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For all this he had, he said, the authority of the Athenian General Iphicrates, who awarded the prize of valor to the pleasure-loving and rapacious soldier. The more irksome the restraint by which the passions of the soldiers were kept in check, the greater must have been the vehemence with which they broke forth at the sole outlet which was left open to them.
Iphicrates was afterward sent to assist Sparta in the desperate contest with Thebes. The Spartan allied army occupied Corinth, and guarded the passes which prevented the Thebans from penetrating into the Peloponnesus.
In B.C. 375 an attempt to recover Egypt, for which a vast armament had been collected under Pharnabazus and Iphicrates, completely failed. Nine years afterwards, in B.C. 366, the revolt of the satraps began. First Ariobarzanes, satrap of Phrygia, renounced his allegiance, and defended himself with success against Autophradutes, satrap of Lydia, and Mausolus, native king of Caria under Persia.
He waged war out of his own kingdom with the Egyptians, under the conduct of Pharnabazus and Iphicrates, but was unsuccessful by reason of their dissensions. In his expedition against the Cadusians, he went himself in person with three hundred thousand footmen and ten thousand horse.
But as if on purpose to punish him in his pride, before they parted from him, messengers came with news of the complete slaughter of one of the Spartan divisions by Iphicrates, a greater disaster than had befallen them for many years; and that the more grievous, because it was a choice regiment of full-armed Lacedaemonians overthrown by a parcel of mere mercenary targeteers.
Pharnabazus and Iphicrates parted amid mutual recriminations; and the reduction of Egypt was deferred for above a quarter of a century. In Greece, however, the Great King still retained that position of supreme arbiter with which he had been invested at the "Peace of Antalcidas."
A story was told of his having driven over a bridge which was not quite as wide as the outside edges of his chariot- wheels; and there were many witnesses to the feat he had performed of writing his mistress' name with his chariot-tracks in the sand of the Hippodrome. The betting was freest and the wagers highest on Hippias and the team belonging to Iphicrates.
The horses in the quadriga with which Marcus, the son of Mary, made his appearance in the arena had never before been driven in the Hippodrome. These perfect creatures were perhaps as fine as the famous team of golden bays belonging to Iphicrates, which so often had proved victorious; but the agitatores, or drivers, attracted even more interest than the horses.
The generous contumacy of Socrates, as Cicero calls it, has been highly celebrated in all ages; and when joined to the usual modesty of his behaviour, forms a shining character. Iphicrates, the Athenian, being accused of betraying the interests of his country, asked his accuser, WOULD YOU, says he, HAVE, ON A LIKE OCCASION, BEEN GUILTY OF THAT CRIME? BY NO MEANS, replied the other.
Before it arrived, however, the Corcyræans made a successful sally upon the Spartan troops, over-confident of victory, in which Mnasippus was slain, and the city became supplied with provisions. After the victory, Iphicrates, in command of the Athenian fleet, which had been delayed, arrived and captured the ships which Dionysius of Syracuse had sent to the aid of the Lacedæmonians.
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