Before he took the field again, a year having now elapsed from the commencement of his expedition, Lysander and his colleagues were superseded by a new body of councillors, and returned home. Agesilaus then gave public notice, that he meant to take the shortest road into the richest part of the enemy’s country. The notice was designed not more for the preparation of his own troops, than for Tissaphernes, who concluded that if this had been the intention of Agesilaus, he would not have disclosed it, and that now Caria was certainly his real mark. He therefore repeated the dispositions of the preceding summer. But while he waited for the enemy with his cavalry in the vale of the Mæander, Agesilaus directed his march towards the plains of Sardis, the richest of Western Asia. During three days he traversed them without seeing an enemy; but on the fourth the Persian cavalry, which Tissaphernes seems to have sent forward as soon as he heard of the movements of Agesilaus, suddenly came up, and cut off many of the followers of the camp, as they were ranging over the country in quest of plunder.
Tissaphernes had already arrived at Sardis; and his countrymen, many of whom had probably suffered considerable loss from the invasion, bitterly censured him for leaving them unprotected, and even it seems charged him with treachery. The complaints were carried up to the court, where he had one implacable and powerful enemy in the fiendish Parysatis, who thirsted to revenge herself on him for his enmity to her favourite son. She had already found that Artaxerxes was weak enough to sacrifice his most faithful servants to her resentment, even when he knew that it was inflamed by the very services which they had rendered to himself; and according to the most probable account, it was in compliance with her request that he now ordered Tissaphernes to be put to death. The execution of the sentence was committed to Tithraustes, who was appointed to succeed Tissaphernes in his satrapy, and was instructed to open a negotiation with Agesilaus. Accordingly, after executing the first part of his commission, which he did in the Turkish style by the hands of an underling, who surprised Tissaphernes in his bath, Tithraustes sent envoys to treat with the Spartan king. He affected to consider Tissaphernes as the author of the quarrel between his master and the Greeks, and, as if the end of their expedition was now answered by their enemy’s death, proposed that Agesilaus should return home. As to the Asiatic Greeks, Artaxerxes was willing to acknowledge their independence, on condition that they would pay their ancient tribute. Agesilaus replied, that he had no authority to conclude peace without the sanction of the government at home: but he would transmit the Persian overtures to Sparta. In the meanwhile Tithraustes was very anxious that hostilities should be suspended in his province, and, pleading his own merits in the execution of Tissaphernes, begged Agesilaus, while he waited for an answer to the terms proposed, to turn his arms against the satrapy of Pharnabazus. To this Agesilaus consented on condition that Tithraustes would defray the expense of the march; and he received thirty talents [£6000 or $30,000] on that score. This was a step beyond former precedents: for even Tissaphernes, though he had not scrupled to conclude a separate truce, had not paid the enemy a subsidy for invading another part of his master’s dominions.
[395 B.C.]
On his march towards the territories of Pharnabazus, Agesilaus received a flattering testimony of the approbation with which his proceedings were viewed at Sparta, and of the disposition which prevailed there to support him in the prosecution of the war. By a despatch which reached him as he lay near Cyme, he learned that he had been invested with the administration of naval affairs, that he was empowered to appoint whom he would to the office of admiral, and still to regulate the operations of the fleet at his discretion. Thus to unite the supreme command of the army and of the navy in one person, was an unexampled mark of confidence, and a striking indication of the new energy which ambition had infused into the Spartan counsels. Agesilaus immediately took measures for raising a fleet; and by a judicious distribution of the burden among the maritime allies, and his influence with wealthy individuals, collected 120 new galleys. But he was less prudent and fortunate in the choice of an admiral, and instead of seeking the highest qualifications, consulted his private affection in the appointment of his wife’s brother Pisander. When this business was despatched, he continued his march to the satrapy of Pharnabazus.
PERSIAN GOLD
These preparations, combined perhaps with other tokens, convinced Tithraustes that Agesilaus had no intention of withdrawing from Asia, but was inclined rather to extend than contract his views, and cherished strong hopes of effecting the conquest of the empire. He perceived that he had only purchased a temporary relief, and bethought himself how he might employ the gold, which was his last remaining stay, to greater advantage. The history of the contest between Greece and Persia afforded several instructive lessons, which were now peculiarly applicable. At the time when the first Artaxerxes was embarrassed by the success of the Athenians in Egypt, he sent an agent, as we have seen, with bribes to Sparta, to procure a diversion in his favour. Tithraustes now resorted to a similar expedient. He sent a Rhodian named Timocrates to Greece, with a sum of fifty talents, which he was charged to distribute, with proper precautions, among the leading persons in the states which might be most easily induced to interrupt the progress of Agesilaus by kindling a war against Sparta at home. Not only was this mission itself a notorious and unquestionable fact; but Xenophon professes an equal degree of certainty as to the names of the persons who received the money. We may at least venture to believe that, though it may have roused them to greater activity, it produced no change in their political sentiments: and we even doubt whether it gave rise to any events which would not have occurred nearly as soon without it. It was indeed natural enough for Agesilaus and his friends to attribute the disappointment of his hopes to the venality of their adversaries. But Xenophon himself observes that the Athenians, though they did not receive any share of the gold, were eager for war in the hope of recovering their independence. And it is clear from his own narrative that similar feelings of jealousy or resentment towards Sparta already prevailed at Thebes, Corinth, and Argos, and were only waiting for an opportunity of displaying themselves in open hostility, but needed no corrupt influence to excite them.
The anti-Laconian party at Thebes—the same no doubt which had sheltered the Athenian exiles, and had contrived the affront offered to Agesilaus at Aulis, and which had therefore reason to dread his resentment if he should ever return to Europe as the conqueror of Asia—set the first springs of hostility in motion. The disposition to war they found already existing; a pretext only was wanting, and this they easily devised. Means were found to induce the Locrians of Opus to make an inroad upon a tract of land which had been long the subject of contention between them and their neighbours the Phocians. The Phocians retaliated by the invasion of the Opuntian Locris, and the Thebans were soon persuaded to take part with the Locrians, and invade Phocis. The Phocians, as was foreseen, applied for succour to Sparta, where, as Xenophon admits, there was the utmost readiness to lay hold on any pretence for a war with Thebes; and the present season of prosperity seemed to the Spartan government the most favourable for humbling a power which had given so many proofs of ill-will towards it.
WAR RISES IN GREECE
War therefore was decreed, and Lysander was sent into Phocis with instructions to collect all the forces he could raise there, and among the tribes seated about Mount Œta, and to march with them to Haliartus in Bœotia, where Pausanias, with the Peloponnesian troops, was to join him on an appointed day. Lysander discharged his commission with his usual activity, and besides succeeded in inducing Orchomenos, which was subject to Thebes, to assert its independence. Pausanias, having crossed the Laconian border, waited at Tegea for the contingents which he had demanded from the allies. They seem to have come in slowly, and Corinth refused to take any part in the expedition. The Thebans, seeing themselves threatened with invasion, sent an embassy to prevail on the Athenians to make common cause with them against Sparta. There were many feelings to be overcome at Athens, before this resolution could be adopted: recollections of a long hereditary grudge, of the animosity displayed by Thebes during the last war, and especially at its close; the sense of weakness, and the dread of provoking a power, by which Athens had so lately been brought to the brink of destruction. The Athenians desired to recover their pre-eminence in Greece, and their readiest way to that end was to declare themselves the protectors of all who suffered under Spartan tyranny. If they were inclined to dread the enemy’s power, they had only to reflect by what means their own had been overthrown. Sparta likewise now ruled over unwilling subjects, and offended allies, who only wanted a leader to encourage them to revolt from her. Indeed she had not one sincere friend left. Argos had always been hostile; Elis had just been deeply wronged. Corinth, Arcadia, and Achaia saw the services which they had rendered in the war requited with insolent ingratitude, and were subject to the control of harmosts, who were not even citizens of Sparta, but helots; bondmen at home, masters abroad. The cities once subject to Athens, which had been tempted to revolt by the prospect of liberty, found themselves cheated of their hopes, and groaned under the double yoke of a foreign governor, and a domestic oligarchy. The Persian king, to whom Sparta mainly owed her victory, she had immediately afterwards treated as an enemy. Athens might now place herself at the head of a confederacy much more powerful than the empire which she had lost; and the Spartan dominion would be more easily overthrown than the Athenian had been, in proportion as the allies of Sparta were stronger than the subjects of Athens.
