History of Greece, Volume 10 (of 12)

by George Grote

This transfer of lands in Samos to Athenian proprietors, combined with the resumption of the Chersonese, appears to have excited a strong sensation throughout Greece, as a revival of ambitious tendencies on the part of Athens, and a manifest departure from those disinterested professions which she had set forth in 378 B.C. Even in the Athenian assembly, a citizen named Kydias pronounced an emphatic protest against the emigration of the kleruchs to Samos.[636] However, obnoxious as the measure was to criticism, yet having been preceded by a conquering siege and the expulsion of many native proprietors, it does not seem to have involved Athens in so much real difficulty as the resumption of her old rights in the Chersonese. Not only did she here come into conflict with independent towns, like Kardia,[637] which resisted her pretensions,—and with resident proprietors whom she was to aid her citizens in dispossessing,—but also with a new enemy, Kotys, king of Thrace. That prince, claiming the Chersonese as Thracian territory, was himself on the point of seizing Sestus, when Agesilaus or Ariobarzanes drove him away,[638] to make room for Timotheus and the Athenians.

It has been already mentioned, that Kotys,[639]—the new Thracian enemy, but previously the friend and adopted citizen, of Athens,—was father-in-law of the Athenian general Iphikrates, whom he had enabled to establish and people the town and settlement called Drys, on the coast of Thrace. Iphikrates had been employed by the Athenians for the last three or four years on the coasts of Macedonia and Chalkidikê, and especially against Amphipolis; but he had neither taken the latter place, nor obtained (so far as we know) any other success; though he had incurred the expense for three years of a mercenary general named Charidemus with a body of troops. How so unprofitable a result, on the part of an energetic man like Iphikrates, is to be explained,—we cannot tell. But it naturally placed him before the eyes of his countrymen in disadvantageous contrast with Timotheus, who had just acquired Samos and the Chersonese. An additional reason for mistrusting Iphikrates, too, was presented by the fact, that Athens was now at war with his father-in-law Kotys. Hence it was now resolved by the Athenians to recall him, and appoint Timotheus[640] to an extensive command, including Thrace and Macedonia as well as the Chersonese. Perhaps party enmities between the two Athenian chiefs, with their respective friends, may have contributed to the change. As Iphikrates had been the accuser of Timotheus a few years before, so the latter may have seized this opportunity of retaliating.[641] At all events the dismissed general conducted himself in such a manner as to justify the mistrust of his countrymen; taking part with his father-in-law Kotys in the war, and actually fighting against Athens.[642] He had got into his possession some hostages of Amphipolis, surrendered to him by Harpalus; which gave great hopes of extorting the surrender of the town. These hostages he had consigned to the custody of the mercenary general Charidemus, though a vote had been passed in the Athenian assembly that they should be sent to Athens.[643] As soon as the appointment of Iphikrates was cancelled, Charidemus forthwith surrendered the hostages to the Amphipolitans themselves, thus depriving Athens of a material advantage. And this was not all. Though Charidemus had been three years with his band in the service of Athens under Iphikrates, yet when the new general Timotheus wished to reëngage him, he declined the proposition; conveying away his troops in Athenian transports, to enter into the pay of a decided enemy of Athens—Kotys; and in conjunction with Iphikrates himself.[644] He was subsequently coming by sea from Kardia to take service under her other enemies, Olynthus and Amphipolis, when he was captured by the Athenian fleet. Under these circumstances, he was again prevailed on to serve Athens.

It was against these two cities, and to the general coast of Macedonia and the Chalkidic Thrace, that Timotheus devoted his first attention, postponing for the moment Kotys and the Chersonese. In this enterprise he found means to obtain the alliance of Macedonia, which had been hostile to his predecessor Iphikrates. Ptolemy of Alôrus, regent of that country, who had assassinated the preceding king, Alexander son of Amyntas, was himself assassinated (365 B.C.) by Perdikkas, brother of Alexander.[645] Perdikkas, during the first year or two of his reign, seems to have been friendly and not hostile to Athens. He lent aid to Timotheus, who turned his force against Olynthus and other towns both in the Chalkidic Thrace and on the coast of Macedonia.[646] Probably the Olynthian confederacy may have been again acquiring strength during the years of recent Spartan humiliation; so that Perdikkas now found his account in assisting Athens to subdue or enfeeble it, just as his father Amyntas had invoked Sparta for the like purpose. Timotheus, with the assistance of Perdikkas, was very successful in these parts; making himself master of Torônê, Potidæa, Pydna, Methônê, and various other places. As he mastered many of the Chalkidic towns allied with Olynthus, the means and adherents still retained by that city became so much diminished, that Timotheus is spoken of loosely as having conquered it.[647] Here, as at Samos, he obtained his successes not only without cost to Athens, but also (as we are told) without severities upon the allies, simply from the regular contributions of the Thracian confederates of Athens, assisted by the employment of a temporary coinage of base metal.[648] Yet though Timotheus was thus victorious in and near the Thermaic Gulf, he was not more fortunate than his predecessor in his attempt to achieve that which Athens had most at heart,—the capture of Amphipolis; although, by the accidental capture of Charidemus at sea, he was enabled again to enlist that chief with his band, whose services seem to have been gratefully appreciated at Athens.[649] Timotheus first despatched Alkimachus, who was repulsed,—then landed himself and attacked the city. But the Amphipolitans, aided by the neighboring Thracians, in large numbers (and perhaps by the Thracian Kotys), made so strenuous a resistance, that he was forced to retire with loss; and even to burn some triremes, which, having been carried across to assail the city from the wide part of the river Strymon above, could not be brought off in the face of the enemy.[650]

Timotheus next turned his attention to the war against Kotys in Thrace, and to the defence of the newly-acquired Athenian possessions in the Chersonese, now menaced by the appearance of a new and unexpected enemy to Athens in the eastern waters of the Ægean,—a Theban fleet.

I have already mentioned that in 366 B.C., Thebes had sustained great misfortunes in Thessaly. Pelopidas had been fraudulently seized and detained as prisoner by Alexander of Pheræ; a Theban army had been sent to rescue him, but had been dishonorably repulsed, and had only been enabled to effect its retreat by the genius of Epaminondas, then serving as a private, and called upon by the soldiers to take the command. Afterwards, Epaminondas himself had been sent at the head of a second army to extricate his captive friend, which he had accomplished, but not without relinquishing Thessaly and leaving Alexander more powerful than ever. For a certain time after this defeat, the Thebans remained comparatively humbled and quiet. At length, the aggravated oppressions of the tyrant Alexander occasioned such suffering, and provoked such missions of complaint on the part of the Thessalians to Thebes, that Pelopidas, burning with ardor to revenge both his city and himself, prevailed on the Thebans to place him at the head of a fresh army for the purpose of invading Thessaly.[651]

At the same time, probably, the remarkable successes of the Athenians under Timotheus, at Samos and the Chersonese, had excited uneasiness throughout Greece, and jealousy on the part of the Thebans. Epaminondas ventured to propose to his countrymen that they should grapple with Athens on her own element, and compete for the headship of Greece not only on land but at sea. In fact the rescript brought down by Pelopidas from the Persian court sanctioned this pretension, by commanding Athens to lay up her ships of war, on pain of incurring the chastisement of the Great King;[652] a mandate, which she had so completely defied as to push her maritime efforts more energetically than before. Epaminondas employed all his eloquence to impress upon his countrymen, that, Sparta being now humbled, Athens was their actual and prominent enemy. He reminded them,—in language such as had been used by Brasidas in the early years of the Peloponnesian war, and by Hermokrates at Syracuse,[653]—that men such as the Thebans, brave and trained soldiers on land, could soon acquire the like qualities on shipboard; and that the Athenians themselves had once been mere landsmen, until the exigencies of the Persian war forced them to take to the sea.[654] “We must put down this haughty rival (he exhorted his countrymen); we must transfer to our own citadel, the Kadmeia, those magnificent Propylæa which adorn the entrance of the acropolis at Athens.”[655]

Such emphatic language, as it long lived in the hostile recollection of Athenian orators, so it excited at the moment extreme ardor on the part of the Theban hearers. They resolved to build and equip one hundred triremes, and to construct docks with ship-houses fit for the constant maintenance of such a number. Epaminondas himself was named commander, to sail with the first fleet, as soon as it should be ready, to the Hellespont and the islands near Ionia; while invitations were at the same time despatched to Rhodes, Chios, and Byzantium, encouraging them to prepare for breaking with Athens.[656] Some opposition however was made in the assembly to the new undertaking; especially by Menekleidas, an opposition speaker, who, being frequent and severe in his criticisms upon the leading men such as Pelopidas and Epaminondas, has been handed down by Nepos and Plutarch in odious colors. Demagogues like him, whose power resided in the public assembly, are commonly represented as if they had a natural interest in plunging their cities into war, in order that there might be more matter of accusation against the leading men. This representation is founded mainly on the picture which Thucydides gives of Kleon in the first half of the Peloponnesian war: I have endeavored in my sixth volume to show,[657] that it is not a fair estimate even of Kleon separately, much less of the demagogues generally, unwarlike men both in tastes and aptitudes. Menekleidas at Thebes, far from promoting warlike expeditions in order that he might denounce the generals when they came back, advocated the prudence of continued peace, and accused Epaminondas of involving his country in distant and dangerous schemes, with a view to emulate the glories of Agamemnon by sailing from Aulis in Bœotia, as commander of an imposing fleet to make conquests in the Hellespont. “By the help of Thebes (replied Epaminondas) I have already done more than Agamemnon. He, with the forces of Sparta and all Greece besides, was ten years in taking a single city; while I, with the single force of Thebes and at the single day of Leuktra, have crushed the power of the Agamemnonian Sparta.”[658] While repelling the charge of personal motives, Epaminondas contended that peace would be equivalent to an abnegation of the headship of Greece; and that, if Thebes wished to maintain that ascendant station, she must keep her citizens in constant warlike training and action.

To err with Epaminondas may be considered, by some readers, as better than being right with Menekleidas. But on the main point of this debate, Menekleidas appears to have been really right. For the general exhortations ascribed to Epaminondas resemble but too closely those feverish stimulants, which Alkibiades administered at Athens to wind up his countrymen for the fatal expedition against Syracuse.[659] If we should even grant his advice to be wise, in reference to land-warfare, we must recollect that he was here impelling Thebes into a new and untried maritime career, for which she had neither aptitude nor facilities. To maintain ascendency on land alone, would require all her force, and perhaps prove too hard for her; to maintain ascendency by land and sea at once would be still more impracticable. By grasping at both she would probably keep neither. Such considerations warrant us in suspecting, that the project of stretching across the Ægean for ultramarine dependencies was suggested to this great man not so much by a sound appreciation of the permanent interests of Thebes, as by jealousy of Athens,—especially since the recent conquests of Timotheus.[660]

The project however was really executed, and a large Theban fleet under Epaminondas crossed the Ægean in 363 B.C. In the same year, apparently, Pelopidas marched into Thessaly, at the head of a Theban land-force, against Alexander of Pheræ. What the fleet achieved, we are scarcely permitted to know. It appears that Epaminondas visited Byzantium; and we are told that he drove off the Athenian guard-squadron under Laches, prevailing upon several of the allies of Athens to declare in his favor.[661] Both he and Timotheus appear to have been in these seas, if not at the same time, at least with no great interval of time between. Both were solicited by the oligarchy of the Pontic Herakleia against the people; and both declined to furnish aid.[662] Timotheus is said to have liberated the besieged town of Kyzikus: by whom it was besieged, we do not certainly know, but probably by the Theban fleet.[663] Epaminondas brought back his fleet at the end of the year, without having gained any splendid victory or acquired any tenable possession for Thebes; yet not without weakening Athens, unsettling her hold upon her dependencies, and seconding indirectly the hostilities carried on by Kotys; insomuch that the Athenian affairs in the Chersonese and Thrace were much less prosperous in 362 B.C. than they had been in 364 B.C. Probably Epaminondas intended to return with his fleet in the next year (362 B.C.), and to push his maritime enterprises still farther;[664] but we shall find him imperatively called elsewhere, to another and a fatal battle-field. And thus the first naval expedition of Thebes was likewise the last.

Meanwhile his friend and colleague Pelopidas had marched into Thessaly against the despot Alexander; who was now at the height of his power, holding in dependence a large portion of Thessaly together with the Phthiot Achæans and the Magnetes, and having Athens as his ally. Nevertheless, so revolting had been his cruelties, and so numerous were the malcontents who had sent to invite aid from Thebes, that Pelopidas did not despair of overpowering him. Nor was he daunted even by an eclipse of the sun, which is said to have occurred just as he was commencing his march, nor by the gloomy warnings which the prophets founded upon it; though this event intimidated many of his fellow-citizens, so that his force was rendered less numerous as well as less confident. Arriving at Pharsalus, and strengthening himself by the junction of his Thessalian allies, he found Alexander approaching to meet him at the head of a well-appointed mercenary force, greatly superior in number. The two chiefs contended who should occupy first the hills called Kynos Kephalæ, or the Dog’s Heads. Pelopidas arrived there first with his cavalry, beat the cavalry of the enemy, and pursued them to some distance; but he thus left the hills open to be occupied by the numerous infantry of the enemy, while his own infantry, coming up later, were repulsed with loss in their attempt to carry the position. Thus unpromising did the battle appear, when Pelopidas returned from the pursuit. Ordering his victorious cavalry to charge the infantry on the hill in flank, he immediately dismounted, seized his shield, and put himself at the head of his own discouraged infantry, whom he again led up the hill to attack the position. His presence infused so much fresh ardor, that his troops, in spite of being twice repulsed, succeeded in a third attempt to drive the enemy from the summit of the hill. Thus master of the hill, Pelopidas saw before him the whole army of the enemy, retiring in some disorder, though not yet beaten; while Alexander in person was on the right wing, exerting himself to rally and encourage them. When Pelopidas beheld, as it were within his reach, this detested enemy,—whose treacherous arrest and dungeon he had himself experienced, and whose cruelties filled every one’s mouth,—he was seized with a transport of rage and madness, like Cyrus the younger on the field of Kunaxa at the sight of his brother Artaxerxes. Without thinking of his duties as a general, or even looking to see by whom he was followed, he rushed impetuously forward, with loud cries and challenges to Alexander to come forth and fight. The latter, declining the challenge, retired among his guards, into the midst of whom Pelopidas plunged, with the few who followed him; and there, while fighting with desperate bravery, met his death. So rapidly had this rash proceeding been consummated, that his army behind did not at first perceive it. But they presently hastened forward to rescue or avenge him, vigorously charged the troops of Alexander, and put them to flight with severe loss.[665]