Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/54

32 HISTORY OF GREECE Athens, where the remainder of them were residing at the time of the peace of Antalkidas ; little dreaming that those who had destroyed their town and their fathers forty years before, would now turn round and restore it. 1 Such restoration, whatever might be the ostensible grounds on which the Spartans pretended to rest it, was not really undertaken either to carry out the convention of Antalkidas, which guaranteed only the autonomy of existing towns, or to repair previous in- justice, since the prior destruction had been the deliberate act of themselves, and of King Archidamus the father of Agesilaus, but simply as a step conducive to the present political views of Sparta. And towards this object it was skilfully devised. It weakened the Thebans, not only by wresting from them what had been, for about forty years, a part of their territory and property ; but also by establishing upon it a permanent stronghold in the oc- cupation of their bitter enemies, assisted by a Spartan garrison. It furnished an additional station for such a garrison in Bceotia, with the full consent of the newly-established inhabitants. And more than all, it introduced a subject of contention between Athens and Thebes, calculated to prevent the two from hearty cooperation afterwards against Sparta. As the sympathy of the Platasans with Athens was no less ancient and cordial than their antipathy against Thebes, we may probably conclude that the restoration of the town was an act acceptable to the Athenians ; at least, at first, until they saw the use made of it, and the position which Sparta came to occupy in reference to Greece generally. Many of the Plateans, during their residence at Athens, had intermarried with Athenian women, 2 who now, probably, accompanied their husbands to the restored little town on the north of Kithseron, near the southern bank of the river Asopus. Had the Platasans been restored to a real and honorable auto- nomy, such as they enjoyed in alliance with Athens before the Peloponnesian war, we should have cordially sympathized with the event. But the sequel will prove and their own subsequent statement emphatically sets forth that they were a mere depen- dency of Sparta, and ar outpost of Spartan operations against ' Paus/tnias, ix, 1, 3. * Isokrates Or. xh (Plataic.) s. 54.