Chapter 13 - Epaminondas and the new inscription from Cnidus

Summary

The appearance of a Theban fleet of a hundred triremes in the Aegean Sea in 364 BC has always been an anomaly in the history of the Theban ascendancy. From the liberation of the Cadmea in 379 to the battle of Mantinea in 362 the Thebans had consistently pursued a land strategy, first against the Spartans and later against the Athenians, who had come to the aid of the enemy. In 367/6 Pelopidas won the support of the King for a Common Peace, which, however, was never ratified. Yet a connection with Persia had been made. Moreover, this diplomatic failure did not retard work on the Theban fleet, nor did it entail a break between Persia and Thebes. The usual strategy of the Persians for dealing with the eastern Aegean was to finance a Greek fleet as an agent of their policy in the area. The King and his satraps had employed both Athenian and Spartan fleets during the Ionian War and had provided Conon with the means to defeat the Spartans at the battle of Cnidus in 394. Themselves lacking the huge resources necessary for naval warfare, the Thebans needed foreign funds with which to build a fleet, and the only realistic source for them was the King.

Diodorus is the principal, but not the only, source for these events. His testimony (15, 79, 1) is terse enough to be quoted in full:

The people immediately decreed to build a hundred triremes and dockyards to accommodate them, and to urge Rhodes, Chios, and Byzantium to assist their schemes (boēthēsai tais epibolais). Epaminondas himself, who had been dispatched with a force to these cities, so overwhelmed the Athenian general Laches, who had a considerable fleet and had been sent out to circumvent the Thebans, that he forced him to withdraw, and he made the cities Thebes' own (idias tas poleis tois Thēbaiois epoiēsen).