The enormities of the Thirty had provoked severe comments from the philosopher Sokratês, whose life was spent in conversation on instructive subjects with those young men who sought his society, though he never took money from any pupil. These comments had been made known to Kritias and Chariklês, who sent for him, reminded him of the prohibitive law, and peremptorily commanded him to abstain for the future from all conversation with youths. Sokratês met this order by putting some questions to those who gave it, in his usual style of puzzling scrutiny, destined to expose the vagueness of the terms; and to draw the line, or rather to show that no definite line could be drawn, between that which was permitted and that which was forbidden. But he soon perceived that his interrogations produced only a feeling of disgust and wrath, menacing to his own safety. The tyrants ended by repeating their interdict in yet more peremptory terms, and by giving Sokratês to understand, that they were not ignorant of the censures which he had cast upon them.[408]
Though our evidence does not enable us to make out the precise dates of these various oppressions of the Thirty, yet it seems probable that this prohibition of teaching must have been among their earlier enactments; at any rate, considerably anterior to the death of Theramenês, and the general expulsion out of the walls of all except the privileged Three Thousand. Their dominion continued, without any armed opposition made to it, for about eight months from the capture of Athens by Lysander, that is, from about April to December 404 B.C. The measure of their iniquity then became full. They had accumulated against themselves, both in Attica and among the exiles in the circumjacent territories, suffering and exasperated enemies, while they had lost the sympathy of Thebes, Megara, and Corinth, and were less heartily supported by Sparta.
During these important eight months, the general feeling throughout Greece had become materially different both towards Athens and towards Sparta. At the moment when the long war was first brought to a close, fear, antipathy, and vengeance against Athens, had been the reigning sentiment, both among the confederates of Sparta and among the revolted members of the extinct Athenian empire; a sentiment which prevailed among them indeed to a greater degree than among the Spartans themselves, who resisted it, and granted to Athens a capitulation at a time when many of their allies pressed for the harshest measures. To this resolution they were determined partly by the still remaining force of ancient sympathy; partly by the odium which would have been sure to follow the act of expelling the Athenian population, however it might be talked of beforehand as a meet punishment; partly too by the policy of Lysander, who contemplated the keeping of Athens in the same dependence on Sparta and on himself, and by the same means, as the other outlying cities in which he had planted his dekadarchies.
So soon as Athens was humbled, deprived of her fleet and walled port, and rendered innocuous, the great bond of common fear which had held the allies to Sparta disappeared; and while the paramount antipathy on the part of those allies towards Athens gradually died away, a sentiment of jealousy and apprehension of Sparta sprang up in its place, on the part of the leading states among them. For such a sentiment there was more than one reason. Lysander had brought home not only a large sum of money, but valuable spoils of other kinds, and many captive triremes, at the close of the war. As the success had been achieved by the joint exertions of all the allies, so the fruits of it belonged in equity to all of them jointly, not to Sparta alone. The Thebans and Corinthians preferred a formal claim to be allowed to share; and if the other allies abstained from openly backing the demand, we may fairly presume that it was not from any different construction of the equity of the case, but from fear of offending Sparta. In the testimonial erected by Lysander at Delphi, commemorative of the triumph, he had included not only his own brazen statue, but that of each commander of the allied contingents; thus formally admitting the allies to share in the honorary results, and tacitly sanctioning their claim to the lucrative results also. Nevertheless, the demand made by the Thebans and Corinthians was not only repelled, but almost resented as an insult; especially by Lysander, whose influence was at that moment almost omnipotent.[409]
That the Lacedæmonians should have withheld from the allies a share in this money, demonstrates still more the great ascendency of Lysander; because there was a considerable party at Sparta itself, who protested altogether against the reception of so much gold and silver, as contrary to the ordinances of Lykurgus, and fatal to the peculiar morality of Sparta. An ancient Spartan, Skiraphidas, or Phlogidas, took the lead in calling for exclusive adherence to the old Spartan money, heavy iron, difficult to carry; nor was it without difficulty that Lysander and his friends obtained admission for the treasure into Sparta; under special proviso, that it should be for the exclusive purposes of the government, and that no private citizen should ever circulate gold or silver.[410] The existence of such traditionary repugnance among the Spartans would have seemed likely to induce them to be just towards their allies, since an equitable distribution of the treasure would have gone far to remove the difficulty; yet they nevertheless kept it all.
But besides this special offence given to the allies, the conduct of Sparta in other ways showed that she intended to turn the victory to her own account. Lysander was at this moment all-powerful, playing his own game under the name of Sparta. His position was far greater than that of the regent Pausanias had been after the victory of Platæa; and his talents for making use of the position incomparably superior. The magnitude of his successes, as well as the eminent ability which he had displayed, justified abundant eulogy; but in his case, the eulogy was carried to the length of something like worship. Altars were erected to him; pæans or hymns were composed in his honor; the Ephesians set up his statue in the temple of their goddess Artemis; and the Samians not only erected a statue to him at Olympia, but even altered the name of their great festival, the Heræa, to Lysandria.[411] Several contemporary poets—Antilochus, Chœrilus, Nikêratus, and Antimachus—devoted themselves to sing his glories and profit by his rewards.
Such excess of flattery was calculated to turn the head even of the most virtuous Greek: with Lysander, it had the effect of substituting, in place of that assumed smoothness of manner with which he began his command, an insulting harshness and arrogance corresponding to the really unmeasured ambition which he cherished.[412] His ambition prompted him to aggrandize Sparta separately, without any thought of her allies, in order to exercise dominion in her name. He had already established dekadarchies, or oligarchies of Ten, in many of the insular and Asiatic cities, and an oligarchy of Thirty in Athens; all composed of vehement partisans chosen by himself, dependent upon him for support, and devoted to his objects. To the eye of an impartial observer in Greece, it seemed as if all these cities had been converted into dependencies of Sparta, and were intended to be held in that condition; under Spartan authority, exercised by and through Lysander.[413] Instead of that general freedom which had been promised as an incentive to revolt against Athens, a Spartan empire had been constituted in place of the extinct Athenian, with a tribute, amounting to a thousand talents annually, intended to be assessed upon the component cities and islands.[414] Such at least was the scheme of Lysander, though it never reached complete execution.
It is easy to see that under such a state of feeling on the part of the allies of Sparta, the enormities perpetrated by the Thirty at Athens and by the Lysandrian dekadarchies in the other cities, would be heard with sympathy for the sufferers, and without that strong anti-Athenian sentiment which had reigned a few months before. But what was of still greater importance, even at Sparta itself, opposition began to spring up against the measures and the person of Lysander. If the leading men at Sparta had felt jealous even of Brasidas, who offended them only by unparalleled success and merit as a commander,[415] much more would the same feeling be aroused against Lysander, who displayed an overweening insolence, and was worshipped with an ostentatious flattery, not inferior to that of Pausanias after the battle of Platæa. Another Pausanias, son of Pleistoanax, was now king of Sparta, in conjunction with Agis. Upon him the feeling of jealousy against Lysander told with especial force, as it did afterwards upon Agesilaus, the successor of Agis; not unaccompanied probably with suspicion, which subsequent events justified, that Lysander was aiming at some interference with the regal privileges. Nor is it unfair to suppose that Pausanias was animated by motives more patriotic than mere jealousy, and that the rapacious cruelty, which everywhere dishonored the new oligarchies, both shocked his better feelings and inspired him with fears for the stability of the system. A farther circumstance which weakened the influence of Lysander at Sparta was the annual change of ephors, which took place about the end of September or beginning of October. Those ephors under whom his grand success and the capture of Athens had been consummated, and who had lent themselves entirely to his views, passed out of office in September 404 B.C., and gave place to others more disposed to second Pausanias.
I remarked, in the [preceding chapter], how much more honorable for Sparta, and how much less unfortunate for Athens and for the rest of Greece, the close of the Peloponnesian war would have been, if Kallikratidas had gained and survived the battle of Arginusæ, so as to close it then, and to acquire for himself that personal ascendency which the victorious general was sure to exercise over the numerous rearrangements consequent on peace. We see how important the personal character of the general so placed was, when we follow the proceedings of Lysander during the year after the battle of Ægospotami. His personal views were the grand determining circumstance throughout Greece; regulating both the measures of Sparta, and the fate of the conquered cities. Throughout the latter, rapacious and cruel oligarchies were organized,—of Ten in most cities, but of Thirty in Athens,—all acting under the power and protection of Sparta, but in real subordination to his ambition. Because he happened to be under the influence of a selfish thirst for power, the measures of Sparta were divested not merely of all Pan-Hellenic spirit, but even, to a great degree, of reference to her own confederates, and concentrated upon the acquisition of imperial preponderance for herself. Now if Kallikratidas had been the ascendent person at this critical juncture, not only such narrow and baneful impulses would have been comparatively inoperative, but the leading state would have been made to set the example of recommending, of organizing, and if necessary, of enforcing arrangements favorable to Pan-Hellenic brotherhood. Kallikratidas would not only have refused to lend himself to dekadarchies governing by his force and for his purposes, in the subordinate cities, but he would have discountenanced such conspiracies, wherever they tended to arise spontaneously. No ruffian like Kritias, no crafty schemer like Theramenês, would have reckoned upon his aid as they presumed upon the friendship of Lysander. Probably he would have left the government of each city to its own natural tendencies, oligarchical or democratical; interfering only in special cases of actual and pronounced necessity. Now the influence of an ascendent state, employed for such purposes, and emphatically discarding all private ends for the accomplishment of a stable Pan-Hellenic sentiment and fraternity; employed too thus, at a moment when so many of the Greek towns were in the throes of reorganization, having to take up a new political course in reference to the altered circumstances, is an element of which the force could hardly have failed to be prodigious as well as beneficial. What degree of positive good might have been wrought, by a noble-minded victor under such special circumstances, we cannot presume to affirm in detail. But it would have been no mean advantage, to have preserved Greece from beholding and feeling such enormous powers in the hands of a man like Lysander; through whose management the worst tendencies of an imperial city were studiously magnified by the exorbitance of individual ambition. It was to him exclusively that the Thirty in Athens, and the dekadarchies elsewhere, owed both their existence and their means of oppression.
It has been necessary thus to explain the general changes which had gone on in Greece and in Grecian feeling during the eight months succeeding the capture of Athens in March 404 B.C., in order that we may understand the position of the Thirty oligarchs, or Tyrants, at Athens, and of the Athenian population both in Attica and in exile, about the beginning of December in the same year, the period which we have now reached. We see how it was that Thebes, Corinth, and Megara, who in March had been the bitterest enemies of the Athenians, had now become alienated both from Sparta and from the Lysandrian Thirty, whom they viewed as viceroys of Athens for separate Spartan benefit. We see how the basis was thus laid of sympathy for the suffering exiles who fled from Attica; a feeling which the recital of the endless enormities perpetrated by Kritias and his colleagues inflamed every day more and more. We discern at the same time how the Thirty, while thus incurring enmity both in and out of Attica, were at the same time losing the hearty support of Sparta, from the decline of Lysander’s influence, and the growing opposition of his rivals at home.