Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/382

 360 HISTORY OF GREECE. permanently efficacious, so that th e integrity of this recent Fan- Arcadian community was no farther disturbed. The old king Agesilaus was compelled, at the age of eighty, to see the dominion of Sparta thus irrevocably narrowed, her influ- ence in Arcadia overthrown, and the loss of Messene formally sanctioned even by her own allies. All his protests, and those of his son Archidamus, so strenuously set forth by Isokrates, had only ended by isolating Sparta more than ever from Grecian support and sympathy. Archidamus probably never seriously attempted to execute the desperate scheme which he had held out as a threat some two or three years before the battle of Mantinea ; that the Lacedemonians would send away their wives and fami- lies, and convert their military population into a perpetual camp, never to lay down arms until they should have reconquered Mes- sene or perished in the attempt. 1 Yet he and his father, though deserted by all Grecian allies, had not yet abandoned the hope that they might obtain aid, in the shape of money for levying mercenary troops, from the native princes in Egypt and the revolted Persian satraps in Asia, with whom they seem to have been for some time in a sort of correspondence. 2 About the time of the battle of Mantinea, and as it would seem, for some years before, a large portion of the western dominions of the Great King were in a state partly of revolt, partly of dubious obedience. Egypt had been for some years in actual revolt, and under native princes, whom the Persians had vainly endeavored to subdue (employing for that purpose the aid of the Athenian generals Iphikrates and Timotheus) both in 374 and 371 B. c. Ariobarzanes, satrap of the region near the Pro- pontis and the Hellespont, appears to have revolted about the year 3 67 366 B. c. In other parts of Asia Minor, too, Paph- lagonia, Pisidia, etc, the subordinate princes or governors be- came disaffected to Artaxerxes. But their disaffection was for a certain time kept down by the extraordinary ability and vigor of a Karian named Datames, commander for the king in a part of Kappadokia, who gained several important victories over them, by rapidity of movement and well-combined stratagem. At length the services of Datames became so distinguished as to See Isokrates, Orat. vi, (Archidamus) s. 85-93. Isokrates. Or. vi, ( Archid.) s. 73.