Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/59

SPARTANS TAKE MANT1NEA. 37 city and threaten the stability of the walls ; which seem to have been of no great height, and built of sun-burnt bricks. Disap- pointed in their application to Athens for aid, 1 and unable to pro- vide extraneous support for their tottering towers, the Mantineana were compelled to solicit a capitulation. But Agesipolis now refused to grant the request, except on condition that not only the brtifications of their city, but the city itself, should be in great ,3art demolished ; and that the inhabitants should be re-distributed into those five villages, which had been brought together, many years before, to form the aggregate city of Mantinea. To this also the Mantineans were obliged to submit, and the capitulation was ratified. Though nothing was said in the terms of it about the chiefs of the Mantinean democratical government, yet these latter, conscious that they were detested both by their own oligarchical opposition and by the Lacedaemonians, accounted themselves certain of being put to death. And such would assuredly have been their fate, had not Pausanias (the late king of Sparta, now in exile at Tegea), whose good opinion they had always enjoyed, obtained as a perso- nal favor from his son Agesipolis the lives of the most obnoxious, sixty in number, on condition that they should depart into exile. Agesipolis had much difficulty in accomplishing the wishes of his father. His Lacedaemonian soldiers were ranged in arms on both sides of the gate by which the obnoxious men went out; and Xenophon notices it as a signal mark of Lacedaemonian discipline, that they could keep their spears unemployed when disarmed enemies were thus within their reach ; especially as the oligarchi- cal Mantineans manifested the most murderous propensities, and were exceedingly difficult to control. 2 As at Peiraeus before, so diversion of the river. It appears easier to believe that the river has changed its course. See Leake, Travels in Morea, vol. iii, ch. xxiv, p. 71 ; and Peloponnesiaca, p. 380 ; and Ernst Curtius, Peloponnesos, p. 239 who still, however, leaves the point obscure. 1 Diodor. xv, 5. 2 Xen. Hellen. v, 2, 6. Oioptvuv 6e aTrovavtla&ai ruv apyo/Uoi>rot>, Kal ruv rev firjuov npoaTaruv, theirpu^aTo 6 narrjp (see before, v, 2, 3) napa rov 'Ay77<Ti7r6At(Jof, uaQafaiav avrolf effsaftai, aTra/l/larro/zt'voif e/c rtjf TroAfUf, i^r]Kovra ovai. Kal ufj,<j>orepa'&EV fj,ev rrj<; 6dov, dpZu/j-evoi UTTO ruv nvXSiv fyovref ra 66para oi ActKeSai/iovioi iarriaav, <&eu/jevot rovf f ibvraq tea) ui aovvrrs aiiTove ofiuf atreixovro air uv pao v , r) ol ,3t*