Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/237

Rh supremacy in Corinth and Northern Peloponnesus generally. Then came a check to the success of Sparta by the military genius of the Athenian Iphicrates, who, with a force specially trained and more lightly armed than the regular hoplites, cut to pieces a company or mora of Spartans (B.C. 390).

This made a great impression in Greece generally, and seems to have influenced the Spartans once more to obtain the support of Persia. There had been meanwhile various operations at sea, in which successes had been gained on both sides, without any very decisive result, as far north as Byzantium and as far south as Rhodes. But when in B.C. 387 the Spartan ambassador, Antalcidas, returned from the Persian court with a royal decree announcing that he would war against any state that attempted to violate two conditions—(1) the possession by the king of the Greek states in Asia, (2) the autonomy of all other states (except Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, which were to belong to Athens)—the Greeks in general were obliged to submit, because with the assistance of the Persians, Antalcidas had collected a fleet of eighty vessels, and no state was strong enough to resist him.

The Spartan supremacy had thus a new lease of life. But in the sixteen years which followed (B.C. 387–371) a series of violent and oppressive proceedings on the part of the Spartan government and officers gave rise to renewed war, which made the king's rescript a dead letter, except that the loss of freedom on the part of the Asiatic cities remained. But there was only the briefest interval of peace