THE SECOND ATHENIAN LEAGUE
[379-378 B.C.]
Politics makes strange bedfellows. The petty jealousies of the little Grecian townships, called countries, were as important and as bitter to them as the feuds of empires. Yet, of course, when any two of them fell by the ears they were always ready to accept aid from the bystanding communities, on whatsoever terms they may have recently been. We are now to see a stranger sight than the union of Athens and Sparta, and that is the re-alliance of the polished and haughty Athenians with the citizens of Thebes, although to the Attic mind the very word “Bœotian” had been from time immemorial a synonym for “swine,” a by-word of treachery, of Asiatic sympathy, and of backwoods uncouthness.
The immediate effect of the theatrical revolution at Thebes was the death of three of the leading generals concerned. Sparta in disgust executed two of the defeated harmosts with short shrift of trial. The Athenians put to death one of the generals who had gone to the relief of the Thebans, and outlawed the other. They were not yet ready to take a step in renewal of the ancient wars with Sparta. The Thebans felt themselves now quite left at the mercy of the Lacedæmonians, and, indeed, it was only a Spartan who could seemingly have been of aid to them. Sphodrias, a harmost of Thespiæ, was hot-headed enough to dream of taking Athens unawares and seizing the Piræus. He was so slow on the march, however, that daylight found him only at Eleusis. Thereupon, his surprise failing, he retreated, ravaging the country through which he passed. Athens had shown her purpose to keep the peace with Sparta by her punishment of the rash officers who had gone to the relief of Thebes, and yet here was a Spartan general marching against Athens and playing havoc in the vicinity. A prompt disavowal on the part of Sparta was demanded, with the execution of Sphodrias. Sphodrias did not dare return to Sparta for trial, feeling that his doom was certain. And so it would have been had it not been for the influence of Agesilaus who was notably a tender-hearted man and could not resist the pleadings of his son who was on terms of Grecian intimacy with the son of Sphodrias. Acquittal followed, and Athens could not but feel herself insulted and forced into an open declaration for Thebes. War broke out and was busy for six years. It took the form, as usual, of a war between two leagues.
Sparta felt called upon to deal gently with her remaining confederates after she saw Chios, Byzantium, Rhodes, and Mytilene revolt at once to Athens. Sparta divided her league into ten classes: herself the first, the Arcadian states second and third, Elis the fourth, the Achæans the fifth, Corinth and Megara the sixth, Sicyon, Phlius, and the towns of the Argolic Acte the seventh, the Acarnanians the eighth, the Phocians and Locrians the ninth, Olynthus and the other cities on the coast of Thrace the tenth.
To Athens it seemed as if destiny had forced her once more to the forefront of a league against Sparta, a league which should bring her back to her old-time mastery of the seas. This league, which is called by Busolt[k] and others the second Athenian league, is called the third by Beloch,[g] who writes of it as follows:
“Meanwhile Athens had striven with zeal to erect again the twice-lost lordship of the seas. Immediately after the King’s Peace the alliance with Chios, Mytilene, Methymna, and Byzantium was renewed: Rhodes also entered into treaty with Athens, as her Asia Minor league had gone to pieces at the death of Glos, about 379. The effort to resume the old relations with the Chalcidians in Thrace had been quickly foiled by the Spartan intervention; but instead, as we have seen, Thebes had entered into alliance with Athens in the spring of 378. And now, after the breach with Sparta was definite, Athens lifted up to all Hellenes and barbarians, where they were not under Persian rule, the summons to band together in a league against the encroachment of Sparta. The provisions of the King’s Peace should fashion the ground plan. The autonomy of all the states party to it was guaranteed; the Persian king was to be recognised as lord of the continent of Asia: Athens renounced all claims on her old colonial possessions and for the future the acquisition of houses and lands anywhere in the confederacy should be forbidden to the Athenians. For the administration of affairs a congress (synedrion) was established which sat in Athens, and in which delegates from all the allied states had place and vote; but Athens herself none. For the passing of measures, the consent of both the chief city [Athens] and of the synedrion was necessary. The funds for the fleet of the league were defrayed through contributions (syntaxeis) whose amount the synedrion would fix according to current needs. The management of this fund and the leadership in war belonged to Athens.
“Athens made heavy sacrifices to lay the foundation for the erection of this new league. It was a complete breach with her political practices down to the King’s Peace, a final renunciation of the re-establishment of the empire in its old form, as she had planned since Thrasybulus. And more than that: thousands of Athenian citizens lost their last hope of regaining the property outside Attica, which their fathers had lost through the catastrophe of the year 404. But these sacrifices were not made in vain. The states of Eubœa came at once into the new league, except Oreus, which was held by a Spartan garrison; also the northern Sporades, Peparethus, Sciathus and Icus; Tenedos at the mouth of the Hellespont, Perinthus and Maronea in Thrace; Paros and other neighbouring isles. Moreover, the previous confederates of Athens, Chios, Mytilene, Mythimna, Byzantium, Rhodes, and Thebes came back.
“Thus at one blow Athens was again the ruling power in the Ægean Sea; she could now take again in hand the trusteeship of the temple of Delos, which she had lost for some years.
“At the same time the reorganisation of the Attic marine was begun. That was strongly needful: since in the Corinthian War the material had been rendered largely useless, and efforts at its repair had been very insufficiently made. There existed well over one hundred triremes, but most of them old and hardly seaworthy. The building of a great number of new battleships was begun and pushed so skilfully that after the lapse of twenty years (357-6) an array of 289 triremes remained in spite of the great demands made on the Attic fleet. To cover these expenses and for the payment of the costs of the war an extraordinary tax was levied on the property in Attica.”
[378-376 B.C.]
Thus we find Athens again with an array of allies behind her. She no longer has the prestige of old. The moneys that they entrust to her are contributions (syntaxeis), and no longer tribute (phoros). So jealous are they, indeed, of Athenian ambition that no citizen of Athens may even acquire property among the allies. The very tablet on which this treaty was carved is still in existence, though broken in a score of fragments. The chief purpose of the league is, it states, to be one of defence, a combination “to compel the Spartans to leave the Greeks in peace and freedom with unviolated lands.” The chief agents in the organisation of this confederacy and in the proselyting of allies were the brilliant orator Callistratus, who has been called the Aristides of the second confederacy, and the shrewd generals, Iphicrates, Chabrias, and Timotheus, the worthy son of the great admiral, Conon. The chief fault with the confederacy was that it bound Athens into an unnatural alliance with Thebes, its inveterate enemy, who could serve little further purpose than that of a ladder to be discarded as soon as it had been climbed over. The war, therefore, becomes mainly a war between Sparta and Athens, in which, as Holm[h] notes, “Athens played always the rôle of the spectator who sits quiet, saving his strength in order to act as peace-maker over both the antagonists.”
Thebes took up the war with a blazing enthusiasm. She had for a controlling spirit the coming man Epaminondas, a military genius of the very first rank, a gifted musician, a philosopher, and an orator. He had the rare qualities of modesty, of pure patriotism, of indifference to money and to partisanship. Allied with him was Pelopidas, who was in command of a new organisation which stood some chance of meeting the famous Spartan hoplite in equal combat. This Hieros Lochos, or Sacred Band of sworn friends, was a curious body of three hundred young men fighting in couples and bound together by Grecian ideas of friendship. They were trained to a high degree of gymnastic strength, and while chosen at first merely to serve as front-rank men, later came to be employed as a separate regiment of irresistible momentum in a charge.
Before they had learned the power of this troop the Thebans dug a ditch and built a rampart around the most fertile part of their territory against the invasions of the Spartans. Soon after the revolt of the city, in 378 B.C., the Spartan king Cleombrotus had raided the land, but without result. Later came King Agesilaus for two expeditions, equally fruitless, except for pillage. The Spartan Phœbidas made an inroad in 377 and was killed in a disastrous defeat. To relieve a famine due to the destruction of two harvests, the Thebans sent for two galleys of corn which the Spartan Alcetas captured, putting the crews in prison in the citadel in Oreus in Eubœa. The prisoners captured the fortress and took possession of the town, which now joined the league with Athens. In 376, Agesilaus, who was ill from the bursting of a blood-vessel, on his previous campaign, was compelled to keep his room, and the Spartans sent an army under Cleombrotus, who was repulsed at the passes of Cithæron. The Spartans now sent a fleet to cut off the corn supplies of Athens and put her port under blockade.
Athens, once more able to take the sea, fitted a fleet of eighty galleys which she entrusted to Chabrias. In order to decoy the Spartan fleet under Pollis away from the Piræus, he laid siege to Naxos which was wavering towards the Athenian confederacy. Pollis accepted the challenge, and, though he had only sixty galleys, gave battle between Paros and Naxos. It was a hard fight and the Spartans seem to have lost all their ships except eleven, and these would have been destroyed, says Diodorus, had it not been for the fate of the commanders in the battle of Arginusæ, who, as will be remembered, were in such haste to pursue the defeated enemy that they did not stop to pick up their own wounded and dead on the sinking wrecks of their own fleet. They had been put to death in their hour of triumph, and the lesson was not forgotten by Chabrias in his victory thirty years later.
[376-374 B.C.]
The glory of Naxos, however, was a sufficient. And while it was not so momentous a success as Conon’s at the battle of Cnidus, it was more savoury to the Athenians, because it had been won by a fleet not of Asiatics merely commanded by an Athenian, but altogether by Athenian ships and men. In this battle the command of the left wing was given to Phocion, who looms large in later Athenian history. This success at Naxos in the year 376 relieved Athens of famine, re-established her prestige on the sea, and brought seventeen new cities around the Ægean Sea into the confederacy, together with a large contribution. In the same year the Athenians also punished an insurrection at Delos where the renewal of her authority was not entirely welcome. Preparations were now made for a circumnavigation of the Peloponnesus with a fleet under Pinotenus. In 375 he sailed and brought over to the Athenian alliance the islands of Corcyra and Cephallenia, a part of Acarnania, and the king of the Molossians. At Alyzia, Timotheus with his sixty galleys was attacked by the Spartan Nicolochus, with fifty-five galleys. The Athenian won this encounter, but declined a later challenge, and increased his fleet to seventy sail.
Greek Warrior in Travelling Costume
(After Hope)
The expedition had succeeded in the purpose that had led the Thebans to suggest it, that is, it had prevented Sparta from making her usual incursion into Bœotia. Athens, however, found the fleet a very heavy and irksome expense, and each captain of a trireme was compelled to advance £28 or $140 towards the payment of his crew. The Athenians now suggested that the Thebans make some payment towards the cost of an expedition which had been of such economy to them; but they declined the opportunity, and Athens, in a not unnatural pique, turned towards Sparta. In 374 a peace was agreed to, but was broken at once owing to the fact that Timotheus interfered at Zacynthus and brought down the wrath of Sparta. So the war went on.
Meanwhile, the year before, the Thebans had been active and growingly successful. They turned against three near-by cities in Bœotia which were old victims of Thebes and had been granted independence under the Peace of Antalcidas. These towns were Platæa, Thespiæ, and Orchomenos. They hated Thebes from bitter memories of former oppressions and held out against her increasing presumption, although other Bœotian towns were brought into the league, and although they were themselves heavily assailed. It was 372 before Platæa was taken by surprise and all the inhabitants driven out of it. They took refuge in Athens, whose friendship for Platæa was of old times. Thebes also compelled Thespiæ to tear down her fortifications. These things only revived in Athens the ancient abhorrence of Thebes, but they fed the insolence of the Bœotians. It was probably in 375 B.C., that Pelopidas, at the head of his Sacred Band, unexpectedly fell in with two Spartan moras, each of them equal alone to his three hundred, and each under command of a polemarch. One of his men came flying to Pelopidas, exclaiming:
“We have fallen into the midst of the enemy.”
“Why not they into the midst of us?” answered Pelopidas. And at once he charged home.
The first onset killed the two Spartan leaders. This threw the two moras into confusion, and Pelopidas, after cutting his way through, instead of retiring, turned and successfully routed each of the moras. So far as the number engaged is concerned, it was hardly more than a serious riot, but, as we have seen before, any blow at the prestige of the Spartan soldier made all Greeks shudder, and here was a new organisation or club from the unheroic city of Thebes destroying a Spartan force of twice its strength. This was a further blow to Spartan pride and new fuel for the increase of Theban self-confidence. In 374 an expedition against Phocis was checked by Spartan troops under Cleombrotus, but about this time the Athenians seem to have regained Oropus, which the Spartans had captured in 411. This year also Lacedæmonian pride was more deeply humbled before Corcyra.[a] Of this let Xenophon tell.