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1

When Calleas was archon at Athens, the Romans elected as military tribunes with consular power four men, Lucius Papirius, Marcus Publius, Titus Cornelius, and Quintus Lucius. During their term of office, following the failure of the Lacedaemonians at Thebes, the Boeotians, uniting boldly, formed an alliance and gathered a considerable army, expecting that the Lacedaemonians would arrive in Boeotia in great strength. [2] The Athenians sent their most respected citizens as ambassadors to the cities which were subject to the Lacedaemonians, urging them to adhere to the common cause of liberty. For the Lacedaemonians, relying on the size of the force at their disposal, ruled their subject peoples inconsiderately and severely, and consequently many of those who belonged to the Spartan sphere of influence fell away to the Athenians. [3] The first to respond to the plea to secede were the peoples of Chios and Byzantium; they were followed by the peoples of Rhodes and Mytilene and certain others of the islanders; and as the movement steadily gathered force throughout Greece, many cities attached themselves to the Athenians.2 The democracy, elated by the loyalty of the cities, established a common council of all the allies and appointed representatives of each state. [4] It was agreed by common consent that, while the council should hold its sessions in Athens, every city great and small should be on an equal basis and enjoy but one vote, and that all should continue independent, accepting the Athenians as leaders. The Lacedaemonians, aware that the movement of their cities to secede could not be checked, nevertheless strove earnestly by means of diplomatic missions, friendly words and promises of benefits to win back the peoples who had become estranged. [5] Likewise they devoted themselves assiduously to their preparations for war, for they expected the Boeotian War to be a hard and tedious affair for them, since the Athenians and the rest of the Greeks who participated in the council were allied with the Thebans.

1 377/6 B.C.

2 This is the formation of the second Athenian maritime confederacy which aimed at the overthrow of Spartan supremacy in Greece. The accounts here and in Xen. Hell. 5.4.34-6.3, are the essential literary texts. Important inscriptional evidence exists, IG, 2（2）.43, also 40-42, 44, 45, 82, 95-101. The formation of the confederacy should probably be placed after Sphodrias' attempt to surprise the Peiraeus (see chap. 29.6 and Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 5.384).

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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