Early European History. Hutton Webster
followers entered Thebes at nightfall, killed the tyrants whom Sparta had set over the people, and forced the Spartan garrison to surrender.
BATTLE OF LEUCTRA, 371 B.C.
The Thebans had now recovered their independence. Eight years later they totally defeated a superior Peloponnesian force at the battle of Leuctra and brought the supremacy of Sparta to an end. This engagement from a military standpoint is one of the most interesting in ancient history. Epaminondas, the skilful Theban commander, massed his best troops in a solid column, fifty men deep, and hurled it with terrific force against the Spartan ranks. The enemy, drawn up twelve men deep in the customary formation, could not withstand the impact of the Theban column; their lines gave way, and the fight was soon won. The battle destroyed once for all the legend of Spartan invincibility.
PELOPIDAS AND EPAMINONDAS
The sudden rise of Thebes to the position of the first city in Greece was the work of two men whose names are always linked together in the annals of the time. In Pelopidas and Epaminondas, bosom friends and colleagues, Thebes found the heroes of her struggle for independence. Pelopidas was a fiery warrior whose bravery and daring won the hearts of his soldiers. Epaminondas was both an able general and an eminent statesman. No other Greek, save perhaps Pericles, can be compared with him. Even Pericles worked for Athens alone and showed no regard for the rest of Greece. Epaminondas had nobler ideals and sought the general good of the Hellenic race. He fought less to destroy Sparta than to curb that city's power of doing harm. He aimed not so much to make Thebes mistress of an empire as to give her a proper place among Greek cities. The Thebans, indeed, sometimes complained that Epaminondas loved Hellas more than his native city.
BATTLE OF MANTINEA, 362 B.C.
By crippling Sparta, Epaminondas raised Thebes to a position of supremacy. Had he been spared for a longer service, Epaminondas might have realized his dream of bringing unity and order into the troubled politics of his time. But circumstances were too strong for him. The Greek states, which had accepted the leadership of Athens and Sparta, were unwilling to admit the claims of Thebes to a position of equal power and importance. The period of Theban rule was filled, therefore, with perpetual conflict. Nine years after Leuctra Epaminondas himself fell in battle at Mantinea in the Peloponnesus, and with his death ended the brief glory of Thebes.
38. DECLINE OF THE CITY-STATE
WEAKNESS OF CITY-STATES
The battle of Mantinea proved that no single city—Athens, Sparta, or Thebes—was strong enough to rule Greece. By the middle of the fourth century B.C. it had become evident that a great Hellenic power could the not be created out of the little, independent city-states of Greece.
A RECORD OF ALMOST CEASELESS CONFLICT
The history of Continental Hellas for more than a century after the close of the Persian War had been a record of almost ceaseless conflict. We have seen how Greece came to be split up into two great alliances, the one a naval league ruled by Athens, the other a confederacy of Peloponnesian cities under the leadership of Sparta. How the Delian League became the Athenian Empire; how Sparta began a long war with Athens to secure the independence of the subject states and ended it by reducing them to her own supremacy; how the rough-handed sway of Sparta led to the revolt of her allies and dependencies and the sudden rise of Thebes to supremacy; how Thebes herself established an empire on the ruins of Spartan rule—this is a story of fruitless and exhausting struggles which sounded the knell of Greek liberty and the end of the city-state.
THE FUTURE
Far away in the north, remote from the noisy conflicts of Greek political life, a new power was slowly rising to imperial greatness—no insignificant city-state, but an extensive territorial state like those of modern times. Three years after the battle of Mantinea Philip II ascended the throne of Macedonia. He established Hellenic unity by bringing the Hellenic people within a widespread empire. Alexander the Great, the son of this king, carried Macedonian dominion and Greek culture to the ends of the known world. To this new period of ancient history we now turn.
STUDIES
1. On an outline map indicate the principal places mentioned in this chapter.
2. On an outline map indicate the Athenian allies and dependencies and those of Sparta at the opening of the Peloponnesian War.
3. What do you understand by a "decisive" battle? Why has Marathon been considered such a battle?
4. Why did Xerxes take the longer route through Thrace, instead of the shorter route followed by Datis and Artaphernes?
5. What was the importance of the Phoenician fleet in the Persian invasions?
6. What reasons can be given for the Greek victory in the struggle against Persia?
7. Distinguish between a confederacy and an empire.
8. Compare the relations of the Delian subject cities to Athens with those of British colonies, such as Canada and Australia, to England.
9. What do you understand by representative government?
10. If the Athenian Empire could have rested on a representative basis, why would it have been more likely to endure?
11. How far can the phrase "government of the people, by the people, for the people" be applied to the Athenian democracy?
12. Did the popular assembly of Athens have any resemblance to a New England town meeting?
13. Compare the Athenian jury system with that of England and the United States.
14. The Athenian democracy of the time of Pericles has been described as a pure democracy and not, like the American, as a representative democracy. In what lies the difference?
15. Can you suggest any objections to the system of state pay introduced by Pericles? To what extent do we employ the same system under our government?
16. What conditions of the time help to explain the contempt of the Greeks for money-making?
17. Trace on the map, page 107, the Long Walls of Athens.
18. Why has the Peloponnesian War been called an "irrepressible conflict"? Why has it been called the "suicide of Greece"?
19. What states of the Greek mainland were neutral in the Peloponnesian War (map facing page 108)?
20. Contrast the resources of the contending parties. Where was each side weak and where strong?
21. Why was the tyranny of Sparta more oppressive than that of Athens?
22. What were the reasons for the failure of the Athenian, Spartan, and Theban attempts at empire?
FOOTNOTES
[1] Webster, Readings in Ancient History, chapter vii, "Xerxes and the Persian Invasion of Greece"; chapter viii, "Episodes from the Peloponnesian War"; chapter ix, "Alcibiades the Athenian"; chapter x, "The Expedition of the Ten Thousand"; chapter xi, "The Trial and Death of Socrates."
[2] See the map facing page 38.
[3] See page 87.
[4] See the illustration, page 99.
[5] Thucydides, i, 18.
[6] See page 272.
[7] Herodotus, vii, 228.
[8] See the map on page 107.
[9] See page 96.
[10] See page 83.
[11] See the map facing page 108.
[12] See page 155.
[13] See page