CHAPTER XLI. THE SPARTAN SUPREMACY

There is an inevitable bias in the minds of most people towards the brilliant and refined ideals of Athens as opposed to the obstinate and barren creed of the Spartans. We have heard, therefore, more of the Athenian side than of the Spartan in their wars together. As we approach a period of Spartan glory, it is well to make a quick review and summary of her ideals and achievements down to this period, when, as the Spartophile Müller notes, Sparta won her advancement by discarding her venerable creeds. What follows must be read with the knowledge that it is from the pen of a Spartan partisan.[a]

Sparta, by the conquest of Messenia and Tegea, had obtained the first rank in the Peloponnese, which character she confirmed by the expulsion of the tyrants, and the overthrow of Argos. From about the year 580 B.C. she acted as the recognised commander, not only of the Peloponnese, but of the whole Greek name. The confederacy itself, however, was formed by the inhabitants of that peninsula alone, on fixed and regular laws; whereas the other Greeks only annexed themselves to it temporarily. The order of precedence observed by the members of this league may be taken from the inscription on the footstool of the statue of Jupiter, which was dedicated at Olympia after the Persian War, the Ionians, who were only allied for a time, being omitted. It is as follows: Lacedæmon, Corinth, Sicyon, Ægina, Megara, Epidaurus, Tegea, Orchomenos, Phlius, Trœzen, Hermione, Tiryns, Mycenæ, Lepreum, and Elis; which state was contented with the last place, on account of the small share which it had taken in the war.

The defenders of the isthmus are enumerated as follows: Lacedæmonians, Arcadians, Eleans, Corinthians, Sicyonians, Epidaurians, Phliasians, Trœzenians, and Hermionians, nearly agreeing with the other list, only that the Arcadians, having been present with their whole force, and also the Eleans, occupy an earlier place; and the Megarians and Æginetans are omitted, as having had no share in the defence. This regular order of precedence is alone a proof of a firm union. The Tegeatæ, since they had joined the side of Lacedæmon, enjoyed several privileges, and especially the place of honour at the left wing of the allied army. Argos remained excluded from the nations of the Peloponnesus, as it never would submit to the command of Sparta; the Achæans, indifferent to external affairs, only joined themselves momentarily to the alliance: but the Mantineans, though latterly they followed the policy of Argos, were long attached to the Peloponnesian league; for at the end of the Persian War they sent an army, which arrived too late for the battle of Platæa: having before, together with the other Arcadians, helped to defend the isthmus; they had also been engaged in the first days of the action at Thermopylæ, and they were at this time still the faithful allies of the Lacedæmonians. Their subsequent defection from Sparta may be attributed partly to their endeavours to obtain the dominion of Parrhasia, which was protected by Lacedæmon, to their hostility with Tegea, which remained true to Sparta after the great war with Arcadia, which began about 470 B.C., and to the strengthening of their city, and the establishment of a democratic government, through the influence of Argos.

[Sidenote: [480-432 B.C.]]

The supremacy of Sparta was exercised in the expeditions of the whole confederacy, and in transactions of the same nature. In the first, the Spartan king--after it had been thought proper never to send out two together--was commander-in-chief, in whose powers there were many remains of the authority of the ancient Homeric princes. Occasionally, however, Sparta was compelled to give up her privilege to other commanders, especially at sea, as, for instance, the fleet at Salamis to Eurybiades. When any expedition was contemplated, the Spartans sent round to the confederate states, to desire them to have men and stores in readiness. The highest amount which each state could be called on to supply was fixed once for all, and it was only on each particular occasion to be determined what part of that was required. In like manner the supplies in money and stores were regularly appointed; so that an army, with all its equipment, could be collected by a simple summons. But agricultural labour, festivals, and the natural slowness of the Doric race, often very much retarded the assembling of this army. The contributions, chiefly perhaps voluntary, both of states and individuals, were registered on stone: and there is still extant an inscription, found at Tegea, in which the war-supplies of the Ephesians, Melians, etc., in money and in corn, are recorded. But the Lacedæmonians never exacted from the Peloponnesian confederacy a regular annual contribution, independent of circumstances; which would have been, in fact, a tribute: a measure of this kind being once proposed to King Archidamus, he answers, “that war did not consume according to rule.”

Pericles, however, properly considers it as a disadvantage to the Peloponnesians that they had no paid troops, and that they had amassed no treasure. The object of an expedition was publicly declared: occasionally, however, when secrecy was required, it was known neither to the states nor to their army. The single allied states, if necessity demanded it, could also immediately summon the army of the others; but it is not clear to what extent this call was binding upon them. The Spartan military constitution, which we will explain hereafter, extended to the whole allied army; but it was doubtless variously combined with the tactics of the several nations. To the council of war, which, moreover, only debated, and did not decide, the Spartan king summoned the leaders of the several states, together with other commanders, and generally the most distinguished persons in the army.

According to the constitution of the Peloponnesian league, every common action, such as a declaration of war, or the conclusion of a peace or treaty, was agreed on at a congress of the confederates. But, as there was no regular assembly of this kind, the several states sent envoys (ἄγγελοι), like the deputies (πρόβουλοι), of the Ionians, who generally remained together only for a short time. All the members had legally equal votes (ἰσόψηφοι); and the majority sometimes decided against a strong opposition; Sparta was often outvoted, Corinth being at all times willing to raise an opposition. We have, however, little information respecting the exact state of the confederacy; it is probable, from the aristocratic feelings of the Peloponnesians, that, upon the whole, authority had more weight than numbers; and for great undertakings, such as the Peloponnesian War, the assent of the chief state was necessary, in addition to the agreement of the other confederates. When the congress was summoned to Sparta, the envoys often treated with a public assembly of the Spartans.

But upon the internal affairs, laws, and institutions of the allied states, the confederacy had legally no influence. It was a fundamental law that every state should, according to its ancient customs, be independent and supreme; and it is much to the credit of Sparta, that, so long as the league was in existence, she never, not even when a favourable opportunity offered, deprived any Peloponnesian state of this independence. Nor were disputes between individual states brought before the congress of the allies, which, on account of the preponderance of Sparta, would have endangered their liberty; but they were commonly either referred to the Delphian oracle, or to arbitrators chosen by both states. For disputes between citizens of different states there was an entirely free and equal intercourse of justice. The jurisdiction of the states was also absolutely exempt from foreign interference. These are the chief features of the constitution of the Peloponnesian confederacy; the only one which in the flourishing times of Greece combined extensive powers with justice, and a respect for the independence of its weaker members.

[Sidenote: [580-479 B.C.]]

Sparta had not become the head of this league by agreement, and still less by usurpation; but by tacit acknowledgment she was the leader, not only of this, but of the whole of Greece; and she acted as such in all foreign relations from about the year 580 B.C. Her alliance was courted by Crœsus: and the Ionians, when pressed by Cyrus, had recourse to the Spartans, who, with an amusing ignorance of the state of affairs beyond the sea, thought to terrify the king of Persia by the threat of hostilities. It is a remarkable fact, that there were at that time Scythian envoys in Sparta, with whom a great plan of operations against Persia is said to have been concerted. In the year 520 B.C. the Platæans put themselves under the protection of Cleomenes, who referred them to Athens; a herald from Sparta drove the Alcmæonidæ from their city: afterwards Aristagoras sought from the protector of Greece aid against the national enemy: and when the Æginetans gave the Persians earth and water, the Athenians accused them of treachery before the Spartans: and lastly, during the Persian War, Greece found in the high character of that state the only means of effecting the union so necessary for her safety and success.

In this war a new confederacy was formed, which was extended beyond the Peloponnese; the community of danger and of victory having, besides a momentary combination, also produced a union destined for some duration. It was the assembly of this league--a fixed congress at Corinth during, and at Sparta after, the war--that settled the internal differences of Greece, that invited Argos, Corcyra, and Gelo to join the league, and afterwards called upon Themistocles to answer for his proceedings. So much it did for the present emergency. But at the same time Pausanias, the regent of Sparta, after the great victory of Platæa, prevailed upon the allies to conclude a further treaty. Under the auspices of the gods of the confederacy, particularly of the Eleutherian (or Grecian) Jupiter, they pledged themselves mutually to maintain the independence of all states, and to many other conditions, of which the memory has been lost. To the Platæans in particular security from danger was promised. The Ionians also, after the battle of Mycale, were received into this confederacy.

The splendid victories over the Persians had for some time taken Sparta, which was fitted for a quiet and passive existence, out of her natural sphere; and her king, Pausanias, had wished to betray his country for the glitter of an Asiatic prince. But this state soon perceived her true interest, and sent no more commanders to Asia, “that her generals might not be made worse”: she likewise wished to avoid any further war with the Persians, thinking that Athens was better fitted to carry it on than herself. If the speech were now extant in which Hetoëmaridas the Heraclid proved to the councillors that it was not expedient for Sparta to aim at the mastery of the sea, we should doubtless possess a profound view, on the Spartan side, of those things which we are now accustomed to look on with Athenian eyes. Nor is it true that the supremacy over the Greeks was in fact transferred at all from Sparta to Athens, if we consider the matter as Sparta considered it, however great the influence of this change may have been on the power of Athens. But Sparta continued to hold its pre-eminence in the Peloponnese, and most of the nations of the mother-country joined themselves to her: while none but the Greeks of Asia Minor and the islands, who had previously been subjects of Persia, and were then only partially liberated, perhaps too much despised by Sparta, put themselves under the command of Athens. But the complete liberation of Asia Minor from the Persian yoke, which has been considered one of the chief exploits of Athens, was in fact never effected. The Athenian empire did not prevent the vassals and subjects of the king of Persia from ruling over the Greeks of Asia Minor, even down to the very coast. We need not go any further to prove the entire falsehood of the account commonly given by the panegyrical rhetoricians of Athens.

[Sidenote: [479-465 B.C.]]

The Peloponnese took the less concern in these proceedings, as internal differences had arisen from some unknown cause, which led to an open war between Sparta and Arcadia. We only know that, between the battle of Platæa (in which Tegea, as also later still, showed great fidelity towards Sparta) and the war with the Helots (_i.e._ between 479 and 465 B.C.), the Lacedæmonians fought two great battles, the one against the Tegeatæ and Argives at Tegea, the other against all the Arcadians, with the exception of the Mantineans, at Dipæa (ἐν Διπαιεῦοιν), in the Mænalian territory. Tisamenus, an Elean, of the family of the Iamidæ, was in both battles in the Spartan army; and in both Sparta was victorious.

[Sidenote: [465-451 B.C.]]

This war had not been brought to a termination, when, in the year 465 B.C., a tremendous earthquake destroyed Sparta, and a sudden ruin threatened to overwhelm the chief state of Greece. For, in the hope of utterly annihilating their rulers, many helots revolted, and the war was called the Third Messenian War. Upon this the Lacedæmonians, foreseeing a tedious siege, called in the aid of their allies; and this call was answered among others by the Athenians; the Spartans, however, dismissed them, as we have seen, before the fortress was taken.

Immediately after the dismission of the Athenians from Ithome, the injured people of Athens annulled the alliance with Sparta, which had subsisted since the Persian War. Then followed the war with the maritime towns of Argolis, in which Athens, after many reverses, at length succeeded in destroying the fleet of Ægina, and subjugating that island (457 B.C.). The inactivity of Sparta during these astonishing successes of her enemy (for when she concluded the armistice with Athens she must have partly foreseen its consequences) seems to prove that she was entirely occupied with the final capture of Ithome, and the settlement of her interests in Arcadia.

The five years’ truce in 451 B.C. was only an armistice between Athens and the Peloponnesian confederacy, which left Bœotia to shake off the Athenian yoke by her own exertions. At the end of these five years Megara revolted from the Athenians, and in consequence an invasion of Attica by the Peloponnesians took place, which, though it did not produce any immediate result, was soon followed by the Thirty Years’ Truce, in which Athens ceded her conquests in Megaris and the Peloponnese, and on the mainland returned within her ancient boundaries.

If now we consider the events which have been briefly traced it will be perceived, that the principle on which the Lacedæmonians constantly acted was one of self-defence, of restoring what had been lost, or preserving what was threatened with danger; whereas the Athenians were always aiming at attack or conquest, or the change of existing institutions. While the Spartans during this period, even after the greatest victories, did not conquer a foot of land, subjugate one independent state, or destroy one existing institution; the Athenians, for a longer or for a shorter time, reduced large tracts of country under their dominion, extended their alliance (as it was called) on all sides, and respected no connection when it came in conflict with their plans of empire.

But the astonishing energy of the Athenians, which from one point kept the whole of Greece in constant vibration, almost paralysed Sparta; the natural slowness of that state became more and more apparent: which having been, as it were, violently transplanted into a strange region, only began by degrees to comprehend the policy of Athens. It is manifest that the maxims of the Athenian policy were directly at variance with the general feeling of justice entertained by the Greeks, and especially to the respect for affinity of blood; and this fundamental difference was the true cause of the Peloponnesian War. In the first place then, Dorians were opposed to Ionians; and hence in the well-known oracle it was called the Doric War. It was a union of the free Greeks against the evil ambition of one state: of land forces against sea forces: the fleet of the Peloponnesians was at the beginning of the war very inconsiderable. Hence it was some time before the belligerent parties even so much as encountered one another; the land was the means of communication for one party, the sea for the other: hence the states friendly to Athens were immediately compelled to build Long Walls for the purpose of connecting the chief city with the sea, and isolating it from the land. Large bodies of men practised in war fought against wealth: the Peloponnesians carried on the war with natives; whereas Athens manned her fleet--the basis of her power--chiefly with foreign seamen; so that the Corinthians said justly that the power of Athens was rather purchased than native. It was the main principle of Pericles’ policy, and it is also adopted by Thucydides in the famous introduction to his _History_, that it is not the country and people, but moveable and personal property in the proper sense of the word, which make states great and powerful. The war meant the maintenance of ancient custom as opposed to the desire for novelty: the former was the chief feature of the Doric, the latter of the Ionic race. The Dorians wished to preserve their ancient dignity and power, as well as their customs and religious feelings: the Ionians were commonly in pursuit of something new. It was a union of nations and tribes against one arbitrarily formed: aristocracy was pitted against democracy: this difference was manifested in the first half of the war by Athens changing, while Sparta only restored governments; for in this instance also the power of Sparta was in strictness only employed in upholding ancient establishments, as an aristocracy may indeed be overthrown, but cannot be formed in a moment.

These obvious points of difference are sufficient to substantiate the result which we wish to arrive at. The “honesty and openness” of the Doric character, the noble simplicity of the ancient times of Greece, soon disappeared in this tumultuous age. Sparta therefore and the Peloponnesians emerge from the contest, altered, and as it were reversed; and even before its termination appear in a character of which they had before probably contained only the first seeds.

[Sidenote: [460-405 B.C.]]

But in the second half of the war, when the Spartans gave up their great armaments by land, and began to equip fleets with hired seamen; when they had learnt to consider money as the chief instrument of warfare, and begged it at the court of Persia; when they sought less to protect the states joined to them by affinity and alliance, than to dissolve the Athenian confederacy; when they began to secure conquered states by harmosts of their own, and by oligarchs forced upon the people, and found that the secret management of the political clubs was more to their interest than open negotiation with the government; we see developed on the one hand an energy and address, which was first manifested in the enterprises of the great Brasidas, and on the other a worldly policy, as was shown in Gylippus, and afterwards more strongly in Lysander; when the descendants of Hercules found it advisable to exchange the lion’s for the fox’s skin. And since the enterprises conducted in the spirit of earlier times either wholly failed or else remained fruitless, this new system, though the state had inwardly declined, brought with it, by the mockery of fate, external fame and victory.[b]

Whatever nobility of creed the Sparta-loving Müller has, as above, claimed for Sparta up to this time, it is certain that the sudden accession of vast and unforeseen power changed her to a mood in which, as Bury says, “she cynically set aside her high moral professions and yielded to a lust for oppression.” Grote was no lover of Sparta and yet he substantiates well his accusations against her.[a]

GROTE’S COMPARISON OF SPARTAN AND ATHENIAN RULE

[Sidenote: [405-404 B.C.]]

The Spartan empire began with the decisive victory of Ægospotami in the Hellespont (September or October 405 B.C.). The whole power of Athens was thus annihilated, and nothing remained for the Lacedæmonians to master except the city itself and Piræus; a consummation certain to happen, and actually brought to pass in April 404 B.C., when Lysander entered Athens in triumph, dismantled Piræus, and demolished a large portion of the Long Walls. With the exception of Athens herself--whose citizens deferred the moment of subjection by an heroic, though unavailing, struggle against the horrors of famine--and of Samos, no other Grecian city offered any resistance to Lysander after the battle of Ægospotami; which in fact not only took away from Athens her whole naval force, but transferred it all over to him, and rendered him admiral of a larger Grecian fleet than had ever been seen together since the battle of Salamis.

The allies, especially Thebes and Corinth, not only relented in their hatred and fear of Athens, now that she had lost her power--but even sympathised with her suffering exiles, and became disgusted with the self-willed encroachments of Sparta; while the Spartan king Pausanias, together with some of the ephors, were also jealous of the arbitrary and oppressive conduct of Lysander.

We have learned from dark, but well-attested details, to appreciate the auspices under which that period of history called the Lacedæmonian empire was inaugurated. Such phenomena were by no means confined within the walls of Athens. On the contrary, the Year of Anarchy (using that term in the sense in which it was employed by the Athenians) arising out of the same combination of causes and agents, was common to a very large proportion of the cities throughout Greece. The Lacedæmonian admiral Lysander, during his first year of naval command, had organised in most of the allied cities factious combinations of some of the principal citizens, corresponding with himself personally. By their efforts in their respective cities he was enabled to prosecute the war vigorously, and he repaid them, partly by seconding as much as he could their injustices in their respective cities, partly by promising to strengthen their hands still further as soon as victory should be made sure.

In the greater number of cities, he established an oligarchy of ten citizens, or a decarchy, composed of his own partisans; while he at the same time planted in each a Lacedæmonian harmost or governor, with a garrison, to uphold the new oligarchy. The decarchy of ten Lysandrian partisans, with the Lacedæmonian harmost to sustain them, became the general scheme of Hellenic government throughout the Ægean, from Eubœa to the Thracian coast towns, and from Miletus to Byzantium. Lysander sailed round in person with his victorious fleet to Byzantium and Chalcedon, to the cities of Lesbos, to Thasos, and other places--while he sent Eteonicus to Thrace for the purpose of thus recasting the governments everywhere. Not merely those cities which had hitherto been on the Athenian side, but also those which had acted as allies of Sparta, were subjected to the same intestine revolution and the same foreign constraint. Everywhere the new Lysandrian decarchy superseded the previous governments, whether oligarchical or democratical.

In what spirit these new decarchies would govern, consisting as they did of picked oligarchical partisans distinguished for audacity and ambition--who, to all the unscrupulous lust of power which characterised Lysander himself, added a thirst for personal gain, from which he was exempt, and were now about to reimburse themselves for services already rendered to him--the general analogy of Grecian history would sufficiently teach us, though we are without special details. But in reference to this point, we have not merely general analogy to guide us; we have further the parallel case of the Thirty at Athens, the particulars of whose rule are well known and have already been alluded to.

Isocrates, who speaks with indignant horror of these decarchies, while he denounces those features which they had in common with the triacontarchy at Athens--extrajudicial murders, spoliations, and banishments--notices one enormity besides, which we do not find in the latter: violent outrages upon boys and women. Nothing of this kind is ascribed to Critias and his companions; and it is a considerable proof of the restraining force of Athenian manners, that men who inflicted so much evil in gratification of other violent impulses, should have stopped short here. The decemvirs named by Lysander, like the decemvir Appius Claudius at Rome, would find themselves armed with power to satiate their lusts as well as their antipathies, and would not be more likely to set bounds to the former than to the latter. Lysander, in all the overweening insolence of victory, while rewarding his most devoted partisans with an exaltation comprising every sort of licence and tyranny, stained the dependent cities with countless murders, perpetrated on private as well as on public grounds. No individual Greek had ever before wielded so prodigious a power of enriching friends or destroying enemies, as in this universal reorganisation of Greece; nor was there ever any power more deplorably abused.

Taking all these causes of evil together--the decarchies, the harmosts, and the overwhelming dictatorship of Lysander--and construing other parts of the Grecian world by the analogy of Athens under the Thirty, we shall be warranted in affirming that the first years of the Spartan empire, which followed upon the victory of Ægospotami, were years of all-pervading tyranny, and multifarious intestine calamity, such as Greece had never before endured. The hardships of war, severe in many ways, were now at an end, but they were replaced by a state of suffering not the less difficult to bear because it was called peace. And what made the suffering yet more intolerable was, that it was a bitter disappointment and a flagrant violation of promises proclaimed, repeatedly and explicitly, by the Lacedæmonians themselves.

For more than thirty years preceding--from times earlier than the commencement of the Peloponnesian War--the Spartans had professed to interfere only for the purpose of liberating Greece, and of putting down the usurped ascendency of Athens. Like the allied sovereigns of Europe in 1813, who, requiring the most strenuous efforts on the part of the people to contend against the Emperor Napoleon, promised free constitutions, and granted nothing after the victory had been assured--the Lacedæmonians held out the most emphatic and repeated assurances of general autonomy in order to enlist allies against Athens; disavowing, even ostentatiously, any aim at empire for themselves.

The victory of Ægospotami, with its consequences, cruelly undeceived every one. The language of Brasidas, sanctioned by the solemn oaths of the Lacedæmonian ephors, in 424 B.C., and the proceedings of the Lacedæmonian Lysander in 405-404 B.C., the commencing hour of Spartan omnipotence, stand in such literal and flagrant contradiction, that we might almost imagine the former to have foreseen the possibility of such a successor, and to have tried to disgrace and disarm him beforehand. There was no present necessity for conciliating allies--still less for acting up to former engagements; so that nothing remained to oppose the naturally ambitious inspirations of the Spartan ephors, who allowed the admiral to carry out the details in his own way. But former assurances, though Sparta was in a condition to disregard them, were not forgotten by others; and the recollection of them imparted additional bitterness to the oppressions of the decemvirs and harmosts. In perfect consistency with her misrule throughout eastern Greece, too, Sparta identified herself with the energetic tyranny of Dionysius at Syracuse, assisting both to erect and to uphold it; a contradiction to her former maxims of action which would have astounded the historian Herodotus.

[Sidenote: [405-371 B.C.]]

The empire of Sparta, thus constituted at the end of 405 B.C., maintained itself in full grandeur for somewhat above ten years, until the naval battle of Cnidus in 394 B.C. That defeat destroyed her fleet and maritime ascendency, yet left her in undiminished power on land, which she still maintained until her defeat by the Thebans, at Leuctra in 371 B.C. Throughout all this time, it was her established system to keep up Spartan harmosts and garrisons in the dependent cities on the continent as well as in the islands. Even the Chians, who had been her most active allies during the last eight years of the war, were compelled to submit to this hardship; besides having all their fleet taken away from them. But the native decarchies, though at first established by Lysander universally throughout the maritime dependencies, did not last as a system so long as the harmosts. Composed as they were to a great degree of the personal nominees and confederates of Lysander, they suffered in part by the reactionary jealousy which in time made itself felt against his overweening ascendency. After continuing for some time, they lost the countenance of the Spartan ephors, who proclaimed permission to the cities (we do not precisely know when) to resume their pre-existing governments. Some of the decarchies thus became dissolved, or modified in various ways, but several probably still continued to subsist, if they had force enough to maintain themselves; for it does not appear that the ephors ever systematically put them down as Lysander had systematically set them up.

Such then was the result throughout Greece when that long war, which had been undertaken in the name of universal autonomy, was terminated by the battle of Ægospotami. In place of imperial Athens was substituted, not the promised autonomy, but yet more imperial Sparta. An awful picture is given by the philo-Laconian Xenophon, in 399 B.C., of the ascendency exercised throughout all the Grecian cities, not merely by the ephors and the public officers, but even by the private citizens, of Sparta.

We have more than one picture of the Athenian empire in speeches made by hostile orators who had every motive to work up the strongest antipathies in the bosoms of their audience against it. We have the addresses of the Corinthian envoys at Sparta when stimulating the Spartan allies to the Peloponnesian War; that of the envoys from Mytilene delivered at Olympia to the Spartan confederates, when the city had revolted from Athens and stood in pressing need of support; the discourse of Brasidas in the public assembly at Acanthus; and more than one speech also from Hermocrates, impressing upon his Sicilian countrymen hatred as well as fear of Athens. Whoever reads these discourses, will see that they dwell almost exclusively on the great political wrong inherent in the very fact of her empire, robbing so many Grecian communities of their legitimate autonomy, over and above the tribute imposed. That Athens had thus already enslaved many cities, and was only watching for opportunities to enslave many more, is the theme upon which they expatiate. But of practical grievances--of cruelty, oppression, spoliation, multiplied exiles, etc., of high-handed wrong committed by individual Athenians--not one word is spoken. Had there been the smallest pretext for introducing such inflammatory topics, how much more impressive would have been the appeal of Brasidas to the sympathies of the Acanthians! How vehement would have been the denunciations of the Mytilenean envoys, in place of the tame and almost apologetic language which we now read in Thucydides! Athens extinguished the autonomy of her subject-allies, and punished revolters with severity, sometimes even with cruelty. But as to other points of wrong, the silence of accusers, such as those just noticed, counts as a powerful exculpation.

[Sidenote: [405-403 B.C.]]

The case is altered when we come to the period succeeding the battle of Ægospotami. Here indeed also, we find the Spartan empire complained of (as the Athenian empire had been before), in contrast with that state of autonomy to which each city laid claim, and which Sparta not merely promised to ensure, but set forth as her only ground of war. Yet this is not the prominent grievance--other topics stand more emphatically forward. The decemvirs and the harmosts (some of the latter being helots), the standing instruments of Spartan empire, are felt as more sorely painful than the empire itself; as the language held by Brasidas at Acanthus admits them to be beforehand. At the time when Athens was a subject city under Sparta, governed by the Lysandrian Thirty and by the Lacedæmonian harmost in the Acropolis--the sense of indignity arising from the fact of subjection was absorbed in the still more terrible suffering arising from the enormities of those individual rulers whom the imperial state had set up. Now Athens set up no local rulers--no native Ten or native Thirty--no resident Athenian harmosts or garrisons. This was of itself an unspeakable exemption, when compared with the condition of cities subject, not only to the Spartan empire, but also under that empire to native decemvirs like Critias, and Spartan harmosts like Aristarchus or Aristodemus. A city subject to Athens had to bear definite burdens enforced by its own government, which was liable in case of default or delinquency to be tried before the popular Athenian dicastery. But this same dicastery (as is distinctly stated by Thucydides) was the harbour of refuge to each subject city; not less against individual Athenian wrong-doers than against misconduct from other cities. In no one point can it be shown that the substitution of Spartan empire in place of Athenian was a gain, either for the subject cities or for Greece generally; while in many points it was a great and serious aggravation of suffering. And this abuse of power is the more deeply to be regretted, as Sparta enjoyed after the battle of Ægospotami a precious opportunity--such as Athens had never had, and such as never again recurred--of reorganising the Grecian world on wise principles, and with a view to Panhellenic stability and harmony.

She now stood without competitor as leader of the Grecian world, and might at that moment have reasonably hoped to carry the members of it along with her to any liberal and Panhellenic organisation, had she attempted it with proper earnestness. Unfortunately she took the opposite course, under the influence of Lysander; founding a new empire far more oppressive and odious than that of Athens, with few of the advantages, and none of the excuses, attached to the latter. As she soon became even more unpopular than Athens, _her_ moment of high tide, for beneficent Panhellenic combination, passed away also--never to return.[c]

HARSHNESS OF THE SPARTAN HEGEMONY

[Sidenote: [405-353 B.C.]]

The Peloponnesian War had been disastrous in its consequences to public morals. Its long duration and peculiarly bloody character, arousing everywhere mistrust, exciting passions, deifying brute force, had wrought a deterioration in the Greek nature from which it never fully recovered. There was ferocity on the battle-field, a ferocity in the party contests. “This,” says Aristotle, “is the oath administered to-day in several cities by the oligarchy: ‘I will be the enemy of the people and will do them all the evil I can.’” We may indeed place against this homicidal oath that taken by the heliasts of Athens after the tyranny: “I will forget all past ills and will permit no one else to remember and give them mention.” But Athens even in its decadence was always Athens liberal and generous, even as its mutilated statues remain beautiful in all their degradation.

The system of warfare had also changed. We have shown how one military revolution had already occurred; the replacing of the aristocratic army of former times by the democratic army of the fifth and sixth centuries. And now the age of mercenaries was being ushered in by the employment, in all Greek cities, of hired soldiers to fight beside their citizen troops. But to pay these hirelings money was required, and Greece applied to Persia, who alone had money; hence her mendicant attitude towards the Great King, and the continual intervention of Xerxes’ successors in Hellenic affairs. This dependence on a foreign power and harshness of the public temper were first observed during the last years of the war; they are found again in the year after peace was concluded, the Year of Anarchy, as the Greeks called the commencement of the Spartan dominion.

Blood flowed everywhere because everywhere were established oligarchical governments. A massacre occurred at Thasos. At Miletus eight hundred citizens belonging to the popularist party were lured from their retreats by Lysander and put to death. At Byzantium, Œtœa, and the greater part of the towns of Asia Minor similar outrages were committed. At Samos the inhabitants were all banished, with the privilege of taking away but a single garment. The defection of Chios and its navy had assured Sparta’s triumph; as a reward its most prominent citizens were sent into exile and all its triremes were seized. Lycophron, a Pheræan, made himself master of the province of Thessaly after desperate battles. “Thereafter,” relates Xenophon, “a Lacedæmonian’s lightest word was obeyed; even a citizen in private life could arrange everything to his will.” Xenophon himself appears to have shared this terror, since after the retreat of the Ten Thousand he refused the title of general-in-chief that his companions wished to bestow upon him, fearing that Sparta might view with disfavour the placing of command in the hands of an Athenian. The islanders, especially those who had betrayed the cause of Athens, hoped that with the accession to power of Lacedæmonia who was an ally of the Great King the duties established by Aristides and Pericles to protect their commerce would be removed. But they found they had simply changed masters, Sparta continuing to levy the former tribute, which amounted annually to 1000 talents [£200,000 or $1,000,000].

Athens, more adroit in establishing her empire, had proceeded without cruelty, violence, or spoliation, hence had not known, even in her time of greatest misfortune, the falling-off of her supports. Sparta was not so wise in the formation of kingdoms; force was the only instrument of which she knew the use, and with her the use of it was the abuse of it. Athens had also made use of force, but had always associated with it justice. Athens had made itself the political, military, and judiciary centre of the empire, and further, it was the metropolis of arts and letters for all Hellas. Nothing great or glorious, nothing useful or full of promise, could proceed from the Lacedæmonian dominion; it threatened to topple over in the hour of its erection. A thousand causes were at work to bring about a rapid dissolution; many of these were in Sparta or Greece, the rest in other lands.

DEGENERACY OF SPARTA

[Sidenote: [353-240 B.C.]]

The results of Lycurgus’ institutions continued to be made manifest. The Spartan city diminished in population from day to day, as though worn away by the friction of its iron institutions. The narrow circle, which it had drawn round itself, never widening but always growing smaller, finally came to enclose but an insignificant number of Spartans. Great numbers had perished in the wars, others cast by poverty into the lower classes could no longer take their seats at the public tables. Aristotle says, “Whoever is without means to contribute to the expense of these tables must forfeit his political rights.” The Spartans knew that they were menaced with destruction through lack of citizens; the cry that arose when the four hundred and twenty Spartan soldiers were imprisoned on the island of Sphacteria, still rang in every ear. Aristotle further states: “The territory of Sparta that is capable of providing sustenance for fifteen hundred cavalry and thirty thousand hoplites, to-day barely supports a thousand warriors.” In the assemblies of four thousand, there were scarcely to be seen forty Spartans; moreover, inequality of conditions grew as the people decreased in number.

Gold and silver currency had for a long time ceased to be proscribed and the disinterestedness of the Lacedæmonians to be extolled. Numerous examples of their venality were known; Eurybiades had been bought by Themistocles, Plistoanax and Cleandridas by Pericles, Leotychides by the Aleuadæ, the admiral and captains of the fleet by Tissaphernes. The kings, the senators, the ephors, all had repeatedly received bribes, and Gylippus, the liberator of Syracuse, who had been charged to carry to Sparta the plunder of Athens, kept back for his own use thirty talents [£6000 or $30,000]. Hence the remark of an interlocutor in the _Alcibiades_: “There is more gold and silver in Lacedæmonia than in all the rest of Greece; money flows to it from all parts and once there remains; the country is like a lion’s cave, one sees the footprints of those who enter, but of footsteps leaving there is no trace.” The commanders who returned from ports in Asia brought with them great wealth, and more than that a taste for luxury and ease, in a word, corruption; every one plunged into wild extravagance and the vices engendered by the possession of riches.

[Sidenote: [405-240 B.C.]]

After the Peloponnesian War, the ephor Epitadeus had passed a law authorising citizens to dispose of their property and land. The effects of this rhetra were so prompt to appear that Aristotle was given cause to write: “The land has passed into the hands of a few.” In the time of Agis IV the entire territory was owned by a hundred Spartans. Thus the government had become more and more oligarchical. All the national affairs were carried on by the ephors and the senate, even the general assembly was rarely consulted, and in consequence the rulers, being few in number, were all the more jealous of the privileges of their station and less disposed to suffer them to be curtailed. To open their ranks, moreover, for the readmission of families that poverty had driven forth would have been to expose themselves, by relinquishing the majority, to some territorial reform tending toward a fresh division of the immense domains now concentrated in the possession of a few. Public interest might point this way but private interest decidedly opposed it, and private interest won.

There resulted from this a violent hatred between the privileged and the lower classes; the latter being formed of Spartans degraded from their ranks, enfranchised helots, Laconians to whom had been accorded certain rights, and the children of Spartan fathers of the higher order and alien mothers. These classes were given denominations that kept them separate and distinct; there was doubtless also a wide difference in conditions. Below the Equals, who formed a restricted oligarchy, were the Inferiors, or Spartans, who were excluded from the public tables, and the _neodamodes_ or helots enfranchised for services rendered the state, and lastly the _periœci_. Though they had no share in the actual government of their country these men estimated highly the value of their services to the state; and at different times many prominent figures, sons of Spartan fathers and helot mothers, such as Lysander, Gylippus, and Callicratidas had issued from this class. In a vindictive address against Lacedæmon the Thebans at Athens declared that the Spartans recruited their military governors from among men who had helot blood in their veins; and indeed many of these people had amassed competencies that gave them the ambition to leave the inferior station in which custom held them. When Cleomenes III promised liberty to those among the helots who could pay into the public treasury the sum of five minæ [£21 or $108], six thousand presented themselves.

Lacedæmon’s two royal houses, however, had been retained, and it should have been the function of these to maintain discipline in the state. But the newly-acquired wealth of Sparta, coupled with the growing authority of the ephors, appreciably diminished the power of the kings. Reduced to the rôle of hereditary generals these monarchs could never depart on an expedition without being accompanied by ten supervisors, who, under the name of councillors, in reality directed all the military operations. During the last years of the Peloponnesian War the decisive battles had been fought on sea, and the fleets were commanded, captives sold, cities ransomed and subsidies received from the Great King by men who were not of pure Spartan blood. Aristotle in his _Politics_ calls the office of admiral among them “a second royalty.”

Lysander was not obeying the dictates of ambition when, as Sparta’s leading citizen, he undertook to reform for his own advantage the political system of the city. “He could not,” says Plutarch, “see without regret a city whose glory he had done so much to increase governed by kings who had no more ability to rule than he, so he formed the plan of depriving the reigning houses of their dignity to make it the common appanage of all the Heraclids.” The discovery of the plot of Cinadon [described later] revealed an abyss of hatred yawning beneath the social system of Sparta, and at the same time an alarming unanimity of feeling between the inferior classes, both free and slaves. A civil war could easily have resulted from the situation; but Sparta, with that vigilance which continued distrust arouses in all oligarchies, discovered and baffled all the plots that were formed against her.

Yet in spite of this hostility between the classes, in spite of many other difficulties, such as strife between the kings on the one hand and the senators and the ephors on the other, in which the kings were reduced almost to the condition of subjects, and rivalry between the kings themselves, the Spartan government, by reason of concentration of authority in a few hands, was powerful enough for action against other states. At home and abroad the ephors and the harmosts, those so-called conciliators, exercised a permanent dictatorship, maintaining garrisons at Megara, Ægina, Tanagra, Pharsalus, Heraclea in Trachinia, at the entrance of Thermopylæ; also Dionysius of Syracuse was Sparta’s ally. But this power, widespread as it was, was scarcely more than an influence, and an influence that was already on the wane, since the nation that lacks citizens has no resources within itself.

Sparta’s exactions offended those who still loved liberty and had not, to console them for its loss, the advantages offered by Athens to her subjects--extensive commerce, and the splendour of public festivals, of arts and of poetry. Sparta, equally grasping and more oppressive, robbed her subjects of everything. She levied on them an annual tribute of one thousand talents [£200,000 or $1,000,000] which vanished in Lacedæmon never to be seen again, and those who had furnished her with troops, like the Achæans and Arcadians, or with vessels, like the Corinthians, or auxiliaries, like the Thebans, received nothing in return.

The weight of this heavy Dorian rule began shortly to be felt, and many regretted the Athenian supremacy that was kindly even in its excesses. That the Greeks from the coasts of Thrace or Asia, those people who had never known how to say “No,” should tremble at sight of a Spartan mantle or wand of office, was in no way remarkable, since they had been accustomed to obey. Not that a double servitude, that of the oligarchs, friends of Lysander, and that of the Lacedæmonian harmosts was not a great burden to bear, even for them. But Sparta must not count on such docility in the mother-country. She had not hesitated to speak as sovereign in the matter of the Athenian exiles, nor to make decrees, as sole authority, for all Greece. We have seen how Thebes responded.

Thebes, a continental power, had long aspired to play in central Greece the part played by Sparta in the Peloponnesus. Between this state and Athens there might be jealousy, but not necessarily a clash of interests as in her relations with Lacedæmonia. In the intoxication of victory Sparta had believed prudence no longer necessary, and, incensed that the Thebans should have taken at Decelea the tithe belonging to Apollo, had scornfully rejected their claims to a share in the spoils and treasures brought back by Lysander, fourteen hundred and seventy talents, the remainder of the advances made by Cyrus. Corinth, no better received, made common cause with Thebes, and this formed another ground of complaint to Sparta against that state. The Argives, in a discussion relative to the fixing of boundaries, maintained their reasons to be superior to those of their adversaries. “He who is strongest with this argument,” said Lysander, drawing his sword, “reasons best about boundary limits.” A Megarian, in conference, spoke in a very loud voice. “My friend,” said Lysander, addressing him, “your words need a city to make them good.” Still more unceremoniously Sparta dealt with the Eleans, as we shall see later.

To the imperious demands of the Spartan government were added individual acts of violence, which are often more odious because a single victim, even though obscure, excites more pity than a whole people bowed under defeat; and there is less peril in attacking public liberty which is the property of all, than in endangering, by contempt of truth and right, the honour or the life of an individual.

A kind and hospitable man of Leuctra, Scedadus, received in his house one day two young Lacedæmonians, who were greatly struck with the beauty of their host’s two daughters. Returning from a voyage to Delphi, whither they had gone to consult the oracle, these two Lacedæmonians found the daughters alone in the house and violated them, after which they murdered them and threw their bodies into the well. When Scedadus returned next day his daughters did not, to his surprise, come forth to meet him, and his dog, howling plaintively, ran back and forth from his master to the well. Alarmed, Scedadus looked into the well, discovered the crime, and learned from his neighbours who were its perpetrators. He departed at once for Lacedæmon. In Argolis he fell in with a man as unfortunate as himself, whose son had fallen a victim to the brutality of a Spartan. This father had believed in Lacedæmonian justice, but had had none accorded him. Nevertheless Scedadus continued on his journey, and when he arrived in Sparta, told his story to the ephors, to the kings, to all the citizens he met, but no one would give it heed. Then wishing to call the divine anger down upon Sparta he invoked all the gods of heaven and earth, especially the furies of revenge, and put an end to his life. A tomb was later erected at Leuctra to his unfortunate daughters.

As against the few facts of this nature that have come to our knowledge how many have escaped us? We realise this more fully when we reflect on the hatred Sparta everywhere inspired even in the Peloponnesus.

The Arcadians and the Achæans served her from motives of fear alone; she was, they declared, a citadel placed upon their flank to keep guard over the whole peninsula. At Lacedæmon their sentiments were well known. On his return from an expedition in which a whole Spartan corps had been lost, in the Corinthian War which we shall treat of shortly, Agesilaus entered the towns only at night, leaving them at break of day, that his men might not witness the joy exhibited by the inhabitants at this disaster.[f]