CHAPTER LXXII.
GREECE UNDER THE LACEDÆMONIAN EMPIRE.
The three preceding Chapters have been devoted exclusively to the narrative of the Expedition and Retreat, immortalized by Xenophon, occupying the two years intervening between about April 401 B.C. and June 399 B.C. That event, replete as it is with interest and pregnant with important consequences, stands apart from the general sequence of Grecian affairs,—which sequence I now resume.
It will be recollected that as soon as Xenophon with his Ten Thousand warriors descended from the rugged mountains between Armenia and the Euxine to the hospitable shelter of Trapezus, and began to lay their plans for returning to Central Greece,—they found themselves within the Lacedæmonian empire, unable to advance a step without consulting Lacedæmonian dictation, and obliged, when they reached the Bosphorus, to endure without redress the harsh and treacherous usage of the Spartan officers, Anaxibius and Aristarchus.
Of that empire the first origin has been set forth in my last preceding volume. It began with the decisive victory of Ægospotami in the Hellespont (September or October 405 B.C.), where the Lacedæmonian Lysander, without the loss of a man, got possession of the entire Athenian fleet and a large portion of their crews,—with the exception of eight or nine triremes with which the Athenian admiral Konon effected his escape to Euagoras at Cyprus. The whole power of Athens was thus annihilated, and nothing remained for the Lacedæmonians to master except the city itself and Peiræus; a consummation certain to happen, and actually brought to pass in April 404 B.C., when Lysander entered Athens in triumph, dismantled Peiræus, and demolished a large portion of the Long Walls. With the exception of Athens herself,—whose citizens deferred the moment of subjection by an heroic, though unavailing, struggle against the horrors of famine,—and of Samos,—no other Grecian city offered any resistance to Lysander after the battle of Ægospotami; which in fact not only took away from Athens her whole naval force, but transferred it all over to him, and rendered him admiral of a larger Grecian fleet than had ever been seen together since the battle of Salamis.
I have recounted in my sixty-fifth chapter, the sixteen months of bitter suffering undergone by Athens immediately after her surrender. The loss of her fleet and power was aggravated by an extremity of internal oppression. Her oligarchical party and her exiles, returning after having served with the enemy against her, extorted from the public assembly, under the dictation of Lysander who attended it in person, the appointment of an omnipotent council of thirty for the ostensible purpose of framing a new constitution. These thirty rulers,—among whom Kritias was the most violent, and Theramenes (seemingly) the most moderate, or at least the soonest satiated,—perpetrated cruelty and spoliation on the largest scale, being protected against all resistance by a Lacedæmonian harmost and garrison established in the acropolis. Besides numbers of citizens put to death, so many others were driven into exile with the loss of their property, that Thebes and the neighboring cities became crowded with them. After about eight months of unopposed tyranny, the Thirty found themselves for the first time attacked by Thrasybulus at the head of a small party of these exiles coming out of Bœotia. His bravery and good conduct,—combined with the enormities of the Thirty, which became continually more nefarious, and to which even numerous oligarchical citizens, as well as Theramenes himself, successively became victims,—enabled him soon to strengthen himself, to seize the Peiræus, and to carry on a civil war which ultimately put down the tyrants.
These latter were obliged to invoke the aid of a new Lacedæmonian force. And had that force still continued at the disposal of Lysander, all resistance on the part of Athens would have been unavailing. But fortunately for the Athenians, the last few months had wrought material change in the dispositions both of the allies of Sparta and of many among her leading men. The allies, especially Thebes and Corinth, not only relented in their hatred and fear of Athens, now that she had lost her power,—but even sympathized with her suffering exiles, and became disgusted with the self-willed encroachments of Sparta; while the Spartan king Pausanias, together with some of the ephors, were also jealous of the arbitrary and oppressive conduct of Lysander. Instead of conducting the Lacedæmonian force to uphold at all price the Lysandrian oligarchy, Pausanias appeared rather as an equitable mediator to terminate the civil war. He refused to concur in any measure for obstructing the natural tendency towards a revival of the democracy. It was in this manner that Athens, rescued from that sanguinary and rapacious regime which has passed into history under the name of the Thirty Tyrants, was enabled to reappear as a humble and dependent member of the Spartan alliance,—with nothing but the recollection of her former power, yet with her democracy again in vigorous and tutelary action for internal government. The just and gentle bearing of her democratical citizens, and the absence of reactionary antipathies, after such cruel ill-treatment,—are among the most honorable features in her history.
The reader will find in my last volume, what I can only rapidly glance at here, the details of that system of bloodshed, spoliation, extinction of free speech and even of intellectual teaching, efforts to implicate innocent citizens as agents in judicial assassination, etc.,—which stained the year of Anarchy (as it was termed in Athenian annals[300]) immediately following the surrender of the city. These details depend on evidence perfectly satisfactory; for they are conveyed to us chiefly by Xenophon, whose sympathies are decidedly oligarchical. From him too we learn another fact, not less pregnant with instruction; that the knights or horsemen, the body of richest proprietors at Athens, were the mainstay of the Thirty from first to last, notwithstanding all the enormities of their career.
We learn from these dark, but well-attested details, to appreciate the auspices under which that period of history called the Lacedæmonian empire was inaugurated. Such phenomena were by no means confined within the walls of Athens. On the contrary, the year of Anarchy (using that term in the sense in which it was employed by the Athenians) arising out of the same combination of causes and agents, was common to a very large proportion of the cities throughout Greece. The Lacedæmonian admiral Lysander, during his first year of naval command, had organized in most of the allied cities factious combinations of some of the principal citizens, corresponding with himself personally; by whose efforts in their respective cities he was enabled to prosecute the war vigorously, and whom he repaid, partly by seconding as much as he could their injustices in their respective cities,—partly by promising to strengthen their hands still farther as soon as victory should be made sure.[301] This policy, while it served as a stimulus against the common enemy, contributed still more directly to aggrandize Lysander himself; creating for him an ascendency of his own, and imposing upon him personal obligations towards adherents, apart from what was required by the interests of Sparta.