Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/141

 SPIRIT AT THEBES. 1J.9 such as had not belonged to them before the archonship of 1'Iau- sinikus. By their intervention (it was supposed) the schedule would be kept nearer to the truth as respects the assessment on each individual, while the sums actually imposed would be more- immediately forthcoming, than if the state directly interfered by officers of its own. Soon after, the system of the Symmories was extended to the trierarchy ; a change which had not at first been contemplated. Each Symmory had its chiefs, its curators, its assessors, acting under the general presidency of the Strategi. Twenty-five years afterwards, we also find Demosthenes (then about thirty years of age) recommending a still more compre- hensive application of the same principle, so that men, money, ehips, and all the means and forces of the state, might thus be parcelled into distinct fractions, and consigned to distinct Sym- mories, each with known duties of limited extent for the component persons to perform, and each exposed not merely to legal process, but also to loss of esteem, in the event of non-performance. It will rather appear, however, that, in practice, the system of Sym- mories came to be greatly abused, and to produce pernicious effects never anticipated. At present, however, I only notice this new financial and poli tical classification introduced in 378 B. c., as one evidence of the ardour with which Athens embarked in her projected war against Sparta. The feeling among her allies, the Thebans, was no less determined. The government of Leontiades and the Spartar garrison had left behind it so strong an antipathy, that the large majority of citizens, embarking heartily in the revolution against them, lent themselves to all the orders of Pelopidas and his col- leagues ; Avho, on their part, had no other thought but to repel the common enemy. The Theban government now became probably democratical in form ; and still more democratical in spirit, from the unanimous ardor pervading the whole mass. Its military force was put under the best training ; the most fertile portion of the plain north of Thebes, from which the chief subsistence of the city came, was surrounded by a ditch and a palisade, 1 to repel the expected Spartan invasion ; and the memorable Sacred Band was now for the first time organized. This was a brigade of three 1 Vp. n. Hellen. v, 4, 38.