Three great battles had thus been fought in the space of little more than a month (July and August)—those of Corinth, Knidus, and Korôneia; the first and third on land, the second at sea, as described in my last chapter. In each of the two land-battles the Lacedæmonians had gained a victory; they remained masters of the field, and were solicited by the enemy to grant the burial-truce. But if we inquire what results these victories had produced, the answer must be that both were totally barren. The position of Sparta in Greece as against her enemies had undergone no improvement. In the battle of Corinth, her soldiers had indeed manifested signal superiority, and acquired much honor. But at the field of Korôneia, the honor of the day was rather on the side of the Thebans, who broke through the most strenuous opposition, and carried their point of joining their allies. And the purpose of Agesilaus (ordered by the ephor Diphridas) to invade Bœotia, completely failed.[607] Instead of advancing, he withdrew from Korôneia, and returned to Peloponnesus across the gulf from Delphi; which he might have done just as well without fighting this murderous and hardly contested battle. Even the narrative of Xenophon, deeply colored as it is both by his sympathies and his antipathies, indicates to us that the predominant impression carried off by every one from the field of Korôneia was that of the tremendous force and obstinacy of the Theban hoplites,—a foretaste of what was to come at Leuktra!
If the two land-victories of Sparta were barren of results, the case was far otherwise with her naval defeat at Knidus. That defeat was pregnant with consequences following in rapid succession, and of the most disastrous character. As with Athens at Ægospotami,—the loss of her fleet, serious as that was, served only as the signal for countless following losses. Pharnabazus and Konon, with their victorious fleet, sailed from island to island, and from one continental seaport to another, in the Ægean, to expel the Lacedæmonian harmosts, and terminate the empire of Sparta. So universal was the odium which it had inspired, that the task was found easy beyond expectation. Conscious of their unpopularity, the harmosts in almost all the towns, on both sides of the Hellespont, deserted their posts and fled, on the mere news of the battle of Knidus.[608] Everywhere Pharnabazus and Konon found themselves received as liberators, and welcomed with presents of hospitality. They pledged themselves not to introduce any foreign force or governor, nor to fortify any separate citadel, but to guarantee to each city its own genuine autonomy. This policy was adopted by Pharnabazus at the urgent representation of Konon, who warned him that if he manifested any design of reducing the cities to subjection, he would find them all his enemies; that each of them severally would cost him a long siege; and that a combination would ultimately be formed against him. Such liberal and judicious ideas, when seen to be sincerely acted upon, produced a strong feeling of friendship and even of gratitude, so that the Lacedæmonian maritime empire was dissolved without a blow, by the almost spontaneous movements of the cities themselves. Though the victorious fleet presented itself in many different places, it was nowhere called upon to put down resistance, or to undertake a single siege. Kos, Nisyra, Teos, Chios, Erythræ, Ephesus, Mitylênê, Samos, all declared themselves independent, under the protection of the new conquerors.[609] Pharnabazus presently disembarked at Ephesus and marched by land northward to his own satrapy; leaving a fleet of forty triremes under the command of Konon.
To this general burst of anti-Spartan feeling, Abydos, on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont, formed the solitary exception. That town, steady in hostility to Athens,[610] had been the great military station of Sparta for her northern Asiatic warfare, during the last twenty years. It was in the satrapy of Pharnabazus, and had been made the chief place of arms by Derkyllidas and Agesilaus, for their warfare against that satrap as well as for the command of the strait. Accordingly, while it was a main object with Pharnabazus to acquire possession of Abydos,—there was nothing which the Abydenes dreaded so much as to become subject to him. In this view they were decidedly disposed to cling to Lacedæmonian protection; and it happened by a fortunate accident for Sparta, that the able and experienced Derkyllidas was harmost in the town at the moment of the battle of Knidus. Having fought in the battle of Corinth, he had been sent to announce the news to Agesilaus, whom he had met on his march at Amphipolis, and who had sent him forward into Asia to communicate the victory to the allied cities;[611] neither of them at that moment anticipating the great maritime defeat then impending. The presence in Abydos of such an officer, who had already acquired a high military reputation in that region, and was at marked enmity with Pharnabazus,—combined with the standing apprehensions of the Abydenes,—was now the means of saving a remnant at least of maritime ascendency to Sparta. During the general alarm which succeeded the battle of Knidus, when the harmosts were everywhere taking flight, and when anti-Spartan manifestations often combined with internal revolutions to overthrow the dekarchs or their substitutes, were spreading from city to city,—Derkyllidas assembled the Abydenes, heartened them up against the reigning contagion, and exhorted them to earn the gratitude of Sparta by remaining faithful to her while others were falling off; assuring them that she would still be found capable of giving them protection. His exhortations were listened to with favor. Abydos remained attached to Sparta, was put in a good state of defence, and became the only harbor of safety for the fugitive harmosts out of the other cities, Asiatic and European.
Having secured his hold upon Abydos, Derkyllidas crossed the strait to make sure also of the strong place of Sestos, on the European side, in the Thracian Chersonese.[612] In that fertile peninsula there had been many new settlers, who had come in and acquired land under the Lacedæmonian supremacy, especially since the building of the cross-wall by Derkyllidas to defend the isthmus against Thracian invasion. By means of these settlers, dependent on Sparta for the security of their tenures,—and of the refugees from various cities all concentrated under his protection,—Derkyllidas maintained his position effectively both at Abydos and at Sestos; defying the requisition of Pharnabazus that he should forthwith evacuate them. The satrap threatened war, and actually ravaged the lands around Abydos,—but without any result. His wrath against the Lacedæmonians, already considerable, was so aggravated by disappointment when he found that he could not yet expel them from his satrapy, that he resolved to act against them with increased energy, and even to strike a blow at them near their own home. For this purpose he transmitted orders to Konon to prepare a commanding naval force for the ensuing spring, and in the mean time to keep both Abydos and Sestos under blockade.[613]
As soon as spring arrived, Pharnabazus embarked on board a powerful fleet equipped by Konon; directing his course to Melos, to various islands among the Cyclades, and lastly to the coast of Peloponnesus. They here spent some time on the coast of Laconia and Messenia, disembarking at several points to ravage the country. They next landed on the island of Kythêra, which they captured, granting safe retirement to the Lacedæmonian garrison, and leaving in the island a garrison under the Athenian Nikophêmus. Quitting then the harborless, dangerous, and ill-provided coast of Laconia, they sailed up the Saronic gulf to the isthmus of Corinth. Here they found the confederates,—Corinthian, Bœotian, Athenian, etc., carrying on war with Corinth as their central post, against the Lacedæmonians at Sikyon. The line across the isthmus from Lechæum to Kenchreæ (the two ports of Corinth) was now made good by a defensive system of operations, so as to confine the Lacedæmonians within Peloponnesus; just as Athens, prior to her great losses in 446 B.C., while possessing both Megara and Pegæ, had been able to maintain the inland road midway between them, where it crosses the high and difficult crest of Mount Geraneia, thus occupying the only three roads by which a Lacedæmonian army could march from the isthmus of Corinth into Attica or Bœotia.[614] Pharnabazus communicated in the most friendly manner with the allies, assured them of his strenuous support against Sparta, and left with them a considerable sum of money.[615]
The appearance of a Persian satrap with a Persian fleet, as master of the Peloponnesian sea and the Saronic Gulf, was a phenomenon astounding to Grecian eyes. And if it was not equally offensive to Grecian sentiment, this was in itself a melancholy proof of the degree to which Pan-hellenic patriotism had been stifled by the Peloponnesian war and the Spartan empire. No Persian tiara had been seen near the Saronic Gulf since the battle of Salamis; nor could anything short of the intense personal wrath of Pharnabazus against the Lacedæmonians, and his desire to revenge upon them the damage inflicted by Derkyllidas and Agesilaus, have brought him now so far away from his own satrapy. It was this wrathful feeling of which Konon took advantage to procure from him a still more important boon.
Since 404 B.C., a space of eleven years, Athens had continued without any walls around her seaport town Peiræus, and without any Long Walls to connect her city with Peiræus. To this state she had been condemned by the sentence of her enemies, in the full knowledge that she could have little trade,—few ships either armed or mercantile,—poor defence even against pirates, and no defence at all against aggression from the mistress of the sea. Konon now entreated Pharnabazus, who was about to go home, to leave the fleet under his command, and to permit him to use it in rebuilding the fortifications of Peiræus as well as the Long Walls of Athens. While he engaged to maintain the fleet by contributions from the islands, he assured the satrap that no blow could be inflicted upon Sparta so destructive or so mortifying, as the renovation of Athens and Peiræus with their complete and connected fortifications. Sparta would thus be deprived of the most important harvest which she had reaped from the long struggle of the Peloponnesian war. Indignant as he now was against the Lacedæmonians, Pharnabazus sympathized cordially with these plans, and on departing not only left the fleet under the command of Konon, but also furnished him with a considerable sum of money towards the expense of the fortifications.[616]
Konon betook himself to the work energetically and without delay. He had quitted Athens in 407 B.C., as one of the joint admirals nominated after the disgrace of Alkibiades. He had parted with his countrymen finally at the catastrophe of Ægospotami in 405 B.C., preserving the miserable fraction of eight or nine ships out of that noble fleet which otherwise would have passed entire into the hands of Lysander. He now returned, in 393 B.C., as a second Themistokles, the deliverer of his country, and the restorer of her lost strength and independence. All hands were set to work; carpenters and masons being hired with the funds furnished by Pharnabazus, to complete the fortifications as quickly as possible. The Bœotians and other neighbors lent their aid zealously as volunteers,[617]—the same who eleven years before had danced to the sound of joyful music when the former walls were demolished; so completely had the feelings of Greece altered since that period. By such hearty coöperation the work was finished during the course of the present summer and autumn without any opposition; and Athens enjoyed again her fortified Peiræus and harbor, with a pair of Long Walls, straight and parallel, joining it securely to the city. The third, or Phalêric Wall (a single wall stretching from Athens to Phalêrum), which had existed down to the capture of the city by Lysander, was not restored; nor was it indeed by any means necessary to the security either of the city or of the port. Having thus given renewed life and security to Peiræus, Konon commemorated his great naval victory by a golden wreath in the acropolis, as well as by the erection of a temple in Peiræus to the honor of the Knidian Aphroditê, who was worshipped at Knidus with peculiar devotion by the local population.[618] He farther celebrated the completion of the walls by a splendid sacrifice and festival banquet. And the Athenian people not only inscribed on a pillar a public vote gratefully recording the exploits of Konon, but also erected a statue to his honor.[619]
The importance of this event in reference to the future history of Athens was unspeakable. Though it did not restore to her either her former navy, or her former empire, it reconstituted her as a city, not only self-determining, but even partially ascendant. It reanimated her, if not into the Athens of Perikles, at least into that of Isokrates and Demosthenes; it imparted to her a second fill of strength, dignity, and commercial importance, during the half century destined to elapse before she was finally overwhelmed by the superior military force of Macedon. Those who recollect the extraordinary stratagem whereby Themistokles had contrived (eighty-five years before) to accomplish the fortification of Athens, in spite of the base but formidable jealousy of Sparta and her Peloponnesian allies, will be aware how much the consummation of the Themistoklean project had depended upon accident. Now, also, Konon in his restoration was favored by unusual combinations, such as no one could have predicted. That Pharnabazus should conceive the idea of coming over himself to Peloponnesus with a fleet of the largest force, was a most unexpected contingency. He was influenced neither by attachment to Athens, nor seemingly by considerations of policy, though the proceeding was one really conducive to the interests of Persian power,—but simply by his own violent personal wrath against the Lacedæmonians. And this wrath probably would have been satisfied, if, after the battle of Knidus, he could have cleared his own satrapy of them completely. It was his vehement impatience, when he found himself unable to expel his old enemy, Derkyllidas, from the important position of Abydos, which chiefly spurred him on to take revenge on Sparta in her own waters. Nothing less than the satrap’s personal presence would have placed at the disposal of Konon either a sufficient naval force, or sufficient funds for the erection of the new walls, and the defiance of all impediment from Sparta. So strangely did events thus run, that the energy, by which Derkyllidas preserved Abydos, brought upon Sparta, indirectly, the greater mischief of the new Kononian walls. It would have been better for Sparta that Pharnabazus should at once have recovered Abydos as well as the rest of his satrapy; in which case he would have had no wrongs remaining unavenged to incense him, and would have kept on his own side of the Ægean; feeding Konon with a modest squadron sufficient to keep the Lacedæmonian navy from again becoming formidable on the Asiatic side, but leaving the walls of Peiræus (if we may borrow an expression of Plato) “to continue asleep in the bosom of the earth.”[620]
But the presence of Konon with his powerful fleet was not the only condition indispensable to the accomplishment of this work. It was requisite further, that the interposition of Sparta should be kept off, not merely by sea, but by land, and that, too, during all the number of months that the walls were in progress. Now the barrier against her on land was constituted by the fact, that the confederate force held the cross line within the isthmus from Lechæum to Kenchreæ, with Corinth as a centre.[621] But they were unable to sustain this line even through the ensuing year,—during which Sparta, aided by dissensions at Corinth, broke through it, as will appear in the next chapter. Had she been able to break through it while the fortifications of Athens were yet incomplete, she would have deemed no effort too great to effect an entrance into Attica and interrupt the work, in which she might very probably have succeeded. Here, then, was the second condition, which was realized during the summer and autumn of 393 B.C., but which did not continue to be realized longer. So fortunate was it for Athens, that the two conditions were fulfilled both together during this particular year!