Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/368

 346 HISTORY OF GREECE women, and children, freemen and slaves, with cattle and other property, Agesilaus ordered that all those who had taken part in the massacre at Corinth, in the market-place, should be handed over to the vengeance of the exiles ; and that ah 1 the rest should be sold as slaves. 1 Though he did not here inflict any harder measure than was usual in Grecian warfare, the reader who reflects that this sentence, pronounced by one on the whole more generous than most contemporary commanders, condemned num- bers of free Corinthian men and women to a life of degradation, if not of misery, will understand by contrast the encomiums with which in my last volume I set forth the magnanimity of Kal- likratidas after the capture of Methymna ; when he refused, in spite of the importunity of his allies, to sell either the Methym- naean or the Athenian captives, and when he proclaimed the ex alted principle, that no free Greek should be sold into slavery by any permission of his. 2 As the Lacedaemonians had been before masters of Lechaeum, Krommyon, and Sidus, this last success shut up Corinth on its other side, and cut off its communication with Bocotia. The city not being in condition to hold out much longer, the exiles already began to lay their plans for surprising it by aid of friends within. 3 So triumphant was the position of Agesilaus, that his enemies were all in alarm, and the Thebans, as well as others, sent fresh envoys to him to solicit peace. His antipathy towards the Thebans was so vehement, that it was a great personal satisfaction to him to see them thus humiliated. He even treated their envoys with marked contempt, affecting not to notice them when they stood close by, though Pharax, the proxenus of Thebes at Sparta, was preparing to introduce them. Absorbed in this overweening pride and exultation over con- quered enemies, Agesilaus was sitting in a round pavilion, on the 1 Xen. Hellen. iv, 5, 5-8. 1 Xen. Hellen. i, 5, 14. See Vol. VIII, Ch. bur, p. 165 of this History The sale of prisoners here directed by Agesilaus belies the encomiums of his biographers (Xen. Agesil. vii, 6; Cornel. Nep. Agesil. c. 5). The story of Polyaenns (iii, 9, 45) may perhaps refer to this point of time But it is rare that we can verify his anecdotes or those of the other Tactic writers. M. Rehdantz strives in vain to find proper places for the sixty three different stratagems which Polysenus ascribes to Iphikrates
 * Xsn. Agesil. vii, 6 ; Cornelius Nepos, Ages. c. 5.