Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/362

 340 HISTORl OF OKEECE. within them ; thus breaking up the naval power of Corinth in the Krissaean Gulf. Lechaeum now became a permanent post of hos- tility against Corinth, occupied by a Lacedaemonian garrison, and occasionally by the Corinthian exiles, while any second rebuilding of the Corinthian Long Walls by the Athenians became impossi- ble. After this important success, Agesilaus returned to Sparta. Neither he nor his Lacedaemonian hoplites, especially the Amy- klaeans, were ever willingly absent from the festival of the Hya- k in t hia ; nor did he now disdain to take his station in the chorus, 1 under the orders of the choric conductor, for the paean in honor of Apollo. It was thus that the Long Walls, though rebuilt by the Athenians in the preceding year, were again permanently overthrown, and the road for Lacedaemonian armies to march beyond the isth- mus once more laid open. So much were the Athenians and the Boeotians alarmed at this new success, that both appear to have express purpose of rebuilding the Long Walls which Praxitas had in part broken down. This step would hare been both impracticable and useless, if the Lacedaemonians had stood then in possession of Lechaeum. There is one passage of Xenophon, indeed, which looks as if the Lace- daemonians had been in possession of Lechaeum before this expedition of the Athenians to reestablish the Long Walls, A.vrol (the Lacedaemonians) <T EK TOV Aex aiov tipftujtevoi aiiv fiopq not Tolf ruv Kopivdiuv tyvyuai, KVKku irepl TO uarv TUV 'K.opivdiuv earpaTevovro (iv, 4, 17). But whoever reads attentively the sections from 15 to 19 inclusive, will see (I think) thas this affirmation may well refer to a period after, and not before. the capture of Lechoeum by Agesilaus ; for it has reference to the general contempt shown by the Lacedaemonians for the peltasts of Iphikrates, as contrasted with the terror displayed by the Mantineians and others, of these same peltasts. Even if this were otherwise, however, I should still say that the passages which I have produced above from Xenophon show plain- ly that he represents Lechaeum to have been captured by Agesilaus and Teleutias ; and that the other words, iit TOV Aexaiov dppufievoi, if they really implied anything inconsistent with this, must be regarded as an inac curacy. I will add that the chapter of Diodorus, xiv, 86, puts into one year events which cannot all be supposed to havs taken place in that same year. Had Lechseum been in possession and occupation by the Lacedaemonians In the year preceding the joint attack by Agesilaus and Teleutias, Xemophon would surely have mentioned it in iv, 4, 14; for it was a more inporta^t post than Sikyon, for acting against Corinth. 1 XCD. Agesilaus, ii, 1 7.