Volume 6: The Meeting of Two Heroes, Chapter 3: The Corinthian War

As the Spartan hero who defeated Athens, Lysander in his heyday had installed pro-Spartan puppet regimes in Athens’ maritime allies. Now that he came to Asia Minor, the rulers of those city-states vied to visit him, trailed after him, and made all sorts of demands, behaving as if he were the true king and Agesilaus merely his lackey.

But soon, Lysander tasted Agesilaus’s harshness. Any request he made, even a reasonable one, was flatly refused by the Spartan king. Agesilaus even secretly sent people to spread word that Lysander was merely an ordinary member of the Spartan “Thirty-Man Military Commission” and held no real power. Consequently, Lysander’s promises to these men ultimately went unfulfilled. The rulers of those city-states, realizing the shift in power, turned to curry favor with Agesilaus.

Agesilaus’s coldness toward Lysander began to unsettle Lysander. He finally understood how badly he had misjudged—this new king was no mediocrity to be manipulated.

By now, Lysander was no longer the glorious Spartan hero of a few years earlier. His failed conspiracy to overthrow Sparta’s institutions and the wariness of the other members of the Council of Elders had stripped him of his real power. In the end, he had no choice but to voluntarily propose to Agesilaus that he would go to the Hellespont to win over the cities that had previously sided with Persia.

Agesilaus agreed to his request.

After reining in the ambitious Lysander, Agesilaus began to display his military talent. His troop movements were more flexible than Dercylidas’s; he marched back and forth between the territories of the two Persian satraps, Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus, so confounding the Persian forces that they were at a loss. In the spring of 395 BC, at the Battle of Sardis, he dealt a heavy blow to Tissaphernes’s army.

This disastrous defeat gave Parysatis, mother of the Persian King Artaxerxes, the opportunity she had long awaited. She persuaded her son to remove Tissaphernes from his post and eventually had him executed, thus avenging her younger son, Cyrus the Younger.

When news reached Agesilaus’s camp, the mercenaries who had experienced the “Retreat of the Ten Thousand” cheered thunderously. Xenophon even wrote a letter to Davos, who was far away in Thurii, expressing his joy and his admiration for the Spartan king Agesilaus.

Agesilaus’s military actions in Asia Minor put great pressure on Persia. The Persian king was forced to muster troops from other regions to counter the Spartan offensive, which consequently left other areas defenseless. In Egypt, the province farthest from Persia proper, the Egyptians, who had long resisted Persian rule, seized this opportunity. Under the leadership of Acoris, they rose up, drove out the Persians, achieved independence, and reestablished the Egyptian kingdom. Acoris became the new pharaoh—this was the 29th Dynasty in ancient Egyptian history.

In order to reclaim Egypt, Persia repeatedly sent envoys to Agesilaus in 395 BC to propose peace talks, but Agesilaus refused the Persian overtures. King Artaxerxes realized that the Spartans had no intention of withdrawing from Asia Minor; on the contrary, Agesilaus’s ultimate goal was to attack Persia itself. Enraged, he followed the advice of his ministers and sent agents to Greece with large sums of gold to bribe the generals and councilors of city-states that were hostile to Sparta—Thebes, Corinth, Argos, and others. The only condition was that they must go to war with Sparta.

These city-states gave similar answers: even without the money, they were eager to fight, because the Spartans were overbearing—they not only showed them no respect but had repeatedly harmed their states’ interests.

Egg on by the Persian agents, these city-states began secretly negotiating an alliance. The Thebans were the most enthusiastic about declaring war on Sparta. They stirred up their ally, Locris, into conflict with Sparta’s ally, Phocis. When the Phocians finally invaded Locris, the Thebans declared that Phocis had attacked their ally and, in defense of that ally, they declared war on Phocis.

Thebes then mustered its army and invaded Phocian territory. The small and weak Phocis had no choice but to appeal to Sparta for help. Though Phocis was insignificant, it was an important city-state near the region of Delphi, which allowed the Spartans to meddle in Delphi’s religious affairs. Moreover, the Spartans still remembered with resentment how the Thebans had scorned and disrupted the sacrifices to the gods before the Spartan expedition to Persia. So the Spartans were delighted to have a pretext to attack Thebes and promptly decided to punish Thebes for its contempt and insolence.

Consequently, the Spartan army invaded Thebes in two columns. One column, led by the other Spartan king, Pausanias, advanced from the north. The other column was led by Lysander, who had already returned to Sparta. The Council of Elders sent him to Phocis to organize a local allied army and attack Thebes from the south. Lysander quickly accomplished this task and even won over the people of Orchomenus in Boeotia.

Faced with Sparta’s overwhelming threat, Thebes turned for help to its nearest powerful neighbor, Athens.

After suffering the defeat in the Peloponnesian War, the dark rule of the Thirty Tyrants, the restoration of the democrats, and a series of other trials, the Athenians had shed their former arrogance. Domestically, they adopted moderate institutions to reconcile the differences between democrats and aristocrats. Externally, they treated their former allies as equals. Under this steady and pragmatic policy, Athens’s strength recovered rapidly over nearly ten years. With renewed power, the Athenians wanted to break free from Spartan control and gain true military and commercial freedom.

So, upon receiving Thebes’s request for aid, Athens convened the Assembly. In the Assembly, an overwhelming majority of citizens voted to ally with their former mortal enemy, Thebes, and go to war with Sparta.

Finally, Thrasybulus, the democratic leader who had led the hard-fought resistance, overthrown the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, and brought Athens back to life, relayed the Athenian resolution to the Theban envoy. In a firm tone, he said: “…Although Piraeus now has no walls, we Athenians will bravely face danger and stand shoulder to shoulder with you Thebans against the brutal Spartans!”

The Thebans were moved. The two city-states, enemies for decades, quickly sealed the alliance, declaring that Thebes and Athens had formed an eternal bond.

Meanwhile, Lysander and Pausanias, each leading their forces, were approaching Boeotia from south and north. They had agreed to rendezvous near the town of Haliartus, an ally of Thebes to the south.

But when Lysander arrived, Pausanias’s army was nowhere to be seen. Lysander tried to persuade the people of Haliartus to break away from Thebes.

The Haliartians pretended to agree, but secretly played for time. When Theban reinforcements arrived, they suddenly sallied out of the city and, together with the Theban army, caught Lysander’s forces in a pincer attack.

Lysander, the founder of Spartan hegemony, died unexpectedly in this sudden battle. Yet in the fighting that followed, the Thebans failed to completely crush the leaderless remnants of his army and instead suffered heavy losses.

The next day, Pausanias finally arrived with his troops.

When the Thebans saw the Spartans’ large force and orderly ranks, their morale plummeted.

But Pausanias did not immediately attack. Instead, he set up camp nearby.

On the third day, Athenian reinforcements arrived.

The Thebans’ confidence revived. Together with the Athenians, they formed up for battle, ready to face the Spartans.

Pausanias, however, did not advance against the allied army or accept the enemy’s challenge. Instead, he summoned his officers to discuss whether to fight immediately or to negotiate a truce, so that they could recover the bodies of Lysander and the other fallen soldiers.

The Spartans ultimately decided on a truce.

After negotiations, the Spartan army withdrew from Boeotia, carrying the bodies of their comrades.

When the ordinary Spartan citizens saw Lysander’s corpse, they were overcome with grief. Recalling the great contributions Lysander had made to Sparta, they turned that grief into anger. They accused King Pausanias of deliberately delaying the rendezvous, causing Lysander’s death, and then retreating without a fight.

The Elders of the Council of Elders did not defend the Spartan king with full vigor. After all, the impact of Lysander’s death and Sparta’s withdrawal was enormous. It directly led to the formation of an anti-Spartan alliance among four important Greek city-states: Thebes, Athens, Corinth, and Argos.

Thus, King Pausanias of Sparta was found guilty and exiled.

The Spartans realized that this anti-Spartan alliance posed a great threat to their hegemony. They quickly mustered their army to try to crush the alliance.

The Anti-Spartan Alliance likewise rapidly concentrated its forces at the Isthmus of Corinth, hoping to withstand the Spartan attack there, then counter-invade Spartan territory and burn the “wasp’s nest” to the ground.

So, the two sides began a protracted struggle at the Isthmus of Corinth…

…

That same year, war was also raging in Sicily.

The armies of Syracuse and Carthage had been fighting on Sicily’s northern coast for more than half a year.

By the time 394 BC arrived, the major states and city-states of the Mediterranean were all mired in war, while Magna Graecia had already enjoyed more than three years of peace.

Early in the morning, Lycasus arrived at the clinic and began to clean up and organize things. As a physician’s apprentice, preparing the clinic before opening each day was his job. He firmly believed that only through hard work could he earn his teacher’s trust and learn true medicine. Today, he was in an especially good mood because he was going to accompany his teacher on a long journey.

When the doctor, Nicostratus, strolled slowly into the clinic, Lycasus had already packed their bags. Nicostratus, who never liked to bother with trivial matters, asked only: “Everything ready?”

Receiving Lycasus’s affirmative answer, he nodded and said, “Let’s go.”