No such struggles could have appeared within the limits of possibility, even to the most far-sighted politician either of Greece or of Macedon—at the time when Philip mounted the throne. Among the hopes and fears of most Grecian cities, Macedonia then passed wholly unnoticed; in Athens, Olynthus, Thasus, Thessaly, and a few others, it formed an item not without moment, yet by no means of first-rate magnitude.
The Hellenic world was now in a state different from anything which had been seen since the repulse of Xerxes in 480-479 B. C. The defeat and degradation of Sparta had set free the inland states from the only presiding city whom they had ever learned to look up to. Her imperial ascendency, long possessed and grievously abused, had been put down by the successes of Epaminondas and the Thebans. She was no longer the head of a numerous body of subordinate allies, sending deputies to her periodical synods—submitting their external politics to her influence—placing their military contingents under command of her officers (xenagi)—and even administering their internal government through oligarchies devoted to her purposes, with the reinforcement, wherever needed, of a Spartan harmost and garrison. She no longer found on her northern frontier a number of detached Arcadian villages, each separately manageable under leaders devoted to her, and furnishing her with hardy soldiers; nor had she the friendly city of Tegea, tied to her by a long-standing philo-Laconian oligarchy and tradition. Under the strong revolution of feeling which followed on the defeat of the Spartans at Leuktra, the small Arcadian communities, encouraged and guided by Epaminondas, had consolidated themselves into the great fortified city of Megalopolis, now the centre of a Pan-Arcadian confederacy, with a synod (called the Ten thousand) frequently assembled there to decide upon matters of interest and policy common to the various sections of the Arcadian name. Tegea too had undergone a political revolution; so that these two cities, conterminous with each other and forming together the northern frontier of Sparta, converted her Arcadian neighbors from valuable instruments into formidable enemies.
But this loss of foreign auxiliary force and dignity was not the worst which Sparta had suffered. On her north-western frontier (conterminous also with Megalopolis) stood the newly-constituted city of Messênê, representing an amputation of nearly one-half of Spartan territory and substance. The western and more fertile half of Laconia had been severed from Sparta, and was divided between Messênê and various other independent cities; being tilled chiefly by those who had once been Periœki and Helots of Sparta.
In the phase of Grecian history on which we are now about to enter—when the collective Hellenic world, for the first time since the invasion of Xerxes, was about to be thrown upon its defence against a foreign enemy from Macedonia—this altered position of Sparta was a circumstance of grave moment. Not only were the Peloponnesians disunited, and deprived of their common chief; but Megalopolis and Messênê, knowing the intense hostility of Sparta against them—and her great superiority of force even reduced as she was, to all that they could muster—lived in perpetual dread of her attack. Their neighbors the Argeians, standing enemies of Sparta, were well-disposed to protect them; but such aid was insufficient for their defence, without extra-Peloponnesian alliance. Accordingly we shall find them leaning upon the support either of Thebes or of Athens, whichever could be had; and ultimately even welcoming the arms of Philip of Macedon, as protector against the inexpiable hostility of Sparta. Elis—placed in the same situation with reference to Triphylia, as Sparta with reference to Messênê—complained that the Triphylians, whom she looked upon as subjects, had been admitted as freemen into the Arcadian federation. We shall find Sparta endeavoring to engage Elis in political combinations, intended to ensure, to both, the recovery of lost dominion.[409] Of these combinations more will be said hereafter; at present I merely notice the general fact that the degradation of Sparta, combined with her perpetually menaced aggression against Messênê and Arcadia, disorganized Peloponnesus, and destroyed its powers of Pan-hellenic defence against the new foreign enemy now slowly arising.
The once powerful Peloponnesian system was in fact completely broken up. Corinth, Sikyon, Phlius, Trœzen, and Epidaurus, valuable as secondary states and as allies of Sparta, were now detached from all political combination, aiming only to keep clear, each for itself, of all share in collision between Sparta and Thebes.[410] It would appear also that Corinth had recently been oppressed and disturbed by the temporary despotism of Timophanes, described in my last chapter; though the date of that event cannot be precisely made out.
But the grand and preponderating forces of Hellas now resided, for the first time in our history, without, and not within, Peloponnesus; at Athens and Thebes. Both these cities were in full vigor and efficiency. Athens had a numerous fleet, a flourishing commerce, a considerable body of maritime and insular allies, sending deputies to her synod and contributing to a common fund for the maintenance of the joint security. She was by far the greatest maritime power of Greece. I have recounted in my last preceding volume, how her general Timotheus had acquired for her the important island of Samos, together with Pydna, Methônê, and Potidæa, in the Thermaic Gulf; how he failed (as Iphikrates had failed before him) in more than one attempt upon Amphipolis; how he planted Athenian conquest and settlers in the Thracian Chersonese, which territory, after having been attacked and endangered by the Thracian prince Kotys, was regained by the continued efforts of Athens in the year 358 B. C. Athens had sustained no considerable loss, during the struggles which ended in the pacification after the battle of Mantinea; and her condition appears on the whole to have been better than it had ever been since her disasters at the close of the Peloponnesian war.
The power of Thebes also was imposing and formidable. She had indeed lost many of those Peloponnesian allies who formed the overwhelming array of Epaminondas when he first invaded Laconia, under the fresh anti-Spartan impulse immediately succeeding the battle of Leuktra. She retained only Argos, together with Tegea, Megalopolis, and Messênê. The last three added little to her strength, and needed her watchful support; a price which Epaminondas had been perfectly willing to pay for the establishment of a strong frontier against Sparta. But the body of extra Peloponnesian allies grouped round Thebes was still considerable:[411] the Phokians and Lokrians, the Malians, the Herakleots, most of the Thessalians, and most (if not all) of the inhabitants of Eubœa; perhaps also the Akarnanians. The Phokians were indeed reluctant allies, disposed to circumscribe their obligations within the narrowest limits of mutual defence in case of invasion and we shall presently find the relations between the two becoming positively hostile. Besides these allies, the Thebans possessed the valuable position of Oropus, on the north-eastern frontier of Attica; a town which had been wrested from Athens six years before, to the profound mortification of the Athenians.
But ever and above allies without Bœotia, Thebes had prodigiously increased the power of her city within Bœotia. She had appropriated to herself the territories of Platæa and Thespiæ on her southern frontier, and of Koroneia and Orchomenus near upon her northern; by conquest and partial expulsion of their prior inhabitants. How and when these acquisitions had been brought about, has been explained in my preceding volume:[412] here I merely recall the fact, to appreciate the position of Thebes in 359 B. C.—that these four towns, having been in 372 B. C. autonomous—joined with her only by the definite obligations of the Bœotian confederacy—and partly even in actual hostility against her—had now lost their autonomy with their free citizens, and had become absorbed into her property and sovereignty. The domain of Thebes thus extended across Bœotia from the frontiers of Phokis[413] on the north-west to the frontiers of Attica on the south.
The new position thus acquired by Thebes in Bœotia, purchased at the cost of extinguishing three or four autonomous cities, is a fact of much moment in reference to the period now before us; not simply because it swelled the power and pride of the Thebans themselves; but also because it raised a strong body of unfavorable sentiment against them in the Hellenic mind. Just at the time when the Spartans had lost nearly one-half of Laconia, the Thebans had annexed to their own city one-third of the free Bœotian territory. The revival of free Messenian citizenship, after a suspended existence of more than two centuries, had recently been welcomed with universal satisfaction. How much would that same feeling be shocked when Thebes extinguished, for her own aggrandizement, four autonomous communities, all of her own Bœotian kindred—one of these communities too being Orchomenus, respected both for its antiquity and its traditionary legends! Little pains was taken to canvass the circumstances of the case, and to inquire whether Thebes had exceeded the measure of rigor warranted by the war-code of the time. In the patriotic and national conceptions of every Greek, Hellas consisted of an aggregate of autonomous, fraternal, city-communities. The extinction of any one of these was like the amputation of a limb from the organized body. Repugnance towards Thebes, arising out of these proceedings, affected strongly the public opinion of the time, and manifests itself especially in the language of Athenian orators, exaggerated by mortification on account of the loss of Oropus.[414]
The great body of Thessalians, as well as the Magnetes and the Phthiot Achæans, were among those subject to the ascendency of Thebes. Even the powerful and cruel despot, Alexander of Pheræ, was numbered in this catalogue.[415] The cities of fertile Thessaly, possessed by powerful oligarchies with numerous dependent serfs, were generally a prey to intestine conflict and municipal rivalry with each other; disorderly as well as faithless.[416] The Aleuadæ, chiefs at Larissa—and the Skopadæ, at Krannon—had been once the ascendent families in the country. But in the hands of Lykophron and the energetic Jason, Pheræ had been exalted to the first rank. Under Jason as tagus (federal general), the whole force of Thessaly was united, together with a large number of circumjacent tributaries, Macedonian, Epirotic, Dolopian, etc., and a well-organized standing army of mercenaries besides. He could muster eight thousand cavalry, twenty thousand hoplites, and peltasts or light infantry in numbers far more considerable.[417] A military power of such magnitude, in the hands of one alike able and aspiring, raised universal alarm, and would doubtless have been employed in some great scheme of conquest, either within or without Greece, had not Jason been suddenly cut off by assassination in 370 B. C., in the year succeeding the battle of Leuktra.[418] His brothers Polyphron and Polydorus succeeded to his position as tagus, but not to his abilities or influence. The latter a brutal tyrant, put to death the former, and was in his turn slain, after a short interval, by a successor yet worse, his nephew Alexander, who lived and retained power at Pheræ, for about ten years (368-358 B. C.).