difficult to say anything about Boiotian affairs, whether internal or external, in the period of Athenian control.
In the winter of 447/6, Thucydides tells us, Boiotian exiles seized Orchomenos, Chaironeia, and some other places.65 These exiles had presumably been driven out by the Athenians as opponents to the new order they imposed, and it is important to recognize that the revolt was staged from the north by these outsiders. They established themselves so quickly and firmly as a group, with their action so focused on Orchomenos, that they became known as “the Orchomenizers.”66 In the spring of 446 the Athenians sent a force of a thousand hoplites under Tolmides to deal with the revolt; they managed to regain Chaironeia, at the cost of the citizens’ freedom, and held it with a garrison. They must have been attempting to return to Athens, or to a base in a loyal part of Boiotia where they might await reinforcements, when they turned southeast and were met at Koroneia by the Orchomenizers and “others who were of the same mind.”67 In the battle that ensued the Boiotians and their allies had an overwhelming victory; the Athenian hoplites were all either killed or taken prisoner. This forced the Athenians’ hand, and they surrendered control of Boiotia. Thucydides reports that the exiles returned and “all the others became autonomous again.”68
The Athenians’ defeat at Koroneia was a major blow, not only in itself but also because of its consequences, for it probably sparked the coordinated revolt of Megara and Euboia, which itself encouraged many other cities to follow suit.69 In the same year the Athenians and Spartans concluded a thirty-year treaty that ended the First Peloponnesian War.70 But the Athenians may have retained some friendships with Boiotians: an Athenian decree of roughly this period records the bestowal of proxeny on four individuals of Thespiai.71 Without a more specific date it is difficult to place this evidence, but if it belongs after 446 it may reflect a new attempt on the part of the Athenians to maintain ties to those Boiotian cities with which they were closest. In this connection the sending out of settlers to reinforce Thourioi, in southern Italy, in 446–444 is of interest: in an Athenian-led expedition with participation from numerous Greek cities, the ten tribes of the new polis were comprised of the several ethnic groups represented by the colonists, including Boiotians.72 We know too that Thourioi at its inception was governed by a democracy, and it is possible that pro-Athenian partisans in Boiotia opted to leave when the Athenians were expelled after Koroneia and most of the democracies were overturned.
The impact on Boiotia of the Athenian defeat at Koroneia was tremendous. In 427, when defending themselves to the Spartans on the charge of an unjust attack on Plataia, the Thebans spoke of Koroneia as a victory that liberated Boiotia (Th. 3.62.4; cf. 67.3), and though tendentious it is an unproblematic account of Theban perceptions of the importance and impact of the battle twenty years later. What happened in the interim? Freed of external constraints and imposed governments, the Boiotian poleis could pursue their own policies. In theory, they were free to pick up where they had left off in 457, before the Athenian victory at Oinophyta. Most historians have assumed that this meant refounding the koinon that was dismantled by the Athenians a decade before.73 For neither part of that assumption, however, is there any solid evidence.74 The Thebans, it is quite clear, were for much of the late sixth and early fifth century working to gain a leading position in the region and in any regional state apparatus that could be developed for the governance of the whole. The boiotarchs who make a brief appearance in Herodotos’s narrative of 479 may be a reflection of such an apparatus at an early stage of development, if they are not a mere anachronism. The sources suggest, however, that the Thebans themselves had nothing to do with the liberation of Boiotia in 446, which was led rather by political exiles with strong support from Orchomenos, and this may reflect the weakness of Thebes after a series of failures—the attempt on Plataia in 519, the attack on Athens in 506, their shameful record in the Persian Wars, and the disaster at Oinophyta in 457.75
Thucydides’ full and rich narrative of the Peloponnesian War reveals the existence and operation of institutions of a regional state in Boiotia that are described yet more fully by the Oxyrhynchos Historian in his account of the year 395.76 We must infer that at least some of those institutions were created immediately after 446 in order to promote and protect the tentative steps taken toward the formation of a regional state in the period from roughly 520 to 457. The victory at Koroneia certainly provided the regional security and independence that are necessary preconditions for this particular sort of institutional development, and the experience of an eleven-year Athenian occupation, combined with plentiful evidence of the ongoing imperialist aims and practices of their southern neighbor, must have provided the Boiotians with the motivation they needed to undertake it. The formal federal institutions that were established after 446 bear the hallmarks of voluntary participation and bargaining: the political rights and fiscal and military obligations of each polis were clearly established and protected by a system of districts, which went a long way toward preventing Boiotia from becoming a unitary state—like its southern neighbor Athens—under the hegemony of its single most powerful polis, Thebes.
The Boiotian cities, with the exception of Plataia and eventually Thespiai, were resolutely opposed to Athens during the Peloponnesian War and for that reason if for no other firmly allied with the Peloponnesian League. Their opposition was probably a response to the Athenian domination of Boiotia from 457 to 446 as well as being a function of oligarchic sympathies.77 There was stasis in the cities of Boiotia during the Peloponnesian War, and Thucydides presents it as revolving around the political struggle between oligarchs (allied with the Thebans and favoring the strengthening of a regional state apparatus) and democrats (looking to the Athenians and seeking greater autonomy at the polis level). Thucydides’ biggest Boiotian story is that of Plataia; it is well known, so a brief recounting will be sufficient here.
In early 431 a force of more than three hundred Thebans, led by their own boiotarchs, attacked Plataia by night, hoping to force the city out of its alliance with Athens and back into the Boiotian koinon that had started to take shape after 446.78 When precisely the Plataians had left the koinon is unknown, but it is likely that the rupture occurred as tensions increased between Athens, with which Plataia was allied, and Sparta, with which most of the rest of Boiotia was. The Thebans certainly saw that a pro-Athenian Plataia increased Boiotia’s vulnerability, and they were encouraged in the attack by some Plataians who wished to make the city over to the Thebans “for the sake of personal power,” a phrase probably alluding to a desire to gain official positions within the koinon.79 The attack was a Theban initiative, not an act of the Boiotian koinon; the other member poleis were either not privy or were uninvolved. Nevertheless it is clear that the Thebans were attempting not to subordinate Plataia to themselves but to make it part of “the Boiotians” (much as they had done in 519): the pro-Theban partisans in Plataia urged the Theban soldiers, once they had entered the city, to go immediately to the houses of their enemies (presumably to slaughter them), but the Thebans were unwilling. They preferred “to make friendly announcements and rather to lead the polis to an agreement and friendship.” The herald accordingly announced that anyone who wished “to make an alliance in accordance with the ancestral customs [ta patria] of all the Boiotians” should lay down his arms.80 The Plataians firmly resisted and managed to take 180 Theban prisoners, while the rest escaped; the prisoners were executed, according to the Thebans, contrary to an oath sworn by the Plataians.81 The Athenians rallied to the aid of Plataia, installing a garrison in the city, and prepared for war with the Peloponnesians, since the attack on their ally constituted a breach of the terms of the Thirty Years’ Peace.82
Theban resentment of Plataian recalcitrance lingered, and the Plataians became a natural target of Peloponnesian attack in the war between Athens and Sparta. The Spartan army arrived in 429, and Archidamos offered to leave the Plataians alone if they would abandon their alliance with Athens and remain neutral throughout the war. The offer was rejected, and the Peloponnesians, with Boiotian help, laid siege to the city.83 The small force at Plataia held out, remarkably, until the summer of 427, when the place was surrendered.84 In the sham trial of the defenders that followed, the Plataians speak only of Theban, not Boiotian, hostility: they accuse
