Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/179

DISCOURAGEMENT OF SPAETA. 157 the same command from which Iphikrates had retired a little time before. 1 That admiral, whose naval force had been reinforced by a large number of Korkyrasan triremes, was committing without opposi- tion incursions against Akarnania, and the western coast of Pelo- ponnesus ; insomuch that the expelled Messenians, in their distant exile at Hesperides in Libya, began to conceive hopes of being restored by Athens to Naupaktus, which they had occupied under her protection during the Peloponnesian war. 2 And while the Athenians were thus masters at sea both east and west of Pelo- ponnesus, 3 Sparta and her confederates, discouraged by the ruin- ous failure of their expedition against Korkyra in the preceding year, appear to have remained inactive. With such mental pre- dispositions, they were powerfully affected by religious alarm arising from certain frightful earthquakes and inundations with which Peloponnesus was visited during this year, and which were regarded as marks of the wrath of the god Poseidon. More of these formidable visitations occurred this year in Peloponnesus than had ever before been known ; especially one, the worst of all, whereby the two towns of Helike and Bura in Achaia were destroyed, to- gether with a large portion of their population. Ten Lacedaemo- nian triremes, which happened to be moored on this shore on the night when the calamity occurred, were destroyed by the rush of the waters. 4 Under these depressing circumstances, the Lacedaemonians had recourse to the same mano3uvre which had so well served their purpose fifteen years before, in 388-387 B. c. They sent Antal- 1 Demosth. cont. Timoth. c. 6. p. 1191 ; c. 8. p. 1194. We see from another passage of the same oration, that the creditors of Timotheus reckoned upon his making a large sum of money in the Persian service (c. 1 p. 1185). This farther illustrates what I have said in a pre- vious note, about the motives of the distinguished Athenian officers to take service in foreign parts away from Athens. 2 Xen. Hellen. vi, 2, 38 ; Pausanias, iv, 26, 3. 3 See a curious testimony to this fact in Demosthen. cont. Neaeram, c. J2. p. 1357. 4 Diodor. xi, 48, 49 ; Pausan. vii, 25 ; JElian. Hist. Animal, xi, 19. Kallisthenes seems to have described at large, with appropriate religious comments, numerous physical portents which occurred about this time (see Kallisthcn. Fragm. 8, ed. Didot).