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2

The Fourth Century

During the first half of the fourth century the loose cooperative practices of the Achaians and Aitolians were transformed into a set of formal political institutions that bound the poleis and communities of each region together into regional states. Although the evidence is not plentiful, it is unmistakable. For Boiotia rich literary sources allow us to trace the struggle against Sparta and the unambiguous domination of the Boiotian koinon by Thebes, which itself begins to reveal the remarkable fragility of the koinon as a set of institutions, a theme we shall pick up in greater detail in chapter 6. The narratives of the fourth-century historians also allow us to trace, more broadly, the problem of the relationship between polis autonomy, hailed as a pan-Hellenic political goal in this period, and participation in a koinon. The creation of a common, regional polity was increasingly seen as a solution to the problem of how small poleis could survive in a world in which some states, and rulers, had grown exceptionally large, wealthy, and powerful. The story of the latter half of the fourth century, and indeed the Hellenistic period as well, can be seen as a story about the tremendous success of this solution, as well as about its limitations.

COMMON WARS, COMMON PEACES, COMMON POLITIES, 404–371

The end of the Peloponnesian War left the Aitolians and Achaians apparently independent but pro-Spartan. The Aitolians still lacked access to the Corinthian Gulf but had no immediate means of regaining it. Boiotian feelings toward Sparta, however, now ran tepid, and they grew even cooler in the first years of the fourth century. Of all the Spartans’ Peloponnesian War allies, only the Boiotians and Corinthians refused to join the Spartans when they made war on the Elians in 398.¹ Relations between Sparta and Boiotia continued to deteriorate until outright hostility emerged in 395 in a series of engagements called by some sources the Boiotian War, which became only the first act in the longer play known as the Corinthian War. While there may have been lingering anger over the fallout of the Peloponnesian War, there were certainly more immediate causes for offense. The Spartans were interfering in factional Theban politics.² Farther afield, they were aggressively prosecuting a war with the Persians in the eastern Mediterranean that revealed imperialist ambitions, of which the Boiotians had expressed their disapproval.³ They were also beginning to become involved in Thessaly (much to the alarm of the Boiotians), Sicily, and even Egypt.⁴ These are the background conditions against which the Boiotians, according to Xenophon, were open to the suggestion, made by agents of the Persian king, that they should stir up a war against the Spartans in Greece in order to draw Agesilaos away from Asia. They were joined by the Corinthians and Argives, at least in part because of political divisions and strong anti-Spartan tendencies within each of the cities.⁵ The Thebans took the lead in drumming up a war against Sparta indirectly, by exploiting an old conflict between the Lokrians, allies of the Boiotians and Athenians, and the Phokians, loyal allies of Sparta.⁶ They were correct in their assumption that the Spartans would come to the aid of the Phokians if summoned, and their actions marked the beginning of the Corinthian War.

It was probably around this time, when long-simmering discontent with the Spartans was about to boil over into outright conflict, that political divisions within Thebes affected all Boiotia.⁷ According to Xenophon, it was a political faction led by Androkleidas and Ismenias that encouraged the Boiotians to invade Phokis in defense of their Lokrian allies. The Spartans agreed readily to a Phokian appeal for help, and the Boiotians (or at least some of them) had what they wanted: a war with Sparta.⁸ In response to a damaging Boiotian invasion of western Phokis, the Spartans ordered a general mobilization and sent Lysander ahead to Phokis, from where he exploited the internal divisions of the Boiotians to Spartan advantage, inducing Orchomenos to revolt, once again, from Thebes.⁹ While the main Spartan army was making its way north, the Thebans persuaded the Athenians to make an alliance with the entire Boiotian koinon.¹⁰ This was probably part of the process of forming a larger coalition against Sparta, including Argos and Corinth, which only Diodoros recounts in detail, but which is implicit in several passages of Xenophon’s account.¹¹

Lysander, flushed with his success at Orchomenos, then moved on to Haliartos and had just persuaded the city to become autonomous when the Thebans got wind of his actions and attacked him there. A fierce battle took place beneath the walls of the city, in which Lysander himself was killed and the Boiotians emerged clearly victorious.¹² But they did not manage to regain Orchomenos, which was held by a Spartan garrison until the King’s Peace in 386; the military burden of holding it was indeed one reason why the Spartans were eager for that settlement.¹³ The complex events that unfolded in western Boiotia in 395 illustrate for us one reason why those Boiotians who were fighting for a regional state fought so hard: it is, geographically speaking, a relatively open region, and as soon as complete coherence breaks down, the entire region becomes exceptionally vulnerable. This defensive motive is thus an important part of the problem, but it should by no means be regarded as the only one.

From this point the Corinthian War assumes a familiar shape, and the issue of regional political organization and division receives no particular illumination from the sources, so a quick résumé of events should be sufficient. In 394 the Spartans enjoyed two important (but narrow) victories, one at Nemea and one at Koroneia, in the heart of Boiotia.¹⁴ From 393 to 390 Corinth became the center of the allied struggle against Sparta.¹⁵ In 392/1 the Spartans and their allies were sufficiently discontented with the pace of progress in the war, and alarmed by recent developments in the Aegean war, that they were willing to approach the negotiating table at Sardis. It is clear from Xenophon’s account of the breakdown of peace talks at Sardis that the main principle of the proposed agreement was universal polis autonomy: the Argives were unwilling to surrender Corinth, which they had seized in 393; the Athenians feared the loss of their cleruchies on Lemnos, Imbros, and Skyros, and the implications of full autonomy for the Greek poleis of Asia Minor; and the Thebans were unwilling to allow the Boiotian poleis to become autonomous.¹⁶ The Persian King Artaxerxes was likewise unwilling to accept Sparta’s terms. Implementing the concept of autonomy in interstate agreements was always a slippery business, and the difficulty of it has led to debates over whether it was a clearly designated political status with legal backing or something more akin to an ideological concept around which partisans could rally.¹⁷ The problem seems in fact to lie somewhere between these positions: as Martin Ostwald demonstrated, the concept developed over time, and the mistake seems to be in assuming that by the early fourth century it had assumed a fixed meaning independent of context. The Sardis negotiations were derailed in part by the Boiotians’ refusal to grant the autonomy of their poleis, which would not have resulted in the immediate dissolution of the koinon, as is so often repeated, but in the Boiotians’ being compelled to allow any member polis to break away if it no longer wished to be a part of the regional state. A second conference was apparently held at Sparta, where a concession was made to the Boiotians’ understanding of polis autonomy: they would have only to renounce their claim to Orchomenos and allow the city to be autonomous.¹⁸ This second attempt foundered too, at least in part because the Athenians refused to sign what had to be a multilateral agreement. The Boiotians could continue to fight for a unified regional state incorporating every polis that was conceived of as belonging (ethnically, culturally, politically, and economically) to Boiotia.

The Spartans were not opposed to koina in principle, for just as they were challenging the integrity of the Boiotian state, they actively supported what must have been a similar form of state in Achaia. In 389, Xenophon tells us, the Achaians were in possession of Kalydon, on the northern coast of the Corinthian Gulf in territory that was once Aitolian, and had made the Kalydonians Achaian citizens.¹⁹ The place was attacked by the Akarnanians, Boiotians, and Athenians, so that the Achaians were compelled to garrison the city and summon Agesilaos for assistance. We do not know when Kalydon was taken by the Achaians, but it is clear that Naupaktos, formerly an Athenian stronghold occupied by both Messenians and Naupaktians, was likewise under Achaian control by 389.²⁰ The Achaians appealed to the Spartans for assistance, and together with other Peloponnesian allies they invaded Akarnania. This experience prompted the Akarnanians to make peace with the Achaians and alliance with the Spartans in the spring of 388.²¹ With this Spartan assistance the Achaians were able to retain control of both Kalydon and Naupaktos until 367 but failed to achieve any further expansion, if indeed that was their purpose.²² Behind the original Achaian seizure of Kalydon and Naupaktos, which the Aitolians had lost sometime in the fifth century but never surrendered their aspiration to regain, must lie hostility if not outright conflict between the Achaians and the Aitolians. We may detect a trace of this hostility in the tradition recorded by the contemporary historian Ephoros that the Achaians controlled the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia before being driven out by the Elians at the head of Oxylos and the Herakleidai.²³ The claim would have angered not only the Elians but also their constant allies and putative kin the Aitolians. Circulating such a claim in the early fourth century, when tensions between Achaia and Aitolia must have been elevated, would have been highly effective.

The episode reveals not only that the Achaians had by 389 developed a political organization in which citizenship was bound up with the political coherence of the entire region, comprising still multiple poleis, but also that it was robust enough to seize and incorporate non-Achaian communities.²⁴ If a sense of Achaian identity was all that bound the Achaian cities together throughout most of the fifth century, it clearly did not impose any restrictions on the limits of their new state, for Kalydon was an old Aitolian polis, and Naupaktos was inhabited by a mix of Lokrians and Messenians. Xenophon’s description of the Achaians’ response to this attack on their northern coastal possessions reveals a few clues about the operation of the Achaian koinon in the early fourth century: it maintained an alliance with Sparta, which may have gone back to the years of the Peloponnesian War, and had some institutional mechanism for the dispatch of ambassadors representing the entire Achaian state and for the levying of an army from all the Achaian member communities.²⁵

The Corinthian War was fought primarily in the eastern Aegean, a contest more between Athens and Persia than between the allies at Corinth and the Spartans. Mainland activity centered around a struggle for control of the Corinthian Gulf, though none of these actions was decisive in bringing about a conclusion to the war. In 386 all parties were more committed to the peace, and the terms eventually dictated by Artaxerxes were essentially those offered in 392 at Sardis: the poleis in Asia were to belong to the king; all other Greek poleis both large and small were to be autonomous, with the exception of the Athenians’ old cleruchies Lemnos, Imbros, and Skyros, which they were allowed to keep.²⁶ The Thebans were, infamously, hesitant to accept these terms and did so only in response to the real threat of a Spartan invasion of Boiotia.²⁷

The autonomy clause of the King’s Peace is generally regarded as the death knell for states comprising multiple poleis like the Boiotian koinon and the recent sympoliteia of Argos and Corinth, as well as for nascent imperial structures like that being built in these years by the Athenian general Thrasyboulos. This is certainly an overstatement. We have already seen that the meaning of autonomy in this period was slippery. Precisely what Artaxerxes and Agesilaos expected would result from this agreement is unclear: Was polis autonomy at odds even with voluntary membership in a koinon or a sympoliteia? Probably not: Mogens Hansen has shown that the concept was contoured around consent.²⁸ The ambiguity of the term “autonomy,” and as a result the difficulty of interpreting the actions surrounding its implementation, has prompted much debate about whether the actual treaty contained a full definition (like that in the Aristoteles Decree of 377) and what such a definition may have been.²⁹ But the problem of ambiguity is not all: the autonomy clause of the King’s Peace actually affected only those political structures that had become involved in the war against Sparta, which in the immediate term meant only Boiotia.³⁰ It had no discernible effect on Achaia. It is, however, clear that it brought about some change in Boiotian political organization, but this change is typically described with undue confidence.³¹ The college of boiotarchs may have been abolished, for in the period 382–379/8 officials called polemarchs appear to have held the highest office at Thebes, but this change is likely to have been more a function of the Spartan occupation of Thebes in those years (on which more below) than of the demands of the King’s Peace.³² Our ignorance of what happened in the other Boiotian cities in the same period is so profound that we simply do not know how the King’s Peace affected them.³³

If the college of boiotarchs was in fact disabled in this period and the Boiotians were unable to make joint decisions and undertake joint actions within the framework of a regional state recognized as valid by outsiders, this does not mean that they were not interacting. Indeed, religious interactions and trade relations (about which there will be much more to say in chapters 4 and 5) must have continued almost undisturbed, and as we shall see these kinds of quotidian relations between individuals of different poleis within the region constituted the real core of the koinon; it was these relations that necessitated the development of state institutions to protect and promote them. So it is partly misleading to speak of the dissolution of the Boiotian koinon in 386; we should rather speak of a temporary institutional crippling enabled by the King’s Peace but enforced by Agesilaos’s interpretation of it.

The advantages that could stem from integrating poleis into a single regional state were apparently becoming clear, and the Chalkideis, under the strong leadership of Olynthos, were working hard in this period to expand theirs. The origin of this koinon is uncertain but may be associated with the synoikism of Olynthos in 432.³⁴ For the late fifth century we know only that the Chalkidian poleis cooperated militarily, made some treaties as a single state, and had ambassadors and proxenoi who represented them in their relations with other states.³⁵ It is only in the early fourth century that we begin to see how this state was organized and what made it powerful. The Chalkidians had joined the Boiotians, Athenians, Corinthians, and Argives in a treaty to fight against the Spartans at the outset of the Corinthian War, and probably around 393 they made a treaty with Amyntas, the Macedonian king.³⁶ So when in 382 a number of poleis in the Chalkidike resisted membership in the koinon of the Chalkideis, and Amyntas needed assistance to regain a number of Macedonian communities he had lost to them, the Spartans were an obvious source of help, not only because they had a history of opposition to the Chalkideis but also because in Boiotia they had demonstrated their willingness to apply the terms of the King’s Peace in such a way as to restrict federal authority.³⁷ According to Xenophon, ambassadors were sent from Akanthos and Apollonia to alert the Spartans to the alarming growth of the Chalkideis and to seek their support in their efforts to avoid becoming part of the state. From a speech attributed by Xenophon to Kleigenes of Akanthos, we learn that the Chalkideis, under Olynthian leadership, had a single set of laws for all the poleis within the state, and a single citizenship just as the Achaians had in this period.³⁸ Diodoros, who makes no mention of the Chalkideis, claims that the appeal was made by Amyntas.³⁹ Whoever actually sent the embassy, the outcome was the same: the Spartans and their Peloponnesian allies launched a major expedition and an advance force to prevent any cities in the region from being brought by coercion into the koinon.⁴⁰ Kleigenes claims that the Olynthians sought an alliance with both Athens and Thebes; diplomacy fell short of this aim, but the Thebans passed a decree prohibiting any Theban citizen from participating in an expedition against Olynthos.⁴¹

Internal support for the Thebans’ decree was far from unanimous. Xenophon paints a picture of severe political infighting at Thebes that continues the story told by the Oxyrhynchos Historian about the opening years of the fourth century.⁴² Ismenias led a group of anti-Spartan political hetairoi, while Leontiades led a group that was eager to cozy up to the Spartans.⁴³ When, therefore, part of the Spartan force being sent to Olynthos was encamped near Thebes, Leontiades approached the Spartan commander, Phoibidas, and offered to betray the Theban akropolis, the Kadmeia, to his forces during the Thesmophoria at Thebes, a festival during which the women took over the akropolis. Phoibidas took the opportunity, and once inside Leontiades approached the Theban council to report it as a fait accompli. He had certainly canvassed for support earlier, because he was immediately supported in the council and had Ismenias arrested as a warmonger. Ismenias’s supporters fled the city in fear for their lives; many went to Athens. Ismenias faced a sham trial, defending himself unsuccessfully against charges of Medism and responsibility for every disturbance in Greece, and was executed.⁴⁴ Whether Phoibidas had acted on orders from Sparta or not was clearly debated in antiquity.⁴⁵ What matters for us is that the Spartans chose to hold the Kadmeia once it had been won, ushering in a period the Boiotians described as the time when the Spartan spear was dominant.⁴⁶

The description is not at all inaccurate, for Thebes continued to be held by a Spartan garrison.⁴⁷ The impact on the rest of Boiotia is interesting. Plataia, destroyed by the Thebans in 427, was probably restored under Spartan sponsorship after 386 and became resolutely pro-Spartan, along with Thespiai.⁴⁸ The allegiance of Thespiai also made the Corinthian Gulf port at Kreusis available to the Spartans.⁴⁹ Spartan control of Boiotia was probably more widespread, managed through puppet governments and garrisons: Xenophon later tells us that they had, in the years prior to 378, established narrow oligarchies in all the poleis, which caused the dēmos in each city to withdraw to Thebes, becoming an unlikely haven for democrats, if not for democracy itself.⁵⁰ We know also that a pro-Spartan government was in place in Tanagra in 377 and probably had been for some years.⁵¹ It appears, then, that the Spartan seizure of Thebes in 382 had wider ramifications for the region than is typically realized; the regional takeover was certainly facilitated by political stasis in the Boiotian poleis. The blow dealt by the Spartans in 382 and facilitated by Theban dissidents resulted in deep fractures to the regional system and its institutions.

In 379 the Spartans and their allies finally took Olynthos and made it a member of the Peloponnesian League.⁵² Surprisingly, however, the terms of their treaty contain not a single hint that the Spartans required the dismantling of the institutions that bound the Chalkideis together.⁵³ The issue of Sparta remained divisive in Thebes, where there was no similar softening of anticooperative sentiment. In the winter of 379/8 Theban exiles and several malcontents within the pro-Spartan Theban government murdered the polemarchs, described by Xenophon as tyrants, and immediately accomplished the adherence of the Theban hoplites and cavalry.⁵⁴ The Thebans immediately set about rebuilding the Boiotian koinon, conducting an election of boiotarchs to govern in place of the polemarchs. But the election was held by Thebans, not by all the Boiotians, and those elected were certainly Theban. This fact had profound effects on the nature of the koinon as it developed over the next decade.⁵⁵ The Spartan garrison on the Kadmeia was expelled with the help of the Athenians and other Boiotians, most of its members being treacherously killed.⁵⁶ Early in 378 the Spartans sent a force to Boiotia under the new king, Kleombrotos, who found the Plataians and Thespians still willing to help; after an ineffectual stay he left Sphodrias as harmost at Thespiai with a garrison, funds, and an order to hire mercenaries.⁵⁷ If nothing else Kleombrotos did manage to frighten both the Thebans, who did not relish the prospect of taking on the Spartan army alone, and the Athenians, who had no taste for the Spartan army traversing their territory. It was fear, then, that threw the Athenians and Thebans into alliance.⁵⁸ When Sphodrias attempted an unauthorized raid on Peiraieus, the Athenians felt their own vulnerability and probably saw that the King’s Peace was now a mere sham.⁵⁹ Around this time the Athenians established their system of alliances known as the Second Athenian Confederacy; although the system was formalized and an allied synedrion established in spring 377 by the decree of Aristoteles, the recent alliance with Thebes provided a paradigm for the terms on which other states would join.⁶⁰ Whether this system of alliances was formalized before or after Sphodrias’s attempt on Peiraieus in 378 has been debated.⁶¹ The somewhat ominous clause stating that the Athenians should send three ambassadors “to persuade the Thebans of whatever good thing they can” may point to Athenian efforts to stave off the conflict between the Boiotian koinon, now being vigorously rebuilt, and the Spartans over the terms of the King’s Peace.⁶² According to Xenophon the Athenians now “assisted the Boiotians with great eagerness” (Hell. 5.4.34).

Thespiai continued to be friendly to the Spartans and became a base from which the Spartan army, again under Agesilaos, ravaged the territory of Thebes in the fall of 378 and spring of 377, doing enough damage to cause a grain shortage.⁶³ A third planned invasion, in spring 376, was thwarted by Athenian intervention. As a result, Xenophon reports, “the Thebans marched out boldly against the neighboring poleis and once again took control of them.”⁶⁴ That process in fact took years. The Spartan garrison was expelled from Orchomenos in 375 by a small Theban force, which then led a victory over the Spartans at Tegyra, just east of Orchomenos.⁶⁵ Thespiai and Tanagra may have been persuaded to rejoin the koinon, but if that is right then Thespiai had rebelled again by 373, for in this year it was attacked by the Thebans, the city razed to the ground, its extended territory pillaged and depopulated.⁶⁶ Plataia, which had probably never been reintegrated, suffered the same fate for its stubborn refusal.⁶⁷

Theban aggression in these years began to alarm the Athenians, who sought in 371 a reaffirmation of the terms of the King’s Peace. They therefore sent an embassy to the Thebans, inviting them to join an embassy to Sparta.⁶⁸ The Thebans agreed and sent Epameinondas as ambassador.⁶⁹ Xenophon recounts a series of speeches given by the various Athenian ambassadors, and one of them, Kallistratos, rebukes the Spartans with the charge that as a result of their seizure of the Theban Kadmeia, “all those cities which you so much wanted to be independent are once again under Theban authority.”⁷⁰ In Plutarch’s version of the story, there was an aggressive confrontation at this conference between Agesilaos and the powerful Theban general Epameinondas, who charged the Spartan king with hypocrisy, arguing that the participation of the Boiotian poleis in a Theban-led koinon was no more a violation of autonomy than the subordination of the perioikic towns of Lakonia to Sparta.⁷¹ Xenophon claims that when the allies agreed to renew the common peace and took their oaths, the Thebans did too, in their own name, but on the following day asked to change their oath, so that it would be in the name of all Boiotia. Agesilaos refused and sent orders to Kleombrotos, the Spartan general stationed in Phokis, to invade Boiotia.⁷² The implication is clear: the Spartans refused to recognize the Boiotian koinon as a state, insisting that it violated the autonomy clause of the King’s Peace. As a result, all sources agree, the Thebans remained outside the peace, and we know of no other Boiotian poleis taking the oath in their own names. Kleombrotos, already in Phokis, could act quickly and launched an invasion of Boiotia, which led to a decisive engagement at Leuktra late in the year 371. The stunning defeat suffered by the Spartans at this battle is one of the major turning points in the history of fourth-century Greece. Leuktra led, undeniably, to a wholly different world, in which the Spartans were badly weakened and the Thebans wildly emboldened.⁷³ That different world is described by modern historians as the Theban hegemony, adopting the language of hēgemonia used by the ancient sources about Thebes’ position vis-à-vis the rest of Greece for the next nine years. Yet this label captures only a part of the story that interests us, for these years also witnessed the burgeoning of formal koinon institutions throughout mainland Greece, a phenomenon that cannot be tied in every case to the energies of the Boiotians’ brilliant statesman Epameinondas.

THEBAN HEGEMONY AND THE HEGEMONY OF THE KOINON, 371–346

The Athenians received Theban news of their victory at Leuktra with obvious distress; the herald was not even offered hospitality, much less a promise of aid.⁷⁴ Several attempts were made to arbitrate in the dispute between Thebes and Sparta, but the status of the Boiotian and the Lakonian perioikic poleis remained unresolved.⁷⁵ The Athenians soon took the lead in reaffirming the terms of the peace reached before the battle; the only difference appears to be that no one was prepared to force the issue of autonomy for the poleis of Boiotia.⁷⁶

The Thebans now set about consolidating the Boiotian state and cementing alliances with central Greek neighbors. In 370 they punished the intransigence of Orchomenos, with which they had been in open conflict before Leuktra.⁷⁷ The original intention, according to Diodoros, was to enslave the city, but Epameinondas persuaded them of the political importance of philanthrōpia, so instead “they reckoned the Orchomenians among the territory of their allies,” a mysterious phrase.⁷⁸ Whether that was equivalent to the treatment originally meted out to Thespiai in 373 (being compelled “to contribute to the Thebans”), or whether they allowed them independence from the koinon on condition of agreeing to an alliance, is unclear. They then established friendship with the Phokians, Lokrians, and Aitolians, all of whom turned out to be valuable supporters.⁷⁹ The Thebans now approached a hegemonic position within the mainland, which means in practice only that they tended to be the ones who were most effective at deciding disputes (usually by force) and received appeals for help by other states for that reason. Although Xenophon’s account of these years focuses heavily on Theban relations with the Peloponnesian states, we know from other sources that they were also vigorously active in northern Greece and in the Aegean. The history of Thebes and Boiotia in the 360s thus demands a consideration of virtually the whole of the Greek world. But my aim is merely to show the outlines of the major events of the period in order to facilitate a better understanding of the developments of the institutions of the koinon and its internal workings.⁸⁰

The Arkadians took the common peace reached in Athens, which implicitly sanctioned the existence of the Boiotian koinon, as an opportunity for political revolution. The Mantineians took it as a signal that they were free to resynoikize their city and did so despite Spartan anger, while in Tegea the first steps were taken toward the creation of an Arkadian regional state; it was proposed that whatever was decided in common would be binding upon all poleis.⁸¹ But the proposal met with opposition in some places, at Tegea so strongly that a violent stasis erupted over the issue. As the Arkadian army grew with the adherence of each new member polis, it was used to compel recalcitrant poleis to join the koinon. It was probably in these earliest days of Arkadian unification after Leuktra, when there was heightened awareness of the need for physical security and institutional support for a newly created regional state, that the Arkadians began the process of creating their new Megalopolis by synoikism.⁸² Spartan attempts to break what they clearly saw as a very real threat were unsuccessful, but the Arkadians needed help and appealed to the Athenians in late 370. There they were rebuffed, but they received a much warmer reception in Thebes.⁸³

The Boiotian army invaded the Peloponnese in late winter 370 to help the Arkadians, with virtually all central Greece in their alliance.⁸⁴ The army of Boiotians and Arkadians that invaded Lakonia was the first the Spartan women had ever seen, and the shock was so severe that the Spartans offered freedom to all helots who assisted in the defense of Lakonia.⁸⁵ After an indecisive battle at Sparta itself the Thebans attacked Gytheion, the southern port of Lakonia opposite Kythera, and won the support of Lakonian perioikoi.⁸⁶ It was probably at this juncture, in early spring 369, that they delivered a more significant blow to Sparta’s ancient supremacy in the Peloponnese by helping to refound Messene as a city well situated, geographically and in a sense structurally, for opposition to Sparta.⁸⁷ The Messenian communities now formed themselves into a koinon, with the help not only of the Boiotians but also of the Arkadians and Argives.⁸⁸ The Thebans’ invasion of the Peloponnese in winter 370/69 was focused primarily on damaging the Spartans indirectly by bolstering nascent Arkadian political union and strengthening the Messenians, and this was precisely what was accomplished before their withdrawal in the early spring of 369.⁸⁹ As they withdrew, however, they encountered Athenian forces, now allied with the Spartans, in the Corinthia. Fighting in the area, extending into summer 369, was indecisive.⁹⁰

During the same period the Thebans became more heavily involved in northern Greece, and as they did so the Arkadians began to withdraw their support.⁹¹ In Thessaly, one Alexander came to power in Pherai after a series of bloody power struggles, and the Boiotians responded to a call for help from Larisa, which Alexander held by force.⁹² In Macedon similar dynastic struggles were unfolding, and the Thebans were asked to arbitrate. Most of the Boiotian army was in the Peloponnese with Epameinondas, so the Thebans sent their other star general, Pelopidas, at the head of a force that was able to expel Alexander’s garrison from Larisa before continuing north to Macedon. The primary outcome of this first official Theban visit to Macedon was that Philip II, the brother of the reigning king, along with other noble youths, was taken back to Thebes as a hostage for the good behavior of the Macedonian ruler.⁹³

Neither the Thessalian nor the Macedonian arrangement lasted long: Ptolemy assassinated Alexander II and took the throne for himself, sparking the complaints of Alexander’s supporters, while the Thessalian poleis renewed their complaints against Alexander of Pherai.⁹⁴ Pelopidas returned to Macedonia, where he managed to extract a promise from Ptolemy that he would hold the throne only as regent for Alexander’s heirs, but the agreement was made, according to Plutarch, more out of deference on Ptolemy’s part to the prestige of the Thebans than as a result of military victory.⁹⁵ Indeed Pelopidas had been forced to hire mercenaries within Thessaly for his expedition to Macedonia, because the bulk of the Theban army was again in the Peloponnese with Epameinondas, but they were susceptible to Ptolemy’s bribes. Pelopidas then entered Thessaly: whether he did so with the intention of punishing his treacherous mercenaries or to arbitrate again in the dispute between Alexander of Pherai and some of the Thessalian cities is not clear.⁹⁶ Whatever his intention, Pelopidas was seized by Alexander of Pherai and held at Pharsalos; it took two expeditions by the Thebans to rescue him, in the course of which Alexander of Pherai was so alarmed that he sought, and won, an alliance with the Athenians.⁹⁷

The Athenian alliance first with Sparta and then with Alexander of Pherai in these years, and the Arkadians’ increasing independence from the Boiotians, whom they had originally summoned in 370, suggest at first glance that the Boiotians suffered significant diplomatic isolation in these years. The long list of central Greek allies that they had built up in 371/0 was, however, for the most part still in place, and there is evidence to support the claim that Boiotian relations with some Thessalian communities continued to be warm.⁹⁸ As a means of persuading the Arkadians to remain loyal the Boiotians sought to develop stronger ties with the northern Peloponnese, and this meant seeking the allegiance of the Achaians. Achaian Pellene had been a loyal Spartan ally since the invasion of 370, but it appears to have acted independently of the rest of Achaia and must not have been a member of the koinon in these years.⁹⁹ Although Achaia appears to have retained the institutions of a single state that allowed it to annex and integrate Naupaktos and Kalydon several decades before, Xenophon describes a condition of fairly serious regional stasis. When Epameinondas entered Achaia in 367 with his Boiotian and allied army, he was approached by “the best men from Achaia,” a typical euphemism for those with oligarchic sympathies. He assured them that “the strongest” would not be exiled, nor would there be any changes in government, in exchange for a unilateral alliance.¹⁰⁰ Underlying Xenophon’s account is significant tension, if not outright conflict, between oligarchs and democrats within Achaia, but there is no hint that these tensions ran along polis lines (as they had recently in Boiotia); the internal debate about how Achaia ought to be governed was clearly being conducted at the regional scale. The Thebans’ aim was simply to achieve the Achaian alliance; they were apparently indifferent to the internal composition of the government, for almost immediately the oligarchs’ political opponents objected that the arrangement was too favorable to Sparta. The Theban response was to send governors (harmosts) to each of the Achaian poleis; when they arrived these governors helped to oust the oligarchs and install democracies. We should probably infer that this was done on official orders from the Theban-led Boiotian koinon. The arrangement was ephemeral; the exiled oligarchs quickly regained control of their cities and rejected all allegiance to the Thebans, who had, according to Xenophon, so easily betrayed them.¹⁰¹

It was probably after this botched attempt to make an alliance with the Achaians that the Thebans under Epameinondas expelled the Achaian garrisons from Naupaktos and Kalydon, in Aitolia, and from Dyme itself, in the extreme west of coastal Achaia.¹⁰² Diodoros, whose brief account is our only source for the supposed liberation of these cities, does not explain the Boiotians’ motive, but it is perhaps not so difficult to divine. In a single blow they could take vengeance on the Achaians for their fickleness and reward the Aitolians, who had been their friends since 370 and had been hoping to regain Naupaktos since at least 389.¹⁰³ It is additionally possible that winning over such coastal places was part of the planning stage of building a Boiotian navy, which got under way a few years later.¹⁰⁴ The liberation of Dyme may not have affected the Aitolians at all, but it may point to an ongoing struggle within Achaia to define the nature and boundaries of the power of the regional state.¹⁰⁵ The independence of Pellene in these years and the struggle between oligarchs and democrats point in the same direction.¹⁰⁶ The status of Naupaktos and Kalydon after their liberation is somewhat murky, but it is likely that Kalydon was handed over to the Aitolians while control of Naupaktos was returned to the Lokrian inhabitants of the town.¹⁰⁷ Even if the Aitolians did not gain what the Achaians lost, the expulsion of the Achaian garrisons from these places must have been a great benefit to them.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that we have our first incontrovertible evidence for the existence of formal koinon institutions in Aitolia in the very same year, 367/6. An Athenian decree (T52) records the decision to send a herald “to the koinon of the Aitolians” (ll. 16–17) to demand the release of sacred officials who had been seized by some Trichoneians while announcing the sacred truce for the Eleusinian Mysteries (ll. 11–14), which had been accepted by the Aitolian koinon before the seizure (ll. 8–10). There has been some debate about the meaning of “the koinon of the Aitolians” in this document, but it is clear that this entity was regarded by other states as having both authority over the behavior of the citizens of the polis Trichoneion (certainly inter alias) and responsibility for enforcing “the common laws of the Greeks” among them.¹⁰⁸ To put it another way, it was expected that the laws and decisions of the koinon, in this case accepting the truce for the Eleusinian Mysteries, were binding on its citizens. That the Aitolian koinon should first appear on the scene in the context of an illicit seizure has perhaps obscured the importance of the historical context of the decree. The Aitolians’ Hellenistic reputation as plunderers seems to receive early confirmation here.¹⁰⁹ But while the act of seizure that lies behind the decree may have been the private act of a few Trichoneians, it is equally possible that it should be seen in the framework of broader hostilities between the Athenians and the Boiotians, with whom the Aitolians were in allegiance.

This inscription alone justifies the claim that the first decades of the fourth century witnessed political developments that formalized old patterns of cooperation among the different communities and poleis of Aitolia, committing them to a single authority through which interactions with foreign states would be conducted. We would like to know why this happened now. The Aitolians may have developed formal political institutions that created a single regional state at any time between the Peloponnesian War and 367/6. We have seen evidence of functional cooperation throughout that period but have lacked any evidence for formal institutions that may have supported or, indeed, required it. It has been argued that the Aitolian koinon was created by Epameinondas in 370, a hypothesis that could be supported by the Boiotians’ efforts to liberate the old Aitolian city of Kalydon in 367.¹¹⁰ But the Boiotian-Aitolian relationship in 370 is described only as a friendship, and there is no evidence to support the common view that the Boiotians were engaged in forging confederate polities outside their own borders.¹¹¹

During the fourth century, however, we see another striking development in Aitolia that may be related, namely a significant increase in urbanization throughout the region. Although Kalydon had been occupied since at least the archaic period, in the early fourth century its inhabitants invested heavily in its defense, building a lengthy circuit wall with towers and gates to enclose the settlement.¹¹² With our inability to date fortification walls precisely comes uncertainty as to whether these should be associated with the period of the Achaian garrison or with Aitolian retrenchment following the city’s probable return in 367, but the developments at Kalydon are in line with what we see in other parts of the region that were not subject to foreign control, suggesting that the Aitolians were indeed responsible for them. At nearby Chalkis, the fourth century saw the construction of a fortification above the city, which was itself defended by a circuit wall in the classical period.¹¹³ The scant remains of a large fortified settlement of the classical period at modern Gavalou, south of Lake Trichonis, have long been associated with ancient Trichoneion, the home of those accused by the Athenians of seizing the sacred heralds; they are an important corrective to any sense that urbanization and fortification were phenomena restricted to coastal Aitolia.¹¹⁴ South again to the coast are the archaeological remains of a fortified settlement of the fourth century at Molykreion, with similar structures at nearby Makynea belonging to the late fourth or early third century.¹¹⁵ Finally, Kallion (later known as Kallipolis), east of Naupaktos at the confluence of four rivers in the ancient Daphnos Valley, was planned and developed in the mid-fourth century with a defensive circuit wall and an independently fortified acropolis; over the course of the Hellenistic period urban forms proliferated here, despite the brutal sack of the city by the Gauls in 279.¹¹⁶ When collected, this scattered evidence provides a clear picture of significant investments in urbanization and defense across southern Aitolia in the fourth century. The effort appears to have been systematic, and it should probably be associated with the internal development of the Aitolian koinon, which was itself prompted by the Aitolians’ need for more effective cooperation in the face of their increasing involvement in the major conflicts of the Greek world.¹¹⁷ Yet this implies that Aitolian cooperation was motivated solely by military vulnerability and aimed almost exclusively at eradicating it; we shall see later (chapters 4 and 5) that although this was certainly a factor, the story is rather more complex.

Growth in Boiotia was happening at an altogether different pace. With help from Euboian allies, the Thebans sought to detach Oropos from Athens and bring the city and its sanctuary back within the Boiotian fold. The city and its sanctuary were seized by the Boiotians, and the Athenian army sent to wrest it back was ill equipped to face the Thebans. The issue of possession of Oropos was turned over to arbitration.¹¹⁸ The most significant outcome of this embarrassing encounter was that the Arkadians were emboldened to seek an Athenian alliance, and the Athenians nervous enough to accept it, going to lengths to ensure that it would not violate the terms of their alliance with Sparta.¹¹⁹ It may also have been at this time that the Thebans voted to develop a navy by building a hundred triremes, with the stated aim of extending their hegemony on land to hegemony at sea in order to gain naval superiority over the Athenians.¹²⁰ The process took several years, but this seems the most logical juncture for its inception.¹²¹ The Corinthians were deeply discomfited by the Arkadian-Athenian alliance and, after the brief tyranny of Timophanes at Corinth and the persistent threat from Argos, they went to Thebes seeking a general peace. The agreement that was reached under Persian and Theban auspices included Thebes, Corinth, Phleious, Argos, and probably Athens, but the Spartans refused to join, preferring instead to fight for Messene, which the peace treaty would have required that they surrender.¹²²

Despite the strength of the Theban-led Boiotian koinon at this juncture—a navy in development, Persian support, and a general peace that excluded only Sparta—internal dissension wrought drastic and violent change in the region. A group of Theban aristocrats who had been expelled from their city sought to overthrow the democracy and enlisted the support of three hundred cavalry from Orchomenos. On the day of the planned attack, however, the instigators changed their minds and betrayed the plot to the boiotarchs, thus securing their own safety. The Orchomenian cavalry, by contrast, were arrested and brought before the popular assembly in Thebes, where the Thebans voted the most extreme measures imaginable: the cavalrymen guilty of conspiracy were to be executed; every remaining inhabitant of Orchomenos was to be sold into slavery; and the ancient city was to be razed to the ground.¹²³ The decree was carried out quickly, and the city was only resettled two decades later. It is tempting to see this act of overwhelming violence perpetrated against a member city as part and parcel with the destructions of Plataia and Thespiai, and to see in all these episodes evidence for Theban aggression. Yet when seen from the standpoint of a federal state responding to secession attempts that would yield major breaches of security, all these cases take on a rather different perspective.

Meanwhile, Alexander of Pherai was still causing trouble in Thessaly, and despite Pelopidas’s narrow escape from the region in 367, he agreed to lead an army in 364 in response to a broad Thessalian appeal for help. Although Pelopidas died in the ensuing battle of Kynoskephaloi in 364, the Boiotians and their Thessalian allies enjoyed an overwhelming victory that led to the isolation of Alexander. He was compelled to surrender the other Thessalian cities he had subdued in war, and his rule was restricted to Pherai itself, under the further condition that he make himself an ally of the Boiotians. The Magnesians and Phthiotic Achaians were recognized as Boiotian allies, an alignment that had important ramifications almost a decade later.¹²⁴

The initial decision to build a Boiotian fleet was mentioned above, and by 364 Epameinondas appears to have been in the Aegean working actively to further Boiotian maritime interests. The primary motive here was to weaken Athenian influence in the region.¹²⁵ The alliance between Arkadia and Athens in 366, regardless of whether the Athenians partook of the Theban-sponsored peace of that year, was unsettling to the Boiotians, and Athenian support for the revolt of Ariobarzanes, the satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, combined with a more aggressive approach to their relations with the Aegean states under the Athenian admiral Timotheos above all, meant that both the Thebans and the Persians were keen to change the situation. The Thebans remained the most loyal allies of Persia, and it was with Persian money that the fleet must have been funded. It is precisely in this period that we find the Thebans issuing electrum coinage, a remarkable (and ephemeral) phenomenon for fourth-century mainland Greece, and it can only be associated with the Persian-funded naval program.¹²⁶ There is no doubt that the appearance of a Boiotian fleet of one hundred triremes on the Aegean in 364 was a remarkable novelty and may initially have been seen by disaffected Athenian allies as potentially capable of improving their situation.

The actual success of the plan was, however, more limited. When the decision was initially undertaken to build the fleet, the Boiotians planned to make overtures to Byzantion, Rhodes, and Chios.¹²⁷ After sailing past an Athenian fleet unharassed, Epameinondas went to Byzantion, where he achieved the most signal success of the entire campaign. Although Justin, our only detailed source for the campaign, indicates that no formal alliance was made at Byzantion despite generally friendly feelings toward the Boiotians, we know that in this year a citizen of Byzantion was made proxenos of the Boiotians. By 362 Byzantion had broken away from the Athenian alliance and never returned to it, and in the 350s continued to have a close relationship with the Boiotians.¹²⁸ The alignment was probably accomplished by Epameinondas in 364. Justin tells us that he had no success at Herakleia, Chios, or Rhodes, and no other source contradicts that report.¹²⁹ But in general Epameinondas’s Aegean campaign must have been more complex than Justin reports. We know that the Athenian general Timotheos relieved a siege at Kyzikos, for which Epameinondas was probably responsible; it would have been a logical target if Byzantion was encouraging.¹³⁰ A newly discovered proxeny decree of Knidos for Epameinondas (T8) reveals that he had friendly relations with that city and was given the right to sail in and out of its harbor freely. And an Athenian inscription for Keos reveals that the island broke away from the Second Athenian Confederacy, probably in 364/3, and was brought back in only with real difficulty. It is usually inferred, probably rightly, that Epameinondas had something to do with it: the Boiotians had, after all, benefited from the Euboean revolt of 366 and supported the activities of Themison, tyrant of Eretria, at the expense of Athens. Keos, virtually equidistant from the southern tips of Euboia and Attika, would have been an attractive ally if the island could be won.¹³¹ Although a careful study of the epigraphic evidence thus suggests a campaign far broader and more complex than literary sources let on, there is still no room to believe that Epameinondas achieved any lasting success in the Aegean in 364, and we never hear of renewed attempts by the Boiotians to exert any significant naval power.

Conflict in the Peloponnese, however, drew them back into action on land and presented the Thebans with another opportunity to show true leadership in Greece beyond the sheer military might they had demonstrated since Leuktra. In 363/2 they became involved in a war between the Arkadians and Elis that had broken out in 365 over the independent regional state of Triphylia and, later, over the use of sacred funds to pay the standing army of the Arkadians, the Eparitoi.¹³² Claiming that the Arkadians had violated their agreement with the Boiotians by resolving on war with Elis independently, the Boiotians staged a massive invasion of Arkadia with their Euboian and Thessalian allies.¹³³ The defeat they suffered was totally unexpected. The battle of Mantineia in 362 resulted in enormous loss of life on both sides but, symptomatically for the mid-fourth century, had few decisive implications.¹³⁴ Epameinondas himself was among those who died at Mantineia, and with him the Theban hegemony is conventionally thought to have ended.¹³⁵ This is overly schematic: the Thebans continued to lead affairs in Boiotia and retained the allegiance of many of their allies. That the Athenians concluded an alliance with the Thebans’ Peloponnesian enemies after Mantineia comes as no surprise and should not be taken as an indication that Thebes was somehow finished. That the Spartans again remained outside the common peace that was concluded in 362/1, in order to fight for control over Messenia, further suggests that little had changed.¹³⁶ It is easier to argue that the battle of Mantineia itself changed the sociopolitical landscape by forcing upon the Greeks a realization that even with massive bloodshed the differences that divided them could not be reconciled. If indeed they had that realization (and Xenophon certainly did), however, it affected old patterns of behavior little. The experiment with the limits of power held by a regional state like the Boiotian koinon, which was arguably the most innovative attempt to solve the ills that plagued fourth-century Greece, was still being conducted in Arkadia, but the strength of Boiotia and, in the north, of the Chalkideis, could not be ignored.

The Thebans remained committed to their Arkadian allies and to the security of the new Megalopolis, and they were loyal to other allies like the Euboians.¹³⁷ Here stasis broke out in 357 over the issue of the island’s stance toward Athens and Thebes, and the oligarchs sought help from Thebes. The background to the war can only be inferred: the cities of Euboia were among the first to join the Second Athenian Confederacy, but they had joined the Theban alliance shortly after Leuktra and apparently remained loyal.¹³⁸ A month of ineffectual fighting on Euboia was ended by the conclusion of an agreement in which the prodemocratic parties on the island clearly prevailed.¹³⁹ Loss of the Euboian alliance was certainly a blow to the Thebans, but they remained resolute in their attempt to retain a hegemonic position in the wider Greek world, as events of the next decade would clearly show.

The Boiotians found another opportunity to strike at the Spartans and at their Phokian neighbors at the spring meeting of the council of the Delphic Amphiktyony in 356. With their strong Thessalian alliance, the Thebans persuaded the amphiktyony to renew an old indictment against the Spartans for their seizure of the Kadmeia sixteen years before and to pass a new indictment against the Phokians for cultivating the sacred plain of Kirrha. Both carried heavy penalties.¹⁴⁰ Both were largely political: the first was a strategy for the further humiliation of the Spartans, while the second was probably motivated by a desire to create a conflict that would allow the Thebans to present themselves as the undisputed hegemonic power of the Greek world—not so much by defeating the Phokians (who were not expected to be a formidable enemy) as by showing themselves to be the defenders of Delphi and the amphiktyony. In the next year the fines had not been paid, and the amphiktyonic council decreed that the territory of Phokis should be laid under a curse and that all who had not paid fines owed to the amphiktyony should incur the hatred of all the Greeks in common.¹⁴¹ The Phokians claimed that the fine and the curse were both unjust and that they had an ancestral right to control the sanctuary of Apollo. Their general Philomelos sought the assistance of the Spartans, likewise implicated in the decrees of the council, but only covert monetary support was initially offered. With few other resources and a strong commitment to fighting the decrees, the Phokians seized the sanctuary at Delphi, and before the year was out they had begun to use the sacred treasuries to pay their mercenary army.¹⁴² The Boiotians accepted a Lokrian appeal for help in defending the shrine, and in 354 the amphiktyony declared war on Phokis.¹⁴³ Most of central Greece supported the amphiktyons, while the Athenians and Spartans, along with the Achaians and some other Peloponnesians, decided to defend the Phokians and, implicitly, the claim that the charge leveled against the Spartans was unjust. Within the year the amphiktyonic forces had won a battle at Neon in Phokis, which appeared to be a decisive victory.¹⁴⁴ But the Phokians retreated to Delphi, which they still held, and met with their allies in an assembly that took on the guise of what has been aptly termed a rebel amphiktyony.¹⁴⁵ The Phokians’ use of the sacred treasuries to arm and fund their mercenary army protracted the conflict and made it expensive for the amphiktyony and its allies as well. The Boiotians accepted contributions for the war from a number of Greek states, including their steadfast ally Byzantion, and the Persian king.¹⁴⁶ But repeated Phokian attacks on western Boiotia exploited some internal divisions within the Boiotian poleis and in 349 resulted in the complete detachment of Koroneia, Tilphosaion, Chorsiai, and Orchomenos from the koinon.¹⁴⁷ These losses, combined certainly with financial exhaustion, led the Boiotians to appeal to Philip II of Macedon for help in the summer of 347.¹⁴⁸ The relationship was formalized as an alliance shortly thereafter.¹⁴⁹ The Thessalians made their own appeals to Philip, and in 346 his victories resulted in the surrender first of the Phokian leaders and then of the Phokian poleis, when they saw that they had been abandoned by their leaders. In the settlement, the Boiotians regained control of their western poleis.¹⁵⁰ Philip dismantled most of the Phokian poleis, scattered their populations into villages, and received control of the two Phokian votes in the amphiktyony.¹⁵¹ Athenian fantasies notwithstanding, Philip did not use his upper hand to restore Plataia and Thespiai or to punish the Thebans in any way; the koinon was left fully intact and autonomous.¹⁵² But Philip’s now de facto leadership of the amphiktyony and his unique ability to settle an otherwise costly and unwinnable war had profound long-term consequences.

A NEW MACEDONIAN ORDER, 346–323

The settlement was ephemeral. Not only did Philip’s peace with the Athenians break down quickly as a result of clashing interests in Thrace and the Hellespont, but his record of settling central Greek disputes appears to have made it unthinkable to combatants not to involve him. Between 346 and 340 relations between Philip and Athens became increasingly strained, rupturing completely when Philip seized Byzantion itself, thereby threatening the Athenian grain supply and eliciting a declaration of war from the Athenians.¹⁵³ Meanwhile, another amphiktyonic conflict was brewing, this time between Athens and Thebes. Probably shortly after 346 the Athenians had dedicated some shields in the new temple, with an inscription that declared them to have been taken “from the Medes and the Thebans, when they fought on the opposite side to the Greeks”; this was certainly a rededication of shields from the Persian Wars, destroyed in the fire that burned the temple in 373. The Thebans were displeased, and it was purportedly at their behest that amphiktyonic delegates from Lokrian Amphissa proposed that the amphiktyons should fine the Athenians fifty talents for having hung the shields on the walls of the temple before they had been properly purified or sanctified.¹⁵⁴ The orator Aeschines was one of the Athenian representatives at the meeting where the charge was leveled, and rather than deny the charge he sought to deflect it by accusing the Amphissans of cultivating the sacred plain and levying harbor taxes at Kirrha. These accusations triggered a minor conflict between the amphiktyony and Amphissa, the so-called Fourth Sacred War, in which the amphiktyons sought assistance from Philip.¹⁵⁵ From his base at Elateia Philip made overtures to the Thebans, and though they may have initially renewed their alliance, opinions on the matter were divided.¹⁵⁶ They had control of Lokrian Nikaia, just east of Thermopylai, which was tantamount to controlling the pass, and refused either to surrender it or to grant Philip unhindered passage.¹⁵⁷ News of Philip’s proximity struck terror in the Athenians; when no one would come forward with a proposal in the Athenian assembly, Demosthenes braved the suggestion that the Athenians make an alliance with their long-reviled Theban neighbors, who stood between Philip and Athens and were therefore forced to take a stance on the matter.¹⁵⁸ Aeschines suggests that the Boiotians were so divided over the issue that some poleis threatened secession from the koinon if the Athenian alliance were accepted, and he quotes an Athenian decree promising help to any that might do so.¹⁵⁹ With the experience of having lost control of western Boiotia during the Third Sacred War still fresh, these threats of secession made the complete collapse of the Boiotian koinon a very real possibility. It was perhaps with the Athenian promise in mind that the Boiotians reversed themselves and accepted the Athenian alliance. The battle that ensued at Chaironeia in western Boiotia in August 338 was a terrible defeat for the allies and is regularly taken by historians to mark the end of Greek freedom.¹⁶⁰

In the settlement that followed, the Thebans were punished by Philip while the Athenians received conciliations. Philip’s evident intention was not to subordinate the Greeks but to secure their cooperation; but the Thebans’ betrayal was evidently unforgivable. They were forced to ransom their dead; the city was garrisoned, and pro-Macedonian exiles were forcibly returned and put in control of a narrowly oligarchic regime.¹⁶¹ Orchomenos, which had been lost to the koinon during the Third Sacred War and may have been one of the poleis that threatened secession over the question of the Macedonian alliance in the autumn of 339, was also forced to restore its exiles.¹⁶² The Plataians were invited by Philip to return to their city.¹⁶³ But the koinon itself was certainly left intact, and this is no surprise if Philip wanted stability and cooperation from the Greeks.¹⁶⁴ By restoring pro-Macedonian exiles and putting them in power in the member poleis of the koinon, he could be sure to get both from Boiotia.

Before the Fourth Sacred War, Philip had been working to build alliances in central Greece. It was probably in this context that he had promised the Aitolians that he would hand over Naupaktos to them; it was apparently back in Achaian hands.¹⁶⁵ The Aitolians duly fought on Philip’s side at Chaironeia, but after the battle, when he was finally in a position to make good on his promise, he apparently failed to do so. Theopompos tells us that Philip captured Naupaktos and slaughtered the garrison at the behest of the Achaians, probably in the winter of 338/7; the certain implication is that it was now given to the Achaians. We are probably to infer that in the interim the Aitolians had seized Naupaktos on their own initiative when Philip reneged on his promise to give it to them.¹⁶⁶ The episode triggered a long-held Aitolian opposition to Macedonian kings.

Aside from the garrisoning of Thebes, Philip’s efforts were focused on minor corrections and adjustments with the goal of securing a broad base of support in Greece for his planned campaign against Persia. His major innovation was the creation of the so-called League of Corinth, essentially a large military alliance in which the troop obligations of each member state were probably spelled out.¹⁶⁷ But Philip’s sudden death in 336 created an opportunity for the Greeks to challenge these arrangements. In this effort the Thebans and Aitolians joined the Athenians in playing a leading role.

While the Aitolians undertook the restoration of anti-Macedonian exiles, the Thebans waited until they had heard a rumor of the death of Alexander, Philip’s son and successor, in Illyria in 335 to attempt to expel the Macedonian garrison from their own city.¹⁶⁸ The Thebans sought help from several quarters, but they were matched in their enthusiasm only by the Aitolians.¹⁶⁹ Fearing that the revolt could easily spread, Alexander rushed into mainland Greece with terrifying speed at the head of his army. After inflicting a battlefield defeat the Macedonians entered the city of Thebes and destroyed it utterly. Women and children were raped and enslaved; men were slaughtered or captured, and following a vote by Alexander’s Greek allies, who cited the Theban Medism of the previous century as an excuse, the ancient city was razed to the ground.¹⁷⁰ The Thespians, Plataians, and Orchomenians, whose cities had all been destroyed by the Thebans in the last century, took the opportunity for revenge by participating in the Macedonian attack.¹⁷¹ Survivors of the attack scattered, some going to Akraiphia and others to Athens, while at least a few able-bodied Thebans who sought some means of continuing their struggle against Alexander joined the Persian army.¹⁷² The remains of the city were held by a Macedonian garrison, which presumably also policed the way in which the other Boiotians responded to the sudden appearance of this gaping hole in their political and economic landscape.¹⁷³ For Alexander portioned out the territory of Thebes to the neighboring Boiotians, who by 323 were deriving great revenues from it; in the same period a contemporary witness could report that “the city of Thebes . . . is being plowed and sown.”¹⁷⁴

The effects of the Theban revolt and destruction of the city rippled outward. Alexander advanced the process of rebuilding Orchomenos and Plataia begun by Philip after Chaironeia. In doing so he strengthened old opponents of Thebes and provided a vision of a Boiotia without its leading city.¹⁷⁵ The Athenians had, however, to be rewarded for staying out of it, and it was probably now that they received Oropos at Boiotian expense.¹⁷⁶ The Aitolians, conspicuous for their support of the Thebans, now sent embassies to Alexander “by ethnos, seeking pardon for having revolted, in response to the news brought from Thebes.”¹⁷⁷ The dispatch of multiple embassies has signaled to some that the Aitolian koinon had been dismantled, perhaps by Philip in retaliation for the Aitolians’ attempted seizure of Naupaktos after Chaironeia.¹⁷⁸ The conclusion is hardly inevitable: not only is the dismantling of a sovereign state by Philip otherwise unparalleled, but what Arrian, at a considerable remove, interpreted as separate embassies sent by ethnos may well have been simply a group of ambassadors who represented the several ethnē of which the Aitolian koinon was composed.¹⁷⁹ We simply do not know enough about Aitolian diplomatic practices in the fourth century to conclude that embassies sent by ethnos are unusual and signal a collapse of the koinon. Ultimately what matters is that in their revolt, as in their attempt at conciliation, the Aitolians were united, and in these years were treated by outsiders as a single state. So the Aitolians received a collective grant of promanteia from the polis of Delphi in 335 or 334.¹⁸⁰ Although the real motives for the grant are difficult to divine, it is nevertheless significant as the first clear evidence we have for any relationship between the Aitolians and Delphi, and it helps to contextualize the apparent interest of the Aitolians in Delphi and the amphiktyonic world in the early third century, which will be explored in the next chapter. In short, if Philip had in fact dismantled the koinon, the measure had virtually no effect; we know that the Aitolian koinon, like the Arkadian and Boiotian koina, was very much in existence in 323.¹⁸¹

When Alexander left Greece to conquer the Persian empire in 334, he took the attention of Greek writers with him. We have little evidence for developments among the koina of mainland Greece in this period. The ephemeral revolt from Macedonian control led by the Spartan king Agis in 331/0 attracted some Peloponnesian support, including the participation of the Achaians, and it may have been as punishment that so many of the Achaian poleis were now saddled with tyrants installed by Alexander (or his agents).¹⁸² The struggle to expel them is part of the story of the next chapter, inextricably bound up with the story of the redevelopment of the institutions of the Achaian koinon. Resistance to Macedonian rule remained strong in Aitolia.¹⁸³ The Boiotians were less restive, relieved to be rid of the Thebans who had determined regional politics since the end of the Peloponnesian War and grateful to Alexander for having brought about such a drastic change. The history of Boiotia in the fourth century is, effectively, a history of Thebes and the demands it placed on its fellow Boiotian poleis, which were, in the period after 379, virtually its subjects. The history of the region in the Hellenistic period is a different story altogether, a story of remarkably equitable institutions, which included Thebes on an equal footing with the other poleis after the city was rebuilt and, eventually, accepted as a member of the koinon again. It is in the Hellenistic period that we finally begin to see the internal structures of the Achaian and Aitolian koina in some detail, just as we are at last able to follow much more closely the histories of their interactions with the rest of the Greek world, tracing lines of sight rather than simply noticing scattered points of light.

1. Diod. Sic. 14.17.7; cf. Xen. Hell. 3.2.25. Xenophon dates the war to 398/7, and Diodoros to 402/1. Diod. Sic. 14.17.9–10 reports that the Aitolians assisted their kin the Elians in this war, evidence, if in fact T48 (see comm.) belongs to the fifth century, that despite their alliance with Sparta they remained independent. The notice seems to reflect a troop commitment by a single Aitolian state authority, not mercenaries, but we have no contemporary evidence that might shed light on the nature of the Aitolian state that sent them out.

2. Hell.Oxy. 17.2 (Bartoletti) with Lendon 1989.

3. Spartan war against Persia: Xen. Hell. 3.1.1–2.20. Boiotian disapproval: Xen. Hell. 3.5.1–2; Hell. Oxy. 7.5 (Bartoletti) with Rung 2004. Spartan imperialism: Andrewes 1978; Hornblower 2002: 183–86; Cawkwell 2005.

4. Thessaly: Ps.-Herodes Peri politeias 6, 24 (advocating a Spartan-Thessalian war on Macedonia); Diod. Sic. 14.38.3–4 for Spartan involvement in stasis at Herakleia Trachinia (on which more will be said below) and 14.82 for a Spartan garrison at Pharsalos. Sicily: Diod. Sic. 14.10, 63, 70 (for Spartan support to Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse, in a local stasis and against the Carthaginians). Egypt: Diod. Sic. 14.79. On all this see Hornblower 2002: 181–91.

5. Xen. Hell. 3.5.1–2 reports bribery; Hell.Oxy. (Bartoletti) 7.5 with Rung 2004.

6. The accounts differ in their details, but the basic outlines are the same: Xen. Hell. 3.5.3–4 (dispute over taxes); Hell.Oxy. 16.1 (Bartoletti), 18.2–5 (rustling sheep); Paus. 3.9.8 (Lokrians harvesting crops and stealing sheep from Phokian territory). There is debate over which Lokris was involved, Ozolian (Hell.Oxy. 18.3 [Bartoletti]; Paus. 3.9.9) or Opountian (Xen. Hell. 3.5.3). See Lendon 1989: 311–13; R. J. Buck 1994: 30–35; Buckler 2004: 402–4.

7. Hell.Oxy. 17.2 (Bartoletti); cf. Gehrke 1985: 173–75.

8. Xen. Hell. 3.5.4–5. Hell.Oxy. 18.4 (Bartoletti) presents the Spartans as being rather more reticent, sending envoys to ask the Boiotians not to invade Phokis. (The Boiotians, of course, dismiss them, and the outcome is the same.)

9. Xen. Hell. 3.5.4, 6–16, with Bearzot 2004: 21–30; Hell.Oxy. 18.4 (Bartoletti). González 2006: 39 suggests that Orchomenos revolted because it shouldered a tax burden (18.18% of “federal dues”) disproportionate to its territorial size (with Hysiai, 10.3% of “the federal territory”). The numbers are extrapolated from Hell.Oxy. 16.3–4 (Bartoletti), but the conclusion that every district paid the same amount in taxes is based on an uncertain assumption. See below, p. 298.

10. Xen. Hell. 3.5.6–16; RO 6. The Athenians also made an alliance with Lokris in the same year: Tod 102.

11. Diod. Sic. 14.82.1–4; Xen. Hell. 3.5.2, 4.2.10–14, 18.

12. Xen. Hell. 3.5.18–19; Diod. Sic. 14.81.1–3, 89; Plut. Lys. 28.1–30.1; Paus. 3.5.2–6. Cf. Westlake 1985.

13. Xen. Hell. 5.1.29.

14. Nemea: Xen. Hell. 4.2.9–23; Diod. Sic. 14.83.1–2. Koroneia: Xen. Hell. 4.3.15–20; Diod. Sic. 14.84.1–2.

15. Corinth: Xen. Hell. 4.4.1–5.2.

16. Xen. Hell. 4.8.12–15 for the entire peace conference. For the Argive seizure of Corinth in 393, the subsequent civil war, and its resolution see Xen. Hell. 4.4.1–14, 5.1.34, 36; Diod. Sic. 14.86, 92.1; Andoc. 3.26–27. Cf. Bearzot 2004: 31–36.

17. Bickerman 1958 and Ostwald 1982 established the distinction in the language of interstate relations between eleutheria and autonomia, Bickerman placing the development of the latter concept in the context of the Greek cities under Persian rule, Ostwald in the context of the shift from Delian League to Athenian empire, but both agreeing that autonomia was a relative and restricted status that protected weaker communities from arbitrary abuses by stronger ones while at the same recognizing their ultimate authority in certain spheres. Hansen 1995b argues for a stronger, unrestricted view of autonomia as self-government, which he applies to Boiotia (Hansen 1995a). Cf. the debate between Hansen 1996 and Keen 1996.

18. Andoc. 3.13, 20; cf. Philoch. FGrHist 328 F 149b. See further Cawkwell 1976: 271–72 n. 13 with references.

19. Xen. Hell. 4.6.1.

20. Naupaktos: Xen. Hell. 4.6.14. Cf. Merker 1989; Freitag 2009: 17–19. It was probably in connection with the annexation of Kalydon and Naupaktos that the Achaians besieged and captured the Aitolian community Phana, an event described only by Pausanias (10.18.1) upon seeing the statue of Athena dedicated at Delphi by the Achaians to thank the god for the favorable oracle they received during the long siege of the city (with Jacquemin 1999: 85).

21. Xen. Hell. 4.6.4–7.1; Xen. Ages. 2.20; Plut. Ages. 22.9–11; Paus. 3.10.2 (a confused account that excludes the Achaians entirely and claims that the Spartans went to the assistance of the Aitolians in their own territory); Polyaenus, Strat. 2.1.1.

22. Diod. Sic. 15.75.2. Freitag 2009: 20 argues that the Achaians invaded Akarnania with expansionist intentions; he may be right. Note that the Aitolians granted Agesilaos passage through their territory in 389 as he withdrew from Akarnania “because they hoped that he would help them to regain Naupaktos” (Xen. Hell. 4.6.14). Kelly 1978 proposed that this was the context for the conclusion of the inscribed treaty between Sparta and Aitolia (T48).

23. Ephoros FGrHist 70 F 115 (ap. Str. 8.3.33).

24. The political significance of the grant of Achaian citizenship to Kalydon has been cited by Larsen 1953: 809 and 1968: 81, 85; Koerner 1974: 485. The extent of the Achaian state in this period is indicated by Polyb. 2.41.7–8, providing a list of members before the reigns of Philip and Alexander: Olenos, Helike, Patrai, Dyme, Pharai, Tritaia, Leontion, Aigion, Aigeira, Pellene, Boura, and Karyneia.

25. Xen. Hell. 4.6.2–4.

26. Xen. Hell. 5.1.31; Diod. Sic. 14.110.2–4. See Cawkwell 1981 for speculation that the actual agreement had to contain more detailed provisions than are preserved in the royal rescript recorded by Xenophon.

27. Xen. Hell. 5.1.32–33.

28. Hansen 1995b: 28.

29. V. Martin 1944: 26 n. 7; Ryder 1965: 122–23; Cawkwell 1981: 72–74; Urban 1991: 110; Jehne 1994: 37–44. Beck 2001: 362 is right to conclude that “it is impossible to decide whether the federal principle was eo ipso in contradiction to the autonomy clause” and to insist on the importance of Spartan actions establishing a precedent that defined it in practical terms. It is certain that the issue was clarified in the next two decades. The Aristoteles decree of 377, which records the establishment of the Second Athenian League (RO 22 ll. 20–24), spells out the three facets of autonomy relevant to that context: being governed under whatever form of government a city wishes; neither receiving a garrison nor submitting to a governor; and not paying tribute (phoros). The common peace of 366/5 had as its principal condition that each signatory polis would “hold its own territory” (Xen. Hell. 7.6.10).

30. Larsen 1968: 171–72; Badian 1991: 39; Beck 2001: 363. The Olynthians, as aggressive leaders of the emergent koinon of the Chalkideis, were attacked by the Spartans in 382 in response to an appeal for help from Akanthos (Xen. Hell. 5.2.11–19), Amyntas (Diod. Sic. 15.19.1–3), or both. In Xenophon’s account, the Akanthian speaker, Kleigenes, points to the efforts of the Spartans to “prevent Boiotia from becoming one” (5.2.16) and asks that they not ignore the repetition of the same phenomenon in the north. The Akanthians wished “to keep their ancestral laws [patrioi nomoi] and to be citizens of their own state [autopolitai]” (5.2.14). Whether Sparta’s willingness to help was a direct response to the King’s Peace (which was not a common peace; it was binding only on the actual signatories) is unclear and depends upon whether the Olynthians can be proved to have been involved in the Corinthian War, as is suggested by Isae. 5.46. Cawkwell 1973: 53 seems to assume that Olynthos was a signatory, and that the Spartan response to the Akanthian appeal was legally justified by a sanctions clause in the peace, which our sources do not record.

31. Larsen 1968: 171, 175; R. J. Buck 1994: 59–61; Beck 1997: 96.

32. Mention of polemarchs in Thebes, 382–379/8: Xen. Hell. 5.2.25, 30, 32 (382 BCE); 5.4.2, 7, 8 (379 BCE); Plut. Pel. 7.4, 9.8, 11.4; Ages. 24.2. The office is amply attested epigraphically in eight Boiotian poleis from the mid-third century BCE to the imperial period.

33. Numismatic evidence has sometimes been taken to prove the complete independence of the Boiotian poleis after 386. Coins minted with polis legends and types on the reverse, with the Boiotian shield on the obverse, have been assigned to the period 386–378 (Head 1881: 43–60; against Head’s circular reasoning note Hansen 1995a: 31–32). The magistrate staters were placed next in the series (Head 1881: 61–72; Kraay 1976: 113), but it has now been shown that they go back to the very earliest years of the fourth century (Hepworth 1989, 1998). The chronology of Boiotian coinage is so insecure, and its political significance so unclear, that the coins cannot be pressed into service as evidence for this argument.

34. Th. 1.58.2 with Hornblower 1991–2008: I.102–3; Zahrnt 1971: 49–66; Demand 1990: 77–83; Psoma 2001: 189–95.

35. Military cooperation: Th. 2.29, 58; 4.7, 78–79. The Chalkidian poleis were listed independently in the Peace of Nikias (Th. 5.18.5–8) but in 415 had concluded a ten-day truce with the Athenians (Th. 6.7.4). Ambassadors: Th. 4.83.3. Proxenos: Th. 4.78.1. There has been extensive debate about the nature of the Chalkidian state in the fifth century: Larsen 1968: 59 believed that it was federal, while Hampl 1935: 182 and Zahrnt 1971: 65–66 saw evidence only for a unitary state.

36. Isae. 5.46; Diod. Sic. 14.82.3; RO 12.

37. The embassy from Amyntas is attested only by Diod. Sic 15.19.3, though Xen. Hell. 5.2.12–13 describes the hostilities between the Chalkideis and Amyntas.

38. Xen. Hell. 5.2.12. This speech and its arguments will be discussed in greater detail in chapter 5.

39. Diod. Sic. 15.19.1–3 with V. Parker 2003: 126–32.

40. Xen. Hell. 5.2.20–24. The Spartans authorized a levy of ten thousand Peloponnesian troops, augmented by allied forces. The size of this force is taken by Larsen 1968: 73–74 as an index of the strength of the Chalkideis.

41. Xen. Hell. 5.2.27. There has been some speculation that after the King’s Peace the Thebans made an alliance with Sparta, but the only ancient evidence for the claim is in Isocr. 14.27, a passage full of tendentious factual errors, and Plut. Pel. 4–5.1, a passage that directly contradicts both Xenophon’s (Hell. 5.2.4–6) and Diodoros’s (15.5.3–5, 12.1–2) accounts of the same event and is tendentious in its own way, attempting to portray Epameinondas as a philosopher-warrior, the Sokrates to Pelopidas’s Alkibiades. (Cf. Plut. Alc. 7.3.) The decree prohibiting Thebans from participating in an expedition against Olynthos would have been a clear violation of any such alliance, and this consideration along with the source problems tips the balance against the veracity of the claim. See Buckler 1980a; on Epameinondas as philosopher see Arist. Rhet. 1398b18; Vidal-Naquet 1986: 61–84.

42. On this aspect see Gehrke 1985: 175–77.

43. Xen. Hell. 5.2.25.

44. Betrayal: Xen. Hell. 5.2.26–31; cf. Plut. Pel. 5. Trial of Ismenias: Xen. Hell. 5.2.35–36 (jury composed of representatives of the Peloponnesian League); cf. Plut. Pel. 5.3; De gen. Soc. 576a (who places the trial in Sparta). See Landucci Gattinoni 2000.

45. Xen. Hell. 5.2.28, 32; Diod. Sic. 15.20.2.

46. T4.4.

47. Xen. Hell. 5.4.10–13; Diod. Sic. 15.20.2, 23.4, 25.1 and 3, 27.1 and 3; Plut. Pel. 12.3, 13.2; De gen. Soc. 598f.

48. The repopulation of Plataia is a necessary precondition to Xenophon’s narrative about its pro-Spartan sympathies in the late 380s and early 370s. Paus. 9.1.4 places its restoration in the period of the King’s Peace, and the same is implied by the hypothesis to Isocrates’ Plataikos. Some have argued that Plataia was restored in 382, but Paus. 9.1.4 indicates that 386 is more likely; for full discussion see Amit 1973: 106–9.

49. Xen. Hell. 5.4.10, 14–16.

50. Xen. Hell. 5.4.46. For Spartan garrisons in Boiotia in this period see Wickersham 2007.

51. Xen. Hell. 5.4.49.

52. Xen. Hell. 5.2.37–3.27; Diod. Sic. 15.20.3–23.3. The terms of the treaty (having the same friends and enemies, following wherever the Spartans might lead, and being symmachoi) are precisely those identified by Bolmarcich 2005 as belonging to subordinate allies of Sparta.

53. It is usually assumed, despite the absence of any clear evidence to support the claim, that the koinon of the Chalkideis was dissolved after the Spartan victory at Olynthos: Beck 1997: 241. Psoma 2001: 228–30 rightly dismisses the claim and summarizes the evidence for continued regional cooperation and economic and expansionist activities of the koinon in the decade after the Spartan victory.

54. Xen. Hell. 5.4.1–9. Cf. Diod. Sic. 15.25–27; Plut. Pel. 7–13 with varying details. Gehrke 1985: 177–80.

55. Diod. Sic. 15.28.1; Plut. Pel. 13.1. Sordi 1973 on the seizure of power by Thebans in this moment of political reconstitution.

56. Xen. Hell. 5.4.10–13; Diod. Sic. 15.25. Sources differ on the nature of Athenian support. Many have read Xenophon’s account as evidence only for private Athenian support (noting especially the dēmos’s decision to execute the two generals who collaborated with the Theban rebels, Hell. 5.4.19, and the description of the supporters as “some Athenians from the frontiers” at Hell. 5.4.10, 12), but there is nothing in Xenophon that leads us ineluctably to that conclusion. Indeed several sources speak against it: Xen. Hell. 5.4.14; Diod. Sic. 15.25.4, 26.1–2; Din. 1.39; Isocr. 14.29. See Cawkwell 1973: 56–58; Cargill 1981: 56; Kallet-Marx 1985: 140–47; Stylianou 1998: 230–31; V. Parker 2007: 15–16, 24–25, 27–28. The evidence for other Boiotian poleis sending aid to expel the Spartan garrison in the winter of 379/8 is generally overlooked, but Diod. Sic. 15.26.3 is explicit. It is immediately plausible: we have every reason, from the accounts of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia as well as Xenophon, to expect stasis in the Boiotian poleis in this period. On the high value of Diodoros’s whole account of the Theban hegemony, based on Ephoros, see Momigliano 1935; Sordi 2005.

57. Xen. Hell. 5.4.14–15.

58. Diod. Sic. 15.28.5.

59. Xen. Hell. 5.4.20–33 for the unsuccessful attempt and the sham trial of Sphodrias in absentia in Sparta that eventually acquitted him. Whether or not Sphodrias was bribed by the Thebans to make the attack is immaterial; for recent discussion of this point see Hodkinson 2007.

60. RO 22 ll. 24–25.

61. Xenophon, infamously, makes no mention. Diod. Sic. 15.28 places it in 377/6, after the liberation of Thebes from Sparta but before Sphodrias’s raid on Peiraieus (Diod. Sic. 15.29.5–8). The liberation of the Kadmeia from its Spartan garrison occurred in winter 379/8, so Diodoros’s absolute date must be wrong, but it is possible that his relative chronology is correct, viz. that the confederacy was founded before the seizure of Peiraieus (Cawkwell 1973; Cargill 1981: 57–60; Hornblower 2002: 233), which would help to understand the motives behind Sphodrias’s raid. On the other hand, the raid on Peiraieus can be seen as precisely the sort of proof the Athenians needed to gain alliances in support of an Athenian role as the new enforcers of the King’s Peace, taking over where the Spartans had so patently failed (Rice 1975; Badian 1995: 89–90 n. 34; Rhodes and Osborne 2003: 100).

62. RO 20 ll. 72–77. The full integration of Thebes into the allied synedrion may have been recorded in IG II² 40, but the text is so fragmentary that certain interpretation is impossible. See Cargill 1981: 52–56, 60.

63. Xen. Hell. 5.4.35–41, 46–56; cf. Diod. Sic. 15.34.1–3. The Thebans undertook a mission to Thessaly to purchase grain; the ships were captured by the Spartan garrison commander at Histiaia (Oreos) on Euboia, which shortly after revolted from Sparta and may have made an alliance with the Thebans that recognized their hagemonia in the war, recorded on a newly discovered inscription: Aravantinos and Papazarkadas 2012.

64. Xen. Hell. 5.4.63.

65. Orchomenos: Diod. Sic. 15.37.1–2 (who places the event, probably wrongly, in 376/5; cf. Beloch 1912–27: III.1.155); Plut. Pel. 16.2–3. Tegyra: Plut. Pel. 16–17.10, Ages. 27.3; Diod. Sic. 15.81.2.

66. Possible reintegration: Isocr. 14.9. Destruction of Thespiai: Xen. Hell. 6.3.1, 5; Diod. Sic. 15.46.6, 51.3; Isocr. 6.27; Dem. 16.4, 25, 28.

67. Xen. Hell. 6.3.1, 5; Plut. Pel. 25.7; Diod. Sic. 15.46.6; Paus. 9.1.8; Isocr. 14 passim. For discussion see Amit 1973: 114–18; Tuplin 1986. At the same time the Thebans apparently attacked Orchomenos, though the results were indecisive (Xen. Hell. 6.4.10). See below, pp. 366–67, for further discussion of the dynamics of these attacks.

68. Xen. Hell. 6.3.1–2.

69. Plut. Ages. 27.3–28.2.

70. Xen. Hell. 6.3.11.

71. Plut. Ages. 27.3–28.4; Paus. 9.13.2. Cf. Nep. Epam. 6.4. For discussion of the ambiguity of the concept of autonomia and its impact on this peace conference, see Rhodes 1999.

72. Xen. Hell. 6.3.18–4.3; cf. Plut. Ages. 28.2–3.

73. Xen. Hell. 6.4.14–15; Diod. Sic. 15.51–56; Plut. Pel. 20–23, Ages. 28.5–6; cf. Arist. Pol. 1269a34–1271b19 for analysis of Spartan weakness in the wake of this defeat.

74. Xen. Hell. 6.4.19 and Buckler 2000a: 328.

75. Polyb. 2.39.9 and Str. 8.7.1 report that the Achaians were asked to arbitrate in the dispute between Thebes and Sparta. For debate about the historicity of the report see von Stern 1884: 154–55; Grote 1906: VIII.189; Cary 1925; F. W. Walbank 1957–79: I.226–27; and Buckler 1978. I doubt the skepticism is justified.

76. Xen. Hell. 6.5.1–2; Ryder 1965: 70–71; Jehne 1994: 74–79.

77. Xen. Hell. 6.4.10.

78. Diod. Sic. 15.57.1.

79. Diod. Sic. 15.57.1; cf. Xen. Hell. 6.5.23 for Phokian and Lokrian support in 369.

80. Buckler 1980b provides a detailed account of these years.

81. Xen. Hell. 6.5.6. Diod. Sic. 15.59.1 attributes the political innovation to Lykomedes of Tegea, who persuaded the Arkadians “to arrange themselves in a single synteleia and have a common council made up of ten thousand men, with the authority to decide on matters of war and peace.” The Arkadian origin of this koinon speaks against the idea that the Thebans were actively promoting federalism in this period: Beck 2000: 340–43 contra Beister 1989. For further discussion of the Arkadian regional state organized in 370 see Larsen 1968: 180–95; Beck 1997: 67–83; Nielsen 2002: 474–99.

82. The date of the foundation of Megalopolis has been contested; Diod. Sic. 15.72.4 places it after the Tearless Battle in 368, but Paus. 8.27.8 puts it in 371/0, and the Parian Marble (IG XII.5.444 l. 73) no earlier than 370. Roy 1971: 572 argues that the Thebans were uninvolved, and that is surely impossible given that it must have taken years for the city to get off the ground, but he may be right that we should not attribute to them the primary impetus for the project. See Hornblower 1990; Moggi 1976: 293–325.

83. Diod. Sic. 15.62.3; cf. Dem. 16.12. Athenian refusal to help the Arkadians is explained by their alignment with the Spartans implicit in the post-Leuktra peace conference: Buckler 1980b: 68–69 and 2000a: 328. I agree with Beck 2000 that the move in Arkadia toward federal institutions after Leuktra is not to be explained by some ideological penchant of the Thebans for federalism.

84. Xen. Hell. 6.5.22–24; cf. Diod. Sic. 15.62.4; Paus. 9.14.2.

85. Xen. Hell. 6.5.28; Diod. Sic. 15.65.6.

86. Xen. Hell. 6.5.30–32. This may have been the occasion for the Theban grant of proxeny to Timeas son of Cheirikrates, a Lakonian, recorded on a stele with a relief depicting inter alia the prow of a warship (T6 with commentary).

87. Diod. Sic. 15.66; Paus. 9.14.5.

88. Very little is known about this state, but it is attested epigraphically: IG V.1.1425 and FDelph III.4.5–6. See Luraghi 2009.

89. Xen. Hell. 6.5.50.

90. The Spartan-Athenian alliance: Xen. Hell. 6.5.33–49, 7.1–14; Diod. Sic. 15.67.1. Action in the Corinthia: Xen. Hell. 6.5.49–52 for the end of the first Theban invasion; 7.1.15–19 for the beginning of the second.

91. Arkadian independence under leadership of Lykomedes of Mantineia: Xen. Hell. 7.1.22–26; Diod. Sic. 15.67.2.

92. Xen. Hell. 6.4.35; Diod. Sic. 15.67.3–4; Plut. Pel. 26.1.

93. Plut. Pel. 26.4–8; Diod. Sic. 15.67.4.

94. Plut. Pel. 27.1–2; Diod. Sic. 15.71.1.

95. Plut. Pel. 27.3–5; not reported by Diodoros.

96. The aim of punishment is underscored by Plut. Pel. 27.5.

97. Diod. Sic. 15.71.3, 75.2; Xen. Hell. 7.1.28.

98. Boiotian proxeny decree for a Perrhaibian: IG VII.2858.

99. Cf. Xen. Hell. 7.1.15–18; Diod. Sic. 15.68.2.

100. Xen. Hell. 7.1.42; cf. Diod. Sic. 15.75.2.

101. Xen. Hell. 7.1.43; Gehrke 1985: 14. Whether the harmosts should be seen as a Spartan-inspired strategy for subordination or an attempt to enforce some stability in the political settlement (so Buckler 1980b: 192–93) is unclear. In 367/6 the Thebans also had a harmost and garrison at Sikyon (Xen. Hell. 7.2.11, 7.3.4). The practice should probably be associated with the broader plan of gaining (by force if necessary) the adherence of the entire northern Peloponnese.

102. Diod. Sic. 15.75.2. Buckler 1980b: 188 for a slightly different chronology.

103. Aitolian friendship with Boiotia: Diod. Sic. 15.57.1. Aitolian aspirations for Naupaktos: Xen. Hell. 4.6.14 and above, n. 22. Cf. Buckler 1980b: 189–90.

104. So Freitag 2009: 24.

105. Freitag 2009: 24 makes the attractive suggestion that the Achaians had garrisoned these places only in anticipation of the Boiotian attack, and that the language of liberation is pure Theban propaganda.

106. Gehrke 1985: 14–15.

107. Σ B ad Il. 2.494 reports that “Kalydon was given to the Aitolians, who were in a dispute with the Aiolians and called it their own on the grounds of the catalogue of the Aitolians,” viz. the Aitolian entry in the Homeric Catalogue of Ships. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1921 suggested that the scholiast was a fourth-century historian whose report refers to the events of 367/6; cf. Jacoby, comm. to FGrHist 70 F 122. Kalydon was certainly Aitolian in the latter half of the fourth century: Ps.-Skylax 35 in GGM I.37. Buckler 1980b: 188–91; Bommeljé 1988: 298, 302–3, 310; Merker 1989: 305–6.

108. Sordi 1953b, 1969: 343–49. Rzepka 2002: 230–31 takes it as a reference to the Aitolian assembly.

109. See Polyb. 4.3.1 with Grainger 1999: 34–35; de Souza 1999: 70–76; Scholten 2000: 9–12.

110. Schweigert 1939: 11; Klaffenbach 1939b: 191–92; Tod II.111.

111. Friendship: Diod. Sic. 15.57.1. Sordi 1953b, 1969: 343–49; Grainger 1999: 35 (though he is wrong to conclude that there was no Aitolian koinon at all in the first half of the fourth century); Beck 2000: 338–44.

112. Recent excavations conducted jointly by the Greek Archaeological Service and the Danish Institute at Athens have revealed the gates and towers, and clarified the overall plan of the town: Archaeological Reports 2001/2: 44–45; 2002/3: 41; 2003/4: 36; 2004/5: 42; 2005/6: 53; Dietz, Kolonas, Moschos, et al. 2007; Dietz and Stavropoulou-Gatsi 2009.

113. Bommeljé, Doorn, Deylius, et al. 1987: 112; Ober 1992: 165; Dietz, Kolonas, Moschos, et al. 1998: 255–57. Cf. Dietz, Kolonas, Houby-Nielsen, et al. 2000.

114. The remains were first identified with Trichoneion by Leake 1835: 55. Cf. Woodhouse 1897: 232–35; Bommeljé, Doorn, Deylius, et al. 1987: 83, 110–11; Antonetti 1990: 238–40.

115. Molykreion: Woodhouse 1897: 328; Lerat 1952: I.84–86, 188–89; Bommeljé, Doorn, Deylius, et al. 1987: 112; Freitag 2000: 58–67.

116. Themelis 1979, 1999; Bakhuizen 1992.

117. Funke 1991: 330.

118. Xen. Hell. 7.4.1; Diod. Sic. 15.76.1; Isocr. 5.53; Σ Aeschin. 3.85. Cf. Buckler 1980b: 194–95, 250–51.

119. Xen. Hell. 7.4.2–4; Plut. Mor. 193c–d; Nep. Epam. 6.1–3.

120. So Buckler 1980b: 160–64 (most of which is overly speculative), 257–59, following Hammond 1967: 503, 665.

121. It is narrated only by Diod. Sic. 15.78.4–79.2 in the context of the year 364, an account that does not allow for the logical lapse of time between initial vote and readiness of the fleet for expeditions.

122. Xen. Hell. 7.4.6–11. Only Diod. Sic. 15.76.3 mentions Athenian involvement, and the issue has been a source of major controversy, which is tangential to my main purpose. Cawkwell 1961 (followed by Hornblower 2002: 230) and Jehne 1994: 86–88 argue that it was a common peace involving both Persia and Athens; contra Ryder 1965: 83, 137–39.

123. Diod. Sic. 15.79.3–6 for the main narrative; cf. Dem. 20.109; Paus. 9.15.3 (who absolves Epameinondas of any responsibility). Buckler 1980b: 182–84 suggests that the Orchomenian cavalry may have been motivated to join the conspiracy out of opposition to the move toward ever more democratic government in Thebes and in those cities outside Boiotia where the Thebans had some sway.

124. Diod. Sic. 15.80; Plut. Pel. 31–35; Nep. Pel. 5. For detailed discussion of the battle see Buckler 1980b: 175–82.

125. Aeschin. 2.105.

126. Kraay 1976: 113.

127. Diod. Sic. 15.79.1.

128. Byzantine proxenos at Boiotia: T9. Separation from Athenian alliance by 362: Dem. 1.6. The relationship in the 350s is deduced from RO 57 ll. 9–13, a record of contributions to the Boiotians for the Third Sacred War in the period 354–352, in which the Byzantine contributions are made by the Byzantine synedroi; the significance of this word has been a matter of some debate, hinging on the question of how the Boiotians organized their allies. See below n. 146. Dem. 9.34 attests an alliance of Byzantion and Thebes.

129. Fossey 1994: 39 suggests that SEG 28.465 may provide evidence for Theban relations with Rhodes in this period, but the document (reused in antiquity) is so fragmentary that it offers no certainty, and the name “Rhodes” itself is restored. Cf. Buckler 1998: 197–98.

130. Diod. Sic. 15.81.6; Nep. Timoth. 1.3.

131. RO 39. In this connection it is interesting to note the hints of a koinonlike structure uniting the four poleis of Keos at this time: Tod 141; SEG 14.530 (Staatsverträge 232); IG XII.5.609 with Brun 1989. Two Athenian decrees reflect a desire to break up this structure: IG II² 404 (SEG 39.73) and 1128 (Tod 162; RO 40). See also Reger and Risser 1991, focused primarily on the Hellenistic koinon of the Keans.

132. Triphylian state: Nielsen 1997.

133. Xen. Hell. 7.4.38–40. Other allies from central Greece and the Peloponnese joined later: Xen. Hell. 7.5.4; Diod. Sic. 15.84.4.

134. Xen. Hell. 7.5.26–27.

135. Death of Epameinondas: Xen. Hell. 7.5.24–25; Diod. Sic. 15.87.5–6. Mantineia was the terminus for at least five different ancient historical accounts of the period: Diod. Sic. 15.89.3, 95.4. For its importance as both end and beginning in Xenophon see Dillery 1995: 17–40.

136. RO 41 = IG II² 112; Diod. Sic. 15.89.1–2; Plut. Ages. 35.3–4; Polyb. 4.33.8–9. Cf. Xen. Hell. 7.5.18.

137. Commitment to Megalopolis: Diod. Sic. 15.94.1–3.

138. Euboian cities in Second Athenian Confederacy: RO 22 ll. 80–84. Euboians in Theban alliance after Leuktra: Xen. Hell. 6.5.23.

139. Diod. Sic. 16.7.2; Aeschin. 3.85; Dem. 8.74–75; 21.174. The resulting alliance between Athens and Karystos (RO 48) alludes (lines 15–17) to the dispatch of embassies from Karystos to the other Euboian cities (viz. Eretria, Chalkis, and Histiaia) presumably in an attempt to persuade them too to make a formal alliance with Athens. There is a problem with the chronology of this conflict. Detailed discussion can be found in Cawkwell 1962 and the commentary to RO 48, which latter I follow. Whether the Euboian War occurred in 358/7 or 357/6 matters little for my purposes, but the Julian year 357 is more likely.

140. Diod. Sic. 16.23.2–3, 29.2–3. We rely almost exclusively, by necessity, on Diodoros’s account of the Third Sacred War, for which reason there has been much discussion of his sources. (See Markle 1994.) The date of the initial indictment of the Spartans has been debated: 371, directly after Leuktra (Harris 1995: 80; Lefèvre 2002: 455 n. 55), or 366 or 361 (Sordi 1957: 49–52) or 356 (Buckler 1985: 242–43 and 1989: 15). Diodoros, however, makes it clear that the charge was renewed in 356 when the fine had remained unpaid for many years. The matter cannot be settled with certainty, but the date is most likely sometime in the 360s (Hornblower 2007: 43–46).

141. Diod. Sic. 16.23.3.

142. Diod. Sic. 16.23.4–24.5, 30.1.

143. Diod. Sic. 16. 24.4, 25.1–3, 27.5, 28.3.

144. Diod. Sic. 16.28.4–31.5. The delay is to be explained by the Thessalians’ reticence to act against Athens (a Phokian ally) until the outcome of the Social War (in 355) was clear.

145. Diod. Sic. 16.29.132 and FDelph III.5.19, a list of Delphic naopoioi that reflects fairly broad support for the Phokian position. Rebel amphiktyony: Ellis in CAH VI²: 741.

146. Greek contributions: RO 57. The Byzantines, who had supported the Theban naval initiative and now maintained the alliance out of hostility to Athens at the end of the Social War, made their contribution via synedroi (ll. 11, 24), implying a synedrion of which they were members (Lewis 1990b). It is doubtful that the Boiotians had created a formal deliberative body with representation from its allies, for if such an entity had existed we would expect that all contributions would have been made by the synedroi of each allied state, whereas the inscription indicates that only the Byzantines had them. See Buckler 1980b: 222–33 and 2000b; Jehne 1999: 328–44. Persian contribution: Diod. Sic. 16.40.1–2 with Buckler 1989: 100.

147. Phokian attacks on western Boiotia: Diod. Sic. 16.33.4, 56.2, 58.1; Dem. 3.27, 19.141 and 148; Theopomp. FGrHist 115 F 167. Opposition to the Boiotian koinon within Koroneia, exploited by the Phokian general Onomarchos: Ephoros FGrHist 70 F 94, Σ Arist. Nic. Eth. 3.8.9. Cf. Buckler 1989: 72, 82, 101–4; and Kallet-Marx 1989.

148. Diod. Sic. 16.58.2–3.

149. Diod. Sic. 16.59.2; Dem. 19.139, 318–25; Aeschin. 2.133.

150. The settlement had broad ramifications for the Athenians that are beyond my present concerns; for detailed discussion see Harris 1995: 82–106.

151. Phokian surrender: Diod. Sic. 16.59.3–4; Dem. 19.62, 123, 278. Western Boiotian poleis: Dem. 19.141. Punishment of the Phokians, inflicted by the amphiktyony, with Macedonian support: Diod. Sic. 16.60.1–4; cf. Dem. 19.60–61, 123. For the limited nature of the Macedonian destruction see Typaldou-Fakiris 2004: 326. This is not the place to enter into the debate about Philip’s intentions toward Thebes and Athens, which now sought peace with Philip after their war over Amphipolis. See Buckler 1989: 121–24 with references.

152. Dem. 5.10, 19.112.

153. Theopomp. FGrHist 115 F 292; Dem. 18.87–94; Plut. Phok. 14. Cf. Diod. Sic. 16.77. On Athenian politics in this period see Harris 1995: 107–23.

154. Aeschin. 3.116 with Sánchez 2001: 229. For the technicality upon which the Athenians are indicted by the Amphissans in Aeschines’ account see Bommelaer and Bommelaer 1983: 21–26. Cf. Dem. 18.150.

155. Aeschin. 3.115, 117–33; Dem. 18.155–57. Demosthenes’ claim (Dem. 18.143–51) that Aeschines fabricated the whole tradition about the consecration of Kirrha under a bribe from Philip, in order to have a war declared that would give Philip the right to be in central Greece with his army, is to be rejected in the face of earlier evidence for the duty of the amphiktyony to protect the sacred land (e.g., CID IV.1 with Sánchez 2001: 153–63 and Rousset 2002: 188–92). It is clearly intended to counter Aeschines’ charge (3.113–14) that Demosthenes had taken bribes from Amphissa.

156. Dem. 18.167, 175; Plut. Dem. 18.1; Philoch. FGrHist 328 F 56; Diod. Sic. 16.85.3.

157. Aeschin. 3.140; Philoch. FGrHist 328 F 56b; Dem. 18.153. Cf. Harris 1995: 100. How the Boiotians had come to control Nikaia is unclear. Dem. 11.12 calls it a Theban apoikia. See Nielsen in Hansen and Nielsen 2004: 669–70 for its shadowy history.

158. Dem. 18.169–88; Diod. Sic. 16.84.2–85.1.

159. Aeschin. 3.142.

160. Dem. 16.169–79; Aeschin. 3.142–51; Diod. Sic. 16.85.5–86.6. See Harris 1995: 126–37.

161. Justin 9.4.6–8.

162. Paus. 4.27.10.

163. Plataia: Paus. 4.27.10, 9.1.8.

164. Arr. Anab. 1.7.11.

165. Dem. 9.34.

166. Theopomp. FGrHist 115 F 235. Cf. Bosworth 1976: 169–74. Most assume that Dem. 9.34 simply anticipates Strabo (9.4.7), who says only that Naupaktos was Aitolian in his own time, that Philip must have actually made Naupaktos Aitolian, which he could only have done shortly after Chaironeia, and misread Theopompos as supporting this reconstruction, when in fact he (the best of the three sources) contradicts it. See Oldfather, RE XVI.2 s.v. “Naupaktos,” col. 1990; Lerat 1952: II.49; Merker 1989: 306; Freitag 2000: 87–88; Rousset 2004: 396; BNP IX s.v. “Naupaktos,” col. 547.

167. RO 76.

168. Diod. Sic. 17.3.3–4, 8.1–3; Arr. Anab. 1.1.3, 7.1–3.

169. Persian contributions: Din. 1.10, 18 with 1.20–22; Aeschin. 3.156–57, 239–40; Hyp. 5.17, 25. Uneven Arkadian support: Din. 1.19–20 with Arr. Anab. 1.10.1.

170. Arr. Anab. 1.7.4–8.8, 9.6–10; Marm.Par. (IG XII.5.444 ll. 103–4); Din. 1.24; Aeschin. 3.157; Diod. Sic. 17.9–14; Plut. Alex. 11.6–12.6.

171. Arr. Anab. 1.8.8 with Hurst 1989; Diod. Sic. 17.13.5; Justin 11.3.8.

172. Akraiphia: Paus. 9.23.5. Athens: Aeschin. 3.159; Paus. 9.7.1; Plut. Alex. 13.1; Munn 1998: 53–54 for a Theban among the ephebes at Panakton ca. 330–320. Persian army: Hofstetter 1978: nos. 89, 313 with Arr. Anab. 2.15.2–4; Plut. Apophth. Alex. 22 (Mor. 181B). Some of the Thebans’ Boiotian enemies joined Alexander’s army: Anth.Pal. 6.344.

173. Hyp. Epit. 17; Arr. Anab. 1.9.9.

174. Arr. Anab. 1.9.9; Diod. Sic. 18.11.3–5; Din. 1.24. Cf. Gullath 1982: 77–82.

175. Arr. Anab. 1.9.10; cf. Plut. Alex. 34.2; Plut. Arist. 11.9; Justin 11.3.8. The rebuilding of Plataia after 338 appears to have involved construction on an orthogonal plan: Konecny et al. 2008.

176. Paus. 1.34.1; Σ Dem. 18.99 (176 Dilts) suggest that it was made Athenian after Chaironeia, and this has been the dominant view until recently (e.g., Robert 1940–65: XI–XII.195). But now see Knoepfler 1993a: 295 and 2001a: 367–89 for 335 as the date when Oropos was handed over to the Athenians. After its transfer, the Athenians disputed how the territory would be divided up among the tribes; see Hyp. 4 and Agora I.6793 with Langdon 1987; Lewis 1990a; Papazarkadas 2009b.

177. Arr. Anab. 1.10.2.

178. Bosworth 1976: 166–67; Scholten 2000: 16.

179. Sordi 1953b: 435. Compare the dispatch of three ambassadors by the Aitolians, one to represent each of the three major ethnē, to the Spartans in 426, after Demosthenes’ invasion: Th. 3.100.1. See above, p. 56. For detailed discussion see Funke 1997: 159–60.

180. FDelph III.4.399 (SEG 17.228). The date of the grant is controversial. I follow Arnush 1995 (cf. Arnush 2000: 299–300) contra Bousquet 1988a: 58 n. 50. Even if we accept Arnush’s argument for the Delphic archonship of Sarpadon belonging to the year 335/4, we cannot determine the relative chronology of the grant and the destruction of Thebes.

181. Hyp. 5.18.

182. Achaian participation in revolt of Agis: Aeschin. 3.165; Din. 1.34; Q.C. 6.1.20. This suggestion is hypothetical, and it is difficult to know how to square it with the claim of Hyp. 5.18 that the Achaian koinon was in existence in 323.

183. Mendels 1984: 129–49.