Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/116

98 38 HISTORY OF GREECE- cover the introduction of one thousand Lacedaemonian hoplites into Argos, whither the joint detachment immediately returned, after the business at Sikyon had been accomplished. Thus rein- forced, the oligarchical leaders and the chosen Thousand at Ai'gos put down by force the democratical constitution in that city, slew the democratical leaders, and established themselves in complete possession of the government. 1 This revolution, accomplished about February, B.C. 417, the result of the victory of Mantineia and the consummation of a train of policy laid by Sparta, raised her ascendency in Pelopon- nesus to a higher and more undisputed point than it had ever before attained. The towns in Achaia were as yet not sufficiently oligarchical for her purpose, perhaps since the march of Alkibiades thither, two years before ; accordingly, she now remodelled their governments in conformity with her own views. The pew rulers of Argos were subservient to her, not merely from o?igarchical sympathy, but from need of her aid to keep down inteznal rising against themselves : so that there was neither enemy, nor even neutral, to counterwork her or to favor Athens, throughout the whole peninsula. But the Spartan ascendency at Argos was not destined to last. Though there were many cities in Greece, in which oligarchies long maintained themselves unshaken, through adherence to a tra- ditional routine and by being usually in the hands of men accus- tomed to govern, yet an oligarchy erected by force upon the ruins of a democracy was rarely of long duration. The angry discon- tent of the people, put down by temporary intimidation, usually revived, and threatened the security of the rulers enough to ren der them suspicious and probably cruel. Nor was such cruelty their only fault : they found their emancipation from democratical njstraints too tempting to be able to control either their lust or ieir rapacity. With the population of Argos, comparatively oarse and brutal in all ranks, and more like Korkyra than like 1 Thucyd. v, 81. Kal Aa.ne6ai/j.6vioi Kal 'Apyeioi, ikioi iKarep revcavTEf, TO. T' iv SIKVUVI f oAtyovf p.ut~A.ov Kariarrjaav avrol ol ftovtoi /li9wrff, Kai /zcr' f-Kelva ^vva/^orcpoi fjSr] Kal rbv iv 'Apyei Kcrchvaav, KM oAiyapxla. fxiTTjSria rolf Aanetiai/jovioif /ccrcon? : crwipare Piodor. xii. SO