Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/606

 578 394-376. were crippled by the miserable Oriental administration, e.g., the tardiness in paying the men. Hereupon Conon went himself to the king at Babylon, obtained a grant of the necessary money and powers and the king s consent to bestow the nominal command of the fleet upon the trust worthy Pharnabazus. Then at the head of the Persian fleet the Athenian admiral utterly defeated the Spartans at Cnidus (beginning of August 394). In a short time nearly all the islands and cities on the Asiatic coast were freed from the Spartan prefects (&quot;harmosts&quot;), and Conon carried his point of nowhere occupying the citadels with Persian garrisons. The Spartan sovereignty of the seas, after lasting ten years, was over for ever. Pharnabazus sailed to the Peloponnesus (393), and at Corinth was joy fully greeted by the Greeks gathered for the Avar with Sparta. He supplied them liberally with money and then returned home, while Conon restored the marine fortifi cations of Athens. Thus as a matter of fact a Persian fleet now ruled the Archipelago, but it was a menace and danger to Greek freedom no more. It was only with Greek help, under the leadership of a man like Conon, that the king s ships could still achieve much. As the land-war in Greece dragged on for a long time, the Spartans had again recourse to diplomacy. The new satrap in Sardis, Tiribazus, who in some measure revived the vacillating policy of Tissaphernes, met their advances. He overthrew Conon, who escaped death at his hands only with extreme difficulty and fled to Evagoras, at whose court he must have died soon afterwards. 1 But Tiribazus soon received in the person of Struthas a successor more favourably disposed to Athens. Many conflicts of Greeks against Greeks still took place by land and sea, but all the belligerents were exhausted, at least financially. So, when the Spartans at last succeeded through their ambassador Peace of Antalcidas and through Tiribazus in bringing about a Antal- peace, all the more important states of Greece found
 * idas. themselves obliged to accede to it, however unwillingly.

This is the notorious peace of Antalcidas, which Tiribazus laid before the delegates of the Greeks at Sardis or Ephesus in 387. It is not a mutual compact but a simple edict of the king. It sets forth that in the king s opinion all cities of the Asiatic mainland, as well as the islands of Clazomenae and Cyprus, ought to belong to him ; that, on the other hand, all other Greek states, even the petty ones, ought to be independent, with the single exception of Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, which should continue as of old to belong to Athens. If any one refused to accept this decision, upon him the king and his allies (particularly the Spartans) would wage war with all their power. It is hardly likely that the true import of this document was understood at the Persian court. That the great king should issue a simple order was there regarded as a matter of course, but the Persian statesmen, who really knew the state of affairs, may have had trouble in securing the acknowledgment of the freedom of the islands. By this peace the Spartans personally gained a great success ; for they gave up nothing which they still possessed, while by the declaration of the independence of even the pettiest communities they secured this advantage, that the cities which had hitherto ruled over wider areas were restricted to their own special domain, that, e.g., Thebes, hitherto head of Bceotia, now remained only one of many independ ent Bceotian cities. Thus Greece was split up into a thou sand petty communities, which Sparta, who did not dream of extending the independence to her own subjects, could with ease dominate collectively. Through this peace the Spartans gained for about sixteen years a much greater 1 This follows, in opposition to other statements, from Lysias, Pro fanis Aristnph., p. 155 ; cp. Isoer., Paney., 73, and Dinon in Nepos s Conon, at the end. [MEDO-PERSIAN power over the Greek mainland than they had ever possessed before, and they ruthlessly turned it to account. Athens, slowly regaining her strength, was appeased by the three islands, but nowhere was &quot; the peace sent down by the king &quot; felt to be a disgrace more keenly than at Athens. In that peace the king issued orders to the Greeks as to his subjects, and the express and definitive surrender of all the Greeks on the Asiatic coasts was felt all the more bitterly in the intellectual capital of Greece because there was no prospect of ever again freeing them as in the days of Xanthippus and Cimon. And yet it was known that the Persian empire was now much weaker than it had been then, and that it was only maintained by Greek mercenaries.- The real gain to Persia by the peace was a firm hold on the sea-coast. The domineering attitude towards the other Greeks was a mere appearance. In the following decades the king repeatedly commanded peace, even after Thebes had completely broken the power of Sparta (371). The powers for the time being employed Persian intervention as a means to their own ends, and there were plenty of diplomatic negotiations with the king, but Persia had no advantage from them. Moreover, now one, now another Greek state supported rebel satraps and vassals. They all, the king as well as the rebels, procured mercenaries from Greece/ 1 Meantime another enemy had arisen to the Persian Eva- supremacy in the west an enemy who, if Athens, hisg r a s - friend and sympathizer, had at that time been once more a great naval power with a7i aggressive policy, might perhaps have excluded the Persians from all the western seas. Evagoras of Salamis had made himself the almost independent lord of Cyprus, relying on the ancestral an tagonism of the Greek to the Phoenician element in the island. As early as 390 forces were levied against him. Athens, under obligations to him on Conon s account, sup ported him openly, although she was at that time still formally leagued with the Persians against Sparta. After the peace of Antalcidas Persia made great efforts to reduce Evagoras again to subjection. He was in league with Egypt, scoured the seas far and wide, and had even for some time maintained a siege of Tyre. The cunning Cypriot also kept up a secret correspondence with the vassal princes of Caria. After a ten years struggle he had to yield to superior force, but by skilful negotiation with the satraps he was able to procure a tolerable peace. Soon afterwards he was murdered, but his descendants long con tinued to be princes of different towns in Cyprus. About this time probably the expedition of Artaxerxes Cadu against the Cadusians took place, of which Plutarch, after ex P e&amp;lt; - 1 - * .*: Dinon, has given us a detailed account. 4 The Cadusians are the inhabitants of the modern Gilan, who were prob ably never completely subdued, and who certainly by their raids inflicted much annoyance on the neighbouring terri tory of the king. Darius II. had taken the field against them shortly before his death, 5 and the repeated mention in the fragments of Ctesias of the Cadusians at the time of the Median empire is presumably a reflex of the state of things in his own day. Artaxerxes s campaign turned out disastrously. The king probably thought to crush the wild mountain tribes who, however, are only to be caught by small and skilfully led armies by masses of troops ; but he fell into an ambush, from which he was only saved by 2 C ompare many passages in the orators and Plato. Especinlly interesting is the passage in Isocr. , Epist. ad Archid., p. 436, on the wild doings of the Greek mercenaries, who were specially burdensome to the Greek cities under Persian rule. 3 We are told that the king desired the internal peace of Greece, because he hoped thereby to procure mercenaries all the more easily from that country (Diod., xv. 38). 4 Artax., 24 : cp. Diod., xv. 8, 10. 5 Xenophon, Hell., ii. 1, 13. tion.