The Boeotians and I. 1.5. c. 33. and their influence decided the Chalcidians of SECT. Thrace to the same measure. Megarians were enough dissatisfied with Lacedæmon to declare approbation of it, and an intention to concur. But the consideration that the presidency of a democratical government could scarcely fail to jar with the interests of their oligarchal administrations, made them hesitate to conclude. While these intrigues were going forward, for Thucyd. the purpose of subverting the power of Lacedæmon, the administration of that state were carrying into effect against the Mantineians, after their usual method, by force of arms, that undefined and arbitrary kind of jurisdiction, which the Peloponnesians seem, in some measure, by common consent to have committed to them, and which, tho not often successfully, had nevertheless been opposed almost as often as exercised. A party at Parrhasii in Arcadia, one of the townships which the Mantineians had subjected, applied to Lacedæmon for relief. The Mantineians were not only obnoxious at Lacedæmon, for their new connection with Argos, but still more particularly for having put a garrison into Cypsela, a fortress in the Parrhasian territory, close upon the borders of Laconia. At the same time. therefore to take Cypsela, and to relieve the Parrhasians from their subjection to Mantineia, which would be in effect to bring them under subjection to Lacedæmon, the whole force of the commonwealth marched under the king Pleistoanax. The resource of the Mantineians, not one of the smallest republics of Greece, is among the strongest proofs of the miserably uncertain state of government, law, property, and freedom, through the greatest part of that country. That they might exert their whole force in defence of the Parrhasian CHAP. territory, they committed their own city, with their XVII. families, and indeed their all, except themselves and their arms, to a garrison of Argians. They were nevertheless unable to give any effectual opposition to the Lacedæmonian army: Cypsela was destroyed, and Parrhasii, as far as under Lacedæmonian protection might be, became again an independent state. The fidelity of the Argians to their trust, however, cemented the new connection between their state and Mantineia. Thucyd. 1. 5. c. 34. In the course of the summer, Cleäridas returned to Lacedæmon, with the troops which had fought under Brasidas in Thrace; and the government rewarded the valor and zeal of the Helots of that army with the present of their liberty, giving them leave to settle themselves wherever they could find a livelihood. The present seems thus to have been of small value; for the Helots were little able to provide a settlement for themselves. But in Lacedæmon were some other Helots, who, to strengthen the state in its declining circumstances, had been admitted to the rights of citizens; and Spartan pride and Spartan jealousy, now peace was restored with Athens, would willingly see all those persons members of any state rather than of their own. The infranchised Helots therefore were all established in Lepreum, as an increase of force to that town against the enmity of Elis. A measure of arbitrary severity, not indicating a good and firm constitution, was about the same time taken, on the plea of necessity for the security ⚫ of the commonwealth, against the unfortunate men who had been just restored to their country, after so long languishing in Athenian prisons. Not only many of them were of high rank, but some were actually in high offices. They found themselves nevertheless exposed to frequent invective, for having done, what was esteemed, among the Lacedæmonians, so disgraceful and so illegal, and hitherto so unknown, as surrendering their arms to an enemy, tho, for the occasion, it had been specially warranted by the executive power. Some disturbance was apprehended in consequence; to prevent which, a decree of degradation was passed by the people against them, rendering them incapable of office, and, what appears extraordinary, whether as precaution or punishment, incapable of buying or selling. Some time after, however, tho what occasioned the change we are not informed, they were restored to their former rights and honors. SECT. I.. chid. & Peloponnesus thus, long esteemed the best-go- Isocr. Arverned and the happiest portion of the Greek nation, Or. ad might seem now to have sheathed the sword, drawn Philipp. against external enemies, only to give the freer opportunity for internal convulsion. Athens meanwhile, and her confederacy, were not better prepared for political quiet and civil order. In that state indeed of the Athenian constitution, which gave means for Cleon to become first minister and general in chief, the fate of the subordinate republics, subjected to the arbitrary will of such a soverein as the Athenian people, under the guidance of such a minister as Cleon, could not but be wretched, or in the highest degree precarious. That tyranny over them, described and remonstrated against, especially by Xenophon and Isocrates, appears to have been then at its greatest height; nor could the mild benevolence of a Nicias go far toward its restraint. Not satisfied with the simple possession and exercise of absolute power, tho it sent those who offended to execution or slavery by thousands, the Athenian people would indulge in the pride CHAP. and vanity and ostentation of tyranny. XVII. Isocr. de Pace. p. 222. t. 2. ed. Auger. Thucyd. 1. 5. c. 32. So diligent,' says Isocrates, were they to discover how they might most earn the detestation of mankind, that, by a decree, they directed the tribute money 'to be exhibited, at the Dionysian festival, on the stage of the theater, divided into talents; thus making parade before their allies, numbers of 'whom would be present, of the property wrested from them to pay that very mercenary force, by 'which they were held in so degrading a subjec'tion; and setting the other Greeks, of whom also many would attend, upon reckoning what orphans had been made, what calamities brought upon 'Grecian states, to collect that object of pride, for the Athenian people.' Such was the character of the Athenian government, when the unfortunate Scionæans, all assistance being withdrawn from them, were reduced to the dreadful necessity of surrendering themselves at discretion to the Athenian forces; and the Athenian people added, upon the occasion, a shocking instance to the many that occur in history, of the revengeful and unrelenting temper of democratical despotism. Tho Cleon was no longer living to urge the execution of the decree, of which he had been the proposer, it was nevertheless executed in full strictness: every male of the Scionæans, arrived at manhood, was put to death, and the women and children were all reduced to slavery: the town and lands were given to the Platæans. Amid such acts of extreme inhumanity, we have difficulty to discover any value in that fear of the gods, and that care about the concerns of what they called religion, which we find ever lively in the minds of the Greeks. The late change in the fortune of war, and the losses sustained by the I. 1. 5. c. 32. commonwealth, gave the Athenians to imagine that SECT. the gods had taken offence at something in their conduct; but they never looked beyond some vain ceremony; whether, in its concomitant and consequent circumstances, moral or most grossly immoral. The cruel removal of the Delians from their Thucyd. iland had been undertaken as a work of piety, necessary toward obtaining the favor of the deïty. The contrary imagination now gained, that the god's pleasure had been mistaken; and the Delians were restored to their possessions. Possibly some leading men found their ends in amusing the minds of the people with both these mockeries. SECTION II. Continuation of Obstacles to the execution of the Articles of the II. Thucyd. 1. 5. c. 35. B.C. 421. Q1. 89. 2. THE peace restored free intercourse between Athens SECT. and those Peloponnesian states which acceded to it; tho inability, on one side, completely to perform the conditions, produced immediately, on the other, complaint, with jealousy and suspicion, which soon became mutual. The Peloponnesian troops were withdrawn from the protection of Amphipolis; but the place was left to the inhabitants, with arms in their hands. The other Thracian towns, which had joined the Peloponnesian alliance, refused to acknowlege the authority of the treaty for the conditions, tho favorable to the democratical, would have been ruinous to the oligarchal, which, through the connection with Lacedæmon, was become the |