JOINT WORK OF EPAMINONDAS AND PELOPIDAS
The Thebans had every inducement to husband their strength and guard their commonwealth against civil divisions, for the number of their adversaries increased with their good fortune. If they could look back with pride on what had been accomplished, still their future was by no means secure. They had indeed baffled the unjustifiable designs of their enemies. The Spartans, who eighteen months before had cherished the hope of decimating the divided Thebans for the benefit of the god, were now reduced to complete impotence, while they were threatened by the Thebans with almost the same fate by which the latter had themselves been confronted; the foundation of a city which offered a safe refuge to all oppressed and outlawed inhabitants of Laconia, had inflicted a mortal wound on the ruling Dorian state; the annihilation of the Peloponnesian league had permanently broken the Spartan supremacy.
But the very rapidity with which the fetters had been shaken off had created many difficulties which the Thebans had to face when they came to reunite the dismembered limbs into a new whole. The hegemony of Sparta, like that of Athens, rested on the foundation of ancient popular tradition; each had its justification in the eminent qualities of the respective states, in the exclusive military training and bravery of the Spartans, in the cultivation and democratic judicial life of the Athenians; all the Greek commonwealth had been pledged to one or the other of these states for a shorter or longer period; consequently subordination to one of them was no disgrace to any town, since the ancestors of its inhabitants had already stood in a similar relation.
The position was quite different in the case of Thebes, which neither by her historical past, nor by the greatness and importance of her intellectual and moral progress and civil institutions, seemed justified and qualified for the assumption of so eminent a position. Much as the Peloponnesians admired the bravery, the discipline, and the excellent disposition of the Theban troops, their military reputation was too recent to allow of its measuring itself in the eyes of the Hellenes with the glory of Sparta’s arms and her military practice; and yet warlike courage and bodily dexterity were the only merits which the Thebans could bring forward to support their claim to supremacy in Hellas. They had neglected navigation, though the favourable situation of the country, with its extensive coast on both shores and the excellent roadsteads, especially at Aulis, offered many advantages; they had at all times shown a disinclination and contempt for commerce and industry, and were consequently often in distress for money; in intellectual and artistic progress, they had not only remained behind Athens and the Hellenes of Asia Minor, but the Dorian states of Sparta, Corinth, Sicyon, and Ægina had also developed a richer culture; the composition of lyrics and the art of playing on the flute were the only accomplishments in which the Bœotians had attained to any skill.
The sense of justice and humanity were little cultivated; savage and cruel in their disposition, they pursued their enemies and their rivals with bloodthirsty passion, so that on his second expedition into the Peloponnesus Epaminondas only saved a number of aristocratic fugitives from Bœotia from an agonising death by denying their origin. Beside this, the inclination of the Thebans to sensual pleasures and their delight in luxurious feasts and banquets, formed a striking contrast to Athenian simplicity and moderation, and to the stern and joyless lives of the Spartans.
It has been already remarked that Epaminondas was free from all these defects and vices and did all in his power to remove them; but he stood so far above his fellow-citizens that his influence was diminished by that very fact. Judging his countrymen by himself, and assuming in them the same virtue and morality, the same enthusiasm for the glory and greatness of their native land as he felt in his own great soul, he drew them into undertakings to which neither their strength nor their capacity was equal; he entered on courses which they, with their defective political training, could not pursue with safety. Consequently it has been justly said that with the corpse of Epaminondas the glory of Thebes was also carried to the grave.
When the period of his command in the field expired, Epaminondas returned home, where he was once more to experience the ingratitude of his fellow-citizens. Not only did the people, now again roused against him, pass him over in the election of the Bœotarchs; it is related that the deluded mob appointed him overseer of roads and canals (telearchus), but that by his conscientious administration he gave importance to this insignificant office. Alike in the highest and in the lowest position, this magnanimous man endeavoured to work for the good of his country; his soul was free from the petty human weaknesses which so often cling, like a dark shadow, to talent and worth. This was exhibited in another scene in the year which followed.
From his expedition in Thessaly he, to save Pelopidas, returned joyfully home too late to preserve the Theban state from a disgraceful act of bloodshed. In the interval, armed mobs, stirred up by passionate demagogues, had marched against Orchomenos, where an aristocratic conspiracy was said to have been discovered, had destroyed the detested city, murdered the nobles and chief citizens, and sold the rest into servitude, together with their wives and children. Thus the ancient and famous city of Orchomenos, once the wealthy seat of the Minyæ, disappeared from the number of Greek towns. “Had I been at home,” Epaminondas lamented, “this atrocity would never have been committed.”
At Susa, in spite of his refusal to bend the knee, Pelopidas had won such high favour with the king, by reason of the fame of his deeds and the recollection of the ancient brotherhood in arms so long subsisting between Thebes and Persia, that the conditions of peace which Artaxerxes declared to the envoys proved to be entirely in accordance with the ideas and interests of Thebes and her skilful representative.
But this award whose fulfilment, and with it the supremacy over Hellas, was entrusted to the Thebans, provoked indignation and resistance in the other states. At Athens, the envoy, Timagoras, was condemned to death for his intimacy with Pelopidas; at Sparta, exception was taken to the recognition of the rebellious Messenians; in Arcadia, the people resented the recognition of the Elean claims to suzerainty over the district of Triphylia, which had joined the Arcadian confederacy, and the deputy, Antiochus, famous as a pugilist and wrestler, vented his anger at home in ridicule of the Persians: “The king,” he said, “had bakers, cooks, cup-bearers, and door-keepers in large numbers, but in spite of a zealous search he had not been able to find men who should be able to stand against the Hellenes in a fight; abundance of money and wealth was a vain show; the celebrated golden plane tree could hardly give shade to a locust.”
[368-365 B.C.]
Such being the state of opinion, it is not surprising that the acceptance of the peace should have encountered insuperable difficulties. The ambassadors summoned to Thebes in the ensuing spring had refused to swear to it, and the Arcadian deputy, Lycomedes, even took exception to the place of assembly, by means of which the Thebans would have invested their town with their pre-eminence, and went away in anger. The endeavours to win the concurrence of the separate states were not more successful, so the general war resumed its course and with it sanguinary party strifes in every city, and flight and pursuit for the defeated. In vain Epaminondas, on his third Peloponnesian expedition, endeavoured to bring the principles of mildness and civil tolerance into effect in Achaia: the Theban commonwealth, stirred up by the Arcadian democrats, abolished his institutions and sent magistrates into the country, who countenanced the expulsion of the oligarchs and the erection of unrestricted popular governments, until the refugees assembled together, forcibly compelled their recall, and once more carried Achaia over to the Spartan alliance, whereupon the persecution assumed a different form.
In Sicyon, Euphron, a rich and influential citizen, supported by Arcadian and Argive auxiliaries, placed the new commonwealth under the protection of Thebes, and with the confiscated property of his expelled enemies he obtained mercenaries, with whose aid he made himself ruler of his native city in the capacity of demagogue and tyrant. By wiles and treachery, robberies and crimes, he maintained himself in the government for a long time until, having at last been overpowered and put to flight by an aristocratic army, he was slain in Thebes, whither some of his enemies had followed him, under the eyes of the council. The perpetrator of the deed managed to defend himself so skilfully that he got away unpunished; but the townspeople of Sicyon honoured Euphron, who had freed them from the yoke of the aristocrats, as the second founder of their city.
Thus throughout the Peloponnesus the most terrible party rage was the order of the day; communities and individuals, prompted by passion and revenge, perpetrated wild misdeeds and crimes. Isocrates, in his oration called Archidamus, thus paints the situation in the Peloponnesus:
“Every town has its adversaries about it and therefore we have devastation of the country, destruction of the towns, subversion of governments, disregard of laws. Men fear their enemies less than their own fellow-citizens. The rich would rather throw their property into the sea than give to the poor; on the other hand the poor desire nothing better than to rob the rich. The sacrifices are suspended; men slay each other at the altars. There are more exiles from a single city than formerly in the whole of Peloponnesus.”
The laws had no longer any general application, since Sparta’s ancient supremacy had collapsed and the pre-eminence of Thebes was not yet established; all common interests vanished, and in alliances and secessions nothing but the momentary advantage was kept in view. Even religious awe was extinguished in men’s minds; votive offerings and temple treasures were seized to pay hired troops. The greatest feats of arms were performed for no purpose; valour and military spirit were squandered in adventurous combats and enterprises. Yet in spite of this distracted state of affairs, Sparta could not recover her power and consideration: the want of a free citizenhood and the restoration of Messenia ceased to be spoken of. With the help of Syracusan mercenaries, whom the younger Dionysius had sent them, the generals did, indeed, succeed in bringing the town of Sellasia with the passes into Arcadia again under their power; but on the other hand they had to permit not only the Corinthians, but the Phliasians also, the most faithful of the allies of Sparta, who had executed many brave deeds and conducted so many expeditions against the Sicyonians and Argives, to conclude a separate peace with Thebes. They themselves refused to accede to it, notwithstanding the persuasions of their friends, because they could not make up their minds to the recognition of the independence of the Messenians, which was demanded.
Looking towards Corinth from Arcadia
[368-367 B.C.]
As Corinth, Phlius, Epidaurus, and other cities now allied themselves with Thebes, Arcadia drew up an offensive and defensive treaty with Athens, which Epaminondas, in his capacity of ambassador, vainly endeavoured to counteract by a speech against Callistratus before the national council of the Ten Thousand. But Lycomedes, the creator of this union, was not to reap the fruit of his labours. On his way home he met with a violent death at the hands of some Arcadian refugees. The dream of an Arcadian hegemony was buried with him. No other statesman had it in his power to lead that uncultivated, divided nation of soldiers and shepherds, strangers as they were to any sort of common action, to higher and patriotic aims. Petty border feuds again claimed the whole attention of the Arcadians, and the increasing estrangement between Mantinea and Tegea, and the jealousy of both in regard to Megalopolis, stood in the way of the strengthening and development of a united state. Soon disputes with Elis led to other complications fraught with consequences which necessitated a new military expedition on the part of the Thebans.
After the battle of Leuctra, the Eleans had again taken possession of the territory of Triphylia, which had once been wrested from them by the Spartans; but the inhabitants, dissatisfied with the rule of the Eleans, had turned to the Arcadians, and, appealing to the ancient connection between the races, had requested and obtained admission into the Arcadian confederacy. The suzerainty of Elis over Triphylia had indeed, as it seems, been recognised in the peace prescribed by Persia, but the latter’s dispositions received as little acceptance here as elsewhere; both sides were therefore prepared to vindicate their claims by force of arms.
[365-364 B.C.]
To strengthen their position the Eleans concluded an alliance with Sparta, and vacated the border town of Lasion on the western slope of Erymanthus in favour of a flock of oligarchical refugees from Arcadia. In this settlement the government of Megalopolis saw a hostile intention, for from thence the oligarchs had no difficulty in forming traitorous connections with those who thought with them, and they seized the occasion to visit the peaceful little country with a devastating war. They carried robbery and destruction up to the very capital, excited a sanguinary civil war between the popular party and the oligarchical families, and reduced the inhabitants to a state of despair. In vain the Eleans brought about an invasion of the friendly Spartans into the territory of Megalopolis; after an heroic struggle the Arcadians forced the Lacedæmonian king, Archidamus, to surrender the strong hill town of Cromnus, which he had occupied by a rapid movement, and forced him to a disastrous retreat during which a hundred Lacedæmonian citizens fell into the hands of the victors. And as it chanced that the time of the Olympic games was approaching, they took possession of the holy site and bestowed the office of judge of the contests on the Pisatans.
The Eleans, furious at this infringement of their rights, marched up with their collected forces, and on the sacred ground, before the eyes of those assembled for the festival, they delivered a sanguinary battle which was finally decided against them. The Eleans had to give place to the Arcadians and content themselves with omitting the festival from the series of Olympic years, on the grounds of its having been celebrated contrary to law and order. The confederate government of Arcadia laid hands on the temple treasure, and in spite of the protests of the Mantineans, they used it to defray the cost of the war and the pay of the national levies and epariti. This was the means of widening the schism and the difference of opinion which had for some time divided the Arcadian confederacy into two camps and which now developed into a breach destined to lead to serious consequences. The Mantineans, outnumbered in the federal government and national council, again turned to the Spartans, while the democrats of Tegea, who then had the upper hand in the guidance of united Arcadia, adhered to the alliance with Thebes.