Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/95

 SPARjAiX AFFAiivo. 73 aggravated by the ieceni, peace of Antalkidas, in every sense the work of Sparta; which she had first procured, and afterwards carried into execution. That peace was disgraceful enough, as being dictated by the king of Persia, enforced in his name, and surrendering to him all the Asiatic Greeks. But it became yet more disgraceful when the universal autonomy which it promised was seen to be so executed, as to mean nothing better than sub- jection to Sparta. Of all the acts yet committed by Sparta, not only ia perversion of the autonomy promised to every city, but in violation of all the acknowledged canons of right dealing between city and city, the most flagrant was, her recent seizure and oc- cupation of the Kadmeia at Thebes. Her subversion (in alliance with, and partly for the benefit of, Amyntas king of Macedonia) of the free Olynthian confederacy was hardly less offensive to every Greek of large or Pan-hellenic patriotism. She appeared as the confederate of the Persian king on one side, of Amyntas the Macedonian, on another, of the Syracusan despot Dionysius on a third, as betraying the independence of Greece to the foreigner, and seeking to put down, everywhere within it, that free spirit which stood in the way of her own harmosts and partisan oligarchies. Unpopular as Sparta was, however, she stood out incontestably as the head of Greece. No man dared to call into question her headship, or to provoke resistance against it. The tone of patri- otic and free-spoken Greeks at this moment is manifested in two eminent residents at Athens, Lysias and Isokrates. Of these two rhetors, the former composed an oration which he publicly read at Olympia during the celebration of the 99th Olympiad, B. c. 384, three years after the peace of Antalkidas. In this oration (of which unhappily only a fragment remains, preserved by Dio- nysius of Halikarnassus), Lysias raises the cry of danger to Greece, partly from the Persian king, partly from the despot Dio- nysius of Syracuse. 1 He calls upon all Greeks to lay aside hos- 1 Lysias, Frag. Orat. xxxiii, (Olympic.) ed. Bekker ap. Dionys. Hal. Ju- dic. de Lysi&, p. 520-525, Keisk. . . . .'Optiv OVTU alffxpuf 6iaKEifj.vrjv TTJV 'EA/lacJa, /cat 7ro/l/la /J.EV avrrjg bvra vwb TU (3ap3up(f), rro/l/laf ds nohetf virb rvpdvvuv avaaTurovf yevsvri- ueva$. . . . .'Qpufiev yap rot>c Kivdvvovf not ueyahovf Kal navTu%o$v VOL. X. 4