Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/317

 DEFEAT AND DEATH OF AGIS. 2b5 Thii «^as a gi'eater loss than Alexander had sustaint.d either at Issus or at Arbela ; a plain proof that Agis and his companions, however unfortunate in the result, had manifested courage worthy of the best days of Sparta. The allied forces were now so completely crushed, that all submitted to Antipater. After consulting the philo-Macedonian synod at Corinth, he condemned the Achajans and Eleians to pay 120 talents to Megalopolis, and exacted from the Tegeans the punishment of those among their leading men who had ad- vised the war.-' But he would not take upon him to determine the treatment of the Lacedaemonians, without special reference to Alexander. Requiring from them fifty hostages, he sent up to Alexander in Asia some Lacedtemonian envoys or prisoners, to throw themselves on his mercy .^ We are told that they did not reach the king until a long time afterwards, at Baktra ; ' what he decided about Sparta generally, we do not know. The rising of the Thebans, not many months after Alexander's accession, had been the first attempt of the Greeks to emanci- pate themselves from Macedonian dominion ; this enterprise of Agis was the second. Both unfortunately had been partial, with- out the possibility of any extensive or organized combination beforehand ; both ended miserably, riveting the chains of Greece more powerfully than ever. Thus was the self-defensive force of Greece extinguished piecemeal. The scheme of Agis was in fact desperate from the very outset, as against the gigantic power of Alexander ; and would perhaps never have been un- dei-taken, had not Agis himself been already compromised in hostility against Macedonia, before the destruction of the Persian force at Issus. This unfortunate prince, without any superior ability (so far as we know), manifested a devoted courage and patriotism worthy of his predecessor Leonidas at Thermopylae ; whose renown stands higher, only because the cause in which he fell ultimately triumphed. The Athenians and ^tolians, neither ' Curtius, vi. 1, 15-20; Diodor. xvii. 63-73. After the defeat, a snspeii' sive decree was passed by the Spartans, releasing from uTifiia those wht had escaped from the battle — as had been done after Lenktra (Diodor, xix. 70).
 * JEschincs aJv. Ktesiph. p. 524. ' Curtius, vii. 4, 82