II

GREECE FROM 404 TO 359 B.C.

THE condition of the Greek world at the time when Demosthenes began to take an interest in public affairs cannot be satisfactorily explained without a brief review of the course of Greek history since the downfall of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War. To this the present chapter will be devoted.

So far as Athens herself was concerned, the calamity, despite the apparent completeness of her overthrow at the moment, proved to be less great than might have been expected. The tyranny of the Thirty, who established themselves in power shortly after the capitulation of the city to Sparta, was soon over; and it had at least one beneficial result, that it brought oligarchy into lasting disrepute. The democratic constitution was restored; and although rival orators might accuse one another of employing oligarchical methods or of sympathising with oligarchical ideas, and theorists might hanker after a constitution more efficient in its practical working than the Athenian democracy, there was, nevertheless, —at least for eighty years or so—no serious desire for constitutional change, nor any risk of successful revolution. The laws of Athens, which had fallen into some confusion, were revised and brought into harmony with one another; the city's trade revived rapidly; her external splendour and her position as the chief centre both of Hellenic commerce and of Hellenic culture brought strangers to her, as of old, from all countries; and, apart from some temporary relapses, her history for the next thirty years was a history of the gradual recovery of strength and prosperity.

The history of Sparta during the same period presents a different picture. After the capitulation of Athens in 404 she was for the moment the strongest State in Greece. But the governors and "Committees of Ten", which she established wherever she could, ruled tyrannically, and she came to be more and more detested. She failed, moreover, to fulfil the expectations of the principal States which had assisted her to conquer Athens,—Corinth, Argos, and Thebes. Corinth wished for the possession of Corcyra, and for undisputed supremacy in the seas west of the Isthmus, in order that her trade in those seas might be secure. Argos, though not really capable of being more than a second-rate power, at least expected some im­provement in her position in the Peloponnese.

Thebes desired to be acknowledged as the paramount state in Boeotia. Sparta did not gratify any of these desires, and all three States, as well as Athens herself, were ready to turn upon her when the opportunity offered itself in 395.

In that year the Persian King, Artaxerxes II, with whom—nominally in the interest of the Greek cities in Asia Minor—the Spartans had been at war since about 400, sent a Rhodian named Timocrates to the principal Greek States, with large sums of money, to induce the leading statesmen to cause their several cities to declare war upon Sparta. (Whether any statesman at Athens took the bribe is uncertain: in any case Athens needed little persuasion.) The Thebans incited their friends the Locrians of Opus to hostilities against the Phocians; the latter applied for aid to Sparta; and the Spartans under Lysander invaded Boeotia. But Lysander was killed in an attack upon Haliartus, and when an Athenian force joined the Thebans, his successor returned to Sparta. In the next year (394) we find a mixed army composed of troops from Athens, Thebes, Corinth, Argos, and Euboea, opposed to the army of Sparta, in which were contingents from the smaller Peloponnesian states. At first Sparta was successful on land: but the refortification of the Peiraeus, the port of Athens, was begun in July; on August 10th, the Athenian admiral Conon, at the head of a Persian fleet, won a great naval victory over the Spartans off Cnidos; and in 393 he rebuilt the walls of Athens (which had been destroyed in 404), a large body of Theban workmen assisting in the task. About the same time (probably in consequence of the revival of imperialistic ambitions in Athens) the moderate leaders who had guided Athens for some years gave way to Agyrrhius and other politicians of a more extreme type. The increase of the payment for each attendance in the Assembly to three obols made it better worth while for the masses once more to throw their weight into politics, and as their interests were on the whole best served by war, a markedly militant tendency began to show itself. The demagogues unhappily resorted, not infrequently, to prosecutions of their opponents and of the wealthier citizens in order to obtain money and to find supplies for the army. The war continued with varying results for some years: on the whole the trend of events was adverse to the domination of Sparta, and she lost to a great extent her hold over the islands and more distant colonies. Brilliant generalship was displayed on both sides: the Athenian Iphicrates in particular distinguished himself by his use of the newly devised force of peltast—composed largely (though not en­tirely) of mercenaries, and more lightly armed, though equipped with longer weapons, than the heavy hoplite forces which had been customarily employed—as well as by new tactical methods, which at first were extremely successful. On one occasion he surprised and destroyed a whole division of the Spartan army near Corinth.

In 392, the Spartans, hard-pressed for money, made an abortive appeal to Persia for the dictation and enforcement of a Peace. A similar appeal conveyed to Susa by their admiral Antalcidas in 387 was more successful; and the position of Athens at the end of the year was seriously threatened both on the Hellespont and at home: her finances were exhausted; and she had really no alternative but to submit to the Peace, which was finally concluded in the winter of 387-6. Any desire on the part of Corinth and Thebes to resist was quelled by the mobilisation of the Spartan army; and when the Great King's letter was read to the assembled representatives of the Greek States, the terms of the Peace were generally accepted. They seemed, indeed, to provide a temporary solution, if not altogether an honourable one, both of the disputes between the Greek States themselves, and of the position of the Greek cities in Asia Minor in relation to the King. These cities, with the islands of Clazomen and Cyprus, were now to become part of the King's Empire. All other Greek cities were to be independent, except that the islands of Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros were still to belong to Athens. The King declared his intention of making war upon any State which would not accept the peace; and although Thebes made an effort to obtain the recognition of her supremacy in Bceotia, she was obliged to give way, and to allow the towns of Orchomenus, Plataeae, and Thespim to be established as independent centres—centres, that is, at first of Spartan, and before long of Athenian, influence within Boeotia.

The ratification of the Peace of Antalcidas is an event of the highest importance for the history of the next half-century. On the one hand, the Peace provided as it were a charter of liberty to all the smaller States; and it could always be appealed to by a larger State desirous of putting a rival in the wrong by accusing it of menacing the autonomy of weaker cities. But, on the other hand, the final abandonment of the Asiatic Greeks to the Persian Empire, and the acknowledgment of the right of the King of Persia to dictate terms to the Greek States, are very significant of the difference between the spirit of the fourth century and that of the fifth, when any concession to Persia was thought of as treason to the cause of liberty. From this time onwards, the possibility of Persian interference in the internal affairs of Greece was always in the background of men's thoughts, whether they thought of such interference as a means of securing their own ends, or as a danger to be guarded against; and the influence of Persia by means of the "Persian gold," of which we hear so much, became from time to time a real and a very unfortunate element in Greek political life, creating suspicion everywhere, and affecting for the worse both the course of debate in the councils of Athens and the administration of justice in her courts.

The Peace of Antalcidas, however, did not in fact allay hostilities in Greece itself. It did indeed put an end for the time to direct hostilities between the Greek States and the Persian Empire: for although the rebellious subjects of the Empire—particularly Euagoras in Cyprus, and Tachos and Nectanebos in Egypt—were greatly assisted by Athenian generals and soldiers, these were not acting in the name of Athens, and the Athenians were more than once obliged to recall their generals at the request of the King. But in Greece itself the Peace was not perfectly satisfactory to any one. Athens, though the retention of the three islands was a concession to her dignity and an advantage of the first importance to her trade, was ashamed of the affair, got rid of the statesmen who had influenced her in the matter, and for many years followed the lead of Callistratus in their stead. The antagonism between Thebes and Sparta was not to be lightly healed, and the desire of the Spartans to recover their supremacy over the Peloponnese could not remain at rest for long. They did not indeed formally break the Peace. Their interferences with other States were, it seems, justified technically by the receipt of an invitation from the oligarchic party in the State interfered with, and by the pretence that that party represented the government of the State; so that nominally they merely placed their troops and governors at the service of the local government. But the effect was the same as if they had openly broken the Peace. In 385 or 384 they compelled the people of Mantineia (the largest town in Arcadia, and generally a centre of resistance to Sparta) to destroy their walls and to live in four or five villages, each under a Spartan governor, instead of in a town in which they could fortify themselves, and could also listen more easily to the harangues of the advocates of liberty. In 379 they conquered Phleius after a siege of twenty months, and their influence throughout Greece appears for a time to have recovered rapidly. In the North the town of Olynthus, the head of the Chalcidic League, had taken advantage of the weakness of Macedonia to extend its power over the Chalcidic peninsula and (in spite of a nominal alliance with the Macedonian King, Amyntas III) even over part of Macedonia itself. Amyntas joined two of the threatened Chalcidic cities, Acanthus and Apollonia, in an appeal to Sparta. The Spartans responded by sending an expedition against Olynthus, which, after a long struggle, was in 379 forced to become a member of the Spartan alliance. The position of Amyntas was, of course, greatly strengthened; but at the time no one could foresee that the power of the Macedonian monarchy would grow so great as to make it very regrettable that Olynthus and the Chalcidic League had not been suffered to remain as a bulwark against it.

In 383 or 382, a Spartan force under Phoebidas, on its way to Olynthus, contrived to seize the Cadmeia, the acropolis of Thebes. (The Thebans were at the time led by democratic statesmen, hostile to Sparta, and had refused to join in the campaign against Olynthus; while Phoebidas was aided by oligarchical conspirators within the walls.) The Spartans remained in possession until 379, when their garrison was expelled by the democrats, who had been living in exile in Athens, and who now formed a successful plot for the recovery of their native city. The attitude of Athens was peculiar. Strongly opposed as she had been to the policy of Sparta, the Spartan occupation of Thebes had been an advantage to her, since she had been enabled thereby to recover from Thebes the frontier town of Oropus, the possession of which was of great consequence; and the Spartans had re-established Plateae, between which town and herself there had always been friendship: she was also intimidated by the proximity of the Spartan army, and in consequence was not prepared to go to war; she even sentenced to death the generals who of their own accord had helped the Theban exiles; and she would probably have come to an arrangement with Sparta immediately, had not the Spartan admiral Sphodrias invaded Attica, and done some damage before he retreated.

The action of Sphodrias had not been ordered by the Spartans, but they refused to punish him on his return. Instead, therefore, of making peace with Sparta, the Athenians organised a new league, with the avowed object of mutual protection against the Spartans and their infringements of the Peace of Antalcidas; any States which were not subject to the Persian King were invited to join, and the terms of the Peace of Antalcidas gave some assurance to the smaller cities that they would not be oppressed, and made them the more ready to become members of the league.

The chief burden of the organisation of this Athenian confederacy (sometimes called the Second Delian League from its resemblance to the great alliance of the fifth century) was undertaken by Callistratus and the two brilliant admirals, Chabrias and Timotheus—the latter also a pupil of Isocrates, whose "Panegyric Oration" in 380 had probably done something to prepare the way for the formation of the confederacy. The arrangements were completed in 378 or 377. The synod of the allies was to be independent of the Athenian Assembly, and the consent of both was to be required to all active measures, and particularly to the declaration of war and peace. The contributions of the allies were not (as were those of the members of the former Delian League) to be regarded or designated as tribute paid to Athens, and Athenians were not to hold property in any of the allied States. Some few of the allies appear to have contributed ships, but all probably contributed money; and the execution of the plan of campaign was practically left to the Athenians. The principal cities which now, or soon afterwards, became members of the confederacy were Rhodes and Chios; Mytilene and Methymna in Lesbos; Byzantium, the great commercial city on the Bosporus; Chalcis, Eretria, and other towns in Euboea; the important island of Corcyra in the west, and the communities of Cephallenia, Zacynthus, and Acarnania, with many others of less note. The adhesion of Thebes was also obtained—perhaps through the personal influence of the Athenian envoy Thrasybulus—but could not be counted upon for long.

The active policy pursued by Callistratus and his associates necessitated financial reforms in Athens itself. In the same year in which the League was formed, in the archonship of Nausinicus, 378-7 B.C., the war-tax (a tax upon property, which in theory was only levied in an emergency) was put upon a new basis. The property liable to taxation was valued, and divided into one hundred parts, and those who were liable to the tax were distributed into Boards or "Symmories." Every citizen except those whose property was very small—the limit is uncertain, but was possibly twenty-five minae—was liable to the tax. By an arrangement which was made shortly afterwards, if not at once, the three hundred richest men in Athens had to advance the amount due, and were left to recover it as they could from their poorer brethren. There can be no doubt that, though the system was liable to abuse, the money was forthcoming under such an arrangement more promptly than it would have been if there had been a less complete organisation, and if State-officials had been obliged to apply directly to a very large number of individual citizens for payment.

The power of the new confederacy and the efficiency of the new method of taxation were soon proved. In 376 Chabrias gained a great victory over the Spartans off Naxos, and in 375 he won over a number of towns on the Thracian coast to the alliance, while Timotheus operated successfully against Sparta around Corcyra and in the seas west of the Isthmus of Corinth. In the same year, the Olynthian league was refounded—so little fear of Sparta remained in that region. But the cost of the war was heavy. Timotheus in particular was greatly embarrassed by want of funds, and the Thebans gave little help. In consequence of this, a Peace was made with Sparta in 374, by which the supremacy of Sparta on land was acknowledged by Athens, and that of Athens at sea by Sparta, and the terms of the Peace of Antalcidas were reaffirmed. But this Peace was immediately broken by acts of war on the part of Timotheus; and in order to get funds for the prosecution of the campaign in the West, he attempted to raise fresh allies in Thrace and the islands. He seems also to have obtained the support, for a short time, of Jason of Pherae, the most powerful ruler in Thessaly. But both Timotheus and Iphicrates, his successor in the command, found their supplies insufficient; the Thebans were becoming more or less plainly hostile (for the success of the Athenians could not but be regarded as a danger to Thebes) and in 373 they had destroyed Plateae. Accordingly peace was again made in 371. In a congress at Sparta, the autonomy of all the Greek cities was once more publicly asserted; but at the same time the right of Athens both to Amphipolis and to the towns in the Thracian Chersonese was conceded(Amphipolis had been founded by the Athenians in 437. The Spartans had captured it in 424, and in spite of various attempts, Athens had never recovered it. It was now an important city and virtually independent both of the great Greek cities and of Macedonia; but the Athenians claimed to have a right to it). The Persian King and Amyntas, King of Macedonia, were both represented at the congress, and their admission of the title of Athens to the places in question was of some significance. But the Thebans felt themselves strong enough to refuse to join in the Peace, unless they were recognised as having authority over all the Boeotians; and since Sparta declined to acknowledge this, the Thebans were excluded from the treaty, and Cleombrotus, with a Spartan army which had gone to assist the Phocians in their hostilities against Thebes, was instructed to attack them. He was utterly defeated in the battle of Leuctra, and the supremacy of Thebes among the Greek States was placed beyond doubt; though a second congress of envoys from Peloponnesian and other States, which assembled at Athens before the end of the year, once more confirmed the provisions of the Peace of Antalcidas.

The failure of the Spartans at Leuctra was followed by the loss of much of their influence in the Peloponnese. In one town after another, democratic and anti-Spartan revolutions took place. The Arcadian peoples asserted their independence without delay. The walls of Mantineia were rebuilt in 370; in Tegea the supporters of Sparta were overthrown; and the new town of Megalopolis was founded to be the centre of a number of Arcadian tribes and the meeting-place of their representative assembly, "The Ten Thousand." In 369, the Theban forces under Epameinondas ­and among them troops sent by the Euboeans and Acarnanians, who must have deserted the Athenian alliance for the Theban- appeared in the Peloponnese to support the Arcadians, who, having been properly refused aid by Athens (now the ally of Sparta), had appealed to Thebes. The Theban army invaded the territory of Sparta, and established Messene as the capital of Messenia, at last independent after its long subjection to Spartan domination.

There is little to be gained by following in detail the kaleidoscopic movements of the various States in the Peloponnese during the next few years. But it is significant that two attempts were made to establish a general peace by means of Persian intervention. In 368-7 a congress was summoned to meet at Delphi by Philiscus, who had been sent by Ariobarzanes, one of the King's Asiatic satraps. It proved a failure; for Thebes and Sparta could not agree with regard to the independence of Messenia, and the attempt of Philiscus to enforce his terms by collecting an army came to nothing. In the following year, however, representatives of several of the great Greek powers waited upon King Artaxerxes himself at his court in Susa,— Pelopidas from Thebes, Archidamus from Elis, Antiochus from Arcadia, Leon and Timagoras from Athens. Pelopidas took the lead. The terms he proposed stipulated for the independence of Messenia and of Amphipolis, and the withdrawal of the Athenian war-ships from the sea. To this Leon refused to listen; and on his return home he prosecuted his more compliant colleague Timagoras, who was executed as a traitor. The representatives of the Greek States, who assembled at Thebes, also refused to accept the proposals made in the name of the King; and both the prestige of Persia and the position of Thebes in the Greek world were distinctly weakened.

In the year in which this congress met (366) the Arcadians made peace with Athens. But in the course of the struggle with Elis, in which they were engaged from 365 onwards, dissensions arose among themselves as to the use to be made of the treasures of Olympia, captured from the Eleans; and the hostilities which resulted from these dissensions, and from the interferences of Thebes and Sparta, led in the end to the battle of Mantineia in 362; in which there fought on the one side the Theban army under Epameinondas (including Boeotian, Euboean, and Thessalian troops), the Arcadians of Tegea and of Southern Arcadia generally, the Messenians and the Argives; and on the other, the Spartans, the Arcadians of Mantineia and Northern Arcadia, the Eleans and Achaeans, and an Athenian contingent. The Theban side was victorious, but Epameinondas was killed, and his loss more than neutralised the advantage of the victory.

The policy of Athens had been, since the battle of Leuctra, antagonistic to Thebes and friendly to Sparta, and an incident of the year 366 had increased the hostile feeling of the Athenians towards Thebes. Themison, tyrant of Eretria, had seized Oropus, and had put it into the hands of Thebes, nominally until a proper decision should be given in regard to the claim of Athens to the town. Besides this, the Thebans had further alienated the Athenians, by the destruction, in the course of the last few years, of Orchomenus, Thespim, and Plateae. But the Athenians were tired of the unprofitable war, and not long after the battle of Mantineia a general Peace was made, Sparta alone standing out. Oropus remained in the possession of Thebes.

Before the battle of Mantineia, the Thebans had been very active in North Greece, as well as in the Peloponnese. In the year 370, Alexander, the son of Jason of Pherae, succeeded to the position of overlordship over the whole of Thessaly, which his father had held for about five years. But Alexander was exposed from the first to hostile invasions from Thebes, led by Pelopidas and Epameinondas. The invaders, though they were not uniformly successful, proved themselves to be on the whole the stronger power, and in 363 Pelopidas won a great victory at Cynoscephal, though he lost his own life. In one of his earlier expeditions northwards (in 368) Pelopidas had forced the Macedonians into alliance with Thebes, and among the hostages whom he brought to Thebes was Philip, the future conqueror of Greece, then not much more than a boy. But after the death of Pelopidas and Epameinondas the Thebans do not appear to have interfered in Thessaly, or to have established any effective control over Alexander.

During the greater part of the period of Callistratus' ascendancy in Athens, the Athenians had remained on good terms with the King of Persia; but in time their attitude had become somewhat less guarded. The condemnation of Timagoras and the refusal of the King's proposals in 366 marked a definite change of policy. In the same year, or soon afterwards, Ariobarzanes, satrap of the Hellespont, rose in revolt against the King. At first Ariobarzanes appeared only to be at war with rival satraps, and the Athenians sent Timotheus to his assistance. As soon as his revolt against the King himself was declared, Timotheus was precluded by the terms of the Peace of Antalcidas from assisting him further. But Timotheus consoled himself by besieging and taking Samos, which was being held, in violation of the Peace, by another satrap, Cyprothemis. Shortly afterwards there seems to have been a general revolt of the subordinate princes in Asia Minor and Egypt against Artaxerxes II, and not only Chabrias of Athens, but also Agesilaus of Sparta went to the aid of the rebellious Egyptians. Chabrias only returned to Athens in 359. By that time Artaxerxes II had died, and had been succeeded by Artaxerxes Ochus, who proceeded to take all possible measures for the re-establishment of his authority throughout his dominions.

After the conquest (nominally the liberation) of Samos, Timotheus in 365 transferred his activities to the Thracian Chersonese, where the maintenance of Athenian influence was of the greatest importance, since the greater part of the corn-supply of Athens, coming as it did from the shores of the Bosporus and the Euxine, had to pass through the Hellespont. Athenian settlers were sent both to Samos and to the Chersonese; and Timotheus then engaged in hostilities with Cotys, who had succeeded to the kingdom of the Odrysian Thracians in 383. His predecessor Ebryzelmis had been on good terms with Athens, and before him Medocus and Seuthes, who had divided the kingdom between them, had been brought into friendship with Athens by the diplomacy of Thrasybulus. Cotys, on the other hand, showed himself more anxious to maintain and extend his own power, than to assist Athens to control the Chersonese; and he gave Timotheus and other Athenian generals much trouble. Timotheus also attempted (in succession to Iphicrates, whose efforts had failed) to take possession of Amphipolis, the right of Athens to which had been conceded in the Peace of 371, both by Amyntas and by the Persian King. But though Poteidma and Torone (two important towns on the Chalcidic peninsula) and, shortly afterwards, Pydna and Methone were brought within the Athenian alliance, Timotheus failed to recover Amphipolis. He also made no headway against Cotys; nor did better success attend any of the generals who were sent to the Hellespont in 362 and 361, only to be cashiered and prosecuted on their return. It was even worse that Alexander of Pherae (now acting in the interests of Thebes) had built a fleet, occupied the island of Peparethus, defeated the Athenian admiral Leosthenes, and made a profitable raid upon the Peiraeus itself. Moreover Epameinondas had (in 364-3) made a cruise in the northern waters with a Theban fleet, and as the result we find the Byzantines, with the peoples of Cyzicus and Chalcedon, interfering in the following year with the Athenian corn-ships.

The policy of Callistratus, who had up till now continued to direct the Athenian Assembly, seemed to have failed; he was accused in 361 of not having given the People the best advice, and went into exile; his ill-advised attempt to return to Athens shortly afterwards led to his execution. For the next few years the most influential states­man in Athens was Aristophon, a man of advanced years, who had been powerful early in the century, but whose known friendly inclinations towards Thebes had kept him out of popularity for a long period. The Peace of 362, which has already been mentioned, was probably due to his influence, and was made none too soon.

At first, though Athens was now free from direct hostilities on the part of Thebes, there was little improvement in the conduct of military affairs in the North. Timotheus was again defeated by the Amphipolitans in 360-59. In the same year, Cephisodotus was sent to the Hellespont; but he had more than his match in Charidemus, a captain of mercenaries, who was in the service of Cotys, and, after the assassination of Cotys in the next year, was practically the guardian and first minister, as well as the general, of Cotys' young son, Cersobleptes.

The previous relations of Charidemus with Athens had been chequered. He had served for three years under Iphicrates; and the latter, when he had taken hostages from Amphipolis, had entrusted them to Charidemus, intending to send them to Athens; but when in 364 Timotheus succeeded Iphicrates in the command, Charidemus gave back the hostages to the Amphipolitans, thus removing the strongest inducement to them to surrender the town, and himself went off to Cotys. Soon afterwards he agreed to hire his services to Olynthus, which at this moment controlled Amphipolis; but some Athenian ships captured him on his way thither; he joined the Athenian forces instead, and was rewarded with the citizenship of Athens and other compliments. He then crossed to Asia Minor, and joined in the disputes of the satraps Artabazus and Autophradates. Professing to help the former, he actually took from him (or from his relatives Memnon and Mentor) the towns of Scepsis, Cebren, and Ilium; but he was hard-pressed by Artabazus and cut off from supplies, and in the hope of obtaining help from Athens he wrote to the newly appointed Athenian admiral, Cephisodotus, before the latter had set sail from Athens, offering to put the Chersonese in his hands. But for some unknown reason, Memnon and Mentor relented towards him, and persuaded Artabazus to let him go unmolested. He joined Cotys at Sestos (in 360), and instead of fulfilling his promise to Cephisodotus, laid siege to the Athenian towns of Crithote and Elxus in the Chersonese, openly opposed Cephisodotus for several months, and forced him to make a discreditable treaty, for which Cephisodotus was cashiered on his return home and fined five talents, only escaping condemnation to death by three votes. Demosthenes served in this campaign as trierarch; Cephisodotus sailed in his ship, and (according to a statement made by Eschines) Demosthenes himself spoke against Cephisodotus—whether as prosecutor or as witness does not appear—on his return home.

In the next year (359) events took a turn more favourable to Athens. Miltocythes, a Thracian prince who had risen against Cotys two years before and had received promises of support from Athens, fell into the hands of Charidemus. He handed him over to the people of Cardia, who were hostile to Athens, and they put Miltocythes and his son to death. This cruel deed was followed by a general outburst of indignation in that part of Thrace against Charidemus and Cersobleptes (the successor of Cotys); and they were forced to consent to a partition of the Thracian kingdom between Cersobleptes, Berisades, and Amadocus; the two latter being claimants to the kingdom who had entered into friendship with Athens, doubtless for their own purposes, but none the less honestly, since they stipulated in the treaty of partition for the restoration of the Chersonese to Athens. Satisfied with this, the Athenians took no proper steps to fulfil their own obligations; they despatched no funds to Athenodorus, the commander of Berisades' army, but merely sent Chabrias with one ship; so that Cersobleptes was able to disown the treaty, and to make an arrangement favourable to himself with Chabrias. This arrangement the Athenians repudiated, but it was not until 358 or 357 that Chares, who had taken command of the Athenian forces, could oblige him to make a treaty more in accordance with the original settlement. Even now, Cardia, which commanded the entry to the Chersonese from the Thracian side, was explicitly excluded from the list of places handed over to Athens. With the sequel to these proceedings in Thrace we shall be concerned in a later chapter.

We have now reviewed the course of events down to the year 359, and in some cases for a year or two beyond. It remains to summarise in general terms the position of the leading States in Greece at the point which we have now reached.

Sparta, though still one of the three strongest powers, was now the least important of the three. The attainment of independence by the Messenians and Arcadians, with their newly-established centres at Messene and Megalopolis, left her with reduced territory and resources, though she was ready to make an effort, if opportunity arose, to recover lost ground, especially against the Arcadians. The Arcadians themselves were still engaged in hostilities with the people of Elis, and the possession of the district occupied by the Triphylians was in particular a matter of contention between the two peoples. The Arcadians—at least those whose meeting-place was Megalopolis—relied on the support of Thebes; and after the battle of Mantineia, a Theban force under Pammenes had been sent to help them to maintain their independence; but it appears probable (in the light of subsequent events) that before long a party gained influence which was desirous of obtaining support from Athens rather than from Thebes, since the aid of Thebes seemed likely to be less effective now that Epameinondas was dead. Of the other Peloponnesian states, Corinth and Phleius had concluded peace with Thebes in 366; and in 361 Athens came to an understanding with Phleius, Elis, and the Achaeans; but neither these, nor Argos, which was unfriendly to Sparta, are of any importance in the period which lies before us. Indeed the Spartans themselves play but a small part in the history of the next thirty years, though they could still show from time to time that their bravery and their national dignity had not entirely left them. The relations between Sparta and Athens continued to be generally friendly.

The Thebans were fine soldiers, but they needed great men to lead them; otherwise they had not the energy or the perseverance to make the most of their opportunities; and after the deaths of Epameinondas and Pelopidas they were far less dangerous than they had previously been. They are a difficult people to characterise. The Thebans proper were a race of aristocrats—self-sufficient and contemptuous of trade and commerce, ruling or intending to rule over the inferior towns of Boeotia, but not attempting to assimilate them or consult their interests; and they were generally destitute of the humaner feelings. If they shared with the Boeotians generally the gift for art and literature, they did not develop it, any more than they used their political and military opportunities, except when stimulated by men of genius. So long as they could maintain their hold over Boeotia, and could occupy such a position of superiority over their neighbours, the Phocians and Thessalians, as would secure themselves against interference, they were content to live a life of self-indulgence at home; though it was of importance to them, if possible, to protect themselves against Athens by maintaining a firm footing in Euboea, keeping Oropus in their own hands, and suppressing those towns in Boeotia which were actually or traditionally friendly towards Athens. They were entirely devoid of all concern for the interests of the Greeks as a whole. In the Persian wars they had gone over to the enemy; their alliance with Philip of Macedon was dictated by equally selfish motives; and had they not been persuaded by the extraordinary efforts and eloquence of Demosthenes to take a nobler course, they might perhaps have remained lords of Boeotia under the Macedonian domination, with leisure for the enjoyment of the pleasures to which they were so much devoted.

In Thessaly the influence of Thebes appears still to have been felt; but though the Thebans had shown their power even against so powerful a prince as Alexander of Pherae, they do not seem to have taken steps to maintain their footing in the country, and after the assassination of Alexander in 359, his wife's brothers, Lycophron and Peitholaus, succeeded to the overlordship of Thessaly. At the same time each of the principal towns appears to have had its own subordinate government, and the supremacy of the tyrants of Pherae was not viewed with favour by rivals in other cities, such as the Aleuadae of Larissa. The cavalry of Thessaly were a very valuable addition to the forces of any power which was able to obtain their assistance.

Farther towards the north lay the Macedonian kingdom, which was now suffering, owing to the death of Amyntas, from disputes as to the succession, and greatly needed a firm hand. Round the coasts of the Thermaic Gulf were the colonies now subject to Athens—Pydna and Methone on one side, Poteidea on the other—of which more will be heard in the future; and over the Chalcidic peninsula the chief authority was wielded by Olynthus, once more the head of a considerable league. Beyond this peninsula stretched the coasts of Macedonia and Thrace, as far as the Chersonese, and beyond the Chersonese, the Thracian kingdom was bounded by the Propontis and the Euxine Sea. Amphipolis, virtually independent, occupied a position of great commercial and military importance near the mouth of the Strymon, and not far to the north-east rose Mount Pangmus, with its gold-mines, worked at present by the islanders of Thasos, who were colonists from Athens. On the Thracian coast the more important Greek towns were Abdera, Nicea, and Maroneia, and, between the Chersonese and the Bosporus, Perinthus and Byzantium, the latter exercising supremacy over Selymbria and Chalcedon, and in virtue of its situation commanding all the traffic in corn and other commodities which passed backwards and forwards between Greece and the Euxine coasts.

We may now turn to Athens. No longer able to stand alone against a combination of other powers, and no longer generally acknowledged as the leader of the Greek States (as she had been in the great days after the Persian wars in the fifth century), Athens was nevertheless the most powerful single State in the Greek world. No city headed so extensive and important an alliance. Corcyra indeed fell away in 361, and Byzantium, with the neighbouring towns, had for some time been unfriendly; but in 359 the greater number of the members of the Second Athenian Confederacy were still loyal; and in the course of the next two years most of the Euboean States, which had passed from the Athenian to the Theban alliance about twelve years before, were set free from the Theban domination, at their own request, by an Athenian fleet commanded by Timotheus, and became adherents of Athens. (This event made a great impression on Demosthenes, who served as trierarch in the expedition. Timotheus had roused the Athenians so effectively by his address to the Assembly, that the expedition had started within three days after it had been resolved upon.) The influence of Athens thus extended over most of Euboea, over the important islands of Lemnos, Imbros, Scyros, and Samos (as well as others), over most of the coast-towns on the Thermaic Gulf, and over the Thracian Chersonese and a number of towns on the south coast of Thrace. No other power had so numerous a fleet; her commercial activity and prosperity were unrivalled; and she was on very friendly terms with the princes who ruled the corn-lands about the Cimmerian Bosporus, I with which her trade was especially large. She was free from serious internal division, and her democratic constitution stood in no danger of disturbance.

Yet there were elements of weakness in her condition, which were soon to become actively dangerous. The raison d'être of the Second Confederacy—mutual protection against Sparta—had long ceased to exist; and her policy was becoming less and less one in which the allies had any interest. Nevertheless their contributions were still exacted, and even collected by Athenian admirals at the head of their fleet, and were used for any campaign in which they were at the moment engaged: while the resumption by the Athenians of the practice of sending out "cleruchs," or colonists who settled and held land in allied States, was contrary to the spirit, if not (in the case of the particular States concerned) to the letter, of the agreement with the allies.

Moreover there were features in the constitution and in the financial and military arrangements of Athens which were to be a source of great weakness in the next years; and before we can pass to the events of the first years of Demosthenes' political life, we must consider at some length the political system within which, like other Athenian statesmen, he had to work.