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Lines 1.5-1.8
Greek and Roman Historians, 4th Century Greece 1.5-8
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14. 16. Spartan Aggression and Athenian Resurgence
Spartan forces attacked city-states all over Greece in the years after the peace. Athens, meanwhile, had restored its invulnerability to invasion by rebuilding the long walls connecting the city and the harbor. The Athenian general Iphicrates also devised effective new tactics for light-armed troops called peltasts by improving their weapons. The reconstruction of Athens's navy built up its offensive strength, and by 377 B. C. the city had again become the leader of a naval alliance of Greek states, but this time the members of the league had their rights specified in writing to prevent high-handed Athenian behavior. Spartan hopes for lasting power were dashed in 371 B. C., when a resurgent Thebes defeated the Spartan army at Leuctra in Boeotia and then invaded the Spartan homeland in the Peloponnese. At this point the Thebans seemed likely to challenge Jason, tyrant of Pherae in Thessaly, for the position of the dominant military power in Greece.
14. 17. Stalemate after the Battle of Mantinea
The alliances of the various city-states shifted often in the repeated conflicts that took place in Greece during these early decades of the fourth century B. C. The threat from Thessaly faded with Jason's murder in 370 B. C., and the former enemies Sparta and Athens momentarily allied against the Thebans in the battle of Mantinea in the Peloponnese in 362 B. C. Thebes won the battle but lost the war when its great leader Epaminondas fell at Mantinea and no credible replacement for him could be found. The Theban quest for dominance in Greece was over. Xenophon adroitly summed up the situation after 362 B. C. with these closing remarks from the history that he wrote of the Greeks in his time (Hellenica ): "Everyone had supposed that the winners of this battle would be Greece's rulers and its losers their subjects; but there was only more confusion and disturbance in Greece after it than before." The truth of his analysis was confirmed when the naval alliance led by Athens dissolved in the mid-350s B. C. in a war among the leader and the allies.