Chapter LXXII: Greece Under the Lacedæmonian Empire (1)

The three preceding Chapters have been devoted exclusively to the narrative of the Expedition and Retreat, immortalized by Xenophon, occupying the two years intervening between about April 401 B.C. and June 399 B.C. That event, replete as it is with interest and pregnant with important consequences, stands apart from the general sequence of Grecian affairs,—which sequence I now resume.

It will be recollected that as soon as Xenophon with his Ten Thousand warriors descended from the rugged mountains between Armenia and the Euxine to the hospitable shelter of Trapezus, and began to lay their plans for returning to Central Greece,—they found themselves within the Lacedæmonian empire, unable to advance a step without consulting Lacedæmonian dictation, and obliged, when they reached the Bosphorus, to endure without redress the harsh and treacherous usage of the Spartan officers, Anaxibius and Aristarchus.

Of that empire the first origin has been set forth in my last preceding volume. It began with the decisive victory of Ægospotami in the Hellespont (September or October 405 B.C.), where the Lacedæmonian Lysander, without the loss of a man, got possession of the entire Athenian fleet and a large portion of their crews,—with the exception of eight or nine triremes with which the Athenian admiral Konon effected his escape to Euagoras at Cyprus. The whole power of Athens was thus annihilated, and nothing remained for the Lacedæmonians to master except the city itself and Peiræus; a consummation certain to happen, and actually brought to pass in April 404 B.C., when Lysander entered Athens in triumph, dismantled Peiræus, and demolished a large portion of the Long Walls. With the exception of Athens herself,—whose citizens deferred the moment of subjection by an heroic, though unavailing, struggle against the horrors of famine,—and of Samos,—no other Grecian city offered any resistance to Lysander after the battle of Ægospotami; which in fact not only took away from Athens her whole naval force, but transferred it all over to him, and rendered him admiral of a larger Grecian fleet than had ever been seen together since the battle of Salamis.

I have recounted in my sixty-fifth chapter, the sixteen months of bitter suffering undergone by Athens immediately after her surrender. The loss of her fleet and power was aggravated by an extremity of internal oppression. Her oligarchical party and her exiles, returning after having served with the enemy against her, extorted from the public assembly, under the dictation of Lysander who attended it in person, the appointment of an omnipotent council of thirty for the ostensible purpose of framing a new constitution. These thirty rulers,—among whom Kritias was the most violent, and Theramenes (seemingly) the most moderate, or at least the soonest satiated,—perpetrated cruelty and spoliation on the largest scale, being protected against all resistance by a Lacedæmonian harmost and garrison established in the acropolis. Besides numbers of citizens put to death, so many others were driven into exile with the loss of their property, that Thebes and the neighboring cities became crowded with them. After about eight months of unopposed tyranny, the Thirty found themselves for the first time attacked by Thrasybulus at the head of a small party of these exiles coming out of Bœotia. His bravery and good conduct,—combined with the enormities of the Thirty, which became continually more nefarious, and to which even numerous oligarchical citizens, as well as Theramenes himself, successively became victims,—enabled him soon to strengthen himself, to seize the Peiræus, and to carry on a civil war which ultimately put down the tyrants.

These latter were obliged to invoke the aid of a new Lacedæmonian force. And had that force still continued at the disposal of Lysander, all resistance on the part of Athens would have been unavailing. But fortunately for the Athenians, the last few months had wrought material change in the dispositions both of the allies of Sparta and of many among her leading men. The allies, especially Thebes and Corinth, not only relented in their hatred and fear of Athens, now that she had lost her power,—but even sympathized with her suffering exiles, and became disgusted with the self-willed encroachments of Sparta; while the Spartan king Pausanias, together with some of the ephors, were also jealous of the arbitrary and oppressive conduct of Lysander. Instead of conducting the Lacedæmonian force to uphold at all price the Lysandrian oligarchy, Pausanias appeared rather as an equitable mediator to terminate the civil war. He refused to concur in any measure for obstructing the natural tendency towards a revival of the democracy. It was in this manner that Athens, rescued from that sanguinary and rapacious _regime_ which has passed into history under the name of the Thirty Tyrants, was enabled to reappear as a humble and dependent member of the Spartan alliance,—with nothing but the recollection of her former power, yet with her democracy again in vigorous and tutelary action for internal government. The just and gentle bearing of her democratical citizens, and the absence of reactionary antipathies, after such cruel ill-treatment,—are among the most honorable features in her history.

The reader will find in my last volume, what I can only rapidly glance at here, the details of that system of bloodshed, spoliation, extinction of free speech and even of intellectual teaching, efforts to implicate innocent citizens as agents in judicial assassination, etc.,—which stained the year of Anarchy (as it was termed in Athenian annals[300]) immediately following the surrender of the city. These details depend on evidence perfectly satisfactory; for they are conveyed to us chiefly by Xenophon, whose sympathies are decidedly oligarchical. From him too we learn another fact, not less pregnant with instruction; that the knights or horsemen, the body of richest proprietors at Athens, were the mainstay of the Thirty from first to last, notwithstanding all the enormities of their career.

[300] Xen. Hellen. ii, 3, 1.

We learn from these dark, but well-attested details, to appreciate the auspices under which that period of history called the Lacedæmonian empire was inaugurated. Such phenomena were by no means confined within the walls of Athens. On the contrary, the year of Anarchy (using that term in the sense in which it was employed by the Athenians) arising out of the same combination of causes and agents, was common to a very large proportion of the cities throughout Greece. The Lacedæmonian admiral Lysander, during his first year of naval command, had organized in most of the allied cities factious combinations of some of the principal citizens, corresponding with himself personally; by whose efforts in their respective cities he was enabled to prosecute the war vigorously, and whom he repaid, partly by seconding as much as he could their injustices in their respective cities,—partly by promising to strengthen their hands still farther as soon as victory should be made sure.[301] This policy, while it served as a stimulus against the common enemy, contributed still more directly to aggrandize Lysander himself; creating for him an ascendency of his own, and imposing upon him personal obligations towards adherents, apart from what was required by the interests of Sparta.

[301] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 5.

The victory of Ægospotami, complete and decisive beyond all expectations either of friend or foe, enabled him to discharge these obligations with interest. All Greece at once made submission to the Lacedæmonians,[302] except Athens and Samos,—and these two only held out a few months. It was now the first business of the victorious commander to remunerate his adherents, and to take permanent security for Spartan dominion as well as for his own. In the greater number of cities, he established an oligarchy of ten citizens, or a dekarchy,[303] composed of his own partisans; while he at the same time planted in each a Lacedæmonian harmost or governor, with a garrison to uphold the new oligarchy. The dekarchy of ten Lysandrian partisans, with the Lacedæmonian harmost to sustain them, became the general scheme of Hellenic government throughout the Ægean, from Eubœa to the Thracian coast-towns, and from Myletus to Byzantium. Lysander sailed round in person, with his victorious fleet, to Byzantium and Chalkêdon, to the cities of Lesbos, to Thasos, and other places,—while he sent Eteonikus to Thrace, for the purpose of thus recasting the governments everywhere. Not merely those cities which had hitherto been on the Athenian side, but also those which had acted as allies of Sparta, were subjected to the same intestine revolution and the same foreign constraint.[304] Everywhere the new Lysandrian dekarchy superseded the previous governments, whether oligarchical or democratical.

[302] Xen. Hellen. ii, 2, 6.

[303] These Councils of Ten, organized by Lysander, are sometimes
called _Dekarchies_—sometimes _Dekadarchies_. I use the former
word by preference; since the word _Dekadarch_ is also employed
by Xenophon in another and very different sense—as meaning an
officer who commands a _dekad_.

[304] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 13.

Καταλυών δὲ τοὺς δήμους καὶ τὰς ἄλλας πολιτείας, ἕνα μὲν ἁρμοστὴν
ἑκάστῃ Λακεδαιμόνιον κατέλιπε, δέκα δὲ ἄρχοντας ἐκ τῶν ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ
συγκεκροτημένων κατὰ πόλιν ἑταιρειῶν. Καὶ ταῦτα πράττων ~ὁμοίως
ἔν τε ταῖς πολεμίαις καὶ ταῖς συμμάχοις γεγενημέναις πόλεσι~,
παρέπλει σχολαίως τρόπον τινα κατασκευαζόμενος ἑαυτῷ τὴν τῆς
Ἑλλάδος ἡγεμονίαν. Compare Xen. Hellen. ii, 2, 2-5; Diodor. xiii,
3, 10, 13.

At Thasus, as well as in other places, this revolution was not accomplished without much bloodshed as well as treacherous stratagem, nor did Lysander himself scruple to enforce, personally and by his own presence, the execution and expulsion of suspected citizens.[305] In many places, however, simple terrorism probably sufficed. The new Lysandrian Ten overawed resistance and procured recognition of their usurpation by the menace of inviting the victorious admiral with his fleet of two hundred sail, and by the simple arrival of the Lacedæmonian harmost. Not only was each town obliged to provide a fortified citadel and maintenance for this governor with his garrison, but a scheme of tribute, amounting to one thousand talents annually, was imposed for the future, and assessed ratably upon each city by Lysander.[306]

[305] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 13. πολλαῖς παραγινόμενος αὐτὸς
σφαγαῖς καὶ συνεκβάλλων τοὺς τῶν φίλων ἐχθροὺς, οὐκ ἐπιεικὲς
ἐδίδου τοῖς Ἕλλησι δεῖγμα τῆς Λακεδαιμονίων ἀρχῆς, etc.

Plutarch, Lysand. c. 14. Καὶ τῶν μὲν ἄλλων πόλεων ὁμαλῶς ἁπασῶν
κατέλυε τὰς πολιτείας καὶ καθίστη δεκαδαρχίας· πολλῶν μὲν ἐν
ἑκάστῃ σφαττομένων, πολλῶν δὲ φευγόντων, etc.

About the massacre at Thasus, see Cornelius Nepos, Lysand. c. 2;
Polyæn. i, 45, 4. Compare Plutarch, Lysand. c. 19; and see Vol.
VIII, Ch. lxv, p. 220 of this History.

[306] Diodor. xiv, 10. Compare Isokrates, Or. iv, (Panegyr.) s.
151; Xen. Hellen. iv, 8, 1.

In what spirit these new dekarchies would govern, consisting as they did of picked oligarchical partisans distinguished for audacity and ambition,[307]—who, to all the unscrupulous lust of power which characterized Lysander himself, added a thirst for personal gain, from which he was exempt, and were now about to reimburse themselves for services already rendered to him,—the general analogy of Grecian history would sufficiently teach us, though we are without special details. But in reference to this point, we have not merely general analogy to guide us; we have farther the parallel case of the Thirty at Athens, the particulars of whose rule are well known and have already been alluded to. These Thirty, with the exception of the difference of number, were to all intents and purposes a Lysandrian dekarchy; created by the same originating force, placed under the like circumstances, and animated by the like spirit and interests. Every subject town would produce its Kritias and Theramenes, and its body of wealthy citizens like the knights or horsemen at Athens to abet their oppressions, under Lacedæmonian patronage and the covering guard of the Lacedæmonian harmost. Moreover, Kritias, with all his vices, was likely to be better rather than worse, as compared with his oligarchical parallel in any other less cultivated city. He was a man of letters and philosophy, accustomed to the conversation of Sokrates, and to the discussion of ethical and social questions. We may say the same of the knights or horsemen at Athens. Undoubtedly they had been better educated, and had been exposed to more liberalizing and improving influences, than the corresponding class elsewhere. If, then, these knights at Athens had no shame in serving as accomplices to the Thirty throughout all their enormities, we need not fear to presume that other cities would furnish a body of wealthy men yet more unscrupulous, and a leader at least as sanguinary, rapacious, and full of antipathies, as Kritias. As at Athens, so elsewhere; the dekarchs would begin by putting to death notorious political opponents, under the name of “the wicked men;”[308] they would next proceed to deal in the same manner with men of known probity and courage, likely to take a lead in resisting oppression.[309] Their career of blood would continue,—in spite of remonstrances from more moderate persons among their own number, like Theramenes,—until they contrived some stratagem for disarming the citizens, which would enable them to gratify both their antipathies and their rapacity by victims still more numerous,—many of such victims being wealthy men, selected for purposes of pure spoliation.[310] They would next despatch by force any obtrusive monitor from their own number, like Theramenes; probably with far less ceremony than accompanied the perpetration of this crime at Athens, where we may trace the effect of those judicial forms and habits to which the Athenian public had been habituated,—overruled indeed, yet still not forgotten. There would hardly remain any fresh enormity still to commit, over and above the multiplied executions, except to banish from the city all but their own immediate partisans, and to reward these latter with choice estates confiscated from the victims.[311] If called upon to excuse such tyranny, the leader of a dekarchy would have sufficient invention to employ the plea of Kritias,—that all changes of government were unavoidably death-dealing, and that nothing less than such stringent measures would suffice to maintain his city in suitable dependence upon Sparta.[312]

[307] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 13. τοῦ Λυσάνδρου τῶν ὀλίγων τοῖς
θρασυτάτοις καὶ φιλονεικοτάτοις τὰς πόλεις ἐγχειρίζοντος.

[308] Xen. Hellen. ii, 3, 13.

... ἔπεισαν Λύσανδρον φρουροὺς σφίσι ξυμπρᾶξαι ἐλθεῖν, ἕως δὴ
~τοὺς πονηροὺς~ ἐκποδὼν ποιησάμενοι καταστήσαιντο τὴν πολιτείαν,
etc.

[309] Xen. Hellen. ii, 3, 14. Τῶν δὲ φρουρῶν τούτου (the harmost)
συμπέμποντος αὐτοῖς, οὓς ἐβούλοντο, συνελάμβανον οὐκέτι τοὺς
πονηροὺς καὶ ὀλίγου ἀξίους, ἀλλ᾽ ἤδη οὓς ἐνόμιζον ἥκιστα
μὲν παρωθουμένους ἀνέχεσθαι, ἀντιπράττειν δέ τι ἐπιχειροῦντας
πλείστους τοὺς συνεθέλοντας λαμβάνειν.

[310] Xen. Hellen. ii, 3, 21.

[311] Xen. Hellen. ii, 4, 1.

[312] Xen. Hellen. ii, 3, 24-32. Καὶ εἰσὶ μὲν δήπου πᾶσαι
μεταβολαὶ πολιτειῶν θανατήφοροι, etc.

Of course, it is not my purpose to affirm that in any other city, precisely the same phenomena took place as those which occurred in Athens. But we are nevertheless perfectly warranted in regarding the history of the Athenian Thirty as a fair sample, from whence to derive our idea of those Lysandrian dekarchies which now overspread the Grecian world. Doubtless, each had its own peculiar march; some were less tyrannical; but, perhaps, some even more tyrannical, regard being had to the size of the city. And in point of fact, Isokrates, who speaks with indignant horror of these dekarchies, while he denounces those features which they had in common with the triakontarchy at Athens,—extrajudicial murders, spoliations, and banishments,—notices one enormity besides, which we do not find in the latter, violent outrages upon boys and women.[313] Nothing of this kind is ascribed to Kritias and his companions;[314] and it is a considerable proof of the restraining force of Athenian manners, that men who inflicted so much evil in gratification of other violent impulses, should have stopped short here. The decemvirs named by Lysander, like the decemvir Appius Claudius at Rome, would find themselves armed with power to satiate their lusts as well as their antipathies, and would not be more likely to set bounds to the former than to the latter. Lysander, in all the overweening insolence of victory, while rewarding his most devoted partisans with an exaltation comprising every sort of license and tyranny, stained the dependent cities with countless murders, perpetrated on private as well as on public grounds.[315] No individual Greek had ever before wielded so prodigious a power of enriching friends or destroying enemies, in this universal reorganization of Greece;[316] nor was there ever any power more deplorably abused.

[313] Isokrates Orat. iv, (Panegyr.) s. 127-132 (c. 32).

He has been speaking, at some length, and in terms of energetic
denunciation, against the enormities of the dekarchies. He
concludes by saying—Φυγὰς δὲ καὶ στάσεις καὶ νόμων συγχύσεις καὶ
πολιτειῶν μεταβολὰς, ~ἔτι δὲ παιδῶν ὕβρεις καὶ γυναικῶν αἰσχύνας
καὶ χρημάτων ἁρπαγὰς~, τίς ἂν δύναιτο διεξελθεῖν· πλὴν τοσοῦτον
εἰπεῖν ἔχω καθ᾽ ἁπάντων, ὅτι τὰ μὲν ἐφ᾽ ἡμῶν δεινὰ ῥᾳδίως ἄν τις
ἑνὶ ψηφίσματι διέλυσε, τὰς δὲ σφαγὰς καὶ τὰς ἀνομίας τὰς ἐπὶ
τούτων γενομένας οὐδεὶς ἂν ἰάσασθαι δύναιτο.

See also, of the same author, Isokrates, Orat. v, (Philipp.) s.
110; Orat. viii, (de Pace) s. 119-124; Or. xii, (Panath.) s. 58,
60, 106.

[314] We may infer that if Xenophon had heard anything of the
sort respecting Kritias, he would hardly have been averse to
mention it; when we read what he says (Memorab. i, 2, 29.)
Compare a curious passage about Kritias in Dion. Chrysostom. Or.
xxi, p. 270.

[315] Plutarch Lysand. c. 19. Ἦν δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι
δημοτικῶν φόνος οὐκ ἀριθμητὸς, ἅτε δὴ μὴ κατ᾽ ἰδίας μόνον
αἰτίας αὐτοῦ κτείνοντος, ἀλλὰ πολλαῖς μὲν ἔχθραις, πολλαῖς δὲ
πλεονεξίαις, τῶν ἑκασταχόθι φίλων χαριζομένου τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ
συνεργοῦντος; also Pausanias, vii, 10, 1; ix, 32, 6.

[316] Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 7.

It was thus that the Lacedæmonian empire imposed upon each of the subject cities a double oppression;[317] the native decemvirs, and the foreign harmost; each abetting the other, and forming together an aggravated pressure upon the citizens, from which scarce any escape was left. The Thirty at Athens paid the greatest possible court to the harmost Kallibius,[318] and put to death individual Athenians offensive to him, in order to purchase his coöperation in their own violences. The few details which we possess respecting these harmosts (who continued throughout the insular and maritime cities for about ten years, until the battle of Knidus, or as long as the maritime empire of Sparta lasted,—but in various continental dependencies considerably longer, that is, until the defeat of Leuktra in 371 B.C.), are all for the most part discreditable. We have seen in the last chapter the description given by the philo-Laconian Xenophon, of the harsh and treacherous manner in which they acted towards the returning Cyreian soldiers, combined with their corrupt subservience to Pharnabazus. We learn from him that it depended upon the fiat of a Lacedæmonian harmost whether these soldiers should be proclaimed enemies and excluded forever from their native cities; and Kleander, the harmost of Byzantium, who at first threatened them with this treatment, was only induced by the most unlimited submission, combined with very delicate management, to withdraw his menace. The cruel proceeding of Anaxibius and Aristarchus, who went so far as to sell four hundred of these soldiers into slavery, has been recounted a few pages above. Nothing can be more arbitrary or reckless than their proceedings. If they could behave thus towards a body of Greek soldiers full of acquired glory, effective either as friends or as enemies, and having generals capable of prosecuting their collective interests and making their complaints heard,—what protection would a private citizen of any subject city, Byzantium or Perinthus, be likely to enjoy against their oppression?

[317] See the speech of the Theban envoys at Athens, about eight
years after the surrender of Athens (Xen. Hellen. iii, 5, 13).

... Οὐδὲ γὰρ φυγεῖν ἐξῆν (Plutarch, Lysand. c. 19).

[318] Xen. Hellen. ii, 3, 13.

τὸν μὲν Καλλίβιον ἐθεράπευον πάσῃ θεραπείᾳ, ὡς πάντα ἐπαινοίῃ, ἃ
πράττοιεν, etc. (Plutarch, Lysand. c. 15).

The Thirty seem to have outdone Lysander himself. A young
Athenian of rank, distinguished as a victor in the pankratium,
Autolykus,—having been insulted by Kallibius, resented it,
tripped him up, and threw him down. Lysander, on being appealed
to, justified Autolykus, and censured Kallibius, telling him
that he did not know how to govern freemen. The Thirty, however,
afterwards put Autolykus to death, as a means of courting
Kallibius (Plutarch, Lysand. c. 15). Pausanius mentions Eteonikus
(not Kallibius) as the person who struck Autolykus; but he
ascribes the same decision to Lysander (ix, 32, 3).

The story of Aristodemus, the harmost of Oreus in Eubœa, evinces that no justice could be obtained against any of their enormities from the ephors of Sparta. That harmost, among many other acts of brutal violence, seized a beautiful youth, son of a free citizen at Oreus, out of the palæstra,—carried him off,—and after vainly endeavoring to overcome his resistance, put him to death. The father of the youth went to Sparta, made known the atrocities, and appealed to the ephors and Senate for redress. But a deaf ear was turned to his complaints, and in anguish of mind he slew himself. Indeed, we know that these Spartan authorities would grant no redress, not merely against harmosts, but even against private Spartan citizens, who had been guilty of gross crime out of their own country. A Bœotian near Leuktra, named Skedasus, preferred complaint that two Spartans, on their way from Delphi, after having been hospitably entertained in his house, had first violated, and afterwards killed, his two daughters; but even for so flagitious an outrage as this, no redress could be obtained.[319] Doubtless, when a powerful foreign ally, like the Persian satrap Pharnabazus,[320] complained to the ephors of the conduct of a Lacedæmonian harmost or admiral, his representations would receive attention; and we learn that the ephors were thus induced not merely to recall Lysander from the Hellespont, but to put to death another officer, Thorax, for corrupt appropriation of money. But for a private citizen in any subject city, the superintending authority of Sparta would be not merely remote but deaf and immovable, so as to afford him no protection whatever, and to leave him altogether at the mercy of the harmost. It seems, too, that the rigor of Spartan training, and peculiarity of habits, rendered individual Lacedæmonians on foreign service more self-willed, more incapable of entering into the customs or feelings of others, and more liable to degenerate when set free from the strict watch of home,—than other Greeks generally.[321]

[319] Plutarch, Amator. Narration, p. 773; Plutarch, Pelopidas,
c. 20. In Diodorus (xv, 54) and Pausanias, (ix, 13, 2), the
damsels thus outraged are stated to have slain themselves.
Compare another story in Xenoph. Hellen. v, 4, 56, 57.

[320] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 19.

[321] This seems to have been the impression not merely of
the enemies of Sparta, but even of the Spartan authorities
themselves. Compare two remarkable passages of Thucydides, i,
77, and i, 95. Ἄμικτα γὰρ (says the Athenian envoy at Sparta) τά
τε καθ᾽ ὑμᾶς αὐτοὺς νόμιμα τοῖς ἄλλοις ἔχετε, καὶ προσέτι εἷς
ἕκαστος ἐξιὼν οὔτε τούτοις χρῆται, οὐθ᾽ οἷς ἡ ἄλλη Ἑλλὰς νομίζει.

After the recall of the regent Pausanias and of Dorkis from the
Hellespont (in 477 B.C.), the Lacedæmonians refuse to send
out any successor, φοβούμενοι μὴ σφίσιν οἱ ἐξιόντες χείρους
γίγνωνται, ὅπερ καὶ ἐν τῷ Παυσανίᾳ ἐνεῖδον, etc. (i, 95.)

Compare Plutarch, Apophtheg. Laconic. p. 220 F.

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

For more than thirty years preceding,—from times earlier than the commencement of the Peloponnesian war,—the Spartans had professed to interfere only for the purpose of liberating Greece, and of putting down the usurped ascendency of Athens. All the allies of Sparta had been invited into strenuous action,—all those of Athens had been urged to revolt,—under the soul-stirring cry of “Freedom to Greece.” The earliest incitements addressed by the Corinthians to Sparta in 432 B.C., immediately after the Korkyræan dispute, called upon her to stand forward in fulfilment of her recognized function as “Liberator of Greece,” and denounced her as guilty of connivance with Athens if she held back.[322] Athens was branded as the “despot city;” which had already absorbed the independence of many Greeks, and menaced that of all the rest. The last formal requisition borne by the Lacedæmonian envoys to Athens in the winter immediately preceding the war, ran thus,—“If you desire the continuance of peace with Sparta, restore to the Greeks their autonomy.”[323] When Archidamus, king of Sparta, approached at the head of his army to besiege Platæa, the Platæans laid claim to autonomy as having been solemnly guaranteed to them by King Pausanias after the great victory near their town. Upon which Archidamus replied,—“Your demand is just; we are prepared to confirm _your_ autonomy,—but we call upon you to aid us in securing the like for those other Greeks who have been enslaved by Athens. This is the sole purpose of our great present effort.”[324] And the banner of general enfranchisement, which the Lacedæmonians thus held up at the outset of the war, enlisted in their cause encouraging sympathy and good wishes throughout Greece.[325]

[322] Thucyd. i, 69. οὐ γὰρ ὁ δουλωσάμενος, ἀλλ᾽ ὁ δυνάμενος μὲν
παῦσαι, περιορῶν δὲ, ἀληθέστερον αὐτὸ δρᾷ, εἴπερ καὶ τὴν ἀξίωσιν
τῆς ἀρετῆς ὡς ἐλευθερῶν τὴν Ἑλλάδα φέρεται.

To the like purpose the second speech of the Corinthian envoys
at Sparta, c. 122-124—μὴ μέλλετε Ποτιδαιάταις τε ποιεῖσθαι
τιμωρίαν. ... καὶ τῶν ἄλλων μετελθεῖν τὴν ἐλευθερίαν, etc.

[323] Thucyd. i, 139. Compare Isokrates, Or. iv, Panegyr. c. 34,
s. 140; Or. v, (Philipp.) s. 121; Or. xiv, (Plataic.) s. 43.

[324] Thucyd. ii, 72. Παρασκευὴ δὲ τόσηδε καὶ πόλεμος γεγένηται
αὐτῶν ἕνεκα καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐλευθερώσεως.

Read also the speech of the Theban orator, in reply to the
Platæan, after the capture of the town by the Lacedæmonians (iii,
63).

[325] Thucyd. ii, 8. ἡ δὲ εὔνοια παρὰ πολὺ ἐποίει τῶν ἀνθρώπων
μᾶλλον ἐς τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, ἄλλως τε καὶ προειπόντων ὅτι τὴν
Ἑλλάδα ἐλευθεροῦσιν.

See also iii, 13, 14—the speech of the envoys from the revolted
Mitylênê, to the Lacedæmonians.

The Lacedæmonian admiral Alkidas with his fleet, is announced as
crossing over the Ægean to Ionia for the purpose of “liberating
Greece;” accordingly, the Samian exiles remonstrate with him
for killing his prisoners, as in contradiction with that object
(iii, 32)—ἔλεγον οὐ καλῶς τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἐλευθεροῦν αὐτὸν, εἰ ἄνδρας
διέφθειρεν, etc.

But the most striking illustration by far, of the seductive promises held out by the Lacedæmonians, was afforded by the conduct of Brasidas in Thrace, when he first came into the neighborhood of the Athenian allies during the eighth year of the war (424 B.C.). In his memorable discourse addressed to the public assembly at Akanthus, he takes the greatest pains to satisfy them that he came only for the purpose of realizing the promise of enfranchisement proclaimed by the Lacedæmonians at the beginning of the war.[326] Having expected, when acting in such a cause, nothing less than a hearty welcome, he is astonished to find their gates closed against him. “I am come (said he) not to injure, but to liberate the Greeks; after binding the Lacedæmonian authorities by the most solemn oaths, that all whom I may bring over shall be dealt with as autonomous allies. We do not wish to obtain you as allies either by force or fraud, but to act as your allies at a time when you are enslaved by the Athenians. You ought not to suspect my purposes, in the face of these solemn assurances; least of all ought any man to hold back through apprehension of private enmities, and through fear lest I should put the city into the hands of a few chosen partisans. I am not come to identify myself with local faction: I am not the man to offer you an unreal liberty by breaking down your established constitution, for the purpose of enslaving either the Many to the Few, or the Few to the Many. That would be more intolerable even than foreign dominion; and we Lacedæmonians should incur nothing but reproach, instead of reaping thanks and honor for our trouble. We should draw upon ourselves those very censures, upon the strength of which we are trying to put down Athens; and that, too, in aggravated measure, worse than those who have never made honorable professions; since to men in high position, specious trick is more disgraceful than open violence.[327]—If (continued Brasidas) in spite of my assurances, you still withhold from me your coöperation, I shall think myself authorized to constrain you by force. We should not be warranted in forcing freedom on any unwilling parties, except with a view to some common good. But as we seek not empire for ourselves,—as we struggle only to put down the empire of others,—as we offer autonomy to each and all,—so we should do wrong to the majority if we allowed you to persist in your opposition.”[328]

[326] Thucyd. iv, 85. Ἡ μὲν ἔκπεμψίς μου καὶ τῆς στρατιᾶς ὑπὸ
Λακεδαιμονίων, ὦ Ἀκάνθιοι, γεγένηται τὴν αἰτίαν ἐπαληθεύουσα ἣν
ἀρχόμενοι τοῦ πολέμου προείπομεν, ~Ἀθηναίοις ἐλευθεροῦντες τὴν
Ἑλλάδα πολεμήσειν~.

[327] Thucyd. iv, 85. Αὐτός τε οὐκ ἐπὶ κακῷ, ἐπ᾽ ἐλευθερώσει δὲ
τῶν Ἑλλήνων παρελήλυθα, ὅρκοις τε Λακεδαιμονίων καταλαβὼν τὰ τέλη
τοῖς μεγίστοις, ἦ μὴν οὓς ἂν ἔγωγε προσαγάγωμαι ξυμμάχους ἔσεσθαι
αὐτονόμους.... Καὶ εἴ τις ἰδίᾳ τινὰ δεδιὼς ἄρα, μὴ ἐγώ τισι
προσθῶ τὴν πόλιν, ἀπρόθυμός ἐστι, ~πάντων μάλιστα πιστευσάτω. Οὐ
γὰρ συστασιάσων ἥκω~, οὐδὲ ἀσαφῆ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν νομίζω ἐπιφέρειν,
εἰ, ~τὸ πάτριον παρεὶς, τὸ πλέον τοῖς ὀλίγοις~, ἢ τὸ ἔλασσον τοῖς
πᾶσι, δουλώσαιμι. ~Χαλεπώτερα γὰρ ἂν τῆς ἀλλοφύλου ἀρχῆς εἴη~,
καὶ ἡμῖν τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις οὐκ ἂν ἀντὶ πόνων χάρις καθίσταιτο,
ἀντὶ δὲ τιμῆς καὶ δόξης αἰτία μᾶλλον· ~οἷς τε τοὺς Ἀθηναίους
ἐγκλήμασι καταπολεμοῦμεν, αὐτοὶ ἂν φαινοίμεθα ἐχθίονα ἢ ὁ μὴ
ὑποδείξας ἀρετὴν κατακτώμενοι~.

[328] Thucyd. iv, 87. Οὐδὲ ὀφείλομεν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι μὴ ~κοινοῦ
τινος αγαθοῦ αἰτίᾳ τοὺς μὴ βουλομένους ἐλευθεροῦν. Οὐδ᾽ αὖ ἀρχῆς
ἐφιέμεθα~, παῦσαι δὲ μᾶλλον ἑτέρους σπεύδοντες τοὺς πλείους
ἂν ἀδικοῖμεν, ~εἰ ξύμπασιν αὐτονομίαν ἐπιφέροντες~ ὑμᾶς τοὺς
ἐναντιουμένους περιΐδοιμεν. Compare Isokrates, Or. iv, (Panegyr.)
s. 140, 141.

Like the allied sovereigns of Europe in 1813, who, requiring the most strenuous efforts on the part of the people to contend against the Emperor Napoleon, promised free constitutions and granted nothing after the victory had been assured,—the Lacedæmonians thus held out the most emphatic and repeated assurances of general autonomy in order to enlist allies against Athens; disavowing, even ostentatiously, any aim at empire for themselves. It is true, that after the great catastrophe before Syracuse, when the ruin of Athens appeared imminent, and when the alliance with the Persian satraps against her was first brought to pass, the Lacedæmonians began to think more of empire,[329] and less of Grecian freedom; which, indeed, so far as concerned the Greeks on the continent of Asia, was surrendered to Persia. Nevertheless the old watchword still continued. It was still currently believed, though less studiously professed, that the destruction of the Athenian empire was aimed at as a means to the liberation of Greece.[330]

[329] Feelings of the Lacedæmonians during the winter immediately
succeeding the great Syracusan catastrophe (Thuc. viii. 2)—καὶ
καθελόντες ἐκείνους (the Athenians) αὐτοὶ τῆς πάσης Ἑλλάδος ἤδη
ἀσφαλῶς ἡγήσεσθαι.

[330] Compare Thucyd. viii, 43, 3; viii, 46, 3.

The victory of Ægospotami with its consequences cruelly undeceived every one. The language of Brasidas, sanctioned by the solemn oaths of the Lacedæmonian ephors, in 424 B.C.—and the proceedings of the Lacedæmonian Lysander in 405-404 B.C., the commencing hour of Spartan omnipotence,—stand in such literal and flagrant contradiction, that we might almost imagine the former to have foreseen the possibility of such a successor, and to have tried to disgrace and disarm him beforehand. The dekarchies of Lysander realized that precise ascendency of a few chosen partisans which Brasidas repudiates as an abomination worse than foreign dominion; while the harmosts and garrison, installed in the dependent cities along with the native decemvirs, planted the second variety of mischief as well as the first, each aggravating the other. Had the noble-minded Kallikratidas gained a victory at Arginusæ, and lived to close the war, he would probably have tried, with more or less of success, to make some approach to the promises of Brasidas. But it was the double misfortune of Greece, first that the closing victory was gained by such an admiral as Lysander, the most unscrupulous of all power-seekers, partly for his country, and still more for himself,—next, that the victory was so decisive, sudden and imposing, as to leave no enemy standing, or in a position to insist upon terms. The fiat of Lysander, acting in the name of Sparta, became omnipotent, not merely over enemies, but over allies; and to a certain degree even over the Spartan authorities themselves. There was no present necessity for conciliating allies,—still less for acting up to former engagements; so that nothing remained to oppose the naturally ambitious inspirations of the Spartan ephors, who allowed the admiral to carry out the details in his own way. But former assurances, though Sparta was in a condition to disregard them, were not forgotten by others; and the recollection of them imparted additional bitterness to the oppressions of the decemvirs and harmosts.[331] In perfect consistency with her misrule throughout Eastern Greece,[332] too, Sparta identified herself with the energetic tyranny of Dionysius at Syracuse, assisting both to erect and to uphold it; a contradiction to her former maxims of action which would have astounded the historian Herodotus.

[331] This is emphatically set forth in a fragment of Theopompus
the historian, preserved by Theodorus Metochita, and printed at
the end of the collection of the Fragments of Theopompus the
historian, both by Wichers and by M. Didot. Both these editors,
however, insert it only as Fragmentum Spurium, on the authority
of Plutarch (Lysander, c. 13), who quotes the same sentiment
from the comic writer Theopompus. But the passage of Theodorus
Metochita presents the express words Θεόπομπος ὁ ἱστορικός.
We have, therefore, his distinct affirmation against that of
Plutarch; and the question is, which of the two we are to believe.

Now if any one will read attentively the so-called Fragmentum
Spurium as it stands at the end of the collections above referred
to, he will see (I think) that it belongs much more naturally
to the historian than to the comic writer. It is a strictly
historical statement, illustrated by a telling, though coarse,
comparison. The Fragment is thus presented by Theodorus Metochita
(Fragm. Theopomp. 344, ed. Didot).

Θεόπομπος ὁ ἱστορικὸς ἀποσκώπτων εἰς τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, εἴκαζεν
αὐτοὺς ταῖς φαύλαις καπηλίσιν, αἳ τοῖς χρωμένοις ἐγχέουσαι
τὴν ἀρχὴν οἶνον ἡδύν τε καὶ εὔχρηστον σοφιστικῶς ἐπὶ τῇ λήψει
τοῦ ἀργυρίου, μεθύστερον φαυλόν τινα καὶ ἐκτροπίαν καὶ ὀξίνην
κατακρινῶσι καὶ παρέχονται· καὶ τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους τοίνυν
ἔλεγε, τὸν αὐτὸν ἐκείναις τρόπον, ἐν τῷ κατὰ τῶν Ἀθηναίων
πολέμῳ, τὴν ἀρχὴν ἡδίστῳ πόματι τῆς ἀπ᾽ Ἀθηναίων ἐλευθερίας καὶ
προγράμματι καὶ κηρύγματι τοὺς Ἕλληνας δελεάσαντας, ὕστερον
πικρότατα σφίσιν ἐγχέαι καὶ ἀηδέστατα κράματα βιοτῆς ἐπωδύνου καὶ
χρήσεως πραγμάτων ἀλγεινῶν, πάνυ τοι κατατυραννοῦντας τὰς πόλεις
δεκαρχίαις καὶ ἁρμοσταῖς βαρυτάτοις, καὶ πραττομένους, ἃ δυσχερὲς
εἶναι σφόδρα καὶ ἀνύποιστον φέρειν, καὶ ἀποκτιννύναι.

Plutarch, ascribing the statement to the comic Theopompus,
affirms him to be silly (ἔοικε ληρεῖν) in saying that the
Lacedæmonian empire began by being sweet and pleasant, and
afterwards was corrupted and turned into bitterness and
oppression; whereas the fact was, that it was bitterness and
oppression from the very first.

Now if we read the above citation from Theodorus, we shall see
that Theopompus did not really put forth that assertion which
Plutarch contradicts as silly and untrue.

What Theopompus stated was, that the first Lacedæmonians, _during
the war against Athens_, tempted the Greeks with a most delicious
draught and _programme_ and _proclamation_ of freedom from the
rule of Athens,—and that they afterwards poured in the most
bitter and repulsive mixtures of hard oppression and tyranny, etc.

The sweet draught is asserted to consist—not, as Plutarch
supposes, in the first taste of the actual Lacedæmonian empire
after the war, but—in the seductive promises of freedom held
out by them to the allies _during the war_. Plutarch’s charge of
ἔοικε ληρεῖν has thus no foundation. I have written δελεάσαντας
instead of δελεάσοντας which stands in Didot’s Fragment, because
it struck me that this correction was required to construe the
passage.

[332] Isokrates, Or. iv, (Panegr.) s. 145; Or. viii, (de Pace) s.
122; Diodor. xiv, 10-44; xv, 23. Compare Herodot. v, 92; Thucyd.
i, 18; Isokrates, Or. iv, (Panegyr.) s. 144.

The empire of Sparta thus constituted at the end of 405 B.C., maintained itself in full grandeur for somewhat above ten years, until the naval battle of Knidus,[333] in 394 B.C. That defeat destroyed her fleet and maritime ascendency, yet left her in undiminished power on land, which she still maintained until her defeat by the Thebans[334] at Leuktra in 371 B.C. Throughout all this time, it was her established system to keep up Spartan harmosts and garrisons in the dependent cities on the continent as well as in the islands. Even the Chians, who had been her most active allies during the last eight years of the war, were compelled to submit to this hardship; besides having all their fleet taken away from them.[335] But the native dekarchies, though at first established by Lysander universally throughout the maritime dependencies, did not last as a system so long as the harmosts. Composed as they were to a great degree of the personal nominees and confederates of Lysander, they suffered in part by the reactionary jealousy which in time made itself felt against his overweening ascendency. After continuing for some time, they lost the countenance of the Spartan ephors, who proclaimed permission to the cities (we do not precisely know when) to resume their preëxisting governments.[336] Some of the dekarchies thus became dissolved, or modified in various ways, but several probably still continued to subsist, if they had force enough to maintain themselves; for it does not appear that the ephors ever systematically put them down, as Lysander had systematically set them up.

[333] Isokrates, Panathen. s. 61. Σπαρτιᾶται μὲν γὰρ ἔτη δέκα
μόλις ἐπεστάτησαν αὐτῶν, ἡμεῖς δὲ πέντε καὶ ἑξήκοντα συνεχῶς
κατέσχομεν τὴν ἀρχήν. I do not hold myself bound to make out the
exactness of the chronology of Isokrates. But here we may remark
that his “hardly ten years” is a term, though less than the truth
by some months, if we may take the battle of Ægospotami as the
beginning, is very near the truth if we take the surrender of
Athens as the beginning, down to the battle of Knidus.

[334] Pausanias, viii, 52, 2; ix, 6, 1.

[335] Diodor. xiv, 84; Isokrates, Orat. viii, (de Pace) s. 121.

[336] Xen. Hellen. iii, 4, 2.

Lysander accompanied King Agesilaus (when the latter was going
to his Asiatic command in 396 B.C.). His purpose was—ὅπως
τὰς δεκαρχίας τὰς κατασταθείσας ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνου ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν,
ἐκπεπτωκυίας δὲ διὰ τοὺς ἐφόρους, οἱ τὰς πατρίους πολιτείας
παρήγγειλαν, πάλιν καταστήσειε μετ᾽ Ἀγησιλάου.

It shows the careless construction of Xenophon’s Hellenica, or
perhaps his reluctance to set forth the discreditable points of
the Lacedæmonian rule, that this is the first mention which he
makes (and that too, indirectly) of the dekarchies, nine years
after they had been first set up by Lysander.

The government of the Thirty at Athens would never have been overthrown if the oppressed Athenians had been obliged to rely on a tutelary interference of the Spartan ephors to help them in overthrowing it. My last volume has shown that this nefarious oligarchy came to its end by the unassisted efforts of Thrasybulus and the Athenian democrats themselves. It is true, indeed, that the arrogance and selfishness of Sparta and of Lysander had alienated the Thebans, Corinthians, Megarians, and other neighboring allies, and induced them to sympathize with the Athenian exiles against the atrocities of the Thirty,—but they never rendered any positive assistance of moment. The inordinate personal ambition of Lysander had also offended King Pausanias and the Spartan ephors, so that they too became indifferent to the Thirty, who were his creatures. But this merely deprived the Thirty of that foreign support which Lysander, had he still continued in the ascendent, would have extended to them in full measure. It was not the positive cause of their downfall. That crisis was brought about altogether by the energy of Thrasybulus and his companions, who manifested such force and determination as could not have been put down without an extraordinary display of Spartan military power; a display not entirely safe when the sympathies of the chief allies were with the other side,—and at any rate adverse to the inclinations of Pausanias. As it was with the Thirty at Athens, so it probably was also with the dekarchies in the dependent cities. The Spartan ephors took no steps to put them down; but where the resistance of the citizens was strenuous enough to overthrow them, no Spartan intervention came to prop them up, and the harmost perhaps received orders not to consider his authority as indissolubly linked with theirs. The native forces of each dependent city being thus left to find their own level, the decemvirs, once installed, would doubtless maintain themselves in a great number; while in other cases they would be overthrown,—or, perhaps, would contrive to perpetuate their dominion by compromise and alliance with other oligarchical sections. This confused and unsettled state of the dekarchies,—some still existing, others half-existing, others again defunct,—prevailed in 396 B.C., when Lysander accompanied Agesilaus into Asia, in the full hope that he should have influence enough to reorganize them all.[337] We must recollect that no other dependent city would possess the same means of offering energetic resistance to its local decemvirs, as Athens offered to the Thirty; and that the insular Grecian cities were not only feeble individually, but naturally helpless against the lords of the sea.[338]

[337] Compare the two passages of Xenophon’s Hellenica, iii, 4,
7; iii, 5, 13.

Ἅτε συντεταραγμένων ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι τῶν πολιτειῶν, καὶ οὔτε
δημοκρατίας ἔτι οὔσης, ὥσπερ ἐπ᾽ Ἀθηναίων, οὔτε δεκαρχίας, ὥσπερ
ἐπὶ Λυσάνδρου.

But that some of these dekarchies still continued, we know from
the subsequent passage. The Theban envoys say to the public
assembly at Athens, respecting the Spartans:—

Ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ οὓς ὑμῶν ἀπέστησαν φανεροί εἰσιν ἐξηπατηκότες· ὑπό
τε γὰρ τῶν ἁρμοστῶν ~τυραννοῦνται~, καὶ ὑπὸ δέκα ἀνδρῶν, οὓς
Λύσανδρος κατέστησεν ἐν ἑκάστῃ πόλει—where the decemvirs are
noted as still subsisting, in 395 B.C. See also Xen. Agesilaus,
i, 37.

[338] Xen. Hellen. iii, 5, 15.

Such then was the result throughout Greece, when that long war, which had been undertaken in the name of universal autonomy, was terminated by the battle of Ægospotami. In place of imperial Athens was substituted, not the promised autonomy, but yet more imperial Sparta. An awful picture is given by the philo-Laconian Xenophon, in 399 B.C., of the ascendency exercised throughout all the Grecian cities, not merely by the ephors and the public officers, but even by the private citizens, of Sparta. “The Lacedæmonians (says he in addressing the Cyreian army) are now the presidents of Greece; and even any single private Lacedæmonian can accomplish what he pleases.”[339] “All the cities (he says in another place) then obeyed whatever order they might receive from a Lacedæmonian citizen.”[340] Not merely was the general ascendency thus omnipresent and irresistible, but it was enforced with a stringency of detail, and darkened by a thousand accompaniments of tyranny and individual abuse, such as had never been known under the much-decried empire of Athens.

[339] Xen. Anab. vi, 6, 12. Εἰσὶ μὲν γὰρ ἤδη ἐγγὺς αἱ Ἑλληνίδες
πόλεις· (this was spoken at Kalpê in Bithynia) τῆς δὲ Ἑλλάδος
Λακεδαιμόνιοι προεστήκασιν· ~ἱκανοὶ δέ εἰσι καὶ εἷς ἕκαστος
Λακεδαιμονίων ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν ὅ,τι βούλονται διαπράττεσθαι~.

[340] Xen. Hellen. iii, 1, 5. Πᾶσαι γὰρ τότε αἱ πόλεις ἐπείθοντο,
ὅ,τι Λακεδαιμόνιος ἀνὴρ ἐπιτάττοι.

We have more than one picture of the Athenian empire, in speeches made by hostile orators who had every motive to work up the strongest antipathies in the bosoms of their audience against it. We have the addresses of the Corinthian envoys at Sparta when stimulating the Spartan allies to the Peloponnesian war,[341]—that of the envoys from Mitylênê delivered at Olympia to the Spartan confederates, when the city had revolted from Athens and stood in pressing need of support,—the discourse of Brasidas in the public assembly at Akanthus,—and more than one speech also from Hermokrates, impressing upon his Sicilian countrymen hatred as well as fear of Athens.[342] Whoever reads these discourses, will see that they dwell almost exclusively on the great political wrong inherent in the very fact of her empire, robbing so many Grecian communities of their legitimate autonomy, over and above the tribute imposed. That Athens had thus already enslaved many cities, and was only watching for opportunities to enslave many more, is the theme upon which they expatiate. But of practical grievances,—of cruelty, oppression, spoliation, multiplied exiles, etc., of high-handed wrong committed by individual Athenians,—not one word is spoken. Had there been the smallest pretext for introducing such inflammatory topics, how much more impressive would have been the appeal of Brasidas to the sympathies of the Akanthians! How vehement would have been the denunciations of the Mitylenæan envoys, in place of the tame and almost apologetic language which we now read in Thucydides! Athens extinguished the autonomy of her subject-allies, and punished revolters with severity, sometimes even with cruelty. But as to other points of wrong, the silence of accusers, such as those just noticed, counts as a powerful exculpation.

[341] Thucyd. i, 68-120.

[342] Thucyd. iii, 9; iv, 59-85; vi, 76.

The case is altered when we come to the period succeeding the battle of Ægospotami. Here indeed also, we find the Spartan empire complained of (as the Athenian empire had been before), in contrast with that state of autonomy to which each city laid claim, and which Sparta had not merely promised to ensure, but set forth as her only ground of war. Yet this is not the prominent grievance,—other topics stand more emphatically forward. The decemvirs and the harmosts (some of the latter being Helots), the standing instruments of Spartan empire, are felt as more sorely painful than the empire itself; as the language held by Brasidas at Akanthus admits them to be beforehand. At the time when Athens was a subject-city under Sparta, governed by the Lysandrian Thirty and by the Lacedæmonian harmost in the acropolis,—the sense of indignity arising from the fact of subjection was absorbed in the still more terrible suffering arising from the enormities of those individual rulers whom the imperial state had set up. Now Athens set up no local rulers,—no native Ten or native Thirty,—no resident Athenian harmosts or garrisons. This was of itself an unspeakable exemption, when compared with the condition of cities subject, not only to the Spartan empire, but also under that empire to native decemvirs like Kritias, and Spartan harmosts like Aristarchus or Aristodemus. A city subject to Athens had to bear definite burdens enforced by its own government, which was liable in case of default or delinquency to be tried before the popular Athenian Dikastery. But this same dikastery (as I have shown in a former volume, and as is distinctly stated by Thucydides)[343] was the harbor of refuge to each subject-city; not less against individual Athenian wrong-doers than against misconduct from other cities. Those who complained of the hardship suffered by a subject-city, from the obligation of bringing causes to be tried in the dikastery of Athens,—even if we take the case as they state it, and overlook the unfairness of omitting those numerous instances wherein the city was thus enabled to avert or redress wrong done to its own citizens,—would have complained both more loudly and with greater justice of an ever-present Athenian harmost; especially if there were coexistent a native government of Ten oligarchs, exchanging with him guilty connivances, like the partnership of the Thirty at Athens with the Lacedæmonian harmost Kallibius.[344]

[343] See the remarkable speech of Phrynichus in Thucyd. viii,
48, 5, which I have before referred to.

[344] Xen. Hellen. ii, 3, 14. Compare the analogous case of
Thebes, after the Lacedæmonians had got possession of the Kadmeia
(v. 2, 34-36).

In no one point can it be shown that the substitution of Spartan empire in place of Athenian was a gain, either for the subject-cities or for Greece generally; while in many points, it was a great and serious aggravation of suffering. And this abuse of power is the more deeply to be regretted, as Sparta enjoyed after the battle of Ægospotami a precious opportunity,—such as Athens had never had, and such as never again recurred,—of reorganizing the Grecian world on wise principles, and with a view to Pan-hellenic stability and harmony. It is not her greatest sin to have refused to grant universal autonomy. She had indeed promised it; but we might pardon a departure from specific performance, had she exchanged the boon for one far greater, which it was within her reasonable power, at the end of 405 B.C., to confer. That universal town autonomy, towards which the Grecian instinct tended, though immeasurably better than universal subjection, was yet accompanied by much internal discord, and by the still more formidable evil of helplessness against any efficient foreign enemy. To ensure to the Hellenic world external safety as well as internal concord, it was not a new empire which was wanted, but a new political combination on equitable and comprehensive principles; divesting each town of a portion of its autonomy, and creating a common authority, responsible to all, for certain definite controlling purposes. If ever a tolerable federative system would have been practicable in Greece, it was after the battle of Ægospotami. The Athenian empire,—which, with all its defects, I believe to have been much better for the subject-cities than universal autonomy would have been,—had already removed many difficulties, and shown that combined and systematic action of the maritime Grecian world was no impossibility. Sparta might now have substituted herself for Athens, not as heir to the imperial power, but as president and executive agent of a new Confederacy of Delos,—reviving the equal, comprehensive, and liberal principles, on which that confederacy had first been organized.

It is true that sixty years before, the constituent members of the original synod at Delos had shown themselves insensible to its value. As soon as the pressing alarm from Persia had passed over, some had discontinued sending deputies, others had disobeyed requisitions, others again had bought off their obligations, and forfeited their rights as autonomous and voting members, by pecuniary bargain with Athens; who, being obliged by the duties of her presidency to enforce obedience to the Synod against all reluctant members, made successively many enemies, and was gradually converted, almost without her own seeking, from President into Emperor, as the only means of obviating the total dissolution of the Confederacy. But though such untoward circumstances had happened before, it does not follow that they would now have happened again, assuming the same experiment to have been retried by Sparta, with manifest sincerity of purpose and tolerable wisdom. The Grecian world, especially the maritime portion of it, had passed through trials not less painful than instructive, during this important interval. Nor does it seem rash to suppose, that the bulk of its members might now have been disposed to perform steady confederate duties, at the call and under the presidency of Sparta, had she really attempted to reorganize a liberal confederacy, treating every city as autonomous and equal, except in so far as each was bound to obey the resolutions of the general synod. However impracticable such a scheme may appear, we must recollect that even Utopian schemes have their transient moments, if not of certain success, at least of commencement not merely possible but promising. And my belief is, that had Kallikratidas, with his ardent Pan-hellenic sentiment and force of resolution, been the final victor over imperial Athens, he would not have let the moment of pride and omnipotence pass over without essaying some noble project like that sketched above. It is to be remembered that Athens had never had the power of organizing any such generous Pan-hellenic combination. She had become depopularized in the legitimate execution of her trust, as president of the Confederacy of Delos, against refractory members;[345] and had been obliged to choose between breaking up the Confederacy, and keeping it together under the strong compression of an imperial chief. But Sparta had not yet become depopularized. She now stood without competitor as leader of the Grecian world, and might at that moment have reasonably hoped to carry the members of it along with her to any liberal and Pan-hellenic organization, had she attempted it with proper earnestness. Unfortunately she took the opposite course, under the influence of Lysander; founding a new empire far more oppressive and odious than that of Athens, with few of the advantages, and none of the excuses, attached to the latter. As she soon became even more unpopular than Athens, her moment of high tide, for beneficent Pan-hellenic combination, passed away also,—never to return.