Continued glory of Athens also.
After the Persian wars the rivalship between Athens and Sparta is the most prominent feature in Grecian history. The confederacy of Delos gave to Athens supremacy over the sea, and the great commercial prosperity of Athens under Pericles, and the empire gained over the Ionian colonies and the islands of the Ægaean, made Athens, perhaps, the leading State. It was the richest, the most cultivated, and the most influential of the Grecian States, and threatened to absorb gradually all the other States of Greece in her empire.
Consequences of the Peloponnesian war.
This ascendency and rapid growth in wealth and power were beheld with jealous eyes, not only by Sparta, but other States which she controlled, or with which she was in alliance. The consequence was, the Peloponnesian war, which lasted [pg 305] half a generation, and which, after various vicissitudes and fortunes, terminated auspiciously for Sparta, but disastrously to Greece as a united nation. The Persian wars bound all the States together by a powerful Hellenic sentiment of patriotism. The Peloponnesian war dissevered this Panhellenic tie. The disaster at Syracuse was fatal to Athenian supremacy, and even independence. But for this Athens might have remained the great power of Greece. The democratic organization of the government gave great vigor and enterprise to all the ambitious projects of Athens. If Alcibiades had lent his vast talents to the building up of his native State, even then the fortunes of Athens might have been different. But he was a traitor, and threw all his energies on the side of Sparta, until it was too late for Athens to recover the prestige she had won. He partially redeemed his honor, but had he been animated by the spirit of Pericles or Nicias, to say nothing of the self-devotion of Miltiades, he might have raised the power of Athens to a height which nothing could have resisted.
Paramount authority of Sparta after the victories of Lysander.
Lysander completed the war which Brasidas had so nobly carried on, and took possession of Athens, abolished the democratic constitution, demolished the walls, and set up, as his creatures, a set of tyrants, and also a Spartan governor in Athens. Under Lysander, the Lacedæmonian rule was paramount in Greece. At one time, he had more power than any man in Greece ever enjoyed. He undertook to change the government of the allied cities, and there was scarcely a city in Greece where the Spartans had not the ascendency. In most of the Ionian cities, and in all the cities which had taken the side of Athens, there was a Spartan governor, so that when Xenophon returned with his Ten Thousand to Asia Minor, he found he could do nothing without the consent of the Spartan governors. Moreover, the rule of Sparta was hostile to all democratic governments. She sought to establish oligarchal institutions everywhere. Perhaps this difference between Athens [pg 306] and Sparta respecting government was one great cause of tho Peloponnesian war.
Sparta incurs the jealousy of Greece.
But the same envy which had once existed among the Grecian States of the prosperity of Athens, was now turned upon Sparta. Her rule was arrogant and hard and she in turn had to experience the humiliation of revolt from her domination. “The allies of Sparta,” says Grote, “especially Corinth and Thebes, not only relented in their hatred of Athens, now she had lost her power, but even sympathized with her suffering exiles, and became disgusted with the self-willed encroachments of Sparta; while the Spartan king, Pausanias, together with some of the ephors, were also jealous of the arbitrary and oppressive conduct of Lysander. He refused to prevent the revival of the democracy. It was in this manner that Athens, rescued from that sanguinary and rapacious régime of the Thirty Tyrants, was enabled to reappear as a humble and dependent member of the Spartan alliance—with nothing but the recollection of her former power, yet with her democracy again in vigorous action for internal government.”
Her oppressive superiority.
The victory of Ægospotami, which annihilated the Athenian navy, ushered in the supremacy of Sparta, both on the land and sea, and all Greece made submission to the ascendant power. Lysander established in most of the cities an oligarchy of ten citizens, as well as a Spartan harmost, or governor. Everywhere the Lysandrian dekarchy superseded the previous governments, and ruled oppressively, like the Thirty at Athens, with Critias at their head. And no justice could be obtained at Sparta against the bad conduct of the harmosts who now domineered in every city. Sparta had embroiled Greece in war to put down the ascendency of Athens, but exercised a more tyrannical usurpation than Athens ever meditated. The language of Brasidas, who promised every thing, was in striking contrast to the conduct of Lysander, who put his foot on the neck of Greece.