The Corinthian War is the conflict between the knights of Sparta and small merchants and craftsmen. Thebes, capital of Boeotia, was gradually becoming the focus of anti-Spartan resistance. This city had been the most favored by the Athenian defeat and the Boeotian League was strengthened around it. , which met in the Theban fortress of Cadmea .
This League was directed by a Council elected by the eleven districts in which the region was divided, who elected the eleven boeotarches.
For a long time, it had been pro-Spartan, but shortly after the end of the Peloponnesian War, the pro-Spartian party of knights, led by Leontiadas and Astias, was defeated by the party of petty merchants and craftsmen, hostile to Sparta, led by Ismenias and Andrócidas. From here events developed rapidly. It is the so-called War of Corinth (395-386) that would end with the Peace of the King or Antalcidas .
Background of the Corinthian War
Around the year 395 the Thebans attacked Phocis, a friendly region of Sparta.
The Spartan king, Pausanias, at the head of the Peloponnesian League forces (except Corinth), attacked Beoda.
The anti-Spartan proclamation found an echo in Athens.
Lysander was sent to Phocis and then to Boeotia, where he was defeated and killed before the city of Haliartus.
Pausanias proposed a truce rather than face the armies of Thebes and Athens, which earned him execution upon his return to Sparta.
The triumph at Halianthus encouraged Sparta's enemies. And the quadruple Alliance of Athens-Thebes-Corinth and Argos was formed. , which was joined by Acarnania, Epirus, Phocis, Euboea, Eocris, cities of the Chalcidic peninsula and Thessaly.
Development:Nemea, Coronea and Cnidos
- Meeting of the allies in Corinth and beginning of the war of the same name:Corinthian War , in the year 394:First united action of the democratic Greek states against the Spartan hegemony.
- Agesilaus returned from Asia Minor, fought his way through Thessaly, and defeated the Quadruple Alliance at Coronea on August 3, 394.
- The Spartans defeated the allies near Nemea and occupied Sicyon.
- Collaboration between Thebes, Athens, Corinth and Argos was strengthened.
- The success of Coronea lost all its value to Sparta when the Persian and Phoenician fleet, commanded by Conon and Pharnabazus, attacked the Peloponnesian navy at Cnidus, in southwestern Asia Minor, killing the Spartan leader, Pindar, thus Sparta gave up its fleeting naval hegemony and also all its possessions in Asia Minor and the Black Sea.
The investment of alliances
After this, the Persian influence in Greece intensified and with their gold, the Beodos minted the first Greek gold coins and at the same time helped Athens, with which a reverse situation was reached to that which had occurred until then (alliance Sparta-Persia and opposition to Athens).
Locked in their war methods, based on destruction and looting, Sparta provoked in the year 392 a violent wave of assassinations and repressions in Corinth, which joined Argos to defend itself.
In Athens, meanwhile, the old naval power was restored and the walls were rebuilt. The main character at the moment was Admiral Cónon.
Thus, a new fleet was created, which was joined by Rhodes, Chios, Cos, Lesbos, the Cyclades and Scyrus, among others, and ties were strengthened with the great cities of Asia Minor, such as Ephesus and Byzantium and other places such as the island of Cyprus. .
This growing Athenian power worried Sparta, who tried to sign a treaty with Persia in the year 392, with a series of conditions:
- Sparta recognized Persian rule over the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor.
- All the other Greek cities were declared free and autonomous, intending to dissolve all the Leagues, except Lacedaemon.
- The consequence of all these conditions would once again be Spartan hegemony.
The Peace of the King or Antalcidas (386 BC). The humiliation of Athens
These proposals did not please anyone and peace was not signed in a first meeting in Sardis nor the following year, in a Congress meeting in Athens, continuing the war another five years, until, finally, in the year 386 BC. the so-called Peace of Antalcidas was signed , by the name of the Spartan navarch who managed to tilt the Persians in his favor. This peace is also called the King's Peace. His text is remembered by Xenophon.
This peace was signed with the conditions of the one that had been proposed in the year 392 , now adding the Persians to their possession of the cities of Ionia, the islands of Clazomena and Cyprus, in addition to limiting the interference of peninsular Greece in Anatolia for a period of fifty years.
Likewise, autonomy was granted to all Hellenic cities, except for the islands of Lemnos, Imbros and Esciros, which remained under Athenian rule, which kept its cleruchies there.
As a consequence, this peace will be remembered as the moment of Greece's greatest humiliation since with her:
- The Boeotian League was dissolved, recognizing the autonomy of each of its cities.
- Spartan hegemony was restored. This is the moment of Sparta's true triumph.
- The Greek cities of Asia Minor were under Persian rule and a great commercial flourishing took place in them. For fifty years, Artaxerxes II limited the meddling of peninsular Greece in Anatolia. This was perhaps a disaster for admirers, ancient and modern. of democracy, but coincides with an increase in prosperity that manifests itself in many different ways:Monumental constructions:Monument to the Nereids and Caryatids of Limira in Lycia. Mausoleum of Halicarnassus in Caria, temple of Athena in Priene and Artemision of Ephesus. in Ionia, as well as in the aforementioned material transfer of the location of cities, to increase its perimeter and accommodate a larger population:Halicarnassus. Erythras. Cnidus and Cindie, which increased their population with that of neighboring cities, carrying out a process of synecism16. at the expense of wealthy satraps who dedicated their income to the beautification and prestige of their respective cities.
- Ephesus became the main center of trade between the East and Greece.
- Lampsacus and Chlazomena, on the Black Sea, are now beginning to mint gold.
- The Spartan policy of repression grew, recounted by Xenophon, Diodorus and Pausa-nías:
First, against Mantinea, who capitulated in the year 385a.C. and their cities were scattered into four villages.
Then Fliunte, who resisted the demand to hand over the acropolis from him for several months.
Athens gave aid to the fugitives from all the Greek cities occupied by Sparta, since it was the only Greek state that benefited from the Corinthian War, because the Treaty that ended the Peloponnesian War in the year 404 was annulled.
Because of this peace, Athens:
— He was able to rebuild the wall and the Long Walls.
— He recovered the islands of Imbros, Lemnos and Esciro, where he reestablished his cleruchies.
— Due to her friendship with Byzantium and the domain of these islands, she recovered the Black Sea trade.
— He maintained his friendship with the great islands of the Aegean, such as Lesbos, Chios and Rhodes.
— He secretly supported the uprising of Cyprus and Egypt against Persia.