So ended the fight which left Epameinondas the first general of his age, and so fell a power which had fully earned its title to stability, if grinding tyranny and law-defying oppressiveness could confer such right. If we had nothing more than the dry record of Xenophon, we should never have known that Epameinondas saw the fight at Leuktra. It was to him some satisfaction to think that at the first his friends had been victorious, for only in that case could they have borne Kleombrotos alive from the field; that the tidings of the great catastrophe were by the orders of the Ephors received without a sign of emotion; and that on the morrow they who appeared with cheerful faces in the Agora were the kinsfolk of the dead, while the kindred of the survivors bore themselves like men oppressed by the deepest ignominy. The Lykourgean discipline would indeed have been worth little if it had failed to produce the semblance of an unconcern which treated the more generous and tender instincts of humanity as the worst of vices.

Another act in the great drama had been thus played out, and the whole Hellenic world had at length learnt that the promises of freedom made by Sparta had been from beginning to end a lie. Not a single pledge had she redeemed: not a single burden had been removed, not a single abuse redressed. She had hailed the downfall of Athens as the beginning of a golden age for Hellas, and in order to realise it she had aided and abetted her victorious generals in setting up everywhere societies of murderers. Her enemies were prostrate; and she trampled on them without a touch of commiseration. Her allies were too much overpowered by the consciousness of their inferiority really to dispute her will: and she refused to share her spoils with the partners of her robberies. Well might the blood of the Thebans boil in their veins as they looked on the graves of Skedasos and his daughters on the field of Leuktra; and well may we contrast the merciless iniquity of the Spartan government with that judicial impartiality of the Athenian demos which even a general who had done the good service of Paches dared not to face.

311

BOOK V.

THE RISE AND CULMINATION OF THE MAKEDONIAN

POWER.

CHAPTER I.

FROM THE BATTLE OF LEUKTRA TO THE DEATH OF
EPAMEINONDAS.

THE sudden disruption of the Spartan empire by the battle of Leuktra was followed naturally by vehement commotions in the Greek cities generally. Like snow melting before the summer sun, the Spartan harmosts vanished with their garrisons from the allied cities; the decemvirates who had ruled by their means were put down, and their partisans for the most part deprived of their property and banished. In all cases these changes were attended naturally with outbursts of vehement feeling which might easily run on into injustice and bloodshed; and the Spartans, hurled from the plenitude of power, found themselves compelled to watch events in silence, while the streets of Argos ran red with the blood of philo-Lakonian citizens. But the humiliation of Sparta was not confined to the expulsion of her harmosts, the ruin of her friends, or even the authority assumed by Athens as guardian of the Peace of Antalkidas. While many of the Greek cities (how many or which, we cannot say) undertook to maintain this peace under her presidency, the Thebans appealed to a tribunal of whose action we hear nothing during the whole of the weary struggle between Athens and Sparta. They pleaded before the Amphiktyonia (p. 11) for a verdict which might vindicate the divine justice against the men who had seized their Akropolis. The assembly sentenced Sparta to a fine of 500 talents; and although no notice was taken of the sentence even when the fine was doubled, the purpose of the Thebans was fully answered. The verdict of the most august Hellenic tribunal had marked her as

an offender against divine not less than human law: and not a voice had been raised in her defence.

When the city of Mantineia was broken up by the Spartans, the historian Xenophon found it convenient to say that after a little while the citizens vastly preferred the new state of things to the old. He must therefore have felt a surprise which he does not care to express when, immediately after the Theban victory, the Mantineians abandoned their villages, and with the fraction which had been allowed to remain set about the re-establishment of their old home. Nor was this all. The resolution of the Mantineians had quickened throughout the country the desire for a Pan-Arkadian union: and an invasion of Arkadia by Agesilaos was followed immediately by overtures from the Arkadians, first to Athens, and then, on their rejection by the Athenians, to Thebes.

For this invitation which he felt sure must come Epameinondas had been eagerly waiting. He had convinced himself that Spartan ambition could be effectually repressed only by setting up a counteracting force which would give to Spartan armies enough to do without crossing the Corinthian isthmus; but he entered the Peloponnesos (370 B.C.) unprepared for the daring enterprise which was to push to its furthest limit the mortification and ignominy of Sparta. Eagerly assuring Epameinondas that the road to Sparta lay open, the Arkadians besought him to strike a blow on that tyrant city whose mysterious territory no invading army had thus far entered. The bait was tempting; and in four different streams the invaders poured into a region hitherto regarded as inviolable. The flames which consumed Sellasia heralded the approach of the enemy to the very citadel of Spartan power. The spears and helmets of the Theban soldiers flashed near the bridge which spanned the Eurotas, and marked the progress of the ruin which swallowed up houses, crops, and cattle until it reached Amyklai.

The destroyer thus stood at the very doors of the oppressor, who had good cause to fear the rottenness of the materials with which he had chosen to construct his home. The old king had not merely to defend the villages of his unwalled city (p. 13), but to put down conspiracies within it, while such of the allied cities as wished to give help were unable to approach it. The lion, shut up in his den, was constrained to wait patiently for aid, if aid should ever reach him; and Spartan envoys appeared

at Athens, imploring the Demos to forget the wrongs of fifty years and strike a blow on the traitors who had prostrated themselves before the barbarian Xerxes. Struggling with some natural reluctance, the Athenians resolved to take the part of their ancient enemies.

It was possible that the army of Epameinondas might even have carried the streets of Sparta itself by assault. But it was not possible to foresee what the enemy, pushed to bay, might do in his despair, nor could he afford to encounter the risk while more important work summoned him elsewhither. After marching southwards to the port of Gytheion, he resolved to hasten back into Arkadia. He had already passed the Lakonian border, before Iphikrates, heading a large force of volunteers, could set out from Athens; and he now addressed himself to the task of building up permanent bulwarks against Spartan aggression. On the plain contained in the angle lying between the Alpheios and the Helisson he laid the foundations of the Great City, Megalopolis, which was to serve as a centre of common action not supplied by Tegea or Orchomenos. (369 B.C.)

But infinitely more galling to Spartan haughtiness was the sight of their ancient slaves, as they chose to call them, re-established in the home which even Aristomenes had been unable to defend (p. 16). The fall of Athens had been followed by the expulsion of the Messenians from Naupaktos, Pylos, and Kephallenia; and in scattered companies this unfortunate folk had been driven to seek asylums in places as distant even as the Libyan Hesperides. From this remote Greek colony or from nearer abodes they now hurried back to their old country at the call of a hero as great as Aristomenes and more successful; and the new city Messênê (no such common centre had ever as yet existed) rose on the summit of Ithômê, and looked down from its height of 2,500 feet on the happy plain of Makaria.

So mighty was the work which Epameinondas had achieved, when, having beaten back the troops of Iphikrates under Mount Oneion, he stood before the Theban assembly to defend himself for retaining his command four months beyond the legal time. His straightforward statement succeeded at least in keeping his enemies silent, while from the people he received with his colleagues an enthusiastic acquittal. The following year again saw Epameinondas and Pelopidas among the number of the Boiotarchs.

Elsewhere the course of events seemed chiefly to bring into clear light the thousand elements of dissatisfaction and discontent, of jealousy and suspicion. The alliance of Iasôn of Pherai with the Thebans sufficed of itself to make the Makedonian chief gravitate to Athens, and the same reason tended to win the favour of the Athenians for Amyntas. For the present the Athenians were specially anxious to recover the long-lost Amphipolis; but they were no more prepared now to put forth their full strength in the enterprise than they were in the days of Kleon, and the people of Amphipolis had no heart except for their second founder Brasidas. While the former put off all strenuous action, the aspect of the Hellenic world was suddenly changed by the assassination of the Pheraian despot and the death of the Makedonian Amyntas. At Pherai Iasôn was succeeded by his sons Polyphron and Polydoros: the former killed the latter, and was himself slain by another brother, Alexandros. In Makedonia, another Alexandros, the son of Amyntas, was after two years murdered; and Eurydike, the widow of the latter, hastened with her two younger sons, Perdikkas and Philip, to implore the aid of the Athenian Iphikrates. This help was vigorously given; and thus was established the dynasty which a few years later was to sweep away the autonomy of the Hellenic cities and give a new direction to Hellenic

energy.

Meanwhile after long debate Athens and Sparta had agreed to share alternately the supreme command both by land and sea for periods of five days; and a large force of Athenians and other allies of the Lakedaimonians under Mount Oneion barred the way for any Theban army. Epameinondas determined at once to test their purpose. Taking them at unawares, he brought his main strength to bear on the Lakedaimonians as holding the weakest position. These were beaten off, and his roadway left clear by the retreat of the Spartan polemarch who confessed himself defeated. But a more serious danger menaced him from Arkadia, where the Ten Thousand insisted on their right to share the supreme power with the Thebans— a claim which tended, not less than the triumphant march of the Arkadians to Asinê, a port a few miles to the northeast of Cape Akritas, to turn the goodwill of the Thebans to suspicion and dislike.

The disturbing elements were multiplied when the envoy