Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/63

 srARTAN ASCENDENCY. 41 vorable criticism of judges rather disinclined towards democracy generally. 1 Thirty years before, when Mantinea had conquered certain neighboring Arcadian districts, and had been at actual war with Sparta to preserve them, the victorious Spartans exacted nothing more than the reduction of the city to its original district ; a now they are satisfied with nothing less than the partition of the city into unfortified villages, though there had been no actual war preceding. So much had Spartan power, as well as Spartan des- potic propensity, progressed during this interval. The general language of Isokrates, Xenophon, and Diodorus, 3 indicates that this severity towards Mantinea was only the most stringent among a series of severities, extended by the Lacedae- monians through their whole confederacy, and operating upon all such of its members as gave them ground for dissatisfaction or mistrust. During the ten years after the surrender of Athens, they bad been lords of the Grecian world both by land and sea, with a power never before possessed by any Grecian state ; until the battle of Knidus, and the combination of Athens, Thebes, Argos, and Corinth, seconded by Persia, had broken up their em- pire at sea, and much endangered it on land. At length the peace of Antalkidas, enlisting Persia on their side (at the price of the liberty of the Asiatic Greeks), had enabled them to dissolve the hostile combination against them. The general autonomy, of which they were the authorized interpreters, meant nothing more than a separation of the Bosotian cities from Thebes, 4 and of Corinth from Argos, being noway intended to apply to the re- lation between Sparta and her allies. Having thus their hands free, the Lacedasmonians applied themselves to raise their ascen- dency on land to the point where it had stood before the battle of Knidus, and even to regain as much as possible of their empire at sea. To bring back a dominion such as that of the Lysandrian harmosts and dekarchies, and to reconstitute a local oligarchy of their most devoted partisans, in each of those cities where the government had been somewhat liberalized during the recent pe- riod of war, was their systematic policy. 1 Aristot. Polit. vi, 2, 2. 2 Thucyd. v, 81. 3 Isokrates, Or. iv, (Panegyr.) s. 133, 1.34, 146, 206; Or. viii, (De Pace) ft 123; Xen. Ilellen. v, 2, 1-8; Diodor. x", 5, 0-19. 4 Xen. Hellen. v, 1, 35.