Chapter LXXX (4)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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