Peace of Antalcidas

Last updated
The King's Peace, promulgated by Artaxerxes II in 387 BC, put an end to the Corinthian War under the guarantee of the Achaemenid Empire. Xenophon, Hellenica. The word "independent" in this translation is more generally translated as "autonomous" (autonomous
in the Greek original). King's Peace 387 BC.jpg
The King's Peace, promulgated by Artaxerxes II in 387 BC, put an end to the Corinthian War under the guarantee of the Achaemenid Empire. Xenophon, Hellenica . The word "independent" in this translation is more generally translated as "autonomous" (αὐτονόμους in the Greek original).

The King's Peace (387 BC) was a peace treaty guaranteed by the Persian King Artaxerxes II that ended the Corinthian War in ancient Greece. The treaty is also known as the Peace of Antalcidas, after Antalcidas, the Spartan diplomat who traveled to Susa to negotiate the terms of the treaty with the king of Achaemenid Persia. The treaty was more commonly known in antiquity, however, as the King's Peace, a name that reflects the depth of Persian influence in the treaty, as Persian gold had driven the preceding war. The treaty was a form of Common Peace, similar to the Thirty Years' Peace which ended the First Peloponnesian War.

Contents

The end of the war

By 387 BC, the central front of the Corinthian War had shifted from the Greek mainland to the Aegean, where an Athenian fleet under Thrasybulus had successfully placed a number of cities across the Aegean under Athenian control, and was acting in collaboration with Evagoras, the king of Cyprus. Since Evagoras was an enemy of Persia, and many of the Athenian gains threatened Persian interests, these developments prompted Artaxerxes to switch his support from Athens and her allies to Sparta. Antalcidas, the commander of a Spartan fleet, was summoned to Susa, along with the satrap, Tiribazus. There, the Spartans and Persians worked out the form of an agreement to end the war.

Antalcidas traveled to Susa to negotiate the peace. Western part of the Achaemenid Empire.jpg
Antalcidas traveled to Susa to negotiate the peace.

To bring the Athenians to the negotiating table, Antalcidas then moved his fleet of 90 ships to the Hellespont, where he could threaten the trade routes along which the Athenians imported grain from the Black Sea region. The Athenians, mindful of their disastrous defeat in 404 BC, when the Spartans had gained control of the Hellespont, agreed to negotiate, and Thebes, Corinth, and Argos, unwilling to fight on without Athens, were also forced to negotiate. In a peace conference at Sparta, all the belligerents agreed to the terms laid down by Artaxerxes.

Terms of the peace

The Peace of Antalcidas was guaranteed by Achaemenid ruler Artaxerxes II. Artaxerxes II relief detail.jpg
The Peace of Antalcidas was guaranteed by Achaemenid ruler Artaxerxes II.

The most notable feature of the King's Peace is the Persian influence it reflects. The Persian decree that established the terms of the peace, as recorded by Xenophon, clearly shows this:

King Artaxerxes thinks it just that the cities in Asia should belong to him, as well as Clazomenae and Cyprus among the islands, and that the other Greek cities, both small and great, should be left autonomous [αὐτονόμους], except Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros; and these should belong, as of old, to the Athenians. But whichever of the two parties does not accept this peace, upon them I will make war, in company with those who desire this arrangement, both by land and by sea, with ships and with money. [1] [2] [3]

Ionia and Cyprus were abandoned to the Persians, and the Athenians were compelled to cede their newly-won territories in the Aegean. Equally significantly, the insistence on autonomy put an end to a novel political experiment that had grown out of the war, the union of Argos and Corinth. In what the Greeks called sympoliteia , the two cities had politically merged, granting all citizens joint citizenship. They were forced to separate, and the Thebans were required to disband their Boeotian league. Only Sparta's Peloponnesian League and helots were overlooked, as the Spartans, who were responsible for administering the peace, had no wish to see the principle of independence applied there.

Effects

The single greatest effect of the Peace was the return of firm Persian control over Ionia and parts of the Aegean. Driven back from the Aegean shores by the Delian League during the 5th century, the Persians had been recovering their position since the later part of the Peloponnesian War of 431 to 404 BC, and were now strong enough to dictate terms to Greece. They would maintain this position of strength until the time of Alexander the Great (r.336  323 BC). As Mikhail Gasparov states in his book Greece for Entertainment ( Занимательная Греция ), "Artaxerxes had succeeded where Xerxes had failed; the Persian King was giving orders in Greece like it was his, and without bringing in a single soldier at that." In short, the treaty placed Greece under Persian suzerainty. [4] [5]

The Peace was negotiated by Satrap Tiribazos on the Achaemenid side. Tiribazos portrait.jpg
The Peace was negotiated by Satrap Tiribazos on the Achaemenid side.

A second effect of this "most disgraceful event in Greek history", as Will Durant characterized it, [6] was the establishment of Sparta in a formalized position at the top of a Greek political system enforced by the Great King. Using their mandate to protect and enforce the peace, the Spartans proceeded to launch a number of campaigns against poleis that they perceived as political threats. Near at hand, they forced the city of Mantinea in Arcadia, to disband into its constituent villages. [7] The largest intervention was a campaign in 382 BC to break up the federalist Chalcidian League in northeastern Greece, as violating the autonomy principle of the Great King's decree. On the way there, in 383 the Spartan commander Phoebidas, invited by a pro-Spartan faction, seized the Theban Kadmeia (the Theban acropolis) and left a Laconophile oligarchy supported by a Spartan garrison; even the pro-Spartan Xenophon could only attribute the act to madness. The principle of autonomy proved to be a flexible tool in the hand of a hegemonic power.

The King's Peace was not successful in bringing peace to Greece. Pelopidas and companions liberated Thebes in 379 by assassinating the Laconizing tyrants. After the Spartan campaign against Olynthus in 382-379 BC, general fighting resumed (Boeotian War of 378 to 371 BC) with the revived Athenian naval confederacy and continued, with intermittent attempts to restore the peace, for much of the next two decades. The idea of a Common Peace proved enduring, however, and numerous attempts would be made to establish one, with little more success than the original. By granting powers to Sparta that were sure to infuriate other states when used, the treaties sowed the seeds of their own demise, and a state of near-constant warfare continued to be the norm in Greece.

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 Ruzicka, Stephen (2012). Trouble in the West: Egypt and the Persian Empire, 525–332 BC. Oxford University Press, USA. p. 81. ISBN   9780199766628.
  2. 1 2 Tritle, Lawrence A. (2013). The Greek World in the Fourth Century: From the Fall of the Athenian Empire to the Successors of Alexander. Routledge. p. 164. ISBN   9781134524747.
  3. Xenophon, Hellenica 5.1.31
  4. Ertl, Alan (2007). The Political Economic Foundation of Democratic Capitalism: From Genesis to Maturation. Boca Raton: Brown Walker. p. 111. ISBN   978-1-59942-424-8. [...] the Treaty of Antalcidas in 387-6 B.C. had established a Persian suzerainty over Greece that persisted until the formation of the League of Corinth.
  5. Tucker, Spencer (2010). A Global Chronology of Conflict. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO LLC. p. 52.
  6. Durant, The Life of Greece 1939:461.
  7. Simon Hornblower, in John Boardman, Jasper Griffin and Oswyn Murray, Greece and the Hellenistic World (Oxford)141.

Related Research Articles

Agesilaus II was king of Sparta from c. 400 to c. 360 BC. Generally considered the most important king in the history of Sparta, Agesilaus was the main actor during the period of Spartan hegemony that followed the Peloponnesian War. Although brave in combat, Agesilaus lacked the diplomatic skills to preserve Sparta's position, especially against the rising power of Thebes, which reduced Sparta to a secondary power after its victory at Leuctra in 371 BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peloponnesian War</span> War between Athens and Sparta (431–404 BC)

The Peloponnesian War was an ancient Greek war fought between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies for the hegemony of the Greek world. The war remained undecided for a long time, until the decisive intervention of the Persian Empire in support of Sparta. Led by Lysander, the Spartan fleet, built with Persian subsidies, finally defeated Athens and started a period of Spartan hegemony over Greece.

This article concerns the period 399 BC – 390 BC.

This article concerns the period 379 BC – 370 BC.

This article concerns the period 389 BC – 380 BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antalcidas</span> Spartan general and statesman (died c. 367 BC)

Antalcidas, son of Leon, was an ancient Greek soldier, politician, and diplomat from Sparta.

Spartan hegemony refers to the period of dominance by Sparta in Greek affairs from 404 to 371 BC. Even before this period the polis of Sparta was the greatest military land power of classical Greek antiquity and governed, dominated or influenced the entire Peloponnese. The defeat of the Athenians and the Delian League in the Peloponnesian War in 431–404 BC resulted in a short-lived Spartan dominance of the southern Greek world from 404 to 371 BC. Due to their mistrust of others, Spartans discouraged the creation of records about their internal affairs. The only histories of Sparta are from the writings of Xenophon, Thucydides, Herodotus and Plutarch, none of whom were Spartans. Plutarch was writing several centuries after the period of Spartan hegemony had ceased. This creates difficulties in understanding the Spartan political system, which was distinctly different from any other Greek polis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pharnabazus II</span> Persian satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia from 413 to 374 BC

Pharnabazus II was a Persian soldier and statesman, and Satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia. He was the son of Pharnaces II of Phrygia and grandson of Pharnabazus I, and great-grandson of Artabazus I. He and his male ancestors, forming the Pharnacid dynasty, had governed the satrapy of Hellespontine Phrygia from its headquarters at Dascylium since 478 BC. He married Apama, daughter of Artaxerxes II of Persia, and their son Artabazus also became a satrap of Phrygia. According to some accounts, his granddaughter Barsine may have become Alexander the Great's concubine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chabrias</span> 4th-century BCE Athenian general

Chabrias was an Athenian general active in the first half of the 4th century BC. During his career he was involved in several battles, both on land and sea. The orator Demosthenes described him as one of the most successful commanders Athens ever had:

To sum up the whole: he is the only general who never lost a single city or post or ship or soldier, when he commanded you: none of your enemies has any trophy over you and him, while you have many over many enemies under his command.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corinthian War</span> Ancient Greek war (395–387 BC)

The Corinthian War was a conflict in ancient Greece which pitted Sparta against a coalition of city-states comprising Thebes, Athens, Corinth and Argos, backed by the Achaemenid Empire. The war was caused by dissatisfaction with Spartan imperialism in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War, both from Athens, the defeated side in that conflict, and from Sparta's former allies, Corinth and Thebes, who had not been properly rewarded. Taking advantage of the fact that the Spartan king Agesilaus II was away campaigning in Asia against the Achaemenid Empire, Thebes, Athens, Corinth and Argos forged an alliance in 395 BC with the goal of ending Spartan hegemony over Greece; the allies' war council was located in Corinth, which gave its name to the war. By the end of the conflict, the allies had failed to end Spartan hegemony over Greece, although Sparta was durably weakened by the war.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Cnidus</span> 394 BCE naval engagement between the Achaemenid Empire and Sparta

The Battle of Cnidus was a military operation conducted in 394 BC by the Achaemenid Empire against the Spartan fleet during the Corinthian War. A fleet under the joint command of Pharnabazus and former Athenian admiral, Conon, destroyed the Spartan fleet led by the inexperienced Peisander, ending Sparta's brief bid for naval supremacy.

<i>Hellenica</i> Work by Xenophon

Hellenica simply means writings on Greek (Hellenic) subjects. Several histories of 4th-century Greece, written in the mould of Thucydides or straying from it, have borne the conventional Latin title Hellenica. The surviving Hellenica is an important work of the Ancient Greek writer Xenophon and one of the principal sources for the last seven years of the Peloponnesian War not covered by Thucydides, as well as the war's aftermath.

The Battle of Haliartus was fought in 395 BC between Sparta and Thebes. The Thebans defeated a Spartan force attempting to seize the town of Haliartus, killing the Spartan leader Lysander. The battle marked the start of the Corinthian War, which continued until 387 BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Nemea</span> Land battle during the Corinthian War (394 BC)

The Battle of Nemea, also known in ancient Athens as the Battle of Corinth, was a battle in the Corinthian War, between Sparta and the coalition of Argos, Athens, Corinth, and Thebes. The battle was fought in Corinthian territory, at the dry bed of the Nemea River. The battle was a decisive Spartan victory, which, coupled with the Battle of Coronea later in the same year, gave Sparta the advantage in the early fighting on the Greek mainland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Common Peace</span>

The idea of the Common Peace was one of the most influential concepts of 4th century BC Greek political thought, along with the idea of Panhellenism. The term described both the concept of a desirable, permanent peace between the Greek city-states (poleis) and a sort of peace treaty which fulfilled the three fundamental criteria of this concept: it had to include all the Greek city-states, it had to recognise the autonomy and equality of all city states without regard for their military power, and it had to be intended to remain in force permanently.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tiribazus</span> Achaemenid satrap (c. 440 BC-370 BC)

Tiribazus, Tiribazos or Teribazus was an Achaemenid satrap of Armenia and later satrap of Lydia in western Anatolia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Second Athenian League</span> 4th-century BC maritime confederation of Aegean city-states

The Second Athenian League was a maritime confederation of Greek city-states that existed from 378 to 355 BC under the leadership (hegemony) of Athens. The alliance represented a partial revival of the Delian League, which had been disbanded in 404 BC following the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War. The new League was centered in the Aegean and included over 60 states, among which were Kos, Mytilene, Rhodes, and Byzantium. It was primarily formed as a defensive alliance against Sparta and secondly the Persian Empire. The new League's main objective was to preserve peace in Greece and counterbalance Sparta's growing hegemony and aggression. The League largely revived Athenian influence in the Greek world, reestablishing it as the strongest naval power in the eastern Mediterranean. This time, Athens made conscious efforts to avoid the strict terms that had eventually rendered the previous Delian League unpopular. The alliance lasted until 355 BC, when most of the allied cities became independent following the Social War that broke out in 357 BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Classical Greece</span> Period of ancient Greece from 510 to 323 BC

Classical Greece was a period of around 200 years in Ancient Greece, marked by much of the eastern Aegean and northern regions of Greek culture gaining increased autonomy from the Persian Empire; the peak flourishing of democratic Athens; the First and Second Peloponnesian Wars; the Spartan and then Theban hegemonies; and the expansion of Macedonia under Philip II. Much of the early defining mathematics, science, artistic thought, theatre, literature, philosophy, and politics of Western civilization derives from this period of Greek history, which had a powerful influence on the later Roman Empire. Part of the broader era of classical antiquity, the classical Greek era ended after Philip II's unification of most of the Greek world against the common enemy of the Persian Empire, which was conquered within 13 years during the wars of Alexander the Great, Philip's son.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theban–Spartan War</span> 4th century BCE conflict between Thebes and Sparta

The Theban–Spartan War of 378–362 BC was a series of military conflicts fought between Sparta and Thebes for hegemony over Greece. Sparta had emerged victorious from the Peloponnesian War against Athens, and occupied an hegemonic position over Greece. However, the Spartans' violent interventionism upset their former allies, especially Thebes and Corinth. The resulting Corinthian War ended with a difficult Spartan victory, but the Boeotian League headed by Thebes was also disbanded.

Philiscus or Philiskos was a 4th-century BC Greek tyrant of the city of Abydos, on the Asian side of the Hellespont, and a hyparch ("vice-regent") and military commander of the Achaemenid satrap Ariobarzanes. He was sent by Ariobarzanes in 368 BCE as an Achaemenid emissary to Delphi, where the Greek cities at war between themselves had assembled for peace negotiations. Philiscus had probably been sent at the request of either Athens or Sparta, to help solve the conflicts between the Greek city-states.

References