The Lacedaemonians, having wielded the autonomy clause in the King’s Peace as a potent weapon twice already, did so at least twice again in the years that followed its swearing. A peace treaty between Sparta and Mantinea had expired in 388 (Thuc. V 81; Xen. Hell. V 2,2 with incorrect date), and this left Mantinea exposed. In 385 the Lacedaemonians issued an unacceptable ultimatum, and when the Mantineans rejected it, the Lacedaemonians mobilized and attacked. After defeating the Mantineans (Xen. Hell. V 2,1-6; Diod. XV 5), they inflicted upon Mantinea what the pamphleteer Isocrates (VIII 100) termed a “dioe-cism” - the opposite of a “synoecism.” A synoecism was a political union of two or more cities such that only one city existed thereafter: either the residents of one city moved into the other or all involved in the synoecism moved into one new city. In the course of time Mantinea had grown through such unions with smaller towns in the vicinity (see Box 16.1), and these smaller towns had ceased to exist as political entities in their own right.
By a strict interpretation of the autonomy clause in the King’s Peace, Mantinea had through these synoecisms violated the autonomy of the smaller towns. It did not matter if these smaller towns had voluntarily ceded their autonomy - what mattered to the Lacedaemonians was that all cities, small and great, were autonomous. The Lacedaemonians accordingly split Mantinea up into five autonomous cities (Ephorus, BNJ 70, Fr. 79 with Diod. XV 5 and 12,1-2; cf. Xen. Hell. V 2,7 with the number four, but with the detail which proves “autonomy”: the Lacedaemonians sent a xenagos, a mustering official, to each city). Each new town was more easily managed than just Mantinea. All, incidentally, became members of the Peloponnesian League.
World History
