The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]

Such then was the result throughout Greece when that long war, which had been undertaken in the name of universal autonomy, was terminated by the battle of Ægospotami. In place of imperial Athens was substituted, not the promised autonomy, but yet more imperial Sparta. An awful picture is given by the philo-Laconian Xenophon, in 399 B.C., of the ascendency exercised throughout all the Grecian cities, not merely by the ephors and the public officers, but even by the private citizens, of Sparta.

We have more than one picture of the Athenian empire in speeches made by hostile orators who had every motive to work up the strongest antipathies in the bosoms of their audience against it. We have the addresses of the Corinthian envoys at Sparta when stimulating the Spartan allies to the Peloponnesian War; that of the envoys from Mytilene delivered at Olympia to the Spartan confederates, when the city had revolted from Athens and stood in pressing need of support; the discourse of Brasidas in the public assembly at Acanthus; and more than one speech also from Hermocrates, impressing upon his Sicilian countrymen hatred as well as fear of Athens. Whoever reads these discourses, will see that they dwell almost exclusively on the great political wrong inherent in the very fact of her empire, robbing so many Grecian communities of their legitimate autonomy, over and above the tribute imposed. That Athens had thus already enslaved many cities, and was only watching for opportunities to enslave many more, is the theme upon which they expatiate. But of practical grievances—of cruelty, oppression, spoliation, multiplied exiles, etc., of high-handed wrong committed by individual Athenians—not one word is spoken. Had there been the smallest pretext for introducing such inflammatory topics, how much more impressive would have been the appeal of Brasidas to the sympathies of the Acanthians! How vehement would have been the denunciations of the Mytilenean envoys, in place of the tame and almost apologetic language which we now read in Thucydides! Athens extinguished the autonomy of her subject-allies, and punished revolters with severity, sometimes even with cruelty. But as to other points of wrong, the silence of accusers, such as those just noticed, counts as a powerful exculpation.

[405-403 B.C.]

The case is altered when we come to the period succeeding the battle of Ægospotami. Here indeed also, we find the Spartan empire complained of (as the Athenian empire had been before), in contrast with that state of autonomy to which each city laid claim, and which Sparta not merely promised to ensure, but set forth as her only ground of war. Yet this is not the prominent grievance—other topics stand more emphatically forward. The decemvirs and the harmosts (some of the latter being helots), the standing instruments of Spartan empire, are felt as more sorely painful than the empire itself; as the language held by Brasidas at Acanthus admits them to be beforehand. At the time when Athens was a subject city under Sparta, governed by the Lysandrian Thirty and by the Lacedæmonian harmost in the Acropolis—the sense of indignity arising from the fact of subjection was absorbed in the still more terrible suffering arising from the enormities of those individual rulers whom the imperial state had set up. Now Athens set up no local rulers—no native Ten or native Thirty—no resident Athenian harmosts or garrisons. This was of itself an unspeakable exemption, when compared with the condition of cities subject, not only to the Spartan empire, but also under that empire to native decemvirs like Critias, and Spartan harmosts like Aristarchus or Aristodemus. A city subject to Athens had to bear definite burdens enforced by its own government, which was liable in case of default or delinquency to be tried before the popular Athenian dicastery. But this same dicastery (as is distinctly stated by Thucydides) was the harbour of refuge to each subject city; not less against individual Athenian wrong-doers than against misconduct from other cities. In no one point can it be shown that the substitution of Spartan empire in place of Athenian was a gain, either for the subject cities or for Greece generally; while in many points it was a great and serious aggravation of suffering. And this abuse of power is the more deeply to be regretted, as Sparta enjoyed after the battle of Ægospotami a precious opportunity—such as Athens had never had, and such as never again recurred—of reorganising the Grecian world on wise principles, and with a view to Panhellenic stability and harmony.