Sparta wins the war against Athens. Within seventy years, neither city can command Greece: a king from the north commands them both.
In 404 B.C. Athens surrendered its fleet and pulled down the walls that joined the city to Piraeus. Sparta had promised to free the Greeks from Athenian rule. Lysander, the admiral who had won the war, now installed narrow governing councils in cities brought under Spartan power, with governors and garrisons to sustain them. The tribute and the ships had changed masters; freedom depended on the wishes of the victor.
At Athens the Thirty, a ruling commission backed by Sparta, confiscated property, drove citizens into exile, and killed opponents. Critias, their most determined leader, had his colleague Theramenes put to death when he resisted the widening terror. In 403 Thrasybulus brought a band of exiles down from the border fortress of Phyle and established himself in Piraeus. Critias died fighting them. Sparta itself was divided: King Pausanias checked Lysander’s influence and helped arrange a settlement. The democracy returned, and an amnesty protected most of those who had remained in the city.
Athens could govern itself again, but it could no longer govern the Aegean. Its recovery also carried bitterness. In 399 a citizen jury condemned Socrates on charges of impiety and corrupting the young. His association with Critias and Alcibiades belonged to the political wounds of the period, though the prosecution’s motives cannot be reduced to a single cause. Plato and Xenophon defended his memory; neither left us an impartial account of the trial.
Persian money had helped Sparta win the war. The prince who supplied much of it, Cyrus the Younger, now sought a return. In 401 B.C. he gathered Greek mercenaries and marched against his brother Artaxerxes II. At Cunaxa, near Babylon, the Greeks defeated the troops facing them, but Cyrus was killed attacking the king. Their victory had lost its purpose. They were deep inside an empire whose ruler they had come to overthrow.
Negotiations brought no safe passage. The Persian commander Tissaphernes seized the leading Greek generals at a meeting, and they were subsequently executed. The soldiers elected replacements; among them was Xenophon, an Athenian who had joined the expedition as a companion of one of its officers. They marched north, fought their way through the country of the Carduchians, and crossed the Armenian uplands in winter. Xenophon describes hunger, snow, hostile villagers, and the constant work of keeping men together when every village offered an excuse to scatter.
The sight of the Black Sea from Mount Theches became the great moment of his Anabasis, the account of the expedition. It was not the end of their difficulties. Ships were scarce, provisions had to be found, and quarrels divided the survivors. Many eventually entered Spartan service. The retreat showed what disciplined infantry could endure; it did not show that Persia was helpless. The Great King had kept his throne, while the Greeks had lost their employer and fought for their lives.
Scroll to follow the ten thousand from Sardis to the disaster at Cunaxa, and out again to the sea.
Cyrus the Younger musters an army at Sardis to unseat his brother, the Great King — and buried in it are more than ten thousand Greek hoplites, told only that they march against hill tribes. Up through Phrygia they go, deeper into the empire than any Greek army has come.
At Tarsus the Greeks balk: they can see this is no border raid but a march on Babylon. Cyrus buys them on with higher pay. Past the Cilician and Syrian gates the road bends east, toward the King.
They cross the Euphrates at Thapsacus and follow it down to Cunaxa, near Babylon. The Greeks sweep their wing of the field — and it means nothing, because Cyrus charges, and dies. Their paymaster and their cause are gone in an afternoon.
Lured to a parley, their generals are seized and killed. New leaders are chosen — Xenophon among them — and the army turns north up the Tigris, past the dead cities of Assyria, and fights its way through the Carduchi and across the Kentrites into an Armenia deep in snow.
From Gymnias a guide leads them to a mountain, and the vanguard on the summit of Theches raises a cry that runs down the whole column — thálatta! thálatta!, the sea! Below lies Trapezus, a Greek city on the Black Sea coast. They have come out.
Along the friendly Greek coast — Kerasous, Kotyora, Sinope — they make their way west to Byzantium and back into the Greek world. Xenophon will write it all down, and the retreat becomes the most famous long march in antiquity.
Thapsacus and Cunaxa are placed by hand; both sites are disputed. The route is schematic; no precise ancient track survives.
Sparta inherited a contradiction with its victory. The Greek cities of Asia wanted protection from Persia; Persia expected the return of cities whose support for Cyrus had made them suspect. Spartan armies crossed the Aegean, and King Agesilaus took command in 396 B.C. He could raid the king’s provinces, but he could not prevent Persian money reaching Sparta’s enemies at home.
In 395 Thebes, Corinth, Argos, and Athens went to war against Sparta. Lysander was killed at Haliartus; Agesilaus was recalled. The following year a Persian fleet commanded by Pharnabazus and the Athenian Conon destroyed Spartan sea power at Cnidus. Conon returned to Athens with Persian assistance to rebuild the Long Walls. The money that had helped pull them down now helped raise them.
Years of fighting brought no lasting decision. When Athens grew stronger at sea, Persia changed partners again. The King’s Peace of 387/386 B.C., negotiated by the Spartan Antalcidas, assigned the Greek cities of Asia to Artaxerxes and proclaimed the autonomy of the other Greek cities, with specified island possessions retained by Athens. Autonomy meant that each city should manage its own affairs. Sparta used the principle to break up rival combinations, while keeping its own alliance. Thebes lost its Boeotian federation; Mantinea was later divided into villages. In 382 a Spartan commander seized the citadel of Thebes. The peace had become another instrument of command.
Theban exiles returned in 379 B.C., killed the leaders of the pro-Spartan government, and forced the garrison to leave. Athens formed a new naval league in 378/377, promising safeguards against the tribute and land seizures of its former empire. Thebes rebuilt its federation. Sparta could neither tolerate these recoveries nor suppress them cheaply.
At Leuctra in 371 the Thebans under Epaminondas met a Spartan invasion. Their deep left wing struck the Spartan right, where King Cleombrotus and the citizen troops stood. Xenophon, who admired Sparta, reports that about four hundred of the seven hundred Spartan citizens present were killed. Cleombrotus fell with them. Sparta’s reputation had rested on the expectation that its citizens would win a battle in the open; now its allies had seen them beaten.
Epaminondas made the defeat permanent by attacking the resources behind Spartan power. In the winter campaign of 370–369 he entered Laconia and helped establish an independent Messenia, with its fortified capital at Messene. The Messenians had supplied much of the forced agricultural labour that maintained Sparta’s citizen soldiers. Their liberation cost Sparta land, produce, and the means of recovering its former position. An Arcadian federation, with a new centre at Megalopolis, further weakened Spartan control of the Peloponnese.
Thebes could dismantle an empire more readily than it could build a settled alliance. Athens drew towards Sparta; Arcadian cities divided; Theban campaigns carried new obligations. At Mantinea in 362 Epaminondas won another battle but received a mortal wound. Xenophon closed his history with the judgement that Greece had become more confused, not less. The cities had survived. None had secured a generally accepted leadership.
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Three leading powers in seventy years, the King of Persia holding the balance, and a Macedonian king at the end.
Sparta rules Athens' old empire through governors and garrisons, and goes to war with Persia for the Greeks of Asia, under Thibron (400) and then King Agesilaus (396). With Persian gold, Thebes, Athens, Corinth and Argos rise against Sparta in 395, and Lysander falls at Haliartus. The next year Conon's fleet, in the King's pay, destroys Sparta's navy off Cnidus.
After eight years of war the Persian king sets the terms. The Greek cities of Asia, and Cyprus, are his; every other city is to be autonomous, except Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros, which go to Athens. Sparta, as the peace's enforcer, breaks up the Boeotian League, splits Mantinea into villages (385) and seizes the citadel of Thebes (382).
Theban exiles retake their citadel (379), and Athens forms a new league (378), promising its members no tribute and no settlers. At Leuctra (371) the Theban army of Epaminondas, massed fifty shields deep on its left, breaks the Spartan line. King Cleombrotus and about four hundred of the seven hundred Spartiates present are killed, according to Xenophon.
Epaminondas invades Laconia, the first enemy army there in centuries, and frees Messenia, where the helots found Messene (369); the Arcadians build Megalopolis. Pelopidas carries Theban power into Thessaly. At Mantinea (362) Epaminondas wins and is killed. Xenophon ends his history there: after the battle, he says, Greece was in more confusion than before.
Philip II takes the Macedonian throne (359) and rebuilds the army around a long-speared phalanx. He takes Amphipolis (357), Pydna and Potidaea (356) and Methone (354), where he loses an eye. Athens' allies break away in the Social War (357–355). After the Crocus Field (352) Philip heads the Thessalians, and in 348 he destroys Olynthus while Demosthenes urges Athens to act.
The peace of Philocrates (346) ends the Sacred War on Philip's terms. He conquers Thrace (342–340), though Perinthus and Byzantium beat off his sieges. At Chaeronea (338) he defeats Athens and Thebes, with his eighteen-year-old son Alexander commanding a wing. Philip garrisons Thebes, spares Athens, and gathers every Greek state but Sparta into a league at Corinth that votes war on Persia.
Philip is murdered (336). Alexander crushes a Theban revolt and razes the city (335), then crosses the Hellespont with about 37,000 men by Diodorus' count. He beats the satraps at the Granicus (334), takes Sardis, and restores democracy to the Ionian cities; Miletus and Halicarnassus are taken by siege. The Persian fleet holds the islands until 332.
Alexander destroys the Persian empire at Issus (333) and Gaugamela (331) and marches on to India. In Greece, Antipater beats Agis III of Sparta at Megalopolis (331). When news comes that Alexander has died at Babylon (June 323), Athens and the Aetolians lead a Greek rising, the Lamian War, and shut Antipater up in Lamia. Macedon wins it in 322.
Regions are editorial outlines, clipped to the coastline; islands are shown whole, and a region takes the colour of its leading cities. In 395 the dashed teal marks the coalition of Thebes, Athens, Corinth and Argos against Sparta.
In 359 B.C. Macedon faced a disaster of its own. King Perdiccas III had been killed fighting the Illyrians, and rival claimants threatened the succession. His brother Philip secured the throne through negotiation, payments, and force. He then defeated the Illyrians and began to turn a vulnerable kingdom into a power that could intervene south of its borders.
Philip’s infantry fought in a close formation, the phalanx, carrying the sarissa, a pike much longer than the ordinary Greek spear. Its projecting ranks of points held an enemy in front while cavalry and other troops struck where the line could be broken. The weapon required drill and cohesion. Philip’s achievement was to sustain an army in which foot soldiers, cavalry, and siege engineers could work together through repeated campaigns.
Conquests paid for further conquests. Amphipolis fell in 357; the mines near Philippi supplied revenue for soldiers and diplomacy. Philip intervened in Thessaly during the Sacred War, fought over the control and punishment of Phocis for its seizure of Delphi. Victory at the Crocus Field in 352 strengthened his position among the Thessalians and brought their cavalry into his reach. He could present intervention as service to allies and to Apollo, while gaining the roads into central Greece.
Athens still had ships, money, and the power to resist, but its second league was breaking apart. The Social War of 357–355 ended with major allies outside Athenian control. Demosthenes urged the citizens to meet Philip with regular service and sustained expenditure; promises made after a city was besieged were little use. In 348 Philip destroyed Olynthus. In 346 Athens accepted the Peace of Philocrates, and Philip settled the Sacred War. He now had a recognised place in the council that supervised Delphi as well as an army beyond the northern passes.
Philip’s advance was neither effortless nor inevitable. Perinthus and Byzantium resisted his sieges. Athens and Thebes eventually joined against him, overcoming a long hostility. At Chaeronea in 338 B.C. their combined army met the Macedonians and was defeated. Philip’s son Alexander, eighteen years old, commanded on one wing. The details of his part in the battle are less certain than the result: the last strong coalition able to bar Macedon from central Greece had failed.
Philip placed a garrison in Thebes but spared Athens a garrison and left its democracy intact. He needed obedience and ships, not the destruction of every defeated city. At Corinth he organised the Greek states, Sparta excepted, into a common peace and alliance. Its members retained their civic governments; a council represented them; Philip held the military command. The cities could debate their own business, but their freedom to make war had passed under the king’s supervision.
The alliance prepared a campaign against Persia. In 336 an advance force crossed into Asia, but Philip did not follow. A bodyguard murdered him at Aegae during the celebrations for his daughter’s marriage. Ancient accounts supplied wider conspiracies; they do not establish who, if anyone, stood behind the assassin. Philip left Alexander an army, a treasury, experienced officers, and a Greek settlement that depended on the strength of its king. The son’s first task was to prove that it had survived the father.
Xenophon, Hellenica, translated by H. G. Dakyns: II.2–4 for Athens’ defeat, the Thirty, and restoration; III.4–IV.8 for Agesilaus and the Corinthian War; V.1–4 for the King’s Peace and Thebes; VI.4–5 for Leuctra and the invasion of Laconia; VII.5 for Mantinea. His Spartan sympathies and uneven treatment of Theban achievements require caution. The retreat follows his Anabasis, I.8–II.5, III–IV, and VI–VII, also translated by Dakyns; its author was a participant defending his own conduct.
Plato, Apology, and Xenophon, Apology and Memorabilia I.1–2, preserve defences of Socrates. Diodorus, Library XV.62–66 and XVI.1–8, 35, 53–60, 84–94, supplies the Messenian settlement and the narrative of Philip; Demosthenes’ Philippics and Olynthiacs present the Athenian case against him. Chronology and institutions are checked against The Cambridge Ancient History, VI, The Fourth Century B.C., second edition, especially chapters 2, 6–7, and 14–15. The argument that military victories repeatedly failed to secure an accepted settlement is an interpretation of these events.