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
Thus perished a Greek of pre-eminent vigour and intelligence, remarkably
free from the vices usual in Grecian despots, and forming a strong
contrast in this respect with his contemporary Dionysius, whose military
energy is so deeply stained by crime and violence. Nicocles, the son
of Evagoras, reigned at Salamis after him, and showed much regard,
accompanied by munificent presents, to the Athenian Isocrates; who
compliments him as a pacific and well-disposed prince, attached to Greek
pursuits and arts, conversant by personal study with Greek philosophy,
and above all, copying his father in that just dealing and absence of
wrong towards person or property which had so much promoted the comfort
as well as the prosperity of the city.
[Sidenote: [387 B.C.]]
We now revert from the episode respecting Evagoras--interesting not
less from the eminent qualities of that prince than from the glimpse
of Hellenism struggling with the Phœnician element in Cyprus--to the
general consequences of the Peace of Antalcidas in Central Greece. For
the first time since the battle of Mycale in 479 B.C., the Persians were
now really masters of all the Greeks on the Asiatic coast. The satraps
lost no time in confirming their dominion. In all the cities which they
suspected, they built citadels and planted permanent garrisons. In some
cases, their mistrust or displeasure was carried so far as to raze the
town altogether. And thus these cities, having already once changed their
position greatly for the worse, by passing from easy subjection under
Athens to the harsh ride of Lacedæmonian harmosts and native decemvirs,
were now transferred to masters yet more oppressive and more completely
without the pale of Hellenic sympathy. Both in public extortion, and
in wrong-doing towards individuals, the commandant and his mercenaries
whom the satrap maintained, were probably more rapacious, and certainly
more unrestrained, than even the harmosts of Sparta. Moreover, the
Persian grandees required beautiful boys as eunuchs for their service,
and beautiful women as inmates of their harems. What was taken for their
convenience admitted neither of recovery nor redress. While the Asiatic
Greeks were thus made over by Sparta and the Perso-Spartan convention
of Antalcidas, to a condition in every respect worse, they were at the
same time thrown in, as reluctant auxiliaries to strengthen the hands
of the Great King against other Greeks--against Evagoras in Cyprus,
and above all, against the islands adjoining the coast of Asia--Chios,
Samos, Rhodes, etc. These islands were now exposed to the same hazard,
from their overwhelming Persian neighbours, as that from which they had
been rescued nearly a century before by the confederacy of Delos, and by
the Athenian empire into which that confederacy was transformed. All the
tutelary combination that the genius, the energy, and the Panhellenic
ardour of Athens had first organised, and so long kept up, was now broken
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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