Indeed, all the leading states meddled in the affairs of northern Greece in the fourth century. Sparta had already signalled her ambitions in this direction in 426 with the foundation of Heraklea in Trachis (Thuc. 3.92-3; in this case the association with Herakles was authentic), and took the opportunity to intervene in the conflict between Thessalian dynasts as soon as her victory allowed. Spartan foreign policy in these years is remarkably dynamic and expansive, which may be due to the continuing influence of Lysander; however, in 395-394 they were dislodged from Thessaly (another established interest: Hdt. 6.72 and Plutarch Moralia 859d: On the Malice of Herodotos 21, for Leotychidas’ expedition of 478) having achieved nothing of substance other than to incur the hostility of Thebes, on whose traditional sphere of influence they had encroached, and Lysander died in battle at Haliartos in Boiotia in the same year. They also lost Heraklea, from which they had already been expelled once and supplanted by Thebes (Thuc. 5.51-2). In the following decade their response to an appeal from Amyntas, king of Macedon, had more substantial consequences, since not only did they lose a king, but the dismantling of the Chalkidian League centred on Olynthos removed a potential check on the growth of Macedonian power. In the fifth century, Macedon’s chronic weakness had left her vulnerable to the intrigues of the great powers, chiefly the Athenians, for whom the high-quality ship timber of Macedon made the region of strategic interest (the same was true of southern Italy). During the Peloponnesian War Perdikkas II had attempted to protect his kingdom by equivocation; Athenian public opinion regarded him as duplicitous (Hermippos F 63 Kassel & Austin (below, p. 95)), but in truth they had provoked him by allying with his enemies (Thuc. 1.57). Early in the war they also put pressure on him by cultivating the rulers of the Odrysian Thracians in a piece of kinship diplomacy noted by Thucydides (2.29); the Thracian prince Sadokos was even made an Athenian citizen, to the amusement of Aristophanes (Acharnians 141-50), though the policy bore little fruit.
Athenian manoeuvring in the north was clearly shaped from the restoration of the democracy in 403 by the ambition to reinstate her empire as quickly and fully as possible. Here, however, they found themselves in competition not only with Sparta but with Thebes, especially in her decade of hegemony, and then with Philip of Macedon. Athens started off on the wrong foot by backing a pretender to the Macedonian throne; having made peace with them at the outset to buy time, Philip then with a deft blend of force and diplomacy (the latter exploiting their fixation with Amphipolis) dislodged them from their footholds on the coast of Macedon. These included the cleruchy at Poteidaia, one of a number established in the 360s and 350s. Technically, these did not breach the undertakings Athens had made to its allies (above, p. 88), since none was placed on the territory of an ally, but like the need for Athenian commanders to fund their own expeditions, which according to Demosthenes (4.45) put their allies in mortal fear of them, these footholds were symptomatic of the way in which lack of resources inclined Athens to exploit where she could. In so doing she forfeited the fragile trust of her allies and undermined her own attempts to become an imperial power again, which were finally undone by the ‘Social War’. It is significant, too, that her confederacy included the Molossians Alketas and Neoptolemos and perhaps lason of Pherai, who appeared (with Alketas) as a character witness for the Athenian general Timotheus in 373. Especially in the north, Athens was having to come to terms with the emergence of powerful individuals who could have a major political impact but who originated in a culture rather different from that of the polis-centred Greek world. The hostility of Demosthenes, mingled with a grudging respect for Philip’s dynamism and power, reveals an ambiguous attitude not confined to Athens: Theopompos of Chios (FGrHist 115), who began his history by stating that Europe had never borne a man like Philip, went on to include scathing exposes of the moral corruption of his court.
By contrast, Sicily, the other theatre in which autocracy flourished in the fourth century, saw a gradual decline in its engagement with politics in the Greek mainland. In the immediate aftermath of the Athenian defeat at Syracuse, the Syracusans in particular were energetic allies of Sparta in the naval war even after Hermokrates was exiled from the city (Selinous sent a small contingent too). Sparta maintained the connection by helping the tyrant Dionysios I consolidate his position and pursue the war with Carthage, and he reciprocated by supporting Sparta in the Korinthian War. Athens tried to woo him away from Sparta by bestowing honours on him (R&O 10), but only won him over in 368/7 (R&O 34, cf. 33), shortly before he died, and after a rapprochement between Sparta and Athens. This was also the year in which Dionysios won a victory in the tragic contest at the Lenaia, and it is worth noting the degree to which tragic drama was a cultural and diplomatic asset for Athens (Taplin 1999). On the one hand, Athenian playwrights attracted foreign patronage: Aischylos ended his life in Sicily after being commissioned by Hieron, and Euripides migrated to Macedon, where he wrote an Archelaos about the mythical origins of the royal house. He was followed by his younger contemporary Agathon (it is interesting that both were innovative rather than conservative figures), and the fragments of unidentified tragedies indicate that there must have been a number of Macedon-related plays by these or other authors. The high status of drama also led to the use of actors as envoys between Athens and Macedon (Csapo & Slater 1995: 223, 232-6). After Dionysios I, Syracuse became increasingly embroiled in internal struggles for power, while Greek Sicily as a whole was bogged down in hostilities with Carthage which dragged on without resolution, and the attention and ambitions of the major Greek poleis were directed elsewhere; it was left to Korinth to respond to the appeal of her daughter-city with the mission ofTimoleon. Curiously, Sparta found herselfin similar circumstances about the same time, though in a form which reflected her reduced circumstances, when Archidamos III died fighting for the Tarentines against their indigenous neighbours: he was fulfilling the Delphic prophecy that the Spartan colony would be ‘a plague on the Iapygians’, but he was serving for pay. So too in Egypt, which at the beginning of the century had supported Sparta’s war against Persia (Diodoros 14.79.4), Agesilaos ended his days fighting Persia as a mercenary general.
World History
