WAR IN GREECE
Accounts remaining, both of the circumstances of the Macedonian kingdom at the time, and of following events, are very defective. But it appears indicated that no Macedonian force, that could be spared for war southward, would enable Antipater to meet Agis; and it was long before he could excite the republican Greeks, adverse to the Lacedæmonian and Persian interest, however dreading its prevalence, to assemble in arms in sufficient numbers. His success however in quelling the disturbances in Thessaly and Thrace, encouraging the zeal of that portion of the Greek nation which dreaded republican empire, whether democratical under Demosthenes or oligarchical under Agis, enabled him at length to raise superior numbers.
Megalopolis had resisted beyond expectation. Antipater, entering Peloponnesus to relieve that place, was met by Agis. A sanguinary battle ensued. The Lacedæmonians are said to have fought with all the obstinacy which their ancient institutions required, and which their ancient fame was adapted to inspire. But they were overborne: Agis, fighting at their head, with the spirit of a hero rather, apparently, than with the skill of a general, received a wound which disabled him, so that it was necessary to carry him out of the field. His troops, unable to resist superior numbers, directed by superior skill, took to flight. Diodorus relates that, pressed by the pursuing enemy, he peremptorily commanded his attendants to save themselves, and leave him with his arms; and that, disabled as he was, refusing quarter and threatening all who approached him, he fought till he was killed.
The conduct of the victor then was what became the delegate of the elected superintendent and protector of the liberties of Greece. The Lacedæmonian government, feeling its inability to maintain the war in which it was engaged, and the principal instigator being no more, sent a deputation to Antipater to treat for peace. Antipater, as deputy of the captain-general and vicegerent of the Greek nation, took nothing further upon himself than to summon a congress of the several republics to Corinth, to which he referred the Lacedæmonian ministers. There matters were much debated and various opinions declared. The decision at last, in the historian’s succinct account, appears not what might best become the wisdom and dignity of a nation accustomed to appreciate its ascertained privileges, or what ought to be such. Unable to agree upon a measure to afford precedent for future times, the resource was to decree that the Lacedæmonian state, submitting itself to the mercy of their great and magnanimous captain-general, should send fifty principal Spartans into Macedonia, as hostages to insure obedience to his decision. We owe to Curtius the additional probable information that the assembly set a fine of 120 talents [about £24,000 or $120,000] upon the Eleans and Achæans, to compensate to the Megalopolitans the damages done in the hostile operations against them.
It seems likely the Lacedæmonians rejoiced in a sentence which, in so great a degree, secured them against the usual virulence of party animosity among the Greeks, and the result of which they had reason to hope would be liberal and mild. It does not appear that anything more was required than to acknowledge error in hostile opposition to the general council of the nation, and to send, thus late, the Lacedæmonian contingent of troops for maintaining the Grecian empire, already acquired, in Asia.[b]
This blow riveted the chains forged at Chæronea, which however were still destined to be burst by more than one gallant struggle, though never to be finally shaken off. Alexander, when he heard of Antipater’s success, is said to have spoken contemptuously of “the battle of mice,” which his lieutenant had been fighting, while he had been slaughtering myriads, and overrunning kingdoms; and while the event continued unknown, it did not in the slightest degree interfere with his operations. Yet Antipater’s victory was perhaps not much less hardly won than either of his own over Darius. But from the distance at which he now stood, Greece and Macedonia began to appear very diminutive objects. His little kingdom was now chiefly valuable to him as a nursery of soldiers; and the most important advantage which he reaped from the establishment of his power in Greece, was that it insured a constant succession of recruits for his army.