• New league quickly brought up to about 70 members:
  • islands, Thebes, Euboia, Thracian cities, Chalcidic league, Corcyra, Pherai in Thessaly, Epirus

Increase in Thebes' military preparedness

• establishment of 'Sacred Band'
  • 150 pairs of lovers, chosen from high-born families
  • rigorously trained to be at the spearhead of a hoplite attack

378-371: Thebes defends against Sparta

• 378 & 377: Agesilaus invades Boiotia, nothing of lasting achievment
  • Thebes meanwhile able to drive remaining Spartan garrisons out of Boiotian cities
    • except Orchomenos and Chaironeia in the west
• 375: Battle of Tegyra: small Theban force (including Sacred Band) routed Spartan force over twice its size
• Sparta also active on sea:
  • trying to cut off Athens' grain shipments from the Black Sea
  • 80 Athenian ships defeated Spartan fleet of 60 near Naxos in late summer 376
    • all but 11 Spartan ships escaped
• 374: Athens and Thebes undergo strain in their relations:
  • Athens had been active on sea in the west: Corcyra, Acarnania, Corinthian Gulf; circumnavigation of Peloponnese a show of revived naval force.
  • Thebes failed to support the expense of some Athenian naval operations that were meant partly to benefit Thebes
  • Athens negotiates a peace with Sparta, but it breaks down almost immediately
  • 374-3: Sparta and Athens struggle over Corcyra, Athens eventually prevailing
• Sparta getting anxious for peace, as is Athens
  • Theban capture of Athenian ally Plataia in 372?, forcing it into Boiotian league
• 371: envoys from Athens and her league arrive at Sparta when the congress of their league is meeting in the spring
  • Athenian ambassadors include Callias, who had negotiated the abortive peace of 374
  • Thebes also sends ambassadors, including Epaminondas
  • Concluded a peace along the lines of the old King's Peace, affirming the autonomy of the Greek cities
    • leagues could exist, but no compulsion could be used to force members to do anything
    • Athens and Sparta implicitly gave up any control over their leagues
  • Immediately, the Boiotian question arises:
    • Thebes argued that its hegemony over Boiotia was not like those of Sparta and Athens over their leagues
      • it was more of a historical/geographical political unity, like that of Athens over Attika and Sparta over Laconia
    • Epaminondas wanted to sign the peace treaty on behalf of all the Boiotian cities
      • this time (unlike in the case of the King's Peace), the Thebans held their ground, and Thebes was not included in the Peace
  • The result is that the long, repeated struggles between Sparta and Athens are once again neutralized, but the growing power of Thebes to the north remains a threat

The Hegemony of Thebes:

• around the time of the Peace of Callias, the disparate cities of Thessaly have been united by Jason of Pherai
  • extremely ambitious
    • clearly wanted to emerge as the dominant power in Greece
    • immediate concern is Sparta, whose colony at Heraclea kept him from acquiring Thermopylae, and thus the gates of southern Greece
    • maintained control with a body of 6000 mercenaries, but also an able diplomatist
  • Thessaly and Thebes in alliance probably shortly before the peace of Callias
• In the wake of the Peace of Callias, the signatories were supposed to withdraw foreign garissons
  • Sparta, who had forces in Phocis, not only didn't withdraw them, but embarked on a policy of moving against Thebes to compel it to free the Boiotian cities
  • By July of 371, this policy led to the battle at Leuctra
    • serious defeat for the Spartans
      • among the dead were 400 Spartiates, a good chunk of the core citizen body of Sparta
• Shortly thereafter, Jason took Heraclea and thus Thermopylae
  • but in 370 he was assasinated, thus putting an end to his ambitions, and no successor emerged to keep Thessaly on the course Jason was taking it
• Result is the hegemony, for a while at least, of Thebes as the strongest power in the Greek world
  • Thebes begins an expansionist policy of its own, and turns the tables on Sparta by beginning to attack, rather than defend
  • 370: Mantinea rebuilt (had been dismantled by Sparta in 386), and around this time the Arcadians form a federal state, build a new capital of Megalopolis, with a double-wall 5 1/2 miles in circumference; Tegea joins the league in 370
    • Arcadians asked Athens for its support against Sparta, but Athens refused
    • drove the Arcadians into the hands of Thebes
• Boiotians send a force under Epaminondas to Arcadia
  • from there they entered Laconia, made it as far as the Eurotas river across from Sparta itself
  • bridge well guarded, and river itself too swollen with rain to corss
    • gave time for Corinth and other Spartan allies to send reenforcements, and Epaminondas withdrew after a show of force
• 370-69 (winter): Epaminondas moved into Messenia and established the very well fortified city of Messene as a place for Messenian exiles
  • separated all of the area west of Mt. Tayegetos from Spartan control
• Over the next several years, Epaminondas continues to make incursions into the Peloponnese
• also active in Thessaly:
  • battle at Cynoscephalae in 364: Theban victory, but Pelopidas died
  • following year Pherae becomes a Boiotian dependency
  • around this time, Orchomenos, the old Boiotian rival of Theban hegemony, is destroyed
• In the Peloponnese, things come to a head in 362, the fourth time the Thebans invaded the Peloponnese:
  • culminated in a battle at Mantinea, where Thebes faced the Spartans and their allies, among them the Athenians and some of the Arcadian cities (who at this point were somewhat split over whether to support Thebes or Sparta)
    • similar tactics as at Leuctra:
      • deep Boiotian column on his left, intending to break the enemy right before the rest of the armies began fighting
      • deployed his cavalry to resist any attempt by the Athenians, on the left of their line, from trying to wheel on his right
      • Things went well for the Thebas, but Epaminondas was killed in pursuit of the retreating enemies
        • his own troops left off the pursuit, and the Theban victory ended up not being all that decisive
• No good Theban leader to replace Epaminondas, and the result of Mantinea was a peace on the basis of the status quo.
• The next great hegemonic power we meet will come from rather unexpected quarters, far to the north on the fringes of the Greek world, from Macedonia