Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/252

230 HISTORY OF GREECE. their offerings from the same soil, and requiting them for previous ill-usage by words of defiance and insult, instead of that universal deference and admiration which a Spartan had hitherto been accustomed to look upon as his due. The enfranchisement and reorganization of all Western Laco- nia, the renovation of the Messenian name, the foundation of tht two new cities (Messene and Megalopolis) in immediate neighbor- hood and sympathy, while they completed the degradation of Sparta, constituted in all respects the most interesting political phenomena that Greece had witnessed for many years. To tho profound mortification of the historian, he is able to recount no- thing more than the bare facts, with such inferences as these facts themselves warrant. Xenophon, under whose eyes all must have passed, designedly omits to notice them ; l Pausanias, whom we two hundred and eighty-seven years between the end of the second Mes- senian war and the foundation of Messene by Epaminondas. See the note of Siebelis on this passage. Exact dates of these early wars can- not be made out. 1 The partiality towards Sparta, visible even from the beginning of Xeno- phon's history, becomes more and more exaggerated throughout the two lat- ter books wherein he recounts her misfortunes ; it is moreover intensified by spite against the Thebans and Epaminondas as her conquerors. But there is hardly any instance of this feeling, so glaring or so discreditable, as the case now before us. In describing the expedition of Epaminondas into Pelopon- nesus in the winter of 370-369 B. c., he totally omits the foundation both of Messene and Megalopolis ; though in the after part of his history, he alludes (briefly) both to one and to the other as facts accomplished. He represents the Thebans to have come into Arcadia with their magnificent army, for the simple purpose of repelling Agesilaus and the Spartans, and to have been desirous of returning to Bceotia, as soon as it was ascertained that the lat- ter had already returned to Sparta (vi, 5, 23). Nor does he once mention the name of Epaminondas as general of the Thebans in the expedition, any more than he mentions him at Leuktra. Considering the momentous and striking character of these facts, and the eminence of the Theban general by whom they were achieved, such si- lence on the part of an historian, who professes to recount the events of the time, is an inexcusable dereliction of his duty to state the whole truth, It is plain that Messene and Megalopolis wounded to the quick the philo- Spartan sentiment of Xenophon. They stood as permanent evidences of the degradation of Sparta, even after the hostile armies had withdrawn from Laconia. He prefers to ignore them altogether. Yet he can find space to recount, with disproportionate prolixity, the two applications of