The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 04 : $b Greece to the Roman Conquest
History
The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 04 : $b Greece to the Roman Conquest
World history
Next morning early the troops were ordered to parade with arms, all
wearing chaplets. Agesilaus himself being unable to attend, the polemarch
Gylis commanded at the ceremony of raising the trophy; which was
performed with all the music of the army playing, and every circumstance
of pomp, that might most inspire, among the soldiery, alacrity and
self-satisfaction.
Why then no measures were taken to profit from the advantages, which
victory apparently should have laid open, is not shown. The Thebans
sending, in usual form, for permission to bury their dead, a truce was
granted them, evidently for a longer time than for that purpose alone,
could be wanted. Meanwhile the Lacedæmonian army withdrew into Phocis,
a country friendly or neutral, to perform a ceremony to which Grecian
superstition indeed attached much importance, the dedication of the tenth
of the spoil collected by Agesilaus in his Asiatic command. It amounted
to a hundred talents; perhaps something more than twenty thousand pounds.
After this second triumphal rite the army, committed to the orders of
Gylis, proceeded into the neighbouring hostile province of Ozolian
Locris, where the object seems to have been little more than to collect
plunder, which, according to the Grecian manner, might serve the soldiers
instead of pay. Corn, goods, whatever the rapacious troops could find in
the villages, were taken. The Locrians, unable to prevent the injury, did
nevertheless what they best could to revenge it. Occupying the defiles
which, in returning into Phocis, were necessarily to be repassed, they
gave such annoyance that Gylis was provoked to take the command of a
select body in pursuit of them.
Entangled among the mountains, he was himself killed, and the whole party
would have been cut off, had not the officers left with the command of
the main body brought seasonable relief. Agesilaus, still from his wounds
unfit for fatigue, passed by sea to Laconia, and the army was distributed
in quarters.
If any other writer had ever given any authority for the supposition,
we might suspect that Xenophon’s account of the battle of Coronea was
written under the influence of partiality for his friend and patron, and
that the victory was less complete than he has described it.[10] Yet
we are not without information of circumstances which may have given
occasion for the line of conduct which Agesilaus pursued. The defeat of
Cnidus produced a great and rapid revolution in Asiatic Greece.
And thus the fabric of the Lacedæmonian empire, seemingly so established
by the event of the Peloponnesian War, and since so extended by the
ability of the commanders in Asia, was in large proportion almost
instantly overthrown.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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