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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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!

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]

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.

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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.

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]

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]

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]

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.

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.

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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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.

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.

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.