them in their relations with other states.35 It is only in the early fourth century that we begin to see how this state was organized and what made it powerful. The Chalkidians had joined the Boiotians, Athenians, Corinthians, and Argives in a treaty to fight against the Spartans at the outset of the Corinthian War, and probably around 393 they made a treaty with Amyntas, the Macedonian king.36 So when in 382 a number of poleis in the Chalkidike resisted membership in the koinon of the Chalkideis, and Amyntas needed assistance to regain a number of Macedonian communities he had lost to them, the Spartans were an obvious source of help, not only because they had a history of opposition to the Chalkideis but also because in Boiotia they had demonstrated their willingness to apply the terms of the King’s Peace in such a way as to restrict federal authority.37 According to Xenophon, ambassadors were sent from Akanthos and Apollonia to alert the Spartans to the alarming growth of the Chalkideis and to seek their support in their efforts to avoid becoming part of the state. From a speech attributed by Xenophon to Kleigenes of Akanthos, we learn that the Chalkideis, under Olynthian leadership, had a single set of laws for all the poleis within the state, and a single citizenship just as the Achaians had in this period.38 Diodoros, who makes no mention of the Chalkideis, claims that the appeal was made by Amyntas.39 Whoever actually sent the embassy, the outcome was the same: the Spartans and their Peloponnesian allies launched a major expedition and an advance force to prevent any cities in the region from being brought by coercion into the koinon.40 Kleigenes claims that the Olynthians sought an alliance with both Athens and Thebes; diplomacy fell short of this aim, but the Thebans passed a decree prohibiting any Theban citizen from participating in an expedition against Olynthos.41
Internal support for the Thebans’ decree was far from unanimous. Xenophon paints a picture of severe political infighting at Thebes that continues the story told by the Oxyrhynchos Historian about the opening years of the fourth century.42 Ismenias led a group of anti-Spartan political hetairoi, while Leontiades led a group that was eager to cozy up to the Spartans.43 When, therefore, part of the Spartan force being sent to Olynthos was encamped near Thebes, Leontiades approached the Spartan commander, Phoibidas, and offered to betray the Theban akropolis, the Kadmeia, to his forces during the Thesmophoria at Thebes, a festival during which the women took over the akropolis. Phoibidas took the opportunity, and once inside Leontiades approached the Theban council to report it as a fait accompli. He had certainly canvassed for support earlier, because he was immediately supported in the council and had Ismenias arrested as a warmonger. Ismenias’s supporters fled the city in fear for their lives; many went to Athens. Ismenias faced a sham trial, defending himself unsuccessfully against charges of Medism and responsibility for every disturbance in Greece, and was executed.44 Whether Phoibidas had acted on orders from Sparta or not was clearly debated in antiquity.45 What matters for us is that the Spartans chose to hold the Kadmeia once it had been won, ushering in a period the Boiotians described as the time when the Spartan spear was dominant.46
The description is not at all inaccurate, for Thebes continued to be held by a Spartan garrison.47 The impact on the rest of Boiotia is interesting. Plataia, destroyed by the Thebans in 427, was probably restored under Spartan sponsorship after 386 and became resolutely pro-Spartan, along with Thespiai.48 The allegiance of Thespiai also made the Corinthian Gulf port at Kreusis available to the Spartans.49 Spartan control of Boiotia was probably more widespread, managed through puppet governments and garrisons: Xenophon later tells us that they had, in the years prior to 378, established narrow oligarchies in all the poleis, which caused the dēmos in each city to withdraw to Thebes, becoming an unlikely haven for democrats, if not for democracy itself.50 We know also that a pro-Spartan government was in place in Tanagra in 377 and probably had been for some years.51 It appears, then, that the Spartan seizure of Thebes in 382 had wider ramifications for the region than is typically realized; the regional takeover was certainly facilitated by political stasis in the Boiotian poleis. The blow dealt by the Spartans in 382 and facilitated by Theban dissidents resulted in deep fractures to the regional system and its institutions.
In 379 the Spartans and their allies finally took Olynthos and made it a member of the Peloponnesian League.52 Surprisingly, however, the terms of their treaty contain not a single hint that the Spartans required the dismantling of the institutions that bound the Chalkideis together.53 The issue of Sparta remained divisive in Thebes, where there was no similar softening of anticooperative sentiment. In the winter of 379/8 Theban exiles and several malcontents within the pro-Spartan Theban government murdered the polemarchs, described by Xenophon as tyrants, and immediately accomplished the adherence of the Theban hoplites and cavalry.54 The Thebans immediately set about rebuilding the Boiotian koinon, conducting an election of boiotarchs to govern in place of the polemarchs. But the election was held by Thebans, not by all the Boiotians, and those elected were certainly Theban. This fact had profound effects on the nature of the koinon as it developed over the next decade.55 The Spartan garrison on the Kadmeia was expelled with the help of the Athenians and other Boiotians, most of its members being treacherously killed.56 Early in 378 the Spartans sent a force to Boiotia under the new king, Kleombrotos, who found the Plataians and Thespians still willing to help; after an ineffectual stay he left Sphodrias as harmost at Thespiai with a garrison, funds, and an order to hire mercenaries.57 If nothing else Kleombrotos did manage to frighten both the Thebans, who did not relish the prospect of taking on the Spartan army alone, and the Athenians, who had no taste for the Spartan army traversing their territory. It was fear, then, that threw the Athenians and Thebans into alliance.58 When Sphodrias attempted an unauthorized raid on Peiraieus, the Athenians felt their own vulnerability and probably saw that the King’s Peace was now a mere sham.59 Around this time the Athenians established their system of alliances known as the Second Athenian Confederacy; although the system was formalized and an allied synedrion established in spring 377 by the decree of Aristoteles, the recent alliance with Thebes provided a paradigm for the terms on which other states would join.60 Whether this system of alliances was formalized before or after Sphodrias’s attempt on Peiraieus in 378 has been debated.61 The somewhat ominous clause stating that the Athenians should send three ambassadors “to persuade the Thebans of whatever good thing they can” may point to Athenian efforts to stave off the conflict between the Boiotian koinon, now being vigorously rebuilt, and the Spartans over the terms of the King’s Peace.62 According to Xenophon the Athenians now “assisted the Boiotians with great eagerness” (Hell. 5.4.34).
Thespiai continued to be friendly to the Spartans and became a base from which the Spartan army, again under Agesilaos, ravaged the territory of Thebes in the fall of 378 and spring of 377, doing enough damage to cause a grain shortage.63 A third planned invasion, in spring 376, was thwarted by Athenian intervention. As a result, Xenophon reports, “the Thebans marched out boldly against the neighboring poleis and once again took control of them.”64 That process in fact took years. The Spartan garrison was expelled from Orchomenos in 375 by a small Theban force, which then led a victory over the Spartans at Tegyra, just east of Orchomenos.65 Thespiai and Tanagra may have been persuaded to rejoin the koinon, but if that is right then Thespiai had rebelled again by 373, for in this year it was attacked by the Thebans, the city razed to the ground, its extended territory pillaged and depopulated.66 Plataia, which had probably never been reintegrated, suffered the same fate for its stubborn refusal.67
Theban aggression in these years began to alarm the Athenians, who sought in 371 a reaffirmation of the terms of the King’s Peace. They therefore sent an embassy to the Thebans, inviting them to join an embassy to Sparta.68 The Thebans agreed and sent Epameinondas as ambassador.69 Xenophon recounts a series of speeches given by the various Athenian ambassadors, and one of them, Kallistratos, rebukes the Spartans with the charge that as a result of their seizure of the Theban Kadmeia, “all those cities which you so much wanted to be independent are once again under Theban authority.”70 In Plutarch’s version of the story, there was an aggressive confrontation at this conference between Agesilaos and the powerful Theban general Epameinondas, who charged the Spartan king with hypocrisy, arguing
