How did Sparta use, and abuse, the supremacy it won in 404 BC, and why did the King's Peace and the seizure of the Cadmea turn its hegemony into overreach?
Spartan hegemony and the King's Peace - Spartan supremacy after 404 BC and its unpopularity (harmosts, decarchies, tribute); the reign and Asian campaigns of Agesilaus II; the Persian-funded backlash and the Corinthian War (395-387 BC), including the naval defeat at Cnidus (394 BC); the King's Peace / Peace of Antalcidas (387/386 BC); and Spartan high-handedness culminating in the seizure of the Theban Cadmea (382 BC)
A focused HSC Ancient History answer on Greece from 404 to 382 BC - Spartan supremacy after Athens fell, the harmosts, decarchies and tribute, Agesilaus II and the Asian campaigns, the Persian-funded Corinthian War of 395 to 387 BC and Cnidus, and the King's Peace of 387 to 386 BC that gave the Asian Greeks to Persia.
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What this dot point is asking
This slice of the period opens with Sparta at the height of its power. Athens has surrendered (404 BC) and Sparta stands as the hegemon of Greece. You are asked to survey what Sparta did with that supremacy - the unpopular machinery of empire (harmosts, decarchies, tribute), the reign and Asian campaigns of Agesilaus II, the Persian-funded backlash that produced the Corinthian War (395-387 BC) and the shattering naval defeat at Cnidus (394 BC), and the King's Peace of 387/386 BC by which Sparta sold the Asian Greeks to Persia in return for a free hand at home. Then you must do the historian's job on it: explain how Spartan high-handedness, above all the seizure of the Theban Cadmea (382 BC), turned hegemony into overreach and provoked the Thebes that would destroy it - and weigh how far the collapse was self-inflicted rather than imposed from outside.
The answer
Spartan supremacy after 404 BC and its unpopularity
Sparta's defeat of Athens at Aegospotami (405 BC) and the surrender of the city (404 BC) left it the undisputed leading power of Greece by land and, for the moment, by sea. But the victor rapidly squandered the goodwill. The war had been fought under the panhellenic slogan of "freeing the Greeks" from the Athenian empire; in practice Sparta simply replaced one empire with a harsher one.
The instruments were threefold. Lysander, the architect of victory, planted narrow pro-Spartan oligarchies of ten men - the decarchies - in city after city of the former Athenian alliance, and backed them with Spartan military governors, the harmosts, often supported by garrisons. At Athens itself this took the form of the oligarchy of the Thirty (404-403 BC). And Sparta drew tribute (phoros) from its dependencies: Diodorus reports a figure of about 1000 talents a year (an ancient estimate, to be treated with caution). The cities that had welcomed Sparta as a liberator found themselves garrisoned, taxed and governed by juntas. The resentment this bred is the seedbed of everything that follows.
The reign of Agesilaus II
The dominant figure of Spartan policy for the next forty years was Agesilaus II (king c. 400-360 BC). His accession was itself contested: on the death of Agis II the throne was disputed with Leotychidas, rumoured to be the son not of Agis but of the Athenian Alcibiades, and there was an oracle warning against a "lame kingship" - Agesilaus was lame. Lysander threw his weight behind Agesilaus, who duly became king. He proved pious, austere and personally brave, and won the lasting admiration of the historian Xenophon, who knew him and wrote both the Hellenica and a laudatory Agesilaus. He was also aggressive, factional and driven by a personal hostility to Thebes that would prove ruinous.
The war in Asia Minor against Persia
Sparta had inherited from the Peloponnesian War a claim to protect the Greek cities of Asia Minor, and after 404 BC it sent commanders - Thibron, then Dercylidas (399-397 BC) - to campaign against the Persian satraps. In 396 BC Agesilaus himself crossed to Asia with grander ambitions: a panhellenic war on Persia. He campaigned against the satraps Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus, ravaged Phrygia and Lydia, and in 395 BC won a notable victory near Sardis. He spoke of striking into the heart of the King's empire. It was, in the eyes of later Greeks, the great missed opportunity - a foretaste of what Alexander would do sixty years on.
The Persian-funded backlash and the Corinthian War (395-387 BC)
Persia's answer was not an army but gold. The satrap Pharnabazus sent an agent, Timocrates of Rhodes (c. 396/395 BC), to distribute Persian money among Sparta's Greek rivals - Xenophon names Thebes, Corinth and Argos, and Athens was soon involved. The subsidy helped harden resentment of Spartan supremacy into an open coalition. War broke out in Greece in 395 BC: fighting flared in Boeotia, and Lysander was killed at Haliartus that year. Faced with a coalition of Thebes, Athens, Corinth and Argos, Sparta recalled Agesilaus from Asia in 394 BC, ending the eastern adventure.
On land Sparta held its own - victories at Nemea and, as Agesilaus marched home through Boeotia, at Coronea (both 394 BC). But at sea came catastrophe. In 394 BC a Persian-funded fleet, commanded by the exiled Athenian Conon alongside Pharnabazus, destroyed the Spartan navy at Cnidus in Caria; the Spartan navarch Peisander was killed. Cnidus broke the sea power on which the harmost-and-tribute empire in the Aegean rested. With Persian help, Conon then rebuilt the Long Walls of Athens (393 BC), reviving the very naval power Sparta had crushed in 404 BC. The war ground on inconclusively, with much fighting around Corinth, until both sides were exhausted and Persia's attitude shifted.
The King's Peace / Peace of Antalcidas (387/386 BC)
By the mid-380s Sparta was alarmed less by its Greek enemies than by the revival of Athens, whose fleet, rebuilt with Persian help, was again active in the Aegean. Sparta therefore turned to the King. The Spartan Antalcidas negotiated with Artaxerxes II, and Persia switched its patronage back to Sparta. The result was the King's Peace, also called the Peace of Antalcidas (387/386 BC) - the first "Common Peace" of Greek history, and the most humiliating.
Its terms, reported by Xenophon, were dictated by the Great King. The Greek cities of Asia Minor, together with Clazomenae and Cyprus, were to belong to Persia; all other Greek cities were to be "autonomous", backed by the King's threat to make war "with ships and with money" on any who refused. In one clause Sparta abandoned the Asian Greeks it had crossed the sea to "liberate", handing them to Persia in exchange for Persian recognition of its own dominance on the mainland. Contemporaries were bitter: the Athenian orator Isocrates (Panegyricus, 380 BC) attacked the peace as a betrayal of Greek freedom.
Crucially, Sparta made itself the guarantor (prostates) of the peace, and promptly weaponised the "autonomy" clause. In the name of freeing cities from coercion, it dissolved the Boeotian League (breaking Theban leadership of Boeotia) and forced Corinth to break from its union with Argos. Autonomy for others meant the dismantling of every bloc that might rival Sparta.
Spartan high-handedness and the seizure of the Cadmea (382 BC)
The years after the peace show Spartan power at its most arrogant. Sparta coerced smaller states - it broke up Mantinea (385 BC) into villages (a dioikismos) and campaigned in the north against the Chalcidian League of Olynthus (382-379 BC). The defining act of overreach came in 382 BC: the Spartan commander Phoebidas, marching north against Olynthus, seized the Cadmea - the acropolis of Thebes - in peacetime by a coup, installed a garrison and a narrow pro-Spartan oligarchy, and handed over the anti-Spartan leader Ismenias to be tried and executed.
This was a flagrant breach of the autonomy clause Sparta claimed to guard. Officially Phoebidas was acting without orders, and he was nominally fined; but Sparta kept the Cadmea, and Agesilaus defended the seizure on the grounds only that it had been "useful" to Sparta - a piece of realpolitik that exposed the hypocrisy at the centre of Spartan policy. Xenophon, tellingly, is uncomfortable and brief about the whole affair.
The occupation was the trigger of Sparta's undoing. In 379 BC Theban exiles led by Pelopidas slipped back into the city, killed the pro-Spartan oligarchs and expelled the garrison, liberating Thebes. The recovered and enraged Thebes - soon organised by Epaminondas and Pelopidas - became the power that would smash the Spartan army at Leuctra (371 BC) and end the hegemony for good. The overreach of 382 BC created the enemy that Spartan supremacy could not survive.
How to read a source on this topic
The evidence is overwhelmingly Greek and, for the narrative spine, largely one man's. Xenophon is central: an Athenian who served with Agesilaus and admired him, he wrote the Hellenica (the continuous narrative for these years) and a eulogistic Agesilaus. He is close to events and often reliable on what he saw, but his partiality is the first thing to flag - he flatters Agesilaus and Sparta, and he is conspicuously silent or brief on inconvenient matters: the illegality of the Cadmea seizure, and, later, the whole rise of the Second Athenian Confederacy and of Thebes. Diodorus Siculus (first century BC), drawing on the fourth-century historian Ephorus, gives an independent and sometimes fuller account (it is Diodorus who supplies the tribute figure and much on the Corinthian War), though he is late and less reliable on detail. Plutarch (Lives of Agesilaus and Pelopidas, second century AD) preserves biographical and anecdotal material from lost sources. Persian and material evidence - coins, the gold daric, inscriptions - is sparse.
Three habits earn marks. First, place the source in the tradition: is this Xenophon the eyewitness partisan, Diodorus the later compiler, or Plutarch the biographer at several removes? Second, separate content, reliability, usefulness and perspective - a passage of Xenophon may be very useful for the Spartan self-image while being unreliable on Sparta's failings. Third, watch for the argument from silence: what Xenophon leaves out (the Cadmea's wrongfulness, the Theban revival) is itself evidence of his bias, and a strong answer says so.
Historians and the debate
The debate turns on how far the collapse of Spartan hegemony was the fault of Agesilaus and Spartan policy, rather than of structural weakness or Persian power. The ancient image, shaped by Xenophon, is broadly favourable to Agesilaus and Sparta, treating the king as the embodiment of Spartan virtue. Modern scholarship is far more critical. Paul Cartledge (Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta, 1987) presents Agesilaus as a factional, short-sighted leader whose personal vendetta against Thebes and aggressive imperialism accelerated Sparta's decline. Charles Hamilton (Sparta's Bitter Victories, 1979; Agesilaus and the Failure of Spartan Hegemony, 1991) reads the post-404 empire as mismanaged imperialism that Sparta lacked the manpower and institutions to sustain. Against a purely personal reading, structural historians stress oliganthropia - the long decline in the number of full Spartiate citizens - as the underlying disease that Agesilaus' policies aggravated rather than caused. Use them to build a judgement: the King's Peace and the Cadmea were choices, but choices made by a state already narrowing dangerously at the base.
Practice questions
Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.
foundation4 marksOutline how Sparta governed the Greek cities it controlled after its victory over Athens in 404 BC.Show worked solution →
A 4-mark "outline" wants several correct, developed features. Roughly one mark each.
1 mark: Sparta, which had fought the Peloponnesian War under the slogan of "freeing the Greeks", instead imposed direct control on the cities of the former Athenian empire.
1 mark: Lysander installed narrow boards of ten pro-Spartan oligarchs, the decarchies, to run many cities in Sparta's interest.
1 mark: Sparta stationed military governors, the harmosts, often with garrisons, to enforce loyalty - Athens itself was given the oligarchy of the Thirty (404-403 BC).
1 mark: Sparta levied tribute (phoros) from its dependencies - Diodorus reports a figure of about 1000 talents a year - so the "liberators" simply replaced Athenian empire with a Spartan one.
Marker's note: full marks require the harmosts AND decarchies AND tribute, plus the point that this contradicted Sparta's "freedom" propaganda; listing one control mechanism caps at 2 marks.
foundation4 marksOutline the campaigns of Agesilaus II in Asia Minor between 396 and 394 BC.Show worked solution →
1 mark: after Sparta had taken up the cause of the Asian Greek cities against the Persian satraps, Agesilaus II crossed to Asia Minor in 396 BC with the aim of a panhellenic-style war on Persia.
1 mark: he campaigned against the satrap Tissaphernes and then Pharnabazus, ravaging Persian territory in Phrygia and Lydia.
1 mark: in 395 BC he won a notable victory over Persian forces near Sardis, and spoke openly of driving deep into the King's empire.
1 mark: in 394 BC he was recalled to Greece to meet the coalition of the Corinthian War, cutting the Asian expedition short - he marched home overland through Thrace and Boeotia.
Marker's note: rewards the date range, the Sardis victory (395 BC) and the recall in 394 BC; a response that only says "he fought the Persians" caps at 2 marks.
foundation5 marksOutline how Persian money helped bring about the Corinthian War (395-387 BC).Show worked solution →
1 mark: Sparta's campaigns in Asia Minor (from 399 BC, climaxing with Agesilaus in 396-394 BC) alarmed the Persian King, who wanted the Spartans out of Asia.
1-2 marks: rather than fight Sparta directly, the satrap Pharnabazus sent an agent - Timocrates of Rhodes - to distribute Persian gold among Sparta's leading Greek rivals (c. 396/395 BC), reportedly to Thebes, Corinth, Argos and Athens.
1 mark: the money helped stiffen anti-Spartan feeling into an open coalition of Thebes, Athens, Corinth and Argos.
1 mark: war broke out in Greece in 395 BC (the fighting around Haliartus, where Lysander was killed), forcing Sparta to recall Agesilaus and abandon Asia.
Marker's note: rewards naming Persian gold / Timocrates AND the four coalition states AND the causal link to Agesilaus' recall, not just "Persia paid the Greeks".
core6 marksExplain the significance of the naval defeat at Cnidus (394 BC) for Spartan power.Show worked solution →
1 mark: sets the context - since 405 BC (Aegospotami) Sparta had held command of the sea, the basis of its control of the former Athenian allies.
2 marks: describes the event - in 394 BC a Persian-funded fleet, commanded by the veteran Athenian exile Conon alongside the satrap Pharnabazus, destroyed the Spartan fleet off Cnidus in Caria; the Spartan navarch Peisander was killed.
2 marks: explains the significance - the defeat broke Spartan sea power at a stroke, stripped away the naval basis of the harmost-and-tribute empire in the Aegean, and let Pharnabazus and Conon detach Sparta's island and coastal dependencies.
1 mark: notes the sequel - with Persian help Conon returned to rebuild the Long Walls of Athens (393 BC), reviving Athenian naval ambition and reversing a key outcome of 404 BC.
Marker's note: rewards the identification of Cnidus as the end of Spartan naval supremacy and the Conon/Long Walls sequel, not just "Sparta lost a sea battle".
core6 marksSource A: an ExamExplained reconstruction of the kind of terms preserved for the King's Peace (in the manner of the settlement reported by Xenophon): "King Artaxerxes thinks it just that the cities in Asia should belong to him, together with Clazomenae and Cyprus among the islands; and that the other Greek cities, both small and great, should be left autonomous. Whichever side will not accept this peace, on them I will make war, together with those who share my wishes, by land and by sea, with ships and with money."
Using Source A and your own knowledge, explain what the King's Peace reveals about Sparta's position in Greece by 386 BC.
Show worked solution →
1-2 marks: content - the settlement is issued as a royal command by Artaxerxes II, handing the Greek cities of Asia (and Clazomenae and Cyprus) back to Persia, and declaring the other Greek cities "autonomous", backed by the threat of Persian force "with ships and with money".
2 marks: own knowledge - Sparta, through Antalcidas, negotiated and then enforced this peace (387/386 BC); it accepted the surrender of the Asian Greeks it had claimed to protect in exchange for Persian backing and a free hand on the mainland, becoming the peace's guarantor (prostates).
1 mark: shows how Sparta used the "autonomy" clause as a weapon - to dissolve rival power blocs such as the Boeotian League and to force Corinth to break from Argos, isolating its enemies.
1 mark: evaluates the source - this is an owned reconstruction in the manner of Xenophon's report, Persian royal self-presentation, so it shows how the King wished to appear as arbiter, not a neutral record; Sparta's role as enforcer must be added from own knowledge.
Marker's note: top responses connect the autonomy clause to Sparta's manipulation of it AND note that Sparta "sold" the Asian Greeks for a free hand; pure paraphrase of the source caps at 2 marks.
core6 marksExplain why the seizure of the Theban Cadmea (382 BC) is regarded as an example of Spartan overreach.Show worked solution →
1 mark: context - after the King's Peace (387/386 BC) Sparta was the dominant power and self-appointed guardian of Greek "autonomy".
2 marks: the event - in 382 BC the Spartan commander Phoebidas, marching north against Olynthus, seized the Theban acropolis (the Cadmea) in peacetime by a coup, installed a garrison and a pro-Spartan oligarchy, and handed over the anti-Spartan leader Ismenias for execution.
1-2 marks: why it was overreach - the seizure flagrantly breached the very autonomy clause Sparta claimed to uphold; Agesilaus defended it by asking only whether it was "useful" to Sparta, exposing the hypocrisy of Spartan policy.
1 mark: the consequence - the occupation (382-379 BC) provoked the Theban backlash; exiles under Pelopidas liberated the city in 379 BC, setting Thebes on the road to Leuctra (371 BC) and the fall of Spartan hegemony.
Marker's note: rewards Phoebidas AND the breach of the autonomy clause AND the link to the Theban recovery of 379 BC; markers penalise treating it as an isolated incident rather than the trigger of Sparta's decline.
exam15 marksTo what extent was Sparta's hegemony between 404 and 382 BC undermined more by its own conduct than by Persian power?Show worked solution →
A strong response argues a clear "to what extent" judgement, using dated evidence and named sources, not a narrative.
- Thesis
- Persian gold repeatedly checked Sparta, but the deeper cause of Sparta's failure was its own conduct - the oppressive empire, the aggressive personal policy of Agesilaus, and the high-handed abuse of the King's Peace that finally alienated Thebes.
- Argument line 1: Spartan misgovernment bred the backlash
- After 404 BC the harmosts, decarchies and tribute (Diodorus reports about 1000 talents a year) turned the "liberators" into resented masters, generating exactly the coalition (Thebes, Athens, Corinth, Argos) that Persian gold then funded.
- Argument line 2: Persia was a real but reactive force
- Timocrates' gold (c. 396/395 BC) and the fleet that won Cnidus (394 BC) under Conon and Pharnabazus broke Spartan sea power - genuine external pressure. But Persia acted to expel Sparta from Asia, a war Agesilaus had chosen to provoke; Persian intervention responded to Spartan aggression.
- Argument line 3: the abuse of the peace was self-inflicted
- After 386 BC Sparta enforced "autonomy" selectively, dissolving the Boeotian League and, in 382 BC, seizing the Theban Cadmea in peacetime under Phoebidas. This was pure Spartan choice, and it directly provoked the recovery of Thebes (379 BC) and the march to Leuctra.
- Historiography
- Xenophon (Hellenica) admires Agesilaus and softens Spartan failings; modern historians such as Paul Cartledge (Agesilaos, 1987) and Charles Hamilton argue Agesilaus' personal, factional and aggressive policy accelerated Sparta's decline, compounded by oliganthropia (shrinking citizen numbers).
- Judgement
- Persian power delivered sharp blows, above all Cnidus, but it worked on wounds Sparta inflicted on itself; the hegemony was undone chiefly by Spartan misrule and overreach, with Persia the opportunistic accelerant.
Marker's note: Band 6 responses weigh both factors, cite dated evidence (Cnidus 394 BC, King's Peace 387/386 BC, Cadmea 382 BC) and at least one historian, and reach a weighted verdict rather than listing events.
exam25 marksESSAY. 'Agesilaus II was the architect of Sparta's ruin rather than the champion of its greatness.' Evaluate this statement with reference to the period 404-382 BC and to the range of ancient and modern interpretations.Show worked solution →
A Band 6 essay sustains a judgement on Agesilaus, uses dated evidence, and weaves ancient AND modern historiography. Plan plus a model paragraph.
- Thesis
- The statement is largely defensible: Agesilaus' aggressive, personal and factional leadership tied Sparta to imperial overreach and needless enmities, above all with Thebes, that hastened its fall - though the structural weakness of Sparta (oliganthropia) and Persian power were also at work.
- Argument line 1: the case for "greatness"
- Agesilaus (king c. 400-360 BC) led the bold Asian campaigns (396-394 BC), beat the Persians near Sardis (395 BC), won at Coronea (394 BC), and was, for Xenophon, the model Spartan king - pious, austere, obedient to the laws.
- Argument line 2: the case for "ruin"
- His Asian adventure provoked the Persian gold and the Corinthian War that cost Sparta the sea at Cnidus (394 BC); his backing of the King's Peace (387/386 BC) sold the Asian Greeks he had claimed to free; and his defence of the seizure of the Cadmea (382 BC) - asking only whether it was "useful" - epitomised the arrogance that drove Thebes to revolt in 379 BC and destroyed Sparta at Leuctra (371 BC).
- Argument line 3: the source problem
- Our fullest source, Xenophon (Hellenica, Agesilaus), was Agesilaus' friend and admirer; he flatters the king and is strikingly silent on inconvenient matters (the Cadmea's illegality, the rise of Thebes), so the "champion" image is partly a literary construction.
- Argument line 4: the historiography
- Paul Cartledge (Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta, 1987) presents Agesilaus as a factional and short-sighted leader whose feud with Thebes was ruinous; Charles Hamilton (Agesilaus and the Failure of Spartan Hegemony, 1991) sees mismanaged imperialism; against a purely personal reading, structural historians stress oliganthropia - the collapse of Spartiate numbers - as the underlying disease Agesilaus merely aggravated.
- Model paragraph (line 2)
- The clearest evidence for "ruin" is the trail of enmities Agesilaus left. Recalled from Asia in 394 BC to a war his own aggression had helped provoke, he presided over a Sparta that lost its fleet at Cnidus and then, at the King's Peace of 387/386 BC, abandoned the very Asian Greeks he had crossed to defend. Worst of all, when Phoebidas seized the Theban Cadmea in peacetime in 382 BC, Agesilaus shielded him, arguing only that the act was useful to Sparta. As Cartledge argues, this was not statesmanship but a personal vendetta dressed as policy, and it handed Thebes the grievance that produced Pelopidas' liberation of the city in 379 BC and the catastrophe of Leuctra. The king Xenophon painted as the guardian of Spartan virtue was, on the evidence of his own choices, the manager of its decline.
- Conclusion
- The statement stands, with qualification: Agesilaus' choices were the proximate architect of Sparta's ruin, but he built on structural weakness and worked against Persian power, so he is best judged the accelerant of a decline he did much, but not everything, to cause.
Marker's note: Band 6 answers weigh "greatness" against "ruin", expose Xenophon's partiality, name modern historians (Cartledge, Hamilton), cite dated evidence (Cnidus 394 BC, King's Peace 387/386 BC, Cadmea 382 BC, Leuctra 371 BC), and reach a sustained verdict.