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

by Unknown

THE KING’S PEACE

[387-386 B.C.]

The treaty founded on these conditions was ratified by all the parties almost without opposition. A little delay arose from the Thebans, who were reluctant to part with the sovereignty they had hitherto exercised over many of the Bœotian towns, and wished, for the sake of at least retaining their pretensions, to ratify in the name of all the other Bœotians. But Agesilaus, who was charged to receive the oath of their ministers, refused to accept it in this form, and required them strictly to conform to the Persian ordinance, and expressly to acknowledge the independence of all other states. One impediment to the general peace still remained. The governments of Corinth and Argos did not consider themselves bound by the treaty to alter the relations which had hitherto subsisted between them; and it was only when Agesilaus threatened them with war, that they consented, the one to dismiss, and the other to withdraw, the Argive garrison from Corinth. Its departure was attended by an immediate reaction in the state of the Corinthian parties. The authors of the massacre, knowing themselves to be generally odious to their fellow citizens, thought themselves no longer safe at home, and left the city. Most of them found refuge at Athens, where they met with a much more honourable reception than they deserved. The exiles of the opposite faction were recalled; and their return dissolved the union with Argos, and restored the influence of Sparta, and the oligarchical institutions.

This treaty, which was long celebrated under the name of the Peace of Antalcidas, was undoubtedly a masterpiece of policy, nor does it appear to deserve the censure which it incurred from the Attic orators and from Plutarch, and which has been repeated by some modern writers, as a breach of political morality. Sparta in her transactions with Persia during the Peloponnesian War, had more than once acknowledged the title of the Persian king to the dominion of the Asiatic Greeks; she had never pledged herself to maintain their independence; and even if she had done so, the revival of the maritime power of Athens, and its union with that of Persia, would have afforded a fair plea for receding from an engagement which she was no longer able to fulfil. The clause in favour of Athens was perhaps only designed to excite jealousy and discord between Athens and the hated Bœotians. It has been attributed to a deeper policy; it has been considered as a device, by which Sparta reserved a pretext for eluding the conditions of the treaty which she rigorously enforced in the case of other states. But it is doubtful whether the exception expressly made concerning the three islands which Athens was allowed to retain, could have been needed, or if needful could have availed, as a colour under which Sparta, while she stripped Thebes of her sovereignty in Bœotia, might keep possession of Messenia and the subject districts of Laconia. Sparta did not permit a question to be raised on this point. She was constituted the interpreter of the treaty; she expounded it by the rule, not of reason, but of might, with the sword in hand, and the power of Persia at her back.[e]

This momentous treaty, which is sometimes called the Peace of Antalcidas after its chief Grecian agent, is nowadays more commonly called the King’s Peace, and wisely, since it was the king who chiefly profited by it. Thirlwall, who can always be relied upon to take an impartial view of the question, says of it: “And thus the Peace of Antalcidas, which professed to establish the independence of the Greek states, subjected them more than ever to the will of one. It was not in this respect only that appearances were contrary to the real state of things. The position of Sparta, though seemingly strong, was artificial and precarious; while the majestic attitude in which the Persian king dictated terms to Greece, disguised a profound consciousness, that his throne subsisted only by sufferance, and that its best security was the disunion of the people with whom he assumed so lordly an air.” Niebuhr, to whom the Spartans were almost always hypocrites, has this to say: “Painful as this peace was to the feelings of the Greeks, who were obliged to leave the dominion over their countrymen to barbarians, yet the hypocrisy of the Spartans, who, by this peace, allowed the Persians to interfere in the internal affairs of Greece, was worse.”

Grote, whose history is a glowing brief for Athens, the type of democracy, as against Sparta, the type of oligarchy, cannot be expected to approve of an agreement leading to such degradation for the Athenians, as well as for all the Greek world. He says: “The peace or convention, which bears the name of Antalcidas, was an incident of serious and mournful import in Grecian history. Its true character cannot be better described than in a brief remark and reply which we find cited in Plutarch. ‘Alas, for Hellas (observed some one to Agesilaus) when we see our Laconians medising!’ ‘Nay (replied the Spartan king), say rather the Medes laconising.’ These two propositions do not exclude each other. Both were perfectly true. The convention emanated from a separate partnership between Spartan and Persian interests. It was solicited by the Spartan Antalcidas, and propounded by him to Tiribazus on the express ground that it was exactly calculated to meet the Persian king’s purposes and wishes, as we learn even from the philo-Laconian Xenophon. While Sparta and Persia were both great gainers, no other Grecian state gained anything as the convention was originally framed.”

George W. Cox, in his General History of Greece, recognises in the treaty a humiliation for Sparta as well as for the rest of Greece, since the peace was not drawn up in the form of an agreement, but rather forced upon Greece by the edict of Persia. It was indeed a fiat “sent down from Susa,” like another royal decree to the subjects whom the Persian king looked down upon with oriental disdain. Cox writes thus fervidly:

“The Persian king chose to regard the acceptance of the peace by the Spartans as an act of submission not less significant than the offering of earth and water. In the disgrace which it involved the one was as ignominious as the other; but Sparta had now not even the poor excuse which long ago she had put forward for calling in the aid of the barbarian. She was no longer struggling for self-preservation. In short, by Sparta the Peace of Antalcidas was adopted with the settled resolution to divide and govern; and all of those of her acts, which might seem at first sight to have a different meaning, carry out in every instance this golden rule of despotism. It was the curse of the Hellenic race, and the ruin ultimately of Sparta itself, that this maxim flattered an instinct which they had cherished with blind obstinacy, until it became their bane. But for Sparta, the consolidation of the Athenian empire would long ago have restrained this self-isolating sentiment within its proper limits. In theory the Spartans by enforcing the Peace of Antalcidas restored to the several Greek states the absolute power of managing their own affairs, and of making war upon one another. In practice Sparta was resolved that their armies should move only at her dictation, that into her treasury should flow the tribute, the gathering of which was denounced as the worst crime of imperial Athens, and that in the government of the oligarchical factions she should have the strongest material guarantee for the absolute submission of the Greek cities. To secure this result the Hellenic states of Lesser Asia were abandoned to the tender mercies of Persian tax-gatherers, and left to feel the full bitterness of the slavery from which Athens had rescued them some ninety years ago.”

An outcome which none could have foreseen from the acceptance of this humiliating title-deed to Grecian independence was the sudden and rocket-like rise of the city of Thebes, a city which had heretofore been a second-or third-rate town chiefly distinguished for being on the wrong side of Hellenic questions. Thebes is now about to break forth into flame with a fire-brand named Epaminondas, one of the noblest and most splendid names in all the glitter of Grecian history.[a]