Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/330

 R08 HISTORY OF GREECE. So far as the Lacedaemonians separately were concerned, the buttle of Corinth was an important victory, gained (as they af- firmed) with the loss of only eight oen, and inflicting heavy loss upon the Athenians in the battle, as well as upon the remaining confederates hi their return from pursuit. Though the Athenian hoplites suffered thus severely, yet Thrasybulus their commander, 1 who kept the field until the last, with strenuous efforts to rally them, was not satisfied with their behavior. But on the other hand, all the allies of Sparta were worsted, and a considerable number of them slain. According to Diodorus, the total loss on the Lacedaemonian side was eleven hundred; on the side of the confederates twenty-eight hundred. 2 On the whole, the victory of the Lacedaemonians was not sufficiently decisive to lead to impor- tant results, though it completely secured their ascendency within Peloponnesus. We observe here, as we shall have occasion to observe elsewhere, that the Peloponnesian allies do not fight heartily in the cause of Sparta. They seem bound to her more by fear than by affection. The battle of Corinth took place about July 394 B. c., seemingly about the same time as the naval battle near Knidus (or perhaps a little earlier), and while Agesilaus was on his homeward march after being recalled from Asia. Had the Lacedaemonians been able to defer the battle until Agesilaus had come up so as to threaten Bceotia on the northern side, their campaign would probably have been much more successful. As it is, their defeated allies doubtless went home in disgust from the field of Corinth, so that the confeder- ates were now enabled to turn their whole attention to Agesilaus. That prince had received hi Asia his summons of recall from the ephors with profound vexation and disappointment, yet at the same tune with patriotic submission. He had augmented his army, the expression in Lysias, Orat. xvi, (pro Mantitheo) s. 20. iv Kopivdu w- oiuv io%vpuv KaTEiTiqfifievuv. 1 Lysias, Orat. xvi, (pro Mantitheo) s. 19. Plato in his panegyrical discourse (Menexenus, c. 17, p. 245 E.) ascribes the defeat and loss of the Athenians to "bad gronnd" xpywpwav dva- The statement in Xenophon (Agesil. vii, 5) that near ten thousand mea were slain on the side of the confederates, is a manifest exaggeration,- it indeed the reading be correct.
 * Diodor. xiv, 83.