Thibron’s expedition was followed by that of Dercyllidas (399–397), but the most ambitious of all was led by the new Spartan king, Agesilaus, in 396. At the least (and Xenophon, a great admirer of the Spartan king, attributes to him some very grand ideas indeed) Agesilaus seems to have wanted to establish a zone of rebel satraps in western Anatolia. It is therefore not surprising that in 397 the Persians began to build a new fleet to deal with the menace of a Spartan army in Asia. (Sparta’s help may, however, have had some technical justification if, as is possible, there had been diplomacy in 408 that renegotiated a more favourable position for the Ionian cities than they had been left in at the end of 411.) It may have been a further irritant that Sparta was helping another anti-Persian rebel in Egypt; the fact that Egypt maintained its independence of Persia until the 340s was a serious economic loss to the Persian landowners who had been exploiting it at a distance.
The Greece that Agesilaus had left behind was uneasy under its new Spartan masters, despite the glory of Sparta’s victory over the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami (405), duly commemorated at Delphi, and the personal prestige of Lysander, who may even have received at this time some kind of cult at Samos (though perhaps only after his death in 395). In fact, Sparta was not even secure in its local dominance in Laconia and Messenia: the old helot problem recurred in 399 with the attempted revolt of Cinadon, already noted in its helot aspect. A little farther away, Sparta’s former Peloponnesian and extra-Peloponnesian allies were unhappy with what they saw as alarming extensions of Spartan territorial interests, though in fact some of these were very traditional.
One powerful Spartan enemy was Thebes, which had emerged much strengthened from the Peloponnesian War. After the expulsion of the Athenians in 446, Boeotia had reorganized itself federally; the detailed arrangements are preserved in a valuable papyrus account by the so-called Oxyrhynchus Historian. After the destruction of Plataea in 427, Thebes took over Plataea’s vote and some of its territory; that was one reason for Theban strength. Another lay in the depredations that the Thebans had been able to carry out in Attica as a result of the occupation of Decelea. When Agesilaus prepared to leave for Anatolia, he tried to sacrifice at Aulis “like Agamemnon” before the Trojan War; but the Boeotian federal magistrates stopped him. Although they had little to fear from a Spartan presence in Anatolia, hardly a normal object of Theban ambition, Theban alarm can be explained by developments nearer home.
In central Greece in the early 390s, the Spartans reinforced their position at Heraclea in Trachis and had a garrison at Thessalian Pharsalus. Initially, Lysander seems to have been at the back of this northward encroachment (good evidence connects him with Thrace and the Chalcidice). Yet because that was always a direction in which Sparta expanded if given the chance, Sparta did not pull out of central Greece during Lysander’s temporary eclipse after 403. From the point of view of Thebes and Corinth, there was a risk of encirclement by Sparta. Another factor making for specifically Corinthian resentment may have been Sparta’s interference in Corinth’s colony, Syracuse. Unlike Thebes, Corinth had emerged badly from the Peloponnesian War; its prosperous middle class had been eroded, and that made possible a remarkable turn of events: Corinth and democratic Argos, in a unique if short-lived political experiment, became fully merged at this time. Argos, for its part, never needed much excuse to act against Sparta.
By 395 then, all Sparta’s enemies were ready and willing for war. The precipitating cause was a quarrel between Locris, abetted by Boeotia, and Phocis. When the Phocians appealed to Sparta, Lysander (now back in qualified favour at Sparta) invaded Boeotia. He was immediately killed at the battle of Haliartus, however, a grave military loss to Sparta. Agesilaus returned from Asia and fought two large-scale hoplite battles but could not force the Athenian general Iphicrates out of Corinth, where for several years he established himself with mercenaries and light-armed troops. At sea, more progress was made against Sparta: Pharnabazus and the Athenian commander Conon won a decisive battle off Cnidus (southern Anatolia) in August 394. The war might well have ended at this point, especially since Sparta faced a renewed helot threat as a result of the occupation by Pharnabazus and Conon of the island of Cythera. It was this as much as anything that made Sparta offer peace terms in 392, which would have meant the final abandoning of its claims to Asia. Artaxerxes, however, had not yet forgiven the Spartans for supporting Cyrus, and the war continued. Nor was Athens yet in a mood for peace.
In the years immediately following 392, the Athenians made such nuisances of themselves in Anatolia under Thrasybulus, who revived a number of 5th-century Athenian imperial institutions, that Persia—which was anxious to end rebellions not just in Egypt but also in Cyprus—eventually realized where its true interest lay. Consequently, it changed its support to Sparta. The Spartans under Antalcidas now blockaded the Hellespont with help from Persia and Dionysius of Syracuse, and Athens was once again starved into surrender. The King’s Peace
The ensuing Peace of Antalcidas, or King’s Peace, of 386 specified that Asia, including Cyprus and Clazomenae, was to belong to the king of Persia. (Ionian Clazomenae was included because Athens had interfered there and also because its status—whether it was an island or part of the mainland—was unclear. It was in fact a peninsular site. Cyprus was included because Athens had been helping the rebel Cypriot king, Evagoras.) The other Greek cities great and small, including the other islands, were to be autonomous, but Athens was allowed to keep Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, three long-standing cleruchies. Modern argument centres on the question of whether there were additional clauses, not supplied by the main account (that of Xenophon). For instance, the Athenian navy was perhaps ordered to be broken up and the gates on the Piraeus removed, but these may have been consequences, not clauses, of the peace. The same is true of Sparta’s position under the peace, which was certainly much strengthened. There is no agreement, however, that Sparta’s enhanced position was officially recognized by some such description as “champion” of the peace. Argos’s merger with Corinth was cancelled, and, more important (in view of the relative power of the states concerned), Thebes had to relinquish the control of Boeotia that it had been exercising in an unrecognized but progressively real way since 446.
In Anatolia there was little immediate change—the Spartans had after all pulled out of Anatolia some years before, though an inscription (published in 1976) suggests that the Ionian cities may have clung to a precarious autonomy until 386. One difference after 386 lay in the status of possessions up to then held by various Greek islands on the mainland of Anatolia. These possessions had hitherto been anomalous enclaves of Greek control within basically satrapal Asia, but the King’s Peace surely assigned them formally to Persia in general. Anatolia now became the political property of Persia and the satraps for the 50 years until Alexander’s arrival. Occasional adventures, such as Greek flirtation with the Revolt of the Satraps in the 360s, do not seriously affect this generalization.
The activities of those 4th-century satraps (and of dynasts without the satrapal title but recognized by Persia) are of great interest, though documented more by inscriptions and archaeology than by written sources. The most energetic of them was the Hecatomnid dynasty of Caria, which took its name from Hecatomnus, the son of Hyssaldomus. Hecatomnus was appointed satrap of the new separate satrapy of Caria, perhaps in the mid-390s, as a counterpoise to Sparta. He ruled his pocket principality under light Persian authority until 377 and made dedications in Greek script at a number of local sites and sanctuaries. The major Hellenizing force, however, was his son Mausolus (Maussollos on the inscriptions), satrap from 377 to 353, who gave his name to the Mausoleum, the tomb he perhaps commissioned for himself.