Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/294

 272 HISTORY OF GREECE. catastrophe. Serving against her in ships fitted out at his own cost, he had been captured in 407 B. c. by the Athenians, and brought in as prisoner to Athens. By the received practice of war in that day, his life was forfeits! ; and over and above such practice, the name of Dorieus was peculiarly odious to the Athe- nians. But when they saw before the public assembly a captive enemy, of heroic lineage, as well as of unrivalled athletic majesty and renown, their previous hatred was so overpowered by sym- pathy and admiration, that they liberated him by public vote, and dismissed him unconditionally. 1 This interesting anecdote, which has already been related in my eighth volume, 2 is here again noticed as a contrast to the treat- ment which the same Dorieus now underwent from the Lacedae- monians. What he had been doing since, we do not know ; but at the tune when Rhodes now revolted from Sparta, he was not only absent from the island, but actually in or near Peloponnesus. Such, however, was the wrath of the Lacedaemonians against Rhodians generally, that Dorieus was seized by their order, brought to Sparta, and there condemned and executed. 3 It seems hardly possible that he can have had any personal concern in the revolt. Had such been the fact, he would have been in the island, or would at least have taken care not to be within the reach of the Lacedaemonians when the revolt happened. Perhaps, however, other members of the Diagoridae, his family, once so much attached to Sparta, may have taken part in it ; for we know, by the example of the Thirty at Athens, that the Lysandrian dekarchics and Spartan harmosts made themselves quite as formidable to oligar- chical as to democratical politicians, and it is very conceivable that the Diagoridaa may have become less philo-Laconian in their politics. This extreme difference in the treatment of the same man by Athens and by Sparta raises instructive reflections. It exhibits the difference both between Athenian and Spartan sentiment, and between the sentiment of a multitude and that of a few. The 1 Xen. Hellen. i, 5, 19. Compare a similar instance of merciful dealing, on the part of the Syr acusan assembly, towards the Sikel prince Duketius (Diodor xi, 92). 8 Hist, of Greece, VoL VIII, Ch. Ixiv, p. 159. 3 Pausanias, vi, 7, 2.