ABSTRACT
Xenophon and Isokrates both speak of the Spartans as the guardians of the King’s Peace (Hell. 5. 1. 36; Paneg. 4. 175), and whether or not this role was explicitly awarded to them in some version of the peace itself, it is certain that their prestige was much enhanced after 386. So says Xenophon (in the passage just cited); Diodorus, whose source Ephorus was a native of Asiatic Kyme and so had his mind more on Asia, says that the Spartans came into disrepute for their abandonment of the Asiatic Greeks (15. 19, under 383). ere is no real contradiction here: the prestige which Xenophon had in mind was a matter of power not ideology, a prestige, that is, conferred by purely military hegemony in Greece itself (not just in the Peloponnese but in the north). As for Asia, it ceased to interest Xenophon much after it had been evacuated by his hero Agesilaos. Before examining the Spartans’ use, in Greece, of their position, we ought to ask how scrupulously the Greeks (that is, the Spartans and Athenians) henceforth kept out of the Persian empire, as the peace had demanded. Certainly Artaxerxes’ agents Tiribazos and Orontes were able to recover Cyprus unimpeded by Greek interference (Diod. 15. 8). In Egypt, however, Tithraustes and Pharnabazos failed very badly in a campaign of 385-383, and part of the reason for this was the presence, on the side of the rebel Pharaoh Akoris, of Chabrias the Athenian with a force of mercenaries (Isok. 4. 140). He cannot be regarded as wholly independent of the Athenian state, since he was to comply with an order of recall in 380/79 (cf. p. 199f.). Ocially, the Athenians’ attitude after 386 to the authors of their brief imperialistic ing of 394-386 was disapproval: Demosthenes (24. 134f.) records the trial and condemnation of two of the principals, Agyrrhios and rasyboulos of Kollytos (not the famous rasybulus). But this disapproval is hardly evidence of repentance so much as of anger that things had gone so wrong: the honours to Phanokritos (above p. 232) imply not only a belief that the ghting could have turned out dierently but indignation that it did not. Whatever the truth, the Athenians had lost their striking power, and could work only indirectly through men like Chabrias.
