Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/219

DEKARCHIES. 197 stroyed ner fleet and maritime ascendency, yet left her in undhnin* ished power on land, which she still maintained until her defeat by the Thebans 1 at Leuktra in 371 B. c. Throughout all this time, it was her established system to keep up Spartan harmosts ana garrisons in the dependent cities on the continent as well as in the islands. Even the Chians, who had been her most active allies during the last eight years of the war, were compelled to submit to this hardship ; besides having all their fleet taken away from them. 2 But the native dekarchies, though at first established by Lysander universally throughout the maritime dependencies, did not last as a system so long as the harmosts. Composed as they were to a great degree of the personal nominees and confederates of Lysander, they suffered in part by the reactionary jealousy which in time made itself felt against his overweening ascendency. After continuing for some time, they lost the countenance of the Spartan ephors, who proclaimed permission to the cities (we do not precisely know when) to resume their preexisting govern- ments. 3 Some of the dekarchies thus became dissolved, or modi- fied in various ways, but several probably still continued to subsist, if they had force enough to maintain themselves ; for it does not appear that the ephors ever systematically put them down, as Ly- sander had systematically set them up. The government of the Thirty at Athens would never have been overthrown if the oppressed Athenians had been obliged to rely on a tutelary interference of the Spartan ephors to help them in overthrowing it. My last volume has shown that this nefarious term, though less than the truth by some months, if we may take the bat- tle of ^Egospotami as the beginning, is very near the trt th if we take the surrender of Athens as the beginning, down to the battle of Knidus. 1 Pausanias, viii, 52, 2 ; ix, 6, 1. 8 Diodor. xiv, 84 ; Isokrates, Orat. viii, (de Pace) s. 121. 3 Xen. Hellen. iii, 4, 2. Lysander accompanied King Agesilaus (when the latter was going to his Asiatic command in 396 B. c.). His purpose was onus ruf 6eKapx'ia<; raf Karaara-delaa^ {JTT' IKELVOV iv rats noheaiv, kKireirTUKvias 6e 6t.a roiif tyopovf, ol Taf irarpiovc Tro^ireiaf Trapjyyyet/lav, TTU^LV KaTaarf/aei (J.ET J A~yrjai^aov. It shows the careless construction of Xenophon'i Hellenica, or perhaps his reluctance to set forth the discreditable points of the Lacedaemonian role, that this is the first mention which he makes (and that too, indirectly) of the dekarchies, nine years after they had been first set up by Lysander,