athens, however, were far from improving. Besides that under the new general she seems to have been losing strength near the Chersonese, she had now upon her hands a new maritime enemy—Alexander of Pheræ. A short time previously, he had been her ally against Thebes, but the victories of the Thebans during the preceding year had so completely humbled him, that he now identified his cause with theirs; sending troops to join the expedition of Epaminondas into Peloponnesus,[798] and equipping a fleet to attack the maritime allies of Athens. His fleet captured the island of Tenos, ravaged several of the other Cyclades, and laid siege to Peparethos. Great alarm prevailed in Athens, and about the end of August (362 B.C.),[799] two months after the battle of Mantinea, a fleet was equipped with the utmost activity, for the purpose of defending the insular allies, as well as of acting in the Hellespont. Vigorous efforts were required from all the trierarchs, and really exerted by some, to accelerate the departure of this fleet. But that portion of it, which, while the rest went to the Hellespont, was sent under Leosthenes to defend Peparethos,—met with a defeat from the ships of Alexander, with the loss of five triremes and six hundred prisoners.[800] We are even told that soon after this naval advantage, the victors were bold enough to make a dash into the Peiræus itself (as Teleutias had done twenty-seven years before), where they seized both property on shipboard and men on the quay, before there was any force ready to repel them.[801] The Thessalian marauders were ultimately driven back to their harbor of Pegasæ; yet not without much annoyance to the insular confederates, and some disgrace to Athens. The defeated admiral Leosthenes was condemned to death; while several trierarchs,—who, instead of serving in person, had performed the duties incumbent on them by deputy and by contract, were censured or put upon trial.[802]

[797] See Rehdantz, Vitæ Iphicratis, Chabriæ, et Timothei, p. 151, and the preceding page.

M. Rehdantz has put together, with great care and sagacity, all the fragments of evidence respecting this obscure period; and has elicited, as it seems to me, the most probable conclusions deducible from such scanty premises.

[798] Xenoph. Hellen. vii, 5, 4.

[799] We are fortunate enough to get this date exactly,—the twenty third of the month Metageitnion, in the archonship of Molon,—mentioned by Demosthenes adv. Polyklem, p. 1207, s. 5, 6.

[800] Diodor xvi, 95; Polyænus, vi, 2, 1.

[801] Polyænus, vi, 2, 2.

It must have been about this time (362-361 B.C.) that Alexander of Pheræ sent envoys into Asia to engage the service of Charidemus and his mercenary band, then in or near the troad. His application was not accepted (Demosth. cont. Aristokrat. p. 675, s. 192).

[802] Demosthenes, de Coronâ Trierarch. p. 1230, s. 9.

Diodorus farther states that the Athenians placed Chares in command of a fleet for the protection of the Ægean; but that this admiral took himself off to Korkyra, and did nothing but plunder the allies (Diodor. xvi, 95).

Not only had the affairs of Athens in the Hellespont become worse under Ergophilus than under Timotheus, but Kallisthenes also, who had succeeded Timotheus in the operations against Amphipolis, achieved no permanent result. It would appear that the Amphipolitans, to defend themselves against Athens, had invoked the aid of the Macedonian king Perdikkas; and placed their city in his hands. That prince had before acted in conjunction with the Athenian force under Timotheus against Olynthus; and their joint invasion had so much weakened the Olynthians as to disable them from affording aid to Amphipolis. At least, this hypothesis explains how Amphipolis came now, for the first time, to be no longer a free city; but to be disjoined from Olynthus, and joined with (probably garrisoned by) Perdikkas, as a possession of Macedonia.[803] Kallisthenes thus found himself at war under greater disadvantages than Timotheus; having Perdikkas as his enemy, together with Amphipolis. Nevertheless, it would appear, he gained at first great advantages, and reduced Perdikkas to the necessity of purchasing a truce by the promise to abandon the Amphipolitans. The Macedonian prince, however, having gained time during the truce to recover his strength, no longer thought of performing his promise, but held Amphipolis against the Athenians as obstinately as before. Kallisthenes had let slip an opportunity which never again returned. After having announced at Athens the victorious truce and the approaching surrender, he seems to have been compelled, on his return, to admit that he had been cheated into suspending operations, at a moment when (as it seemed) Amphipolis might have been conquered. For this misjudgment or misconduct he was put upon trial at Athens, on returning to his disappointed countrymen; and at the same time Ergophilus also, who had been summoned home from the Chersonesus for his ill-success or bad management of the war against Kotys.[804] The people were much incensed against both; but most against Ergophilus. Nevertheless it happened that Kallisthenes was tried first, and condemned to death. On the next day, Ergophilus was tried. But the verdict of the preceding day had discharged the wrath of the dikasts, and rendered them so much more indulgent, that they acquitted him.[805]

[803] Compare Demosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 669, s. 174-176; and Æschines, Fals. Leg. p. 250, c. 14.

[804] The facts as stated in the text are the most probable result, as it seems to me, derivable from Æschines, Fals. Leg. p. 250, c. 14.

[805] Aristotel. Rhetoric. ii, 3, 3.

Ergophilus seems to have been fined (Demosthen. Fals. Leg. p. 398, s. 200).

Autokles was sent in place of Ergophilus to carry on war for Athens in the Hellespont and Bosphorus. It was not merely against Kotys that his operations were necessary. The Prokonnesians, allies of Athens, required protection against the attacks of Kyzikus; besides which, there was another necessity yet more urgent. The stock of corn was becoming short, and the price rising, not merely at Athens, but at many of the islands in the Ægean, and at Byzantium and other places. There prevailed therefore unusual anxiety, coupled with keen competition, for the corn in course of importation from the Euxine. The Byzantines, Chalkedonians, and Kyzikenes, had already begun to detain the passing corn-ships, for the supply of their own markets; and nothing less than a powerful Athenian fleet could ensure the safe transit of such supplies to Athens herself.[806] The Athenian fleet, guarding the Bosphorus even from the Hieron inwards (the chapel near the junction of the Bosphorus with the Euxine), provided safe convoy for the autumnal exports of this essential article.

[806] Demosthen. adv. Polyklem. p. 1207. s. 6.

In carrying on operations against Kotys, Autokles was favored with an unexpected advantage by the recent revolt of a powerful Thracian named Miltokythes against that prince. This revolt so alarmed Kotys, that he wrote a letter to Athens in a submissive tone, and sent envoys to purchase peace by various concessions. At the same time Miltokythes also first sent envoys—next, went in person—to Athens, to present his own case and solicit aid. He was however coldly received. The vote of the Athenian assembly, passed on hearing the case (and probably procured in part through the friends of Iphikrates), was so unfavorable,[807] as to send him away not merely in discouragement, but in alarm; while Kotys recovered all his power in Thrace, and even became master of the Sacred Mountain with its abundance of wealthy deposits. Nevertheless, in spite of this imprudent vote, the Athenians really intended to sustain Miltokythes against Kotys. Their general Autokles was recalled after a few months, and put upon his trial for having suffered Kotys to put down this enemy unassisted.[808] How the trial ended or how the justice of the case stood, we are unable to make out from the passing allusions of Demosthenes.

[807] Demosthenes cont. Aristokrat. p. 655, s. 122; cont. Polyklem. p. 1207.

ὅτε Μιλτοκύθης ἀπέστη Κότυος ... ἐγράφη τι παρ’ ὑμῖν ψήφισμα τοιοῦτον, δι’ οὗ Μιλτοκύθης μὲν ~ἀπῆλθε~ φοβηθεὶς καὶ νομίσας ὑμᾶς οὐ προσέχειν αὐτῷ, Κότυς δὲ ἐγκρατὴς τοῦ τε ὄρους τοῦ ἱεροῦ καὶ τῶν θησαυρῶν ἐγένετο.

The word ἀπῆλθε implies that Miltokythes was at Athens in person.

The humble letter written by Kotys, in his first alarm at the revolt of Miltokythes, is referred to by the orator, p. 658, s. 136, 137.

[808] Demosthenes adv. Polykl. p. 1210, s. 16; Demosthenes cont. Aristok. p. 655, s. 123.

Menon was sent as commander to the Hellespont to supersede Autokles; and was himself again superseded after a few months, by Timomachus. Convoy for the corn-vessels out of the Euxine became necessary anew, as in the preceding year; and was furnished a second time during the autumn of 361 B.C. by the Athenian ships of war;[809] not merely for provisions under transport to Athens, but also for those going to Maroneia, Thasos, and other places in or near Thrace. But affairs in the Chersonese became yet more unfavorable to Athens. In the winter of 361-360 B.C., Kotys, with the coöperation of a body of Abydene citizens and Sestian exiles, who crossed the Hellespont from Abydos, contrived to surprise Sestos;[810] the most important place in the Chersonese, and the guard-post of the Hellespont on its European side, for all vessels passing in or out. The whole Chersonese was now thrown open to his aggressions. He made preparations for attacking Elæus and Krithôtê, the two other chief possessions of Athens, and endeavored to prevail on Iphikrates to take part in his projects. But that general, though he had assisted Kotys in defence against Athens, refused to commit the more patent treason involved in aggressive hostility against her. He even quitted Thrace, but not daring at once to visit Athens, retired to Lesbos.[811] In spite of his refusal, however, the settlers and possessions of Athens in the Chersonese were attacked and imperiled by Kotys, who claimed the whole peninsula as his own, and established toll-gatherers at Sestos to levy the dues both of strait and harbor.[812]

[809] Demosthen. adv. Polyklem, p. 1212, s. 24-26; p. 1213, s. 27; p. 1225, s. 71.

[810] Demosthenes cont. Aristokrat. p. 673, s. 187. Ἐκ γὰρ Ἀβύδου, τῆς τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον ὑμῖν ἐχθρᾶς, καὶ ὅθεν ἦσαν οἱ Σηστὸν καταλαβόντες, εἰς Σηστὸν διέβαινεν, ἣν εἶχε Κότυς. (He is speaking of Charidemus.)

The other oration of Demosthenes (adv. Polykl. p. 1212) contains distinct intimation that Sestos was not lost by the Athenians _until after November 361_ B.C. Apollodorus the Athenian trierarch was in the town at that time, as well as various friends whom he mentions; so that Sestos must have been still an Athenian possession in November 361 B.C.

It is lucky for some points of historical investigation, that the purpose of this oration against Polykles (composed by Demosthenes, but spoken by Apollodorus) requires great precision and specification of dates, even to months and days. Apollodorus complains that he has been constrained to bear the expense of a trierarchy, for four months beyond the year in which it was incumbent upon him jointly with a colleague. He sues the person whose duty it was to have relieved him as successor at the end of the year, but who had kept aloof and cheated him. The trierarchy of Apollodorus began in August 362 B.C., and lasted (not merely to Aug. 361 B.C., its legal term, but) to November 361 B.C.

Rehdantz (Vitæ Iphicratis, Chabriæ, etc. p. 144, note), in the valuable chapters which he devotes to the obscure chronology of the period, has overlooked this exact indication of the time _after which_ the Athenians lost Sestos. He supposes the loss to have taken place two or three years earlier.

[811] Demosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 664, s. 155.

[812] Demosthenes cont. Aristokrat. p. 658, s. 136; p. 679, s. 211.

What is said in the latter passage about the youthful Kersobleptes, is doubtless not less true of his father Kotys.

The fortune of Athens in these regions was still unpropitious. All her late commanders, Ergophilus, Autokles, Menon, Timomachus, had been successively deficient in means, in skill, or in fidelity, and had undergone accusation at home.[813] Timomachus was now superseded by Kephisodotus, a man of known enmity towards both Iphikrates and Kotys.[814] But Kephisodotus achieved no more than his predecessors, and had even to contend against a new enemy, who crossed over from Abydos to Sestos to reinforce Kotys—Charidemus with the mercenary division under his command. That officer, since his service three years before under Timotheus against Amphipolis, had been for some time in Asia, especially in the Troad. He hired himself to the satrap Artabazus; of whose embarrassments he took advantage to seize by fraud the towns of Skepsis, Kebren, and Ilium; intending to hold them as a little principality.[815] Finding his position, however, ultimately untenable against the probable force of the satrap, he sent a letter across to the Chersonese, to the Athenian commander Kephisodotus, asking for Athenian triremes to transport his division across to Europe; in return for which, if granted, he engaged to crush Kotys and reconquer the Chersonese for Athens. This proposition, whether accepted or not, was never realized; for Charidemus was enabled, through a truce unexpectedly granted to him by the satrap, to cross over from Abydos to Sestos without any Athenian ships. But as soon as he found himself in the Chersonese, far from aiding Athens to recover that peninsula, he actually took service with Kotys against her; so that Elæeus and Krithôtê, her chief remaining posts, were in greater peril than ever.[816]

[813] Demosthen. pro Phormione, p. 960, s. 64; Demosth. Fals. Leg. p. 398, s. 200.

[814] Demosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 672, s. 184.

[815] Demosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 671, s. 183. Compare Pseudo-Aristot. Œconomic. ii, 30.

[816] Demosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 672, 673.

The orator reads a letter (not cited however) from the governor of Krithôtê, announcing the formidable increase of force which threatened the place since the arrival of Charidemus.

The victorious prospects of Kotys, however, were now unexpectedly arrested. After a reign of twenty-four years he was assassinated by two brothers, Python and Herakleides, Greeks from the city of Ænus in Thrace, and formerly students under Plato at Athens. They committed the act to avenge their father; upon whom, as it would appear, Kotys had inflicted some brutal insult, under the influence of that violent and licentious temper which was in him combined with an energetic military character.[817] Having made their escape, Python and his brother retired to Athens, where they were received with every demonstration of honor, and presented with the citizenship as well as with golden wreaths; partly as tyrannicides, partly as having relieved the Athenians from an odious and formidable enemy.[818] Disclaiming the warm eulogies heaped upon him by various speakers in the assembly, Python is said to have replied—“It was a god who did the deed; we only lent our hands:”[819] an anecdote, which, whether it be truth or fiction, illustrates powerfully the Greek admiration of tyrannicide.

[817] Aristotle (Politic. v, 8, 12) mentions the act and states that the two young men did it to avenge their father. He does not expressly say what Kotys had done to the father; but he notices the event in illustration of the general category,—Πολλαὶ δ’ ἐπιθέσεις γεγένηνται καὶ διὰ τὸ εἰς τὸ σῶμα αἰσχύνεσθαι τῶν μονάρχων τινάς (compare what Tacitus says about _mos regius_—Annal. vi, 1). Aristotle immediately adds another case of cruel mutilation inflicted by Kotys,—Ἀδάμας δ’ ἀπέστη Κότυος διὰ τὸ ἐκτμηθῆναι ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ παῖς ὢν, ὡς ὑβρισμένος.

Compare, about Kotys, Theopompus, Fragm. 33, ed. Didot, ap. Athenæ. xii, p. 531, 532.

Böhnecke (Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte, p. 725, 726) places the death of Kotys in 359 B.C.; and seems to infer from Athenæus (vi, p. 248; xii, p. 531) that he had actual communication with Philip of Macedon as king, whose accession took place between Midsummer 360 and Midsummer 359 B.C. But the evidence does not appear to me to bear out such a conclusion.

The story cited by Athenæus from Hegesander, about letters reaching Philip from Kotys, cannot be true about this Kotys; because it seems impossible that Philip, in the first year of his reign, can have had any such flatterer as Kleisophus; Philip being at that time in the greatest political embarrassments, out of which he was only rescued by his indefatigable energy and ability. And the journey of Philip to Onokarsis, also mentioned by Athenæus out of Theopompus, does not imply any personal communication with Kotys.

My opinion is, that the assassination of Kotys dates more probably in 360 B.C.

[818] Demosthenes cont. Aristokrat. p. 660, s. 142; p. 662, s. 150; p. 675, s. 193. Plutarch, De Sui Laude, p. 542 E.; Plutarch, adv. Koloten, p. 1126, B.

[819] Plutarch, De Sui Laude, _ut sup._

The death of Kotys gave some relief to Athenian affairs in the Chersonese. Of his children, even the eldest, Kersobleptes, was only a youth:[820] moreover two other Thracian chiefs, Berisades and Amadokus, now started up as pretenders to shares in the kingdom of Thrace. Kersobleptes employed as his main support and minister the mercenary general Charidemus, who either had already married, or did now marry, his sister; a nuptial connection had been formed in like manner by Amadokus with two Greeks named Simon and Bianor—and by Berisades with an Athenian citizen named Athenodorus, who (like Iphikrates and others) had founded a city, and possessed a certain independent dominion, in or near the Chersonese.[821] These Grecian mercenary chiefs thus united themselves by nuptial ties to the princes whom they served, as Seuthes had proposed to Xenophon, and as the Italian Condottieri of the fifteenth century ennobled themselves by similar alliance with princely families—for example, Sforza with the Visconti of Milan. All these three Thracian competitors were now represented by Grecian agents. But at first, it seems, Charidemus on behalf of Kersobleptes was the strongest. He and his army were near Perinthus on the north coast of the Propontis, where the Athenian commander, Kephisodotus, visited him, with a small squadron of ten triremes, in order to ask for the fulfilment of those fair promises which Charidemus had made in his letter from Asia. But Charidemus treated the Athenians as enemies, attacked by surprise the seamen on shore, and inflicted upon them great damage. He then pressed the Chersonese severely for several months, and marched even into the midst of it, to protect a nest of pirates whom the Athenians were besieging at the neighboring islet on its western coast—Alopekonnesus. At length, after seven months of unprofitable warfare (dating from the death of Kotys), he forced Kephisodotus to conclude with him a convention so disastrous and dishonorable, that as soon as known at Athens, it was indignantly repudiated.[822] Kephisodotus, being recalled in disgrace, was put upon his trial, and fined; the orator Demosthenes (we are told), who had served as one of the trierarchs in the fleet, being among his accusers.[823]

[820] Demosthen. cont. Aristokr. p. 674, s. 193. μειρακύλλιον, etc.

[821] Demosth. cont. Aristokrat. p. 623, 624, s. 8-12; p. 664, s. 153 (in which passage κηδεστὴς may be fairly taken to mean any near connection by marriage).

About Athenodorus compare Isokrates, Or. viii, (de Pace) s. 31.

[822] Demosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 674-676, s. 193-199.

In sect. 194, are the words, ~ἧκε δὲ Κηφισόδοτος στρατηγῶν~, πρὸς ὃν αὐτὸς (Charidemus) ἔπεμψε τὴν ἐπιστολὴν ἐκείνην, καὶ αἱ τριήρεις, αἳ, ὅτ’ ἦν ἄδηλα τὰ τῆς σωτηρίας αὐτῷ, καὶ μὴ συγχωροῦντος Ἀρταβάζου σώζειν ἔμελλον αὐτόν.

The verb ἧκε, in my judgment—not to the _first coming out_ of Kephisodotus from Athens to take the command, as Weber (Comment. ad Demosth. cont. Aristokrat. p. 460) and other commentators think, but—to the coming of Kephisodotus with ten triremes _to Perinthus_, near which place Charidemus was, for the purpose of demanding fulfilment of what the latter had promised; see s. 196. When Kephisodotus came to him at Perinthus (παρόντος τοῦ στρατηγοῦ—πρὸς ὃν τὴν ἐπιστολὴν ἐπεπόμφει—s. 195) to make this demand, then Charidemus, instead of behaving honestly, acted like a traitor and an enemy. The allusion to this antecedent letter from Charidemus to Kephisodotus, shows that the latter must have been on the spot for some time, and therefore that ἧκε cannot refer to his first coming out.

The term ἑπτὰ μῆνας (s. 196) counts, I presume, from the death of Kotys.

[823] Demosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 676, s. 199; Æschines cont. Ktesiphont. p. 384, c. 20.

Demosthenes himself may probably have been among the trierarchs called before the dikastery as witnesses to prove what took place at Perinthus and Alopekonnesus (Demosth. cont. Aristokrat. p. 676, s. 200); Euthykles, the speaker of the discourse against Aristokrates, had been himself also among the officers serving (p. 675, s. 196; p. 683, s. 223).

Among the articles of this unfavorable convention, one was that the Greek city of Kardia should be specially reserved to Charidemus himself. That city—eminently convenient from its situation on the isthmus connecting the Chersonese with Thrace—claimed by the Athenians as within the Chersonese, yet at the same time intensely hostile to Athens—became his principal station.[824] He was fortunate enough to seize, through treachery, the person of the Thracian Miltokythes, who had been the pronounced enemy of Kotys, and had coöperated with Athens. But he did not choose to hand over this important prisoner to Kersobleptes, because the life of Miltokythes would thus have been saved: it not being the custom of Thracians, in their intestine disputes, to put each other to death.[825] We remark with surprise a practice milder than that of Greece, amidst a people decidedly more barbarous and blood-thirsty than the Greeks. Charidemus accordingly surrendered Miltokythes to the Kardians, who put the prisoner with his son into a boat, took them a little way out to sea, slew the son before the eyes of the father, and then drowned the father himself.[826] It is not improbable that there may have been some special antecedent causes, occasioning intense antipathy on the part of the Kardians towards Miltokythes, and inducing Charidemus to hand him over to them as an acceptable subject for revenge. However this may be, their savage deed kindled violent indignation among all the Thracians, and did much injury to the cause of Kersobleptes and Charidemus. Though Kephisodotus had been recalled, and though a considerable interval elapsed before any successor came from Athens, yet Berisades and Amadokus joined their forces in one common accord, and sent to the Athenians propositions of alliance, with request for pecuniary aid. Athenodorus, the general of Berisades, putting himself at the head of Thracians and Athenians together, found himself superior in the field to Kersobleptes and Charidemus; whom he constrained to accept a fresh convention dictated by himself. Herein it was provided, that the kingdom of Thrace should be divided in equal portions between the three competitors; that all three should concur in surrendering the Chersonese to Athens; and that the son of a leading man named Iphiades at Sestos, held by Charidemus as hostage for the adherence of that city, should be surrendered to Athens also.[827]

[824] Demosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 679, s. 209; p. 681, s. 216. Demosthen. de Halonneso, p. 87, s. 42.

[825] Demosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 676, s. 201. οὐκ ὄντος νομίμου τοῖς Θρᾳξὶν ἀλλήλους ἀποκτιννύναι, etc.

[826] Demosthenes, cont. Aristokrat. p. 677, s. 201.

[827] Demosth. cont. Aristokrat. p. 677, s. 202-204.

Aristotle (Politic. v. 5, 9) mentions the association or faction of Iphiades as belonging to Abydos, not to Sestos. Perhaps there may have been an Abydene association now exercising influence at Sestos; at least we are told, that the revolution which deprived the Athenians of Sestos, was accomplished in part by exiles who crossed from Abydos; something like the relation between Argos and Corinth in the years immediately preceding the peace of Antalkidas.

This new convention, sworn on both sides, promised to Athens the full acquisition which she desired. Considering the thing as done, the Athenians sent Chabrias as commander in one trireme to receive the surrender, but omitted to send the money requested by Athenodorus; who was accordingly constrained to disband his army for want of pay. Upon this Kersobleptes and Charidemus at once threw up their engagement, refused to execute the convention just sworn, and constrained Chabrias, who had come without any force, to revert to the former convention concluded with Kephisodotus. Disappointed and indignant, the Athenians disavowed the act of Chabrias, in spite of his high reputation. They sent ten envoys to the Chersonese, insisting that the convention of Athenodorus should be resworn by all the three Thracian competitors—Berisades, Amadokus, Kersobleptes; if the third declined, the envoys were instructed to take measures for making war upon him, while they received the engagements of the other two. But such a mission, without arms, obtained nothing from Charidemus and Kersobleptes, except delay or refusal; while Berisades and Amadokus sent to Athens bitter complaints respecting the breach of faith. At length, after some months—just after the triumphant conclusion of the expedition of Athens against Eubœa (358 B.C.)—the Athenian Chares arrived in the Chersonese, at the head of a considerable mercenary force. Then at length the two recusants were compelled to swear anew to the convention of Athenodorus, in the presence of the latter as well as of Berisades and Amadokus.[828] And it would appear that before long, its conditions were realized. Charidemus surrendered the Chersonese, of course including its principal town Sestos, to Athens;[829] yet he retained for himself Kardia,[830] which was affirmed (though the Athenians denied it) not to be included in the boundaries of that peninsula. The kingdom of Thrace was also divided between Kersobleptes, Berisades, and Amadokus; which triple division, diminishing the strength of each, was regarded by Athens as a great additional guarantee for her secure possession of the Chersonese.[831]

[828] Demosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 678, p. 205, 206; p. 680. s. 211, 212. The arrival of Chares in the Hellespont is marked by Demosthenes as immediately following the expedition of Athens to drive the Thebans out of Eubœa, which took place about the middle of 358 B.C.

[829] We see that Sestos must have been surrendered on this occasion, although Diodorus describes it as having been conquered by Chares five years afterwards, in the year 353 B.C. (Diod. xvi, 34). It is evident from the whole tenor of the oration of Demosthenes, that Charidemus did actually surrender the Chersonese at this time. Had he still refused to surrender Sestos, the orator would not have failed to insist on the fact emphatically against him. Besides, Demosthenes says, comparing the conduct of Philip towards the Olynthians, with that of Kersobleptes towards Athens—ἐκεῖνος ἐκείνοις Ποτίδαιαν οὐχὶ τηνικαῦτ’ ἀπέδωκεν, ἥνικ’ ἀποστερεῖν οὐκέθ’ οἷός τ’ ἦν, ὥσπερ ὑμῖν Κερσοβλέπτης Χεῤῥόνησον (p. 656. s. 128). This distinctly announces that the Chersonese was _given back_ to Athens, though reluctantly and tardily, by Kersobleptes. Sestos must have been given up along with it, as the principal and most valuable post upon all accounts. If it be true (as Diodorus states) that Chares in 353 B.C. took Sestos by siege, slew the inhabitants of military age and reduced the rest to slavery—we must suppose the town again to have revolted between 358 and 353 B.C.; that is, during the time of the Social War; which is highly probable. But there is much in the statement of Diodorus which I cannot distinctly make out; for he says that Kersobleptes in 353 B.C., on account of his hatred towards Philip, surrendered to Athens all the cities in the Chersonese except Kardia. That had already been done in 358 B.C., and without any reference to Philip; and if after surrendering the Chersonese in 358 B.C., Kersobleptes had afterwards reconquered it, so as to have it again in his possession in the beginning of 353 B.C.—it seems unaccountable that Demosthenes should say nothing about the reconquest in his oration against Aristokrates, where he is trying to make all points possible against Kersobleptes.

[830] Demosth. cont. Aristokrat. p. 681, s. 216.

[831] Demosth. cont. Aristokrat. p. 623, s. 8; p. 654, s. 121. The chronology of these events as given by Rehdantz (Vitæ Iphicratis, Chabriæ, etc. p. 147) appears to me nearly correct, in spite of the strong objection expressed against it by Weber (Prolegg. ad Demosth. cont. Aristokrat. p. lxxiii.)—and more exact than the chronology of Böhnecke, Forschungen, p. 727, who places the coming out of Kephisodotus as general to the Chersonese in 358 B.C., which is, I think, a full year too late. Rehdantz does not allow, as I think he ought to do, for a certain interval between Kephisodotus and the Ten Envoys, during which Athenodorus acted for Athens.

It was thus that Athens at length made good her possession of the Chersonese against the neighboring Thracian potentates. And it would seem that her transmarine power, with its dependencies and confederates, now stood at a greater height than it had ever reached since the terrible reverses of 405 B.C. Among them were numbered not only a great number of the Ægean islands (even the largest, Eubœa, Chios, Samos, and Rhodes), but also the continental possessions of Byzantium—the Chersonese—Maroneia[832] with other places on the southern coast of Thrace—and Pydna, Methônê, and Potidæa, with most of the region surrounding the Thermaic Gulf.[833] This last portion of empire had been acquired at the cost of the Olynthian fraternal alliance of neighboring cities, against which Athens too, as well as Sparta, by an impulse most disastrous for the future independence of Greece, had made war with inauspicious success. The Macedonian king Perdikkas, with a just instinct towards the future aggrandizement of his dynasty, had assisted her in thus weakening Olynthus; feeling that the towns on the Thermaic Gulf, if they formed parts of a strong Olynthian confederacy of brothers and neighbors, reciprocally attached and self-sustaining, would resist Macedonia more effectively, than if they were half-reluctant dependencies of Athens, even with the chances of Athenian aid by sea. The aggressive hand of Athens against Olynthus, indeed, between 368-363 B.C., was hardly less mischievous, to Greece generally, than that of Sparta had been between 382-380 B.C. Sparta had crushed the Olynthian confederacy in its first brilliant promise—Athens prevented it from rearing its head anew. Both conspired to break down the most effective barrier against Macedonian aggrandizement; neither were found competent to provide any adequate protection to Greece in its room.

[832] Demosthen. cont. Polyklem, p. 1212, s. 26.

[833] Demosthen. Philippic. I, p. 41, s. 6. εἴχομέν ποτε ἡμεῖς, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, Πύδναν καὶ Ποτίδαιαν καὶ Μεθώνην ~καὶ πάντα τὸν τόπον τοῦτον οἰκεῖον κύκλῳ~, etc.

The maximum of her second empire, which I have remarked that Athens attained by the recovery of the Chersonese,[834] lasted but for a moment. During the very same year, there occurred that revolt among her principal allies, known by the name of the Social War, which gave to her power a fatal shock, and left the field comparatively clear for the early aggressions of her yet more formidable enemy—Philip of Macedon. That prince had already emerged from his obscurity as a hostage in Thebes, and had succeeded his brother Perdikkas, slain in a battle with the Illyrians, as king (360-359 B.C.). At first, his situation appeared not merely difficult, but almost hopeless. Not the most prescient eye in Greece could have recognized, in the inexperienced youth struggling at his first accession against rivals at home, enemies abroad, and embarrassments of every kind—the future conqueror of Chæroneia, and destroyer of Grecian independence. How, by his own genius, energy, and perseverance, assisted by the faults and dissensions of his Grecian enemies, he attained his inauspicious eminence—will be recounted in my subsequent volume.

[834] I have not made any mention of the expedition against Eubœa (whereby Athens drove the Theban invaders out of that island), though it occurred just about the same time as the recovery of the Chersonese.

That expedition will more properly come to be spoken of in my next volume. But the recovery of the Chersonese was the closing event of a series of proceedings which had been going on for four years; so that I could hardly leave that series unfinished.

* * * * *

At the opening of my ninth volume, after the surrender of Athens, Greece was under the Spartan empire. Its numerous independent city-communities were more completely regimented under one chief than they had ever been before, Athens and Thebes being both numbered among the followers of Sparta.

But the conflicts recounted in these two volumes (during an interval of forty-four years—404-403 B.C. to 360-359 B.C.) have wrought the melancholy change of leaving Greece more disunited, and more destitute of presiding Hellenic authority, than she had been at any time since the Persian invasion. Thebes, Sparta, and Athens, had all been engaged in weakening each other; in which, unhappily, each has been far more successful than in strengthening herself. The maritime power of Athens is now indeed considerable, and may be called very great, if compared with the state of degradation to which she had been brought in 403 B.C. But it will presently be seen how unsubstantial is the foundation of her authority, and how fearfully she has fallen off from that imperial feeling and energy which ennobled her ancestors under the advice of Perikles.

It is under these circumstances, so untoward for defence, that the aggressor from Macedonia arises.