the city, to its very last house, from the whole of Greece for the sake of the Thebans”;85 they fear that the Thebans have persuaded the Spartans to destroy them (Th. 3.58.1); they expect that the Spartans intend to make the Plataian chōra Theban (3.58.5); and they speak repeatedly of the Thebans as their most hated enemies (3.59.2–4).
The Theban response to the Plataians’ defense speech reveals much about the claims the Thebans were making in the mid-fifth century about the past, their attempts to create their own version of Boiotian history, an attempt at ideological leadership to match their attempt at the political leadership of the region.86 Their opening salvo is thus worth quoting in full (Th. 3.61.2):
Differences first arose between us when we founded Plataia later than the rest of Boiotia, and other places with it, which we held after expelling the mixed population. But they did not think they deserved to be ruled by us, as was originally arranged, and so they stood outside the other Boiotians, contravening the traditions of their ancestors [ta patria]. But when they were pressed too severely, they went over to the Athenians, and with them they did us much harm, in exchange for which they also suffered.
The Thebans now claim responsibility for the settlement of all Boiotia, the expulsion of a mixed population upon their arrival from Thessalian Arne (cf. Th. 1.12.3), and some almost primordial position of hegemony within the entire region.87 They claim too that cooperation of the poleis of Boiotia under Theban leadership was ancestral; ta patria is an explicit attempt to place the political movement of the present—toward the greater organization and institutionalization of Boiotian interpolis cooperation under Theban leadership—in the deep past, to justify their aggression on behalf of this cause. It echoes directly the offer made by the Thebans to the Plataians in 431: if they were willing to make an alliance in accordance with ta patria of all the Boiotians, they would not be attacked.88 In the rest of the speech the Theban strategy is to show that the Plataians are staunch allies of Athens and therefore equally staunch enemies of the Peloponnesian alliance in the current war, making the Athenians into latter-day Persians, enslaving the Greeks just as the Persians had once tried to do. In the same vein the Thebans claim that the victory at Koroneia was won in order to bring Boiotia over to the Peloponnesians (3.67.3). For our purposes their more interesting argument is that they were justified in invading the city in 431 because they were invited by Plataians who were prominent both in wealth and in birth “to restore [the city] to the shared ancestral traditions [ta koina patria] of all the Boiotians,” which would have amounted to them “living among kin.”89 Plataia was, in other words, victim as much of its small size and geographical vulnerability as it was of internal stasis, with the oligarchic element favoring participation in a Boiotian regional government and the democratic majority favoring continued alliance with Athens.90 The Plataians’ pleas were unsuccessful, and the city met a brutal end: the defenders were executed by the Lakedaimonians, and the city itself came under direct Theban control, being quickly razed to the ground.91
If the Thebans had by 427 won a position of leadership within Boiotia, they fought hard to retain it within the institutional confines of the koinon established about 446, which by clearly establishing the rights and obligations of each member polis to the koinon restricted the Thebans’ ability to act unilaterally or to efface the local autonomy of the other Boiotian poleis. In 426 they went to the assistance of the Tanagrans who were besieged by a full force of the Athenian army, an attack that started from Oropos (then in Athenian hands) and may have been motivated by the Athenians’ anxiety over controlling the food supply from Euboia to Attica via Oropos.92 Although the Thebans’ assistance was ultimately ineffectual, it does point to their active commitment to the project of a regional state, for Tanagra was an independent Boiotian polis and member of the koinon in this period. And it was probably between 427 and 424 that the Thebans doubled the size of their territory and population by undertaking the synoikism of at least six small communities into Thebes: Erythrai, Skaphai, Skolos, Aulis, Schoinos, Potniai, and many others, the Oxyrhynchos Historian (17.3) tells us. This move was taken partially as a response to mounting Athenian aggression toward Thebes: in the frontier zone between northern Attica and southeastern Boiotia, these small communities were highly vulnerable. They had previously been in sympoliteia with Plataia, so it was ultimately the Theban destruction of that city that exposed them. The synoikism was not an act of Theban beneficence.93 The reorganization of southern Boiotia in the mid-420s reveals how complex the political geography of Boiotia already was: a region, recognized as such in ethnic terms, but only fitfully unified politically, and containing within itself subregions comprising multiple communities in various configurations of dependence and interdependence. This should provide us with an important indication of how and why the koinon came into existence.
But even as the regional government in Boiotia took on firmer and more stable institutions, internal unrest threatened the structure. In 424 democrats within the region, seeking closer Athenian relations and a weakening of this ever stronger and more centralized Boiotian regional state, encouraged the Athenians to invade. The Boiotian democrats, according to Thucydides (4.76.2), wished “to change the order of things and to set up a democracy, just like the Athenians.” They were spread throughout the southern and western part of the region: their leader was a Theban exile, and some Orchomenians and Phokians were also involved.94 These partisans planned three strategic points of betrayal: they would themselves hand over Siphai, the small Corinthian Gulf port of Thespiai, and Chaironeia, while the Athenians were to take the initiative in seizing Delion, a temple of Apollo in the territory of Tanagra.95 Boiotia was thus to be invaded by Athenian and pro-Athenian forces from west, south, and east on the same day, appointed in advance.
But like many well-laid plans this one too was botched. There was confusion about the day on which the attack was to be made, and the plot was revealed to the Spartans and Boiotians. Siphai and Chaironeia were secured by the Boiotians because Hippokrates, the general who was supposed to seize Delion and thereby distract any possible defenders in the south and west, was planning his attack for the wrong day.96 He did invade, unopposed, and with a large levy spent three days fortifying Delion. The Boiotians were not unaware of what was happening; during this time they were mustering their army at Tanagra, a slow process because the soldiers had to “come in from all the poleis.” By the time they were prepared to fight, the Athenian forces had withdrawn just past the Boiotian border and into Oropos.97 At this point we learn from Thucydides of a well-organized set of institutions for the control of the entire region: not only was there a regional levy, but the army was led by eleven boiotarchs, the same officials who cropped up so briefly in the narrative of the Theban attack on Plataia in 431 as representatives of the Thebans. We can combine these two pieces of evidence and assert with confidence that the college of boiotarchs was a regional, representative body by the time of the Peloponnesian War.
At Tanagra in 424 the boiotarchs were at odds: ten of the eleven urged that the army should be disbanded because the Athenians had already crossed out of Boiotia. One, Pagondas of Thebes, opposed them.98 His speech to the assembled army, fascinating but generally neglected, is particularly interesting for our purposes. He begins by reminding the Boiotians of their tradition of opposing the invasion of foreigners (Th. 4.92.2) and asserts that freedom consists in readiness to contest with one’s neighbors (4.92.4). The Boiotians’ neighbors happen to be the Athenians, the worst neighbors one could possibly have, because they are trying to enslave everyone; by a sidelong allusion to Euboia (which had suffered the imposition of Athenian cleruchies in 446 after its revolt) he invokes the truly terrifying possibility that Boiotia could become, effectively, a part of Attica, with no meaningful boundary between them (4.92.4). He then reminds the Boiotians of their victory at Koroneia, which brought security to the entire region (4.92.6). In the battle that ensued the Boiotians were victorious, and after a protracted struggle over the fortifications the Athenians were resolutely chased out of Boiotia.99 The human cost of this victory was heavy, but its significance was enormous, as is attested by the individual public funerary monuments for Boiotian casualties from Thespiai and Tanagra.100
The Thebans followed this victory with a move to shore up internal weaknesses
