Thebans remained committed to their Arkadian allies and to the security of the new Megalopolis, and they were loyal to other allies like the Euboians.137 Here stasis broke out in 357 over the issue of the island’s stance toward Athens and Thebes, and the oligarchs sought help from Thebes. The background to the war can only be inferred: the cities of Euboia were among the first to join the Second Athenian Confederacy, but they had joined the Theban alliance shortly after Leuktra and apparently remained loyal.138 A month of ineffectual fighting on Euboia was ended by the conclusion of an agreement in which the prodemocratic parties on the island clearly prevailed.139 Loss of the Euboian alliance was certainly a blow to the Thebans, but they remained resolute in their attempt to retain a hegemonic position in the wider Greek world, as events of the next decade would clearly show.
The Boiotians found another opportunity to strike at the Spartans and at their Phokian neighbors at the spring meeting of the council of the Delphic Amphiktyony in 356. With their strong Thessalian alliance, the Thebans persuaded the amphiktyony to renew an old indictment against the Spartans for their seizure of the Kadmeia sixteen years before and to pass a new indictment against the Phokians for cultivating the sacred plain of Kirrha. Both carried heavy penalties.140 Both were largely political: the first was a strategy for the further humiliation of the Spartans, while the second was probably motivated by a desire to create a conflict that would allow the Thebans to present themselves as the undisputed hegemonic power of the Greek world—not so much by defeating the Phokians (who were not expected to be a formidable enemy) as by showing themselves to be the defenders of Delphi and the amphiktyony. In the next year the fines had not been paid, and the amphiktyonic council decreed that the territory of Phokis should be laid under a curse and that all who had not paid fines owed to the amphiktyony should incur the hatred of all the Greeks in common.141 The Phokians claimed that the fine and the curse were both unjust and that they had an ancestral right to control the sanctuary of Apollo. Their general Philomelos sought the assistance of the Spartans, likewise implicated in the decrees of the council, but only covert monetary support was initially offered. With few other resources and a strong commitment to fighting the decrees, the Phokians seized the sanctuary at Delphi, and before the year was out they had begun to use the sacred treasuries to pay their mercenary army.142 The Boiotians accepted a Lokrian appeal for help in defending the shrine, and in 354 the amphiktyony declared war on Phokis.143 Most of central Greece supported the amphiktyons, while the Athenians and Spartans, along with the Achaians and some other Peloponnesians, decided to defend the Phokians and, implicitly, the claim that the charge leveled against the Spartans was unjust. Within the year the amphiktyonic forces had won a battle at Neon in Phokis, which appeared to be a decisive victory.144 But the Phokians retreated to Delphi, which they still held, and met with their allies in an assembly that took on the guise of what has been aptly termed a rebel amphiktyony.145 The Phokians’ use of the sacred treasuries to arm and fund their mercenary army protracted the conflict and made it expensive for the amphiktyony and its allies as well. The Boiotians accepted contributions for the war from a number of Greek states, including their steadfast ally Byzantion, and the Persian king.146 But repeated Phokian attacks on western Boiotia exploited some internal divisions within the Boiotian poleis and in 349 resulted in the complete detachment of Koroneia, Tilphosaion, Chorsiai, and Orchomenos from the koinon.147 These losses, combined certainly with financial exhaustion, led the Boiotians to appeal to Philip II of Macedon for help in the summer of 347.148 The relationship was formalized as an alliance shortly thereafter.149 The Thessalians made their own appeals to Philip, and in 346 his victories resulted in the surrender first of the Phokian leaders and then of the Phokian poleis, when they saw that they had been abandoned by their leaders. In the settlement, the Boiotians regained control of their western poleis.150 Philip dismantled most of the Phokian poleis, scattered their populations into villages, and received control of the two Phokian votes in the amphiktyony.151 Athenian fantasies notwithstanding, Philip did not use his upper hand to restore Plataia and Thespiai or to punish the Thebans in any way; the koinon was left fully intact and autonomous.152 But Philip’s now de facto leadership of the amphiktyony and his unique ability to settle an otherwise costly and unwinnable war had profound long-term consequences.
A NEW MACEDONIAN ORDER, 346–323
The settlement was ephemeral. Not only did Philip’s peace with the Athenians break down quickly as a result of clashing interests in Thrace and the Hellespont, but his record of settling central Greek disputes appears to have made it unthinkable to combatants not to involve him. Between 346 and 340 relations between Philip and Athens became increasingly strained, rupturing completely when Philip seized Byzantion itself, thereby threatening the Athenian grain supply and eliciting a declaration of war from the Athenians.153 Meanwhile, another amphiktyonic conflict was brewing, this time between Athens and Thebes. Probably shortly after 346 the Athenians had dedicated some shields in the new temple, with an inscription that declared them to have been taken “from the Medes and the Thebans, when they fought on the opposite side to the Greeks”; this was certainly a rededication of shields from the Persian Wars, destroyed in the fire that burned the temple in 373. The Thebans were displeased, and it was purportedly at their behest that amphiktyonic delegates from Lokrian Amphissa proposed that the amphiktyons should fine the Athenians fifty talents for having hung the shields on the walls of the temple before they had been properly purified or sanctified.154 The orator Aeschines was one of the Athenian representatives at the meeting where the charge was leveled, and rather than deny the charge he sought to deflect it by accusing the Amphissans of cultivating the sacred plain and levying harbor taxes at Kirrha. These accusations triggered a minor conflict between the amphiktyony and Amphissa, the so-called Fourth Sacred War, in which the amphiktyons sought assistance from Philip.155 From his base at Elateia Philip made overtures to the Thebans, and though they may have initially renewed their alliance, opinions on the matter were divided.156 They had control of Lokrian Nikaia, just east of Thermopylai, which was tantamount to controlling the pass, and refused either to surrender it or to grant Philip unhindered passage.157 News of Philip’s proximity struck terror in the Athenians; when no one would come forward with a proposal in the Athenian assembly, Demosthenes braved the suggestion that the Athenians make an alliance with their long-reviled Theban neighbors, who stood between Philip and Athens and were therefore forced to take a stance on the matter.158 Aeschines suggests that the Boiotians were so divided over the issue that some poleis threatened secession from the koinon if the Athenian alliance were accepted, and he quotes an Athenian decree promising help to any that might do so.159 With the experience of having lost control of western Boiotia during the Third Sacred War still fresh, these threats of secession made the complete collapse of the Boiotian koinon a very real possibility. It was perhaps with the Athenian promise in mind that the Boiotians reversed themselves and accepted the Athenian alliance. The battle that ensued at Chaironeia in western Boiotia in August 338 was a terrible defeat for the allies and is regularly taken by historians to mark the end of Greek freedom.160
In the settlement that followed, the Thebans were punished by Philip while the Athenians received conciliations. Philip’s evident intention was not to subordinate the Greeks but to secure their cooperation; but the Thebans’ betrayal was evidently unforgivable. They were forced to ransom their dead; the city was garrisoned, and pro-Macedonian exiles were forcibly returned and put in control of a narrowly oligarchic regime.161 Orchomenos, which had been lost to the koinon during the Third Sacred War and may have been one of the poleis that threatened secession over the question of the Macedonian alliance in the autumn of 339, was also forced to restore its exiles.162 The Plataians were invited by Philip to return to their city.163 But the koinon itself was certainly left intact, and this is no surprise if Philip wanted stability and cooperation from the Greeks.164 By restoring pro-Macedonian exiles and putting them in power in the member poleis of the koinon, he could be sure to get both from Boiotia.
Before the Fourth Sacred War, Philip had been working
