military

Outbreak of the Corinthian War

Date

-395

Part of

military

In 395 BCE, Thebes, Corinth, Argos, and Athens—funded by Persian gold—took up arms against Sparta on land and sea. Battles raged from the Isthmus to Asia Minor. The war turned Spartan hegemony from a triumph into a trial.

What Happened

Coalition politics returned with a snap. In 395 BCE, Thebes and Corinth, soon joined by Argos and a recovering Athens, formed a league to check Spartan dominance. Persian money, channeled through satraps like Pharnabazus, clinked in Greek purses; the Great King preferred to spend silver in Boeotia rather than blood in Asia [15].

The geography of the war stretched the Greek map tight. At the Isthmus of Corinth, Spartan and allied phalanxes squared off against a mixed coalition; in Boeotia, Theban cavalry scouted the roads toward Thespiae and Plataea; on the sea, Athenian seamanship paired with Persian-funded hulls. The creak of oarlocks at Cnidus foreshadowed disaster; the clash of shields at Nemea promised that Sparta could still win on land [1][15].

For Athens, the conflict was a second birth. The city rebuilt a fleet and trained cavalry. Dexileos, an Athenian horseman, fell in 394; his grave stele in the Kerameikos, carved in 394/3, shows a rider in mid-charge, cloak in flowing folds—a marble echo of the war’s cost [10][15]. For Thebes, the war was a school where officers like Pelopidas and Epaminondas learned to coordinate infantry and horse.

Agesilaus felt the pull from Ephesus to the Isthmus. He returned from Asia in 394, his ambitions deferred, to find a mainland fight that would last seven years. Sparta won the set-piece at Nemea in 394, but lost everything that floated at Cnidus that same year. The balance tilted: land prestige remained, naval reach collapsed [1][15].

The war’s second act would be diplomatic. By 387/6, after years of stalemate and exhaustion, the answer came not from hoplites but from a royal seal. The King’s Peace would give Persia formal control over Asia’s Greek cities and turn Sparta into the enforcer of ‘autonomy’ in the rest of Greece [2][19].

Why This Matters

The Corinthian War transformed Sparta’s position. It preserved the Spartan brand of invincible hoplites—Nemea proved that—but erased their naval arm at Cnidus, which had been crucial to sustaining garrisons and influence overseas. It forced Agesilaus home and confirmed that Persia could shape Greek outcomes with subsidies [1][15].

The conflict speaks to hegemony on Persian credit. By underwriting Sparta’s enemies, Artaxerxes II showed that the Great King could purchase Greek coalitions cheaper than fighting them. The eventual ‘peace’ would ratify this reality in stone, with Sparta empowered to enforce autonomy while conceding Asia to Persia [2][12][19].

Within the larger story, the war hardened Theban warriors, sharpened Athenian resolve, and exposed Spartan overreach. It also introduced men and methods—improved Theban cavalry, coordinated Boeotian defense—that would, in the 370s, mature into the tactical shock at Leuctra. The creak of oarlocks at Cnidus reverberated into the creak of treaty chisels in Greek temples [14][18].