Agesilaus, commissioned with a powerful army to pro tect the Greeks of Asia against the designs of the Persian monarch, entered upon a brilliant career of victory, equally productive of honour and spoil. He scattered, with little difficulty, the Persian forces that were brought against him ; passed from province to province, as if on an uninter rupted march ; excited the remoter parts of the empire to throw off the yoke, and made the great monarch tremble for his personal safety in the midst of his dominions. (See AGESILAUS.) This extraordinary success, however, urged the Persian. court to employ a different weapon of defence. By the distribution of gold, the promise of subsidies, and the dis posal of the Persian fleet, a powerful confederacy of the Athenians, Corinthians, Argives, and Thebans, was ar rayed against the domineering commonwealth of Sparta. The defeat and destruction of their naval Force by that of the Persians and Athenians under the command of Conon, was the first fatal blow to their power ; trorn the effects of which they never recovered, and which was followed by a general revolt of their colonies and tributary allies. The subsequent victory gained by Agesilaus at Coroneia over the confederate Greeks, (the most sanguinary, according to Xenophon, that he had ever witnessed,) and the advan tages obtained by Praxitas at Corinth, still upheld the re now n of the Spartan name ; and the peace procured by the Persian mediation, through the able policy of Antaleidas, secured the supremacy, and served the interests of the Lacedaemonians nearly as effectually as the successful ter mination of the Peloponnesian war had done. But the fatal issue of the Theban war which followed, and which their own overbearing interference had excited, together with the loss of half their territory by the restoration of the Messenian statt (which was a consequence of that war,) completely broke their long established influence as leaders in Greece, and left the nation in a state of indecision and disorder from which it never recovered. (See GREECE and EPAN 1 NONDAS.) Before the power of Philip of Macedon had made much progress in Greece, the Lacerimmonians had so far re covered their strength as to renew their oppressions on the adjoining states, particularly of Argos and Messenia ; but, though aware of the danger to be apprehended from the measures of the politic Macedonian, were either too de generate, or still too feeble, to make any decisive effort in behalf of the falling liberties of Greece. At the assembly of the different states, summoned by Alexander the Great to concert the expedition against Persia, they were the only people who ventured to remonstrate against the measure, (apparently, however, from a spirit of pride rather than from any settled principle of policy on the subject,) and openly asserted, in the strain of their ancient independence, that " they had been accustomed to point out the way to such glorious deeds, and not to be directed by others." But they were obliged to submit to the prevailing sentence of the assembly, and to concur in the appointment of the :Macedonian prince to the office of generalissimo in the war. Una wed, nevertheless, by the power of Alexander, or by the terrible example of his vengeance inflicted on the city of Thebes, the Lacedxmonians, under their intrepid king Agis, the grandson of Agesilaus, embraced every oppor tunity to thwart the measures of the great conqueror, and to vindicate the independence of their country.
When the news of the victory at Arbela had alarmed the other states, by a dread of the growing Macedonian power, more than it gratified them by the humiliation of their old but despised enemy, Agis, more daring than prudent, and more ambitious of restoring Spartan supremacy than Gre cian liberty, took the field with a powerful army, and mat ch ed against Megalopolis, the only Peloponnesian city which had acknowledged Alexander for its sovereign. But Anti pater, who commanded in Macedonia, arriving spec lily with a superior force, the Spartans and their allies were defeated, and their enterprising leader slain in the battle.
Eudernidas, the son of Agis, a wise and virtuous prince, and a decided advocate of peace, restrained the ardent hut ill-judged zeal of his countrymen, to prosecute the unequal contest ; and, when one of his subjects was magnifying the victories which their ancestors had gained over the Persians, as an argument in favour of hostilities against Macedon, Do you think," said the king, " that it is the same thing to make war against a thousand sheep, as against fifty wolves ?" Of the subsequent reigns, little more is known than the names of the kings, and of a few leading men ; but amidst all the revolutions of Greece, the shadow of inde pendence was still retained at Lacedxmon. It was still governed by its own princes and senate, and had never sub mitted to the humiliation of receiving within its walls a Macedonian garrison. A striking instance of its ancient spirit was displayed against Pyrrhus, when in his attempt to annex the •Peloponneaus to his kingdom, and who had reached the capital of Laconia at a time when the army was absent on an expedition to Crete. The women vied with the men in fortifying the city, and repelling the ene my ; and, after r epeated attempts to carry the place by assault. the king of Epire was compelled to retreat. This was nearly the last expiring blaze of Spartan valour ; opu lence and voluptuousness had long prevailed, in place of the poverty and discipline inculcated by the laws of Lycurgus. The most remarkable corruption of those laws had been introduced during the administration of Lysander and Age silaus, whose conquests had filled their country with wealth, and opened the sources of luxury and avarice. The most flagrant abuses succeeded in every department of the state, and threatened its total subversion. The ephori, in stead of answering the end of their institution as a check open the dt spotisin of the kings and the turbulence of the people, had become an arbitrary and corrupted body, tyran nizing over all parties. The public meals, the last pledge of Spartan temperance, had been discountenanced ; and the lands had accumulated in the possession of a few families, who lived in the greatest splendour, while the rest of the population was doomed to extreme penury. In this state of affairs, Agis, the son of Euda, ascended the throne ; and, though his family was the most opulent in the state, and himself brought up in all the ease of luxury, he nobly planned the restoration of the ancient discipline, and the re, establishment of the neglected laws of Lycurgus. (See AoIS.) His failure and death left the whole constitution of Sparta in the utmost confusion. and the country itself in a state of rapid depopulation. His successor Cleomenes, animated with the same spirit of reformation, but less averse from sanguinary measures, determined to pursue a more vigorous course. Considering the ephori as the source of the evil, he caused them to be put to death in a secret and summary manner; and having called an assem bly of the people, restored the ancient constitution in all its simplicity and rigour. But the habits of his countrymen were too depraved to be so instantaneously renovated; and, as soon as he had quitted the capital to take the com mand of the army against the Achreans, with whom a quar rel had arisen, the new discipline was agaia relaxed. His efforts to break the domination of the Acnxan league over the other states of Peloponnesus were at first successful; but, by the aid of Antigonus of Macedonia, his army was almost annihilated in a general engagement at Sellasia ; and, afraid to encounter his disaffected subjects, he sought an asylum in the Egyptian court. The Spartans, no longer worthy of the name, after suffering the most unparalleled cruelties from the sanguinary tyrant Nabis, were reduced by Philopeemen to a state of complete subjection to Achaia ; and finally surrendered their own liberties. as A% ell as the general independence of Greece, by committing themselves to the protection of the Rnmans. See the references under the article GREECE. (q)