Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/350

 326 fflSTORY OF GREECE. Athene. When, to all these grounds of opposition, we add, the expense and trouble of the undertaking itself, the interference with private property, the peculiar violence of party which hap- pened then to be raging, and the absence of a large proportion of military citizens in Egypt, — we shall hardly be surprised to find that the projected long walls brought on a risk of the most serious character both for Athens and her democracy. If any farther proof were wanting of the vast importance of these long walls, in the eyes both of friends and of enemies, we might tind it in the fact, that their destruction was the prominent mark of Athenian humiliation after the battle of JEgos, Potamos, and their restoration the immediate boon of Pharnabazus and Konon after the victory of Knidus. Under the influence of the alarm now spread by the proceed- ings of Athens, the Lacedaemonians were prevailed upon to undertake an expedition out of Peloponnesus, although the Helots in Ithome were not yet reduced to surrender. Their force con- sisted of fifteen hundred troops of their own, and ten thousand of their various allies, under the regent Nikomedes. The osten- sible motive, or the pretence, for this march, was the protection of the little territory of Doris against the Phocians, who had recently invaded it and taken one of its three towns. The mere approach of so large a force immediately compelled the Phocians to relinquish their conquest, but it was soon seen that this was only a small part of the objects of Sparta, and that her main purposes, under instigation of the Corinthians, were directed against the aggrandizement of Athens. It could not escape the penetration of Corinth, that the Athenians might presently either enlist or constrain the towns of Boeotia into their alliance, as they had recently acquired Megara, in addition to their previous ally, Plat^a : for the Boeotian federation was at this time much dis- organized, and Thebes, its chief, had never recovered her ascen- dency since the discredit of her support lent to the Persian invasion. To strengthen Thebes, and to render her ascendency effective over the Boeotian cities, was the best way of providing a neighbor at once powerful and hostile to the Athenians, so as to prevent their farther aggrandizement by land : it was the same policy as Epaminondas pursued eighty years afterwards in organ- izing Arcadia and Messene against Sparta. Accordingly, the