CHAPTER LXXV.
FROM THE REBUILDING OF THE LONG WALLS OF ATHENS TO THE PEACE OF ANTALKIDAS.
The presence of Pharnabazus and Konon with their commanding force in the Saronic Gulf, and the liberality with which the former furnished pecuniary aid to the latter for rebuilding the full fortifications of Athens, as well as to the Corinthians for the prosecution of the war,—seem to have given preponderance to the confederates over Sparta for that year. The plans of Konon[622] were extensive. He was the first to organize for the defence of Corinth, a mercenary force which was afterwards improved and conducted with greater efficiency by Iphikrates; and after he had finished the fortifications of Peiræus with the Long Walls, he employed himself in showing his force among the islands, for the purpose of laying the foundations of renewed maritime power for Athens. We even hear that he caused an Athenian envoy to be despatched to Dionysius at Syracuse, with the view of detaching that despot from Sparta, and bringing him into connection with Athens. Evagoras, despot of Salamis in Cyprus, the steady friend of Konon, was a party to this proposition, which he sought to strengthen by offering to Dionysius his sister in marriage.[623] There was a basis of sympathy between them arising from the fact that Evagoras was at variance with the Phœnicians both in Phœnicia and Cyprus, while Dionysius was in active hostilities with the Carthaginians (their kinsmen and Colonists) in Sicily. Nevertheless, the proposition met with little or no success. We find Dionysius afterwards still continuing to act as an ally of Sparta.
Profiting by the aid received from Pharnabazus, the Corinthians strengthened their fleet at Lechæum (their harbor in the Corinthian Gulf) so considerably, as to become masters of the Gulf, and to occupy Rhium, one of the two opposite capes which bound its narrow entrance. To oppose them, the Lacedæmonians on their side were driven to greater maritime effort. More than one naval action seems to have taken place, in those waters where the prowess and skill of the Athenian admiral Phormion had been so signally displayed at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. At length the Lacedæmonian admiral Herippidas, who succeeded to the command of the fleet after his predecessor Polemarchus had been slain in battle, compelled the Corinthians to abandon Rhium, and gradually recovered his ascendency in the Corinthian Gulf; which his successor Teleutias, brother of Agesilaus, still farther completed.[624]
While these transactions were going on (seemingly during the last half of 393 B.C. and the full year of 392 B.C.), so as to put an end to the temporary naval preponderance of the Corinthians,—the latter were at the same time bearing the brunt of a desultory, but continued, land-warfare against the garrison of Lacedæmonians and Peloponnesians established at Sikyon. Both Corinth and Lechæum were partly defended by the presence of confederate troops, Bœotians, Argeians, Athenians, or mercenaries paid by Athens. But this did not protect the Corinthians against suffering great damage, in their lands and outlying properties, from the incursions of the enemy.
The plain between Corinth and Sikyon,—fertile and extensive (speaking by comparison with Peloponnesus generally), and constituting a large part of the landed property of both cities, was rendered uncultivable during 393 and 392 B.C.; so that the Corinthian proprietors were obliged to withdraw their servants and cattle to Peiræum[625] (a portion of the Corinthian territory without the Isthmus properly so called, north-east of the Akrokorinthus, in a line between that eminence and the Megarian harbor of Pegæ). Here the Sikyonian assailants could not reach them, because of the Long Walls of Corinth, which connected that city by a continuous fortification of twelve stadia (somewhat less than a mile and a half) with its harbor of Lechæum. Nevertheless, the loss to the proprietors of the deserted plain was still so great, that two successive seasons of it were quite enough to inspire them with a strong aversion to the war;[626] the more so, as the damage fell exclusively upon them—their allies in Bœotia, Athens, and Argos, having as yet suffered nothing. Constant military service for defence, with the conversion of the city into a sort of besieged post, aggravated their discomfort. There was another circumstance also, doubtless not without influence. The consequences of the battle of Knidus had been, first, to put down the maritime empire of Sparta, and thus to diminish the fear which she inspired to the Corinthians; next, to rebuild the fortifications, and renovate the shipping, commercial as well as warlike, of Athens;—a revival well calculated to bring back a portion of that anti-Athenian jealousy and apprehension which the Corinthians had felt so strongly a few years before. Perhaps some of the trade at Corinth may have been actually driven away by the disturbance of the war, to the renewed fortifications and greater security of Peiræus.
Fostered by this pressure of circumstances, the discontented philo-Laconian or peace-party which had always existed at Corinth, presently acquired sufficient strength, and manifested itself with sufficient publicity to give much alarm to the government. The Corinthian government had always been, and still was, oligarchical. In what manner the administrators or the council were renovated, or how long individuals continued in office, indeed, we do not know. But of democracy, with its legal, popular assemblies, open discussions and authoritative resolves, there was nothing.[627] Now the oligarchical persons actually in power were vehemently anti-Laconian, consisting of men who had partaken of the Persian funds and contracted alliance with Persia, besides compromising themselves irrevocably (like Timolaus) by the most bitter manifestations of hostile sentiment towards Sparta. These men found themselves menaced by a powerful opposition party, which had no constitutional means for making its sentiments predominant, and for accomplishing peaceably either a change of administrators or a change of public policy. It was only by an appeal to arms and violence that such a consummation could be brought about; a fact notorious to both parties,—so that the oligarchical administrators, informed of the meetings and conversations going on, knew well that they had to expect nothing less than the breaking out of a conspiracy. That such anticipations were well-founded, we gather even from the partial recital of Xenophon; who states that Pasimêlus, the philo-Laconian leader, was on his guard and in preparation,[628]—and counts it to him as a virtue that shortly afterwards he opened the gates to the Lacedæmonians.
Anticipating such conspiracy, the government resolved to prevent it by a coup d’état. They threw themselves upon the assistance of their allies, invited in a body of Argeians, and made their blow the more sure by striking it on the last day of the festival called Eukleia, when it was least expected. Their proceeding, though dictated by precaution, was executed with the extreme of brutal ferocity aggravated by sacrilege; in a manner very different from the deep-laid artifices recently practised by the Spartan ephors when they were in like manner afraid of the conspiracy of Kinadon,—and more like the oligarchical conspirators at Korkyra (in the third year of the Peloponnesian war) when they broke into the assembled Senate, and massacred Peithias, with sixty others in the senate-house.[629] While the choice performers at Corinth were contending for the prize in the theatre, with judges formally named to decide,—and while the market-place around was crowded with festive spectators,—a number of armed men were introduced, probably Argeians, with leaders designating the victims whom they were to strike. Some of these select victims were massacred in the market-place, others in the theatre, and one even while sitting as a judge in the theatre. Others again fled in terror to embrace the altars or statues in the market-place,—which sanctuary, nevertheless, did not save their lives. Nor was such sacrilege arrested,—repugnant as it was to the feelings of the assembled spectators and to Grecian feelings generally,—until one hundred and twenty persons had perished.[630] But the persons slain were chiefly elderly men; for the younger portion of the philo-Laconian party, suspecting some mischief, had declined attending the festival, and kept themselves separately assembled under their leader Pasimêlus in the gymnasium and cyprus-grove called Kranium, just without the city-gates. We find, too, that they were not only assembled, but actually in arms. For the moment that they heard the clamor in the market-place, and learned from some fugitives what was going on, they rushed up at once to the Akrokorinthus (or eminence and acropolis overhanging the city) and got possession of the citadel,—which they maintained with such force and courage that the Argeians and the Corinthians, who took part with the government, were repulsed in the attempt to dislodge them. This circumstance, indirectly revealed in the one-sided narrative of Xenophon, lets us into the real state of the city, and affords good ground for believing that Pasimêlus and his friends were prepared beforehand for an armed outbreak, but waited to execute it, until the festival was over,—a scruple which the government, in their eagerness to forestall the plot, disregarded,—employing the hands and weapons of Argeians who were comparatively unimpressed by solemnities peculiar to Corinth.[631]