The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 04

by Unknown

SPARTA UNDER CLEOMENES

[232-227 B.C.]

Lacedæmon had, by this time, exchanged poverty and hardy discipline for opulence and voluptuous manners. The public meals, that last pledge of Spartan frugality and temperance, were discountenanced by the rulers of the state, and fell into disrepute and disuse. One or two princes, who endeavoured to stem the torrent of corruption, suffered deposition, exile, and even death. The laws of Lycurgus were totally disregarded. The lands were all in possession of a few families, who lived in the greatest splendour, whilst the rest of the Spartans, stripped of their patrimony, were doomed to the greatest indigence. The efforts of Agis IV, the king, to enforce the sumptuary laws, to cancel all debts, and to make a new division of lands, were opposed by the rich, and at last punished with death, on pretence of a design to alter the government.

In such a situation of affairs, Cleomenes ascended the Spartan throne, a prince who united integrity of heart with martial spirit and a love of glory. He found, on his accession, both the internal constitution and the public affairs of Sparta in the utmost confusion. Domestic distress, with its concomitant despondency of spirit, had caused throughout Laconia a universal depopulation. Instead of natives sufficient to occupy the thirty-nine thousand shares into which Lycurgus had originally divided the land, only seven hundred families of the Spartan race were now to be found; and, of these, about six hundred, sunk into abject penury and wretchedness, were incapable of exerting any degree of vigour in the public service. The slaves, too, had many of them perished through want of employment and subsistence, while others had been carried off, in great numbers, by the enemies of Sparta. Such was the miserable decay of both public and private virtue! Cleomenes, actuated by his natural disposition to arms, as well as by the representations already mentioned of the Ætolians, in order to revive the martial spirit of the Spartans, attacked Tegea, Mantinea, and Orchomenos, cities of Arcadia. Having reduced these under his obedience, he marched without delay against a certain castle in the district of Megalopolis, which commanded on that side the entrance into Laconia.

Immediately upon this act of hostility, the Achæan states declared war against the Spartans. The Spartan king forthwith took the field, with what troops he could muster, and ravaged the territories of the cities in alliance with Achaia. With five thousand men he advanced against the Achæan general Aratus, who, perceiving the resolution of the Spartans, declined an engagement, though at the head of twenty thousand. The retreat of Aratus, determined the Eleans, who had never been steady in the interests of Achaia, openly to declare against her. The Achæans attempted to chastise this defection; but they were routed by Cleomenes at Lycæum, near the Elean borders; and totally overthrown by him in the ensuing campaign, near Leuctra. Pursuing his good fortune, he reduced several of the towns of Arcadia, which he garrisoned with his Lacedæmonian troops.

[227-223 B.C.]

He returned to Sparta with the mercenaries only, and cut off the ephori, whom he considered as troublesome to himself, and oppressive to the Spartan subjects, by assassination; a course which he endeavoured to justify, by arraigning the unconstitutional establishment of this order of magistrates, and a recital of several acts of iniquity. He now seized on the administration of justice, and re-established the agrarian and sumptuary laws of Lycurgus, which he enforced by his own example. Having thus made himself master of Sparta, he diverted that energy to foreign enterprises, which might otherwise have broken out in domestic sedition. He plundered the territories of Megalopolis, forced the Achæan lines at Hecatombæum, and obtained a complete victory. The Achæan army, composed of the flower of their nation, were almost all cut off. The Mantineans, having slaughtered the Achæan garrison stationed in their city, put themselves under the protection of the Spartans. The same spirit of defection and revolt appeared in most of the other cities of Peloponnesus. In this extremity, they sued for peace to Cleomenes; but Aratus, who had for some time declined to take the lead in the public affairs of Achaia, now resumed his authority; and, by insisting on such terms as the high-spirited Cleomenes could not accept, contrived to prevent that peace which his countrymen wished for.

Both Aratus and Cleomenes wished to unite all the nations of Peloponnesus into one commonwealth, and by that means to form such a bulwark for the liberties of Greece, as might set all foreign power at defiance. But to what people the supreme direction of the common affairs should belong, was the question. Even Aratus, so much above the love of money, showed himself, on this occasion, the slave of ambition; and, rather than see a superior in power, determined to involve everything in confusion.

The interruption of the negotiations for peace raised a general ferment throughout Peloponnesus; the conduct of Aratus fired the martial ardour of Cleomenes, and excited jealousies in different states; nor could the Achæans obtain any assistance from the Athenians, the Ætolians, or the Argives. Corinth was on the point of surrendering to the Spartan king; and even Sicyon must have been lost, had not a timely discovery prevented an intended conspiracy. Here we may remark the extreme quickness with which the Grecian states entered into any confederacy that was formed for humbling whatever power preponderated in Greece: a proof, that, however their manners were corrupted, their sentiments of liberty and the balance of power were not yet wholly subverted.