Tragedies were still composed, although inspiration was failing and none of them has survived. So far as we can tell, they gradually withered into unactable literary exercises. A tradition grew of reviving the masterpieces of the past, especially the plays of Euripides. The concept of the classic was born.
The scabrous political farces of Aristophanes, which oxygenated the democracy of the fifth century (called by scholars Old Comedy), modulated into something softer, comedies in which innuendo supplanted obscenity (Middle Comedy). These in turn were replaced by a brand-new style of humor—gentle, optimistic, and focused on individuals rather than on politics (New Comedy). A leading practitioner was Menander, who flourished in the second half of the fourth century.
His plays are usually set in Athens or the countryside of Attica and concerned the private lives of affluent middle-class families. The plots are artificial and depend on implausible coincidences. They describe obstacles to true love and center on the young man of the house. Children are abandoned or kidnapped and are finally recognized many years later thanks to some curio or trinket. The characters are stereotypes—the boastful soldier, the irate father, the garrulous chef, the clever but cowardly slave, the good-time girl with a heart of gold. Story lines that could never have happened in real life were made convincing by colloquial and witty verse dialogue. In ancient times, Menander was seen as a realist.
His work has only survived in papyrus fragments that archaeologists have found in the rubbish tips of ancient Egypt—convincing evidence that his work was not only acted in theaters, but also read throughout the Greek world.
By a similar process, the subject matter of red-figure pottery paid less attention to the male body, sex scenes and drinking parties, military images, and mythological stories and more to domestic incidents and the private lives of women. The last figurative pottery was produced in the city no later than about 320.
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A modest prosperity returned to Athens, although there was never quite enough money to pay for its ambitions.
The state’s income was sufficient to pay for the administration of the democracy and the law courts. The new league meant that its subscriptions allowed the city to run a peacetime fleet. However, for all the ingenuity of its politicians, Athens was unable to build sufficient reserves to cover the prohibitive costs of a major military campaign or lengthy hostilities. These pressures had the beneficial effect of making the city improve its financial systems (especially under its leading statesmen, Callicrates and Eubulus, during the middle years of the century), and imaginative means were found of bleeding the rich.
Eubulus also devised a cleverly cheap way of helping the poor. He created (or perhaps reinstated) a Festival Fund. Athens had more festivals than any other Greek polis. Attendance used to be free, but now charges were levied; the new fund paid for the admittance of poorer citizens. This popular measure has been estimated to have cost no more than thirty talents a year. However, the fund’s budget soon rose sharply. As well as its regular income, it received all annual exchequer surpluses and became a powerful agency that eclipsed the official financial institutions, including the boulē, and gave grants for all kinds of public purpose.
In a pamphlet on the Athenian economy, Xenophon acknowledged the state’s financial weakness and very sensibly recommended measures to increase trade and, above all, “a complete end to war, on land and sea.” On the face of it, Athens looked as if it had recovered its fifth-century status, but in fact its supremacy was fragile.
Nevertheless, the shortage of money by no means prevented the city from being busy militarily everywhere, albeit as cheaply as possible and without much effect. During the decade after Leuctra its land forces fought in the Peloponnese most years with varying allies, the general aim being to undermine the dominance of Thebes. It also tried to halt Theban activity in Thessaly and intervened in Macedonia. Athenian generals won campaigns in Samos in 365, the Chersonese from 365 onwards, much of Chalcidice in 364, and Euboea in 357. Among them stood the towering figure of Timotheus, son of the great Athenian admiral Conon. A capable commander and politician during the era of the new Athenian maritime league, he worked hard to revive his city’s imperial power.
The city’s main defense priority remained to keep clear the sea-lane from the Black Sea to Piraeus. There were two dangerous obstacles along the way: the city-states of the peninsula of Chalcidice needed to be under Athenian control or at least friendly; and the narrow waters of the Hellespont, the Propontis, and the Bosphorus had to be open to Athenian shipping.
In 364 a storm blew up out of an apparently clear sky. The Athenians seem not to have noticed that their heavy-handed behavior was seriously annoying their Aegean allies; although they had promised not to create cleruchies, they in fact had done so and the undisciplined activities of mercenaries in their employ whom they failed to pay regularly produced many complaints. Discontent was fomented by the energetic ruler of Caria, Mausolus. The successor of Tissaphernes, he was nominally a Persian satrap, but to all intents an independent power. On his encouragement, some allies of Athens broke away from the league. These were the great islands of Rhodes, Cos, and Chios, which Mausolus wanted to bring into his sphere of influence, together with Byzantium on the Bosphorus.
Athens opened a vigorous campaign against the insurgents in what is called the War of the Allies, but lost decisively two major naval engagements. One of its best admirals was killed and two others, who had avoided battle because of stormy weather, were unjustly brought to trial on a charge of treachery (one was Timotheus, who went into exile to avoid a colossal fine of 200 talents and died shortly thereafter). To raise money to pay his troops, an Athenian general went to the aid of a rebellious satrap, to the fury of the Great King, who threatened war. But the treasury was empty (the city had spent 1,000 talents on mercenaries alone) and in 355 Athens was obliged to agree to a peace. The three island rebels were allowed to leave the league and the independence of Byzantium was recognized. The dismembered confederation struggled on, but the renewed dream of empire was over.
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The lame old man still labored unstintingly as the servant of his country. In 361 Agesilaus, now eighty years old (a very great age by the standards of the day), agreed to lead a Spartan force to Egypt. It had won its independence from Persia some forty years previously and its pharaoh was now going on the offensive against the Great King. He needed some Greek mercenaries to help him.
An unconvincing justification for Agesilaus’s accepting the commission was that it would advance “the noble cause to restore the freedom of the Greeks” in Asia Minor by fighting the Persians wherever they could be found, but the truth was simpler. The Spartan government was desperately short of ready cash and was compelled to hire out a king and some of its meager band of Equals to raise revenue. The embarrassment was palpable.
When Agesilaus arrived in Egypt the pharaoh’s top commanders paid him a courtesy visit. He was an international celebrity and they were amazed by what they found. Plutarch describes the scene: