| Battle of Haliartus | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Corinthian War | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Sparta | Thebes | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Lysander † | |||||||
  Haliartus Location of the Battle of Haliartus | |||||||
The Battle of Haliartus was fought in 395 BC between Sparta and Thebes. The Thebans defeated a Spartan force attempting to seize the town of Haliartus, killing the Spartan leader Lysander. The battle marked the start of the Corinthian War, which continued until 387 BC.
In 396 or 395 BC, an ambassador from the Persian satrap Pharnabazus, Timocrates of Rhodes, arrived in Greece. There, he promised Persian funding and support to leading states of Greece if they would declare war on Sparta. Since Sparta's aggressive and unilateral actions had angered many of its allies, the prospect of Persian support was enough to induce a number of states, and in particular Thebes, to make war on Sparta.[ citation needed ]
Rather than undertake offensive operations immediately, the Thebans chose to precipitate a war indirectly. Accordingly, they persuaded the Locrians to raid Phocis, a Spartan ally. Thebes, as an ally of Locris, was obligated to assist in the conflict thus begun; Phocis, meanwhile, appealed to its ally, Sparta. The Spartans, seeing a chance to chasten the increasingly restive Thebans, chose to launch a major campaign against Thebes. Meanwhile, the Thebans sent emissaries to Athens requesting aid; a perpetual alliance was concluded between the Athenians and the Boeotians. [1]
The Spartan strategy for the campaign called for two armies, one under king Pausanias of the Agiad dynasty, composed of Spartan troops and Peloponnesian allies, and one under general Lysander composed of Phocians and other allies from northwest Greece, to meet at the town of Haliartus for a coordinated attack. [2] Pausanias, however, delayed for several days in the Peloponnese, and Lysander arrived at Haliartus with his force while Pausanias was still several days away.[ citation needed ]
Unwilling to wait for Pausanias to arrive, Lysander marched his army up to the walls of Haliartus. When an attempt to take the city by subversion failed, he launched an assault on the walls. A sizable Theban force, however, was located nearby, perhaps unbeknownst to Lysander. This force hurried to the assistance of the city's defenders. In heated fighting under the walls of Haliartus, Lysander's force was routed and he himself was killed. The Thebans, however, pursued the defeated troops too far, and as they entered rough and steep terrain, the fleeing soldiers turned and drove the Thebans back with heavy losses. This reversal briefly disheartened the Thebans, but the following day Lysander's army disbanded, with each contingent returning to its home country. [3]
Several days after the battle, Pausanias reached Haliartus with his army. Wishing to recover the bodies of Lysander and the others killed in the battle, he asked for a truce, which the Thebans agreed to grant only on the condition that he depart from Boeotia. Pausanias agreed to this condition, collected the bodies of the dead, and returned to Sparta. Upon his return, Lysander's faction brought him to trial for arriving late and failing to attack when he did arrive, and Pausanias, recognizing that he would be convicted and executed, went into exile. [4] Pausanias's exile, along with the death of Lysander, removed from the scene two of the three major actors on the Spartan political scene, leaving only Agesilaus, who would dictate Spartan policy for years to come.[ citation needed ]
The battle of Haliartus launched the Corinthian War, which stretched from 395 to 387 BC. Fighting resumed in the next year when Thebes and Athens, now supported by Corinth and Argos, fought against Spartan armies at Nemea and Coronea, and continued in the Aegean Sea and around the Isthmus of Corinth until the end of the war. This war produced little of lasting value for any state except Persia, which had instigated it; by raising trouble in Greece, the Persians were able to force Agesilaus to withdraw with his army from Ionia, and by the end of the war were in a position to dictate the terms of the peace.[ citation needed ]
Agesilaus II was king of Sparta from c. 400 to c. 360 BC. Generally considered the most important king in the history of Sparta, Agesilaus was the main actor during the period of Spartan hegemony that followed the Peloponnesian War. Although brave in combat, Agesilaus lacked the diplomatic skills to preserve Sparta's position, especially against the rising power of Thebes, which reduced Sparta to a secondary power after its victory at Leuctra in 371 BC.
This article concerns the period 399 BC – 390 BC.
Lysander was a Spartan military and political leader. He destroyed the Athenian fleet at the Battle of Aegospotami in 405 BC, forcing Athens to capitulate and bringing the Peloponnesian War to an end. He then played a key role in Sparta's domination of Greece for the next decade until his death at the Battle of Haliartus.
Year 395 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Tribunate of Cossus, Medullinus, Scipio, Fidenas, Ambustus and Lactucinus. The denomination 395 BC for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Epaminondas was a Greek general and statesman of the 4th century BC who transformed the Ancient Greek city-state of Thebes, leading it out of Spartan subjugation into a pre-eminent position in Greek politics called the Theban Hegemony. In the process, he broke Spartan military power with his victory at Leuctra and liberated the Messenian helots, a group of Peloponnesian Greeks who had been enslaved under Spartan rule for some 230 years following their defeat in the Third Messenian War ending in 600 BC. Epaminondas reshaped the political map of Greece, fragmented old alliances, created new ones, and supervised the construction of entire cities. He was also militarily influential and invented and implemented several important battlefield tactics.
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The polis of Sparta was the greatest military land power of classical Greek antiquity. During the Classical period, Sparta governed, dominated or influenced the entire Peloponnese. Additionally, the defeat of the Athenians and the Delian League in the Peloponnesian War in 431–404 BC resulted in a short-lived Spartan dominance of the southern Greek world from 404 to 371 BC. Due to their mistrust of others, Spartans discouraged the creation of records about their internal affairs. The only histories of Sparta are from the writings of Xenophon, Thucydides, Herodotus and Plutarch, none of whom were Spartans. Plutarch was writing several centuries after the period of Spartan hegemony had ceased. This creates difficulties in understanding the Spartan political system, which was distinctly different from any other Greek polis.
The Corinthian War was a conflict in ancient Greece which pitted Sparta against a coalition of city-states comprising Thebes, Athens, Corinth and Argos, backed by the Achaemenid Empire. The war was caused by dissatisfaction with Spartan imperialism in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War, both from Athens, the defeated side in that conflict, and from Sparta's former allies, Corinth and Thebes, who had not been properly rewarded. Taking advantage of the fact that the Spartan king Agesilaus II was away campaigning in Asia against the Achaemenid Empire, Thebes, Athens, Corinth and Argos forged an alliance in 395 BC with the goal of ending Spartan hegemony over Greece; the allies' war council was located in Corinth, which gave its name to the war. By the end of the conflict, the allies had failed to end Spartan hegemony over Greece, although Sparta was durably weakened by the war.
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Thespiae was an ancient Greek city (polis) in Boeotia. It stood on level ground commanded by the low range of hills which run eastward from the foot of Mount Helicon to Thebes, near modern Thespies.
Agesipolis I was the twenty-first of the kings of the Agiad dynasty in ancient Sparta.
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The Battle of Nemea, also known in ancient Athens as the Battle of Corinth, was a battle in the Corinthian War, between Sparta and the coalition of Argos, Athens, Corinth, and Thebes. The battle was fought in Corinthian territory, at the dry bed of the Nemea River. The battle was a decisive Spartan victory, which, coupled with the Battle of Coronea later in the same year, gave Sparta the advantage in the early fighting on the Greek mainland.
Timocrates of Rhodes was a Rhodian Greek sent by the Persian satrap Pharnabazus in 396 or 395 BC to distribute money to Greek city states and foment opposition to Sparta. He visited Athens, Thebes, Corinth, and Argos. His encouragement prompted Thebes to provoke Sparta into war, beginning the Corinthian War, which dragged on from 395 to 387 BC.
The Arcadian League was a league of city-states in ancient Greece. It combined the various cities of Arcadia, in the Peloponnese, into a single state. The league was founded in 370 BC, taking advantage of the decreased power of Sparta, which had previously dominated and controlled Arcadia. Mantinea, a city that had suffered under Spartan dominance, was particularly prominent in pushing for its founding. The league was responsible for the foundation of Megalopolis.
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