Megalopolis had resisted beyond expectation. Antipater, entering Peloponnesus to relieve that place, was met by Agis. A sanguinary battle ensued. The Lacedæmonians are said to have fought with all the obstinacy which their ancient institutions required, and which their ancient fame was adapted to inspire. But they were overborne: Agis, fighting at their head, with the spirit of a hero rather, apparently, than with the skill of a general, received a wound which disabled him, so that it was necessary to carry him out of the field. His troops, unable to resist superior numbers, directed by superior skill, took to flight. Diodorus relates that, pressed by the pursuing enemy, he peremptorily commanded his attendants to save themselves, and leave him with his arms; and that, disabled as he was, refusing quarter and threatening all who approached him, he fought till he was killed.
The conduct of the victor then was what became the delegate of the elected superintendent and protector of the liberties of Greece. The Lacedæmonian government, feeling its inability to maintain the war in which it was engaged, and the principal instigator being no more, sent a deputation to Antipater to treat for peace. Antipater, as deputy of the captain-general and vicegerent of the Greek nation, took nothing further upon himself than to summon a congress of the several republics to Corinth, to which he referred the Lacedæmonian ministers. There matters were much debated and various opinions declared. The decision at last, in the historian’s succinct account, appears not what might best become the wisdom and dignity of a nation accustomed to appreciate its ascertained privileges, or what ought to be such. Unable to agree upon a measure to afford precedent for future times, the resource was to decree that the Lacedæmonian state, submitting itself to the mercy of their great and magnanimous captain-general, should send fifty principal Spartans into Macedonia, as hostages to insure obedience to his decision. We owe to Curtius the additional probable information that the assembly set a fine of 120 talents [about £24,000 or $120,000] upon the Eleans and Achæans, to compensate to the Megalopolitans the damages done in the hostile operations against them.
It seems likely the Lacedæmonians rejoiced in a sentence which, in so great a degree, secured them against the usual virulence of party animosity among the Greeks, and the result of which they had reason to hope would be liberal and mild. It does not appear that anything more was required than to acknowledge error in hostile opposition to the general council of the nation, and to send, thus late, the Lacedæmonian contingent of troops for maintaining the Grecian empire, already acquired, in Asia.[b]
This blow riveted the chains forged at Chæronea, which however were still destined to be burst by more than one gallant struggle, though never to be finally shaken off. Alexander, when he heard of Antipater’s success, is said to have spoken contemptuously of “the battle of mice,” which his lieutenant had been fighting, while he had been slaughtering myriads, and overrunning kingdoms; and while the event continued unknown, it did not in the slightest degree interfere with his operations. Yet Antipater’s victory was perhaps not much less hardly won than either of his own over Darius. But from the distance at which he now stood, Greece and Macedonia began to appear very diminutive objects. His little kingdom was now chiefly valuable to him as a nursery of soldiers; and the most important advantage which he reaped from the establishment of his power in Greece, was that it insured a constant succession of recruits for his army.
AFFAIRS AT ATHENS
It is rather surprising that when Agis—encouraged by the great distance which separated Alexander from Europe, by perhaps exaggerated rumours of the dangers that threatened him in Asia, and by the disasters which had befallen the Macedonian arms at home—ventured on his ill-fated struggle Athens remained neutral. It was afterward made a ground of accusation against Demosthenes, that he had taken no advantage of this occasion to display the hostility which he always professed towards Alexander. The event proves that he took the most prudent course; but his motives must remain doubtful. He was perhaps restrained, not by his opinion of the hopelessness of the attempt, but by the disposition to peace, which he found prevailing at home, whether the effect of fear or of jealousy, or of any other cause. Had the people been ready to embark in the contest, an orator probably would not have been wanting to animate them to it. But Demosthenes may still have given secret encouragement and assistance to the Peloponnesian confederates, and may have alluded to this, when, according to his adversary’s report, he boasted that the league was his work. The issue of that struggle, and the news which arrived soon after, of the great victory by which Alexander had decided the fate of the Persian monarchy at Gaugamela [Arbela], must have crushed all hope at Athens, except one, which might have been suggested by domestic experience, that the conqueror’s boundless ambition might still lead him into some enterprise beyond his strength.
DEMOSTHENES AND ÆSCHINES
There was however a party there, which did not dissemble the interest it felt in the success of the Macedonian arms. Before the battle of Issus, when Alexander was commonly believed to be in great danger, and Demosthenes was assured by his correspondents that he could not escape destruction, Æschines says, that he was himself continually taunted by his rival, who exultingly displayed the letters that conveyed the joyful tidings, with the dejection he betrayed at the prospect of the disaster which threatened his friends. Æschines was the active leader of the macedonising party: all his hopes of a final triumph over his political adversaries were grounded on the Macedonian ascendency. But Phocion, though his motives were very different, added all the weight of his influence to the same side. His sentiments were so well known, that Alexander himself treated him as a highly honoured friend; addressed letters to him from Asia, with a salutation which he used to no one else except Antipater, and repeatedly pressed him to accept magnificent presents. Phocion indeed constantly rejected them; and when Alexander wrote that their friendship must cease if he persisted to decline all his offers, was only moved to intercede in behalf of some prisoners, whose liberty he immediately obtained.
Urns and Vases