In the end, the Athenians despite their weaknesses and errors came close to conquering Syracuse outright, but the huge costs of ultimate failure led to a radical shift in outlook at Sparta: at last it looked as though Athens could be defeated at sea, and that made a deal with Persia, the only realistic source of the necessary funds, a viable proposition. Hitherto, negotiations had made no progress: one embassy was intercepted early in the war en route to Persia (Thuc. 2.67), as five years later was a Persian envoy to Sparta, who bore dispatches in which the Persian king complained of Spartan vagueness and inconsistency and invited them to make some concrete proposals (Thuc. 4.50). The Athenians took advantage of the latter coup to send their own mission to Persia, and although this was frustrated by the death of Artaxerxes I, they subsequently renewed friendly relations with his successor (Lewis 1977: 69-77; M&L 70 and Addenda). By 413, relations between Athens and Persia had been soured by Athens’ support for Amorges, bastard son of the rebel satrap Pissouthnes. How this came about is not clear from Thucydides; in the fourth century it could be treated as an instance of folly in Athenian foreign policy, but it is possible that the advent of the new satrap Tissaphernes, who was under pressure to produce arrears of tribute (Thuc. 8.5), was a significant factor. At all events, there was a flurry of diplomatic activity which saw the satraps Tissaphernes and Pharnabazos and their associates among the Greek cities competing to lobby for Spartan intervention, and a series of attempts to agree on satisfactory terms between Persia and Sparta (Thuc. 8.18; 36-7; 58). At the same time, Alkibiades was intriguing with Tissaphernes and Athenian oligarchs for Persian aid for Athens, holding out the inducement of a nondemocratic government there, but the complex machinations into which Alkibiades’ self-interest led him helped in the end to thwart that initiative, though the coup went ahead (and rapidly failed too). Even so, in practice the Persian response was rather equivocal, particularly on the part of Tissaphernes, whom Thucydides represents as seeking to play off either side against the other, and Athenian hopes remained alive until the arrival in Ionia of the young prince Kyros (Xenophon Hellenika 1.4); the genuine bond of friendship which he established with the Spartan commander Lysander led in turn to the effective support of the Spartan navy which paved the way for the defeat of Athens.
Spartan success in turn immediately exposed the ideological tensions implicit in the deal with Persia, whereby the leader of Greece against Xerxes and now self-professed liberator of the Greeks had abandoned the Greeks of Asia to the control of the Great King in exchange for Persian gold. The problem had clearly been evident from the start, hence Spartan indecision in her early negotiations with Persia, and even after pragmatism had prevailed, there were always those like the admiral Kallikratidas (Xenophon Hellenika 1.6.7) who objected on principle to ‘flattering barbarians for the sake of money’. Once Sparta had got what she wanted, this element prevailed: Sparta reneged on her agreement by annexing the Asian Greeks, and compounded this by assisting (albeit unofficially) the revolt of Kyros against his brother Artaxerxes II and then sending troops when the Asian Greeks appealed for help against Tissa-phernes. Although Kyros was defeated and killed at Kounaxa, the sequel, the famous march to the Black Sea of the Ten Thousand Greek mercenaries, contributed greatly to the anti-Persian movement we call Panhellenism, since their escape suggested that Persia was militarily weak and hence open to attack. The other major stimulus for this movement was paradoxically the tangible effectiveness of the Great King in intervening in Greek affairs, the clearest evidence of which was the series of Common Peaces brokered by Persia, and in particular the first of these, the so-called King’s Peace of 386. While the principal motive for this was to stabilise Persian control of Asia Minor in the face of interference from both Sparta and a resurgent Athens, later Common Peaces were also influenced by a desire to free up Greek mercenaries to quell revolts in the satrapies, particularly the prolonged insurrection in Egypt (a weak point for Persia in the fifth century too), where at times a proxy war was being conducted by Greek troops commanded by Greek generals on both sides. The clear superiority of Greek hoplites in turn reinforced the suggestion of Persian vulnerability, as did the revolts of satraps and satrapies.
Nevertheless, the outright contempt for barbarians which typified fifth-century attitudes becomes much more muted in fourth-century sources, and Plato, for example, treats the Great King as the type of the powerful autocrat (e. g., Republic 553C), though naturally he does not regard him as a model for imitation. In the Kyroupaideia (‘Education of Kyros ’) of Xenophon, on the other hand, the elder Kyros is used as the basis for an account of an ideal ruler. Xenophon had encountered enough Persians, above all the younger Kyros, to make his attitude to barbarians and Panhellenism complex and ambivalent, but his writings, like those of Plato and Isokrates, also reflect the renaissance of monarchy as an effective form of government on the edges of the Greek world (Sicily, Thessaly, Macedon, Cyprus) and beyond. Persia’s effectiveness was partly economic, since she was the only available source of funds on a scale sufficient for decisive naval action, particularly given the generally diminished level of resources brought about by the Peloponnesian War - even Athens had Konon’s association with Pharnabazos (and a Persian fleet) to thank for victory at Knidos in 394 and the reconstruction of her walls - and the difficulty which Greek cities had in paying for military action is nicely illustrated by the frequency with which fourth-century generals appear in the catalogue of devices for raising money in the Aristotelian Oikonomika 2. The result was that Persia was constantly courted by the three great powers, Athens, Sparta and Thebes. In this the Spartans were most generally successful, probably because they were culturally best placed to form friendships with Persians, while for the same reason the Athenians were generally least successful both because of their suspicion of monarchy and as a result of the mistrust among the demos of those who did establish good relations (Mitchell 1997: 111-33). The continuing deference of the leading Greek states to Persia and their lack of real power made it less and less likely that one or more of them would ever take effective action against the barbarian: Isokrates, who in his Panegyrikos of 380 had looked to a coalition of Athens and Sparta for leadership, turned his eyes north towards the new military autocrats, first Alexandros of Pherai (allegedly: Speusippos Letter to Philip 13) and then Philip II of Macedon, to whom he commended the unification of Greece for the crusade in the Philip of 346. It should be pointed out, however, that the objective which Isokrates regards as realistic is not outright conquest of Persia, but rather the annexation of Asia Minor for Greek settlement. It is ironic that Philip’s need for a naval force to put such ideas into practice obliged him (and Alexander after him) to be tolerant of Athenian interference and opposition, though after Chaironeia Athens was constrained within the structures of the League of Korinth (which formally precluded an independent foreign policy) and compelled to acknowledge the hegemony of Philip and then Alexander.
World History
