ABSTRACT
Mter the surrender of Athens in 404, the unanimity of her enemies soon dissolved. Ten years later, Sparta was to be engaged in a war with her former ally Persia (who was now assisted by an Athenian naval commander and crews) fought in the east Aegean from the beginning of the 390s; and in a simultaneous war with a coalition of Boiotia, Corinth, Argos and Athens, fought in mainland Greece from 395: the so-called Corinthian War. This is an astonishingly rapid reversal of fortune, made possible only by, first, singular infirmity of purpose at Sparta-where concessiveness alternated with brutality -leading to, second, general suspicion of her motives among the Greek states and at Persia; in third place there is Athenian imperialistic ambition, which was miraculously quick to recover its strength after an apparently total defeat. Fourth and last there is the element ofchance - the accident of death which removed Darius II from the Persian throne in 404, causing dynastic convulsions in which Sparta felt able to interfere (since freed from her dominant preoccupation of nearly three decades, the great war with Athens). This interference incurred the anger of the winning candidate for the Persian throne, Artaxerxes II. Of these four factors, we are well enough informed about the first
and third, because of the biographical interest which attached to Lysander (considered as a figure in domestic Spartan and Athenian politics) and therefore also to the opponents of his methods; and because Athenian internal history is so richly documented in these years (there is much relevant information in the speeches of Lysias as well as the historians and the inscriptions). For the fourth we have Xenophon'sAnabasis. The second is the problem-how to isolate the precise areas of Spartan penetration which made her seem so threatening to her former friends. Here too Lysander is a crucial figure; but his activity when he moves away from Sparta and Athens is much more elusive, though no less important (hence the qualiflcation, above, that we are well-informed about him 'considered as a figure in
Spartan and Athenian politics'). Yet there is evidence for Spartan expansion in central and northern Greece, and for interference by her in support of Dionysius I in Sicily, and even for some kite-flying in Egypt, all of which though scrappy is just coherent enough, when combined with the source-material for Asia Minor, to show that some people at Sparta had very wide ambitions; probably Lysander was the man responsible for resuming the old policy of central Greek imperialism (p. 132). To understand the years 405-395 it is not enough to accept the restriction of an Athenian viewpoint, if that means neglect of the Asiatic cities (including the strategically vital island of Rhodes), Thessaly, Macedon, Thrace, Syracuse and Egypt. Suspicion of the Spartans by their former allies does however begin
with Athens, on whom at the time of her surrender in 404 all eyes were for the moment fixed: would Sparta obliterate Athens now that it was open to her to do so? Boiotia and Corinth pressed for destruction (Xen. Hell. ii.2.19); and there were Spartans of that way of thinking too (Polyainus i.45.5). Lysander, however, prevailed and Sparta imposed her traditional solution, an oligarchy-the Thirty Tyrants. Among Sparta's motives, distrust of Thebes predominated, 1 for as we have seen Thebes had already profited by Athenian losses in the war and would have profited still more if Athens had been wiped out, something which would produce what Polyainus calls a 'larger and stronger Thebes'. Thebes and Corinth for their part were not willing (cp. p. 43) to see Athens become a 'faithful satellite' of Sparta. The eight months which followed (April-end 404) are an ugly
period in Athenian history, the regime of the Thirty Tyrants. After a while Sparta was obliged to shore them up with a Spartan garrison of seven hundred men, paid for by Athens (Xen. Hell. ii.3.13), with a harmost, Kallibios, in charge. But Athenian democrats in exile had been taken in at Megara, Argos, and above all Thebes (Diod. xiv.6; Dem. xv.22; Xen.HeU. ii.4.1, etc.), and there was little Sparta could do to discipline such expatriates. There is no real inconsistency in the Theban attitude (helping citizens of the polis she had so recently voted to destroy): the Theban vote for the destruction of Athens had been cast out of desire to prevent Athens becoming a political annex of the Peloponnese; now that that had happened, and the moment for removing Athens from the map of Greece had passed, there remained only the less radical way: to loosen Sparta's grip on Athens by overthrowing her nominees. The democrats under Thrasybulus took Phyle in the north-west of Attica, a fortress only just over the border
from Boiotia, but with (on a clear day, and before the pollution of modern times) a heartening view of the Acropolis and even its individual buildings. Thence they moved down to Piraeus and defeated the oligarchs (who advanced from the city to meet them), killing Kritias the leader of the pro-Spartan party (end of 404). Eventually King Pausanias of Sparta intervened, formally overturn ing Lysander's arrangements and returning the democrats to power (by September 403)- though any oligarch who wanted it was given safe passage to Eleusis where a pocket of them held out till as late as 401. But the period ofoligarchic extremism at Athens was over by late 403, as was, for the moment, the period of Lysander's greatest influence. To speak of his fall or even ofhis eclipse goes too far, but it is certain that after 404 Sparta switched to less harsh methods of control, and not just in Athens either. (Pausanias was tried but acquitted: Paus. iii.5.2.)
Pausanias' intervention (Xen. Hell. ii.4.29) had been pointedly boycotted by the Boiotians and Corinthians - the first open sign of disaffection, and one which Sparta was later to hold against Thebes at least (Xen. Hell. iii.S.S). But that same passage is evidence for another grievance against Thebes, also dating from the end of the war: the Thebans had claimed a sacred and specially reserved 'tenth part' of the booty collected at Decelea (this was the traditional 'tithe of Apollo' expected from the victors in Greek wars and certainly owed by the Peloponnesians in 404: had not Delphic Apollo promised his help at the very begining? See pp.105, 176). This incident must date from just after the end of the war, i.e. from even earlier than the allies' refusal to march on Attica with Pausanias. As Xenophon, who disliked Thebes, recounts the 'tithe' incident, it is merely intended to show the Thebans as impious and greedy; but it has deeper significance as evidence of early Theban disquiet at the way Sparta was engrossing all decision-making. These two episodes-and the all-important third, the harbouring of the exiles-show how soon feeling began to build up against Sparta. How rational was this feeling? Here we move to areas less easy for
the historian to penetrate (cp. above), the areas, other than the well-documented Athens, where Sparta was applying pressure on a scale sufficient to alarm her former friends.
