The total of public money, recorded by the Inscription as having passed through the hands of Lykurgus in the twelve years, was 18,900 talents = £4,340,000, or thereabouts. He is said to have held, besides, in deposit, a great deal of money entrusted to him by private individuals. His official duties as treasurer were discharged, for the first four years, in his own name: during the last eight years, in the names of two different friends.
[666] Plutarch, Phokion, 28.
[667] Æschines (adv. Ktesiph. p. 635) mentions this mission of Ktesiphon to Kleopatra. He also (in the same oration, p. 550) charges Demosthenes with having sent letters to Alexander, soliciting pardon and favor. He states that a young man named Aristion, a friend of Demosthenes, was much about the person of Alexander, and that through him the letters were sent. He cites as his authority the seamen of the public Athenian vessel called Paralus, and the Athenian envoys who went to Alexander in Phenicia in the spring or summer of 331 B. C. (compare Arrian, iii. 6, 3). Hyperides also seems to have advanced the like allegation against Demosthenes—see Harpokration, v. Ἀριστίων.
The fragments of the oration of Hyperides in defence of Euxenippus (recently published by Mr. Churchill Babington), delivered at some period during the reign of Alexander, give general evidence of the wide-spread feeling of jealous aversion to the existing Macedonian ascendancy. Euxenippus had been accused of devotion to Macedonia; Hyperides strenuously denies it, saying that Euxenippus had never been in Macedonia, nor ever conversed with any Macedonian who came to Athens. Even boys at school (says Hyperides) know the names of the corrupt orators, or servile flatterers, who serve Macedonia—Euxenippus is not among them (p 11, 12).
[668] Plutarch, Camill. 19; Diodor. xvi. 88; Plutarch, Agis, 3.
[669] Arrian, i. 16, 11: compare Pausan. vii. 10, 1.
[670] Arrian, ii. 13, 4.
[671] Arrian, iii. 6, 4; Diodor. xvii. 48; Curtius, iv. 1, 39. It is to this war in Krete, between Agis and the Macedonian party and troops, that Aristotle probably alludes (in the few words contained, Politica, ii. 7, 8), as having exposed the weakness of the Kretan institutions—see Schneider’s note on the passage. At least we do not know of any other event, suitable to the words.
[672] Alexander, as soon as he got possession of the Persian treasures at Susa (about December 331 B. C.), sent a large remittance of 3000 talents to Antipater, as means for carrying on the war against the Lacedæmonians (Arrian, iii. 16. 17). The manifestations of Agis in Peloponnesus had begun in the spring of 331 B. C. (Arrian, iii. 6, 4); but his aggressive movements in Peloponnesus did not assume formidable proportions until the spring of 330 B. C. At the date of the speech of Æschines against Ktesiphon (August 330 B. C.), the decisive battle by which Antipater crushed the forces of Agis had only recently occurred; for the Lacedæmonian prisoners were only about to be sent to Alexander to learn their fate (Æsch. adv. Kt. p. 524). Curtius (vii. 1, 21) is certainly mistaken in saying that the contest was terminated before the battle of Arbela. Moreover, there were Lacedæmonian envoys, present with Darius until a few days before his death (July 330 B. C.), who afterwards fell into the hands of Alexander (Arrian iii. 24, 7); these men could hardly have known of the prostration of their country at home. I suppose the victory of Antipater to have taken place about June 330 B. C.—and the Peloponnesian armament of Agis to have been got together about three months before (March 330 B. C.).
Mr. Clinton (Fast. H. App. c. 4. p. 234) discusses the chronology of this event, but in a manner which I cannot think satisfactory. He seems inclined to put it some months earlier. I see no necessity for construing the dictum ascribed to Alexander (Plutarch, Agesilaus, 15) as proving close coincidence of time between the battle of Arbela and the final defeat of Agis.