Late Classical period (404-323 BC), ANCIENT GREECE

Late Classical Period, Spartan Hegemony, Corinthian War: Peace of Antalcidas (=King’s Peace, 386 BC)

The Athenian victories in Greece and along the northern grain route made the Spartans seek peace with Persia. Antalcidas went to Susa and, supported by Tiribazus, reminded Artaxerxes that the greatest threat to his western front was not Sparta but Athens with her support of Evagoras and Hakor in their rebellions against Persia. Antalcidas proposed a general peace, the conditions of which would be the relinquishment of Asia Minor to the Persians and the complete autonomy of all the Greek states in Europe; terms that the Greek states excepting Sparta had been rejected by in 392 BC.

Antalcidas persuaded the Persians to finance a new Spartan fleet and received twenty triremes from Dionysius of Syracuse. In summer 387 BC Antalcidas with a fleet of eighty ships defeated the Athenians at the Hellespont and took control of the waterway. In the autumn Tiribazus summoned envoys from the Greek states to hear the terms of the peace: all the states in Asia Minor, including Clazomenae and Cyprus, were to be subject to Persia; all the states in Greece were to be autonomous, except that Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros were to belong to Athens. The envoys were then told that Persia would attack any state unwilling to accept these terms.

In spring 386 BC the oaths to the King’s Peace were given by all the Greek states. The Boeotian League was disbanded, the union between Corinth and Argos was ended, and Corinth returned to the Peloponnesian League which survived either because Sparta’s control over its members was not so evident and/or because Sparta was to administer the King’s Peace and thus had the final say.

Notes

Throughout AntiquityComplete the traditional BC/AD convention is replaced by xx-00-yy
and the term 'Roman Period' is used instead of 'Roman Iron Age'. More Information.


Leave a Reply