Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/236

208 armistice for six months, took advantage of the interval to send an agent into Greece to bribe Thebes, Corinth, and Argos to stir up war against Sparta.

Then followed a period of distraction in Greece full of petty wars, of combinations formed and dissolved, and of internal dissensions in many of the chief towns. The only gainer was Persia, whose alliance was sought by various parties alternately. Thus in B.C. 395 a dispute as to frontiers broke out between the Phocians and Locrians, and Sparta and Thebes took opposite sides. This cost Lysander his life, who was defeated and killed near Haliartus, in Boeotia. Next year a combined army of Thebans, Athenians, Corinthians, and Argives was defeated by the Spartans near Corinth. Then the Persian Pharnabazus resolved to crush Sparta, and, collecting a fleet, put Conon—still living in Cyprus—at the head of the Greek part of it. The Spartan fleet having been defeated and almost annihilated off Cnidus (B.C. 394), Conon, after expelling the Spartan harmosts from the islands, next year (B.C. 393), sailed to Athens, and restored the long walls and the fortifications of the Piraeus. The victory led to a renewal of the com- bination against Sparta, and the hasty recall of Agesilaus from Asia. He defeated the allies at Coroneia, but the war went on with Corinth as the base. The Corinthians themselves, however, were fiercely divided, and the party in favour of Sparta admitted Agesilaus into the space between the long walls connecting Corinth and Lechaeum, where he again defeated the allied forces (B.C. 392), and in the course of the next year established Spartan's