(In the British Museum)
It was upon this basis that the peace was concluded. The armaments on both sides were to be disbanded; the harmosts and garrisons everywhere withdrawn, in order that each city might enjoy full autonomy. If any city should fail in observance of these conditions, and continue in a career of force against any other, all were at liberty to take arms for the support of the injured party; but no one who did not feel disposed, was bound so to take arms. This last stipulation exonerated the Lacedæmonian allies from one of their most vexatious chains.
To the conditions here mentioned, all parties agreed; and on the ensuing day, the oaths were exchanged. Sparta took the oath for herself and her allies; Athens took the oath for herself only—her allies afterwards took it severally, each city for itself. Why such difference was made, we are not told; for it would seem that the principle of severance applied to both confederacies alike. Next came the turn of the Thebans to swear; and here the fatal hitch was disclosed. Epaminondas, the Theban envoy, insisted on taking the oath, not for Thebes separately, but for Thebes as president of the Bœotian federation, including all the Bœotian cities. The Spartan authorities, on the other hand, and Agesilaus as the foremost of all, strenuously opposed him. They required that he should swear for Thebes alone, leaving the Bœotian cities to take the oath each for itself. Already in the course of the preliminary debates, Epaminondas had spoken out boldly against the ascendency of Sparta. While most of the deputies stood overawed by her dignity, represented by the energetic Agesilaus as spokesman, he, like the Athenian Autocles, and with strong sympathy from many of the deputies present, had proclaimed that nothing kept alive the war except her unjust pretensions, and that no peace could be durable unless such pretensions were put aside. Accepting the conditions of peace as finally determined, he presented himself to swear to them in the name of the Bœotian federation. But Agesilaus, requiring that each of the Bœotian cities should take the oath for itself, appealed to those same principles of liberty which Epaminondas himself had just invoked, and asked him whether each of the Bœotian cities had not as good a title to autonomy as Thebes. Epaminondas might have replied by asking why Sparta had just been permitted to take the oath for her allies as well as for herself. But he took a higher ground. He contended that the presidency of Bœotia was held by Thebes on as good a title as the sovereignty of Laconia by Sparta. He would remind the assembly that when Bœotia was first conquered and settled by its present inhabitants, the other towns had all been planted out from Thebes as their chief and mother-city; that the federal union of all, administered by bœotarchs chosen by and from all, with Thebes as president, was coeval with the first settlement of the country; that the separate autonomy of each was qualified by an established institution, devolving on the bœotarchs and councils sitting at Thebes the management of the foreign relations of all jointly.
All this had been pleaded by the Theban orator before the five Spartan commissioners assembled to determine the fate of the captives after the surrender of Platæa; when he required the condemnation of the Platæans as guilty of treason to the ancestral institutions of Bœotia, and the Spartan commissioners had recognised the legitimacy of these institutions by a sweeping sentence of death against the transgressors. Moreover, at a time when the ascendency of Thebes over the Bœotian cities had been greatly impaired by her anti-Hellenic co-operation with the invading Persians, the Spartans themselves had assisted her with all their power to re-establish it, as a countervailing force against Athens. Epaminondas could show that the presidency of Thebes over the Bœotian cities was the keystone of the federation—a right not only of immemorial antiquity, but pointedly recognised and strenuously vindicated by the Spartans themselves. He could show further that it was as old, and as good, as their own right to govern the Laconian townships; which latter was acquired and held (as one of the best among their own warriors had boastfully proclaimed) by nothing but Spartan valour and the sharpness of the Spartan sword.
An emphatic speech of this tenor, delivered amidst the deputies assembled at Sparta, and arraigning the Spartans not merely in their supremacy over Greece, but even in their dominion at home, was as it were the shadow cast before by coming events. It opened a question such as no Greek had ever ventured to raise. It was a novelty startling to all—extravagant probably in the eyes of Callistratus and the Athenians, but to the Spartans themselves intolerably poignant and insulting. They had already a long account of antipathy to clear off with Thebes; their own wrong-doing in seizing the Cadmea; their subsequent humiliation in losing it and being unable to recover it; their recent short-comings and failures, in the last seven years of war against Athens and Thebes jointly. To aggravate this deep-seated train of hostile associations, their pride was now wounded in an unforeseen point, the tenderest of all. Agesilaus, full to overflowing of the national sentiment, which in the mind of a Spartan passed for the first of virtues, was stung to the quick. Had he been an Athenian orator like Callistratus, his wrath would have found vent in an animated harangue. But a king of Sparta was anxious only to close these offensive discussions with scornful abruptness, thus leaving to the presumptuous Theban no middle ground between humble retractation and acknowledged hostility. Indignantly starting from his seat, he said to Epaminondas: “Speak plainly,—will you, or will you not, leave to each of the Bœotian cities its separate autonomy?” To which the other replied, “Will you leave each of the Laconian towns autonomous?” Without saying another word, Agesilaus immediately caused the name of the Thebans to be struck out of the roll, and proclaimed them excluded from the treaty.
Such was the close of this memorable congress at Sparta in June 371 B.C. Between the Spartans and the Athenians, and their respective allies, peace was sworn. But the Thebans were excluded, and their deputies returned home, (if we may believe Xenophon) discouraged and mournful. Yet such a man as Epaminondas must have been well aware that neither his claims nor his arguments would be admitted by Sparta. If, therefore, he was disappointed with the result, this must be because he had counted upon, but did not obtain, support from the Athenians or others.
ATHENS ABANDONS THEBES
The leaning of the Athenian deputies had been adverse rather than favourable to Thebes throughout the congress. They were disinclined, from their sympathies with the Platæans, to advocate the presidential claims of Thebes, though on the whole it was to the political interest of Athens that the Bœotian federation should be maintained, as a bulwark to herself against Sparta. Yet the relations of Athens with Thebes, after the congress as before it, were still those of friendship, nominal rather than sincere. It was only with Sparta, and her allies, that Thebes was at war, without a single ally attached to her. On the whole, Callistratus and his colleagues had managed the interests of Athens in this congress with great prudence and success. They had disengaged her from the alliance with Thebes, which had been dictated seven years before by common fear and dislike of Sparta, but which had no longer any adequate motive to countervail the cost of continuing the war; at the same time the disengagement had been accomplished without bad faith. The gains of Athens, during the last seven years of war, had been considerable. She had acquired a great naval power, and a body of maritime confederates; while her enemies the Spartans had lost their naval power in the like proportion. Athens was now the ascendant leader of maritime and insular Greece, while Sparta still continued to be the leading power on land—but only on land; and a tacit partnership was now established between the two, each recognising the other in their respective halves of the Hellenic hegemony. Moreover, Athens had the prudence to draw her stake, and quit the game, when at the maximum of acquisitions, without taking the risk of future contingencies.[e]
FOOTNOTES
[11] [That is, the organisation of a group of settlements into one city or capital.]