If the Spartans expected to replace Athens as leaders of Greece, they were to be disappointed. Military authority was no match for the vast influence Athens enjoyed thanks to its extraordinary advancement in a multitude of areas. The Peloponnesian War simply left a power vacuum, which Macedon would fill less than seventy years later.
Historians frequently use words such as “inept” or “clumsy” to describe Sparta's handling of its leadership role. After centuries of isolation from the mainstream of Greek civilization, all the Spartans knew how to do was to maintain what they already had. When they tried to apply to Athens methods that had worked in Sparta, they failed miserably, as in the case of the Thirty Tyrants. This was a group of politicians who, with Spartan backing, seized power in Athens in 404 b. c. They proceeded to settle old scores with the democratic factions, and waged a reign of terror that resulted in many deaths. Within a year, the Athenians had driven out the Thirty Tyrants.
By 395 B. C., Athens had recovered sufficiently to join two old Spartan allies, Corinth and Thebes, in a revolt against Sparta. Though the Spartans managed to defeat the others in the Corinthian War, which ended in 386 b. c., the conflict showed that Spartan rule could only be maintained by constant effort. It also prefigured Sparta's fall. In 371 b. c., the Theban commander Epaminondas (i-pam-i-NAHN-duhs; c. 410-362 B. C.) led his troops to victory over Sparta at Leuctra (LEWK-truh).
Like the Periclean Age, the Spartan Age had lasted about a third of a century; but unlike the Age of Pericles, few mourned its passing. The next one-third century belonged, more or less, to Thebes, though Athens continued to assert its importance through figures such as Demosthenes. In any case, the poleis of Greece proper had sapped their energies in squabbling. The focus was about to shift northward, to Macedon.
World History
