Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/252

 230 HISTORY OF GREECE. CHAPTER LXXIII. AGESILAUS KING OF SPARTA. -THE CORINTHIAN WAR. THE close of the Peloponnesian war, with the victorious organi- sation of the Lacedaemonian empire by Lysander, has already been described as a period carrying with it increased sufferings to those towns which had formerly belonged to the Athenian empire, as compared with what they had endured under Athens, and harder dependence, unaccompanied by any species of advantage, even to those Peloponnesians and inland cities which had always been dependent allies of Sparta. To complete the melancholy picture of the Grecian world during these years, we may add (what will be hereafter more fully detailed) that calamities of a still more deplorable character overtook the Sicilian Greeks ; first, from the invasion of the Carthaginians, who sacked Himera, Seli- nus, Agrigentum, Gela, and Kamarina, next from the over- ruling despotism of Dionysius at Syracuse. Sparta alone had been the gainer ; and that to a prodigious extent, both in revenue and power. It is from this time, and from the proceedings of Lysander, that various ancient authors dated the commencement of her degeneracy, which they ascribe mainly to her departure from the institutions of Lykurgus by admitting gold and silver money. These metals had before been strictly prohibited; no money being tolerated except heavy pieces of iron, not portable except to a very trifling amount. That such was the ancient institution of Sparta, under which any Spartan having in his possession gold and silver money, was liable, if detected, to punishment, appears certain. How far the regulation may have been in practice evaded, we have no means of determin- ing. Some of the ephors strenuously opposed the admission of the large sum brought home by Lysander as remnant of what he had received from Cyrus towards the prosecution of the war. They contended that the admission of so much gold and silver into the public treasury was a flagrant transgression of the Lykurgean ordinances. But their resistance was unavailing, ond the new ac-