Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/208

 186 HISTORY OF GREECE. overborne by the progressive military improvement of other state;. handled by a preeminent tactician ; a misfortnne predicted by the Corinthians 1 at Sparta sixty years before, and now reali/ed, to the conviction of all Greece, on the field of Leuktra. But if the Spartan system was thus invaded and overpassed in its privilege of training soldiers, there was another species of teaching wherein it neither Avas nor could be overpassed, the hard lesson of enduring pain and suppressing emotion. Memorable indeed was the manner in which the news of this fatal catastrophe was re- ceived at Sparta. To prepare the reader by an appropriate contrast, we may turn to the manifestation at Athens twenty-seven years before, when the trireme called Paralus arrived from JEgos- potami, bearing tidings of the capture of the entire Athenian fleet. " The moan of distress (says the historian) 2 reached all up the Long Walls from Peiraeus to Athens, as each man communicated the news to his neighbor : on that night, not a man slept, from bewailing for his lost fellow-citizens and for his own impending ruin." Not such was the scene at Sparta, when the messenger arrived from the field of Leuktra, although there was everything calculated to render the shock violent. For not only was the de- feat calamitous and humiliating beyond all former parallel, but it came at a moment when every man reckoned on victory. As soon as Kleombrotus, having forced his way into Breotia, saw the unas- sisted Thebans on plain ground before him, no Spartan entertained any doubt of the result. Under this state of feeling, a messenger arrived with the astounding revelation, that the army was totally defeated, with the loss of the king, of four hundred Spartans, and more than a thousand Lacedaemonians ; and that defeat stood con- fessed by having solicited the truce for interment of the slain. At the moment when he arrived, the festival called the Gymnopaedia Compare Xenophon, De Repub. Laced, xiii, 5. rove /lev u 6iaaruf flvai TUV arpaTiuriKuv, AaKeSaiftoviove 6e fj.6vovf ru OVTI TUV TroAep/cwv and Xenoph. Memorab. iii, 5, 13, 14. 1 Thucyd. i, 71. upxaiorpoira {i/j.>v (of you Spartans) T& 7riTjj6sv^aTa irpb; GVTOVS kcriv. 'AvdyKri (5' uairep TX VJ if a el rd, TT iy tyvop eva Kparelv Kal Jiovxa&varj fiev iroAet rti UKIV^TO vo/itfia upiaTa, Trpof TTO^- Xd 6e uva-)Ka&fth>oif isvai, Trohhr/f Kal TJJf ;r i r exvf/aeuf del, etc. 1 Xen. Hellen. ii, 2, 3.