'Greco-Persian', current in the southern states of Asia Minor in the later fifth and fourth centuries B.C., and serving Persian or Persian-
dominated courts. The style and spirit of the subject matter, however, owe much to Greek art.
The 'autonomy' provision of the King's Peace was greatly to Sparta's advantage, for she could use it as a pretext to dismantle those of her
enemies whose organization could be held to be a violation of internal 'autonomy': thus Mantinea, in Arcadia, a unified and democratic polis
since Themistocles' day, was broken up into its constituent villages. It is doubtful, however, whether Sparta relied on legal technicalities about
autonomy to intervene in Mantinea; the fact was that her prestige as a result of the King's Peace, of which she was appointed by Persia to be in
some sense the guarantor, gave her the power to do what she liked. This was especially true since two of her main enemies, Thebes and
Athens, were caught by the 'autonomy' clause: Thebes had to renounce her position of dominance over the Boeotian League, and Athens had
to abandon for the moment her hopes of a revival of her old empire. There is no doubt that those hopes had revived, very soon after 404: an
Athenian orator in 392 refers to the desire to recover the overseas possessions which Athens had lost by the war, and in the period after the
battle of Cnidus Athens had revived the old 10-per-cent tax at the Hellespont. This hankering after empire on fifth-century lines, and
especially the desire to recover another northern possession, Amphipolis, determined the course of Athenian foreign policy down to the age of
Philip.
The King's Peace left Sparta free, not merely to coerce immediate neighbours such as Mantinea, but to go north again: in 383 she attacked
Olynthus, in the Chalcidice. But en route for the north the Spartan commander Phoebidas was invited into Thebes by a pro-Spartan faction,
and seized the Theban citadel, the Cadmeia. This blatant aggression was viewed by the pious Xenophon, for all his Spartan sympathies, as a
piece of divinely sent madness, and certainly it created a mood of violent antipathy to Sparta in the Greek world at large, so that when some
Theban exiles liberated their city in 379 they were able to call in help from Athens. Capitalizing on the anti-Spartan atmosphere, and perhaps
fearful of Spartan reprisals for their part in the recent events at Thebes, the Athenians now (378) gathered together an alliance, the second
Athenian Naval Confederacy, with Thebes as the most noteworthy ally. As we have already remarked, the new alliance was careful to abjure
the most hated of the fifth-century imperial practices (tribute, garrisons, cleruchies); even so there was no immediate rush to join. Only when
the new confederacy showed its effectiveness in practice by a naval defeat of Sparta off Naxos in the Aegean (376) did adherents flock in.
Athens' new position was recognized in a renewal of the King's Peace in 375. The Athenian eagle had taken wing again, though it was
altogether a less plump and formidable bird. Despite the promises of 377 (above, p. 133), the energetic naval campaigning of the decade had
to be paid for, and by 373 we hear for the first time of financial 'contributions' - the old fifth-century tribute under another name. And in the
same year there is evidence of the first Athenian garrison, on the island of Cephallenia off the west of Greece.
The Attic Fort At Phyle On Mount Parnes. It was built in the early fourth century B.C. and guards the most direct route from Athens to Thebes.