When the Lacedaemonians marched northwards to attack the Chalcidians, they passed by Thebes, the largest city in Boeotia. As so often in a Greek city, there was factional strife there. The leader of one of two competing factions, Leontia-des, approached the Lacedaemonian commander, Phoebidas, with an offer: if Phoebidas assisted Leontiades in gaining power in Thebes, then Leontiades would betray to the Lacedaemonians the Cadmeia, the citadel of Thebes. The Cadmeia was untakeable in antiquity and, as such, a prize which Phoebidas could not possibly refuse. Accordingly, the two did the deal and shortly thereafter, at midday in the middle of summer - i. e., when everyone was having a siesta - Leontiades led Lacedaemonian troops onto the Cadmeia and, with the backing of the Lacedaemonian troops, carried out a coup d’etat (Xen. Hell. V 2,25-31; Diod. XV 20). Phoebidas’ act violated the King’s Peace (Xen. Hell. V 4,1). Even at Sparta the act aroused controversy (Xen. Hell. V 2,32), but while the Assembly there sentenced Phoebidas to a fine (Diod. l. c.), it did not remove the garrison from the Cadmeia.
In the five years after the swearing of the King’s Peace, the Lacedaemonians had achieved a dominant position in Greece by diplomacy and by the careful isolation of selected foes. Ruthlessly, they had pursued a policy of splitting other states into small, manageable fragments and hindering the creation of alliances. But during these same years the diplomats of one state, realizing full well that it might stand next on the Lacedaemonians’ list, found the key to undoing the latter’s diplomatic success. It was the Athenians, and what they did initially attracted no notice. In 384, shortly after the dioecism of Mantinea, they negotiated with the Chians for an alliance. The decree (Harding, Nr. 31) which ratified the alliance in Athens specifically stated that the contractants would preserve the “oaths and treaties. . . which the King, the Athenians, the Lacedaemonians, and the other Greeks swore.” Chios and Athens, moreover, formed the alliance “on terms of freedom and autonomy.” Here, then, was a military alliance of two states such that no objection on the basis of the King’s Peace might arise. The Chian alliance was unobtrusive; the Lacedaemonians raised no objections. In the next few years Byzantium and Methymna made an alliance with Athens on the same terms (Harding, Nrr. 34 and 37; for the date, see Cawkwell 1973: 50-51 [see Chapter 15, Further Reading]). The Athenians were collecting allies in case the Lacedaemonians should turn against them next.
The Athenians also played an active role in the event which undid the Lacedaemonian position in Greece militarily. Over the winter of 379 to 378, they colluded with Thebans plotting a revolution. When the time came, the plotters carried out a series of assassinations by night, and at daybreak the Lacedaemonian garrison on the Cadmeia found itself under siege (Xen. Hell. V 4,2-9; Diod. XV 25). Meanwhile, two Athenian generals - who just happened to have troops on the border to Boeotia - rushed to the rebels’ aid (Xen. Hell. V 4,9; cf. Diod. l. c. with a version revised to make the Athenian support for Thebes appear official). When the Lacedaemonians thereafter sent a relief force northwards, it had to travel from Megara to Boeotia by one of two roads: the first led directly from Megara into Boeotia, and a Theban force was blocking it; the second led from Megara across a corner of Attica and then into Boeotia - and an Athenian force just happened to be blocking that one too (Xen. Hell. V 14). The relief force pushed on past the Boeotian blockade, but the garrison commander had already surrendered (Diod. XV 27; Plut. Pel. 13; cf. Xen. Hell. V 4,11 - chronologically vague). King Cleombrotus, who had led the relief force, could do little now. He shored up the Lacedaemonians’ position in Boeotia as best he could and left behind a man called Sphodrias as the commander of a Lacedaemonian garrison in Thespiae (Xen. Hell. V 4,15).
The Athenian Assembly had not authorized any of the Athenian aid. As so often, the executive council, the Boule, had taken the Assembly out of the loop: covert aid for a secret coup d’etat was a matter better not discussed in front of several thousand Athenians (for a parallel, see chap. 18). But the Lacedaemonians, having connected the dots all the same, sent an embassy to Athens to complain (Xen. Hell. 4,22 - not stating the embassy’s purpose). As it happened, the
Athenian assembly, when the Lacedaemonian relief force was in Boeotia, had panicked and had condemned the two commanders who had rushed to Thebes in aid of the coup d’etat (Xen. Hell. V 4,19). So the Athenian explanation to the Lacedaemonian ambassadors adverted to two things: first, the generals’ acts had not been authorized; second, the generals had already received just punishment. Still, the fact remained that the Lacedaemonians had, with Athenian connivance, lost their garrison on the Cadmeia, and that fact rankled.
So King Cleombrotus suggested - off the record, of course - to Sphodrias, the garrison commander at Thespiae, that he carry out an unauthorized raid on Attica (Diod. XV 29; otherwise Xen. Hell. V 4,20). Early in 378, Sphodrias planned to seize the Peiraeus in a night-time march. In keeping with their obligations under the King’s Peace, the Athenians had removed the gates from the Peiraeus’ fortifications (see chap. 15), so it was an obvious target.
Unfortunately for Sphodrias, he lost his way during the night. At sunrise he was nowhere near his goal, and his plan had failed (Xen. Hell. V 4,21; Diod. XV 29). The Lacedaemonian ambassadors were still in Athens, and Sphodrias’ raid embarrassed them greatly. They insisted that the raid had been unauthorized (just as believably as the Athenians had been doing) and that the Lacedaemonians would punish Sphodrias. With that the embassy traveled back to Sparta where, however, Sphodrias secured an acquittal (Xen. Hell. V 4,21-24; Diod. XV 29). When that news arrived in Athens, the Athenian assembly voted that “the treaties were no longer in force” (Diod. l. c.), and war between Athens and Sparta began again.
For this conflict the Athenians had laid the diplomatic groundwork well. An appeal, the text of which survives (Harding, Nr. 35; see also Diod. XV 28 and 30; Xenophon omits entirely), went out to the entire Aegean world, insofar as it did not stand under Persian control (that is to say, the appeal avoided an offense against the first clause of the King’s Peace), that whoever wished might join the Athenians’ alliance on the same terms as had the Chians. The appeal also stated the express purpose of the alliance: “that the Lacedaemonians will permit the Greeks to live in peace, with freedom and autonomy.” The Lacedaemonians’ violations of the spirit of the King’s Peace (however scrupulously they claimed to have been upholding the letter) were thus turned against them as the Athenians and their allies undertook to maintain individual states’ “autonomy” against the Lacedaemonians.
Moreover the Athenians for the first time proposed a practical working definition of “autonomy”:
1 No interference in a state’s constitution
2 No garrison
3 No governor
4 No payment of tribute.
The definition’s second element is obviously directed against the Lacedaemonians’ putative violations of states’ autonomy, for the Lacedaemonians had commonly maintained garrisons on other states’ territories (e. g., that ofThebes). The third element might have referred to the Lacedaemonian harmosts, governors whom the Lacedaemonians had installed in cities under their control (see chap. 15).
However, not just the Lacedaemonians had a history of violating other states’ autonomy. The states to whom Athens was offering membership in this alliance were often the same states which Athens had subjected to the tyranny of the Athenian Empire in the fifth century. And the memory of the imposed democracies, the garrisons, the governors, and the tribute lingered. These states had all been burned once before, and they required assurances to overcome their shyness the second time around. The Athenians’ proposed definition of autonomy ruled out those abuses too.
In addition, the Athenians offered potential allies the assurance that no Athenian might own land in any allied city (any existing deeds for such land were to be destroyed), and Athens’ allies this time would have a council in which only they had representation. Effectively, the Second Athenian League (as it is conventionally termed) had two governing bodies: the Council of the Allies (see most clearly Diod. XV 28) and the Athenian Assembly, such that both bodies had to approve any action of the League. Moreover, the League undertook to finance its common expeditions not through a compulsory tribute, but from syntaxeis (contributions) voluntarily given by the members (Harding, Nr. 36 - for discussion, see chap. 18).
The assurances worked, and resentment at the Lacedaemonians’ abuses of the autonomy clause drove states into Athens’ open arms. Over the next few years several dozen states joined (some sixty names eventually stood on the public list [Harding, Nr. 35], which, however, the Athenians after a while ceased to update), with seventy (Diod. XV 30) or more than seventy-five (Aesch., II 70) members in the League’s heyday.
World History
