Nabis of Sparta

“ This, however, was long after.
13 Titus now engaged in a most gallant and just war upon Nabis, that most profligate and lawless tyrant of the Lacedaemonians, but in the end disappointed the expectations of the Greeks. For when he had an opportunity of taking him, he purposely let it slip, and struck up a peace with him, leaving Sparta to bewail an unworthy slavery; whether it were that he feared, if the war should be protracted, Rome would send a new general who might rob him of the glory of it ”

“ Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, was right then, when, addressing the consul Quinctius Flamininus, he said, “With you, it is regard for the pay which determines enlistments into the cavalry and infantry. Power is for a small number; dependence is the lot of the multitude. Our lawgiver (Lycurgus) , on the contrary, did not wish to put all the power into the hands of certain citizens, whose assembling together you call the Senate, nor to give a legal pre-eminence to one or two orders.” [617]
It is curious to see a tyrant of Greece give lessons in democracy to a Roman. ”

“ The Spartans, having thus freed themselves from the yoke of the Achæan League, now fell into far worse hands, for they were governed by a tyrant named Na ́bis,—a cruel and miserly man, who, in order to [Pg 278] increase his treasure, often had recourse to vile stratagems.
He had made a cunning instrument of torture, on purpose to obtain money from any one he wished. This was a statue, the exact image of his wife, clad in magnificent robes. Whenever he heard that any man was very rich, Nabis used to send for him. ”

“ The future lawgiver then set out on his travels, visiting the other States of Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, and other countries, and returned to Sparta about the period of the first Olympiad, B.C. 776, with a rich store of wisdom and knowledge. The State was full of disorders, but he instituted great reforms, aided by the authority of the Delphic oracle, and a strong party of influential men. His great object was to convert the citizens of Sparta into warriors united by the strongest bonds, and trained to the severest discipline, governed by an oligarchy under the form of the ancient monarchy. ”

“ The severe simplicity of Spartan life, the rigor of political and social institutions, the aristocratic form of government, and above all the military spirit and ambition, gave permanence to all conquests, so that in the Persian wars Sparta took the load of the land forces. The great rival power of Sparta was Athens, but this was founded on maritime skill and enterprise. It was to the navy of Athens, next after the hoplites of Sparta, that the successful resistance to the empire of Persia may be attributed. ”

“ Megara acknowledged her supremacy; and at the time of the Persian invasion under Xerxes no state questioned her right to lead the Greek forces on land and sea. Of such a position Sparta proved herself wholly unworthy. As an ally she was ineffective, nor could she ever rid herself of her narrowly Peloponnesian outlook sufficiently to throw herself heartily into the affairs of the greater Hellas that lay beyond the isthmus and across the sea. She was not a colonizing state, though the inhabitants of Tarentum, in southern Italy, and of Lyttus, in Crete, claimed her as their mother-city. ”

“ Soldiering, as in the case of the Ten Thousand, is passing over from amateur patriots to mercenary professionals. It is clear that if new ideas are to revolutionise the art of war, the supremacy of Sparta is doomed. Strong arms and thick skulls flourished in the vale of Eurotas. Sparta had a rude shock when an Athenian condottiere named Iphicrates cut up a Spartan company of hoplites with a newfangled battalion of his own training, a body of drilled light infantry. And now in the fullness of time Bœotia was to produce its man of genius—Epaminondas the Theban. ”

“ The Sacred War emanating from a solemn Amphictyonic decree, carried on jointly by troops of different states whom we do not know to have ever before coöperated, and directed exclusively toward an object of common interest—is in itself a fact of high importance, as manifesting a decided growth of pan-Hellenic feeling. Sparta is not named as interfering—a circumstance which seems remarkable when we consider both her power, even as it then stood, and her intimate connection with the Delphian oracle—while the Athenians appear as the chief movers, through the greatest and best of their citizens. ”

“ Spartans are counting their numbers, not their manhood. Let us see how long the list is, that Sparta may have, if not brave soldiers, at least true messengers. Can it be that we are vanquished, not by war, but by reports? that man, i' faith, has a right to despise everything at whose very name Spartans are afraid. If we may not conquer Xerxes, let us at least be allowed to see him; I would know what it is I flee from. As yet I am in no way like an Athenian, either in seeking culture, or in dwelling behind a wall; the last Athenian quality that I shall imitate will be cowardice. ”

“ Unhappily for her, a new enemy was at hand, against whom the mightiest walls were of no avail. Sparta gained an unthought-of ally, and death stalked at large in the Athenian streets, silent and implacable, without clash of weapon or shout of war, yet more fatal and merciless than would have been the strongest army in the field. ”

“ Literature and science, the comfort and hope of the rest of Greece, were still, even to this day, proscribed in Sparta. Sparta had no other interest in the situation except that in her dominion was the universal recruiting ground for all parties—the peninsula of Tænarus—and distinguished Spartans were always glad to take the field as mercenaries. Even the son of the aged king Cleomenes II, Acrotatus, led a mercenary army to Tarentum and Sicily in 315, revolting those in whose pay he fought by his bloodthirsty savagery and his [488] unnatural passions. ”

“ Between the ages of 20 and 60 all Spartans served in the army, and, though allowed to marry and to engage in business, ate and slept in the public barracks. The early struggles of Sparta with Messenia, Argos and Athens, gave Sparta the victory and made it the chief power in Greece, but its tyranny induced rebellion, and the Thebans under Epaminondas reduced Sparta to its old boundaries. The Macedonians still further cut off its provinces, and finally, with the remainder of Greece, it became a part of the Roman empire. ”

“ The Spartan alliance, however, did not prevent him from enrolling among his mercenaries a considerable fraction of the Messenians, the bitter enemies of Sparta; who were now driven out of Naupaktus and Kephallenia, with no other possession left except their arms [996] —and whose restoration to Peloponnesus by Epaminondas, about thirty years afterwards, has been described in a preceding chapter. ”

“ With the real power of Sparta thus greatly augmented on land, in addition to her vast empire at sea, bringing its ample influx of tribute,—and among cities who had not merely long recognized her as leader, but had never recognized any one else,—it required an unusual stimulus to raise any formidable hostile combination against her, notwithstanding a large spread of disaffection and antipathy. The stimulus came from Persia, from whose treasures the means had been before furnished to Sparta herself for subduing Athens. ”

“ He showed great heroism in the defence of Sparta against Epaminondas immediately before the battle of Mantineia (362) . He supported the Phocians during the Sacred War (355–346) , moved, no doubt, largely by the hatred of Thebes which he had inherited from his father; he also led the Spartan forces in the conflicts with the Thebans and their allies which arose out of the Spartan attempt to break up the city of Megalopolis. Finally he was sent with a mercenary army to Italy to protect the Tarentines against the attacks of Lucanians or Messapians ”

“ Yet in a few years the Spartan women saw for the first time the smoke of the flames with which a hostile army ravaged their country in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital: and a Spartan embassy implored the pity of the Athenians, and pleaded the magnanimity with which Sparta in her day of victory had preserved Athens from annihilation, as a motive for the exercise of similar generosity toward a fallen enemy. The historian sees in this reverse the judgement of the gods against treachery and impiety. ”

“ Remember that thou insist on the disgrace to me—the Heracleid, and through me to Sparta, that my recall would occasion; remember that thou prove that my alleged harshness is but necessary to the discipline that preserves armies, and to the ascendancy of Spartan rule. And as to the idle tale of Persian prisoners escaped, why thou knowest how even the Ionians could make nothing of that charge. Crowd all sail, strain every oar, no ship in the fleet so swift as that which bears thee. I care not for the few hours' start the talebearers have. Our Spartan forms are slow ”

“ Every one knows of the tearless battle between the Spartans and Arcadians, in which the state had no dead to mourn.1204 Nothing therefore can be less laid to the charge of Sparta than a violent passion for war, a foolhardy and reckless desire of conquest. The latter was also guarded against by the maxim of Lycurgus,1205 “not to go often against the same enemy,” the non-observance of which was a charge brought against Agesilaus. ”

“ At last he got the Spartans also to join the Achæan League, and this saved Sparta from further war—at least, for a time. So the Spartans sent messengers to Philopœmen's house to thank him and to offer him a gift of gold. They came back and said they had not liked to give it him, for he seemed so honest a man that they did not think he would care to accept money for doing his duty to the liberty of Greece. ”

“ XV. Such are the general outlines of the state and constitution of Sparta—the firmest aristocracy that perhaps ever existed, for it was an aristocracy on the widest base. If some Spartans were noble, every Spartan boasted himself gentle. His birth forbade him to work, and his only profession was the sword. The difference between the meanest Spartan and his king was not so great as that between a Spartan and a Perioecus. Not only the servitude of the Helots, but the subjection of the Perioeci, perpetually nourished the pride of the superior race ”

“ The tyrants were frequently in intimate connexion with the inhabitants of Asia Minor, whom Sparta despised for their luxury and effeminacy; and from the Lydian sultan in his harem at Sardes, a chain of communication, most important in its consequences, was established through the princes of Miletus and Samos with the countries in the immediate neighbourhood of Sparta. ”

“ Then the law-giver went to Delphi, where he offered a sacrifice to Apollo, and asked the oracle if the laws he had made were good. The oracle answered that they were excellent, and would bring the people the greatest fame. This answer he had put into writing and sent to Sparta, for he had resolved to make his oath binding for all time by never returning. So the old man starved himself to death.
The Spartans kept their oath. For five hundred years their city continued one of the chief cities of Greece, and their army the most warlike and dreaded of the armies of the earth. ”

“ At the first news of the disembarkation of the enemy, the republic had despatched the messenger Phidippides to Sparta to beg for immediate assistance, and in the mean time had sent forward all her able-bodied troops to meet the invaders. They comprised about 10,000 hoplites, accompanied, as was customary, by nearly as many more light infantry, who were shortly reinforced by 1000 Platæans. ”

“ The fifteen years of Theban power had weakened Sparta; but Agesilaus persuaded the Ephors to send him to assist Tachos, who had revolted from the Persians and made himself king of Egypt, and who promised to pay the Spartans well for their aid. When he sent his officers to receive the Spartan king who had achieved the greatest fame of any man then living, they absolutely burst out laughing at the sight of the little, lame man, now more than eighty years old, and as simply clad as ever; and he was much vexed and angered that he was not made commander of the army, but only of the foreign allies ”

“ But Aratus, the general of the Achæans, called in the assistance of Antigonus Doson, king of Macedonia, who defeated Cleomenes at the decisive battle of Sellasia (221) , and followed up his success by the capture of Sparta. Sparta now sank into insignificance, and was ruled by a succession of native tyrants, till at length it was compelled to abolish its peculiar institutions, and to join the Achæan League. Shortly afterward it fell, with the rest of Greece, under the Roman power. ”

“ Periclides looked hard at the speaker, and the two men exchanged a significant glance.
"For my part," said a third, a man of a severe but noble countenance, the father of Lysander, and, what was not usual with the Ephors, belonging to one of the highest families of Sparta, "I have always held that Sparta should limit its policy to self-defence; that, since the Persian invasion is over, we have no business with Byzantium. Let the busy Athenians obtain if they will the empire of the sea. The sea is no province of ours. ”

“ COMPARISON OF THE RESOURCES OF SPARTA AND OF ATHENS.—The resources of Hellas were, at the outbreak of the war, very evenly divided between the two parties. With Sparta were all the states of the Peloponnesus, save Argos and Achaia, while beyond the Isthmus the Boeotian League, headed by Thebes, and other states were her allies. Together, these states could raise a land force of sixty thousand men, besides a considerable naval armament, Corinth being especially strong in ships. ”