Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/277

Rh The decay of other parts of Greece was still more marked. Thessaly was practically incorporated with Macedonia, and though for a time it seems to have enjoyed a quiet kind of prosperity, it suffered much in after-times as the battle-ground of Macedonia and Rome. In Sparta the true Spartans were steadily dwindling, the land was passing into the hands of a few families, the institutions which had created a nation of soldiers were falling into neglect, and the government was becoming more and more oligarchical. A small class of wealthy persons were living in a nation for the most part idle and needy—a “Laconian” no longer suggested the idea of a brave and simple soldier so much as of a needy buffoon. Here, however, as in Thessaly and in the Lacedaemonian colony at Tarentum, there was still a military class, which probably included the most energetic portion of the citizens, who were highly valued by other states or sovereigns as mercenary soldiers. The decadence of Boeotia was perhaps more marked than that of the other parts of Greece. Cassander restored Thebes in B.C. 315 (it had always retained some of its inhabitants, and the temples had not been destroyed), but it did not recover political power or influence. The two cities of Boeotia which did retain a certain prosperity were Thespiae and Tanagra, where a fine kind of pottery ware was produced. In the rest of Boeotia a rather vulgar luxury and ostentation took the place of political activity. Polybius says that the decline became rapid after a war with the Aetolians in B.C. 245, but asserts that it began much earlier. With this political decline