Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/250

 228 HISTORY OF GREECE. The time of the Olympic festival seems to have been now approaching, and the Eleians were probably the more anxious to obtain peace from Sparta, as they feared to be deprived of their privilege as superintendents. The Pisatans, inhabitants of the district immediately around Olympia, availed themselves of the Spartan invasion of Elis to petition for restoration of their original privilege, as administrators of the temple of Zeus at Olympia with its great periodical solemnity, by the dispossession of the Eleiana as usurpers of that privilege. But their request met with no suc- cess. It was true indeed that such right had belonged to the Pisa- tans in early days, before the Olympic festival had acquired its actual Pan-hellenic importance and grandeur ; and that the Eleians had only appropriated it to themselves after conquering Following the chronology of Diodorus, who places the beginning of the war in 402 B. c., I differ from Mr. Clinton, who places it in 401 B. c. (Fasti Hellen. ad ann.), and from Sievers (Geschichte von Griechenland bis zur Schlacht von Mantinea, p. 382), who places it in 398 B. c. According to Mr. Clinton's view, the principal year of the war would have been 400 B. c., the year of the Olympic festival. But surely, had such been the fact, the coincidence of war in the country with the Olympic festi- val, must have raised so many complications, and acted so powerfully on the sentiments of all parties, as to be specifically mentioned. In my judg- ment, the war was brought to a close in the early part of 400 B. c., before the time of the Olympic festival arrived. Probably the Eleians were anx- ious, on this very ground, to bring it to a close before the festival did ar- rive. Sievers, in his discussion of the point, admits that the date assigned by Diodorus to the Eleian war, squares both with the date which Diodonu gives for the death of Agis, and with that which Plutarch states about the duration of the reign of Agesilaus, better than the chronology which he himself (Sievers) prefers. He founds his conclusion on Xenophon, Hell, iii, 2, 21. TOVTUV tie irpa.TTOfi.ivuv ev TJ) 'Aaip vnn &epicvU.i6a, aKc6aijji6vioL Kara TOV O.VTOV xpovov nu'^ai opyi&fievoi rote 'HAeiotf, etc. This passage is certainly of some weight ; yet I think in the present case it is not to be pressed with rigid accuracy as to date. The whole third Book down to th'ise very words, has been occupied entirely with the course of Asiatic affairo. Not a single proceeding of the Lacedaemonians in Pelo- ponnesus, since the amnesty at Athens, has yet been mentioned. The com- mand of Derkyllidas included only the last portion of the Asiatic exploits, and Xenophon has here loosely refe Ted to it as if it comprehended th whole. Sievers moreover compresses the whole Eleian war into on*) yeai and a fraction ; an interval, shorter, I l hink, than that which is implied ID the statements of Xenophon,