Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/221

VIOLENCES A1 AKGOS. 199 of their foreign support, the long-accumulated flood of internal discontent burst with irresistible force, stimulated probably by returning exiles. Their past misgovernment was avenged by se- vere sentences and proscription, to the length of great reactionary injustice ; and the parties banished by this anti-Spartan revolution became so numerous, as to harass and alarm seriously the newly- established governments. Such were the commotions which, dur- ing the latter hah of 371 B. c., disturbed many of the Peloponne- sian towns, Phigaleia, Phlius, Corinth, Sikyon, Megara, etc., though with great local difference, both of detail and of result. 1 But the city where intestine commotion took place in its most violent form was Argos. We do not know how this fact was con- 1 Diodor. xv, 39, 40. Diodorus mentions these commotions as if they had taken place after the peace concluded in 374 B. c., and not after the peace of 371 B.C. But it is impossible that they can have taken place after the former, which in point of fact, was broken off almost as soon as sworn, was never carried into effect, and comprised no one but Athens and Sparta. I have before re- marked that Diodorus seems to have confounded, both in his mind and in his history, these two^ -eaties of peace together, and has predicated of the former what really belongs to the latter. The commotions which he men- tions come in, most naturally and properly, immediately after the battle of Leuktra. He affirms the like reaction against Lacedaemonian, supremacy and its local representatives in the various cities, to have taken place even after the peace of Antalkidas in 387 B. c. (xv, 5). But if such reaction began at that time, it must have been promptly repressed by Sparta, then in undi- minished and even advancing power. Another occurrence, alleged to have happened after the battle of Leuktra, may be properly noticed hdre. Polybius (ii, 39), and Strabo seemingly copying him (viii, p. 384), assert that both Sparta and Thebes agreed to leave their disputed questions of power to the arbitration of the Achaeans, and to abide by their decision. Though I greatly respect the authority of Polybius, I am unable here to reconcile his assertion either with the facts which unquestionably occurred, or with general probability. If any such arbitration was ever consented to, it must have come to nothing: for the Avar went on without interruption. But I cannot bring myself to believe that it was even consented to, either by Thebes or by Sparta. The exuber- ant confidence of the former, the sense of dignity on the part of the latter, must have indisposed both to such a proceeding ; especially to the acknowl- edgment of umpires like the Achasan cities, who enjoyed little estimation in 370 B. c., though they acquired a good deal a century and a half after' Wards,