Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/450

 442 ARTAXERXES. though they had lost both Cyrus and their own gen- erals, nevertheless escaped, as it were, out of his very palace, making it plain to all men that the Persian king and his empire were mighty indeed in gold and luxury and women, but otherwise were a mere show and vain display, upon this, all Greece took courage, and despised the barbarians ; and especially the Lacedaemonians thought it strange if they should not now deliver their countrymen that dwelt in Asia from their subjection to the Persians, nor put an end to the contumelious usage of them. And first having an army under the conduct of Thimbrou, then under Dercyllidas, but doing nothing memorable, they at last committed the war to the manage- ment of their king Agesilaus, who, when he had arrived with his men in Asia, as soon as he had landed them, fell actively to work, and got himself great renown. He de- feated Tisaphernes in a pitched battle, and set many cities in revolt. Upon this, Artaxerxes, perceiving what was his wisest way of waging the war, sent Timocrates the Rhodian into Greece, with large sums of gold, com- manding him by a free distribution of it to corrupt the leading men in the cities, and to excite a Greek war against Sparta. So Timocrates following his instructions, the most considerable cities conspiring together, and Pe- loponnesus being in disorder, the ej^hors remanded Age- silaus from Asia. At which time, they say, as he was upon his return, he told his friends that Artaxerxes had driven him out of Asia with thirty thousand archers ; the Persian coin having an archer stamped upon it. Artaxerxes scoured the seas, too, of the Lacedaemonians, Conon the Athenian and Pharnabazus being his admirals. For Conon, after the battle of ^gospotami, resided in Cyprus ; not that he consulted his own mere security, but looking for a vicissitude of affairs with no less hope than men wait for a change of wind at sea. And perceiving