PERSIAN GOLD
These preparations, combined perhaps with other tokens, convinced Tithraustes that Agesilaus had no intention of withdrawing from Asia, but was inclined rather to extend than contract his views, and cherished strong hopes of effecting the conquest of the empire. He perceived that he had only purchased a temporary relief, and bethought himself how he might employ the gold, which was his last remaining stay, to greater advantage. The history of the contest between Greece and Persia afforded several instructive lessons, which were now peculiarly applicable. At the time when the first Artaxerxes was embarrassed by the success of the Athenians in Egypt, he sent an agent, as we have seen, with bribes to Sparta, to procure a diversion in his favour. Tithraustes now resorted to a similar expedient. He sent a Rhodian named Timocrates to Greece, with a sum of fifty talents, which he was charged to distribute, with proper precautions, among the leading persons in the states which might be most easily induced to interrupt the progress of Agesilaus by kindling a war against Sparta at home. Not only was this mission itself a notorious and unquestionable fact; but Xenophon professes an equal degree of certainty as to the names of the persons who received the money. We may at least venture to believe that, though it may have roused them to greater activity, it produced no change in their political sentiments: and we even doubt whether it gave rise to any events which would not have occurred nearly as soon without it. It was indeed natural enough for Agesilaus and his friends to attribute the disappointment of his hopes to the venality of their adversaries. But Xenophon himself observes that the Athenians, though they did not receive any share of the gold, were eager for war in the hope of recovering their independence. And it is clear from his own narrative that similar feelings of jealousy or resentment towards Sparta already prevailed at Thebes, Corinth, and Argos, and were only waiting for an opportunity of displaying themselves in open hostility, but needed no corrupt influence to excite them.
The anti-Laconian party at Thebes—the same no doubt which had sheltered the Athenian exiles, and had contrived the affront offered to Agesilaus at Aulis, and which had therefore reason to dread his resentment if he should ever return to Europe as the conqueror of Asia—set the first springs of hostility in motion. The disposition to war they found already existing; a pretext only was wanting, and this they easily devised. Means were found to induce the Locrians of Opus to make an inroad upon a tract of land which had been long the subject of contention between them and their neighbours the Phocians. The Phocians retaliated by the invasion of the Opuntian Locris, and the Thebans were soon persuaded to take part with the Locrians, and invade Phocis. The Phocians, as was foreseen, applied for succour to Sparta, where, as Xenophon admits, there was the utmost readiness to lay hold on any pretence for a war with Thebes; and the present season of prosperity seemed to the Spartan government the most favourable for humbling a power which had given so many proofs of ill-will towards it.