Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/86

 64 HISTORY OF GREECE. spiracy with the Persian king to the detriment of Greece, 1 of having partaken in the Persian funds brought into Greece by Timokrates the Rhodian, and of being the real author of that war which had disturbed Greece from 395 B. c. down to the peace of Antalkidas. After an unavailing defence, he was condemned and executed. Had this doom been inflicted upon him by his po- litical antagonists as a consequent of their intestine victory, it would have been too much in the analogy of Grecian party- war- fare to call for any special remark. But there is something pecu- liarly revolting in the prostitution of judicial solemnity and Pan- hellenic pretence, which the Lacedaemonians here committed. They could have no possible right to try Ismenias as a criminal at all ; still less to try him as a criminal on the charge of confederacy with the Persian king, when they had themselves, only five years before, acted not merely as allies, but even as instruments, of that monarch, in enforcing the peace of Antalkidas. If Isme- nias had received money from one Persian satrap, the Spartan Antalkidas had profited in like manner by another, and for the like purpose too of carrying on Grecian war. The real motive of the Spartans was doubtless to revenge themselves upon this dis- tinguished Theban for having raised against them the war which began in 395 B. c. But the mockery of justice by which that re- venge was masked, and the impudence of punishing in him as treason that same foreign alliance with which they had ostenta- tiously identified themselves, lends a deeper enormity to the whole proceeding. Leontiades and his partisans were now established as rulers in Thebes, with a Lacedaemonian garrison in the Kadmeia to sustain them and execute their orders. The once-haughty Thebes was enrolled as a member of Lacedaemonian confederacy. Sparta was now enabled to prosecute her Olynthian expedition with re- doubled vigor. Eudamidas and Amyntas, though they repressed the growth of the Olynthian confederacy, had not been strong enough to put it down ; so that a larger force was necessary, and the aggregate of ten thousand men, which had been previously decreed, was put into instant requisition, to be commanded by 1 Xen. Ilellen. v. 2, 35 ; Plutarch, De Genio Socratis, p. 576 A. Plutarch in another place (Pelopid. c. 5) represents Ismenias as having been con- veyed to Sparta and tried there.