Apart, however, from this prospect of Persian intervention, which doubtless was not without effect,—Athens herself was becoming more and more disposed towards peace. That common fear and hatred of the Lacedæmonians, which had brought her into alliance with Thebes in 378 B.C., was now no longer predominant. She was actually at the head of a considerable maritime confederacy; and this she could hardly hope to increase by continuing the war, since the Lacedæmonian naval power had already been humbled. Moreover, she found the expense of warlike operations very burdensome, nowise defrayed either by the contributions of her allies or by the results of victory. The orator Kallistratus,—who had promised either to procure remittances from Athens to Iphikrates, or to recommend the conclusion of peace,—was obliged to confine himself to the latter alternative, and contributed much to promote the pacific dispositions of his countrymen.[333]
Moreover, the Athenians had become more and more alienated from Thebes. The ancient antipathy between these two neighbors had for a time been overlaid by common fear of Sparta. But as soon as Thebes had reëstablished her authority in Bœotia, the jealousies of Athens again began to arise. In 374 B.C., she had concluded a peace with the Spartans, without the concurrence of Thebes; which peace was broken almost as soon as made, by the Spartans themselves, in consequence of the proceedings of Timotheus at Zakynthus. The Phokians,—against whom, as having been active allies of Sparta in her invasions of Bœotia, Thebes was now making war,—had also been ancient friends of Athens, who sympathized with their sufferings.[334] Moreover, the Thebans on their side probably resented the unpaid and destitute condition in which their seamen had been left by Timotheus at Kalauria, during the expedition for the relief of Korkyra in the preceding year;[335] an expedition of which Athens alone reaped both the glory and the advantage. Though they remained members of the confederacy, sending deputies to the congress at Athens, the unfriendly spirit on both sides continued on the increase, and was farther exasperated by their violent proceeding against Platæa in the first half of 372 B.C.
During the last three or four years, Platæa, like the other towns of Bœotia, had been again brought into the confederacy under Thebes. Reëstablished by Sparta after the peace of Antalkidas as a so-called autonomous town, it had been garrisoned by her as a post against Thebes, and was no longer able to maintain a real autonomy after the Spartans had been excluded from Bœotia in 376 B.C. While other Bœotian cities were glad to find themselves emancipated from their philo-Laconian oligarchies and rejoined to the federation under Thebes, Platæa,—as well as Thespiæ,—submitted to the union only by constraint; awaiting any favorable opportunity for breaking off, either by means of Sparta or of Athens. Aware probably of the growing coldness between the Athenians and Thebans, the Platæans were secretly trying to persuade Athens to accept and occupy their town, annexing Platæa to Attica;[336] a project hazardous both to Thebes and Athens, since it would place them at open war with each other, while neither was yet at peace with Sparta.
This intrigue, coming to the knowledge of the Thebans, determined them to strike a decisive blow. Their presidency, over more than one of the minor Bœotian cities, had always been ungentle, suitable to the roughness of their dispositions. Towards Platæa, especially, they not only bore an ancient antipathy, but regarded the reëstablished town as little better than a Lacedæmonian encroachment, abstracting from themselves a portion of territory which had become Theban, by prescriptive enjoyment lasting for forty years from the surrender of Platæa in 427 B.C. As it would have been to them a loss as well as embarrassment, if Athens should resolve to close with the tender of Platæa,—they forestalled the contingency by seizing the town for themselves. Since the reconquest of Bœotia by Thebes, the Platæans had come again, though reluctantly, under the ancient constitution of Bœotia; they were living at peace with Thebes, acknowledging her rights as president of the federation, and having their own rights as members guaranteed in return by her, probably under positive engagement,—that is, their security, their territory, and their qualified autonomy, subject to the federal restrictions and obligations. But though thus at peace with Thebes,[337] the Platæans knew well what was her real sentiment towards them, and their own towards her. If we are to believe, what seems very probable, that they were secretly negotiating with Athens to help them in breaking off from the federation,—the consciousness of such an intrigue tended still farther to keep them in anxiety and suspicion. Accordingly, being apprehensive of some aggression from Thebes, they kept themselves habitually on their guard. But their vigilance was somewhat relaxed and most of them went out of the city to their farms in the country, on the days, well known beforehand, when the public assemblies in Thebes were held. Of this relaxation the Bœotarch Neokles took advantage.[338] He conducted a Theban armed force, immediately from the assembly, by a circuitous route through Hysiæ to Platæa; which town he found deserted by most of its male adults, and unable to make resistance. The Platæans,—dispersed in the fields, finding their walls, their wives, and their families, all in possession of the victor,—were under the necessity of accepting the terms proposed to them. They were allowed to depart in safety, and to carry away all their movable property; but their town was destroyed, and its territory again annexed to Thebes. The unhappy fugitives were constrained for the second time to seek refuge at Athens, where they were again kindly received, and restored to the same qualified right of citizenship as they had enjoyed prior to the peace of Antalkidas.[339]
It was not merely with Platæa, but also with Thespiæ, that Thebes was now meddling. Mistrusting the dispositions of the Thespians, she constrained them to demolish the fortifications of their town;[340] as she had caused to be done fifty-two years before, after the victory of Delium,[341] on suspicion of leanings favorable to Athens.
Such proceedings on the part of the Thebans in Bœotia excited strong emotion at Athens; where the Platæans not only appeared as suppliants, with the tokens of misery conspicuously displayed, but also laid their case pathetically before the assembly, and invoked aid to regain their town, of which they had been just bereft. On a question at once so touching and so full of political consequences, many speeches were doubtless composed and delivered, one of which has fortunately reached us; composed by Isokrates, and perhaps actually delivered by a Platæan speaker before the public assembly. The hard fate of this interesting little community is here impressively set forth; including the bitterest reproaches, stated with not a little of rhetorical exaggeration, against the multiplied wrongs done by Thebes, as well towards Athens as towards Platæa. Much of his invective is more vehement than conclusive. Thus when the orator repeatedly claims for Platæa her title to autonomous existence, under the guarantee of universal autonomy sworn at the peace of Antalkidas,[342]—the Thebans would doubtless reply, that at the time of that peace, Platæa was no longer in existence; but had been extinct for forty years, and was only renovated afterwards by the Lacedæmonians for their own political purposes. And the orator intimates plainly, that the Thebans were noway ashamed of their proceeding, but came to Athens to justify it, openly and avowedly; moreover, several of the most distinguished Athenian speakers espoused the same side.[343] That the Platæans had coöperated with Sparta in her recent operations in Bœotia against both Athens and Thebes, was an undeniable fact; which the orator himself can only extenuate by saying that they acted under constraint from a present Spartan force,—but which was cited on the opposite side as a proof of their philo-Spartan dispositions, and of their readiness again to join the common enemy as soon as he presented himself.[344] The Thebans would accuse Platæa of subsequent treason to the confederacy; and they even seem to have contended, that they had rendered a positive service to the general Athenian confederacy of which they were members,[345] by expelling the inhabitants of Platæa and dismantling Thespiæ; both towns being not merely devoted to Sparta, but also adjoining Kithæron, the frontier line whereby a Spartan army would invade Bœotia. Both in the public assembly of Athens, and in the general congress of the confederates at that city, animated discussions were raised upon the whole subject;[346] discussions, wherein, as it appears, Epaminondas, as the orator and representative of Thebes, was found a competent advocate against Kallistratus, the most distinguished speaker in Athens; sustaining the Theban cause with an ability which greatly enhanced his growing reputation.[347]
But though the Thebans and their Athenian supporters, having all the prudential arguments on their side, carried the point so that no step was taken to restore the Platæans, nor any hostile declaration made against those to whom they owed their expulsion,—yet the general result of the debates, animated by keen sympathy with the Platæan sufferers, tended decidedly to poison the good feeling, and loosen the ties, between Athens and Thebes. This change showed itself by an increased gravitation towards peace with Sparta; strongly advocated by the orator Kallistratus, and now promoted not merely by the announced Persian intervention, but by the heavy cost of war, and the absence of all prospective gain from its continuance. The resolution was at length taken,—first by Athens, and next, probably, by the majority of the confederates assembled at Athens,—to make propositions of peace to Sparta, where it was well known that similar dispositions prevailed towards peace. Notice of this intention was given to the Thebans, who were invited to send envoys thither also, if they chose to become parties. In the spring of 371 B.C., at the time when the members of the Lacedæmonian confederacy were assembled at Sparta, both the Athenian and Theban envoys, and those from the various members of the Athenian confederacy, arrived there. Among the Athenian envoys, two at least,—Kallias (the hereditary daduch or torchbearer of the Eleusinian ceremonies) and Autoklês,—were men of great family at Athens; and they were accompanied by Kallistratus the orator.[348] From the Thebans, the only man of note was Epaminondas, then one of the Bœotarchs.
Of the debates which took place at this important congress, we have very imperfect knowledge; and of the more private diplomatic conversations, not less important than the debates, we have no knowledge at all. Xenophon gives us a speech from each of the three Athenians, and from no one else. That of Kallias, who announces himself as hereditary proxenus of Sparta at Athens, is boastful and empty, but eminently philo-Laconian in spirit;[349] that of Autoklês is in the opposite tone, full of severe censure on the past conduct of Sparta; that of Kallistratus, delivered after the other two,—while the enemies of Sparta were elate, her friends humiliated, and both parties silent from the fresh effect of the reproaches of Autoklês,[350]—is framed in a spirit of conciliation; admitting faults on both sides, but deprecating the continuance of war, as injurious to both, and showing how much the joint interests of both pointed towards peace.[351]
This orator, representing the Athenian diplomacy of the time, recognizes distinctly the peace of Antalkidas as the basis upon which Athens was prepared to treat,—autonomy to each city, small as well as great; and in this way, coinciding with the views of the Persian king, he dismisses with indifference the menace that Antalkidas was on his way back from Persia with money to aid the Lacedæmonians in the war. It was not from fear of the Persian treasures (he urged),—as the enemies of peace asserted,—that Athens sought peace.[352] Her affairs were now so prosperous, both by sea and land, as to prove that she only did so on consideration of the general evils of prolonged war, and on a prudent abnegation of that rash confidence which was always ready to contend for extreme stakes,[353] like a gamester playing double or quits. The time had come for both Sparta and Athens now to desist from hostilities. The former had the strength on land, the latter was predominant at sea; so that each could guard the other; while the reconciliation of the two would produce peace throughout the Hellenic world, since in each separate city, one of the two opposing local parties rested on Athens, the other on Sparta.[354] But it was indispensably necessary that Sparta should renounce that system of aggression (already pointedly denounced by the Athenian, Autoklês) on which she had acted since the peace of Antalkidas; a system, from which she had at last reaped bitter fruits, since her unjust seizure of the Kadmeia had ended by throwing into the arms of the Thebans all those Bœotian cities, whose separate autonomy she had bent her whole policy to ensure.[355]
Two points stand out in this remarkable speech, which takes a judicious measure of the actual position of affairs;—first, autonomy to every city; and autonomy in the genuine sense, not construed and enforced by the separate interests of Sparta, as it had been at the peace of Antalkidas; next, the distribution of such preëminence or headship, as was consistent with this universal autonomy, between Sparta and Athens; the former on land, the latter at sea,—as the means of ensuring tranquillity in Greece. That “autonomy perverted to Lacedæmonian purposes,”—which Perikles had denounced before the Peloponnesian war as the condition of Peloponnesus, and which had been made the political canon of Greece by the peace of Antalkidas,—was now at an end. On the other hand, Athens and Sparta were to become mutual partners and guarantees; dividing the headship of Greece by an ascertained line of demarcation, yet neither of them interfering with the principle of universal autonomy. Thebes, and her claim to the presidency of Bœotia, were thus to be set aside by mutual consent.