Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/309

 FAILURE TO CREATE HOSTILITY. 287 already noticed ; and we may fairly presume that its effect on the other side, in encouraging their Grecian enemies, was considerable. Timokrates visited Thebes, Corinth, and Argos, distributing his funds. He concluded engagements on behalf of the satrap, with various leading men in each, putting them into communication with each other ; Ismenias, Androkleidas, and others in Thebes, Ti- molaus and Polyanthes at Corinth, Kylon and others at Argos. It appears that he did not visit Athens ; at least, Xenophon ex- pressly says that none of his money went there. The working of this mission, coupled, we must recollect, with the renewed naval warfare on the coast of Asia, and the promise of a Persian fleet against that of Sparta, was soon felt in the more pronounced manifestation of anti-Laconian sentiments in these various cities, and in the commencement of attempts to establish alliance between them. 1 With that Laconian bias which pervades his Hellenica, Xeno- phon represents the coming war against Sparta, as if it had been brought about mainly by these bribes from Persia to the leading men in these various cities. I have stated on more than one occa- sion, that the average public morality of Grecian individual poli- ticians in Sparta, Athens, and other cities, was not such as to exclude personal corruption ; that it required a morality higher than the average, when such temptation was resisted, and a morality considerably higher than the average, if it were sys- tematically resisted, and for a long life, as by Perikles and Nikias. There would be nothing therefore surprising, if Ismenias and the rest had received bribes under the circumstances here mentioned. But it appears highly improbable that the money given by Timo- krates could have been a bribe ; that is, given privately, and for the separate use of these leaders. It was furnished for the pro- motion of a certain public object, which could not be accomplished without heavy disbursements ; it was analogous to that sum of thirty talents which (as Xenophon himself tells us) Tithraustea had just given to Agesilaus, as an inducement to carry away his army into the satrapy of Pharnabazus (not as a present for the private purse of the Spartan king, but as a contribution to the 1 Xen. Hellen iii, 5, 2 ; 1'ausan. iii, '), 4 ; Plutarch, Artaxerxes, c. 20.