Live now or never.’
“He said, ‘What’s time! Leave Now for dogs and apes—
Man has Forever.’”
—Browning.
Sparta.
The manner in which the news of the defeat of the Athenians at Ægospotami affected Athens is in striking contrast with the manner in which Sparta received word of the disastrous Spartan defeat at Leuctra. When report of the naval disaster reached the Piræus, it was quickly communicated to the thronging crowds within the Long Walls, and thence to the heart of the city. Consternation prevailed and all Athens mourned. “That night,” says Xenophon, “no one in Athens slept.”
The news of the defeat at Leuctra reached Sparta in the midst of a festive celebration. The magistrates heard of the defeat, and the death of their king, with countenances unmoved; they gave orders that the festival be uninterrupted; and they urged all who had lost relatives and friends in the battle of Leuctra to appear at the festivities in particularly gay attire and with smiling faces, while those whose relatives were among the survivors were ordered to put on mourning.
The spirit of Lycurgus, of Draco, and of Leonidas seems to have fused and chilled into the Laws of Sparta. No surrender; conquer or die; return with your shield or upon it; wounds all in front and faces grimly fierce even in death—such was the spirit of Sparta.
Whatever may be our admiration for the Spartan qualities in general, there can be but lament that they found expression in the Peloponnesian War. This fratricidal strife brought ruin to Hellas. Marathon, Thermopylæ, Salamis, Platæa, Mycale were all undone by Syracuse and Ægospotami. Chæronea was made possible and the passing of the scepter of empire from Greece to Macedonia, from leaderless Hellas to Alexander the Great.