standing menace of the Helots, and a successful rising seems to have been averted only by an accident.' The Spartan Empire even at home rested on a volcano.

B. WARS AND LEAGUES TO THE PEACE OF ANTALCIDAS.

222. The March of the Ten Thousand; Renewal of War with Persia. In 401 B.C. the weakness of the Persian Empire was made strikingly manifest. Cyrus the Younger, brother of the king Artaxerxes, endeavored to seize the Persian throne. satrap in Asia Minor he had given Sparta decisive help against Athens, and now Sparta gave some countenance to his expedition. Through her aid, Cyrus enlisted ten thousand Greeks in his army. He penetrated to the heart of the empire, but in the battle of Cunaxa, near Babylon, he was killed and his Asiatic troops routed. The Ten Thousand, however, proved unconquerable by the Persian host of half a million, but the Greek leaders were entrapped afterward by treachery and murdered; still, under the inspiration of Xenophon the Athenian (whose Anabasis is our history of these events), the Ten Thousand chose new generals and made good a remarkable retreat to the coast. Until this time the Greeks had waged their contests with Persia only along the coasts of Asia; after this, the dream of conquering and Hellenizing the continent became a fixed idea in the Greek mind, and at length Alexander made it fact. First, however, the attempt was made by Agesilaus, king of Sparta. Sparta had incurred the wrath of Persia by favoring Cyrus, and Agesilaus burned with a noble ambition to free and protect the Asiatic Greeks, who a little before had been abandoned to Persia by his country. He invaded Asia Minor with a large army, and seemed in full career of conquest, when he was checked by the progress of events in Hellas.

223. A Greek League against Sparta, 395 B.C. No sooner was Sparta engaged with Persia than enemies rose against her

1 Special topic: Cinadon's conspiracy.

in Greece itself. Thebes, Corinth, Athens, and Argos leagued in a struggle called the Corinthian War. Persia supplied the allies with funds, and the two wars became intermingled. The contest turned upon two remarkable battles: in the first, an Athenian general in Persian service shattered the maritime empire of Sparta; and in the second, Athens for the first time shook Spartan supremacy on land.

224. Conon at Cnidus. Conon was the ablest of the Athenian generals in the latter period of the Peloponnesian War. At Aegospotami he was the only one who had kept his squadron in fighting order, and after all was lost he had escaped to Rhodes and entered Persian service. Now, in 394 B.C., in command of a Phoenician fleet, at the battle of Cnidus he completely destroyed the Spartan naval power. Spartan authority in the Aegean fell at once. Conon sailed from island to island, expelling the Spartan harmosts and garrisons, and restoring the democracies; and in the next year he anchored in the Peiraeus and rebuilt the Long Walls. These events raised Athens again to the place of one of the great powers, and threw Sparta back into her old position as head of the powerful Peloponnesian league only.

Shortly after,

225. Iphicrates, and the Change in Warfare. even this position was threatened. The Athenian Iphicrates introduced the first striking innovation in land warfare since the hoplite overcame the chariot and the knights, five hundred years before. His work was to increase the efficiency of lightarmed mercenaries so as to make them a match for the citizen hoplites. This he did by making their pikes and swords heavier and longer (to do which he lightened even their former defensive armor), and by training them to a nimble dexterity that the hoplite could not imitate. The result was seen in 390 B.C., when, with these peltasts, Iphicrates cut to pieces a Spartan battalion of seven hundred hoplites near Corinth (Xenophon's Hellenica, iv. 5). The leadership of

Sparta had rested upon her acknowledged superiority in the field, and now this supremacy was challenged.

226. Peace of Antalcidas, 387 B.C.- Accordingly, Sparta sought peace with Persia. The two powers invited all the Greek states to send deputies to Sardis, where the Persian king dictated the terms. The document read: :

"King Artaxerxes deems it just that the cities in Asia, with the islands of Clazomenae and Cyprus, should belong to himself; the rest of the Hellenic cities, both great and small, he will leave independent, save Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, which three are to belong to Athens as of yore. Should any of the parties not accept this peace, I, Artaxerxes, together with those who share my views [the Spartans], will war against the offenders by land and sea." - XENOPHON, Hellenica, v. 1.

These terms were taken by Sparta to dissolve all the other leagues (like the Boeotian, of which Thebes was the head), but not to affect the control of Sparta over her subject towns in Laconia, nor to weaken the Peloponnesian confederacy. Thus Persia and Sparta again conspired to betray the Greeks. Persia would help Sparta keep the European Greek states divided and weak, as they were before the Persian War; and Sparta would help Persia recover her old authority over the Asiatic Greeks. By this crowning iniquity the tottering Spartan supremacy was bolstered up a few years longer.

Of course the shame of betraying the Asiatic Greeks must be shared by the enemies of Sparta who had used Persian aid against her; but the policy had been first introduced by Sparta in seeking Persian assistance in 412 against Athens (§ 215, b), and so far no other Greek state had offered to surrender Hellenic cities to barbarians as the price of such aid.

C. FROM THE BETRAYAL OF HELLAS TO LEUCTRA.

227. High-handed Aggressions. The power so infamously recovered by Sparta was used with the same brutal cunning as in the past, and with even more arrogant contempt for justice. The Spartan government cynically announced the maxim that anything was right which was expedient, and avowed a

policy of keeping down all beginnings of greatness in Greece. Arcadia had shown signs of growing strength, but the leading city, Mantinea, was now broken up and the inhabitants dispersed in villages; by treachery in time of peace a Spartan force seized the citadel of Thebes; and, a little later, when the Athenian naval power began to revive, a like treacherous, though unsuccessful, attempt was made upon the Peiraeus.

228. The Ruin of the Chalcidic Confederacy. These outrages were all to recoil finally upon the head of the offenders; but first there occurred an event, deplorable for Greece. After the overthrow of the Athenian power on the north coast of the Aegean in the Peloponnesian War, Olynthus, a leading Greek city of the district, had built up a promising Hellenic confederacy, to check the Thracian and Macedonian barbarians. From the little that we know of this league, it seems probable that a definite advance in federal government was made here. The cities retained their equality and separate independence in local matters; but they were merged in a large state with new bonds of union never before seen in Greek leagues. The citizens of any city could live and hold land and intermarry in any other city of the confederacy; and no one city had superior rights or privileges, as Athens had had in the Delian League.

The forty states so united made already a formidable power, and if left to grow, this union might have saved Hellas from Macedonian conquest, or even have brought all Hellas into union. Athens and Thebes had declined to join, however, and now Sparta destroyed the confederacy, leaving the ground cleared for the subsequent growth of Macedon.1

229. The Revolt of Thebes, and the New Athenian Confederacy. The attack upon Spartan rule came from Thebes and Athens, who had been so wantonly injured. The Spartan garrison at

1 For the world this was no doubt well, in view of Alexander's conquests later; but from a Greek point of view the ruin of the confederacy was most unhappy. Advanced students may consult Grote, X. 67-94, and Freeman's Federal Government, I. 190-197, on the nature of this federal state.

Thebes supported an oligarchic Theban government whose terrorism drove crowds of citizens into exile. Athens received them, as Thebes had sheltered Athenian fugitives in the time of the Thirty Tyrants; and from Athens their leader Pelopidas struck the return blow.1 Thebes was surprised and seized by the exiles, and the government passed into the hands of the democrats.

An indecisive war with Sparta followed for some years. During this conflict, in 377-376 B.C., the cities of the Aegean began to seek protection against Sparta in a new league with Athens. This confederacy had a definite written constitution." Each state was to send a deputy to a congress at Athens. Athens herself was to have no representative in the congress, but she was to have a veto upon its decisions. Thus the confederacy consisted of two parts, Athens and the allies, neither of which could coerce the other. The old arrangement of contributions of money and ships was adopted under new The league came to count seventy communities; but it was designed only to check Sparta, and it faded away when Sparta became too weak to be feared.

names.

230. Leuctra; the Overthrow of Sparta. In 371 B.C. the contending parties, wearied with war, concluded peace. But when the deputies were about to sign for their cities, Epaminondas, the Theban representative, demanded the right to sign for all Boeotia, as Sparta did for all Laconia. Sparta, therefore, excluded Thebes from the peace and turned to crush her, now left alone. A powerful army at once invaded Boeotia, and met with an overwhelming defeat by a smaller Theban force at Leuctra.

This amazing result was due to the military genius of Epaminondas. Hitherto the Greeks had fought in extended lines, from eight to twelve men deep. Against such a Spartan line Epaminondas adopted a new arrangement that marks a step in

1 Special reports: Pelopidas' expedition from Athens; the Social War. 2 Gilbert, 435 ff., or Holm, III. 85-87.