ABSTRACT
Xenophon and Isokrates both speak of Sparta as the guardian of the King's Peace (Hell. v.l.36; Paneg. iv.l75), and whether or not this role was explicitly awarded her1 in some version of the peace itself, it is certain that her prestige was much enhanced after 386. So Xenophon (op. cit.); Diodorus, whose source Ephorus was a native of Asiatic Kyme and so had his mind more on Asia, says that Sparta came into disrepute for her abandonment of the Asiatic Greeks (xv.l9, under 383). There is no real contradiction here: the prestige 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 Agesilaus. Before examining Sparta's use, in Greece, ofher 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 Tiribazus and Orontes were able to recover Cyprus unimpeded by Greek interference (Diod. xv. 8ff. ). In Egypt, however, Tithraustes and Phamabazus 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 (lsok. iv .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 (cp. p. 161). Officially Athens' attitude after 386 to the authors ofher brief imperialistic fling of 394-386 was disapproval: Demosthenes (xxiv.l34f.) records the trial and condemnation of two of the principals, Agyrrhios and Thrasybulus of Kollytos (not the famous Thrasybulus). But this disapproval is hardly evidence of repentance so much as of anger that things had gone wrong: the language of an inscription (Tod 116, not in HD: honours to a man from the Hellespont who had warned the generals about Antalkidas' movements, but to no avail) implies a belief that the fighting could have turned out differently and
indignation that it did not. Whatever the truth, Athens had lost her striking power, and could only work indirectly through men like Chabrias. During the following decades we do hear of occasional Athenian
activity on the Asiatic mainland, and it is worth listing this, although -even after the Athenian naval revival of the 370s-it never adds up to very much. Thus Chabrias seems (Hesperia, 1961, pp. 79ff.) to have fought at Aianteion in the Hellespont, i.e. in the King's Asia, in perhaps 375; and Timotheus in the mid 360s had some dealings with Ionian Erythrai (IG ii2108, cp. Dem. xv.9 for the occasion). Perhaps that was the kind of thing Demosthenes had in mind (viii.24:341) when he spoke of Athenian generals visiting places like Chios and E rythrai looking for money. The reference to Persian Erythrai here is certainly surprising. But Athens observed the 'Asiatic' clause of the King's Peace, more or less (although we shall see that fear of the satraps was highly relevant, at least as relevant as fear of Sparta, to the adhesion of many eastern islands to the new Athenian confederacy of the 370s; see p. 211 ). That formal Athenian observance is illustrated by a recently discovered inscription, in which Erythrai in c.386, immediately before the King's Peace, pleads with Athens not to let her 'be handed over to the barbarian', i.e. Persia (SEG xxvi, 1976/7, no. 1282 = HD 28A). The Athenian answer is lost, since the stone breaks off, but it cannot have been encouraging.
