Classical literature; Greece -- History -- Peloponnesian War, 431-404 B.C.; Greece -- History -- Spartan and Theban Supremacies, 404-362 B.C.
cross-examined, and had made a full confession of the whole plot, his
plans, and his accomplices, they put to him one final question: "What
was your object in undertaking this business?" He answered: "I wished to
be inferior to no man in Lacedaemon." Let that be as it might, his fate
was to be taken out forthwith in irons, just as he was, and to be placed
with his two hands and his neck in the collar, and so under scourge and
goad to be driven, himself and his accomplices, round the city. Thus
upon the heads of those was visited the penalty of their offences.
(8) "And pointed to a well-concerted plan."
(9) See Grote, "H. G." ix. 348.
(10) See Thuc. i. 131; Plut. "Lys." 19 (Clough, iii. p. 125).
(11) "The Hippagretes (or commander of the three hundred guards called
horsemen, though they were not really mounted)." Grote, "H. G."
vol. ix. p. 349; see "Pol. Lac." iv. 3.
(12) Or, "to those on the way to Aulon."
(13) See for Cinadon's case, Arist. "Pol." v. 7, 3.
IV
B.C. 397. (1) It was after the incidents just recorded that a Syracusan
named Herodas brought news to Lacedaemon. He had chanced to be in
Phoenicia with a certain shipowner, and was struck by the number of
Phoenician triremes which he observed, some coming into harbour from
other ports, others already there with their ships' companies complete,
while others again were still completing their equipments. Nor was it
only what he saw, but he had heard say further that there were to be
three hundred of these vessels all told; whereupon he had taken passage
on the first sailing ship bound for Hellas. He was in haste to lay this
information before the Lacedaemonians, feeling sure that the king and
Tissaphernes were concerned in these preparations--though where the
fleet was to act, or against whom, he would not venture to predict.
(1) See Grote, "H. G." ix. 353, for chronology, etc.
These reports threw the Lacedaemonians into a flutter of expectation and
anxiety. They summoned a meeting of the allies, and began to deliberate
as to what ought to be done. Lysander, convinced of the enormous
superiority of the Hellenic navy, and with regard to land forces drawing
an obvious inference from the exploits and final deliverance of the
troops with Cyrus, persuaded Agesilaus, to undertake a campaign into
Asia, provided the authorities would furnish him with thirty Spartans,
two thousand of the enfranchised, (2) and contingents of the allies
amounting to six thousand men. Apart from these calculations, Lysander
had a personal object: he wished to accompany the king himself, and by
his aid to re-establish the decarchies originally set up by himself in
the different cities, but at a later date expelled through the action
of the ephors, who had issued a fiat re-establishing the old order of
constitution.
(2) Technically, "neodamodes."
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