Derkyllidas next proceeded to Ephesus, where orders presently reached him from the ephors, directing him to march into Karia and attack Tissaphernes. The temporary truce which had hitherto provisionally kept off Persian soldiers and tribute-gatherers from the Asiatic Greeks, was now renounced by mutual consent. These Greeks had sent envoys to Sparta, assuring the ephors that Tissaphernes would be constrained to renounce formally the sovereign rights of Persia, and grant to them full autonomy, if his residence in Karia were vigorously attacked. Accordingly Derkyllidas marched southward across the Mæander into Karia, while the Lacedæmonian fleet under Pharax coöperated along the shore. At the same time Tissaphernes, on his side, had received reinforcements from Susa, together with the appointment of generalissimo over all the Persian force in Asia Minor; upon which Pharnabazus (who had gone up to court in the interval to concert more vigorous means of prosecuting the war, but had now returned)[385] joined him in Karia, prepared to commence vigorous operations for the expulsion of Derkyllidas and his army. Having properly garrisoned the strong places, the two satraps crossed the Mæander at the head of a powerful Grecian and Karian force, with numerous Persian cavalry, to attack the Ionian cities. As soon as he heard this news, Derkyllidas came back with his army from Karia, to cover the towns menaced. Having recrossed the Mæander, he was marching with his army in disorder, not suspecting the enemy to be near, when on a sudden he came upon their scouts, planted on some sepulchral monuments in the road. He also sent some scouts up to the neighboring monuments and towers, who apprised him that the two satraps, with their joint force in good order, were planted here to intercept him. He immediately gave orders for his hoplites to form in battle array of eight deep, with the peltasts, and his handful of horsemen, on each flank. But such was the alarm caused among his troops by this surprise, that none could be relied upon except the Cyreians and the Peloponnesians. Of the insular and Ionian hoplites, from Priênê and other cities, some actually hid their arms in the thick standing corn, and fled; others, who took their places in the line, manifested dispositions which left little hope that they would stand a charge; so that the Persians had the opportunity of fighting a battle not merely with superiority of number, but also with advantage of position and circumstances. Pharnabazus was anxious to attack without delay. But Tissaphernes, who recollected well the valor of the Cyreian troops, and concluded that all the remaining Greeks were like them, forbade it; sending forward heralds to demand a conference. As they approached, Derkyllidas, surrounding himself with a body-guard of the finest and best-equipped soldiers,[386] advanced to the front of the line to meet them; saying that he, for his part, was prepared to fight,—but since a conference was demanded, he had no objection to grant it, provided hostages were exchanged. This having been assented to, and a place named for conference on the ensuing day, both armies were simultaneously withdrawn; the Persians to Tralles, the Greeks to Leukophrys, celebrated for its temple of Artemis Leukophryne.[387]
This backwardness on the part of Tissaphernes even at a time when he was encouraged by a brother satrap braver than himself, occasioned to the Persians the loss of a very promising moment, and rescued the Grecian army out of a position of much peril. It helps to explain to us the escape of the Cyreians, and the manner in which they were allowed to cross rivers and pass over the most difficult ground without any serious opposition; while at the same time it tended to confirm in the Greek mind the same impressions of Persian imbecility as that escape so forcibly suggested.
The conference, as might be expected, ended in nothing. Derkyllidas required on behalf of the Asiatic Greeks complete autonomy,—exemption from Persian interference and tribute; while the two satraps on their side insisted that the Lacedæmonian army should be withdrawn from Asia, and the Lacedæmonian harmosts from all the Greco-Asiatic cities. An armistice was concluded, to allow time for reference to the authorities at home; thus replacing matters in the condition in which they had been at the beginning of the year.[388]
Shortly after the conclusion of this truce, Agesilaus, king of Sparta, arrived with a large force, and the war in all respects began to assume larger proportions,—of which more in the next chapter.
But it was not in Asia alone that Sparta had been engaged in war. The prostration of the Athenian power had removed that common bond of hatred and alarm which attached the allies to her headship; while her subsequent conduct had given positive offence, and had even excited against herself the same fear of unmeasured imperial ambition which had before run so powerfully against Athens. She had appropriated to herself nearly the whole of the Athenian maritime empire, with a tribute scarcely inferior, if at all inferior, in amount. How far the total of one thousand talents was actually realised during each successive year, we are not in a condition to say; but such was the assessment imposed and the scheme laid down by Sparta for her maritime dependencies,—enforced too by omnipresent instruments of rapacity and oppression, decemvirs and harmosts, such as Athens had never paralleled. When we add to this great maritime empire the prodigious ascendency on land which Sparta had enjoyed before, we shall find a total of material power far superior to that which Athens had enjoyed, even in her day of greatest exaltation, prior to the truce of 445 B.C.
This was not all. From the general dulness of character pervading Spartan citizens, the full resources of the state were hardly ever put forth. Her habitual short-comings at the moment of action are keenly criticised by her own friends, in contrast with the ardor and forwardness which animated her enemies. But at and after the battle of Ægospotami, the entire management of Spartan foreign affairs was found in the hands of Lysander; a man not only exempt from the inertia usual in his countrymen, but of the most unwearied activity and grasping ambition, as well for his country as for himself. Under his direction the immense advantages which Sparta enjoyed from her new position were at once systematized and turned to the fullest account. Now there was enough in the new ascendency of Sparta, had it been ever so modestly handled, to spread apprehension through the Grecian world. But apprehension became redoubled, when it was seen that her ascendency was organized and likely to be worked by her most aggressive leader for the purposes of an insatiable ambition. Fortunately for the Grecian world, indeed, the power of Sparta did not long continue to be thus absolutely wielded by Lysander, whose arrogance and overweening position raised enemies against him at home. Yet the first impressions received by the allies respecting Spartan empire, were derived from his proceedings and his plans of dominion, manifested with ostentatious insolence; and such impressions continued, even after the influence of Lysander himself had been much abated by the counterworking rivalry of Pausanias and others.
While Sparta separately had thus gained so much by the close of the war, not one of her allies had received the smallest remuneration or compensation, except such as might be considered to be involved in the destruction of a formidable enemy. Even the pecuniary result or residue which Lysander had brought home with him (four hundred and seventy talents remaining out of the advances made by Cyrus), together with the booty acquired at Dekeleia, was all detained by the Lacedæmonians themselves. Thebes and Corinth indeed presented demands, in which the other allies did not (probably durst not) join, to be allowed to share. But though all the efforts and sufferings of the war had fallen upon these allies no less than upon Sparta, the demands were refused, and almost resented as insults.[389] Hence there arose among the allies not merely a fear of the grasping dominion, but a hatred of the monopolizing rapacity, of Sparta. Of this new feeling, an early manifestation, alike glaring and important, was made by the Thebans and Corinthians, when they refused to join Pausanias in his march against Thrasybulus and the Athenian exiles in Peiræus,[390]—less than a year after the surrender of Athens, the enemy whom these two cities had hated with such extreme bitterness down to the very moment of surrender. Even Arcadians and Achæans too, habitually obedient as they were to Lacedæmon, keenly felt the different way in which she treated them, as compared with the previous years of war, when she had been forced to keep alive their zeal against the common enemy.[391]
The Lacedæmonians were however strong enough not merely to despise this growing alienation of their allies, but even to take revenge upon such of the Peloponnesians as had incurred their displeasure. Among these stood conspicuous the Eleians; now under a government called democratical, of which the leading man was Thrasydæus,—a man who had lent considerable aid in 404 B.C. to Thrasybulus and the Athenian exiles in Peiræus. The Eleians, in the year 420 B.C., had been engaged in a controversy with Sparta,—had employed their privileges as administrators of the Olympic festival to exclude her from attendance on that occasion,—and had subsequently been in arms against her along with Argos and Mantineia. To these grounds of quarrel, now of rather ancient date, had been added afterwards, a refusal to furnish aid in the war against Athens since the resumption of hostilities in 414 B.C., and a recent exclusion of king Agis, who had come in person to offer sacrifice and consult the oracle of Zeus Olympius; such exclusion being grounded on the fact that he was about to pray for victory in the war then pending against Athens, contrary to the ancient canon of the Olympic temple, which admitted no sacrifice or consultation respecting hostilities of Greek against Greek.[392] These were considered by Sparta as affronts; and the season was now favorable for resenting them, as well as for chastising and humbling Elis.[393] Accordingly Sparta sent an embassy, requiring the Eleians to make good the unpaid arrears of the quota assessed upon them for the cost of the war against Athens; and farther,—to relinquish their authority over their dependent townships or Periœki, leaving the latter autonomous.[394] Of these dependencies there were several, no one very considerable individually, in the region called Triphylia, south of the river Alpheus, and north of the Neda. One of them was Lepreum, the autonomy of which the Lacedæmonians had vindicated against Elis in 420 B.C., though during the subsequent period it had again become subject.
The Eleians refused compliance with the demand thus sent, alleging that their dependent cities were held by the right of conquest. They even retorted upon the Lacedæmonians the charge of enslaving Greeks;[395] upon which Agis marched with an army to invade their territory, entering it from the north side where it joined Achaia. Hardly had he crossed the frontier river Larissus and begun his ravages, when an earthquake occurred. Such an event, usually construed in Greece as a divine warning, acted on this occasion so strongly on the religious susceptibilities of Agis, that he not only withdrew from the Eleian territory, but disbanded his army. His retreat gave so much additional courage to the Eleians, that they sent envoys and tried to establish alliances among those cities which they knew to be alienated from Sparta. Not even Thebes and Corinth, however, could be induced to assist them; nor did they obtain any other aid except one thousand men from Ætolia.