Sparta could not enjoy its position as the foremost polis for long. It made itself extremely unpopular by its support for undemocratic governments, its recourse to military means to enforce obedience, especially the payment of tribute money, and by not letting its own allies share in any of the profits that its victory brought. Already in 403 BC, after a short civil war, Athens reverted to democracy. New coalitions formed, and poleis that had fought against Athens now supported it against Sparta. The most important newcomer was Thebes, in Central Greece, which managed to establish itself as the third major force, next to Athens and Sparta. In Sicily and in southern Italy, Syracuse, now in the hands of the turannos Dionysius I, fought a number of wars with other Greek cities and with the Carthaginians, and came out as the paramount force in the region.
The Persians still managed to profit from the divisions among the Greek poleis. First, they supported the enemies of Sparta (when they had only just helped it become the biggest power); next, they allied themselves with Sparta in order to enforce a general peace, the King’s Peace, so named after the Persian king who, together with Sparta, was its guarantor. All Greek poleis were to be independent, except those in Asia Minor, which now returned to Persian rule. Sparta was still the dominant power, but opposing forces developed. In 379 BC, Thebes got embroiled in a conflict with Sparta, and in 378/377 BC Athens created a new league, the so-called Second Athenian League. After a period of confused warfare, interspersed with truces and armistices, 371 BC saw a turning point: in the Battle of Leuctra, the Thebans, led by Epaminondas, put a definitive end to Spartan military superiority. With Sparta defeated, the next year Epaminondas invaded the Peloponnese, which led to the demise of the Peloponnesian League, and to Messenia gaining independence. The
Figure 20 Philip II? Fragments of a skuh from Vergina (4th c. BC) and a facial reconstruction based on those fragments. In 1977, archaeologists uncovered some extremely rich 4th-century graves under a huge tumulus in Vergina, Macedonia. In the grave with the most imported finds, known as Tomb 2, the central room contained a golden casket with cremated bones. From the fragments of a skull among these bones, a complete skull was reconstructed (left); on the basis of this skull, a face was reconstructed using forensic techniques (middle); and finally, a makeup artist turned a wax cast of that face into a lifelike image, adding facial hair according to the 4th-century BC Macedonian fashion (right). The result looks like known images of Philip II of Macedon, even though such images usually do not show that Philip had lost his right eye. That we know from written sources: in 354, Philip was hit by an arrow in the head during one of his military campaigns. So have we found the grave of Philip II? Since this reconstruction was presented, it has been shown how difficult it is to interpret cremated bones. Have we been carried away by wishful thinking? Photos: Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester
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Traditional Spartan society, already in decline, now collapsed quite rapidly. But neither Athens, nor Thebes, or any other polis for that matter, managed to profit in the long run from the disappearance of Spartan power. The poleis exhausted themselves in warfare, and the use of mercenaries was an enormous drain on their financial resources. A true general peace was what everyone wanted, but it floundered because of distrust in all directions. The Athenian rhetor Isocrates called, in vain, for a Panhellenic unity, for all poleis to stand together and confront the archenemy Persia, in order to liberate the Greeks of Asia Minor and conquer lands in the East for Greek settlement.
Meanwhile, in the north, there arose a new power: the kingdom of Macedon. For a long time, the Greek poleis had neglected that kingdom, regarding it as an uncivilized outpost of their world. There was truth in this: Macedon was politically and socially backward; it resembled what Greece used to be like long ago, before the polis became dominant. But from these half-barbarian lands there descended the troops of King Philip II (359-336 BC), who conquered Thrace and all of Greece. Philippus had created a mighty army, which combined the professionalism of a mercenary force with the loyalty of a citizen army. He recruited his soldiers from among the Macedonian peasantry and paid them with the gold that he got from the Thracian goldmines that he had conquered. In 338 BC, Philip defeated the Athenians and the Thebans in the Battle of Chaeronia in Boeotia. He then forced most poleis to join the Corinthian League, which meant that they recognized Philip as their overlord. But Philip had much more ambitious plans: he wanted to put Isocrates’ ideas into practice and lead the Greeks against the Persians. In 336 BC, however, Philip was murdered in a palace brawl. It was left to his young son, Alexander, to carry out his father’s plans.
In 338 BC, the classical polis came to an end: in the future, the Greek world would be dominated by kingdoms, and the majority of poleis would lose, at least de facto, their independence. But, of course, Greek cities did not disappear from the map; in fact, their number increased substantially in the period to come. As these cities continued to have local autonomy over their territories—and as we have seen, many classical poleis were under the sway of other more powerful poleis and did have to make do with local autonomy—we will go on calling these communities poleis, even after 338 BC.
World History
