CHAPTER III .

THE SECOND ATHENIAN LEAGUE

GENERAL CONDITIONS OF GREECE IN 386 BC

OF the diplomatic settlements in Greek History none has been more severely censured than the ‘King’s Peace’. Six years after its conclusion the Athenian pamphleteer Isocrates indicted it in his most famous treatise, the Panegyricus, as a national disgrace; and the general verdict of historians has found a true bill on this count. The procedure by which a Persian satrap communicated his king’s sovereign pleasure to the Greek belligerents was in itself a humiliation, and the actual terms of the peace were even more dishonouring. In ceding the cities of the Asia Minor seaboard to Persia the Greeks alienated one of the finest portions of their heritage. These cities had not only maintained a close intercourse with their homeland, but had in a large measure imparted their culture to it: by any test they constituted an integral part of the Greek nation. Moreover the state to which the Greeks forfeited this prize was a power whose civilization had been arrested while Greek culture advanced by leaps and bounds. In the art of war more particularly Persia had been completely outdistanced by the Greeks. Her horsemen were still formidable; but no Persian army or fleet would dare to match itself against the Greeks in set battle. Greek admirals in command of Greek crews had obtained for Persia her recent naval victories; Greek mercenaries had formed the backbone of Cyrus’ insurrectionary force, and henceforward loyal and disloyal satraps competed for the services of Greek auxiliaries. That a state which was as dependent on its Greek soldiers as the decadent Roman Empire was on its Germans should nevertheless dictate political terms to the Greek people was a strange paradox and a scathing commentary on Hellenic statesmanship.

For this condition of things, as Isocrates rightly emphasized, the blame fell chiefly upon Sparta. It was Sparta that set the example of bargaining away Greek assets in order to enlist foreign allies against a Greek adversary, that suggested and enforced the conditions of the King’s Peace. But Sparta’s adversaries were thickly tarred with the same brush. The war of which the King’s Peace was the outcome was largely of their making; it sprang from trivial discontents or selfish desires of aggrandizement; and it stabbed Sparta in the back at the very moment when she had established a new front against Persia in defence of national Greek interests.

But however the blame should be apportioned, it must not be supposed that the guilty parties took Isocrates’ advice and repented. Nay rather they contracted a habit of invoking Persia as a party, to their quarrels, and it was more by good luck than by good management that Persia was prevented from exploiting these quarrels any further. In the fourth century the crime of ‘medism’ became respectable in Greece, and it remained in honour so long as the Mede remained to medize with.

Again, however rigorously we may condemn the betrayal of Asiatic Greece to Persia, we must acknowledge that for the Greek homeland the King’s Peace afforded quite a tolerable settlement. The principle of ‘autonomy for all’ was in theory an ideal ruling for the composure of Greek disputes, and the practical interpretation which Sparta put upon it gave little ground for discontent. True enough, the ephors relaxed the rule in their own favour when they imposed tribute upon some of the Aegean islands which remained attached to them, and they overstrained it in dissolving the Boeotian League. By the constitution of this league Boeotia was divided into eleven electoral districts, each of which supplied an equal quota of money or soldiers for federal purposes, and an equal number of representatives to the federal court, council and executive. Of these constituencies no less than four were made up out of Theban territory; the federal congress was held in Thebes; and the other cities had to find the subsistencemoney for their deputies. It therefore appears probable that the Thebans usually had a working majority at the congress. But in view of the superior size and central position of Thebes this arrangement did not constitute an unfair advantage. It is significant too that, except for a monopoly of coinage, Thebes conceded to the other cities their fair share of executive functions. Moreover, though the federal authorities probably had full control of Boeotian foreign policy, they do not appear to have unduly restricted local self-government. In breaking up the Boeotian League, therefore, the Spartans did Greek autonomy no service, and a disservice to Greek unity. On the other hand, they were fully justified in asserting the independence of Corinth against Argos, and in preventing Athens from converting her maritime allies into tributaries.

In any case, the King’s Peace provided the belligerent Greeks with a modus vivendi, and this for the time being was the one thing needful. The Corinthian War, treading on the heels of a yet greater conflict, had aggravated the unsettlement of Greece and threatened to afflict it with a chronic unrest. The most characteristic symptom of the ensuing period was the growth of the habit of professional soldiering among the Greeks. This habit was an almost unmitigated evil. It withdrew from productive enterprise the most vigorous and resourceful young men and disseminated the desire of living not by work but by plunder. On the high seas piracy again became rife; within the cities the struggle for political power grew fiercer as this power was more and more perverted to the economic exploitation of party victories. In the more orderly states the conflict assumed the comparatively harmless form of a scramble for state doles and pay; in the unruly ones contending parties made play with the almost meaningless catchwords of ‘oligarchy’ and ‘democracy’ in order to expropriate each other. While the citizens thus gambled for their livelihood, honest industry was relegated to metics or slaves. To the states which employed them the mercenaries were a ruinous source of expense. Hence the beneficent expenditure on public buildings which characterized the sixth and fifth centuries became more rare in the fourth. Outside the great national sanctuaries such as Olympia, Delphi and Epidaurus, where money for new construction was still forthcoming, the temple of Athena Aiea at Tegea is the only notable piece of architecture in Greece in the early fourth century. To raise the necessary revenues, not only had direct imposts and ‘liturgies’ to be increased, but harmful underhand taxes such as the sale of monopolies and depreciation of coinage (by the reduction of standards) became increasingly common, and rich men were liable to have their property confiscated with or without legal pretext.

Yet Greece had economic opportunities in plenty. Her industry, though lacking the fillip of fresh technical inventions, remained supreme in the artistic excellence of its products. Agricultural methods were being improved by pioneers who substituted for the conventional biennial fallow a three-year shift with a restorative course of leguminous plants or artificial grasses. At Athens, if not elsewhere in Greece, commerce was being stimulated by bankers who attracted the increasing stocks of gold and silver and out of these deposits advanced capital for shipping enterprise. These improvements in method moreover were accompanied by increased openings for trade. In the Greek lands a growing refinement of taste created a demand for more costly food, housing and furniture. Abroad the decline of the Etruscan market was compensated by the growth of commerce with Carthage and the revival of the Black Sea trade. Consequently for those who retained old habits of industry the fourth century was a period of economic stability or even prosperity. The small landowners, so far as is known, held their own, except perhaps round a few towns like Athens where enriched manufacturers or traders seeking to invest their gains in real estate bought them up. The small captains of industry were notoriously prosperous; and the large traders and manufacturers, though exposed to graver risks, often realized handsome profits. Few Greek communities, if any, had a happier fourth-century history than the small town of Megara, which eschewed political flutters and attended strictly to business.

Economic recovery thus lay within reach of Greece. But first of all the country required a respite from predatory politics.

In narrating the sequel to the King’s Peace we shall first consider its effects on Persia and her new subjects. From Persia’s standpoint the peace was a godsend. The example of rebellion which Evagoras had recently set in Cyprus showed ominous signs of spreading. To say nothing of the naval assistance provided by Athens, Hecatomnus the Carian satrap had secretly supplied Evagoras with money, and King Achoris, who had recently consolidated the rebel authority in Egypt, entered into overt alliance with him. So long as his attention was riveted on the war in the Aegean, King Artaxerxes appeared unable to cope with these insurrections; but on conclusion of the King’s Peace he at once set about to reduce the rebel chiefs. In 385 an army of unknown composition was conducted by Tithraustes and Pharnabazus against Achoris. After a three years’ campaign, the scene of which was apparently laid in Palestine, the Persian force retired beaten. Its defeat was followed by the secession of the native ruler of Cilicia and of the city of Tyre. The revolt of Tyre was of special importance in that it strengthened Evagoras’ naval position and united two natural adversaries, Greeks and Phoenicians, in a common rebellion. But in the meantime the satrap Tiribazus had been raising an army and fleet among his new Greek subjects on the Aegean coast. In 382 this force was sent to recover Cyprus. In its first campaign it displayed poor discipline and effected nothing. But in 381 Greek fought it out with Greek in a naval battle off Citium in which Evagoras was decisively beaten. Dissensions which broke out among the Persian commanders prevented them from exploiting their victory to the full. In the ensuing year Tiribazus’ successor Orontes was content to make a truce with Evagoras which confirmed him in his kingship at Salamis, and the attack upon Achoris was apparently not renewed. Nevertheless the rebel coalition was effectively broken. Evagoras was henceforth content to retain the sovereignty of Salamis, and after his death in 374 his son Nicocles abode by the settlement of 380.

The foregoing account shows that the Asiatic Greeks were made at once to feel the full weight of Persian domination. The Greek levies, if Isocrates is to be believed, were treated by their new masters with barbaric severity. To the blood-tax which Persia exacted so promptly money imposts were added, and in the citadels of some towns Persian garrisons were stationed. Yet burdens hardly less grievous had been imposed upon the Greek cities by Sparta; indeed in the long run the Persian yoke probably proved the lighter. Though the satraps of Lydia and Phrygia did not follow the example of the Carian ruler Hecatomnus and his son Mausolus, who set up their court in the Greek city of Halicarnassus and attracted Greek artists and men of letters to their residence, yet they found it worthwhile to conciliate subjects whose economic and military aptitudes were a source of strength to themselves. Whether the Greek towns under Persian rule experienced any general revival of material welfare cannot be ascertained; but the local prosperity of Cyzicus is strikingly attested by its copious issues of electrum coins1, which circulated through Greece in competition with the Persian darics. In any case, for better or worse, the Asiatic Greeks were united to Persia by what appeared to be a permanent tie. For their own part they made no attempt at rebellion, and until the coming of the Macedonians none of their European compatriots stirred a finger to obtain their release.

II.

SPARTA’S POLICY OF PRECAUTIONS

While the first clause of the King’s Peace effectively secured the permanent subjugation of the Asiatic Greeks, the second clause failed from the outset to guarantee universal autonomy for the remainder: indeed the very power which had imposed this clause set the example of violating it. By this disregard of her own rulings Sparta plunged Greece into a series of fresh crises and fired the train which exploded her own supremacy. Her inconsistency appears all the stranger, in that the settlement of 386 BC completely confirmed her authority in Greece. While Argos resumed its policy of self-isolation, Corinth rejoined the Peloponnesian League. The Boeotian cities, not excluding Thebes, entered into conventions with Sparta which bound them to send contingents when asked for; and the states of Euboea followed suit. So surely was Sparta’s ascendancy restored that shortly after 386 she was able to group her dependents in the Peloponnese and Central Greece into a number of administrative provinces, upon each of which an equal quota of military liabilities was imposed.

Why then did Sparta not respect her own settlement? Because she let herself be perverted by the personal prejudices of Agesilaus. The undoubted ability displayed by this king in the recent war had invested him with an authority which he made all the more lasting and effective for exercising it through strictly constitutional channels and with due respect to the prerogatives of the ephors. In matters of imperial policy Agesilaus remained for many years an adviser whose counsel was equal to law. Unfortunately for Sparta, he had taken no warning from the collapse of Sparta’s overseas empire, but persisted in the discredited policy of interfering with the constitutions of the dependent states and of imposing ‘safe’ governments upon them.

Of pretexts for the accomplishment of his purpose Agesilaus found no lack. The party spirit in Greek cities which had been raised to fever pitch by the Peloponnesian War was again inflamed by the Corinthian War. In the Peloponnese more particularly the warfare of factions continued after the general peace had been signed. By way of gaining a party advantage certain groups labelled themselves friends of Sparta, accused their adversaries of disloyalty to Sparta, and ended by inviting Spartan interference. Of the details of these quarrels and of Sparta’s interventions little is recorded; but we may gather from certain known instances how little regard Sparta paid to the autonomy of her dependents in regulating their affairs.

In the autumn of 385 the ephors sent a point-blank request to the Arcadian city of Mantinea to demolish its fortifications, and proceeded to enforce their demand by laying siege to the town. King Agesipolis, who commanded this punitive expedition, took advantage of a spate in the river Ophis to dam up the waters to flood level and by their sudden release to carry away the upper courses of the ring-wall which were built of unburnt brick. Having thus reduced the Mantineans he cantoned them out among the four or five villages out of which the city had been originally compacted, and upon this aggregate of scattered settlements he imposed an oligarchic government. In defence of these measures it may be urged that Mantinea had been seriously disaffected during the recent war; and Xenophon may be right in asserting that its former inhabitants benefited by residing nearer to their plots of land ‘and being rid of the troublesome demagogues.’ But Sparta’s precautions for its future loyalty were a manifest infringement of Mantinea’s autonomy.

In 383 Sparta began a series of coercive measures against Phlius, a town which was of some strategic importance, in that it commanded one of the subsidiary roads to the Isthmus, and had, like Mantinea, come under suspicion of disloyalty. A pretext for intervention was furnished by some political exiles who appealed to Sparta for reinstatement. The Phliasian government readmitted the exiles on Sparta’s demand, but failed to satisfy their claims to restitution of confiscated property, and thus drove them to renew their solicitations in Sparta. In the autumn of 381 Agesilaus, who had friends among the appellants, obtained authority to conduct an expedition against Phlius. After the rejection of his ultimatum, which called upon the Phliasians to admit a Spartan garrison into their citadel, he invested the town. By a notable effort of endurance the besieged held out for twenty months, but in the spring of 379 they were starved into surrender. A committee drawn in equal numbers from the townspeople and the exiles was appointed by Agesilaus to draft a new constitution and ‘to determine who should live and who should die’. We need not doubt that actually the émigrés had it all their own way in constitution-making and in dealing out life and death.

In 382 the Spartans involved themselves and their allies in a more serious war on the northern confines of Greece, where the cities of Chalcidice under the leadership of Olynthus had established a powerful confederation. This League, which probably had its origin at the time of the Peloponnesian War and was primarily directed against Athens, was carried on after the fall of the Athenian Empire as a means of resisting the occasional forays of plundering Thracians and the more systematic encroachments of Macedonia, whose enterprising king Archelaus (413—399) had constructed two great instruments of conquest, a regular army and military roads, and lost no opportunity of using them. A period of usurpations and disputed successions, which set in after Archelaus’ death and again reduced Macedon to a mere aggregate of baronies, gave the Chalcidians an opportunity of defending their seaboard by invading the hinterland. Taking advantage of the domestic difficulties of King Amyntas III (c. 393—369 BC), they not only extorted commercial concessions but acquired a piece of borderland from him; and when Amyntas repented of his bargain and sought to recover the borderland they retaliated by taking his capital Pella and a further wide strip of Macedonian territory. By 382 the Chalcidians had also entered into negotiations with the tribes of western Thrace with a view to possessing the gold mines of Mt Pangaeus, and they were on the point of contracting alliances with Athens and Thebes. These remarkable successes made it appear certain that the League could eventually draw in all the Greeks on the Macedonian coast; and although some important cities such as Amphipolis and Mende do not appear to have joined it, yet even those communities which resisted absorption admitted that their aversion to the League would wear off sooner or later. But the League would not be kept waiting. It prepared to annex the outstanding towns by compulsion only to find that the recalcitrants had superior force on their side. Two of the threatened cities, Acanthus and Apollonia, had appealed to Sparta and secured her assistance.

It need hardly be pointed out that the Acanthian envoy who described the League as a danger to Sparta’s supremacy in Greece was exaggerating. On general grounds of policy, therefore, Sparta had little interest in checking the League’s growth. The question whether she had any legal right to coerce the League is not so easy to determine. So far as is known, the League put no restraint upon the local liberties of its constituent members, except that it controlled their foreign and military policy, and that it compelled them to grant to each other full freedom of intercourse and intermarriage. The League as such therefore did not violate the right of any Greek city to be autonomous. On the other hand, the forcible incorporation of Acanthus and Apollonia into the League constituted a manifest breach of the principle of autonomy. But unless the League was a signatory of the King’s Peace—a point on which we have no information—it is not clear whether Sparta had any locus standi in the case.

Before taking action on the appeal of Acanthus and Apollonia the Spartans referred their suit to a congress of allies. From their allies they got more support for a war policy than might have been expected. Therefore, without waiting to try the effect of a friendly remonstrance upon the Chalcidians, they dispatched an advance force to garrison the threatened towns and in its wake sent a general Peloponnesian levy under Agesilaus’ brother Teleutias (summer 382). Begun in a hurry, the Chalcidian War ended at leisure. With the help of King Amyntas and of a vassal prince from the Macedonian uplands named Derdas, whose horsemen outfought the excellent Chalcidian cavalry, Teleutias beat the federal army out of the field, and in 381 he was able to invest Olynthus. But the besiegers had to spend two years before Olynthus, and during the siege they lost two of their commanders. In summer 381 Teleutias was killed in a sortie; some twelve months later his successor, King Agesipolis, died of fever. In 379 the Olynthians were at last starved into surrender. Their League was dissolved, and its individual members were enrolled as dependent allies of Sparta.

Unlike the expeditions against Mantinea and Phlius, the Chalcidian War could be justified on better grounds than mere military precaution. The disruption of the League, though in itself no more defensible than the dissolution of the Boeotian federation, was of no lasting consequence, for a few years later the Chalcidians affederated themselves again. In the conduct of the war the Spartans showed unusual consideration for their allies. Besides consulting them on the expediency of making war, they gave them the opportunity of commuting their military liabilities for a money payment which was used to hire mercenary substitutes. But the effort required to win the war placed a considerable strain upon the Spartan alliance. Moreover the opening moves of the war gave rise to an incident which finally discredited Sparta as a champion of Greek liberties.

In summer 382 a section of the advance force proceeding to Chalcidice happened to halt near Thebes on its way through Central Greece. Its commander Phoebidas was approached by one of the ‘polemarchs’ or chief magistrates of Thebes named Leontiades, who offered to deliver the city into Sparta’s hands. Phoebidas, who was anxious to win a reputation quand même, fell in with this proposal. By collusion with Leontiades he stole into Thebes during the siesta hour and made his way unnoticed to the citadel, which at that season was in sole possession of the worshippers at a special women’s festival. Thus Phoebidas won Thebes ambulando. But the crucial question remained whether the Spartan government would uphold his action. First impressions at Sparta were hostile to Phoebidas, if only because he had exceeded his orders. But Leontiades, who would have had to pay dear for his treason if Thebes had recovered freedom to punish him, went in person to Sparta to scare the ephors with stories of Theban disloyalty; and Agesilaus, whose constitutional fondness for ‘acts of precaution’ was reinforced in this case by an unsleeping grudge against the captured city, cunningly suggested that the acid test was whether Phoebidas had not brought gain to Sparta. Eventually the ephors decided to maintain a permanent garrison at Thebes. According to a story of doubtful value Phoebidas himself was put on trial and heavily fined. If so, the fine was probably never collected; in any case, his work was not disowned.

In extenuation of Sparta’s policy it might be urged that the anti-Spartan party at Thebes was still on even terms with Sparta’s adherents, and that their leader Ismenias, so far from lending a hand against the Chalcidians, was negotiating a treaty with them. But assuming that Thebes had evil intentions, we cannot admit that she had the power to give effect to them, as in 395. In 382 she had no support from her former partners in the Corinthian War, and she had lost control over the other Boeotian towns, all of whom had advertized their independence by the issue of separate municipal coinages. Under such conditions Thebes was no more formidable than Mantinea or Phlius. On the other hand, Sparta proceeded to aggravate her breach of faith by the execution of Ismenias at the orders of a court composed of three Spartans and one delegate from each allied city. Not only was this assize absolutely illegal, but the prisoner’s alleged offence, the receipt of money from Persia, was one which Sparta least of all Greek powers could afford to reprobate.

Whatever strategical advantages accrued to Sparta from her occupation of Thebes were more than counterbalanced by the moral detriment which she thereby suffered. Not only judicious critics such as Isocrates but avowed partisans like Xenophon denounced Sparta’s treachery. It is doubtful whether any other single act of Sparta went so far to lower her prestige. Conversely the Thebans were not crippled by Sparta’s sudden blow but stimulated to an effort of self-deliverance which changed the whole 6 political map of Greece.

III.

THE RISE OF THEBES

At first sight indeed Sparta’s authority appeared to have been greatly strengthened by her new conquest. Following up their success, the Spartans threw a garrison into Thespiae on some pretext or other, and invited the former inhabitants of Plataea, who had long been domiciled in Attica with a modified Athenian franchise, to resume possession of their city. The territories of Mycalessus and Pharae were also detached from Thebes and constituted into independent states; and it was probably also in 382 that the narrow oligarchies which we find shortly after in possession of all the Boeotian towns were installed. In Thebes a force of no less than 1500 men was maintained, and Leontiades kept constant guard against counter-revolutions. Not content with the death of Ismenias and the self-banishment of some 300 of Ismenias’ adherents, Leontiades imprisoned some 150 more of his adversaries and procured the assassination of Androcleides, his principal surviving opponent, who had sought safety in Athens. On the other hand, he apparently did not deem it necessary to introduce sweeping constitutional changes, and he seems to have abstained from wanton insults and spoliations.

Nevertheless a government which had sold Thebes’ independence and called in a foreign garrison could never be popular; neither could it disarm all its outlaws as it had disarmed Androcleides. At Athens a number of refugees who had eluded Leontiades’ bravoes eventually formed a conspiracy under the leadership of two prominent exiles, Melon and Pelopidas. The plotters were fortunate enough to find accomplices in Thebes, one of whom, a certain Phillidas, was secretary to the polemarchs and stood in their confidence. In December 379 seven refugees from Athens slipped into Thebes disguised as country folk. Having changed their costume at the house of an accomplice they made their next public appearance as choice examples of female beauty. Under this seductive semblance they were introduced by Phillidas to a wine-party in the house of the polemarch Archias, to which Leontiades’ principal followers had been invited. According to a story which looks like a later piece of embroidery Archias had received warning of danger from two separate quarters, but had allowed Phillidas to reassure him and agreed to leave over ‘business till tomorrow’. In any case he and his friends were as drunk as they were surprised and went down without a struggle. Leontiades, who was subsequently cornered by some of the conspirators in his own house, made a good fight for his life but was eventually brought down by Pelopidas.

The liberators, having thus destroyed the Theban government at one blow, immediately constituted themselves into a provisional administration. Their first act was to call their fellowcitizens to arms for an attack upon the Spartan garrison in the citadel. Had this force acted promptly, it should at this stage have found little difficulty in scattering and disarming the insurgents. But its commander lost his nerve completely. First of all, he gave the Thebans time to muster their forces and to head off the reinforcements which he had summoned from Thespiae, and allowed a corps of Athenian sympathizers who had been waiting on the Boeotian frontier to make their way to Thebes. On the next day, finding himself invested by the joint Theban and Athenian forces, he agreed to evacuate his post without waiting for the relief expedition which presently arrived from the Peloponnese. Small wonder that the Spartan Council of Elders condemned him and his principal lieutenant to death.

The departure of the Spartan garrison left the Theban liberators free to consummate their revolution by giving their city its first democratic constitution. But it remained to be seen whether the young Theban democracy could hold its own against Sparta in a set war. At the first news of rebellion the ephors had sent out King Cleombrotus, brother of the late Agesipolis, with a flying column. This force was deflected by the presence of an Athenian division on the main road to Thebes via Eleutherae, and had to pick its way along the difficult pass from Megara to Plataea. Nevertheless Cleombrotus drove off the defenders of the defile with heavy loss and descended into the Theban plain. Here he learnt that the city had been made proof against a coup de main, and being ill equipped for a midwinter campaign, he returned home without further fighting. But on his retreat he strengthened the garrison at Thespiae and made preparations for a more serious invasion in spring. So little confidence had the Thebans in their power to resist single-handed the full enemy levy that they made an offer of submission to Sparta.

We do not know whether the ephors gave any consideration to this proposal. In any case, before the negotiations could proceed far the whole face of the war was changed by another unrehearsed incident, a worthy pendant to the seizure of Thebes in 382. The hero of this new adventure was the commander of the garrison at Thespiae, who was not satisfied with the waiting role assigned to him but aspired to emulate the exploits of Phoebidas. This officer—his name was Sphodrias—shrewdly suspected that the ephors would like to see an end of the armed neutrality of Athens, which at-times had played over into open partnership with Thebes. He rightly imagined that by seizing the Piraeus he would put Athens at Sparta’s mercy; and he opportunely remembered that the Athenians had never troubled to complete the rebuilding of the Piraeus gates. He therefore planned a night attack upon the harbour of Athens; but he made his calculations with incredible carelessness. The distance from Thespiae to the Piraeus was some 45 miles; from Plataea, which was probably the starting-point of his march, it was fully thirty miles; his route lay across Mt Cithaeron, which was almost certainly snow-bound at that season. Yet he reckoned to accomplish his journey between sunset and sunrise. It is no matter for surprise that Sphodrias was still some ten miles short of his goal when daybreak compelled him to turn back. But he had advanced far enough to betray his purpose, and to remove all doubts on his attitude he plundered the Attic countryside on his retreat.

Sphodrias’ raid befel at a moment when public opinion at Athens wavered between the alternative policies of neutrality and active cooperation with Athens.. By way of requiting the services once rendered by Thebes to Thrasybulus and the other victims-of the Thirty Tyrants, the Athenians had gone so far as to shelter the Theban refugees from Leontiades’ persecution in spite of protests by Sparta; they had turned a blind eye on two of their strategi who led a volunteer force to assist in the expulsion of the Spartans from Thebes; and they had closed their frontiers to Cleombrotus on his winter expedition into Boeotia. But a strongcurrent of opinion ran in favour of continued peace with Sparta. To say nothing of the neighbourly jealousy that had long subsisted between them and Thebes, the Athenians, as we shall presently see, had themselves done well out of the peace of the last few years and for the moment were in no mood for warlike adventures. When it became evident that Sparta intended to prosecute the spring campaign with energy, they made an almost panicky attempt to whitewash themselves by putting on trial and condemning to death the two strategi at whose escapade they previously had connived. When three Spartan envoys who happened to be in Athens at the time of Sphodrias’ raid—no doubt in connection with the trial of the strategi—pledged their government to give full satisfaction for Sphodrias’ aggression, they promptly calmed the Athenians’ first outburst of anger. Had these promises been redeemed, there is little doubt that Athens would have taken no further action.

In dealing with the similar case of Phoebidas in 382 the ephors had had their hands tied by their obligations to Leontiades; in Sphodrias’ case they were free to let justice take its course. When Sphodrias was summoned before the Elders, he felt so sure of condemnation that he defaulted at the trial. Nevertheless he was acquitted. His personal friends made a great effort and won over King Agesilaus, who once more, as in Phoebidas’ case, used his authority to condone a subordinate’s breach of discipline.

The result of the trial provoked severe comment in Sparta itself. To the Greeks in general it suggested that Sphodrias had all along been hand in glove with the ephors. Of collusion between Sphodrias and other parties there was indeed no evidence. Nay rather we may at once reject the story that Sphodrias was acting under Spartan orders, and the rival contemporary tradition that he had been bribed by some Theban intriguers who banked on his failure. For the Spartans to lay odds on Sphodrias or the Thebans to lay odds against him would have been a particularly foolish gamble, for Thebes could not afford to make a present of Athens to Sparta, and Sparta did a very bad piece of business by driving Athens into the arms of Thebes. Yet we cannot be surprised that Sparta’s good faith was called into question. At Athens the acquittal of Sphodrias brought about a quick revulsion of feeling: without further hesitation the Assembly made alliance with Thebes.

The coalition between Athens and Thebes was put to the test in the summer of 378, when Agesilaus invaded Boeotia with a Peloponnesian levy of some 20,000 men. Although Agesilaus had incurred temporary discredit by his provocative foreign policy, and in recognition of that fact had left over the command of the previous winter expedition to his colleague Cleombrotus, the ephors wisely entrusted to him the leadership in the larger summer campaign. By an unsuspected compact with a stray mercenary corps Agesilaus forestalled his adversaries in occupying the Cithaeron passes and thus reached his advanced base at Thespiae without a struggle. On entering Theban territory he was brought up short by a line of trenches and palisades. This novel defence was the work of an Athenian named Chabrias, who had been sent to assist the Thebans with a strong force of peltasts. Like his countryman Iphicrates, Chabrias was a professional condottiere. In recent years he had taken service with the rebel kings of Cyprus and Egypt, and though the Athenians presently recalled him at the instance of their old friend Pharnabazus, he had gained some experience of field-fortifications in the Nile delta. The use of field-works, however, was never fully appreciated by the Greeks, who shirked the fatigue of throwing them up; and their first experiment with such defences was a failure. Agesilaus slipped through a negligently guarded sector of the fortifications and proceeded to ravage the Theban plain systematically, while the defenders, who dared not face the Spartans in a field battle, took shelter behind their city walls. But like the Athenians who sacrificed their crops in 431, the Thebans won the campaign by resolute inactivity. Unable either to outfight or to outstarve his enemy, Agesilaus retired from Boeotia without obtaining his decision.

In 377 the land campaign took a precisely similar course. By arrangement with the Spartan governor of Thespiae, Agesilaus again secured the Cithaeron passes before the Thebans were ready for him. By turning the field defences he once more gained access to the Theban plain. But he failed, as before, to induce the enemy to fight for their crops, and his Peloponnesian allies displayed such insubordination that he beat an early retreat.

The two successive invasions of Boeotia had been so far effective that in 377 the shortage of food in Thebes became serious. But in the ensuing autumn or winter an opportune assault upon Histiaea, the last remaining possession of Sparta in Euboea, gave the Thebans naval communication with Thessaly and enabled them to revictual themselves from that quarter.

In the season of 376 the Thebans’ power of endurance was not tried so severely. In the spring the Spartans sent out their usual expeditionary force. But as Agesilaus had fallen ill the command devolved upon Cleombrotus. This king, though not lacking in strategic skill, had no heart in a vendetta against Thebes. By misfortune or design he failed to carry the Cithaeron barrier and fell back without having molested the Thebans. Henceforth the Spartans made no further attempt to invade Boeotia by the Isthmus route, and although they considered a plan for turning the Cithaeron defences by transporting their forces across the Corinthian Gulf, they were deterred from their purpose by the preponderant naval forces of Athens.

No sooner were the Thebans rid of the Spartan field forces than they assumed the initiative in Boeotia and proceeded to recover the neighbouring towns. Of their operations in 376 and 375 hardly anything is known, but the story of one significant episode in these campaigns has come down to us. A Theban corps having made an unsuccessful attack on Orchomenus during the temporary absence of its Spartan garrison fell in by accident with the Spartan force on its return, and thus was committed to a fight with an army of twice its own strength (375 BC). Nothing daunted, its commander Pelopidas charged home and cut his way through with great slaughter. Although the total numbers engaged were small, this battle of Tegyra greatly enhanced Theban prestige. The instrument of Thebes’ victory was a newly formed division of 300 regular troops known as the ‘Sacred Band,’ who were subsisted at public expense and acquired a Spartan proficiency in arms. These troops had originally been distributed over the entire Theban battle front, but at Tegyra they were collected into a separate company. In view of its performance in this battle the Sacred Band was henceforth regularly used as the spear-head of the Theban column of attack.

The effect of Thebes’ military successes was enhanced by a political reaction against the oligarchies installed by Sparta in the minor Boeotian towns. Consequently by 374 the Thebans had recovered by force or by amicable surrender all the Boeotian cities except Orchomenus, Thespiae and Plataea. The reconquered cities probably followed the example of Thebes in setting up democracies, and at some time between 374 and 371 they were incorporated in a new Boeotian League. In the new federation a popular assembly supplanted, or more probably supplemented, the former federal Council, and the number of federal constituencies was reduced from eleven to seven, of which Thebes appropriated three. In other respects the constitution of the new League appears to have followed that of its predecessor; the Thebans again reserved the right of issuing coins to themselves, but they do not seem to have claimed any novel prerogative. But in actual practice their ascendancy over the other towns and their power of shaping the League’s foreign policy were more complete than ever.

IV.

THE NEW ATHENIAN THALASSOCRACY

The defection of Boeotia, following upon the revolt of Thebes, did not complete the tale of Sparta’s losses in the warfare of the ’seventies. While her authority on land. Was being undermined, the Last remains of her naval power were being annihilated, and the ascendancy among the maritime states of Greece was being definitely restored to Athens.

It may appear strange that the Athenians should once more have revived ambitions of supremacy in Greece which the double defeat of the Peloponnesian and Corinthian Wars had seemingly dispelled for ever. But, as we have already seen in the preceding chapter, the memories of the fifth century could not be readily effaced in Athenian minds; on the other hand, as the fourth century wore on, the traces of the havoc wrought by the recent wars were gradually obliterated.

The economic condition of Athens, though less brilliant than in the Periclean age, compared well with that of her neighbours. The land of Attica stood once more under intensive cultivation, and although some of the richer citizens appear to have given less personal attention to their estates, others devoted their capital to the systematic improvement of the soil. At the Laurium mines operations on a large scale were not resumed until the second half of the fourth century. On the other hand, the quarries of Pentelicus benefited by the growing demand for Attic marble. The ceramic industries of Athens gradually lost their markets in Etruria and South Italy, but found compensation in an increased traffic with southern Russia. The revival of the Athenian carrying trade was even more complete. In western waters the growth of Syracusan empire no doubt acted as a check upon Athenian commerce, but in the eastern seas the Attic merchantmen fully recovered their former position. Indications are not lacking of increased intercourse between Athens and Phoenicia, and of the resumption of active trade on the north Aegean coast. But these gains were of little significance compared with the expansion of Athenian trade along the northern coast of the Black-Sea. In this district a dynasty of native rulers known as the ‘Spartocidae’ had towards the end of the fifth century united the Greek cities on either side of the Kertsch straits and the adjacent hinterland into one extensive realm which presently became one of the chief centres of wheat production in the Greek world. In the reign of Satyrus I (433—389 BC) the Athenians were granted exemption from the usual export duties at the ports of the Crimea, and under Leucon (389—349) their privilege was confirmed. An important traffic in grain thus grew up between Theodosia, the chief exporting centre, and the Piraeus. Of the wheat cargoes which came to the Piraeus Attic law allowed one third to be re-exported, and we need not doubt that Athenian skippers took advantage of this permission to ply a general trade in corn with the importing cities of the Aegean area. To such an extent did the maritime commerce of Athens revive that by 370 the city had the reputation of deriving most of its livelihood from the sea.

The increased demand for money which followed upon this revival of commerce gave in its turn a fresh impetus to the business of banking. Money-lenders became deposit bankers, and out of their growing loan-funds made large advances to merchants. As an example of this new development we may mention the bank of a metic named Pasion. The working capital of this financier was no longer wholly made up out of his private means, but a considerable portion was derived from sums paid in to him by one set of customers and lent out by him to another set. In the dealings of this firm the transition from money-lending to banking in the proper sense of that term is apparent. Another innovation which we may probably attribute to the Athenian money-dealers of this period is the system of making payments between bank customers by mere book-entries without cash transfers. This improvement in the technique of banking was a natural outcome of the rigid system of accountancy in Athenian public finance, which must have provided the necessary habits of accuracy in book-keeping. The flow of capital towards enterprise which was created by these new methods was of especial benefit to the Athenian shipping trade; and at a time when Athens had lost her imperial revenues and her monopoly of coinage in the Aegean area, she nevertheless became, because of her banks, the principal money market of Greece.

While Athens was regaining her economic pre-eminence she also acquired an enviable immunity from those domestic disturbances which elsewhere in Greece were becoming endemic. The rule of the Thirty Tyrants had done this much good, that all Athenians high and low had acquired a healthy horror of revolution, and rich as well as poor loyally accepted the existing democratic constitution. Hence in the fourth century Athens enjoyed a higher measure of political stability than in the fifth.

Last but not least, the intellectual and artistic achievements of Athens had hardly if at all declined from the level of the Periclean age, and the prestige accruing to her from them was actually growing. The Acropolis had become a show-place like Olympia or Delphi; the Attic drama was reproduced on every Greek stage; Attic literature was exported in book form all over the Greek world; and the Attic dialect was becoming the universal language of educated Greece. Pericles’ boast that Athens was the school of Greece was coming true, and this in an age when, in Isocrates’ words, the name of ‘Greek’ was becoming a mark of culture rather than of race.

In 380 the claims of Athens to the hegemony of Greece were formulated and made known to the entire Greek world in one of Isocrates’ masterpieces, the Panegyricus. In this treatise the Athenian pamphleteer denounced the results of the King’s Peace and indicated a new confederation under Athenian leadership as the remedy for Greece’s political ills. But before the publication of this treatise the Athenians had already taken the first steps towards realizing his programme. The ink was hardly dry on the King’s Peace before they commenced to resume those alliances which the Peace had forced them to abandon. In 386 or 385 they made a treaty with Hebryzelmis, king of the Odrysian Thracians on the Gallipoli peninsula. About the same time they came to a new understanding with Chios, and within the next few years made fresh pacts with Mitylene, Byzantium and Rhodes.

Early in 377 the Athenians took advantage of the bad impression caused by Sparta’s recent abuses of power to pass a decree inviting all neighbouring states, both Greek and barbarian, excepting only the subjects of Persia, to form a league of mutual defence, with the special object of preventing fresh inroads on Greek autonomy by Sparta. The executive power of the league was to be vested in Athens; but its policy was to be framed by concurrent discussion in two co-ordinate congresses. The one branch of this bipartite parliament was to consist of the Athenian Council and Assembly, the other was to be a synod of representatives from all the other states of the league, also sitting in Athens, but containing no Athenian members. The autonomy of Athens’ allies was to be scrupulously respected. Elaborate precautions were devised against the establishment of Athenian cleruchies on i allied soil, and measures were even taken to expropriate such few Athenians as owned land in allied territory. It is probable that a federal court was also set up, though the point is under dispute.

The constitution of the new league suffered from two serious deficiencies. No regulations were drawn up for the delicate task of assessing the military and financial liabilities of its members; and no machinery was provided for removing a deadlock between the two branches of congress. In actual practice both these omissions, and especially the lack of a proper system of assessment, were to prove detrimental to the league’s efficiency. Nevertheless the project was one of the most statesmanlike schemes put forward by Greek constitution-makers. The self-denying spirit in which the Athenians debarred themselves from acquiring any unfair advantage over their allies offers a striking proof that they had taken to heart their previous failures as rulers of an empire. As a bond of union between the Greek states the Second Athenian Confederacy, as the league is usually styled, had the peculiar merit of making full allowance for the Greek cities’ love of autonomy; and at a time when the rival Spartan Confederacy was about to break up it offered not a mere paper scheme but a practical instrument of government.

In actual fact the success of the Athenian manifesto fell far short of its deserts. The existing allies of Athens, Chios, Byzantium, Mitylene, Rhodes, Methymna and Thebes enrolled themselves as original members of the Confederacy. In summer 377 the greater part of Euboea came in, and some scattered cities in the northern Aegean were drawn in by a recruiting flotilla under Chabrias, thus bringing the total to fifteen members. But for the present most of the Aegean states held aloof, and Sparta’s allies on the mainland resisted the solicitations of an Athenian mission which vainly coaxed them to throw off a well-tried if not wholly happy allegiance.

In spite of these disappointments, the Athenians prepared for a vigorous prosecution of the war against Sparta. Realizing that frequent calls would be made upon their purses they remodelled their machinery for levying property-taxes. In order to distribute their incidence more evenly they made a general assessment of their total wealth, both real and personal. The declared total of 6000 talents appears impossibly small as tried by modern standards, and it probably fell considerably short of the real total; yet it is roughly in keeping with other estimates of the wealth of Greek states. As a further means of equalizing the burden the Athenians apportioned all their tax-payers into 100 ‘Symmories’ or groups of approximately equal aggregate wealth, each of which contributed an equal quota of the sum required from year to year and made its own arrangements for assessing its corporate liability upon its individual members.

The failure of the Spartan offensive against Boeotia made it unnecessary for the Athenians to raise large forces for the land war: only in 378 does any considerable Athenian army appear to have taken the field. But from 376 onwards they were called upon to make a considerable naval effort. Unable to force a decision against Thebes, the Spartans in 376 undertook a naval campaign against Athens. A Peloponnesian fleet of 65 sail established bases on Aegina and the nearest of the Cyclades and held up the Athenian corn ships off Euboea. The Athenians, no less resolute, raised by dint of hard taxation and conscription a squadron of 83 sail. With this armada their admiral Chabrias set free the corn ships and by an attack upon Naxos, the principal ally of Sparta among the Cyclades, forced the Peloponnesians to fight. In the battle of Naxos the Athenians gained a victory which might have been as complete as that of Aegospotami, had not Chabrias called off the pursuit in order to rescue the crews of his damaged vessels. Even so his success was decisive: for the next 54 years the Athenians remained masters of the Aegean. As a result of their victory they at once gathered in numerous fresh recruits to their new confederacy. In 376—5 most of the Cyclades renewed their alliance with Athens, and about this time the sanctuary of Delos, which had temporarily fallen into Athenian hands in 390 and again in 377, was definitely brought back under Athenian control. In 375 Chabrias made a prolonged cruise in the northern Aegean, in the course of which he enlisted the reconstituted Chalcidian League and a string of other states extending as far as Lesbos and the Sea of Marmora. It was probably also due to Chabrias that King Amyntas made a treaty with the Athenians and gave them facilities for importing the valuable ship-timber of Macedonia. In the same year another Athenian fleet under Conon’s son Timotheus sailed round Peloponnesus at the request of the Thebans and deterred a Peloponnesian army from attacking Boeotia by way of the Corinthian Gulf. The same squadron also defeated a new Peloponnesian fleet of 55 sail off the Acarnanian coast and obtained several new recruits for the Athenian Confederacy in north-western Greece, chief among them being the Acarnanians, Alcetas king of the Molossi, and the island of Corcyra, where a democratic faction had invoked Athenian assistance against the preponderant oligarchy.

In the campaigns of 376—5 the Athenians swept the seas as they never had done since the early years of the Peloponnesian War, and they reared their Confederacy from a puny childhood to a vigorous youth. But the price which they paid for these successes was almost prohibitive. In spite of the contributions which their most recent allies had paid on entering the league, the expenses of their fleet more than absorbed their available funds. By 376 Athenian finances had got into such disorder that a special commissioner named Androtion was appointed to reorganize them. It was probably on his recommendation that the Athenians imposed upon the three richest members of each Symmory the duty of paying in advance its entire yearly quota of property-tax, and conferred upon them the right of subsequently recovering from the other members of the Symmory. While the burden of the war thus grew heavier, the reasons for waging it became less compelling. So far as their own safety was concerned the Athenians had nothing further to fear from Sparta, and as the conflict wore on they felt less and less inclined to fight the battles of Thebes. Although the Thebans had contributed a few ships to the Athenian fleet they had given their allies no financial support and thus created the impression that they were not pulling their weight.

JASON OF PHERAE

In 374 accordingly the Athenians made peace overtures and found the Spartans willing. No further effort on Sparta’s part appeared likely to retrieve her failures on land and sea, and but recently her impotence had been brought home to her by an embassy from her last remaining ally in northern Greece, whose appeal for help she was constrained to refuse. This appeal came from Polydamas the ruler of Pharsalus, a city which, like most of Thessaly, had shown hostility to Sparta during the Corinthian War, but had since resumed friendly relations. The adversary against whom Polydamas invoked assistance was Jason, the successor of Lycophron at Pherae, who had revived Lycophron’s plan of extending his dominion over all Thessaly. Having recruited a large mercenary corps out of his great personal fortune Jason had in the course of the ’seventies reduced the other Thessalian cities, which apparently made no attempt to combine against him, and in 374 Pharsalus alone remained free. Although Polydamas received a tempting offer of an amicable settlement with Jason, he resolved to make a fight for his independence, and acting on a hint which Jason had generously, or with a cunning prescience of its uselessness, presented to him, he went to Sparta in person to press his suit. To say nothing of their obligations to Polydamas, it was manifestly in the interest of the Spartans to check the further growth of Jason’s power. In contrast with his predecessor, Jason had given overt if intermittent support to Sparta’s enemies: he had attacked the Spartan post at Histiaea, and in 374 he entered into a short-lived alliance with Athens. Nevertheless the Spartans ruefully left Polydamas to shift for himself. Such few troops as they could raise for distant service they were obliged at this juncture to send to Orchomenus and Phocis, which were being urgently menaced with a Theban offensive.

The negotiations between Athens and Sparta led to a prompt conclusion of peace (midsummer 374). While reasserting pro forma the autonomy of all Greeks, the Athenians recognized Sparta’s ascendancy in the Peloponnese and the Spartans acknowledged the Athenian Confederacy. It is not known what consideration, if any, was given to the status of the Boeotian League as reconstructed by Thebes; but it is probable that the Thebans signed the peace as members of the Athenian Confederacy, and in any case the Spartans withdrew their remaining garrisons from Boeotia, thus acquiescing de facto in Thebes’ recent conquests.

The peace of 374 was hailed with great satisfaction at Athens, and to commemorate the event Cephisodotus, the kinsman of Praxiteles, was commissioned to make statues of Mother Peace and Infant Plenty. This monument, however, was the only durable result of the negotiations, for the peace died in the hour of its birth. On returning from his cruise in the Ionian Sea Timotheus landed some democratic exiles from Zacynthus on that island, and the Athenians endorsed his action so far as to admit the ‘Zacynthian demos’ as an independent community into their Confederacy. The Spartans, on the other hand, used this breach of the treaty as a pretext for the immediate resumption of hostilities. The reason for this sudden change of front may be found in a promise of assistance from Sparta’s old ally Dionysius, who was free for the moment to divert his attention from Sicilian to Greek politics. In concert with Dionysius the Spartans decided to acquire Corcyra as the chief link of communication between Greece and Sicily. An advance squadron sent out on the chance of carrying the island by surprise failed in its purpose; but in the spring of 373 a squadron drawn from all Sparta’s maritime allies drove the Corcyraeans off the seas and with the help of a strong landing force put Corcyra town under blockade. To this attack the Athenians replied by fresh levies of soldiers and ships. With the help of Jason and of King Alcetas of the Molossi they at once sent a small peltast force over land to the relief of Corcyra. But their naval preparations were delayed month after month by lack of funds. As their admiral Timotheus shrank from offending Athens’ allies by forcibly impressing men and money, he could only obtain skeleton crews for his fleet. While he lay to, or made futile recruiting cruises in the Aegean, the besieging force all but starved out the Corcyraeans. But the Spartan commander lost his prize over some petty pecuniary quests. By embezzling the pay of his mercenaries he so impaired their discipline that they let themselves be thoroughly routed in an eleventh-hour sortie by the defenders. Thus Corcyra gained a breathing-space until the arrival of the relief squadron. Towards the end of summer the Athenians replaced Timotheus by Iphicrates, who showed less scruple in impressing crews and presently made for Corcyra with 70 sail. The mere news of his approach sufficed to send the Peloponnesian force scuttling homewards, and a small Syracusan squadron which had been sent out to join hands with them fell instead into Iphicrates’ grasp. In the following year Iphicrates remained in the western sea and gained some fresh allies. But though he was less delicate than Timotheus in exacting contributions from the allies he eventually sank into the same state of indigence as his predecessor. Once more the Athenians were reminded that a successful naval campaign could be as ruinous as a disastrous one.

A change in the temper of the Athenians had already set in towards the end of 373, when Timotheus was put on trial but acquitted. Their ardour was further damped by the prospect of an open breach with Thebes. Although the Thebans had contributed some ships to Timotheus’ fleet, they almost came to blows with Athens over the Boeotian border towns recently evacuated by Sparta. While the Athenians snatched Oropus, the Thebans pounced upon Plataea and for a second time destroyed the buildings and expelled the inhabitants (373), and shortly after they turned the Thespians adrift in similar fashion. The Plataeans flocked back to Athens, where their grievances were ventilated by Isocrates in a pamphlet which censured the Thebans with outspoken severity.

At the same time the Athenians suffered a disappointment in their failure to secure an alliance with Jason. Such an alliance appeared all the more desirable since the return of Polydamas from his futile errand to Sparta and the consequent surrender of Pharsalus to the tyrant of Pherae. The whole of Thessaly now acknowledged Jason’s authority, and its reunion under one chief was signalized by the revival of the obsolete title of ‘tagus’, or federal commander, in Jason’s favour. But the more reason the Athenians had to covet the friendship of Jason, the less was this ambitious ruler disposed to subserve Athenian interests. Rumour declared that he intended to challenge the naval supremacy of Athens, and conflicts with Athens were foreboded by his intervention in Macedonia, where King Amyntas became his ally and was thus withdrawn from the Athenian sphere of influence.

The peace movement in Athens found a powerful advocate in Callistratus, a politician who by virtue of his oratory had established over the Assembly an ascendancy similar to that of Pericles or Demosthenes. As late as 373 Callistratus had stood for a vigorous war policy, but he had since realized that Athenian finances would not bear the strain of further fighting.

While Athenian policy was thus gravitating towards peace, the Spartans had sent Antalcidas on a fresh mission to the Persian court, and the Persian king, who at this time was projecting a new campaign against Egypt and wished to see the Greek soldiers demobilized in order that he might attract them to his own service, dispatched an envoy to Sparta to mediate a general peace (spring 371).

In summer 371 a peace congress was convened at Sparta. The Athenian delegates, headed by Callistratus, discussed the issues that lay between them and the Spartans with statesmanlike frankness and soon came to an understanding with them. Under cover of the consecrated formula of ‘autonomy for all’, they not only, as in 374, secured recognition for the Athenian Confederacy, but induced the Spartans to withdraw their garrisons from their remaining dependencies. On these terms the treaty was actually signed by all parties and confirmed by oath. But on the day after its conclusion the Theban delegate Epaminondas asked for permission to substitute ‘Boeotians’ for ‘Thebans’ on the document.

Why did Epaminondas call for this belated amendment? The most probable explanation is that during the negotiations he had assumed that the precedent established by the peace discussions of 374 would hold good and Thebes’ claim to sign for Boeotia would be accepted as a matter of course, but that he had misgivings when he found that on behalf of the Athenian Confederacy not only Athens but the allies of Athens all and single were taking the oath, thus implying that each delegate could only bind his own particular city. But whatever his motive, Epaminondas’ request was a perfectly reasonable one, for he was entitled to assume that the substance of his claim to sign on behalf of all Boeotia had already been conceded, and that the alteration which he proposed was a mere affair of drafting. Nevertheless King Agesilaus refused on Sparta’s behalf to make any change in the treaty. This pedantic adherence to the strict letter of the treaty was a piece of sharp practice in which the personal animus of Agesilaus against Thebes is only too apparent. But the Spartan ephors and the Athenian delegates must bear part of the blame, for either of these could have brought him to reason had they cared to do so. Nevertheless Epaminondas had little cause for complaint: the history of the next three weeks was to show that Agesilaus had really played into his hands.

CHAPTER IV