It was upon this basis that the peace was concluded. The armaments on both sides were to be disbanded; the harmosts and garrisons everywhere withdrawn, in order that each city might enjoy full autonomy. If any city should fail in observance of these conditions, and continue in a career of force against any other, all were at liberty to take arms for the support of the injured party; but no one who did not feel disposed, was bound so to take arms. This last stipulation exonerated the Lacedæmonian allies from one of their most vexatious chains.
To the conditions here mentioned, all parties agreed; and on the ensuing day the oaths were exchanged. Sparta took the oath for herself and her allies; Athens took the oath for herself only; her allies afterwards took it severally, each city for itself. Why such difference was made, we are not told; for it would seem that the principle of severance applied to both confederacies alike.
Next came the turn of the Thebans to swear; and here the fatal hitch was disclosed. Epaminondas, the Theban envoy, insisted on taking the oath, not for Thebes separately, but for Thebes as president of the Bœotian federation, including all the Bœotian cities. The Spartan authorities on the other hand, and Agesilaus as the foremost of all, strenuously opposed him. They required that he should swear for Thebes alone, leaving the Bœotian cities to take the oath each for itself.
Already in the course of the preliminary debates, Epaminondas had spoken out boldly against the ascendency of Sparta. While most of the deputies stood overawed by her dignity, represented by the energetic Agesilaus as spokesman,—he, like the Athenian Autoklês, and with strong sympathy from many of the deputies present, had proclaimed that nothing kept alive the war except her unjust pretensions, and that no peace could be durable unless such pretensions were put aside.[356] Accepting the conditions of peace as finally determined, he presented himself to swear to them in the name of the Bœotian federation. But Agesilaus, requiring that each of the Bœotian cities should take the oath for itself, appealed to those same principles of liberty which Epaminondas himself had just invoked, and asked him whether each of the Bœotian cities had not as good a title to autonomy as Thebes. Epaminondas might have replied by asking, why Sparta had just been permitted to take the oath for her allies as well as for herself. But he took a higher ground. He contended that the presidency of Bœotia was held by Thebes on as good a title as the sovereignty of Laconia by Sparta.[357] He would remind the assembly that when Bœotia was first conquered and settled by its present inhabitants, the other towns had all been planted out from Thebes as their chief and mother-city; that the federal union of all, administered by Bœotarchs chosen by and from all, with Thebes as president, was coeval with the first settlement of the country; that the separate autonomy of each was qualified by an established institution, devolving on the Bœotarchs and councils sitting at Thebes the management of the foreign relations of all jointly. All this had been already pleaded by the Theban orator fifty-six years earlier, before the five Spartan commissioners, assembled to determine the fate of the captives after the surrender of Platæa; when he required the condemnation of the Platæans as guilty of treason to the ancestral institutions of Bœotia;[358] and the Spartan commissioners had recognized the legitimacy of these institutions by a sweeping sentence of death against the transgressors. Moreover, at a time when the ascendency of Thebes over the Bœotian cities had been greatly impaired by her anti-Hellenic coöperation with the invading Persians, the Spartans themselves had assisted her with all their power to reëstablish it, as a countervailing force against Athens.[359] Epaminondas could show, that the presidency of Thebes over the Bœotian cities was the keystone of the federation; a right not only of immemorial antiquity, but pointedly recognized and strenuously vindicated by the Spartans themselves. He could show farther that it was as old, and as good, as their own right to govern the Laconian townships; which latter was acquired and held (as one of the best among their own warriors had boastfully proclaimed)[360] by nothing but Spartan valor and the sharpness of the Spartan sword.
An emphatic speech of this tenor, delivered amidst the deputies assembled at Sparta, and arraigning the Spartans not merely in their supremacy over Greece, but even in their dominion at home,—was as it were the shadow cast before, by coming events. It opened a question such as no Greek had ever ventured to raise. It was a novelty startling to all,—extravagant probably in the eyes of Kallistratus and the Athenians,—but to the Spartans themselves, intolerably poignant and insulting.[361] They had already a long account of antipathy to clear off with Thebes; their own wrong-doing in seizing the Kadmeia,—their subsequent humiliation in losing it and being unable to recover it,—their recent short-comings and failures, in the last seven years of war against Athens and Thebes jointly. To aggravate this deep-seated train of hostile associations, their pride was now wounded in an unforeseen point, the tenderest of all. Agesilaus, full to overflowing of the national sentiment, which in the mind of a Spartan passed for the first of virtues, was stung to the quick. Had he been an Athenian orator like Kallistratus, his wrath would have found vent in an animated harangue. But a king of Sparta was anxious only to close these offensive discussions with scornful abruptness, thus leaving to the presumptuous Theban no middle ground between humble retraction and acknowledged hostility. Indignantly starting from his seat, he said to Epaminondas,—“Speak plainly,—will you, or will you not, leave to each of the Bœotian cities its separate autonomy?” To which the other replied—“Will you leave each of the Laconian towns autonomous?” Without saying another word, Agesilaus immediately caused the name of the Thebans to be struck out of the roll, and proclaimed them excluded from the treaty.[362]
Such was the close of this memorable congress at Sparta in June, 371 B.C. Between the Spartans and Athenians, and their respective allies, peace was sworn. But the Thebans were excluded, and their deputies returned home (if we may believe Xenophon[363]) discouraged and mournful. Yet such a man as Epaminondas must have been well aware that neither his claims nor his arguments would be admitted by Sparta. If therefore he was disappointed with the result, this must be because he had counted upon, but did not obtain, support from the Athenians or others.
The leaning of the Athenian deputies had been adverse rather than favorable to Thebes throughout the congress. They were disinclined, from their sympathies with the Platæans, to advocate the presidential claims of Thebes, though on the whole it was the political interest of Athens that the Bœotian federation should be maintained, as a bulwark to herself against Sparta. Yet the relations of Athens with Thebes, after the congress as before it, were still those of friendship, nominal rather than sincere. It was only with Sparta, and her allies, that Thebes was at war, without a single ally attached to her. On the whole, Kallistratus and his colleagues had managed the interests of Athens in this congress with great prudence and success. They had disengaged her from the alliance with Thebes, which had been dictated seven years before by common fear and dislike of Sparta, but which had no longer any adequate motive to countervail the cost of continuing the war; at the same time, the disengagement had been accomplished without bad faith. The gains of Athens, during the last seven years of war, had been considerable. She had acquired a great naval power, and a body of maritime confederates; while her enemies the Spartans had lost their naval power in the like proportion. Athens was now the ascendent leader of maritime and insular Greece,—while Sparta still continued to be the leading power on land, but only on land; and a tacit partnership was now established between the two, each recognizing the other in their respective halves of the Hellenic hegemony.[364] Moreover, Athens had the prudence to draw her stake, and quit the game, when at the maximum of her acquisitions, without taking the risk of future contingencies.
On both sides, the system of compulsory and indefeasable confederacies was renounced; a renunciation which had already been once sworn to, sixteen years before, at the peace of Antalkidas, but treacherously perverted by Sparta in the execution. Under this new engagement, the allies of Sparta or Athens ceased to constitute an organized permanent body, voting by its majority, passing resolutions permanently binding upon dissentients, arming the chief state with more or less power of enforcement against all, and forbidding voluntary secessions of individual members. They became a mere uncemented aggregate of individuals, each acting for himself; taking counsel together as long as they chose, and coöperating so far as all were in harmony; but no one being bound by any decision of the others, nor recognizing any right in the others to compel him even to performance of what he had specially promised, if it became irksome. By such change, therefore, both Athens and Sparta were losers in power; yet the latter to a much greater extent than the former, inasmuch as her reach of power over her allies had been more comprehensive and stringent.
We here see the exact point upon which the requisition addressed by Sparta to Thebes, and the controversy between Epaminondas and Agesilaus, really turned. Agesilaus contended that the relation between Thebes and the other Bœotian cities was the same as what subsisted between Sparta and her allies; that accordingly, when Sparta renounced the indefeasible and compulsory character of her confederacy, and agreed to deal with each of its members as a self-acting and independent unit, she was entitled to demand that Thebes should do the same in reference to the Bœotian towns. Epaminondas, on the contrary, denied the justice of this parallel. He maintained that the proper subject of comparison to be taken, was the relation of Sparta, not to her extra-Laconian allies, but to the Laconian townships; that the federal union of the Bœotian towns under Thebes was coeval with the Bœotian settlement, and among the most ancient phenomena of Greece; that in reference to other states, Bœotia, like Laconia or Attica, was the compound and organized whole, of which each separate city was only a fraction; that other Greeks had no more right to meddle with the internal constitution of these fractions, and convert each of them into an integer,—than to insist on separate independence for each of the townships of Laconia. Epaminondas did not mean to contend that the power of Thebes over the Bœotian cities was as complete and absolute in degree, as that of Sparta over the Laconian townships; but merely that her presidential power, and the federal system of which it formed a part, were established, indefeasible, and beyond the interference of any Hellenic convention,—quite as much as the internal government of Sparta in Laconia.
Once already this question had been disputed between Sparta and Thebes at the peace of Antalkidas; and already decided once by the superior power of the former, extorting submission from the latter. The last sixteen years had reversed the previous decision, and enabled the Thebans to reconquer those presidential rights of which the former peace had deprived them. Again, therefore, the question stood for decision, with keener antipathy on both sides,—with diminished power in Sparta,—but with increased force, increased confidence, and a new leader whose inestimable worth was even yet but half-known,—in Thebes. The Athenians,—friendly with both, yet allies of neither,—suffered the dispute to be fought out without interfering. How it was settled will appear in the next chapter.