SUBMISSION OF ELIS.-ACCESSION OF AGESILAUS. 555 of this rich booty attracted a number of volun- | were not even allowed to retain Epeum, though teers from Arcadia and Achaia to his standard; they pleaded that it had come into their posand the campaign, Xenophon remarks, spread session by a fair purchase: the Spartans alabundance over the rest of Peloponnesus. Agis leged that they had dictated the terms of the continued his devastations as far as the out- bargain to the weaker party. The presidency not taken from them, only because the rustic skirts of the capital, which were adorned with of the temple at Olympia and of the games was many fine buildings, and these he did not spare. But he abstained from attacking the city, though population of Pisatis, on which it would by right it was believed that, being unfortified, it could have devolved, was deemed incapable of so aunot have opposed an effectual resistance.* He gust and important a charge. Elis, thus shorn probably calculated on an easier conquest, with of her power, was admitted among the dependthe aid of one of the factions between which ant allies of Sparta. Elis was at this time divided, and therefore turned away again, and prosecuted his ravages along the plain as far as the coast. Not long after the war with Elis was brought phi, where he had been consecrating a tenth of to a close, Agis, as he was returning from DelIn the mean while the oligarchical party, head- the spoil, fell sick at Herea in Arcadia, but was ed by Xenias, a man celebrated for his extra- carried to Sparta, and died there in the course ordinary wealth, and attached to Agis and to of a few days. When the solemn mourning Sparta by ties of private and public hospitality, was ended, a question arose as to the succesmade a vigorous effort to overpower their ad- sion. The throne was claimed, according to the versaries, and to reduce their country under law of descent, by Leotychides, who had hitherto But Agis, at the birth of the prince, had publicly subjection to Sparta. They rushed out armed passed for the only son of the deceased king. into the streets, and began to massacre all of the opposite side who fell in their way; and declared that he did not believe him to be his having killed a person whom they mistook for child; and though he owned him on his deaththe democratical leader Thrasydæus, they bed, this tardy recognition did not stifle the susThe report picion before excited, as well by his own lanthought their triumph secure. spread, and, while it struck his partisans with guage as by the prevailing report of his queen's consternation, swelled the numbers of the in- infidelity. The title of Leotychides was now surgents. But the truth was soon discovered, disputed on this ground by Agesilaus, the younand Thrasydæus, who had been overtaken by ger son of Archidamus, and half brother of Agis, sleep after a banquet, putting himself at the who was next in succession to the throne. He head of the commonalty, gained a complete vic- had already shown indications of the great qualtory over their opponents, who were forced to ities which he afterward displayed; had passed take refuge in the enemy's camp. Agis, how-through all the steps of the Spartan training ever, did not think proper to make any attempt upon the city, but retreated across the Alpheus with his booty, and having left a garrison under Lysippus, a Spartan harmost, with the Elean refugees, in Epitalium, which lay near the river, disbanded his forces and returned home. ring the remainder of the year the Elean territory was exposed to incessant inroads from the garrison of Epitalium, which were found so distressing, that in the next summer Thrasydæus was fain to sue for peace. He obtained it only on condition that the Eleans should demolish some fortifications, which seem to have been built for the defence of the city after the last invasion, and should renounce their sovereignty over almost all their subject towns. They Du • According to Diodorus, xix., 17, who names Pausanias as the commander in this campaign, the suburbs were guarded by a body of Etolians, who drove back the invading army; but this is clearly at variance with Xenophon's narrative, no less than the statement that Pausanias, after having fortified some posts in the Elean territory, wintered with his army at Dyme in Achaia. † Xen-, Hell, m., 2, 30. To reixos nepieciv. Yet the city is said to have been the year before artixiaros, which has therefore been interpreted to mean ill fortified. On the other hand, Schneider supposes that Teixos ought to be written as a proper name, and that it means the castle called To Tixos, which stood near Araxus, on the Acharan side of the border. But this place appears from Polybius, iv., 53, to have belonged from time immemorial to the Achaeans; and if the Eleans had wrested it from them, they would probably have been compelled, not to destroy, but to restore it. Pausanias, iii., 8, 5, likewise mentions the demolition of the city wall as one of the conditions of peace. : Pausinias, 1, 8, 5, makes no exception: pre twr περιοίκων ἐτὶ ἄρχειν. This would indeed be very wide of the truth, if they retained all their subject towns except those mentioned by Xenophon, iii., 2, 30, who says that they gue up Cyllene and the Triphylian cities Phrixa, Epita1 am, Letriua, Amphidoli, and Margana, and, moreover, Acruru and Lusion, and even Epeum. But it seems clear with exemplary propriety, and had won the gen- A year had not elapsed from his accession, when a conspiracy was detected at Sparta, which brought the state to the verge of a bloody revolution; and though crushed in the shell, gave an alarming indication of the unsoundness that there is some mistake about this enumeration. It is Impossible to suppose that they were allowed to retain Lepreum and Macistus; and, as Mueller observes (Orchom., p. 362), the three towns north of the Alpheus were not commonly considered as belonging to Triphylia, nor was Perhaps Phrixa was sometimes omitted, and a kai has dropEpitabum usually numbered among the Triphylian towns. ped out before its name in Xenophon's list. a described in loose language as belonging to that class. In proportion as the numbers of the ancient freemen decreased, the dignity and advantages of their position were augmented, and they were consequently more and more unwilling to share them with others. They had cause to fear, not only the loss of their power and political privileges, but also the introduction of an agrarian law to restore the equality of property which Lycurgus was believed to have established. On the other hand, the inferior citizens, without any view to these objects, when they considered their numbers, and the merit and services of many among them, could not be satisfied with a condition which, in such a com the highest good, exposed them to continual humiliation. This feeling was, perhaps, rather irritated than soothed by the high employments to which those whose talents and character fitted them for such promotion were frequently advanced. The distinction itself was galling. even where it involved no injurious consequences; and it was the more keenly felt the more clearly it was seen not to correspond to any real difference in worth or desert. of the whole political system. To explain its origin, we must take a view of some changes which had crept into the Spartan Constitution after the conquest of Messenia. We have already seen reason to believe that one effect of the long and perilous struggle with Messenia was a communication of a limited franchise to numerous body of new citizens; and we were disposed to conjecture that this event was closely connected with the great enlargement of the authority of the ephors, which appears to have taken place in the same period. They rose, as we conceived, to a new stage of power, chiefly as representatives of the whole commonalty, which included both the new and the old citizens. But before the epoch at which we have now arrived, both the internal condi-munity as Sparta, where honour was accounted tion of the commonalty and the position of the ephors with regard to it underwent several important changes. It is possible that the distinction between the two classes of citizens, which, as appears from the legends concerning the founding of Tarentum, and from other evidence, excited much discontent at the time it was introduced, may have been removed in a subsequent generation. But other causes afterward produced similar effects. The earthquake, which gave occasion to the third Messe- Under these circumstances, it becomes internian war, appears to have inflicted a wound on esting to inquire by what means the higher the population of Sparta from which it never class, notwithstanding its inferiority in physirecovered. Its numbers were continually re- cal force, and the universal discontent which duced by the struggles of the ensuing period; prevailed among its subjects, still maintained and the deep impression made at Sparta by the its ground. Some weight must undoubtedly be events of Sphacteria proves how much the attributed to the general reverence for the anvalue of a Spartan life had then risen. It was cient institutions, which continued to guard not, however, by war only that this part of the them, even after they had degenerated, and no population had been thinned. During the same longer answered the end for which they were period the growing inequality of private for- designed. But there were safeguards of antunes was contributing to the same effect. The other kind which, perhaps, contributed still more highest political privileges belonged only to to secure their stability. The great variety of those citizens whose means permitted them to conditions and interests which distinguished associate at the public tables. All who were the inferior classes from each other, served as unable to defray this expense were, it seems, a barrier to prevent their union, and to shelter by the very fact, and without any fault but their the higher class from the danger which it would indigence, degraded into a lower class, from have had to apprehend if they could have been the rank of peers to that of inferiors or com- brought to act in concert with each other. Not moners. But while some sank into this lower only were the Helots and the provincials thus sphere through a blameless poverty, others disunited, but it is probable there was a like rose into it from an humbler station by their want of unanimity among the lower orders of merits. The services of the Helots and the the freemen themselves. And there may be provincials were frequently rewarded with ground to suspect that it was a leading object emancipation and a share of the franchise, so of state policy to nourish their mutual jealousy, qualified as to keep them below the ancient and that the names and other distinctions by citizens, and, it would appear, still separate which they were kept apart were contrived for from one another, as they were distinguished this end. They had no cominon organ, nor by peculiar titles. Another addition to this in- any legitimate opportunities of united action; ferior body was made through marriages con- for the assembly in which they met as one tracted by Spartan freemen with women of in-commonalty was so much under the control of ferior condition. Gylippus, Callicratidas, and Lysander were probably among the offspring of such marriages, and notwithstanding the high military stations which they filled, were never accounted equal in civil rank to their fathers. They were, perhaps, originally, in legal estimation, on a level with the favoured Helot children, who were often reared in their master's family, together with his sons, under the appellation of Mothones or Mothaces; and they are therefore the presiding magistrates as to be scarcely a deliberative body. On the other hand, the main strength of the government lay in the all-pervading authority of the ephors, which was nearly absolute; and, whatever might be the difference of their views on certain points of foreign and domestic policy, was uniformly exerted to promote the interests of the oligarchy. The advantage derived from the unity of purpose, secrecy of deliberation, and rapidity of action, which resulted from such a concentration of power in a few devoted hands, may be easily conceived, and will be illustrated by the history of the conspiracy which we are about to opponents of all innovations tending to encroach on oligarchical privileges, has induced some writers to interpret Aristotle's words in a sense which they seem scarcely to bear; so that they may represent the ephors as elected exclusively from the peers.* But there appear to be two ways in which it may be possible to solve the difficulty without resorting to this expedient. All that we know of the assembly at Sparta is consistent with the supposition that the ruling Spartans possessed a sufficient influence over the elections to secure a majority, at least, in the ephoral college; and so long as this could be done there was a manifest advantage in keeping up the illusion that they were representatives of the commonalty, which, as Aristotle observes,+ was kept quiet by the share it had-or seemed to have-in the highest office in the state. But it may also be observed that the attractions of the office itself, which grew with the enlargement of the Spartan power, the plenitude of authority over kings, subjects, and allies which it conferred, would, with ordinary minds, and most of all with persons of the lowest condition, be sufficient pledges for their willingness to maintain its privileges, and, consequently, the whole system on which they depended, unimpaired. To this it may be added that the ephors, in the midst of their high functions, were surrounded by watchful eyes, and by hands which would not have remained long inactive if they had ever been suspected of har relate. But it may be useful here to observe, that the more insecure the dominion of the oligarchy became, the more was the control of the ephors needed to guard against revolutionary projects of the kings. The kings had, perhaps, as much reason as any of their subjects to be dissatisfied with the existing state of things. According to the universally-received tradition, they were much more closely connected by blood with the ancient inhabitants of the country than with the Spartans. They were the natural protectors of the whole people, and had no interests in common with the ruling caste. As their authority had been originally abridged by the encroachments of the ephors, so they were subject to the constant superintendence of the rival magistracy, which not only restricted them in the exercise of all the functions of royalty, but interfered with the most private concerns and relations of their domestic life. This dependance was the more galling from its contrast with their nominal greatness, and they could scarcely fail to perceive, that a change which should deprive the ruling body of its exclusive privileges might operate in their favour, release them from many irksome restraints, and enable them to exchange their empty honours for the real dignity of chiefs of the nation. Such a project had been formed by Pausanias:* it might again be conceived, and with fairer prospects of success, by a man of enterprising spirit. This seems to have been the true ground of the jealousy with which the kings were cer-bouring designs hostile to the interests of the tainly viewed by the peers. But the hereditary rivalry between the two royal families offered one security against their ambition, if directed towards this object; and it was therefore studiously cherished. Another was supplied by the unreinitting vigilance of the ephors, kept alert by their zeal for the maintenance and extension of their own authority. So far all seems sufficiently clear; but there is one interesting point connected with this subject which is involved in great obscurity. The power of the ephors appears, indeed, to have risen to the height at which we find it in the later times at the expense of the royal dignity; but, according to the view we have taken of their elevation, they were considered as representatives of the whole commonalty, and at least quite as much of the lower as of the higher class. Even, however, if that view should be wholly rejected, the account which Aristotle gives of the mode of their election would have prepared us to expect that, instead of being uniformly subservient to the will of the privileged class, they would be found as often acting the part of demagogues, and that they would have been disposed rather to take the lead in a revolution than steadily to uphold the established order of things. Aristotle contrasts the qualifications required for the ephoralty with those required for the senate, and describes the class out of which the ephors were elected in terms which apparently include the whole commonalty, or all who were admissible to the great assembly. He says that they were chosen without any regard to eminent merit, and were often extremely poor, and therefore venal. The ditficulty of reconciling these statements with the policy invariably pursued by the ephors, as peers; and they seem, for many purposes, to have been subject to the control of the smaller assembly, which, however it may have been composed, was undoubtedly devoted to those interests with perfect unanimity. Such seems to have been the internal condition of Sparta at the accession of Agesilaus; and the history of the conspiracy which threatened the Constitution in the first year of his reign, though related by an author deeply prejudiced in favour of the prevailing party, throws a strong light on the state of public feeling among the inferior classes, and on the spirit and resources of the government. The first intimation of the danger, according to Xenophon, was given to Agesilaus himself, as he was engaged in a public sacrifice, by the attendant soothsayer, who professed to read evidence of a most formidable plot in the aspect of the victims. He had, perhaps, received some private information on the subject; and his public warning, by the alarm it occasioned among the conspirators, may have hastened the discovery which followed. Five days after, the whole affair was revealed to the ephors by an accomplice. He charged a young man named Cinadon-a person, Xenophon observes, of high courage, but not one of the peers-as the author of the conspiracy; and, in answer to the questions of the ephors, gave the following account of it: Cinadon, he said, having met him one day in the agora, at an hour when it was thronged with people, drew him aside into a corner, and bade him count the Spartans that were to be seen there. He could observe no more than the official persons who were transacting business there, one of the kings, the senators, ephors, and other magistrates, in all about Wachsmuth, 1, 2, p. 214. † Pol., 11., 6, 15. forty. These, said Cinadon, you have to con- put to the torture, and the names of his accomsider as your enemies; the rest of the multi-plices, as soon as they were wrung from him, tude assembled here, whose numbers must ex- were taken down, and transmitted by express ceed theirs a hundred fold, are all allied with to Sparta. It is remarkable that the list incluyou against them. Cinadon then bade him no- ded the soothsayer Tisamenus, a descendant tice the passengers in the streets, where he of the Elean of the same name, who had rewould find a like proportion between the num-ceived the Spartan franchise as the price of his bers of his enemies and his friends, and reminded him that the case was the same throughout the country, where each Spartan landowner lived surrounded by a host of aliens. He then informed him that a plot had been concerted for the destruction of their oppressors. Only a few trusty persons, indeed, were in the secret; but they, Cinadon emphatically remarked, were in the secret of the whole subject population of Laconia. For, with regard to the Spartans, the language of all classes-Helots, neodamodes, provincials, citizens of the lower order-wherever they ventured to speak freely, was the same; they did not disguise the bitterness of their hatred, which, according to Cinadon's phrase, was such that they were ready to eat their flesh raw. The conspirators, he said, had regular arms of their own, and as to the multitude, he had shown the informer how they might find weapons by leading him into the iron market, and pointing out to him, besides knives and swords, a variety of implements of husbandry, and other tools, which might all be applied to that use; and, indeed, there was scarcely any handicraft which could not arm the workmen with weapons sufficient for the purpose of an insurrection, especially as they should surprise their enemies unarmed. Finally, the informer added that a day was fixed for the execution of the plot. services in the Persian war.* Nothing more clearly marks the extent of the danger to which the government was exposed; for the Elean Tisamenus, as Herodotus informs us, had expressly stipulated for the full franchise,+ so that his descendant must have enjoyed all the privileges of the highest class of citizens. But possibly they were imbittered by the consciousness that the genuine Spartans still looked down upon him as an alien. He and the others were arrested, and then Cinadon himself was brought to Sparta and examined. When he had confessed the whole plot, and confirmed his first information against his accomplices, he was asked what had been his object. Not to be inferior," was his reply, "to any man in Lacedæmon." It only remained to punish the prisoners; and the government, conscious that it could only maintain itself by terror, determined to make their fate a warning to the disaffected. They were first ignominiously led through the city, and publicly goaded and scourged, and were then put to death. So, Xenophon calmly observes, they met with their deserts. As a warm admirer of the institutions which the conspiracy was designed to overthrow, and as a pensioner of the Spartan government, he could not, perhaps, make a less severe remark on the defeated party; as an historian, he could scarcely have subjoined a more frivolous and unseasonable reflection on such a train of oc currences. Not long after this event news was brought to Sparta by a Syracusan named Herodes, whe had just returned from Phoenicia, of preparations which he had witnessed in the Phoenician ports for a great armament, which he had learned was to consist of 300 galleys. He had not been able to ascertain its object, but it had induced him to quicken his departure, that he might bear the tidings to Greece. The Spartan The ephors, convinced of its reality, and of the urgency of the danger, took their measures with the promptitude and secrecy which the occasion required. They did not even convene the smaller assembly, but privately called the senators together, and deliberated with them on the course to be pursued. The object was both to arrest Cinadon in the quietest manner, and to secure his accomplices. He had often been employed by the ephors in commissions which demanded energy and address. They now sent him to Aulon, on the northern fron-government was alarmed, and called a congress tier of Messenia, with instructions to apprehend some of the inhabitants, and certain Helots, who were described in the scytale. Among the persons to be arrested was a woman of Aulon, of uncommon beauty,* who, it seems, had been charged with corrupting the Spartan citizens who passed through the town. The more effectually to blind him to the real object of his mission, he was directed to apply to the commander of the royal guard for a small party of soldiers to serve under him, and was told that wagons should be sent for the prisoners. But such instructions were given to his attendants, that on his arrival at Aulon he was taken into custody; and, for greater security, a troop of horse was sent to support them. He was then * It seems not impossible that this may have been one of the persons mentioned by Theopompus in a passage of the fifty-sixth book of his Histories, cited by Athenæus, xit., p. 609, b. "Theopompus relates that Xenopitha, the mother of Lysandridas, excelled all the women of Peloponnesus in beauty. She was put to death by the Lacedæmonians, with her sister Chryse, at the time when King Agesilaus, through his intrigues (kataractάons), caused Lysandridas, who was his enemy, to be banished." of the allies to deliberate on preventive measures. But to Lysander the intelligence afforded a highly welcome opportunity of resumirg his ambitious plans, and recovering his influence among the Asiatic Greeks. He seems, however, to have been aware that he was himself viewed with jealousy at home, and that a proposal coming directly from himself, and immediately tending to his own aggrandizement, would probably be ill received. He resolved, therefore, to make use of his friend Agesilaus to accomplish his purpose, and easily prevailed on him to undertake, with a small force, to give such employment to the Persian arms in Asia as would secure Greece from the threatened invasion. Agesilaus, who was in the prime of life, was no less eager to display his military talents in such a brilliant field than Lysander to renew his intrigues, and to replace his creatures in the posts from which they had been dislodg • P. 277. † ix. 33, ἦν μιν πολιήτην σφέτερον ποιήσωνται τῶν πάντω μεταδιδόντες. EXPEDITION OF AGESILAUS.-LYSANDER. ed. He therefore offered to take the command of an expedition to Asia, for which he required no more than 2000 neodamode troops, and 6000 of the allies, and desired to be accompanied by a council of thirty Spartans-which he probably knew would, according to usage, be forced upon His offer him-and by Lysander among them. was accepted, and all his requests granted, with the addition of six months' pay for the army. Corinth, Thebes, and Athens were called upon to contribute their forces, but they all refused.* The Corinthians pleaded the damage which had lately befallen one of their temples through the effects of an earthquake, as an omen which deterred them from taking part in the war. The Athenians alleged their weakness as an excuse. The Thebans, though they were solicited by Aristomenidas, the grandfather of Agesilaus, who, having been one of the five judges who passed sentence on the Platæans, was considered as their benefactor, seem not to have condescended to cover their refusal with any pretext. In the spring of 397, having fixed the contingents of the other allies, and appointed the place of rendezvous for their troops, and having celebrated the usual sacrifices for a foreign expedition, he set sail for Aulis in Boeotia. It was the first time since the expedition of Menelaus that a King of Sparta had undertaken to invade Asia; and Agesilaus, partly perhaps for the sake of the omen, and partly for the sake of his own renown, was willing to associate his enterprise with the recollection of He therefore stopped that heroic adventure. at Aulis, to sacrifice there after the example of Agamemnon. But before he had completed the rite, the Bootarchs sent a party of horse to enJoin him to desist, and the men did not merely deliver the message, but scattered the parts of the victim which they found on the altar. Plutarch, who seems willing to extenuate the insult which his countrymen offered to his hero, represents Agesilaus as having infringed the established usage, by employing a soothsayer of his own on this occasion, instead of the Bootian to whom the superintendence of the ceremony properly belonged. But Xenophon leaves us to conclude that the interruption was a simple indication of the hostile spirit with which the expedition was viewed by the Baotian government; and if Agesilaus saw it in this light, he had reason to dread the omen. He, however, stifled his resentment, and embarked again for Gerastus, where he found the bulk of his armament assembled, and sailed with it to Ephesus. Soon after his arrival he received a message from Tissaphernes, calling on him to explain the design of his coming. Agesilaus replied, that his object was to restore the Asiatic Greeks to the independence which their brethren enjoyed on the other side of the Egean. The satrap on this proposed a truce until the king's pleasure could be taken on this demand; he engaged himself to support it with all the credit he possessed, and professed to believe that Paus., i., 9. 2. ↑ Pausanias represents them as refusing with great reToctance; but the sequel of the history renders this very doubtful. Pausanias says that they pleaded the Peloponnesian war and the pestilence (1), but that their real motive was the utelligence they had received of Conon's journey to the Persian court. the court would comply with it. Agesilaus con- ed again in Asia, though in the train of a Spar- |