The army being mustered, and the border sacrifices favorable, Agesilaus marched with his usual rapidity towards Phlius; dismissing those Phliasian envoys, who met him on the road and bribed or entreated him to desist, with the harsh reply that the government had already deceived Sparta once, and that he would be satisfied with nothing less than the surrender of the acropolis. This being refused, he marched to the city, and blocked it up by a wall of circumvallation. The besieged defended themselves with resolute bravery and endurance, under a citizen named Delphion; who, with a select troop of three hundred, maintained constant guard at every point, and even annoyed the besiegers by frequent sallies. By public decree, every citizen was put upon half-allowance of bread, so that the siege was prolonged to double the time which Agesilaus, from the information of the exiles as to the existing stock of provisions, had supposed to be possible. Gradually, however, famine made itself felt; desertions from within increased, among those who were favorable, or not decidedly averse, to the exiles; desertions, which Agesilaus took care to encourage by an ample supply of food, and by enrolment as Phliasian emigrants on the Spartan side. At length, after about a year’s blockade,[157] the provisions within were exhausted, so that the besieged were forced to entreat permission from Agesilaus to despatch envoys to Sparta and beg for terms. Agesilaus granted their request. But being at the same time indignant that they submitted to Sparta rather than to him, he sent to ask the ephors that the terms might be referred to his dictation. Meanwhile he redoubled his watch over the city; in spite of which, Delphion, with one of his most active subordinates, contrived to escape at this last hour. Phlius was now compelled to surrender at discretion to Agesilaus, who named a Council of One Hundred (half from the exiles, half from those within the city) vested with absolute powers of life and death over all the citizens, and authorized to frame a constitution for the future government of the city. Until this should be done, he left a garrison in the acropolis, with assured pay for six months.[158]
Had Agesipolis been alive, perhaps the Phliasians might have obtained better terms. How the omnipotent Hekatontarchy named by the partisan feelings of Agesilaus,[159] conducted themselves, we do not know. But the presumptions are all unfavorable, seeing that their situation as well as their power was analogous to that of the Thirty at Athens and the Lysandrian Dekarchies elsewhere.
The surrender of Olynthus to Polybiades, and of Phlius to Agesilaus, seem to have taken place nearly at the same time.
CHAPTER LXXVII.
FROM THE SUBJUGATION OF OLYNTHUS BY THE LACEDÆMONIANS DOWN TO THE CONGRESS AT SPARTA, AND PARTIAL PEACE, IN 371 B.C.
At the beginning of 379 B.C., the empire of the Lacedæmonians on land had reached a pitch never before paralleled. On the sea, their fleet was but moderately powerful, and they seem to have held divided empire with Athens over the smaller islands; while the larger islands (so far as we can make out) were independent of both. But the whole of inland Greece, both within and without Peloponnesus,—except Argos, Attica, and perhaps the more powerful Thessalian cities,—was now enrolled in the confederacy dependent on Sparta. Her occupation of Thebes, by a Spartan garrison and an oligarchy of local partisans, appeared to place her empire beyond all chance of successful attack; while the victorious close of the war against Olynthus carried everywhere an intimidating sense of her far-reaching power. Her allies, too,—governed as they were in many cases by Spartan harmosts, and by oligarchies whose power rested on Sparta,—were much more dependent upon her than they had been during the time of the Peloponnesian war.
Such a position of affairs rendered Sparta an object of the same mingled fear and hatred (the first preponderant) as had been felt towards imperial Athens fifty years before, when she was designated as the “despot city.[160]” And this sentiment was farther aggravated by the recent peace of Antalkidas, in every sense the work of Sparta; which she had first procured, and afterwards carried into execution. That peace was disgraceful enough, as being dictated by the king of Persia, enforced in his name, and surrendering to him all the Asiatic Greeks. But it became yet more disgraceful when the universal autonomy which it promised was seen to be so executed, as to mean nothing better than subjection to Sparta. Of all the acts yet committed by Sparta, not only in perversion of the autonomy promised to every city, but in violation of all the acknowledged canons of right dealing between city and city,—the most flagrant was, her recent seizure and occupation of the Kadmeia at Thebes. Her subversion (in alliance with, and partly for the benefit of, Amyntas king of Macedonia) of the free Olynthian confederacy was hardly less offensive to every Greek of large or Pan-hellenic patriotism. She appeared as the confederate of the Persian king on one side, of Amyntas the Macedonian, on another, of the Syracusan despot Dionysius on a third,—as betraying the independence of Greece to the foreigner, and seeking to put down, everywhere within it, that free spirit which stood in the way of her own harmosts and partisan oligarchies.
Unpopular as Sparta was, however, she stood out incontestably as the head of Greece. No man dared to call into question her headship, or to provoke resistance against it. The tone of patriotic and free-spoken Greeks at this moment is manifested in two eminent residents at Athens,—Lysias and Isokrates. Of these two rhetors, the former composed an oration which he publicly read at Olympia during the celebration of the 99th Olympiad, B.C. 384, three years after the peace of Antalkidas. In this oration (of which unhappily only a fragment remains, preserved by Dionysius of Halikarnassus), Lysias raises the cry of danger to Greece, partly from the Persian king, partly from the despot Dionysius of Syracuse.[161] He calls upon all Greeks to lay aside hostility and jealousies one with the other, and to unite in making head against these two really formidable enemies, as their ancestors had previously done, with equal zeal for putting down despots and for repelling the foreigner. He notes the number of Greeks (in Asia) handed over to the Persian king, whose great wealth would enable him to hire an indefinite number of Grecian soldiers, and whose naval force was superior to anything which the Greeks could muster; while the strongest naval force in Greece was that of the Syracusan Dionysius. Recognizing the Lacedæmonians as chiefs of Greece, Lysias expresses his astonishment that they should quietly permit the fire to extend itself from one city to another. They ought to look upon the misfortunes of those cities which had been destroyed, both by the Persians and by Dionysius, as coming home to themselves; not to wait patiently, until the two hostile powers had united their forces to attack the centre of Greece, which yet remained independent.
Of the two common enemies,—Artaxerxes and Dionysius,—whom Lysias thus denounces, the latter had sent to this very Olympic festival a splendid Theôry, or legation to offer solemn sacrifice in his name; together with several chariots to contend in the race, and some excellent rhapsodes to recite poems composed by himself. The Syracusan legation, headed by Thearides, brother of Dionysius, were clothed with rich vestments, and lodged in a tent of extraordinary magnificence, decorated with gold and purple; such, probably, as had not been seen since the ostentatious display made by Alkibiades[162] in the ninetieth Olympiad (B.C. 420). While instigating the spectators present to exert themselves as Greeks for the liberation of their fellow-Greeks enslaved by Dionysius, Lysias exhorted them to begin forthwith their hostile demonstration against the latter, by plundering the splendid tent before them, which insulted the sacred plain of Olympia with the spectacle of wealth extorted from Grecian sufferers. It appears that this exhortation was partially, but only partially, acted upon.[163] Some persons assailed the tents, but were, probably, restrained by the Eleian superintendents without difficulty. Yet the incident, taken in conjunction with the speech of Lysias, helps us to understand the apprehensions and sympathies which agitated the Olympic crowd in B.C. 384. This was the first Olympic festival after the peace of Antalkidas; a festival memorable, not only because it again brought thither Athenians, Bœotians, Corinthians, and Argeians, who must have been prevented by the preceding war from coming either in B.C. 388 or in B.C. 392,—but also as it exhibited the visitors and Theôries from the Asiatic Greeks, for the first time since they had been handed over by Sparta to the Persians,—and the like also from those numerous Italians and Sicilian Greeks whom Dionysius had enslaved. All these sufferers, especially the Asiatics, would doubtless be full of complaints respecting the hardships of their new lot, and against Sparta as having betrayed them; complaints, which would call forth genuine sympathy in the Athenians, Thebans, and all others who had submitted reluctantly to the peace of Antalkidas. There was thus a large body of sentiment prepared to respond to the declamations of Lysias. And many a Grecian patriot, who would be ashamed to lay hands on the Syracusan tents or envoys, would yet yield a mournful assent to the orator’s remark, that the free Grecian world was on fire[164] at both sides; that Asiatics, Italians, and Sicilians, had already passed into the hands of Artaxerxes and Dionysius; and that, if these two formidable enemies should coalesce, the liberties even of central Greece would be in great danger.
It is easy to see how much such feeling of grief and shame would tend to raise antipathy against Sparta. Lysias, in that portion of his speech which we possess, disguises his censure against her under the forms of surprise. But Isokrates, who composed an analogous discourse four years afterwards (which may perhaps have been read at the next Olympic festival of B.C. 380), speaks out more plainly. He denounces the Lacedæmonians as traitors to the general security and freedom of Greece, and as seconding foreign kings as well as Grecian despots to aggrandize themselves at the cost of autonomous Grecian cities,—all in the interest of their own selfish ambition. No wonder (he says) that the free and self-acting Hellenic world was every day becoming contracted into a narrower space, when the presiding city Sparta assisted Artaxerxes, Amyntas, and Dionysius to absorb it,—and herself undertook unjust aggressions against Thebes, Olynthus, Phlius, and Mantinea.[165]