There is evidence here of the Spartan ethos in the response of the ephors and of the
women on the following day. The beaming faces express pride in sons of Sparta who
had done their duty as conceived in the battle songs of Tyrtaeus. The sullen and
dejected reflect the shame of surrender; ‘return with your shield or on it’, being the
proverbial parting farewell of Spartan mothers to their sons as they set out on any
campaign.
After Leuctra, the Spartans never recovered their dominant position in the affairs
of Greece. The defeat finally confined Sparta to the Peloponnese, which she found
increasingly difficult to control. Epaminondas now invaded the Peloponnese in 370
and freed the Messenian helots who were able to re-establish their city of Messene.
This resulted in a further loss of one of the main supports of the ruling elite who
depended on the helots for their food supply. The next great battle between the
Thebans under Epaminondas and the Spartans and their allies, including the
Athenians who opposed the attempts of their northern neighbours to increase their
power, took place at Mantinea in 362. The result was inconclusive, except that with
the death there of Epaminondas, the Thebans lost their charismatic general and
leader.
Athens meanwhile reverted to her old imperial ways, demanding contributions
to the league treasury, using the fleet for her own purposes and refusing the right of
secession, until in 357 a concerted revolt caused the collapse of the league after a
two-year conflict in 355.
Greece had now reverted to its essentially fragmented state; the individual city
states, perpetually at war with one another and competing for power, could devise
no kind of permanent alliance for their common good. They were therefore an easy
prey for the new Macedonian power developing to the north under the direction of
King Philip II.
The rise of Philip of Macedon
The kingdom of Macedon in the north east had not developed on the lines of the
Greek city-states. Its Greek royal house came from Argos but the Greeks regarded
the Macedonians as foreigners. Their ethnicity has been much debated by scholars,
though recently discovered inscriptions indicate that they spoke a form of Doric
Greek. The Spartans had retained kingship but the power of their monarchs was
circumscribed by its dual character and by the ephorate, the gerousiaand the
assembly. The Macedonian monarchy was much more obviously autocratic without
the balances and checks of other state institutions. The king had hetairoi,companions,
who might constitute his personal bodyguard but they functioned as court followers
with no formal power.
72 THE GREEKS