hearty in the cause might also retire if they chose. Of such permission the Thespians immediately availed themselves, so many were there, in the Theban camp, who estimated the chances to be all in favor of Lacedæmonian victory. But when these men, a large portion of them unarmed, were seen retiring, a considerable detachment from the army of Cleombrotus, either with or without orders, ran after to prevent their escape, and forced them to return for safety to the main Theban army. The most zealous among the allies of Sparta present the Phocians, the Phliasians, and the Heracleots, together with a body of mercenaries -executed this movement, which seems to have weakened the Lacedæmonians in the main battle, without doing any mischief to the Thebans.

The cavalry first engaged in front of both lines; and here the superiority of the Thebans soon became manifest. The Lacedæmonian cavalry at no time very good, but at this moment unusually bad, composed of raw and feeble novices, mounted on horses provided by the rich was soon broken and driven back upon the infantry, whose ranks were disturbed by the fugitives. To reestablish the battle Cleombrotus gave the word for the infantry to advance, himself personally leading the right. The victorious cavalry probably hung upon the Lacedæmonian infantry of the center and left, and prevented them from making much forward movement; while Epaminondas and Pelopidas with their left advanced according to their intention to bear down Cleombrotus and his right wing. The shock here was terrible; on both sides victory was resolutely disputed, in a close hand combat, with pushing of opposite shields and opposite masses. But such was the overwhelming force of the Theban charge with the Sacred Band or chosen warriors in front, composed of men highly trained in the palestra, and the deep column of fifty shields propelling behind that even the Spartans, with all their courage, obstinacy, and discipline, were unable to stand up against it. Cleombrotus, himself either in or near the front, was mortally wounded, apparently early in the battle; and it was only by heroic and unexampled efforts on the part of his comrades around that he was carried off yet alive, so as to preserve him from falling into the hands of the enemy. Around him also fell the most eminent members of the Spartan official staff: Deinon the Polemarch, Sphodrias with his son Cleonymus, and several others. After an obstinate resistance and a fearful slaughter, the right

wing of the Spartans was completely beaten and driven back to their camp on the higher ground.

It was upon the Spartan right wing, where the Theban left was irresistibly strong, that all the stress of the battle fell, as Epaminondas had intended that it should. In no other part of the line does there appear to have been any serious fighting: partly through his deliberate scheme of not pushing forward either his center or his right — partly through the preliminary victory of the Theban cavalry, which probably checked in part the forward march of the enemy's line and partly also through the lukewarm adherence, or even suppressed hostility, of the allies marshaled under the command of Cleombrotus. The Phocians and Heracleots-zealous in the cause from hatred of Thebes - had quitted the line to strike a blow at the retiring baggage and attendants, while the remaining allies, after mere nominal fighting and little or no loss, retired to the camp as soon as they saw the Spartan right defeated and driven back to it. Moreover, even some Lacedæmonians on the left wing, probably astounded by the lukewarmness of those around them, and by the unexpected calamity on their own right, fell back in the same manner. The whole Lacedæmonian force, with the dying king, was thus again assembled and formed behind the intrenchment on the higher ground, where the victorious Thebans did not attempt to molest them.

But very different were their feelings as they now stood arrayed in the camp from that exulting boastfulness with which they had quitted it an hour or two before, and fearful was the loss when it came to be verified. Of seven hundred Spartans who had marched forth from the camp, only three hundred returned to it. One thousand Lacedæmonians, besides, had been. left on the field, even by the admission of Xenophon; probably the real number was even larger. Apart from this, the death of Cleombrotus was of itself an event impressive to every one, the like of which had never occurred since the fatal day of Thermopylæ. But this was not all. The allies who stood alongside of them in arms were now altered men. All were sick of their cause, and averse to further exertion; some scarcely concealed a positive satisfaction at the defeat. And when the surviving polemarchs, now commanders, took counsel with the principal officers as to the steps proper in the emergency, there were a few, but very few, Spartans who pressed for renewal of the battle, and for recovering by force their slain brethren in the field,

or perishing in the attempt. All the rest felt like beaten men ; so that the polemarchs, giving effect to the general sentiment, sent a herald to solicit the regular truce for burial of their dead. This the Thebans granted, after erecting their own trophy. But Epaminondas, aware that the Spartans would practice every stratagem to conceal the magnitude of their losses, coupled the grant with the condition that the allies should bury their dead first. It was found that the allies had scarcely any dead to pick up, and that nearly every slain warrior on the field was a Lacedæmonian. And thus the Theban general, while he placed the loss beyond possibility of concealment, proclaimed at the same time such public evidence of Spartan courage as to rescue the misfortune of Leuctra from all aggravation on the score of dishonor. What the Theban loss was Xenophon does not tell Pausanias states it at forty-seven men, Diodorus at three hundred. The former number is preposterously small, and even the latter is doubtless under the truth, for a victory in close fight, over soldiers like the Spartans, must have been dearly purchased. Though the bodies of the Spartans were given up to burial, their arms were retained, and the shields of the principal officers were seen by the traveler Pausanias at Thebes, five hundred years afterwards.

us.

Twenty days only had elapsed, from the time when Epaminondas quitted Sparta after Thebes had been excluded from the general peace, to the day when he stood victorious on the field of Leuctra. The event came like a thunderclap upon every one in Greece - upon victors as well as vanquished— upon allies and neutrals, near and distant, alike. The general expectation had been that Thebes would be speedily overthrown and dismantled; instead of which, not only she had escaped, but had inflicted a crushing blow on the military majesty of Sparta.

It is in vain that Xenophon-whose account of the battle is obscure, partial, and imprinted with that chagrin which the event occasioned to him- ascribes the defeat to untoward accidents, or to the rashness and convivial carelessness of Cleombrotus, upon whose generalship Agesilaus and his party at Sparta did not scruple to cast ungenerous reproach, while others faintly exculpated him by saying that he had fought contrary to his better judgment, under fear of unpopularity. Such criticisms, coming from men wise after the fact, and consoling themselves for the public calamity by censuring the unfortunate commander, will not stand examination. Cleom

brotus represented on this occasion the feeling universal among his countrymen. He was ordered to march against Thebes with the full belief, entertained by Agesilaus and all the Spartan leaders, that her unassisted force could not resist him. To fight the Thebans on open ground was exactly what he and every other Spartan desired. While his manner of forcing the entrance of Boeotia, and his capture of Creusis, was a creditable maneuver, he seems to have arranged his order of battle in the manner usual with Grecian generals at the time. There appears no reason to censure his generalship, except in so far as he was unable to divine what no one else divined—the superior combinations of his adversary, then for the first time applied to practice.

a

To the discredit of Xenophon, Epaminondas is never named in his narrative of the battle, though he recognizes in substance that the battle was decided by the irresistible Theban force brought to bear upon one point of the enemy's phalanx fact which both Plutarch and Diodorus expressly refer to the genius of the general. All the calculations of Epaminondas turned out successful. The bravery of the Thebans, cavalry as well as infantry, seconded by the training which they had received during the last few years, was found sufficient to carry his plans into full execution. To this circumstance principally was owing the great revolution of opinion throughout Greece which followed the battle. Every one felt that a new military power had arisen, and that the Theban training, under the generalship of Epaminondas, had proved itself more than a match on a fair field, with shield and spear, and with numbers on the whole inferior, for the ancient Lycurgean discipline; which last had hitherto stood without a parallel as turning out artists and craftsmen in war, against mere citizens in the opposite ranks, armed, yet without the like training. Essentially stationary and old-fashioned, the Lycurgean discipline was now overborne by the progressive military improvement of other states, handled by a preeminent tactician-a misfortune predicted by the Corinthians at Sparta sixty years before, and now realized, to the conviction of all Greece, on the field of Leuctra.

PERIODS OF GREEK HISTORY AFTER THE CONQUEST OF GREECE.

BY GEORGE FINLAY.

(From "Greece under the Romans.")

[GEORGE FINLAY : An English historian; born in Faversham, Kent, December 21, 1799; died in Athens, Greece, January 26, 1875. He was one of the early volunteers in the liberation of Greece, a companion of Byron at Missolonghi in 1823, and took up permanent residence there. He was for many years the Greek correspondent of the London Times. His fame, however, rests upon one great work, now collected as "Greece under Foreign Domination" (7 vols., 1877), but the first volume published as "Greece under the Romans" (1844), and the last two volumes being a "History of the Greek Revolution."]

THE Condition of Greece during its long period of servitude was not one of uniform degeneracy. Under the Romans, and subsequently under the Othomans, the Greeks formed only an insignificant portion of a vast empire. Their unwarlike character rendered them of little political importance, and many of the great changes and revolutions which occurred in the dominions of the emperors and of the sultans, exerted no direct influence on Greece. Consequently, neither the general history of the Roman nor of the Othoman empire forms a portion of Greek history. Under the Byzantine emperors the case was different the Greeks became then identified with the imperial administration. The dissimilarity in the political position of the nation during these periods requires a different treatment from the historian to explain the characteristics of the times.

The changes which affected the political and social condition of the Greeks divide their history, as a subject people, into six distinct periods.

1. The first of these periods comprises the history of Greece under the Roman government. The physical and moral degradation of the people deprived them of all political influence, until Greek society was at length regenerated by the Christian religion. After Christianity became the religion of the Roman emperors, the predominant power of the Greek clergy, in the ecclesiastical establishment of the Eastern Empire, restored to the Greeks some degree of influence in the government, and gave them a degree of social authority over human civilization in the East which rivaled that which they had formerly obtained by the Macedonian conquests. In the portion of this work devoted to the condition of Greece under the Romans,