The Discourse Of The Relationship Between Thebes And Sparta In 4Th Century B.C.(to 362 B.C.)

In the second half of the 4th century BC, on the one hand, Sparta and Athens were being decline; on the other hand, Thebes rose up and struggle for hegemony with the other two polities.The rivalry between Sparta and Athens reached to climax between 371 and 362 BCE. Subsequently, the whole Greece was in crisis. Under this circumstance, the rising of Thebes filed the vaccum of Greek powers. Therefore, the relation between Sparta and Thebes is a significant part in ancient Greek history and a topic worth careful study. This thesis is based on the critical analysis of primary sources.1 will discuss three major problems in it.Introduction:First,I analyse the reason and purpose of choosing this topic.Meanwhile, I introduce the studying situation and value about this thesis.Charpter 1:In the first part, I will discuss the history background of Thebes’rising. Sparta controlled the hegemony of Greece after Pelopennesian war. However Sparta became more and more weaker due to Sparta’s enomours military expedition. At the same time, Athens was depressed under Sparta as a defated city-state in Peloponnesian war. Although Athens tried to recover her own hegemony by establishing the Second Athenian Maritime Confederacy, this confederacy’s strength was still could not compared to the past Athenian empire. For the Thebes’side, the Athenian exiles in Thebes overthrew the tyrant and established democratic regime, and Thebes also unified the Boeotia region. These three regimes (Sparta, Thebes and Athens) became the three major powers in Greece, and the rivalry between Sparta and Thebes dominated the later history.Charpter 2:In this part, the history between Spart and Thebes from 371 to 362 BC will be studied. The Leuctra battle in 371 BC had a far-reach effect on the history of Greece because it means that the struggle for hegemony culminated. There are two stages for the relation between Sparta and Athens. In the first stage, Thebes was in offensive status and Sparta in defensive. In the second stage, the two powers were both in defensive, so a balanced power structure formed, especially they made a peace treaty after the Mantineian war.Charpter 3:In the last part, I will argue about the influence of Sparta and Thebes’ rivalry. This rivalry, from the retrospective view from later Greece history development, caused a more severer situation for Greece. Besides, Greek economy was harmed seriously due to their rivalry, especially im Sparta and Athens. Another consequence is that no city-state could take responsibility for all states, and subsequently, the entire Greece was in dismay state. Under this circumstance, Macedon thrived and conquered the whole Greek proper.