In other words, the Spartans were prepared to betray the Asiatic Greeks and hand them over to Persia, whose possession of them would be totally secure, because there would be no Spartan army in Asia Minor, and no naval state would be strong enough, due to the autonomy of the other states in Greece, to take control of them.
The Quadruple Alliance, however, had taken steps to ensure that their representatives were also at this meeting at Sardis, but withheld their agreement to the Spartan proposals because of their fear that the autonomy clause might be used by the Spartans to weaken the members of the Alliance – the Athenians might lose control over Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros which were essential for Athens’ importation of grain from the Black Sea; the Boeotian League might be dissolved, severely weakening the individual cities, especially Thebes; and the union of Corinth and Argos might be ended (Xen. 4.8.15). Tiribazus was very pleased with the Spartan peace offer, but felt that he needed to refer the matter to Artaxerxes for the final decision. The Spartans called a peace conference at Sparta with the intention of making concessions to the Quadruple Alliance over the autonomy clause (Andocides, The Peace), but the negotiations failed, for the Athenians felt that now was their best chance to regain their Aegean Empire, and possibly because they baulked at the idea of selling out the Asiatic Greeks to Persia. In the end, all the Greek discussions proved to be worthless because Artaxerxes, although gaining from the Spartans all that he had previously wanted, was so antagonistic to the Spartans owing to their earlier treacherous behaviour, especially their support for Cyrus, that he rejected the proposed peace treaty. He withdrew the pro-Spartan Tiribazus and replaced him with Strouthas, giving him clear instructions to help the Athenians against the Spartans (Xen. 4.8.17).
The Spartans renewed the war against Persia in Asia Minor by sending out Thibron, but he was soon killed by Strouthas (Xen. 4.8.17–19), and his replacement, Anaxibios, along with 12 other harmosts, was ambushed and killed by the Athenian Iphicrates in 389/8, marking the end of Spartan military involvement in Asia Minor (Xen. 4.8.34–39). The success of Iphicrates was a symbol of Athens’ growing power in the immediate aftermath of the abortive peace conference in 391. The Persian money had financed the construction of a sizeable fleet, which the Athenians intended to use to lay the foundations of a second naval empire. The Athenians made alliances with Byzantium and Chalcedon, and imposed a 10 per cent toll on all ships passing through the Bosporus; they became allies of the two Thracian Kings, thus ensuring the goodwill of the Thracian coastal cities; they regained Lesbos and began collecting money from other cities in Asia Minor (Xen. 4.8.25–30). This behaviour was very reminiscent of Athens’ fifth-century imperialism, which had deprived the Persian kings of their rightful (in their opinion) tribute for over 70 years. The Athenians’ anti-Persian policy was made plain to see by their alliances with King Evagoras of Salamis in Cyprus (Xen. 4.8.24), and with Akoris, the ruler of Egypt (Aristophanes, Wealth 1.178), both of whom had revolted from Artaxerxes. This renewed spectre of Athenian imperialism brought Artaxerxes to his senses.
The Spartans perceived this to be the right moment to make another approach to Artaxerxes and sent Antalcidas, the ‘nauarch’ (naval commander) for 388/7, to negotiate a new treaty between themselves and Persia (D.S. 14.110.2). He was welcomed by Artaxerxes, who had realized that the revitalized Athenians were far more of a threat to his control of the Asiatic Greeks than the Spartans. Consequently he agreed to an alliance with Sparta and to the terms of the peace treaty which the Spartans wished to impose on the rest of the Greeks, but which also gave him control of the Asiatic Greeks (Xen. 5.1.25). He also reappointed Tiribazus to the command of the west, instructing him to give every possible help to the Spartans. Then Antalcidas, with more than 80 ships, including 20 from their ally, Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse, made for the Hellespont and immediately stopped the grain ships from sailing to Athens (Xen. 5.1.28–29). This repeat of Lysander’s action in 405–404 after the battle of Aegospotamoi, which had starved the Athenians into submission, was the decisive move for ending the war. The Athenians were in reality the leaders of the Quadruple Alliance, and once they were compelled to submit, there was little chance of the others continuing the war.
As a result the Greeks, having been summoned by Tiribazus, attended a meeting at Sardis in order to hear the terms of the peace that Artaxerxes was proposing:
‘King Artaxerxes thinks it right that the cities in Asia, including Clazomenae, should belong to him, and that the other Greek cities, both small and big, should be made autonomous, except Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros. These, just as in the past, should belong to the Athenians. Whoever does not accept this peace, I will make war on them, alongside those who want this peace, by land and by sea, with ships and with money.’
(Xen. 5.1.31)
The Greek representatives were then sent away to report Artaxerxes’ proposals to their respective states. However, Agesilaos then used the army to ensure the acceptance of Artaxerxes’ terms by Sparta’s enemies in time for the formal signing of the peace.
The Thebans were very resistant to the concept of autonomy, as redefined by the Spartans, since it entailed the break-up of the Boeotian League which was the source of their strength. Agesilaos assembled the Peloponnesian League army to march upon Thebes, but had only reached as far as Tegea, when the Boeotians submitted and agreed to the terms of the peace treaty (Xen. 5.1.32–33). The Corinthians and Argos also refused at first, because in 389 they had gone a stage further than their mutual citizenship of 392 and had united into one state. However, the threat of Spartan armed intervention by Agesilaos led to the departure of the Argive garrison in Corinth, and the dissolution of the union (Xen. 5.1.34). Having sorted out the enemies of Sparta, Agesilaos was now ready for the formal signing of the King’s Peace in 386.
The main beneficiary of the King’s Peace was the Spartans, and for that reason the alternative name for the peace – the Peace of Antalcidas – is a better reflection of the true position. They had bargained away the Asiatic Greeks, whom they no longer had the means to control anyway, in return for the crippling of their Greek enemies. The Athenians were now prevented from acquiring a new naval empire, since all states were henceforth to be independent; the dangerous union of Corinth and Argos had been broken up, and Corinth was forced once more to rejoin the Peloponnesian League under Sparta; and, far more importantly, Thebes and the other cities of Boeotia were isolated from each other (Xen. 5.1.35–36). Thus Sparta, by the humiliation of the Boeotians, who had offered the most serious challenge from the end of the Peloponnesian War, had regained the undisputed hegemony of Greece.
Bibliography
Andrewes, A. ‘Two notes on Lysander’, Phoenix 25.
Cartledge, P. Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta, chs 6, 11, 12, 14, 17 and 18.
——Sparta and Lakonia, ch. 13.
Davies, J. K. Democracy and Classical Greece, 2nd edn, ch. 8.
Hornblower, S. The Greek World 479–323 BC, 2nd edn, ch. 14.
Lewis, D. M. Sparta and Persia, chs 5 and 6.
Parke, H. W. ‘The development of the second Spartan Empire’, JHS 50.
Perlman, S. ‘The causes and the outbreak of the Corinthian War’, CQ 14.
Seager, R. ‘Thrasybulus, Conon and Athenian imperialism’, JHS 87.
25
THE ‘ HEGEMONY’ OF THEBES, 371– 362
Fifth-century Greece had been dominated by the two super-powers, Athens and Sparta, but in the first 30 years of the fourth century, Boeotia, led by Thebes, became a major force in Greek politics. After the Boeotians regained their independence from Athens in 447 at the battle of Coroneia, they restored the Boeotian League which was the source of their strength. This federal league was divided into eleven administrative constituencies, each one providing 60 members for the 660-strong federal Council which was the chief decision-making body of the Boeotians. The main executive functions of the League were carried out by a board of public officials, known as the eleven Boeotarchs, annuall
y elected, one from each of the constituencies. As Thebes covered four of these constituencies, and thus had 240 councillors and four Boeotarchs, it naturally assumed the position of leadership within the League, although this was disputed by its main rival Orchomenus.
The power of the Boeotians had grown with the defeat of the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War (431–404), and this had caused anxiety among the Spartans. The Boeotians’ passive resistance to the Spartans’ growing imperialism from 404/3 became active in 395 when they joined the Athenians, the Corinthians and the Argives in a Quadruple Alliance, and fought the Spartans in the Corinthian War (see Chapter 24). However, the King’s Peace (also known as the Peace of Antalcidas) in 386 had established Spartan dominance in Greece, mainly at the expense of Boeotia. The Boeotian League was dissolved, destroying the power-base of Thebes, and seemingly removing the possibility of any future challenge to Sparta’s ‘hegemony’ (leadership) of Greece. Yet in 371, at the battle of Leuctra under the inspired leadership of Epaminondas, the Boeotians delivered the fatal blow to the Spartans that finally led to their collapse as a serious force in Greek politics. How had the position of the Boeotians changed so dramatically in that 15-year period?
The rise of Thebes, 386–371
In the years 386–379, the power of Sparta in mainland Greece seemed invincible. One of the principal terms of the King’s Peace of 386 was that all states should be free and autonomous, but it was the Spartans, whether officially under the Peace or unofficially by virtue of their superior military forces, who were to be the judges of what constituted the definition of autonomy. They interpreted autonomy as the right to dissolve any grouping of cities that offered a threat to themselves or coerce any state that had the wrong kind (i.e. democratic) of constitution, while strengthening and enlarging their Peloponnesian League, which they cynically claimed consisted of ‘autonomous’ states. The first to suffer was the democratic state of Mantinea in Arcadia, which had been disloyal to Sparta in the Corinthian War and therefore was ripe for Spartan retribution. In 385 Mantinea was captured by a Spartan army and was broken up into its original four or five villages, which had synoecized (see Glossary) into the unified state of Mantinea c.471; a pro-Spartan oligarchy was also imposed (Xenophon, Hellenica 5.2.1–7 – all references in the rest of this chapter are to this work, unless stated otherwise). In 384, the Spartans ordered democratic Phlius to receive back its oligarchic exiles, but later, after a siege from 381–379, they imposed a narrow pro-Spartan oligarchy, supported by a garrison (5.2.8–10; 5.3.10– 17, 21–25). In 382 the Spartans launched a major expedition against the Chalcidian League which, under the leadership of Olynthus, was growing in size and strength. In 379, Olynthus surrendered, the League was dissolved and each of its members was forced to join the Peloponnesian League (5.2.11–24; 2.37–3.1–9; 3.18–20, 26–27).
But Sparta’s greatest success and most overt imperialism in this period was in Boeotia. The Spartans had ensured that extreme pro-Spartan oligarchic exiles had been restored to Thebes before the formal signing of the King’s Peace in 386. In 382 this foresight came to fruition. While the Spartan Phoebidas was leading his troops through Boeotia for the campaign (allegedly) against the Chalcidian League, having plotted with Leontiadas, one of the restored Theban exiles, he suddenly seized and garrisoned the Cadmeia (the citadel of Thebes) and established a narrow pro-Spartan oligarchy under Leontiadas (5.2.25–36). Even Xenophon, who is generally so biased in favour of Sparta, was shocked by this blatant infringement of autonomy which had been guaranteed in the King’s Peace (5.4.1). However, 300 anti-Spartan Thebans escaped and were given refuge in Athens. Around this time the Spartans also re-founded Plataea, which they had razed to the ground in 427 for being an ally of Athens, and strengthened their hold on Boeotia by imposing Theban-style oligarchies, backed up by Spartan ‘harmosts’ and garrisons, on most of the other main cities in Boeotia. Thus, by 379, Xenophon was able to write:
Events had turned out so well for the Spartans that the Thebans and the rest of the Boeotians were completely under their power … and their empire seemed now at last to have been well and truly established.
(Xenophon 5.3.27)
However, it was at this Spartan pinnacle of success that the recovery of Boeotia begins.
A plot was hatched in 379 to overthrow the pro-Spartan ‘polemarchs’ (war-leaders), who were the chief public officials in Thebes since the dissolution of the Boeotian League. Phillidas, the polemarchs’ secretary, organized the liberation of Thebes with the 300 exiled Thebans in Athens and with two Athenian generals. The exiles entered Thebes at night, assassinated the polemarchs and Leontiadas, roused the Thebans to revolt, summoned the two Athenian generals with their troops and attacked the Cadmeia where the 1,500-strong garrison under its three Spartan commanders were stationed. Having failed to get help from Plataea and Thespiae, Herippidas, the Spartan harmost, surrendered and was forced to make a humiliating retreat from Boeotia (5.4.1–13). The Spartan position, however, was still strong, as they had garrisons in the other principal Boeotian cities, but it was essential to regain control of Thebes. Therefore early in 378 King Cleombrotus was sent with a Peloponnesian army into Boeotia, but he departed after 16 days, having achieved very little there, although he left behind Sphodrias with a third of the army and money to hire mercenaries (5.4.15–18). Nevertheless his expedition did frighten the Athenians into neutrality and into the condemnation of the two generals who had helped in the liberation of Thebes (5.4.19) – this was possibly the main aim of the Spartans.
It had been one of the basic tenets of Spartan foreign policy in central Greece to encourage hostility between Athens and Boeotia so that neither could threaten Sparta. The clumsy attempt in 378 by Sphodrias, the harmost of Thespiae, to seize the Piraeus by force and his acquittal through the influence of King Agesilaos (5.4.20–33) so shocked the Athenians that they voted that the King’s Peace had been broken by the Spartans (Diodorus 15.29.7); and they pressed on with making alliances with the Thebans and other states that culminated in the creation of the Second Athenian League in 378/7. It was now that the Thebans felt the confidence to start the reconstruction of the Boeotian League which was signalled by their election in 378 of four Theban Boeotarchs, the public officials of the League. The three Spartan invasions in 378 and 377 (two led by Agesilaos) and the aborted attempt in 376 under Cleombrotus had failed to conquer the Thebans, and thus their ambitions increased. In 378 the Sacred Band of 300 professional Theban soldiers was formed to be the spearhead of Boeotia’s military resurgence. The Thebans defeated the troops of Phoebidas and of Thespiae in 378/7 and, as a result:
The ambitions of the Thebans were again kindled, and they made expeditions against Thespiae and the other neighbouring cities. However, the democratic factions from these cities retired to Thebes, for narrow oligarchies had been established in all the cities, just as in Thebes.
(Xenophon 5.4.46)
These narrow pro-Spartan oligarchies had proved to be deeply unpopular, and the Thebans’ own moderately democratic constitution and reception of these democratic refugees helped to increase the support for the renewed Boeotian League.
The Peloponnesian League members became disaffected with Sparta’s (and King Agesilaos’) fixation on and failure against Boeotia, and persuaded the Spartans in 376 to direct their military efforts against the growing power of the Athenians and their new naval league. It was decided to repeat the effective strategy of 405/4 and 387/6 by starving the Athenians into submission. Therefore the Peloponnesian fleet patrolled the waters around Aegina, Ceos and Andros, so preventing the grain ships from reaching the Piraeus. However, this strategy failed miserably when the Athenians won a decisive naval battle at Naxos in September 376 (5.4.60–61). In the following year, the Athenians followed up this success by sending a fleet around the Peloponnese, at the request of the Thebans, which gained control of Corcyra and won another resounding naval victory at Alyzeia in Acarnania near the island of Leucas (5.4.64–66).
These two invasion-free years (376–375) gave the Thebans the breathing space that they needed:
The Thebans boldly launched military expeditions against the surrounding cities and took control of them for a second time.
(Xenophon 5.4.63)
The purpose of these expeditions was to restore the Boeotian League, which had been the basis of Thebes’ power. According to Xenophon (6.1.1), the Thebans had restored the Boeotian League in its entirety by 375, but he is probably mistaken as Plataea, Thespiae and Orchomenus, the other principal city-states in Boeotia and long-standing rivals of Thebes, were still under Spartan control at this time. However, by 375, the restored Boeotian League had become a major force, whose new constitution (although its details in the sources are scarce) increased the power of the Thebans as the leaders. There were now only seven Boeotarchs, but Thebes still retained the right to elect four of them. In addition, many of the powers of the former Council of 660, which had been abolished, were handed over to the Boeotarchs. All citizens of the new Boeotian League were entitled to attend the sovereign federal Assembly and, as it was held in Thebes, this ensured that the Thebans were usually in the majority when policy and legislation were being decided.
The growing military prowess of the Boeotians – a clear warning to the rest of Greece – was displayed at the battle of Tegyra in 375 when Pelopidas, using the Sacred Band in conjunction with the cavalry, inflicted a defeat and heavy casualties on the Spartan garrison at Orchomenus (Diodorus 15.37.1). Such was the confidence of the Boeotians that in the same year they went on the offensive against Sparta’s loyal ally in central Greece, Phocis (6.1.1). Therefore the Spartans despatched King Cleombrotus with two-thirds of the Spartan army and the same number of allied troops to defend Phocis (6.1.1). However, by the second half of 375, the Spartans were feeling the pressure: they had failed to make much of an impact against Thebes, had suffered two serious naval defeats, and were unable through a lack of manpower to help their ally, Polydamas of Pharsalus in Thessaly, against the powerful and ambitious Jason of Pherae, who was now allied with Boeotia (6.1.2–17). The Athenians too were finding the naval campaigns a major drain on finance and manpower, and shared the same deep concern about the revival of Boeotian militarism under Thebes. Thus, the request of the Persian King Artaxerxes – possibly prompted by the Spartans (Philochorus FGrH328 F151) – to renew the King’s Peace of 386, for the purpose of hiring Greek mercenaries to put down a rebellion in Egypt, was welcomed by both the Spartans and the Athenians (Diodorus 15.38.1).
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