master intrusted him with the supreme command in that part of his dominions, he would do his best to defend them. Agesilaus grasped his hand, and assured him of his warmest regard, and, under the excitement of a generous feeling, forgetting the excuse he had just before made for his past conduct, promised to withdraw immediately from his territories, and, though they should continue at war, to abstain from invading them, as long as there was any other quarter in which he could employ his forces. on the by-standers. A young son of Pharnabazus, when his father rode away, lingered behind, and running up to Agesilaus, proposed to become his guest. Agesilaus accepted the offer, and the engagement was immediately sealed by an interchange of presents. The youth gave a javelin of beautiful workmanship, and in return received the rich caparisons of a horse on which one of the king's officers rode. He then set off to overtake his father. The friendship of Agesilaus was afterward useful to him when he was driven out of his father's dominions by one of his brothers, and was forced to take refuge in Greece. ed to him of gaining a much more valuable ally. | would enable him to make at the expense of his A Greek of Cyzicus, who was connected by the fellow-subjects, who would then be forced to ties of hospitality with Pharnabazus, and had own him as their master. Pharnabazus, in anrecently entered in the same relation with swer to these overtures, said that he would Agesilaus, proposed to him to bring about an in- frankly declare his mind to them. If the king terview between him and the satrap. The pre- should attempt to place any other general in liminaries were arranged, and a place of meet- authority over him, he would renounce his alleing appointed in the open air, to which Agesi-giance, and ally himself to Sparta; but if his laus came, accompanied by the Thirty, and they seated themselves on the grass to wait for Pharnabazus. He came attended by a train of servants, who, according to the Persian fashion, proceeded to lay down a carpet and cushion for their master. But the intelligent Persian, struck by the contrast of the Spartan simplicity, in a fortune at present so much more prosperous than his own, ordered these instruments of luxury to be removed, and, in his splendid attire, took his seat without ceremony on the green sward by the side of Agesilaus. After the forms of a friendly greeting had been inter- So the interview ended. It was followed by changed, Pharnabazus opened the conference a little scene which Xenophon seems to have with an expostulation on the hard treatment described in order to show the prepossessing which he had suffered. He reminded his hear-effect produced by the demeanour of Agesilaus ers of the zeal and constancy with which he had espoused the cause of Sparta in the war with Athens; that he had spared no expense, and shrunk from no risk, not even from that of his life, in her behalf, and that he had never, in any of their transactions, subjected himself, like Tissaphernes, to the reproach of double-dealing. Nevertheless, Spartan hostility had now reduced him to such a condition that even in his own territory he did not know how to find a meal, except such as he could collect, like a dog, from the orts and leavings of their apine; while his fair patrimonial mansions, his pleasant woods and parks, had been all burned, and felled, and spoiled. If, he concluded, it was his Agesilaus kept his word, and withdrew his ignorance that made him unable to reconcile forces from the satrapy of Pharnabazus, where, such conduct with the obligations of justice and indeed, it is probable he would not otherwise gratitude, he desired that the Spartans would have stayed much longer, as the spring was enlighten him. This address, Xenophon says, coming on, and he was meditating a new expestruck the Thirty with shame, and it was some dition, in which he meant to advance as far as time before Agesilaus broke the silence that he could into the interior. By this movement, ensued. Yet the complaint, as Xenophon re- if he gained no more decisive advantage, he exports it, falls very far short of the real hardship pected that he should at least separate all the of the case; for Pharnabazus might have ob- provinces which he left behind him from the served, not only that he had not been exempted Persian Empire. With this design, he proceedby his old allies from any of the evils of war, as ed to the plain of Thebe, where he encamped, his former services might have entitled him to and began to collect all the forces he could raise expect, but that their hostility had been direct- from the allied cities. He was in the midst of ed with a special preference against him, and these preparations, when he received a message that Agesilaus himself had spared the faithless from the ephors, which was brought by a SparTissaphernes, stained as he was with Grecian tan named Epicydidas, who apprized him of the blood, in order to fall upon the ancient and tried new turn which affairs had taken in Greece, ally of Sparta. Such a charge Agesilaus might and summoned him to march with the utmost have found it difficult to answer; but for that speed for the defence of his country. Agesilaus which Xenophon attributes to Pharnabazus he received this intelligence with fortitude, though had a ready and fair reply. Private friendship it stopped him at the outset of the most brilliant must always give way to reasons of state. The career that had ever yet been opened by a Greek, Spartans being at war with the king of Persia, and obeyed the command of the ephors with as were compelled to treat all his subjects as their much promptness as if he had been present in enemies; and Pharnabazus among the rest, their council-room at Sparta. But he first callhowever glad they might be to gain him for ed an assembly of the allies, and announced his their friend. And what they had now to pro-approaching departure to them; adding, howpose was not that he should exchange one mas-ever, a promise that he would not forget them, ter for another, but that he should at once be- but as soon as he should have despatched the come their ally, and independent of every supe- business which called him away, would return rior. Nor was it a poor or barren independence to protect them. The assembly received these that they held out to him, but a rich addition tidings with marks of deep concern, but unanto his hereditary possessions, which their aid imously determined to send their forces with a HISTORY OF GREECE. ted 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 | described in loose language as belonging to that origin, we must take a view of some changes class. which had crept into the Spartan Constitution after the conquest of Messenia. In proportion as the numbers of the ancient ready seen reason to believe that one effect of of their position were augmented, and they We have al- freemen decreased, the dignity and advantages the long and perilous struggle with Messenia were consequently more and more unwilling to was a communication of a limited franchise to share them with others. They had cause to numerous body of new citizens; and we fear, not only the loss of their power and powere disposed to conjecture that this event was litical privileges, but also the introduction of closely connected with the great enlargement an agrarian law to restore the equality of propof the authority of the ephors, which appears erty which Lycurgus was believed to have esto have taken place in the same period. They tablished. On the other hand, the inferior citirose, as we conceived, to a new stage of pow-zens, without any view to these objects, when er, chiefly as representatives of the whole com- they considered their numbers, and the ment monalty, which included both the new and the and services of many among them, could not be old citizens. But before the epoch at which satisfied with a condition which, in such a comwe have now arrived, both the internal condi-munity as Sparta, where honour was accounted tion of the commonalty and the position of the the highest good, exposed them to continual ephors with regard to it underwent several im- humiliation. This feeling was, perhaps, rather portant changes. It is possible that the dis-irritated than soothed by the high employments tinction between the two classes of citizens, to which those whose talents and character nitwhich, 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 Messenian war, appears to have inflicted a wound on the population of Sparta from which it never recovered. Its numbers were continually reduced by the struggles of the ensuing period; and the deep impression made at Sparta by the events of Sphacteria proves how much the value of a Spartan life had then risen. It was not, however, by war only that this part of the population had been thinned. During the same period the growing inequality of private fortunes was contributing to the same effect. The highest political privileges belonged only to those citizens whose means permitted them to associate at the public tables.† unable to defray this expense were, it seems, All who were by the very fact, and without any fault but their indigence, degraded into a lower class, from the rank of peers to that of inferiors or commoners. But while some sank into this lower sphere through a blameless poverty, others rose into it from an humbler station by their merits. The services of the Helots and the provincials were frequently rewarded with emancipation and a share of the franchise, so qualified as to keep them below the ancient citizens, and, it would appear, still separate from one another, as they were distinguished by peculiar titles. Another addition to this inferior body was made through marriages contracted by Spartan freemen with women of inferior 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 * P. 144. † Aristot., Pol., ii., p. 59, Goettl., öpos Tns ToiTelas où τός ἐστιν αὐτοῖς ὁ πάτριος, τὸν μὴ δυνάμενον τοῦτο τὸ τέλος φέρειν μὴ μετέχειν αὐτοῖς. esting to inquire by what means the higher Under these circumstances, it becomes interclass, notwithstanding its inferiority in phystcal force, and the universal discontent which prevailed among its subjects, still maintained its ground. Some weight must undoubtedly be attributed to the general reverence for the ancient institutions, which continued to guard them, even after they had degenerated, and no longer answered the end for which they were designed. But there were safeguards of another kind which, perhaps, contributed still more to secure their stability. The great variety of conditions and interests which distinguished a barrier to prevent their union, and to shelter the inferior classes from each other, served as the higher class from the danger which it would have had to apprehend if they could have been brought to act in concert with each other. Not only were the Helots and the provincials thos disunited, but it is probable there was a like want of unanimity among the lower orders of the freemen themselves. And there may be ground to suspect that it was a leading object of state policy to nourish their mutual jealousy, and that the names and other distinctions by which they were kept apart were contrived for this end. one any legitimate opportunities of united action; They had no common organ, nor for the assembly in which they met as commonalty was so much under the control of the presiding magistrates as to be scarcely a deliberative body. On the other hand, the inain strength of the government lay in the all-pervading authority of the ephors, which was nearly absolute; and, whatever might be the ditference of their views on certain points of foreign and domestic policy, was uniformly exert ed to promote the interests of the oligarchs The advantage derived from the unity of purpose, secrecy of deliberation, and rapidity action, which resulted from such a concentr easily conceived, and will be illustrated by de tion of power in a few devoted hands, may te history of the conspiracy which we are about to relate. But it may be useful here to observe, opponents of all innovations tending to encroach that the more insecure the dominion of the oli- on oligarchical privileges, has induced some garchy became, the more was the control of the writers to interpret Aristotle's words in a sense ephors needed to guard against revolutionary which they seem scarcely to bear; so that they projects of the kings. The kings had, perhaps, may represent the ephors as elected exclusiveas much reason as any of their subjects to be ly from the peers.* But there appear to be two dissatisfied with the existing state of things. ways in which it may be possible to solve the According to the universally-received tradition, difficulty without resorting to this expedient. they were much more closely connected by All that we know of the assembly at Sparta is blood with the ancient inhabitants of the coun- consistent with the supposition that the ruling try than with the Spartans. They were the Spartans possessed a sufficient influence over natural protectors of the whole people, and had the elections to secure a majority, at least, in no interests in common with the ruling caste. the ephoral college; and so long as this could As their authority had been originally abridged be done there was a manifest advantage in by the encroachments of the ephors, so they keeping up the illusion that they were reprewere subject to the constant superintendence sentatives of the commonalty, which, as Arisof the rival magistracy, which not only restrict- totle observes,+ was kept quiet by the share it ed them in the exercise of all the functions of had-or seemed to have-in the highest office royalty, but interfered with the most private con- in the state. But it may also be observed that cerns and relations of their domestic life. This the attractions of the office itself, which grew dependance was the more galling from its con- with the enlargement of the Spartan power, the trast with their nominal greatness, and they could plenitude of authority over kings, subjects, and scarcely fail to perceive, that a change which allies which it conferred, would, with ordinary should deprive the ruling body of its exclusive minds, and most of all with persons of the lowprivileges might operate in their favour, release est condition, be sufficient pledges for their willthem from many irksome restraints, and enable ingness to maintain its privileges, and, consethem to exchange their empty honours for the quently, the whole system on which they dereal dignity of chiefs of the nation. Such a pended, unimpaired. To this it may be added project had been formed by Pausanias:* it might that the ephors, in the midst of their high funcagain be conceived, and with fairer prospects tions, were surrounded by watchful eyes, and of success, by a man of enterprising spirit. by hands which would not have remained long This seems to have been the true ground of inactive if they had ever been suspected of harthe 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 unremitting 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 difficulty of reconciling these statements with the policy invariably pursued by the ephors, as * See p. 269. ↑ Wachsmuth, i., 2, p. 214. 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. 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 frontier 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, xii., p. 609, b. "Theopompus relates that Xenopith a, the mother of Lysandridas, excelled all the women of Peloponnesus in beauty. She was put to death by the Lacedemonians, with her sister Chiyse, at the time when King Agesilaus, through his intrigues (Karacтactάoas), caused Lysandridas, who was his enemy, to be banished," services in the Persian war. Nothing more currences. As a Not long after this event news was brought to Sparta by a Syracusan named Herodes, who 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 be might bear the tidings to Greece. The Spartan government was alarmed, and called a congress of the allies to deliberate on preventive measures. But to Lysander the intelligence atforded a highly welcome opportunity of resuming his ambitious plans, and recovering his intrence among the Asiatic Greeks. He seems, however, to have been aware that he was hirnself viewed with jealousy at home, and that a proposal coming directly from himself, and im mediately 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 πάντα μεταδιδόντες. sent to the king for a re-enforcement to enable him to take the field; and Agesilaus, who was well aware of his intentions, and probably would not otherwise have granted the truce, though he observed it with strict fidelity, undoubtedly did not suffer the time to be lost with regard to the progress of his own preparations. ed. He therefore offered to take the command the court would comply with it. Agesilaus conof an expedition to Asia, for which he required sented to the proposal, only requiring security no more than 2000 neodamode troops, and 6000 for the observance of the engagement, and even of the allies, and desired to be accompanied by this security was no more than the oath of Tisa council of thirty Spartans-which he probably saphernes, which he pledged with due solemniknew would, according to usage, be forced upon ty to Dercyllidas, and two other Spartan comhim-and by Lysander among them. His offer missioners, who were sent to ratify the convenwas accepted, and all his requests granted, with tion. Nothing, however, was farther from the the addition of six months' pay for the army.mind of either party than the thought of peace. Corinth, Thebes, and Athens were called upon | Tissaphernes, as soon as he had taken the oath, 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 Plateans, 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 that heroic adventure. He therefore stopped 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 Beeotian 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 Geræstus, 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 During this interval a breach, which the characters and views of the two men rendered almost inevitable, rose between him and Lysander. The rumour of the expedition, and of the part which Lysander was to take in it, seems to have rekindled the flames of discord in the Asiatic cities, which, after the expulsion of his creatures, had for a time been kept tranquil by the wise forbearance of the ephors and the prudent administration of Dercyllidas. When he came to Ephesus, his door was immediately besieged by a crowd of petitioners, who desired a license to oppress their countrymen under his patronage. After the victory of Egos-potami, Lysander, as the man who for the time wielded the irresistible power of Sparta, had been courted with extravagant servility by the Asiatic Greeks. They did not content themselves with the ordinary honours of golden crowns and statues, but raised altars and offered sacrifices, and sang paans, and consecrated festivals to him as a god:* the first example of that grossest kind of adulation, which afterward became common among the Greeks, and was reduced to a system by the Romans. When he now appeared again in Asia, though in the train of a Spartan king, it was still supposed that the substance of power resided with him, and that he would direct the exercise of the royal authority as he thought fit. He did not discountenance this persuasion, for he shared it himself. He had calculated on the subserviency of Agesilaus, whom he considered as mainly indebted to his friendship, first for the throne, and then-an obligation little inferior-for the command in Asia. But his colleagues, the rest of the Thirty, felt that the homage paid to him by the allies was derogatory, not only to the royal dignity, but to their own; and they complained to Agesilaus of his presumption. The king himself had been hurt by it, and resolved to check it, not by a friendly remonstrance, but in a way the most grating to Lysander's feelings. He rejected all applications which were made to him in reliance on Lysander's interest; and his purpose at length became so evident, that Lysander was obliged to inform his clients that his intercession, instead of furthering, would only obstruct their suits. He had, however, sufficient self-command to stifle or disguise his resentment; and, after a very mild expostulation with Agesilaus on the harshness of his conduct, requested to be removed from the scene of his humiliation to some other place, where Plut., Lys., 18. |
