diplomatic

Peace Conference of 371 and Exclusion of Thebes

Date

-371

Part of

diplomatic

In 371 BCE, a Greek peace conference faltered when Agesilaus refused to let Thebes sign ‘for Boeotia.’ Diplomacy hardened into insult; Theban hands dropped the pen and reached for spears. War followed the next month.

What Happened

After seasons of inconclusive campaigning, the Greek powers sought words again. The conference in 371 aimed to revive a common peace along the lines of the King’s Peace. Delegates from Sparta, Athens, Thebes, and allied states gathered—names on lists, pillars in mind, the azure paint of old letters still visible on temple stone [18].

Agesilaus came armed with a principle: no city would sign for others. To Thebes, that demand read as an attempt to deny the existence of the Boeotian League they had revived in 378. The Theban envoys—leaders who had kicked a garrison out of their acropolis three years before—insisted on signing ‘for Boeotia.’ Agesilaus said no. The moment cracked. Thebes found itself outside a peace that others proclaimed [18].

The room’s noises—the murmur of translators, the scrape of styluses, the formal proclamations—gave way to silence. A treaty had been within reach: Sparta still as enforcer, Persia tolerated as guarantor, Athens calculating its gains. But the clause, and Agesilaus’s reading of it, turned conferences into campaigns. The Theban delegation left without a protected status; within weeks, a Spartan army under King Cleombrotus marched north [18].

Places snap into alignment: Sparta as the source of the command; Thebes as the target; Boeotia as the ground to be tested; the passes from Phocis as the path. The legalism of 387/6, made visible in stone, had once again produced the opposite of harmony. The Thebans would answer a pen-stroke with a formation fifty shields deep [2][14].

Why This Matters

The conference’s failure isolated Thebes legally and armed Sparta with a thin pretext for intervention. It converted a diplomatic forum into the immediate cause of a campaign, demonstrating how treaty language could be used to deny a federation’s political reality while claiming to protect ‘autonomy’ [18].

This event fits autonomy as a weaponized principle. Agesilaus’s insistence that no city sign for others ensured that the only meaningful ‘autonomy’ belonged to the hegemon. Thebes’ refusal to accept that framing made war likely—indeed almost necessary for both sides’ credibility [12][18].

In the broader story, this is the last stop before Leuctra. Exclusion sharpened Theban purpose and gave Cleombrotus a mission. Theboeotian envoys returned from the conference not with parchment, but with resolve, setting in motion the march that would end a hegemony three decades old [18][14].