I have described in the last two chapters, as far as our imperfect evidence permits, how Sparta came into possession both of the southern portion of Laconia along the coast of the Eurotas down to its mouth, and of the Messenian territory westward. Her progress towards Arcadia and Argolis is now to be sketched, so as to conduct her to that position which she occupied during the reign of Peisistratus at Athens, or about 560-540 B. C.,—a time when she had reached the maximum of her territorial possessions, and when she was confessedly the commanding state in Hellas.
The central region of Peloponnesus, called Arcadia, had never received any emigrants from without. Its indigenous inhabitants,—a strong and hardy race of mountaineers, the most numerous Hellenic tribe in the peninsula, and the constant hive for mercenary troops,[763]—were among the rudest and poorest of Greeks, retaining for the longest period their original subdivision into a number of petty hill-villages, each independent of the other; while the union of all who bore the Arcadian name,—though they had some common sacrifices, such as the festival of the Lykæan Zeus, of Despoina, daughter of Poseidôn and Dêmêtêr, and of Artemis Hymnia,[764]—was more loose and ineffective than that of Greeks generally, either in or out of Peloponnesus. The Arcadian villagers were usually denominated by the names of regions, coincident with certain ethnical subdivisions,—the Azānes, the Parrhasii, the Mænalii (adjoining Mount Mænalus), the Eutrêsii, the Ægytæ, the Skiritæ, etc.[765] Some considerable towns, however, there were,—aggregations of villages or demes which had been once autonomous. Of these, the principal were Tegea and Mantineia, bordering on Laconia and Argolis,—Orchomenus, Pheneus, and Stymphalus, towards the north-east, bordering on Achaia and Phlius,—Kleitôr and Heræa, westward, where the country is divided from Elis and Triphylia by the woody mountains of Pholoê and Erymanthus,—and Phigaleia, on the south-western border near to Messenia. The most powerful of all were Tegea and Mantineia,[766]—conterminous towns, nearly equal in force, dividing between them the cold and high plain of Tripolitza, and separated by one of those capricious torrents which only escapes through katabothra. To regulate the efflux of this water was a difficult task, requiring friendly coöperation of both the towns: and when their frequent jealousies brought on a quarrel, the more aggressive of the two inundated the territory of its neighbor as one means of annoyance. The power of Tegea, which had grown up out of nine constituent townships, originally separate,[767] appears to have been more ancient than that of its rival; as we may judge from its splendid heroic pretensions connected with the name of Echemus, and from the post conceded to its hoplites in joint Peloponnesian armaments, which was second in distinction only to that of the Lacedæmonians.[768] If it be correct, as Strabo asserts,[769] that the incorporation of the town of Mantineia, out of its five separate demes, was brought about by the Argeians, we may conjecture that the latter adopted this proceeding as a means of providing some check upon their powerful neighbors of Tegea. The plain common to Tegea and Mantineia was bounded to the west by the wintry heights of Mænalus,[770] beyond which, as far as the boundaries of Laconia, Messenia, and Triphylia, there was nothing in Arcadia but small and unimportant townships, or villages,—without any considerable town, before the important step taken by Epameinondas in founding Megalopolis, a short time after the battle of Leuktra. The mountaineers of these regions, who joined Epameinondas before the battle of Mantineia, at a time when Mantineia and most of the towns of Arcadia were opposed to him, were so inferior to the other Greeks in equipment, that they still carried as their chief weapon, in place of the spear, nothing better than the ancient club.[771]
Both Tegea and Mantineia held several of these smaller Arcadian townships near them in a sort of dependence, and were anxious to extend this empire over others: during the Peloponnesian war, we find the Mantineians establishing and garrisoning a fortress at Kypsela among the Parrhasii, near the site in which Megalopolis was afterwards built.[772] But at this period, Sparta, as the political chief of Hellas,—having a strong interest in keeping all the Grecian towns, small and great, as much isolated from each other as possible, and in checking all schemes for the formation of local confederacies,—stood forward as the protectress of the autonomy of these smaller Arcadians, and drove back the Mantineians within their own limits.[773] At a somewhat later period, during the acmé of her power, a few years before the battle of Leuktra, she even proceeded to the extreme length of breaking up the unity of Mantineia itself, causing the walls to be razed, and the inhabitants to be again parcelled into their five original demes,—a violent arrangement, which the turn of political events very soon reversed.[774] It was not until after the battle of Leuktra and the depression of Sparta that any measures were taken for the formation of an Arcadian political confederacy;[775] and even then, the jealousies of the separate cites rendered it incomplete and short-lived. The great permanent change, the establishment of Megalopolis, was accomplished by the ascendency of Epameinondas. Forty petty Arcadian townships, among those situated to the west of Mount Mænalus, were aggregated into the new city: the jealousies of Tegea, Mantineia, and Kleitôr, were for a while suspended; and œkists came from all of them, as well as from the districts of the Mænalii and Parrhasii, in order to impart to the new establishment a genuine Pan-Arcadian character.[776] It was thus there arose for the first time a powerful city on the borders of Laconia and Messenia, rescuing the Arcadian townships from their dependence on Sparta, and imparting to them political interests of their own, which rendered them, both a check upon their former chief and a support to the reëstablished Messenians.
It has been necessary thus to bring the attention of the reader for one moment to events long posterior in the order of time (Megalopolis was founded in 370 B. C.), in order that he may understand, by contrast, the general course of those incidents of the earlier time, where direct accounts are wanting. The northern boundary of the Spartan territory was formed by some of the many small Arcadian townships or districts, several of which were successively conquered by the Spartans and incorporated with their dominion, though at what precise time we are unable to say. We are told that Charilaus, the reputed nephew and ward of Lykurgus, took Ægys, and that he also invaded the territory of Tegea, but with singular ill-success, for he was defeated and taken prisoner:[777] we also hear that the Spartans took Phigaleia by surprise in the 30th Olympiad, but were driven out again by the neighboring Arcadian Oresthasians.[778] During the second Messenian war, the Arcadians are represented as cordially seconding the Messenians: and it may seem perhaps singular that, while neither Mantineia nor Tegea are mentioned in this war, the more distant town of Orchomenus, with its king Aristokratês, takes the lead. But the facts of the contest come before us with so poetical a coloring, that we cannot venture to draw any positive inference as to the times to which they are referred.
Œnus[779] and Karystus seem to have belonged to the Spartans in the days of Alkman: moreover, the district called Skirītis bordering on the territory of Tegea,—as well as Belemina and Maleatis to the westward, and Karyæ to the eastward and south-eastward, of Skirītis,—forming altogether the entire northern frontier of Sparta, and all occupied by Arcadian inhabitants,—had been conquered and made part of the Spartan territory[780] before 600 B. C. And Herodotus tells us, that at this period the Spartan kings Leon and Hegesiklês contemplated nothing less than the conquest of entire Arcadia, and sent to ask from the Delphian oracle a blessing on their enterprise.[781] The priestess dismissed their wishes as extravagant, in reference to the whole of Arcadia, but encouraged them, though with the usual equivocations of language, to try their fortune against Tegea. Flushed with their course of previous success, not less than by the favorable construction which they put upon the words of the oracle, the Lacedæmonians marched against Tegea with such entire confidence of success, as to carry with them chains for the purpose of binding their expected prisoners. But the result was disappointment and defeat. They were repulsed with loss, and the prisoners whom they left behind, bound in the very chains which their own army had brought, were constrained to servile labor on the plain of Tegea,—the words of the oracle being thus literally fulfilled, though in a sense different from that in which the Lacedæmonians had first understood them.[782]
For one whole generation, we are told, they were constantly unsuccessful in their campaigns against the Tegeans, and this strenuous resistance probably prevented them from extending their conquests farther among the petty states of Arcadia.
At length, in the reign of Anaxandridês and Aristô, the successors of Leon and Hegesiklês (about 560 B. C.), the Delphian oracle, in reply to a question from the Spartans,—which of the gods they ought to propitiate in order to become victorious,—enjoined them to find and carry to Sparta the bones of Orestês, son of Agamemnôn. After a vain search, since they did not know where the body of Orestês was to be found, they applied to the oracle for more specific directions, and were told that the son of Agamemnôn was buried at Tegea itself, in a place “where two blasts were blowing under powerful constraint,—where there was stroke and counter-stroke, and destruction upon destruction.” These mysterious words were elucidated by a lucky accident. During a truce with Tegea, Lichas, one of the chiefs of the three hundred Spartan chosen youth, who acted as the movable police of the country under the ephors, visited the place, and entered the forge of a blacksmith,—who mentioned to him, in the course of conversation, that, in sinking a well in his outer court, he had recently discovered a coffin containing a body seven cubits long; astounded at the sight, he had left it there undisturbed. It struck Lichas that the gigantic relic of aforetime could be nothing else but the corpse of Orestês, and he felt assured of this, when he reflected how accurately the indications of the oracle were verified; for there were the “two blasts blowing by constraint,” in the two bellows of the blacksmith: there was the “stroke and counter-stroke,” in his hammer and anvil, as well as the “destruction upon destruction,” in the murderous weapons which he was forging. Lichas said nothing, but returned to Sparta with his discovery, which he communicated to the authorities, who, by a concerted scheme, banished him under a pretended criminal accusation. He then returned again to Tegea, under the guise of an exile, prevailed upon the blacksmith to let to him the premises, and when he found himself in possession, dug up and carried off to Sparta the bones of the venerated hero.[783]
From and after this fortunate acquisition, the character of the contest was changed; the Spartans found themselves constantly victorious over the Tegeans. But it does not seem that these victories led to any positive result, though they might perhaps serve to enforce the practical conviction of Spartan superiority; for the territory of Tegea remained unimpaired, and its autonomy noway restrained. During the Persian invasion, Tegea appears as the willing ally of Lacedæmon, and as the second military power in the Peloponnesus;[784] and we may fairly presume that it was chiefly the strenuous resistance of the Tegeans which prevented the Lacedæmonians from extending their empire over the larger portion of the Arcadian communities. These latter always maintained their independence, though acknowledging Sparta as the presiding power in Peloponnesus, and obeying her orders implicitly as to the disposal of their military force. And the influence which Sparta thus possessed over all Arcadia was one main item in her power, never seriously shaken until the battle of Leuktra; which took away her previous means of insuring success and plunder to her minor followers.[785]
Having thus related the extension of the power of Sparta on her northern or Arcadian frontier, it remains to mention her acquisitions on the eastern and north-eastern side, towards Argos. Originally, as has been before stated, not merely the province of Kynuria and the Thyreātis but also the whole coast down to the promontory of Malea, had either been part of the territory of Argos or belonged to the Argeian confederacy. We learn from Herodotus,[786] that before the time when the embassy from Crœsus, king of Lydia, came to solicit aid in Greece (about 547 B. C.), the whole of this territory had fallen into the power of Sparta; but how long before, or at what precise epoch, we have no information. A considerable victory is said to have been gained by the Argeians over the Spartans in the 27th Olympiad or 669 B. C., at Hysiæ, on the road between Argos and Tegea.[787] At that time it does not seem probable that Kynuria could have been in the possession of the Spartans,—so that we must refer the acquisition to some period in the following century; though Pausanias places it much earlier, during the reign of Theopompus,[788]—and Eusebius connects it with the first establishment of the festival called Gymnopædia at Sparta, in 678 B. C.
About the year 547 B. C., the Argeians made an effort to reconquer Thyrea from Sparta, which led to a combat long memorable in the annals of Grecian heroism. It was agreed between the two powers that the possession of this territory should be determined by a combat of three hundred select champions on each side; the armies of both retiring, in order to leave the field clear. So undaunted and so equal was the valor of these two chosen companies, that the battle terminated by leaving only three of them alive,—Alkênôr and Chromius among the Argeians, Othryadês among the Spartans. The two Argeian warriors hastened home to report their victory, but Othryadês remained on the field, carried off the arms of the enemy’s dead into the Spartan camp, and kept his position until he was joined by his countrymen the next morning. Both Argos and Sparta claimed the victory for their respective champions, and the dispute after all was decided by a general conflict, in which the Spartans were the conquerors, though not without much slaughter on both sides. The brave Othryadês, ashamed to return home as the single survivor of the three hundred, fell upon his own sword on the field of battle.[789]