 Chapter 12, Part 6 of A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dick Durett. A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, Volume 2. By John Bagnale Bury. Chapter 12, Part 6. Spartan Supremacy and the Persian War. Section 6, The King's Peace. We must now turn from the Isthmus of Corinth to the eastern coast of the Aegean. The Lacedemonians ascribed the success of their opponents to the support of Persia and drew the conclusion that their chance lay in detaching Persia to their own side. With this view, they had dispatched Antalcidus to open negotiations with Terebanus. The proposals of Sparta were that the Hellenic cities of Asia should be subjects of the king, that this was the price of Persian help, that all Hellenic cities should be independent. This was aimed at the Confederates, at the Supremacy of Thebes in Bokosia and at the Union of Corinth with Argos. The Athenians and their allies sent Conan and other envoys to counteract the mission of Antalcidus and perhaps it was at this time also that they sent the Orata and Dosides to Sparta to consider terms of peace. Both the missions of Andosides and the mission of Antalcidus were alike unsuccessful. Terebazus, who was favorable to Sparta and threw Conan into prison, was recalled and his successor, Struthus, had no Spartan leanings. The object of Antalcidus was indeed ultimately reached but its attainment was postponed for four or five years and the war went on as before. The military events of these years are not of great interest. Our knowledge of them is meager. In Asia the Spartan cause revives. Dibron is sent out once more and though he sustains a severe defeat at the hands of Struthus it is not until he has won over Ephesus, Magnesia and Priene. Soon, Sinaitus and Samos follow the example of these cities. Agiscypilus invades Achanania and forces the Achananians to join the Lacedaemonian League. His colleagues Agiscypilus carries out one of those invasions of Argelis which lead to nothing. Then the Spartans use Aegina as a base for harassing Attica and a warfare of surprises is carried on between the Homoes of Aegina and Athenian admirals. The Homoes Gorgopus captured four ships of an Athenian squadron. The Athenian Shabrius then landed in Aegina, laid in ambush and killed Gorgopus. Telucius the brother of Agiscypilus was sent to Aegina soon afterwards. He made an attack on the Piraeus at daybreak and towed away some of the galleys lying in the harbor. In old Greece, the war was on the whole, advantageous to Sparta, though no decisive success was gained. But the most important event was the recovery of Athenian dominion on a prepontus. At this moment, Athens was in great financial straits for she had ceased to receive Persian subsidies. When an indirect impost of 1.40 had been tried and found insufficient, a direct war tax was levied. For the Athenians had determined to operate both in the south and in the north. In the south to assist their friend Evagaris who was revolting from the great king in the north to recover control of the road to Yuxin Sea. Thrassebulus, the restorer of the democracy, sailed with a fleet of 40 ships to Hellespont and gained over the Athenian alliance the islands of Thassos and Samothrace. The Thrasso-Nines and the two cities which commanded the Bosphorus, Byzantium and Chalcedon. Proceeding to Lesbos, he defeated and slew the Spartan Homoes and established the Athenian supremacy over most of the island. He also won Chasso Minai. The original object for which he had been sent out was to assist Rhodes in maintaining her independence against the efforts of Spada to regain the mastery of the island. But to act with effect, it was necessary to raise money and the Athenian fleet coasted around Asia Minor, levying contributions. These exactions appear to have been a renewal of the tax of 5% which Athens imposed on the commerce of her allies after the Sicilian expedition. It seemed like the beginning of a new empire. Aspendus in Pasfilia was one of the places visited and the visit was fatal to Thrassebulus. The violent methods of his soldiers engaged the inhabitants. They surprised him at night in his tent and slew him. Athens had now lost the two men of action in whom since the death of Pericles, she owed most. Conan and Thrassebulus. Conan, who soon after his imprisonment by Cebasulus died in Cyprus, had broken down the maritime dominion of the Lacedemonians of Prussia and had given Athens the means of recovering her independence and her sea power. Thrassebulus had given to the Athenian democracy a new life and breathe in it a new spirit of conciliation and moderation. He strikes us, we know too little of him, as an eminently reasonable citizen, one of these men who command general confidence and are not blessed by prejudice or ambition. The virtues of Thrassebulus were moral rather than intellectual. After his death insinuations were made against his integrity. And one of his friends named Hergocles was found guilty of embezzlement of money collected on the expedition of Thrassebulus and was put to death. But the statements of an advocate and we have no other evidence carry no way. The success of Thrassebulus in re-establishing a toll for the advantage of Athens on merchandise passing through the Bosphorus was almost immediately endangered by an exibius whom Sparta promptly sent out to act against Athens with Pharma basus. He deprived Athens of her toils by seizing the merchant vessels. If Phikrates was dispatched to oppose him with 12,000 peltasts and the helispont became the scene of the same kind of warfare of raids and surprises which we saw carried on at a genus. At last if the crades saw a favorable opportunity for a decisive blow An exibius had gone to place a garrison in Antaldris which he had just gained over. If Phikrates crossed by night from the Choseny and laid an ambush on the return route near the gold mines of Cremast the troops of an exibus marched in careless order traversing the narrow mountain passes in extended single file without the slightest suspicion that an enemy lay in the way. Suddenly as they were coming down from the mountains into the plains of Cremast the peltasts of Phikrates leaped out. An exibius saw at a glance that the case was desperate. The scattered hoplites had no chance against the peltasts. I must die here, he said to his men, my honor demands it but do you save yourselves? A devoted youth who constantly accompanied him fell fighting by his side. This exploit of Phikrates ensured the command of the helispont and the Bosphorus to Athens. Unfortunately for Athens the political situation changed and other great powers intervened. At the beginning of the fourth century there were three great powers which aimed at supremacy over portions of the Greek world Persia, Sparta and a tyrant of Syracuse Dionysius. At first however it was not a case of these three great powers uniting in a sacred alliance for the suppression of liberty. Dionysius did not intervene in the east and Persia and Sparta contested the supremacy over the Asiatic Greeks. Thus Persia in the cause of her own supremacy in Asia made common cause with liberty elsewhere. The general military failure of Sparta forced her to seek a reconciliation with Persia on the basis of abandoning Asia. One of the obstacles to the accomplishment of this object was the influence of the satrap Phanabasus who cherished bitter hostility to the country of Dersilides and Adjisilis. On the other hand Athens had taken an ambiguous step which could not fail to create distrust and resentment at the Persian court. If Athens was indebted to Persia for the restoration of her walls she had also been befriended and supported by Evagaris, Prince of Solanas, the friend of Conan and she had bestowed upon him her citizenship in recognition of his services. Thus, when he revolted from Persia, Athens was in an embarrassing position. The support of Persia against Sparta was all important to her. Atheserxes was her ally but Evagaris was her citizen too and a Greek. Against her own apparent interest, Athens sent 10 ships to assist her Cypriot friend and though they were captured by a Lacedemonian admiral and never actually served against the Persians the incident was calculated to dispose the great king to entertain the overturn of Sparta. The Diplomatist Antalcides went up to Sasa and reserved his proposals. Back by the influence of Trebasis he overcame the reluctance of Atheserxes who was personally pre-possessed against Sparta and induced him to agree to enforce a general pacification on the same conditions which had been proposed before. Opposites on the part of Phanabaris was removed by summoning him a court to marry a daughter of Atheserxes. The diplomacy of Sparta was successful not only at Sousa it was successful also at Syracuse and obtained an auxiliary force of 20 trinemes from the tyrant Dionysius. With the support of the West and East Sparta was able to force the peace upon Hellas when Antalcides and the Teribazan returned to the coast. They found Iphikrates blockading the Sparta fleet at Abidus and Talsidus dexterously rescued the fleet from this predicament and was able, when the Syracusan vessels joined him as well as Persian reinforcements to blockade the Athenians in the Hellespont and present corn vessels from reaching Athens. The coasting trade of Africa was at the same time suffering grievously through the raids from Ejina which have already been mentioned. Hence peace was expedient for Athens and the allies could not think of continuing the war without her. The representatives of the belligerents were summoned to Sardia and Teribanes read aloud the edict of his master showing them the royal seal. It was to the effect. King Artaxerxes think it just that the cities of Asia and the islands of Clasomina and Cyprus shall belong to him further that all the other Greek cities small and great shall be autonomous except Lemnos, Imbros and Sirius which shall belong to Athens as a foretime. If any refuse to accept this peace I shall make war on them along with those who are of the same purpose both by land and sea with both ships and money. The representatives were to report to the cities the terms of the peace and then meet at Sparta to declare their acceptance. All accepted but the Thibbans raised a difficulty by claiming to take the oath on behalf of all the I-Ocean cities as well as of themselves. Such a proposal would clearly place the I-Ocean cities in a different class from the other cities of Greece which took the oath each for itself. It was an attempt to assert the dependence of the I-Ocean communities of Thebes whereas one of the chief objects of the peace was to assert this autonomy. Gessilus was secretly pleased with the opposition of Thebes. He hoped that the Thebans would persist in it and give him the opportunity of attacking and subduing their detested city but they submitted in time and disappointed his vengeance. The king's peace was inscribed on stone tablets which were set up in the chief sanctuaries of the Greek states. There was a feeling among many that Greece had suffered a humiliation in having to submit to the arbitration of Persia. Both Spartans and Athenians had a like-used Persian help when they could get it but never before had the domestic conflicts of Hellas been settled by barbarian dictation and under a barbarian sanction. It was Sparta's doing. She constituted herself the minister of the great king's will in order to save her own position and the Greeks of Asia were left to endure oriental methods of government. Athens, though she had lost what Thrasybulus had won for her, was allowed to retain her old insular dependencies in the north Aegean, a concession which shows that it was thought necessary to bribe her into accepting the peace and that Sparta was more eagerly bent on weakening the other confederates. In truth, the main objects were to break up the Boetian League and to separate the Argives from Corinth. But it was an age of federal experiments and the king's peace while it dissolved the leagues of Argos and Thebes led to a federal movement in another quarter. Ephesus, Samos, Sinaitis, and Jesus flung back into the power of Persia, formed an alliance with Rhodes and in token thereof these cities issued alliance coins of the Rhodian standard and graven with a picture of the infant Heracles strangling the snakes. It was an alliance for mutual protection of their liberties. These were days in which from one end of the Greek world to the other smaller states seeing their freedom threatened by Persia, Sparta, or Syracuse were inclined to draw together into small federations. And from one end of the Greek world to the other there seems to have spread a fellow feeling among these smaller states a consciousness that their cause was the same. In the west, Croton and Sathynthis viewed with alarm the extension of the Syracusean Empire seemed to have had a secret understanding and it most curious that they too engraved on their money the same symbolic scene. Again on the propontus at Sinaitis and Lamps-Sacris this properly Theban token reappears. It is hazardous to draw conclusions from coins as to definite political relations without some further evidence but Heracles strangling the snakes seems to have been at the period by tacit unanimity if nothing more as an emblem of liberty. End of section chapter 12 part 6 Recording by Dick Tourette, Manchester, New Hampshire, USA Chapter 13 Parts 1 and 2 of A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, Volume 2 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Phil Syrette A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, Volume 2 by John Bagnell Burie, Chapter 13 The Revival of Athens and Her Second League Part 1 High-Handed Policy of Sparta The gates of the Peloponnesus were again open to Sparta without dispute. She was supported by Persia and she had no complications in Asia to divide her energy. Accordingly she was able to renew the despotic policy that had been inaugurated for her by Lysander. Arcadian Mantania was the first to suffer. The Mantanians were accused of various acts of disobedience and disloyalty to Sparta and commanded to pull down their walls. When they refused, King Agisipolis, son of the exiled Palsanias marched out against them. The city of Mantania stood in a high plain without any natural defences depending entirely on its walls of unburnt brick. The river Ophis flowed through the town and a blockade proving tedious, Agisipolis dammed the stream at the point of issue. The water rose and undermined the walls and when one of the towers threatened to fall the people surrendered. Their punishment was severe. Mantania ceased to be a city and was broken up into its five constituent villages. Those who originally belonged to the village of Mantania remained on the site of the city. The rest had to pull down their houses and move each to the village where his property was. The loss of civic life meant to a Greek the loss of all his higher interests. Agisipolis, who had once gone forth to destroy the Persian power zealously supported the king's peace. When someone suggested that it was at least curious to find the Spartans meadizing, he rejoined rather say that the Persians are lacinizing. Each way of putting it expressed a measure of the truth but some of the Lassa demonians, including the king Agisipolis were opposed to the recent policy of their government and thought it ill done to abandon the Greeks of Asia. Some years after the peace there seems to have been floating in the air a vague idea which might or might not take shape of organizing another Asiatic expedition. It was to animate this idea that the Athenian orator Isocrates published a festival speech when the Greek nation was assembled at the Olympian festival. He advocated a grand pan-Hellenic union against Persia under the common headship of Sparta and Athens Sparta taking the command by land, Athens by sea. It was the third occasion on which a renowned master of style had broached the same idea at the same gathering place. Nearly thirty years ago it had been recommended by the florid eloquence of Gorgias. Recently it had been advocated with gracious simplicity by Lyceus and now the rich periods of Isocrates urged it once more upon Greece. The project, in the ideal form in which Isocrates imagined it was at this moment chimerical. A hundred years before it had been hard enough to compass a practical cooperation between Greek powers of equal strength and pretensions in a war of defense. It was hopeless to think of such cooperation now for a war of aggression. Sparta and Athens were quarreling as the orator complains over the tribute of the Cichlid Islands and neither was likely to yield to the other without a clear award of war and other troubles were brewing in another quarter. The contest of east and west had been going on meanwhile in Cyprus an island whose geographical situation marked it out like Sicily to be a meeting place of races. We have already met a man who played an eminent part in that struggle Evigorus the Prince of Salami. He belonged to the Tuchrid family which had reigned there in the days of Darius and Xerxes but had been supplanted by a Phoenician dynasty about the middle of the 5th century. Evigorus, crossing over from the Cilician Soli won back the sceptre of his race by a daring surprise. He governed with conspicuous moderation, discretion and success setting himself to the work of reviving the cause of Hellenism which had lost much ground during the past half-century and pursuing this task by entirely peaceful means. After Aegis Patami, the city of Evigorus became the refuge for large numbers of Athenians who had settled down in various parts of the Athenian Empire and could no longer remain securely in their homes. For the first sixteen years of his reign Evigorus was a faithful tributary of the Great King and we have seen how his influence at Sousa assisted Conan. But soon after the Battle of Nides he became involved in war both with Persia and with some of the Phoenician cities in the island. The peace expressly recognized the sovereignty of Artex-Xerxes over Cyprus and as soon as it was concluded Persia began to concentrate her forces against Evigorus and a recalcitrant king of Egypt with whom Evigorus was lead. A severe defeat at sea shut Evigorus up in Salami but he held out so dauntlessly and the war had already cost Persia so much that Tyra Bezos agreed to leave him his principality on condition that he should pay tribute as a slave to his lord. Evigorus refused. He would only pay it as one king to another. The negotiations were ruptured for a moment on this point of honour but a dispute between the Satrap and his subordinate general resulted in the removal of Tyra Bezos and his successor permitted Evigorus to have his way. The Salamanian despot had thus gained a moral triumph. He did not survive it many years and the story of his death is curious. A certain man named Nicocrian formed a plot against his life and being detected was forced to fly. He left a daughter behind him in Salami under the care of a faithful eunuch. This servant privately acquainted both Evigorus and his son, Nitigorus, with the existence of this young lady and her uncommon beauty and undertook to conduct them to her bed-chamber each without the knowledge of the other. Both kept the assignation and were slain by the eunuch who thus avenged his master's exile. Another son of Evigorus, named Nicocles, succeeded him and pursued the same Hellenizing policy. One of the great objects of these enlightened princes was to keep their country in touch with the intellectual and artistic movements of Greece. Nicocles was a student of Greek philosophy and a generous friend of the essayist Esocrates to whose pen we are indebted for much of what we know of the career of Evigorus. Towards the close of the almost single-handed struggle of Salami against Persia, the eyes of Greece were directed to a different quarter of the world. Events were passing in the north of the Aegean, which riveted the attention of Sparta and Athens. Their Greek brethren of Cyprus and the Asiatic coast seemed to be quite forgotten. For while the Oriental question almost passes out of the pages of Greek history, yet it was destined that from that very region on the northwest corner of the Aegean should issue the force which should not only seem for European influence Cyprus and all the Greek cities of Asia, but bear Greek light into lands of which aegisolus had never dreamed. That force was being forged in the Macedonian uplands, and some who were children when Esocrates published his Panagyric against the barbarian lived to see the barbarians succumb to a Greek power. It was indeed only indirectly that the southern Greeks had now to concern themselves with their backward brethren of Macedonia. One of the chief obstacles to the development of this country was its constant exposure to the attacks of its Illyrian neighbors, and an Illyrian invasion supported by domestic disloyalty compelled King Amantus, he was the nephew of Perticus, to flee from his kingdom. Amantus, soon after his accession, had concluded a close defensive and commercial alliance for fifty years with the Chalcidian League, which had been formed by Elinthus and comprised the towns of the Shthonian Promontory. It was, as we observed already, an age of small federations. At the moment of his retreat, Amantus handed over to the Chalcidians the lower districts of Macedonia and the cities lying round the Thermaeic Gulf. The Macedonian cities readily embraced and union which could protect them against the Illyrians, and the League spread from the maritime towns up the country and included even Pella. Perfect equality and brotherhood between the members was the basis of the Chalcidian Confederacy. All the cities had common laws, common rights of citizenship, intermarriage and commerce. Elinthus did not assume a privileged position for herself. The neighbouring Greek cities were also asked to join and some of them, Potodia for instance, accepted the offer, but it was always a sacrifice for a Greek city to give up its hereditary laws and surrender any part of its sovereignty whatever compensating advantages might be purchased, and there was consequently more reluctance between the Chalcidians than among the less developed Macedonians to join the League. The Olinthians, as their work grew, conceived the idea of a Confederate power which should embrace the whole Chalcidic peninsula and its neighbourhood. Once this ambition took form, it became necessary to impose by force their proposition upon all those who declined to accept it freely. The strong cities of Acanthus and Apollonia resisted and sent envoys to Sparta to obtain her help. However, Amatis had recovered his throne and when the Olinthians refused to abandon the cities which he had handed over to them he too looked for aid to Sparta. These appeals directed the eyes of Greece upon the Chalcidian Confederacy. It was the Lacedemonian policy to oppose all combinations and keep Greece disunited, a policy which was popular and so far as it appealed to that innate love of autonomy which made it so difficult to bring about abiding federal unions in Greece. The ambassadors had little difficulty in persuading the Lacedemonians and their allies that the movement in Chalcidice was dangerous to the interests of Sparta and should be crushed at the outset and they argued that the very liberality of the principles on which it was founded made the League more attractive and therefore more dangerous. A vote of assistance to Acanthus and Apollonia was passed and a small advance force was immediately sent under Eudamidus. Though unable to meet the Confederate army this force was sufficient to protect the cities which had refused to join the League and it even induced Patidia to revolt. The expedition against the Chalcidian Confederacy led unexpectedly to an important incident elsewhere. Phoebitus, the brother of Eudamidus was to follow with larger forces and as the line of march lay through Biosia, a party in Thebes favorable to Sparta thought to profit by the proximity of Spartan troops for the purpose of a revolution. The Antietus, the most prominent member of this party, was then one of the polymarchs. He concerted with Phoebitus a plot to seize the Cadmia, the Citadel of Thebes on the day of the Themysphoria for on that day the Citadel was given up to the use of the women who celebrated the feast. The plot succeeded perfectly. The acropolis was occupied without striking a blow. The oligarchical council was intimidated by the Antietus and his colleague the other polymarch, Ismenius, was arrested. The leading Antispartans fled from Thebes and a government friendly to Sparta was established. This was a great triumph for Sparta, a great satisfaction to Agislus, although, as a violation of peace, it caused a moment's embarrassment. Was the government to recognize the action of Phoebitus and profit by it? Spartan hypocrisy compromised the matter. Phoebitus was fined 100,000 drachma for his indiscretion and the Cadmia was retained. Then Ismenius was tried by a body of judges representing Sparta and her allies and was condemned on charges of medism and executed. That Sparta, after the king's peace, should condemn a Theban for medism with a travesty of justice. With the fortress of Thebes in her hands Sparta had a basis for extending her power in central Greece and might regard her supremacy as secured. She restored the city of Plathia, which she had herself destroyed well nigh 50 years ago, and gathered all the Plathians who could be found to their old home. But her immediate attention was fixed on the necessity of repressing the dangerous league in the north of Greece and continuing the measures which had been interrupted by the enterprise of Phoebitus in Biosia. The popular brother of Agislus, Telucius, was sent to conduct the war. But although he was aided by Amantus and by Daredas, a prince of Upper Macedonia who supplied good cavalry, it proved no easy matter to make head against the league. In front of the walls of Olympus, Telucius sustained a signal defeat and was himself slain. The war was fatal to a king as well as to a king's brother. Agisipolis, who was next sent out at the head of a very large force, caught a fever in the intolerable summer heat. He was carried to the shady grove of the temple of Dionysus at Aphitis, where he was brought home for burial. His successor, Polybiatus, was more successful. He forced the Olympians to sue for peace and dissolve their league. They and all the Greek cities of the peninsula were constrained to join the Lacedemonian alliance and the maritime cities of Macedonia were restored to the sway of Amantus. Thus Sparta put down an attempt to overcome that system of isolation which placed Greek cities at a great disadvantage when they had barbarian neighbors. As Sparta had not happened to be so strong at this moment, the Chalcedian League might have grown into a power which would have considerably modified the development of Macedonia. All that Sparta did, although for a moment it made her power paramount in northern Greece, fell out ultimately to the advancement and profit of Macedon. About the same time the Lacedemonians were making their heavy hand felt in the Peloponnesus. Soon after the king's peace they had forced the Fleasians to form a number of banished aristocrats. Disputes arose about the restoration of confiscated property and the exiles appealed to Sparta where they had a zealous supporter in Agislus. War was declared. Agislus reduced the city of Fleas by blockade and compelled it to receive a Lacedemonian garrison for six months until a commission of one hundred which he nominated should have drawn up a new constitution. Thus the Lacedemonians in alliance with the tyrant Dionysius and the barbarian Artexerxes tyrannized over the Greeks for a space. Some demonstrations were made. Some voices of protest were raised in the name of the Pan-Hellenic cause. At the Olympian festival which was held about two years after the king's peace the Athenian orator Lyceus warned the assembled Greeks of the dangers which loomed in the east and in the west from Persia and from Sicily and uttered his amazement at the policy of Lacedemon. A magnificent deputation had been sent by Dionysius to this festival and the inflammatory words perhaps the direct instigation of the speaker incited some enthusiastic spectators to attack the gorgeous pavilion of the Syracusan envoys. The outrage was prevented but the occurrence shows the beginning of that tide of feeling to which Asocrates appealed four years later when in his festival oration he denounced the Lacedemonians as sacrificing the freedom of Greece to their own interests Even Xenophon the friend of Sparta's king the admirer of Sparta's institutions is roused to regretful indignation at Sparta's conduct and recognizes her fall as a just retribution. The Lacedemonians who swore to leave the city's independence seized the Acropolis of Thebes and they were punished by the very men single-handed whom they had wronged though never before had they been vanquished by any single people. It is a proof that the gods observe men religious and unhallowed deeds. In this way the pious historian introduces the event which prepared the fall of Sparta and the rise of Thebes. Section 2 Alliance of Athens and Thebes The government of Leontiatis and his party at Thebes maintained by 1500 Lacedemonians in the citadel was despotic and cruel like that of the 30 at Athens. Fear made the rulers suspicious and oppressive for they were afraid of the large number of exiles who had found a refuge at Athens and were awaiting an opportunity to recover their city. Athens was now showing the same good will to the fugitives from Thebes which Thebes, when Athens was in a like plight had shown to Thracibulus and his followers. One of the exiles named Polypidus of more than common daring and devotion resolved to take his life in his hands and found six others to associate in his plans. No open attack was to be thought of Thebes must be recovered by Gael even as by Gael it had been won. There were many in Thebes who were bitter foes of the ruling party such as Epaminondus the beloved friend of Polypidus but most of them deemed the time unripe for any sudden stroke for freedom. Yet a few were found ready to run the risk. Above all, Philodis, who was the secretary of the polymarks and therefore the most useful of Confederates and Caron, a citizen of good estate who offered his house as a place of hiding for the conspirators. The day in which the two polymarks Arceus and Philippus were to go out of office was fixed for the enterprise. On the day before, Polypidus and his six comrades crossed Catheron in the guise of Huntsman and nearing Thebes at Nightfall mixed with the peasants who were returning from the fields, got them safely within the gates and found safe hiding in the boat of Caron. The secretary Philodis had made ready a banquet for the following night to which he had bitten the outgoing polymarks tempting them by the promise of introducing them to some high-born and beautiful women whose love they desired. During the carouse, a messenger came with a letter for Arceus and said that it concerned serious affairs. Business tomorrow, said Arceus placing it under his pillow. On the morrow it was found that this letter disclosed the conspiracy. The polymarks then called for the women who were waiting in an adjoining room. Philodis said that they declined to appear till all the attendants were dismissed. When no one remained in the dining hall but the polymarks and a few friends all flushed with wine, the women entered and sat down beside the lords. They were covered with long veils and even as they were bitten, lift them and reveal their charms, they buried daggers in the bodies of the polymarks, for they were none other than polypidus and his fellows in the guise of women. Then they went and slew in their houses Leontiatus and Hippitus, two other chief leaders of the party and set free the political prisoners. When all this was done, Epaminandus and the other patriots who were unwilling to initiate such deeds themselves accepted the revolution with joy. When the day dawned an assembly of the people was held in the Agora and the conspirators were crowned with wreaths. Three of them, including polypidus were appointed polymarks and a democratic constitution was established. The rest of the exiles and the body of Athenian volunteers presently arrived on the news of the success. The Spartan commander of Cadmia had sent hastily, on the first alarm for reinforcements to Thespiae and Plataea, but those that came were charged and repelled outside the gate. Then in the first flush of success the patriots resolved to storm the Cadmia strong as the place was but the labor and danger were spared them. Amazing as it may seem the Lassodemonian harmists decided to capitulate at once. Two of these commanders were put to death on the return to Sparta and the third was banished. The chagrin of the Ephors and Agislis was intense. King Cleombartus was immediately sent with an army into Biosia but accomplished nothing. Athens was formally at peace with Sparta and was not disposed to break with her however great may have been the secret joy felt at the events in Biosia. But the march of the Athenian volunteers to Thebes was an awkward incident the more so as there were two strategic among them. Lassodemonian envoys arrived to demand explanation and satisfaction and their statements were reinforced by the neighborhood of the army of King Cleombartus. There is indeed nothing to be said for the conduct of the two strategic. They had abused their position and brought their city into danger and embarrassment. We can only approve the sentence of the Athenians which executed one and banished the other. But if these Athenian generals were indiscreet it was as nothing aside the indiscretion of Lassodemonian commander which now precipitated a breach between the two states. And not ignoble sympathy might have been pleaded by the two Athenians but no excuse could be urged for the rash enterprise of the Spartan harmist of Thespii who aspired to be a second Phoebitus his name was Fodrius and he conceived the plan of making a night march to Athens and surprising Piraeus on the land side. To seize Piraeus, the seat of Athenian sacrifice would be a compensation for the loss of Thebes. But the plan was if not ill-considered at least ill-carried out. Day dawned when he had hardly passed a Lusus and there was nothing to do but turn back. He retreated laying waste the districts through which he passed. Great wrath was kindled in Athens by this unprovoked deed of hostility. The envoys had not yet gone they were immediately thrown into prison but escaped by declaring that the Spartan government was not responsible for the raid and would speedily prove its innocence by the condemnation of Sphodrius. The assurance was belied Sphodrius was not condemned his son and the son of Aegisolus were lovers and the king's influence saved him Aegisolus was reported to have said Sphodrius is guilty of course but it is a hard thing to put to death a man who as child, stripling and man lived a life of perfect honor for Spartan needeth such soldiers Dismiss carriage of justice was a grave mistake of policy and the high-handed insolence of the Spartan oligarchs was set in a more glaring light by contrast with the fair-mindedness which the Athenian people had displayed in promptly punishing its own generals for a similar though certainly less heinous act. The Athenian generals had at least not invaded Lacedemonian territory it was debated at the time and has been debated since whether Sphodrius acted wholly of his own accord some thought that the suggestion came from King Cleobertus and the theory was started that the Thebans were the prime instigators and unlikely theory which was evidently based on the fact that Thebes was the only gainer by the raid. It seems most probable that the private ambition of Sphodrius who thought he had a chance of emulating Fibidus was alone responsible. The raid and acquittal of Sphodrius drove Athens against her will into war with Sparta and alliance with Thebes It stirred her for a while to leave her role of neutral spectator and assume that of an active belligerent. For the next six years Athens and Sparta are at war though such a war was contrary to the interests of both states but especially to the interests of Sparta. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org A History of Greece to the death of Alexander the Great, Volume 2 by John Bagnell Bury Chapter 13 The Revival of Athens and Her Second League Part 3 The Second Athenian League and the Theban Reforms The raid of Sphodrius was the direct occasion of the Second Athenian Confederacy. For many years back ever since the battle of Schnittus Athens had been gradually forming bonds of alliance with various states in Thrace, the Aegean and the coast of Asia Minor. The breach with Sparta induced her now to gather together these separate connections into a common league with the express object of protecting the independence of the Greek states against the oppressions of Sparta. When thought of the old Confederacy of Delos they might fear that a Second Athenian League would be soon converted into a Second Athenian Empire. But Athens anticipated such alarms by establishing the Confederacy on a different system which provided safeguards against the dangers of Athenian preponderance and Athenian encroachment. In the archonship of Nassinicus Aristotelies of the Deem of Marathon proposed in the Assembly a decree that embodied the principles of the League. The sway of Persia over the Greeks of Athens was explicitly recognized so that the field of operations was to be European, Greece and the islands. The League, which was purely defensive was constituted in two parts Athens on one side, her allies on the other. The allies had their own synodrian or Congress which met in Athens but in which Athens had no part. Both the synodrian of the Confederates and the Athenian Assembly had the right of initiating measures. But no measure passed by either body was valid until it had been approved by the other body also. While the system gave Athens a weight and dignity equal to that of all her allies together it secured for the allies an independence which they had not possessed under the old League and they had the right of absolute veto on any Athenian proposal which they disliked. It was necessary for the members of the League to have a moral fund. Their payments were called syntaxes, contributions and the word foros, tribute which had odious memories connected with the Confederacy of Delos was avoided. It was especially enacted that the practice of Athenian out settling in the lands of the allies which had formerly helped and supported the Athenian Empire was not to be permitted. No Athenian was to acquire home or farm by purchase or mortgage ever in the territory of the Confederates. But the administration of the Federal Fund and the leadership of the Federal Army were in the hands of Athens. Good fortune has preserved to us the original stone, shattered in about twenty pieces, with the decree which founded the Confederacy and we find the purpose of the League definitely declared to force the Lachodemonians to allow the Greeks to enjoy peace and freedom and independence with their lands unviolated. It was no doubt Calistratus the ableist statesman in order of the day who did most to make the new scheme a success. But though he may be called the Aristides of the Second Confederacy Calistratus certainly did not mean the combination against Sparta as seriously as Aristides meant the combination against Persia. The policy which Calistratus generally pursued was based on harmony with Sparta and antagonism to Thebes. It is sometimes said that at this period there were two parties contending for the guidance of the foreign policy of Athens one friendly and the other obstinately hostile to Bosia. But, though Thebes had some friends at Athens we have no good grounds for speaking of a Theban or Bosian party. It might be truer to say that there was an anti-Spartan faction which might often seek a Theban alliance as a means to an end. At this juncture Calistratus was astute enough to see not only that it would be useless to oppose the feeling against Sparta but also that an opportunity which might never recur was offered for increasing the power of Athens. He therefore abandoned for the time his permanent policy and threw himself heartily into a scheme of which the most remarkable feature was union with Thebes. The chief cities which first joined the new league were Kios, Byzantium, Mitelein, Mithymina and Rhodes. Then most of the towns of Uboa joined and what was most important to the people, Thebes enrolled her name in the list of the Confederates. The Thracian cities and several other states including Corsera, Jason, the Despot of Firi and Thessaly and Alcetus, a prince of Aperus presently brought up the whole tale of members to about seventy. But though the league drawn on such liberal lines evoked some enthusiasm at first and the adhesion of Thebes gave its inauguration a certain ecla it had no vital elements of growth and permanence and never attained high political importance. The fact is that the true interest of Athens as Calistratus knew was peace with Sparta and was consequently repugnant to the avowed object of the Confederacy. Hence the Confederacy was doomed either to fall asunder or to become the tool of other designs of Athens as soon as Sparta had been taught a lesson and the more abiding interest of Athens could safely assert itself again over the temporary expedient natural alliance with Thebes. It was a moment at which the chief Greek states were setting their houses in order. Thebes was making herself ready for a new career. Sparta was remodeling her league and Athens her finances. A property tax such as had been introduced in the third year of the Peloponnesian War was revived and a new assessment of property was made. One-fifth of the actual capital of each citizen was inscribed in the capital and the tax, probably about one percent, was imposed on this fraction, not on the whole capital. The revenue from this impost seems to have amounted annually to about sixty talents. For the purposes of levying the tax the whole body of burgers was divided into twenty cemeries and the richest citizens in each cemery were responsible to the treasury for the total sum due on the properties of all the citizens who belong to it. By this means the state relieved itself from the friction which is generally caused by the collection of direct imposts and the revenue accruing from the tax was realized more promptly and easily than if the government had to deal immediately with the individual burgers. Thus Athens tried the novel experiment of a system of joint responsibility, such as in later days was to be introduced and established in an empire of which Athens was only an insignificant town. At Thebes the attention of the government was chiefly bestowed on military affairs. A ditch was dug and a rampart raised round part of the Theban territory as a defence against the inevitable Lachodemonian invasions. But this precaution was of small moment in comparison with the creation of a new troop of three hundred hoplites all chosen young men of the noblest families who had proved their eminent strength and endurance in a long training in the wrestling school. Each man had his best friend beside him so that the sacred band, as it would be called, consisted of one hundred and fifty pairs of comrades, prepared to fight and fall together. In battle it was to stand in front of the other hoplites. At the same time we may be sure much was done to improve the army in other points. Opportunally for Thebes there had arisen to guide her to success when her chance came a man of rarability in whom nature seemed to have united the best features of Greek character and discarded the fondest, the friend of Pelopetus. He was a modest, unambitious man who in other circumstances would probably have remained in obscurity unobtrusively fulfilling the duties of a citizen and soldier. But the revolution stimulated his patriotism and lured him into the field of public affairs where his eminent capacity, gradually revealing itself, made him, before eight years had passed, the most influential man in his city. He had devoted his much time to music as to gymnastic training. Unlike most of his countrymen he could play the lyre as well as the Theban flute, and he had a genuine interest in philosophical speculation. A Tarantine friend who had been much in his company as severe that he had never met a man who knew more and talked less than Epaminondas. But the Theban statesman could speak when he chose, or when the need demanded, and his eloquence was extremely impressive. Exceptional difference to the prizes of ambition he was also less exceptional in his indifference to money, and he died poor. Not less remarkable was his lack of that party spirit which led to so many crimes and revenge, and we have already seen that his repugnance to domestic bloodshed kept him from taking apart in the fortunate conspiracy of Pilopitas. Section 4 The Battle of Naxos and the Peace of Calius are marked by a successful defense of war of Thebes against Spartan invasions, by a decrease of Spartan prestige, by the extension of the Theban supremacy over the rest of Boshia. At the same time Athens prosecutes a naval war against the Lacedaemonian Confederacy and gains considerable successes, but the strain on her resources which this war entails and her growing jealousy of Thebes combine to induce her to come to terms with Sparta. Two invasions of Boshia, conducted by Agacelus himself in successive summers, achieved nothing, and the Thebans had the satisfaction of slaying Phobetus, who had won his fame by the capture of their Acropolis. The other king, Cleombrotus, did even less than Agacelus, for he found the passes of Catherin held by the foes and could not enter Boshia. After this the Thebans had time to attack the Boshian cities and drive out the Spartan Parsons, so that by the end of four years the Boshian Confederacy once more extended over all Boshia, the local governments being overthrown and the foreign harmosts expelled. Only in the extreme west, in Orkomenis and Caronia, were the Lacedaemonians able to hold their ground. In the course of this resuscitation of the Boshian League, one notable exploit was wrought by Phelopetus and the sacred band. At Taguera, on the road to Lulcris, in a narrow pass, the Thebans routed twice as many Lacedaemonian troops and slew both the Spartan generals. As in the case of all Spartan defeats the moral effect was of far greater import than the actual loss in the field. Perhaps it was about this time that Athens won back Oropus, which had been lost to her in the year of the 400. In the meantime there had been war too on the seats. When the invasions of Boshia fell out so badly Sparta had bethought herself of equipping a naval armament to cut off the corn ships which bore grain to Attica from the Yucsin. The ships reached Gerestas, the south point of Yuboa, but a fleet of sixty galleys under the Spartan pulleys hindered them from rounding the Cape of Sinium and Athens was menaced with Amon. Eighty triremes were speedily fitted out and sent forth from the Piraeus under the command of Chabrius to recover the mastery of the city. Chabrius sailed to Naxos, which had seized this moment to desert the Athenian Confederacy and beleaguered the city. Pulleys hurried to the rescue and a battle was fought in the sound between Peros and Naxos. The Athenians gained a complete victory and only eleven of the Lachodemonian vessels escaped. Even these would have been disabled had not Chabrius desisted from the action for the purpose of saving overboard or in disabled ships. The lesson which the Athenian people taught its generals after the battle of Argusinnae had not been forgotten. Though the battle of Naxos had not the important consequence of the battle of Sinidus, it was more gratifying to Athens. The Sinidian victory had been won indeed under the command of an Athenian but by Persian men and ships. The victory gained by Chabrius was entirely Athenian. It led immediately to an enlargement of the city. The triumphant fleet sailed round the Aegean and rolled seventeen new cities and collected a large sum of money. Athens had also to reassert her authority at Delos. For the inhabitants of the island who chafed at the administration of their temple by the Athenian and fictions, as the sacred overseers were entitled, had attempted doubtless, with Lachodemonian help, to recover the control of the sanctuary. An interesting story about the Athenians preserved on a stone tells how seven ring-leaders of the movement were punished by fines and perpetual banishment for having led the Amphic Chions forth from the temple and beaten them. Next year the fleet was sent to sail round the Peloponnesus under the command of Timothyus, son of Conan. This circumnavigation of the Peloponnesus was an assertion by Athens that her naval power was once more dominant. Athenian influence in western Greece and to act in the Corinthian Gulf in case the Spartans tried to throw an army into Bosia by the port of Cresus. The islands of Corsera and Cephalinia, the king of the Melosi, some of the Arcanians, were won over to the Athenian alliance by the discreet policy of Timothyus, who also gained a trifling victory over some hostile ships. But there was a darker side to this triumphant expedition. The cost of the war was proving to be greater than Athens could well bear, and Timothyus failed to obtain from home the money requisite to pay his seamen. In this straight he was obliged to ask each tri-rock to advance seven minne for the payment of his crew, and Athens herself sent a request to Thebes for some contribution towards the expense of the naval operations on the ground that the enterprise of Timothyus had been undertaken partly at Theben's occasion. With the growing jealousy of Theben's success, and the somewhat grave financial difficulties of the moment, combined to dispose Athens towards peace with Sparta, and this was in fact her wisest policy. Negotiations were opened and carried to a successful issue, but the peace was no sooner made than it was broken. For Timothyus, who was ordered to return home from Corsera and reluctantly obeyed, halted at Zekinthus on his way, land in some Zekinthian exiles who were fortified to post for them on the island. The Zekinthians straight away complained to Sparta. Sparta demanded satisfaction from Athens, and when this was refused, the incident was treated as a breach of contract and the war was resumed. The first object of Sparta was to regain her power in the west and undo the work of Timothyus. The best of the winnings of that general had been Corsera, and Corsera once more became the scene of a Peloponnesian war. With the help of their Confederates, including Corinth, the Lachodemonians launched an armament of sixty ships, conveying fifteen hundred mercenary hoplites to gain possession of the island, and at the same time a message was dispatched to Dionysius of Syracuse, requesting his aid, on the ground that Sicily had her interests in Corserian politics. The armament was commanded by the Spartan Manasipus. He drove the Corseraean fleet into the harbour, which he blocked with his own ships, and he invested the city by land so that the supplies of the inhabitants were cut off. The island was a rich prize for the soldiers to whose depredations it was now given over. The tillage was goodly, the crops and farmhouses exceedingly fair, and so plentiful was the wine that the troopers would drink none that was not of the finest sort. Urgent messages were sent to Athens by the Corserians, who soon began to feel the pinch of famine. So great was the misery that slaves were cast out of the gates, even some citizens deserted, but were whipped back to the walls by the Lacodemonian commander. But he, deeming that he had the city in his hands grew careless in his confidence, and from the watchtowers on their walls the besieged could observe that the watch was sometimes relaxed. An opportune moment was seized for a sally which resulted in a completer success than they looked for. The professional soldiers, who had not been paid and detested their general, no zeal inwithstanding the hot onslaught of the desperate men who poured forth from the gates. Manassippus was slain, and the besiegers fell back to their camp. The beleaguermint was thus broken up, and the Corserians were safe until the coming of the expected help from Athens. But they were delivered from all constraint even before that tardy help came, for the Lacodemonians evacuated the island almost immediately after the defeat. Then at last the Athenian fleet sailed into the lands of Corsera. It was from no want of good will on the part of the Athenian people that help had not come in time to save Corsera much of the misery which she had suffered. A tale hangs by the delay of the fleet. On the first appeal it was resolved to send sixty ships at once, and six hundred Peltast were sent in advance and successfully introduced into the city. It was befitting that Timothyus should return to the scene of his former achievements, and the command to him. He found himself in an awkward position owing to one of the gravest defects in the machinery of Athenian administration. The people had voted a certain measure, appointing him to carry it out, but had omitted to vote or consider the necessary ways and means. It consequently devolved on to Timothyus to find the men in the money. For this purpose he cruised with some of his ships in the north Aegean visiting Thessaly, Macedonia and Thrace, while the main part was to return at the island of Caluria. But meanwhile the need of Corsera was sore, and more pressing messengers were arriving in Athens. The long tearing of the general excited public indignation, his appointment was annulled, and Iphicratus, in conjunction with Chabrius and Calistratus, was charged to sail at once to Corsera. Calistratus was the most eloquent orator of the day. Chabrius, a tried soldier who had served under Cypriot and Egyptian kings, we have already met as the victor of Noxos. Iphicratus, who had come to the front by his boldness and success in the Corinthian war, had for the last fifteen years served as a captain of Peltas under the Princess of Thrace and had married a daughter of King Cotus. A comic poet gives a picturesque description of his barbaric wedding. In the marketplace a plentiful feast is set out for throng of wild-haired thrations. There are immense brazen cauldrons and the king, girding himself up, serves it with his own hands in a golden basin. Then the wine and water are tempered in the mixing bowls, and the king goes round tasting each bowl until he is the first drunk. But an adventurous life among the butter-eating barbarians does not seem to have wholly satisfied Iphicratus. He served the king of Persia in Egypt and then returned to Athens, and this expedition to Corsera seems to have been his first service after his return. It was well and capably performed. The people in their excitement gave him a freer hand than they had given to Timothyus. He was able to put hard pressure on the tri-warks. He was allowed to impress seamen and to make use of the galleys which guarded the Attic coast, and even the two sacred vessels, the Salaminia and Porellus. By these unusual efforts a fleet of seventy tri-remes was put together, but before it was quite ready to sail, Timothyus returned. His crews were successful in raising money in men and adding new members to the confederacy, but it was thought that neither necessity nor success could excuse the singular inopportunes of the delay. Ill luck seemed to weigh upon Timothyus. The funds which he brought back proved insufficient to meet the obligations which they ought to have defrayed, and a fraud was suspected. Iphicratus and Calistratus, his political rivals, lodged an indictment against him, but as they had to sail immediately to the west the trial was postponed till the autumn. On his way out Iphicratus learned the news of the deliverance of Corsera so that he was able to send back those ships whose true duty was the defense of Attica. But there was still work to be done. The appeal which the Lachodemonians sent to the tyrant Dionysius had not been in vain, and ten Syracusan tri-remes were even then approaching Corsera. They stopped at a point in the north of the island that the crews might rest after the long voyage, and there Iphicratus, whose scouts had watched for their approach, captured them all but one vessel. This prize raised the welcome sum of sixty talents, but it was not long before Iphicratus, even as Timothyus, found himself embarrassed for want of money. Calistratus went back to Athens, promising to persuade the people either to keep the fleet regularly paid or to make peace. Meanwhile the crews of Iphicratus obtained subsistence by labor on the farms. If Corsera had fallen, there can be little question that Timothyus would have been sacrificed to the displeasure of the Athenian people. But the good tidings from the west restored the public good humor, and this was fortunate for the discredited general. His trial came in towards the end of the year. His military treasurer was tried at the same time, found guilty of malversion and condemned to death. But Timothyus himself was acquitted. He had indeed unusually powerful support. Two foreign monarchs had condescended to come to Athens to bear testimony in his favour—the Iperiot King Alsettus and Jason the despot of Thessalian Firae. It was there to Timothyus that these potentates had joined the Athenian League, and it was through them that he had been able to transport across Thessaly and Ipirus the six hundred peltasts who had been sent in advance to Corsera. The interest of Jason, of whom more will have to be said presently, was particularly effective. Timothyus entertained these distinguished guests in his house, in Piraeus, but he was obliged to borrow bedding, two silver bowls, and other things from his rich neighbour, the banker Passian, in order to lodge them suitably. Though acquitted, Timothyus was discredited in public opinion, and he soon left Athens to take service in Egypt under the great king. Sparta had lost heart at the decisive attack which she had received in Corsera, and the discouragement was increased by a series of terrible earthquakes in which Poseidon seemed to declare his wrath. She was therefore disposed to peace, and she thought to bring peace about as before through the meditation of Persia. Antalcides was once more sent up to the Persian court. But this intervention from without was not really needed. Athens uneasy under the burdens of the war and feeling rather the policy of Thebes than bitterness against Sparta was also well inclined to peace, and the influential orator Calistratus made it the object of his policy. The recent aggression of Thebes against the Phocians, who were old allies of Athens, tended to estrange the two cities, and to this was added the treatment of that unfortunate little mountain berg, Plataea, by her Theban enemies. Restored Plataea had perforce been enrolled in the Bocian Confederacy, but she was secretly scheming to Attica. Suspecting these plots, Thebes determined to forestall them, and a small Theban force, surprising the town one day when the men were in the fields, took possession of it and drove all the Plataeans forth from the Plataean soil. Many of the people, thus bereft of land and city, found a refuge at Athens, where the publicist Isacrates took up their cause and wrote his Plataeic discourse a denunciation of Thebes. This incident definitely, though not formally, loosened the bonds between the two northern powers. The overtures came from Athens and her Confederacy. When the Lachodemonian allies met at Sparta in spring, three Athenian envoys appeared at the Congress. One of these, the chief spokesman, was Calistratus, and one of his associates was Calius, torch-bearer of the Illusionian Mysteries, who had also worked to bring about the abortive peace three years before. Thebes likewise sent ambassadors, one of whom was Epaminandus. The basis of the peace which was now concluded was the principle which had been affirmed by the king's peace, the principle of the autonomy of every Hellenic city. The Athenian and Lachodemonian Confederacies were thus both rendered invalid. No compulsion could be exercised on any city to fulfill engagements as member of a league. Cities might cooperate with each other freely so far as they chose, but no obligation could be contracted or enforced. Yet while Athens and Sparta resigned empire, they mutually agreed to recognize each other's predominance, that of Athens by sea, that of Sparta on land, a predominance which must never be asserted by aggression, and must always be consistent with the universal autonomy. The question immediately arose whether the Bosian League was condemned by this doctrine of universal autonomy. Sparta and Athens, of course, intended to believe that the Confederacy of Bosian cities under the Presidency of Thebes was not on the same footing as the Confederacies which had been formed for temporary political purposes without any historical or geographical basis of union under the Presidencies of Athens and Sparta. It might be contended that Bosia was a geographical unity, like Attica and Laconia, and had a title to political unity, too, especially as the League was an ancient institution. The question came to the issue when it was the turn of Thebes to take the oath. Her representative Epaminandus claimed to take it on behalf of the Bosian cities, and Thebes, represented by him, was not so easily cowed as when she made the same claim at the conclusion of the king's peace. He seems to have developed the view that Bosia was to be compared to Laconia, not to the Lacodemonian Confederacy, and when Agassilis asked him, curtly and angrily, will you leave each of the Bosian retorted, will you leave each of the Laconian towns independent? The name of Thebes was thereupon struck out of the treaty. There was an argument as well as a sting in this retort of Epaminandus. The argument was, Sparta has no more right to interfere in the internal affairs of Bosia than we have to interfere in the domestic administration of Laconia. Laconia, Bosia, Attica, each represents a distinct kind of constitution, and each constitution is justified. The Union of Bosia in a federation is as natural as the Union of Attica in a single city, as legitimate as the Union of Laconia in its subjection to the Spartan oligarchy. The Union of Bosia, like the Union of Laconia, could not have been realized and could not be maintained without the perpetuation of outrages upon the free will of some communities. Yet it is hardly legitimate for one state to say to another, we have committed certain acts of violence, and you must not interfere. For at a remote period of history, which none of us remember, your ancestors used even more high-handed methods for similar purposes, and now you maintain what they established. But the tyrannical method by which Laconia was governed was certainly a weak point in the Spartan armor, and the reply of Epaminandus may well have set Greece thinking over a question of political science. Setting aside the arguments of diplomacy, the point was, Thebes could never become a strong power, the rival of Sparta or Athens, except at the head of a united Bosia, and it was the interest of Athens and Sparta to hinder her from becoming such a power. So far as the two chief contracting parties were concerned, this bargain, which is often called the Peace of Calius, put an end to a war which was contrary to the best interests of both. They were both partly to blame, but Sparta was far more to blame Her witless policy in overlooking the raid of Sphodrius had caused the war, for it left Athens no alternative but hostility. At the end of four years they seemed to have come to their senses. They made peace, but they were still stupid enough to allow the incident of Zacanthus to annul the bargain. Three more years of fighting were required to restore their wits. But although Athens was financially exhausted by her military efforts, the war brought its compensations to her. The victory of Naxos, the circum- navigation of the Peloponnesus, and revival of her influence in western Greece, were achievements which indisputably proved that Athens was once more a first-rate Hellenic power, the peer of Sparta, and this fact was fully acknowledged in the Peace of Calius. But the true policy of Athens, from which the raid of Sphodrius had forced her, was that of a watchful spectator, and this policy she now resumes, though only for a brief space, leaving Sparta and Thebes in the arena. As for Sparta, she had lost as much as Athens had gained. The defeat of Naxos, the defeat of Tigira, the failure at Corsera had dimmed her prestige. After the king's peace, she had begun her second attempt to dominate Greece. Her failure is confessed by the Peace of Calius. If a third attempt was to be successful, it was obvious that it must begin by the subjugation of Thebes. End of Chapter 13, Parts 3 and 4. Chapter 13, Part 5 of A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, Volume 2 by John Bagnell Buri. Chapter 13. The Revival of Athens and her Second League. Part 5. Athens under the Restored Democracy. When Pericles declared that Athens was the School of Greece, this was rather his ideal of what she should be than a statement of a reality. It would have surprised him to learn that, when Imperial Athens fell from her throne, his ideal would be fulfilled. This was what actually happened. It was not until Athens lost her empire that she began to exert a great decisive influence on Greek thought and civilization. This influence was partly exerted by the establishment of schools in the strict sense. The literary school of Isocrates and the philosophical school of Plato which attracted to Athens men from all quarters of the Hellenic world. But the increase in the intellectual influence of Athens was largely owing to the fact that she was becoming herself more receptive of influence from without. She was becoming Hellenic as well as Athenian. She was beginning to become even something like this. This tendency towards cosmopolitanism had been promoted by philosophical speculation which rises above national distinction and it is manifested variously in the pan-Hellenism of Isocrates in the attitude of such different men as Plato and Xenophon towards Athens in the increasing number of foreign religious worships established at Athens or Piraeus in a general decline of local patriotism and in many other ways. There was perhaps no institution which had wider influence in educating Greek thought in the fourth century than the theatre. Its importance in city life was recognized by practical statesmen. It was therefore a matter of the utmost moment that the old Athenian comedy turning mainly on local politics ceased to be written and a new school of comic poets arose who dwelt with subjects of general human interest. Here Athens had a most effectual instrument spreading ideas and the tragedies of the fourth century though as literature they were of less note and consequence than the comedies were not less significant of the spirit of the time. They were all dominated by the influence of Euripides the great teacher of rationalism and the daring critic of all established institutions and beliefs and the comic poets were also under his spell. It can easily be seen that the cultivation of these wider sympathies was connected with the growth of what is commonly called individualism. By this is meant that the individual citizen no longer looks at the outside world through the medium of his city but regards it directly, as it were with his own eyes and in its bearings on him individually. He is no longer content to express his religious feelings simply as one member of the state in the common usages of the state religion but seeks to enter into an immediate personal relation with the supernatural world. And since his own life has become for him something independent of the city, his attitude to the city itself is transformed. The citizen of Athens has become a citizen of the world. His duty to his country may conflict with his duty to himself as a man and thus patriotism ceases to be unconditionally the highest virtue. Again, men begin to put to themselves more or less explicitly the question whether the state is not made for the individual for the state, a complete reversal of the old unquestioning submission to the authority of the social organism. It followed that greater demands were made upon the state by the citizen for his own private welfare and that the citizen, feeling himself tied by no indissoluble bond to his country, was readier than formerly to seek his fortune elsewhere. Thus we find in the single field of military science Athenian officers acting independently of their country in the pay of foreign powers whenever it suited them. Conan, Xenophon, Iphikrates, Chabrius, and others. A vivid, exaggerated description of this spirit has been drawn by Plato in one of his famous contributions to political science, the Republic. The horses and asses, he says, have a way of marching along with all the rights and dignities of free men, and they will run at anybody whom they meet in the street if he does not leave the road clear to them. And all things are just ready to burst with liberty. When he describes the excessive freedom of democracy, he is dealing with the growth of individualism as a result of freedom in its constitutional sense, but his argument that individualism is the fatal fruit of a democratic constitution rests largely on the double sense of the word freedom. The notable thing is that no man did more to promote the tendencies which are here deplored by Plato than Plato himself as fellow philosophers. If any single man could be held responsible for the inevitable growth of individualism it would be perhaps Euripides, but assuredly, next to Euripides, it would be Plato's revered master, Socrates, the son of Sofraniscus. When the history of Greece was being directed by Pericles and Cleon, Naceus and Lysander, men little dreamed, either at Athens or elsewhere, that the interests of the world were far more deeply concerned than the doings of one eccentric Athenian who held aloof from public affairs. The work of Pericles and Lysander affected a few generations in a small portion of the globe, but the spirit of that eccentric Athenian was to lay an impress, indelible forever upon the thought of mankind. The ideas which we owe to Socrates are now so organically a part of the mind of civilized men so familiar and commonplace that it is hard to appreciate the intellectual power which was required to originate them. Socrates was the first champion of the supremacy of the intellect as a court from which there is no appeal. He was the first to insist without modification or compromise that a man must order his life by the guidance of his own intellect without any regard for mandates of external authority or for the impulses of emotion unless his intellect approves. Socrates was thus a rebel against authority as such, and he shrank from no consequences. He did not hesitate to show his companions that an old man has no title to respect because he is old unless he is also wise or that an ignorant parent has no claim to obedience on the mere account of parental relation. Knowledge and veracity the absolute sovereign of the understanding regardless of consequences regardless of all prejudices connected with family or city this was the ideal of Socrates consistently and uncompromisingly followed. But men using their intellects often come to different conclusions. The command issued by an authority which Socrates may reject has been, directly or ultimately the result of some mental process. It is manifest that we require a standard of truth and an explanation of the causes of error. The solution of Socrates is, briefly, this. When we make a judgment we compare two ideas and in order to do so correctly it is obvious that these ideas must be clear and distinct. Error arises from comparing ideas that are undefined and vague. Definition was thus the essential point and it was an essential novelty in the Socratic method for arriving at truth. Its necessity is a commonplace now and we have rather to guard against its dangers. The application of this method to ethics was the chief occupation of Socrates for the interests of human life and its perplexities entirely absorbed him. In the history of ethics his position is supreme. He was the founder of utilitarianism. He arrived at the doctrine by analyzing the notion of good. The result of his analysis was the good is the useful. Closely connected was the principle that virtue is happiness and this was the basis of the famous Socratic paradox that no man willingly does wrong but only through ignorance for there is no man who would not will find out the errors of the startling statement. It is perhaps easier to forget how much wrongdoing is due to the confused thinking of clouded brains and the ignorance of untrained minds. The man who had no respect for authority was not likely to accept the gods from the range of his criticism and the popular religion could not sustain examination. Socrates was as little orthodox as Enixagoras and other impious philosophers but he made no new departure in the field of theology. He doubtless believed in the existence of God but as to the nature of the divine principle he was probably what we call an agnostic as he certainly was in regard to the immortality of the soul. Socrates then was the originator of a new logical method, the founder of utilitarianism and above all the unsparing critic of all things in heaven and earth or rather on earth only for he disdained things in heaven as uninteresting or irrelevant undeterred by any feeling of piety or prejudice. He never wrote anything, he only conversed but he conversed with the ableist young men of the day who were destined afterwards to become immortal themselves as thinkers. He communicated to them, to Plato, to Aristipus, to Euclides, his own spirit of skepticism and criticism. He imbued them with intellectual courage and intellectual freedom. He never preached he only discussed. That was the Socratic method, dialectic or the conversational method. He did not teach for he professed to have no knowledge, he would only confess that he was exceptional in knowing that he knew nothing. This was the Socratic irony. He went about showing that most popular notions as soon as they are tested proved to be inconsistent and untenable. He wished to convince every man he met that his convictions would not stand examination. We can easily conceive how stimulating to young men and how extremely irritating to the old. Haunting the marketplaces in the gymnasia Socrates was always ready to entrap men of all ages and ranks into argument, and many a grudge was owed him by revered and conceded seniors whose foggy minds he exposed to ridicule by means of his prudent interrogations. Though no man ever taught more affectionately than Socrates, he was not a teacher. He had no course of lectures to give and therefore he took no fee. Herein lay his distinction from the Sofists, to whom by his speculation, his skepticism, his mastery of argument, his influence over young men, he naturally belongs and with whom he was generally classed. He soon became a notorious figure in the streets of Athens. Nature had marked him out among other men by his grotesque, satter-like face. Though he was the child of democracy, born to a heritage of freedom in a city where the right of free men restrained, the sacred name of democracy was not more sheltered than anything else from the criticism of Socrates. He railed, for instance, at the system of choosing magistrates by lot, one of the protections of democracy at Athens. He was unpopular with the mass, for he was an enemy of shams and ignorance and superstition. Honest Democrats of the type of Thrasybilis and Anatis, who did their duty but had no desire to probe its foundations, regarded him as a dangerous, free thinker who spent his life in defusing ideas subversive of the social order. They might point to the ablest of the young men who had kept company with him and say, Behold the fruits of his conversation! Look at Alcibiades, his favorite companion, who has done more than any other man to ruin the country. Look at Critias, who next to Alcibiades has wrought the deepest harm to Athens, who brought up in the Socratic circle first wrote a book against democracy, then visited Thessaly and stirred up the serfs against their masters, and finally, returning here, inaugurated the reign of terror. Look, on the other hand, at Plato, enable young man, whom the taste for idle speculation infused by Socrates has seduced from the service of his country. Or look at Xenophon, who instead of serving Athens has gone to serve her enemies. Truly Socrates and his propaganda have done little good to the Athenian state. However unjust, any particular instance might seem, it is easy to understand how considerations of this kind would lead many practical, unspeculative men to look upon Socrates in his ways with little favor. And from their point of view, they were perfectly right. His spirit and the ideas that he made current were an insidious menace to the cohesion of the social fabric, in which there was not a stone or joint he did not question. In other words, he was the same active apostle of individualism, which led in its further development to the subversion of that local patriotism which had inspired the cities of Greece in her days of greatness. And this thinker whose talk was shaking the Greek world in its foundations, though none guessed it, was singled out by the Delphic priesthood for a distinguished mark of approbation. In the truest article that was ever uttered from the Pythian tripod, it was declared that no one in the world was wiser than Socrates. In the period of the philosopher's career the answer was given, but if it was seriously meant, it showed a strange insight which we should hardly have looked for at the Shrine of Delphi. The Delphic priesthood was skillful enough in adjusting their policy to the changing course of events, but they cannot be suspected of brooding over the mysteries of things to come or feeling the deeper pulsations of the thoughts of men. The motive of the oracle concerning the wisdom of Socrates is an unsolved attempt to enlist his support in days when religion was threatened by such men as an exegoras. It shows an unexpected perception of his importance, united with a by no means surprising blindness to the significance of his work. Socrates died five years after the fall of the Athenian Empire and the manner of his death set a seal upon his life. Anatus, the honest democratic politician who had been prominent in the restoration of the democracy, came forward with some pictures as a champion of the state religion and accused Socrates of impiety. The accusation ran Socrates is guilty of crime because he does not believe in the gods recognized by the city but introduces strange supernatural beings. He is also guilty because he corrupts the youth. The penalty proposed was death, but the charge was lodged in the Archon's office. Socrates would leave Attica and no one would have hindered him but Socrates was full of days, he had reached the age of seventy and life spent otherwise than in conversing in the streets of Athens would have been worthless to him. He surprised the city by remaining to answer the charge. The trial was heard in accord of five hundred and one judges, the King Archon presiding and the old philosopher was found guilty by a majority of sixty. It was a small majority considering that the general truth of the accusation was undeniable. According to the practice of Athenian law it was open to a defendant when he was condemned to propose a lighter punishment than that fixed by the accuser and the judges were required to choose one of the two sentences. Socrates might have saved his life if he had proposed an adequate penalty but he offered only a small fine and was consequently condemned by a much larger majority to death. He drank the cup of doom a month later, discoursing with his disciples as eagerly as ever till his last hour. The actual reply of Socrates at his trial has not been preserved but we know its tone and spirit and much of its tenor. For it supplied his companion Plato who was present with the material of a work which stands absolutely alone in literature. In the apology of Socrates, Plato has succeeded in catching the personality of the master and conveying its stimulus to his readers. There can be no question that this work addresses the general outline of the actual defense which is here wrought into an artistic form and we see how utterly impossible it was for Socrates to answer the accusation. He enters into an explanation of his life and motives and has no difficulty in showing that many things popularly alleged against him are false. But with the actual charge of holding and defusing heterodox views he deals briefly and unsatisfactorily. He was not condemned unjustly according to the law. And that is the intensity of the tragedy. There have been no better men than Socrates and yet his accusers were perfectly right. It is not clear why their manifesto for orthodoxy was made at that particular time but it is probable that twenty years later such an action would have been a failure. Perhaps the facts of the trial justify us in the rough conclusion that two out of every five Athenian citizens were then religiously indifferent. In any case the event had a wider than merely religious significance. The execution of Socrates was the protest of the spirit of the old order against the growth of individualism. Seldom in the course of history have violent blows of this kind failed to recoil upon the striker and served the cause they were meant to harm. Socrates was remembered at Athens with pride and regret. His spirit began to exercise an influence which the tragedy of his death enhanced. His companions never forgave the democracy for putting their master to death. He lived and grew in the study of their imaginations and they spent their lives in carrying on his work. They carried forward his work but they knew not what they were doing. They had no suspicion that in pursuing these speculations to which they were stimulated by the Socratic method they were sapping the roots of Greek city life as it was known to the men who fought at Marathon. Plato was a true child of Socrates and he was vehement in condemning that individualism which it had been the life-work of Socrates to foster. Few sides are stranger than Plato and Xenophon turning their eyes away from their own free country to regard with admiration the Constitution of Sparta where their beloved master would not have been suffered so much as to open his mouth. It was a distinct triumph for the Lachodemonians when their Constitution which the Athenians of the Age of Pericles regarded as old-fashioned machinery was selected by the greatest thinker of Athens as the nearest existing approach to the ideal. Indeed, the Spartan organization at the very time when Sparta was making herself detested throughout Greece seems to have attracted general admiration from political thinkers. It attracted them because the old order survived there. The citizen absolutely submissive to the authority of the state and not looking beyond it. Elsewhere they were troubled by the problem reconciling the authority of the state with the liberty of the individual citizen. At Sparta there was no such trouble for the state was absolute. Accordingly, they saw in Sparta the image of what a state should be just because it was relatively free from that individualism which they were themselves actively promoting by their speculations in political philosophy. How freely such speculations ranged at this time is illustrated by the fact that the fundamental institution of ancient society, slavery, was called in question. It had indeed been called in question by Euripides and the heterodox modern views of Euripides were coming into fashion. One thinker expounded the doctrine that slavery was unnatural. Speculation even went so far as to stir the question of the political subjection of women. The Parliament of Women, a comedy of Aristophanes, ridiculed women's rights and in Plato's ideal Republic when they were on a political equality with men. Socialistic theories were also rife and were a mark for the mockery of Aristophanes in the same play. Plato seized upon the notion of communism and made it one of the principles of his ideal state. But his object was not that of the ordinary collectivist to promote the material well-being of all, but rather to make his citizens better by defending them against poverty and ambition. Before he died, Plato had come to the conviction that communism was impracticable and in the state which he atom-braided in his old age he recognized private property though he vested the ownership not in the individual but in the family. In this period, during the fifty years after the battle of Auguste Potomy, the art of writing prose was brought to perfection at Athens and this is closely connected with the characteristic tendency which has engaged our attention. Socrates and others had been bringing about a revolution in thought. The Sicilian, Gorgias, and other professors of rhetoric or style had been preparing an efficient vehicle for diffusing ideas. Prose is the natural instrument of criticism and argument. It is a necessary weapon for intellectual persuasion and therefore the fourth century is an age of prose. The circumstance that the Great Athenian poets of the fifth century had no successors in the fourth and in brains or in imagination. If Plato had been born half a century earlier he would have been a rival of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Aeschylus and Sophocles had been born two or three generations later they would have expressed their genius in prose. Euripides who has come under the influence of the critical spirit seems sometimes like a man belated. He used the old vehicle to convey thoughts for which it was hardly suited. It must always be remembered that the great dramatic poets of the fifth century bore an unalienable religious character and as soon as the day came when the men of the highest literary faculty were no longer in touch with the received religion drama of the old kind ceased to be written. That is why the fourth century is an age of prose. Tragic poetry owes its death to Euripides and the Socratic spirit. The eager individualism of the age found its natural expression in prose whose rhythmical periods demanded almost as much care and art as poetry and the plastic nature of the Greek language rendered it a most facile instrument for the purposes of free thought and criticism. Thus Athens became really a school for Greece as soon as that individualism prevailed which Pericles had unwittingly foreshadowed in the very same breath. I say that Athens is the school of Hellas and that the individual Athenian in his own person seems to have the power of adapting himself to the most varied forms of action with the utmost versatility in grace. It must never be forgotten that it is to the democratic Athenian law courts that the perfecting of Attic prose was mainly due. This institution had, as we saw, called into being a class of professional speechwriters. But there were many who were not content with learning off and reciting in court speeches which a speechwriter like Laceus wrote for them but wished to learn themselves in the art of speaking. For those who aspired to make their mark in debates in the assembly, this was a necessity. The most illustrious instructor in oratory at this period was Isocrates. But the school of Isocrates had a far wider scope and higher aim than to teach the Constitution of Sentences or the arrangement of topics in speech. It was a general school of culture, a discipline intended to fit men for public life. Questions of political science were studied and Isocrates likes to describe his course of studies as philosophy. But it was to Plato's school in the academy that youths of the day went to study philosophy in the stricter sense. The discipline of these two rival schools where there was rivalry between them though their aims were different was what corresponded at Athens to our university education. And the pupils of Isocrates as well as those of Plato had to work hard. This method was one of the distinctive characteristics of Isocrates. His school attained a panhellenic reputation. Pupils came to him from all quarters of the world. Our city, he says, is regarded as the established teacher of all who speak or teach others to speak. And naturally so, since men see that our city offers the greatest prizes to those who possess this faculty, provides the most numerous and various schools for those who, having resolved to enter the real contest, desire a preparatory discipline and further affords to all men that experience which is the main secret of success in speaking. The tone of the teaching of Isocrates harmonized with the national position which he held. He took a large view of all things. There was nothing narrow or local in his opinions. And not less important than the width of his horizon was the high moral tone in which his thoughts were constantly pitched. Isocrates discharged not only the duties which are in modern times discharged by university teachers, but also the functions of a journalist of the best kind. Naturally nervous and endowed with a poor voice, he did not speak in the assembly. But when any great question moved him he would issue a pamphlet in the form of a speech for the purpose of influencing public opinion. We may suspect that the Athenians appreciated these publications more for reasonable excellence of style than for their political wisdom. A highly remarkable passage of Isocrates expresses and applause the wide-minded cosmopolitanism which was beginning to prevail in Greece. He says that Athens has so distanced the rest of the world in power of thought and speech that her disciples have become the teachers of all other men. She has brought it to pass that the name of Greek should be thought no longer a matter of race or matter of intelligence, and should be given to the participators in our culture rather than to the shares of our common origin. Thirty or forty years earlier no one, perhaps, except Euripides would have been bold enough to speak like that. But Isocrates did not see that this enlightenment which he admires was closely connected with the decay of public spirit which he elsewhere declares. It is curious to find the man who approves of citizenship of the world with regret to the days of Solon and proposing to revive the old powers of censorship which the court of the Areopages possessed over the lives of Athenian citizens. The form and features of an age are want to be mirrored in its art and one effective means of winning a concrete notion of the spirit of the fourth century is to study the works of praxiteles and compare them with the sculptures which issued from the workshop of Phidias. Just as the citizen was beginning to assert his own individuality as more than a mere item in the state so the plastic artist was emancipating his art from its intimate connection with the temples of the gods and its subordination to architecture. For in the fifth century, apart from a few colossal statues like those which Phidias wrought for Athens and Olympia the finest works of the sculptor's chisel were to decorate frieze or pediment. In the fourth century the architect indeed still required the sculptor's service but the sculptor's scope, for instance, was called upon in his youth to decorate the temple of Athena Alia Tegea in his later years to make a frieze for the tomb of Akarian Prince but in general the sculptor developed his art more independently of architecture and all the great works of praxiteles were complete in themselves and independent. And as sculpture was emancipating itself from the old subordination to architecture so it also emancipated itself from the religious ideal. In the age of Phidias the artist who fashioned a god sought to express in human shape the majesty and immutability of a divine being and this ideal had been perfectly achieved. In the fourth century the deities lose their majesty and changelessness. They are conceived as physically perfect men and women with human feelings though without human sorrows they are invested with human personalities. The contrast may be seen by looking at the group of gods in the frieze of the Parthenon and then at some of the works of praxiteles the Hermes which was set up in the temple of Hera at Olympia and is preserved there the Aphrodite of Sinidus a woman shrinking from revealing her beauty as she enters the bath or the satyr with the shape of a man and the mind of a beast. Thus sculpture is marked by individualism in a double sense. Each artist is freer to work out an individual path of his own and the tendency of all artists is to portray the individual man or woman rather than the type and even the individual phase of emotion rather than the character. The general spirit of the Athenians in their political life corresponds to this change men came more and more as a means for administering to the needs of the individual we might also say that they conceived of it as a cooperative society for making profits to be divided among the members this at least was the tendency of public opinion they were consequently more disinclined to enter upon foreign undertakings which were not either necessary for the protection and promotion of their commerce or likely to fill their purses the fourth century was therefore for Athens an age of less ambition and glory but of greater happiness and freedom than the fifth the decisive circumstance for Athens was that when she lost her empire she did not lose her commerce this was a cruel blow to Corinth since it was to destroy the Athenian trade that Corinth had brought about the war the fact shows on how firm foundations Athenian commerce rested the only rival Athens had to fear was Rhodes which was becoming a center of traffic in the southeastern Mediterranean but was not yet destined to interfere seriously with Athenian trade for a long time yet the population of Attica had declined and war reduced the number of adult male citizens from at least 35,000 to 21,000 but that was not unfortunate for there were no longer out settlements to receive the surplus of the population and even with the diminished numbers there was a surplus which sought employment in foreign mercenary service the mercantile development of Athens is shown by the increase of the Piraeus at the expense of the city in which many plots of ground now became deserted and lost by the growth of private banks it had long been a practice to deposit money in temples and the priesthoods used to lend money on interest this suggested to money changers the idea of doing likewise and Pashin founded a famous house at Athens which operated with a capital of 50 talents and had credit at all Greek centers of commerce thus business could be transacted by exchanging letters of credit instead of paying in coin and the introduction of this system even on such a small scale shows the growth of mercantile activity money was now much more plentiful and prices far higher than before this was due to the large amount of the precious metals chiefly gold which had been brought into circulation in the Greek world in the last quarter of the 5th century the continuous war led to the coinage of the treasures which had been accumulating for many years in temples and the banking system circulated the money which would otherwise have been traded in private houses but although the precious metals became plentiful the rate of interest did not fall men could still get 12% for a loan of their money this fact is highly significant it shows clearly that industries were more thriving and trade more active and consequently capital in greater demand the high rate of interest must always be remembered when we read of a Greek described as wealthy with a capital which would nowadays seem small thus a fortune of 50 talents little more than 10,000 English pounds would yield an income of nearly 1500 and that some had an enormously greater purchasing power than the equivalent weight of gold today such incomes were extremely rare communistic ideas were a consequence perhaps inevitable of the growth of individualism and the growth of capital the poorer burgers became more and more acutely alive to the inconsistency between the political equality of all citizens and the social and economical advantages enjoyed by the rich political equality seemed to point to social equality as a logical sequel in fact, full and equal political equality could not be secured without social equality also since the advantages of wealth necessarily involved superiorities and political influence thus, just as in modern Europe so in ancient Greece little in democracy produced socialists who pleaded for a leveling of classes by means of a distribution of property by the state Aristophanes mocked these speculations in his parliament of women and his wealth the idea of communism which Plato develops on lines of his own in the republic was not an original notion of the philosopher's brain but was suggested by the current communistic theories of the day it is well worthy of consideration that the Athenians did not take the step from political to social democracy and this discretion may have been partly due to the policy of those statesmen who doubtless conscious of the danger regarded the theeric fund as an indispensable institution the changed attitude of the individual to the state is shown by the introduction of a fixed remuneration for half a drachma to the Athenian citizens for attending the meetings of the assembly and the rise in prices is illustrated by the subsequent increase of this remuneration for the regular sessions in which the proceedings were unattractive the pay was raised to a drachma and a half for the other meetings which were more exciting it was fixed at a drachma the remuneration for serving in the law courts was not increased it was found that half a drachma was sufficient to draw applicants for the judge's ticket payment for the discharge of political duties was part of the necessary machinery of the democracy the distribution of spectacle money to the poor citizens was a luxury which involved an entirely different principle it is uncertain when the practice of giving the price of his theater ticket to the poor Athenian was first introduced it has been attributed to Pericles but it is possible that it was not introduced till Athens began to recover after the fall of her empire in any case the principle became established in the fourth century of distributing theeric monies which were supposed to be spent on religious festivals the citizens came to look forward to subsequent and large distributions the surplus revenue of the state instead of being saved for emergencies was placed in the theeric fund and this theeric fund became so important that it ultimately required a special minister of finance to manage it those statesmen those statesmen under whose guidance the theeric doles were most liberal had naturally the greatest influence with the mass of citizens and consequently finance acquired a new importance and financial ability was developed in a very high degree the state thus assumed the character of a commercial society dividends were a political necessity and in order to meet it heavier taxation was demanded we have seen how when war broke out with Sparta in the year in which the second Athenian confederacy was formed a property tax was imposed and the properties of the citizens were assessed anew for the purpose thus the state provided for the comfort of its poorer burgers at the expense of their wealthier fellows it is as it were publicly recognized as a principle of political science that the end of the state is the comfort and pleasure of its individual members and everything has to be made subordinate to this principle which is outwardly embodied in the theeric fund this principle affected the foreign policy of Athens as we have already observed when she took the step of bringing out settlers to Samos and elsewhere in defiance of the public opinion of Greece her chief motive was doubtless pecuniary profit constitutionally the restored Athenian democracy was a remarkable success the difficulties which the democratic statesmen encountered after the overthrow of the 30 had been treated with a wisdom and moderation which are in striking contrast with the violence and vengefulness shown in other Greek states at similar crises most democratic men of means had been robbed of property under the tyranny of the oligarchs and the property had been sold were the purchasers to be compelled to restore it without compensation were all the acts of the 30 to be declared illegal such a measure would have created a bitter discontented party in the state some of the chief democratic leaders voluntarily resigned all claim to compensation for the property they had lost and this example promoted a general inclination on both sides to concession and compromise the wisdom and tact displayed in this matter were not the least of the services which Thrasybulus and his fellows rendered to their country no oligarchical conspiracy endangered the domestic piece of Athens again no citizen if it were not a philosophical speculator called the democracy in question at this epic the laws were revised and the register of burgers was revised but the constitution was left practically unaltered a change indeed was made in the presidency of the assembly which had hitherto belonged to the Piratenas or board of ten selected every seven days from the presiding tribe in the council the close organic relations between the council and assembly rendered it needful that members of the council should preside in the assembly but the presidency of the assembly was now divorced from the presidency of the council and invested in a body of nine selected one from each of the nine tribes which were not presiding this change was obviously designed to form a check on the administration the presiding tribe in the council could no longer deal directly with the assembly but was obliged to present its measures to the people through an intermediate body which belonged indeed to the council but not to its own part of the council the year in which these new reforms were probably made witnessed also the introduction of a new alphabet as the official script of the state the old attic alphabet with its hard worked vowels doing duty for more than one sound was discontinued and hence forward the stones which record the public acts of the Athenian people are inscribed in the Ionic alphabet with separate signs for the long and short E and O and distinct symbols for the double consonants it is plain that Athens needed at this period not men of genius or enthusiasm but simply men of ability for the conduct of her affairs she had no great aims to achieve, no grave dangers to escape which demanded a pericles or a thymosticles a man of genius would have found no scope in the politics of Athens for two generations after the fall of her empire men of great ability she had men who were thoroughly adequate to the comparatively unambitious role which she had wisely imposed upon herself Agirius, Colostratus and afterwards Eupolis to us they are all shadowy figures Agirius inaugurated Agirius inaugurated the prophet system which afterwards resulted in the institution of the Theoric Fund and it was he who opposed and discredited the extreme anti-Spartan policy of the heroes of Phile his nephew, Colostratus enjoyed a longer career and played a greater part in the affairs of Greece Conspicuous as the founder of the Second Confederacy as the negotiator of the Peace of Chalice and then as the opponent of Epaminandus his policy throughout was consistent and reasonable he aimed at rendering Athens powerful enough to be independent of Sparta he desired that Sparta and Athens should stand side by side as the two leading states in Greece and he recognized that the neighborhood of Attica, Tabosha, necessarily laid upon Athens the policy of opposing the aggrandizement of Thebes Agirius and Colostratus might once and again fill the office of strategists but like Cleon and Hyperbolus they exercised their influence as recognized practically official advisors of the assembly the art of war became every year more and more an art and little could be accomplished except by generals who devoted their life to the military profession such were Timothyus the hero of Lucas Cabrius the victor of Naxos and above all Epikrates whom we have met so many places and in so many guises Timothyus was a rich man his father Conan had left him a fortune and he could afford to serve his country and his country only but Cabrius and Epikrates enriched themselves by taking temporary service under foreign masters Epikrates even went so far as to support the Thracian king whose daughter he had wedded against Athens all these military men preferred to dwell elsewhere than at Athens abroad they could live in luxury and ostentation while at Athens in modernity and public opinion was unfavorable to sumptuous establishments the attitude of the generals to the city became much more independent when the citizens themselves ceased to serve abroad regularly and hired mercenaries instead the hiring of the troops in their organization devolved upon the general and he was often expected to provide the means for paying them too here we touch on a vice in the constitutional machine which was the cause of frequent failures in Athens during this period no systematic provision was made that when the people voted that a certain thing should be done the adequate monies at the same time should be voted anyone might propose a decree without responsibility for its execution and at the next meeting of the assembly the people might refuse to allow the necessary supplies or no one might be ready to move the grant in the same way supplies may be cut off in the middle but it had not made itself seriously felt in the fifth century when the leading generals were always statesmen too with influence in the assembly but it became serious when the generals were professional soldiers whom the statesmen employed during the ten years after the peace of Caleus Athens was actively engaged in a multitude of enterprises of foreign aggrandizement but she achieved little and the reason is that her armaments were hardly ever adequate the difficulties of her financiers and the heroic reserve must be taken into consideration End of Chapter 13, Section 5