Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/75

SPEECH OF THE AKANTHIAN ENVOY. 55 did not mak<; application, until they had already attracted within their confederacy a considerable number of other Grecian as well as Macedonian cities. They then invited Akanthus and Apollonia to come in, upon the same terms of equal union and fellow-citizen- ship. The proposition being declined, they sent a second message intimating that, unless it were accepted within a certain tune, they would enforce it by compulsory measures. So powerful already was the military force of the Olynthian confederacy, that Akan- thus and Apollonia, incompetent to resist without foreign aid, des- patched envoys to Sparta to set forth the position of affairs in the Chalkidic peninsula, and to solicit intervention against Olynthus. Their embassy reached Sparta about B. c. 383, when the Spar- tans, having broken up the city of Mantinea into villages, and coerced Phlius, were in the full swing of power over Peloponne- sus, and when they had also dissolved the Boeotian federation, placing harmosts in Plataea and Thespiae as checks upon any movement of Thebes. The Akanthian Kleigenes, addressing him- self to the Assembly of Spartans and their allies, drew an alarm- ing picture of the recent growth and prospective tendencies of Olynthus, invoking the interference of Sparta against that city. The Olynthian confederacy (he said) already comprised many cities, small and great, Greek as well as Macedonian, Amyntas having lost his kingdom. Its military power, even at present great, was growing every day. 1 The territory, comprising a large breadth of fertile corn-land, could sustain a numerous population. Wood for ship-building was close at hand, while the numerous 1 Xen. Hellen. v, 2, 14. The number of Olynthian troops is given in Xenophon as eight hundred hoplites a far greater number of peltasts and one thousand horsemen, assuming that Akanthus and Apollonia joined the confederacy. It has been remarked by Mr. Mitford and others, that these numbers, as they here stand, must be decidedly smaller than the reality. But we have no means of correction open to us. Mr. Mitford's suggestion of eight thousand hop- lites in place of eight hundred, rests upon no authority Demosthenes states that Olynthus by herself, and before she had brought all the Chalkidians into confederacy (oviro Xa2.Ki6euv TTQ.VTUV tlf ev avvu- Kia/j,vui> De Fals. Leg. c. 75, p. 425) possessed four hundred horsemen, and a citizen population of 5000 ; no more than this (he says) at the time when the Lacedaemonians attacked them. The historical statements of the great orator, for a time which nearly coincides with his own birth, are tc be received with caution.