Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/325

THE THEBANS AT SEA. 303 Timotheus next turned his attention to the war against Kotys m Thrace, and to the defence of the newly-acquired Athenian possessions in the Chersonese, now menaced by the appearance of a new and unexpected enemy to Athens in the eastern waters of the ^Egean, a Theban fleet. I have already mentioned that in 366 B. c., Thebes had sus- tained great misfortunes in Thessaly. Pelopidas had been fraud- ulently seized and detained as prisoner by Alexander of Pherse ; a Theban army had been sent to rescue him, but had been dishon- orably repulsed, and had only been enabled to effect its retreat by the genius of Epaminondas, then serving as a private, and called upon by the soldiers to take the command. Afterwards, Epami- nondas himself had been sent at the head of a second army to extricate his captive friend, which he had accomplished, but not without relinquishing Thessaly and leaving Alexander more pow- erful than ever. For a certain time after this defeat, the Thebans remained comparatively humbled and quiet. At length, the aggravated oppressions of the tyrant Alexander occasioned such suffering, and provoked such missions of complaint on the part of the Thessalians to Thebes, that Pelopidas, burning with ardor to revenge both his city and himself, prevailed on the Thebans to place him at the head of a fresh army for the purpose of invad- ing Thessaly. 1 At the same time, probably, the remarkable successes of the Athenians under Timotheus, at Samos and the Chersonese, had excited uneasiness throughout Greece, and jealousy on the part of the Thebans. Epaminondas ventured to propose to his coun- trymen that they should grapple with Athens on her own element, Chersonese before and after that period, as reported by Demosthenes in the Oration against Aristokrates. Without being able to explain the mistake about the name of the archon, and without determining whether the real mistake may not consist in having placed ETU in place of ifrrd, I cannot but think that Timotheus underwent two repulses, one by his lieutenant, and another by himself, near Amphipolis, both of them occurring in 364 or the early part of 363 B. c. During great part of 363 B. c., the attention of Timotheus seems to have been turned to the Chersonese, Byzantium, Kotys. etc. My view of the chronology of this period agrees generally with that of Dr. Thirlwall (Hist. Gr. vol. v. ch. 42. p. 244-257). 1> 1utarch Pelopid, t 31 ; Diodor. xv, SO.