stowed and received not as a bribe but honestly as the means of rendering resistance possible. A quarrel between the Phokians and Opountian Lokrians for a piece of borderland brought about open strife between Thebes and Sparta. Orders were given that Lysandros should start from Herakleia on the north with as large a force as he could muster, and that king Pausanias should meet him on a given day in the territory of Haliartos. Whether from over haste on the part of Lysandros or slowness on that of Pausanias the meeting never took place. Marching from Herakleia, Lysandros found his way made easy by the revolt of Orchomenos from the Theban confederacy; but he was disappointed in his hope that the Haliartians would take the same course. Pausanias was not yet come; and Lysandros, too impatient to wait, was searching for a place where the assault might be made with most effect, when the sight of a Theban force hurrying towards the city encouraged the Haliartians to sally out against the enemy. Lysandros, taken by

surprise, was amongst the first to fall; and although the loss in the battle was not large, his army melted away during the coming night.

The army of Pausanias might of itself have turned the fortunes of the day against the Boiotians taken singly; but on approaching Haliartos he found that the men led by Lysandros were gone home, and on the day following a large Athenian force made its appearance under Thrasyboulos, the hero of Phylê and Peiraieus. Sparta had thus united Thebes with the city which she had hated with the bitterest enmity. The Thebans had no sooner heard that they were to be attacked by two armies, the one from the north, the other from the south, than they sent to Athens envoys charged to say that their city was in no way responsible for the ferocious sentiment expressed by the Theban who happened to be present at the debate which after the surrender of the city was to determine the fate of Athens. That man spoke on his own authority alone: Thebes had since that time shown her real disposition by refusing to aid the Spartans against Thrasy boulos and his fellow exiles. The Athenians, while they contented themselves with reminding the envoys that the aid of the Thebans had been only passive, decreed a defensive alliance with Thebes. It became, therefore, a serious question for Pausanias whether he should risk a battle when even victory could do no more than enable

him to recover the body of Lysandros, while defeat in the present temper of the allies might be followed by disastrous results. The issue proved that he was right; for when by requesting a truce for the burial of the dead Pausanias virtually admitted a defeat, and when the Thebans had granted it on condition that they should immediately quit Boiotia, the allies received the news with undisguised satisfaction, and submitted with meekness even to the blows of the Thebans who struck all who strayed from the ranks into the cultivated grounds on either side of the road:

Thebes, Athens, Corinth, and Argos were now united against Sparta in a confederacy which embraced among others the Chalkidians of Thrace, the Euboians, and the Akarnanians. In the synod of the confederates held at Corinth the language of the speakers was full of confidence. The mightiest rivers sprang from scanty sources; and the stream of Spartan power could easily be cut off at its head, although the influx of tributaries might swell it to an irresistible volume at a distance. So said the Corinthian Timolaos, adding that as men who wish to destroy a wasp's nest apply fire to it while the wasps are within, so should Spartans be attacked in Sparta. The confederate army set out accordingly for that mysterious city; but they had not advanced beyond Nemea when they learnt that the Spartans had already passed their border. In the battle which ensued the Spartans bore down all opposed to them, while their allies were not only defeated but showed by their lack of firmness how little their hearts were in the cause for which they were fighting.

The indecisiveness of the battle justifies the step which the Ephors had already taken of recalling Agesilaos. Their decision reached him just when the tide of success was carrying him onwards, as he hoped, to Sousa. On his outward voyage Agesilaos had likened himself to Agamemnon. On returning from Asia he was constrained to follow the line of march taken by Xerxes. At Amphipolis Derkyllidas met him with tidings of the victory won at Corinth (394 B.C.): the thought of the task which he had been compelled to abandon left no room for any feeling but that of grief that so much blood had been shed to so little purpose. At Chaironeia an earthquake filled him with gloomy forebodings which were realised a few days later by the news of the battle of Knidos. Taking in at once the full signifi

cance of this great event, Agesilaos informed his army that the Spartan fleet had won a great victory, but that he had to mourn the death of his brother-in-law Peisandros. His next march brought him to the scene of the memorable battle which fiftyfive years ago finally dispelled the dream of Athenian supremacy in Boiotia (p. 133). Here in the plain of Koroneia the confederate army awaited his coming. They were now to learn that the weight of the Peloponnesian hoplites was still a force too mighty to be withstood by any but troops of the first quality. The division of Herippidas, including the Cyreians under Xenophon, bore down the men opposed to them, while on the side of the confederates the Argives without striking a blow fled up the slopes of Helikon. Thither the Thebans resolved to force their way. Their path was barred by the hoplites of Agesilaos; the two masses met in direct encounter; and a conflict ensued which marked a new era in the history of Greek warfare. It was a strife in which the front ranks of men all of tried courage and skill received a tremendous impetus from the weight of the hinder ranks consisting of warriors not less formidable. The ghastly sight presented the next day by the battle field attested the desperate ferocity of the struggle.

In a certain sense Agesilaos had won a victory. He was master of the battle ground; but the Thebans, although they formally admitted their defeat by asking a truce for the burial of the dead, had fully carried out their purpose of forcing their way through the Spartan ranks, and in the mind of Agesilaos the sense of their tremendous power was even deeper than that of his own success. That success, moreover, brought him no solid fruit. He returned home by way of Delphoi and across the Corinthian Gulf, as he might have done without fighting this dreadful battle.

The victory of Konon at Knidos warned the harmosts of the Hellenic towns on the Egean coast that they would do well to seek a refuge elsewhere. For their good fortune but for the mischief of Sparta Abydos remained obstinately faithful to the Peloponnesian cause. To Abydos therefore the harmosts fled, and held the place against all the efforts of Pharnabazos. The satrap vowed vengeance and he kept his word. Sailing with Konon to the Corinthian Isthmus (393 B.C.), through waters where no Persian ship had been seen since the day of the fight at Salamis, he cheered the allies, not only with promises of support

but with substantial aid in money, and then left his fleet with Konon for the execution of a more momentous work, which nothing but an astonishing combination of circumstances during this particular year rendered possible. The way by sea to Athens was barred to the Spartans by the destruction of their navy; the way by land was blocked for the present by the confederate lines at Corinth; and Konon availed himself of this precious opportunity to rebuild the walls thrown down by Lysandros. The Peiraieus thus again formed with Athens a single fortress, and this vast gain was directly the result of the tenacity with which Abydos held out against the satrap Pharnabazos.

But the Greek world generally had by its incessant feuds been now brought to this pass, that any benefit secured by one city was sure to excite the fears of others: and thus the rebuilding of the Athenian walls reawakened at Corinth the suspicions which had been only lulled by the more immediate pressure of Spartan tyranny. The intrigues of the philoLakonian party ended in the betrayal of the city to the Spartans who, by pulling down portions of the Long Walls which joined it to its port Lechaion on the Corinthian Gulf, left a way open across the isthmus to Attica and Boiotia. (392 B.C.) The danger to which they were thus exposed determined the Athenians to repair the breach. With their usual rapidity they built up the shattered portion of the western wall, leaving it to their allies to restore the other. A few months only had passed before they were again thrown down by the Lakedaimonians; and ambassadors appeared at Sparta both from Athens and Thebes to treat for peace. For the time the negotiations came to nothing but the destruction of a Lakedaimonian force by the peltasts or light-armed mercenaries of the Athenian Iphikrates awakened in the Spartan mind feelings not unlike those with which they heard of the slaughter of their hoplites in Sphakteria by the light-armed troops of Demosthenes and Kleon, (p. 170). In their alarm they determined to send envoys to the Persian king, begging him to declare the absolute autonomy or independence of every Hellenic city,-in other words, the suppression of every local confederacy, except of course that of Sparta. (391 B.C.) With these propositions the Spartan Antalkidas was sent to Tiribazos, satrap of Armenia during the retreat of the Cyreians, now viceroy of Ionia in the place of Tithraustes. For the present his only success was the arrest and

detention of the Athenian Konon, which he secured through his influence with Tiribazos. So ended the public career of a man whose loss to Athens was irreparable.

The gratitude of Athens to the Salaminian prince led soon to another loss scarcely less severe than that of Konon. The relations of Euagoras to the Persian court had undergone a great change; and the Athenian ships which along with his own had worked in alliance with the Persian fleet were now needed to fight in his quarrel with Artaxerxes. With forty triremes. Thrasyboulos sailed first to Byzantion, and again made Athens the mistress of the Bosporos, and thence coasting along the eastern shores of the Egean met his death at Aspendos at the hands of natives irritated by the wrongdoing of some of his men. (389 B.C.)

These losses were sustained at a time when Athens could little afford to bear them. Aigina was again held by such of the old inhabitants of the island as Lysandros could find after the fali of the imperial city. These Aiginetans were goaded by the Spartan harmost to assaults on Athenian shipping. By way of reprisal the Athenian Chabrias landed on the island and taking the Spartan troops by surprise, put them to flight with severe loss. (388 B.C.) Defeat and lack of pay roused among these troops a dangerous discontent, when Teleutias, the brother of Agesilaos, told them that brave men had always a ready mode of winning their pay by their swords, and pledged himself to win it for them if only they would agree to follow him.

Leaving Aigina after nightfall Teleutias found himself before dawn close to the entrance of the Peiraieus, open still as in the days of Brasidas. The cries of those who even at that early hour chanced to be stirring sent the news through the port: from Peiraieus it was carried to Athens where the general belief was that the harbour had been actually taken. But before the hoplites could hurry down, Teleutias had sailed away with many merchant ships, with some triremes and with enormous plunder.

Oppressed with the burden of carrying on a wearisome and unprofitable war, the Athenians became almost helpless against Spartan intrigues; and when at length Antalkidas returned with a peace sent down, so the phrase ran, from Sousa, it was accepted by all in the sense which Sparta chose to put upon it. (387 B.C.) The Thebans alone claimed to take the oath in the