HISTORY OF GREECE.
PART II.
CONTINUATION OF HISTORICAL GREECE.
CHAPTER LXXVI.
FROM THE PEACE OF ANTALKIDAS DOWN TO THE SUBJUGATION OF OLYNTHUS BY SPARTA.
The peace or convention[1] which bears the name of Antalkidas, was an incident of serious and mournful import in Grecian history. Its true character cannot be better described than in a brief remark and reply which we find cited in Plutarch. “Alas for Hellas (observed some one to Agesilaus) when we see our Laconians medising!”—“Nay (replied the Spartan king), say rather the Medes (Persians) laconising.”[2]
These two propositions do not exclude each other. Both were perfectly true. The convention emanated from a separate partnership between Spartan and Persian interests. It was solicited by the Spartan Antalkidas, and propounded by him to Tiribazus on the express ground, that it was exactly calculated to meet the Persian king’s purposes and wishes,—as we learn even from the philo-Laconian Xenophon.[3] While Sparta and Persia were both great gainers, no other Grecian state gained anything, as the convention was originally framed. But after the first rejection, Antalkidas saw the necessity of conciliating Athens by the addition of a special article providing that Lemnos, Imbros, and Skyros should be restored to her.[4] This addition seems to have been first made in the abortive negotiations which form the subject of the discourse already mentioned, pronounced by Andokides. It was continued afterwards and inserted in the final decree which Antalkidas and Tiribazus brought down in the king’s name from Susa; and it doubtless somewhat contributed to facilitate the adherence of Athens, though the united forces of Sparta and Persia had become so overwhelming, that she could hardly have had the means of standing out, even if the supplementary article had been omitted. Nevertheless, this condition undoubtedly did secure to Athens a certain share in the gain, conjointly with the far larger shares both of Sparta and Persia. It is, however, not less true, that Athens, as well as Thebes,[5] assented to the peace only under fear and compulsion. As to the other states of Greece, they were interested merely in the melancholy capacity of partners in the general loss and degradation.
That degradation stood evidently marked in the form, origin, and transmission, of the convention, even apart from its substance. It was a fiat issued from the court of Susa; as such it was ostentatiously proclaimed and “sent down” from thence to Greece. Its authority was derived from the king’s seal, and its sanction from his concluding threat, that he would make war against all recusants. It was brought down by the satrap Tiribazus (along with Antalkidas), read by him aloud, and heard with submission by the assembled Grecian envoys, after he had called their special attention to the regal seal.[6] Such was the convention which Sparta, the ancient president of the Grecian world had been the first to solicit at the hands of the Persian king, and which she now not only set the example of sanctioning by her own spontaneous obedience, but even avouched as guarantee and champion against all opponents; preparing to enforce it at the point of the sword against any recusant state, whether party to it or not. Such was the convention which was now inscribed on stone, and placed as a permanent record in the temples of the Grecian cities;[7] nay, even in the common sanctuaries,—the Olympic, Pythian, and others,—the great foci and rallying points of Pan-hellenic sentiment. Though called by the name of a convention, it was on the very face of it a peremptory mandate proceeding from the ancient enemy of Greece, an acceptance of which was nothing less than an act of obedience. While to him it was a glorious trophy, to all Pan-hellenic patriots it was the deepest disgrace and insult.[8] Effacing altogether the idea of an independent Hellenic world, bound together and regulated by the self-acting forces and common sympathies of its own members,—even the words of the convention proclaimed it as an act of intrusive foreign power, and erected the barbarian king into a dictatorial settler of Grecian differences; a guardian[9] who cared for the peace of Greece more than the Greeks themselves. And thus, looking to the form alone, it was tantamount to that symbol of submission—the cession of earth and water—which had been demanded a century before by the ancestor of Artaxerxes from the ancestors of the Spartans and Athenians; a demand, which both Sparta and Athens then not only repudiated, but resented so cruelly, as to put to death the heralds by whom it was brought,—stigmatizing the Æginetans and others as traitors to Hellas for complying with it.[10] Yet nothing more would have been implied in such cession than what stood embodied in the inscription on that “colonna infame,” which placed the peace of Antalkidas side by side with the Pan-hellenic glories and ornaments at Olympia.[11]
Great must have been the change wrought by the intermediate events, when Sparta, the ostensible president of Greece,—in her own estimation even more than in that of others,[12]—had so lost all Pan-hellenic conscience and dignity, as to descend into an obsequious minister, procuring and enforcing a Persian mandate for political objects of her own. How insane would such an anticipation have appeared to Æschylus, or the audience who heard the Persæ! to Herodotus or Thucydides! to Perikles and Archidamus! nay, even to Kallikratidas or Lysander! It was the last consummation of a series of previous political sins, invoking more and more the intervention of Persia to aid her against her Grecian enemies.