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1

When Hippodamas was archon at Athens, the Romans elected four military tribunes with consular power, Lucius Valerius, Lucius Manlius, Servius Sulpicius, and Lucretius. During their term of office Artaxerxes, King of the Persians, intending to make war on the Egyptians and being busily engaged in organizing a considerable mercenary army, decided to effect a settlement of the wars going on in Greece. For by this means he particularly hoped that the Greeks, once released from their domestic wars, would be more ready to accept mercenary service. Accordingly he sent ambassadors to Greece to urge the cities to enter into a general peace by agreement. [2] The Greeks welcomed his proposal because they wearied of the uninterrupted series of wars, and all agreed to make peace on the condition that all the cities should be independent and free from foreign garrisons. Accordingly the Greeks appointed agents who, going from city to city, proceeded to evacuate all the garrisons. [3] But the Thebans alone would not agree that the ratification of the peace should be made city by city,2 but insisted that all Boeotia should be listed as subject to the confederacy of the Thebans. When the Athenians opposed this in the most contentious manner, Callistratus, their popular leader, reciting their reasons, while, on behalf of the Thebans, Epameinondas delivered the address before the general assembly with marvellous effect, the result was that though the terms of the peace were harmoniously concluded for all the other Greek states, the Thebans alone were refused participation in them3 and, through the influence of Epameinondas, who by his own personal merits inspired his fellow citizens with patriotic spirit, they were emboldened to make a stand against the decision of all the rest. [4] For the Lacedaemonians and Athenians, who had constantly been rivals for the hegemony, now yielded one to the other, the one being judged worthy to rule on land, the other on the sea. They were consequently annoyed by the claims to leadership advanced by a third contender and sought to sever the Boeotian cities from the Theban confederation.4

1 375/4 B.C.

2 This peace seems to have been concluded though it did not last long. Ascribed by Beloch, Griechische Geschichte （2）, 3.1.156 to the year 375/4 (see also Judeich, "Athen und Theben," Rheinisches Museum 76 (1927), 181 and his ascription in note 2 of Cephisodotus' statue of Eirene to this occasion). Cp. Xen. Hell. 6.2.1; Isoc. 15.109 f., Isoc. 14.10; Nepos Timotheus 2; Philochorus in Didymus de Demosthene 7.64 ff.

3 Beloch (l.c. note 1) thinks that Diodorus has confused this peace with the peace concluded three years later before Leuctra from which Epameinondas withdrew. Judeich (op. cit. pp. 182-183) accepts Diodorus' account of this peace of 374 and believes that Epameinondas may well have addressed the league synhedrion at Athens, to which he thinks Diodorus refers. In any case Thebes remained in the Athenian confederacy, as is shown in Isoc. 14.21; Dem. 49.14, 21, 40 ff. If Diodorus means by synhedrion an assembly of the members of the second Athenian confederacy, as Judeich seems to think, and not a general peace conference, the question arises how it happens that Callistratus addresses the assembly in which Athens by the terms of the league has no voice. Possibly we are to interpret the κοινόν as a joint meeting of the league assembly and the Athenians. But Diodorus, chap. 28.3, uses the term κοινὸν συνέδριον of the common council of the league which seems to mean the council of the allies. Callistratus may have spoken in the Athenian assembly only, while Epameinondas addressed the allies in their council.

4 The ethnic league of the Boeotians was reorganized under Thebes in 394 B.C. but was under an eclipse from 387 to this time. In 371, the Theban envoys claim the right of Thebes (cp. chap. 50.4; Xen. Hell. 6.3.19) to sign for the rest of Boeotia as Sparta did for Laconia. Thebes, like Prussia in the German Bund, held the predominance by being able to command the majority of the votes.

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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    • Demosthenes, Against Timotheus, 14
    • Isocrates, Plataicus, 10
    • Isocrates, Plataicus, 21
    • Isocrates, Antidosis, 109
    • Xenophon, Hellenica, 6.2.1
    • Xenophon, Hellenica, 6.3.19
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