Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/50

 28 HISTORY OF GREECE. extinction was owing, in surrendering the Asiatic Greeks, had de stroyed the security even of the islanders. It soon appeared, however, how much Sparta herself had gained by this surrender in respect to dominion nearer home. The government of Corinth, wrested from the party friendly to Argos, deprived of Argeian auxiliaries, and now in the hands of the restored Corinthian exiles who were the most devoted par- tisans of Sparta, looked to her for support, and made her mis- tress of the Isthmus, either for offence or for defence. She thus gained the means of free action against Thebes, the enemy upon whom her attention Avas first directed. Thebes was now the ob- ject of Spartan antipathy, not less than Athens had formerly been ; especially on the part of King Agesilaus, who had to avenge the insult offered to himself at the sacrifice near Aulis, as well as the strenuous resistance on the field of Koroneia. He was at the zenith of his political influence ; so that his intense miso-Theban sentiment made Sparta, now becoming aggressive on all sides, doubly aggressive against Thebes. More prudent Spartans, like Antalkidas, warned him l that his persevering hostility would ul- timately kindle in the Thebans a fatal energy of military resist- ance and organization. But the warning was despised until it was too fully realized in the development of the great military genius of Epaminondas, and in the defeat of Leuktra. I have already mentioned that in the solemnity of exchanging oaths to the peace of Antalkidas, the Thebans had hesitated at first to recognize the autonomy of the other Boeotian cities ; upon which Agesilaus had manifested a fierce impatience to exclude them from the treaty, and attack them single-handed. 2 Their timely accession balked him in this impulse ; but it enabled him to enter upon a series of measures highly humiliating to the dig- nity as well as to the power of Thebes. All the Boeotian cities were now proclaimed autonomous under the convention. As soli- citor, guarantee, and interpreter, of that convention, Sparta either had, or professed to have, the right of guarding their autonomy against dangers, actual or contingent, from their previous Yorort or presiding city. For this purpose she availed herself of this 1 Plutarch, Agesil. c. 26 ; Plutarch, Lykurg. c 15. 2 Xen. Heilen. v, 1. S3.