Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/381

VIEWS* OF AGESILAL'S. 359 their original autonomy. But for foreign aid, Megalopolis would now have been in great difficulty. A pressing request was sent to the Thebans, who despatched into Arcadia three thousand hop- lites under Pammenes. This force enabled the Megalopolitans, though not without measures of considerable rigor, to uphold the integrity of their city, and keep the refractory members in com- munion. 1 And it appears that the interference thus obtained was 1 Diodor. xv, 94. I venture here to depart from Diodorus, who states that these three thou sand men were Athenians, not Thebans ; that the Megalopolitans sent to ask aid from Athens, and that the Athenians sent these three thousand men under Pammenes. That Diodorus (or thj copyist) has here mistaken Thebans for Athe- nians, appears to me, on the following grounds ; 1. Whoever reads attentively the oration delivered by Demosthenes in the Athenian assembly (about ten years after this period) respecting the propriety of sending an armed force to defend Megalopolis against the threats of Sparta will see, I think, that Athens can never before have sent any military assistance to Megalopolis. Both the arguments which Demosthenes urges, and those which he combats as having been urged by opponents, exclude the reality of any such previous proceeding. 2. Even at the time when the above-mentioned oration was delivered, the Megalopolitans were still (compare Diodorus, xvi, 39) under special alli- ance with, and guardianship of, Thebes though the latter had then been so much weakened by the Sacred War and other causes, that it seemed doubtful whether she could give them complete protection against Sparta. But in the year next after the battle of Mantinea, the alliance between Megalopolis and Thebes, as well as the hostility betwean Megalopolis and Athens, was still fresher and more intimate. The Thebans (then in unim- paired power), who had fought for them in the preceding year, not the Athenians, who had fought against them, would be the persons invoked for aid to Megalopolis ; nor had any positive reverses as yet occurred to disable the Thebans from furnishing aid. 3. Lastly, Pammenes is a Theban general, friend of Epaminondas. He is mentioned as such not only by Diodorus himself in another place (xvi, 34), but also by Pausanias (viii, 27, 2), as the general who had been sent to watch over the building of Megalopolis, by Plutarch (Plutarch, Pelopidas, c. 26; Plutarch, Reipub. Gerend. Prsecept. p. 805 F.), and by Polyaenus (v, 16, 3). We find a private Athenian citizen named Pammenes, a goldsmith, mentioned in the oration of Demosthenes against Meidias (s. 31. p. 521); but no Athenian officer or public man of that time so named. Upon these grounds, I cannot but feel convinced that Pammenes and his troops were Thebans, and not Athenians. I am happy to find myself in concurrence with Dr. Thirlwall on this point (Hist. Gr. vol. v, ch. xliii, p. 368 note).