Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/254

232 HISTORY OF GREECE. both been guilty of receiving bribes ; Tissaphernes had found means (during the twentieth year of the Peloponnesian war) to corrupt not merely the Spartan admiral Astyochus, but also nearly all the captains of the Peloponnesian fleet, except the Syracusan Hennokrates ; Gylippus, as well as his father Kleandrides, had degraded himself by the like fraud ; and Anaxibius at Byzantium was not at all purer. Lysander, enslaved only by his appetite for dominion, and himself a remarkable iistance of superiority to pe- cuniary corruption, was thus not the first to engraft that vice on the minds of his countrymen. But though he found it already diffused among them, he did much to impart to it a still more de- cided predominance, by the immense increase of opportunities, and enlarged booty for peculation, which his newly-organized Spartan empire furnished. Not merely did he bring home a large residue in gold and silver, but there was a much larger annual tribute imposed by him on the dependent cities, combined with numerous appointments of harmosts to govern these cities. Such appointments presented abundant illicit profits, easy to acquire, and even difficult to nvoid, since the decemvirs in each city were eager thus to purchase forbearance or connivance for their own misdeeds. So many n,w sources of corruption were sufficient to operate most unfavorably on the Spartan character, if not by im- planting any fresh vice?, it least by stimulating all its inherent bad tendencies. To understand the material change thus wrought in it, we have only to contrast the speeches of king Archidamus and of the Corinthians, made in 432 p. c. at the beginning of the Pelopon- nesian war, with the state of facts at the end of the war, during the eleven years between the victory of ^Egospotami and the de- feat of Knidus (405-394 B. c.) At the former of the two epochs, Sparta had no tributary subjects, nor any funds in her treasury, while her citizens were very reluctant to pay imposts. 1 About 334 B. c., thirty-seven years after her defeat at Leuktra and her loss of Messenia, Aristotle remarks the like fact, which had then again become true ; 2 but during the continuance of her empire. Thucyd. i, 80. at^H 7ro/U ETL irteov TOVTOV (xpypa-vv) AA imuev ovre ev Koivu E^O/LLSV, OVTS iroifiuz in TCJV Idiuv Qeppp'.v Aristotel. Folk. ii, 6, 23. $av?ius 6' %et KOI irepf ru "iW j-o///w-a rolt