Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/281

 ALIEN AVION OF THE SPARTAN' ALLIES. 259 dominion continued, without any armed opposition made to it, foi about eight months from the capture of Athens by Lysander, that is, from about April to December 404 B.C. The measure of their iniquity then became full. They had accumulated against themselves, both in Attica and among the exiles in the circumja- cent territories, suffering and exasperated enemies, while they had lost the sympathy of Thebes, Megara, and Corinth, and were less heartily supported by Sparta. During these important eight months, the general feeling throughout Greece had become materially different both towards Athens and towards Sparta. At the moment when the long war was first brought to a close, fear, antipathy, and vengeance against Athens, had been the reigning sentiment, both among the confederates of Sparta and among the revolted members of the extinct Athenian empire ; a sentiment which prevailed among them indeed to a greater degree than among the Spartans them- selves, who resisted it, and granted to Athens a capitulation at a time when many of their allies pressed for the harshest measures. To this resolution they were determined partly by the still remain- ing force of ancient sympathy ; partly by the odium which would have been sure to follow the act of expelling the Athenian popu- lation, however it might be talked of beforehand as a meet punish- ment ; partly too by the policy of Lysander, who contemplated the keeping of Athens in the same dependence on Sparta and on him- self, and by the same means, as the other outlying cities in which lie had planted his dekadarchies. So soon as Athens was humbled, deprived of her fleet and walled port, and rendered innocuous, the great bond of common fear which had held the allies to Sparta disappeared ; and while the paramount antipathy on the part of those allies towards Athens gradually died away, a sentiment of jealousy and appre- hension of Sparta sprang up in its placu, on the part of the leading states among them. For such a sentiment there was more than one reason. Lysander had brought home not only a large sum of money, but valuable spoils of other kinds, and many captive triremes, at the close of the war. As the success aad been achieved by the joint exertions of all the allies, so the fruits of it belonged in equity to all of them jointly, not to Sparta alone. The Thebans and Corinthians preferred a formal claim ta