ABSTRACT
After the Athenians surrendered in 404, the unanimity of their enemies soon dissolved. Ten years later, the Spartans were to be engaged in a war against their former allies the Persians (who were 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 against a coalition of Boiotia, Corinth, Argos and Athens, fought in mainland Greece from 395: the so-called Corinthian War. is is an astonishingly rapid reversal of fortune, made possible only by, rst, inrmity of purpose at Sparta – where concessive behaviour alternated with brutality – leading to, second, general suspicion of Spartan motives among the Greek states and in Persia; in third place there is Athenian imperialistic ambition, which was quick to revive after an apparently total defeat. Fourth and last there is the element of chance – the accident of death which removed Darius II from the Persian throne in 404, causing dynastic convulsions in which the Spartans felt able to interfere (since they were freed from their dominant preoccupation of nearly three decades, the great war against Athens). is interference incurred the anger of the winning candidate for the Persian throne, Artaxerxes II.
