a note on the raid of sphodrias: the case for diodoros

A Note on the Raid of Sphodrias: The Case for DiodorosAuthor(s): Alexander MacDonaldSource: Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Bd. 21, H. 1 (1st Qtr., 1972), pp. 38-44Published by: Franz Steiner VerlagStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4435244 .

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A NOTE ON THE RAID OF SPHODRIAS

The Case for Diodoros

Our sources' for the attempt on the Piraeus by the Spartan general Spho- drias in 378 B. C. show sufficient variation - some of it irreconcilable - to require the modern historian to reconstruct the background of the event as well as he can. Modern interpretation has, however, gone too far in rejecting out of hand the authority of Diodoros on responsibility for the raid, and substituting for his testimony a reconstruction, which, while it coheres well with what must have been the official Spartan version, nevertheless is un- attested by any ancient authority. I shall show in this paper that the rather fulsome account of the raid, its background, and its aftermath given by Xenophon supports the assertion by Diodoros that King Kleombrotos of Sparta engineered the raid.

I

The attempt to seize the Piraeus led to an immediate crisis in relations between Sparta and Athens. When the Spartan ambassadors present at Athens gave assurance that Sphodrias had acted without authority and would surely be condemned, the Athenians adopted a wait-and-see attitude, but took no action against Sparta. Sphodrias was indeed charged with a capital offence, and the Athenians began to feel that their scrupulous adherence to the peace between Athens and Sparta would continue to be possible. Sphodrias, however, was acquitted, and even Xenophon, though partial to Sparta, called the acquittal ad6tKCOTadT. The acquittal renewed the crisis, and the outcome was an alliance between Athens and Thebes against Sparta; the formation of the Second Athenian Confederacy followed almost instantly, and, of course, a war.

Xenophon is at both his best and his worst in this episode: at his best because he brings to it his personal observations of Spartan politics and his own military experience; but he is also full of prejudice: his admiration for Age- silaos must be supposed to operate here as elsewhere in his writings; it is

I The raid itself is given by Xenophon, Hellenica V. iv. 20; Diodoros XV. 29. 5-6; Plutarch,

Pclop. 14 and Ages. 24-25, is derivative and adds nothing substantial. For the sake of convenien-

ce, further references to Hellenica V. iv will give only the Arabic numeral conventionally assigned

to the specific sentence. References to Xenophon other than V. iv will of course be complete.



A Note on the Raid of Sphodrias 39

clear that he simply invented the complicity of the Boiotians in the raid; and he sees the whole thing, both the raid and its consequences, as divine retri- bution for the seizure of the Kadmeia by Phoibidas in 387. The account is in some ways the low point of The Hellenica2.

Diodoros is, of course, anti-Spartan. Besides that, he gets the year of the raid wrong, and misspells the name of the principal actor. On the other hand, although his narrative is far shorter than Xenophon's, he does manage to inform us of the formation of the Second Athenian Confederacy, whereas if Xenophon were our only source for the period, we should have to invent the Confederacy3.

Neither historian, then, has great authority. Xenophon's judgement clearly is awry here; Diodoros' mastery of detail less than adequate. All we can hope for is a reconstruction that deviates as little as possible from the sum of the reports that came down to us through these refractory writers.

Modern historians have gone further than is necessary in rejecting Dio- doros4, preferring something like the official Spartan version5 that Spho- drias, without even the illegal orders of King Kleombrotos, acted on his own initiative. It must be said that modern opinion is not quite unanimous: Glotz granted a tentative peut-etre to Xenophon's hypothesis of Theban intrigue; Ed. Meyer and Beloch considered it hardly credible that Sphodrias acted without the complicity of the leading circles in Sparta. No one, however, has been willing to accept the simple and direct statement of Diodoros, that the raid was carried out on orders from King Kleombrotos. It is as though even the doubters agree with George Grote, that the testimony of Diodoros is "insufficient." If, however, the plausibility of Diodoros' statement can be established from the ancient testimony, then a prima facie case for his authority shall have been made3.

1: referring to the loss of Thebes, he says: ci? Oeoto o&Te Tr&v daEfotwTV OVTE -rn avdaia

-roto wrw auEAovart. 3 He seems to put the raid in 379, and has one ?o6ptaL as its leader. He mentions the Con-

federacy at XV. 28. 4, but puts it in the year 377 or 376, whereas IG ii2 43 (Tod 123, 1-5) has it in February or March of 377.

4 Marshall, The Second Athenian Confederacy, p. 12, has put it simply: "It is probable that neither the Thebans nor Cleombrotus were the instigators of the attempt. The example of Phoebi- das and his success were quite sufficient to induce a second Spartan commander to emulate his feat. Sphodrias knew that, if successful, his action certain to meet with official approval, and even failure, as the event showed, might not result in condemnation."

By the "official version" I mean something like what the ambassadors at Athens said when they were seized (23): ort oV6' n oAg rTopv Awaxe6aiuoviwV Taira avv6Et.

? Glotz, Histoire Grecque, v. 3, p. 116; Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Alleriums, V. 368 (Basel 1958); Beloch, Die Altische Politik, p. 139, and, using almost the same words, his Griecbiscbe Geschbiche, v. 3, part 1, p. 147 (2nd ed., 1922, or p. 235 of the first edition). George Grote, History of Greece (1888 ed.) v. 8, pp. 93-94 and notes; Grote here also refuted the hypothesis of Xenophon, that the Thebans engineered the raid.



40 ALEXANDER MACDONALD

II

The raid itself was well conceived: the Piraeus was exposed to assault by land7. This and the element of surprise made Athenian access to the sea - and, therefore, Athenian autonomy - vulnerable to a coup de main. As Xenophon put it (20): Kaxcdvor 7retOdO'Evo . .. , npoanotroaijevo~ r6v IEtpata KaTaq'1Epa-

Oat, 6Tt 67) dnv)tTOr 'V, YEV E1K TWV &eanwiiV izp4i 6Ecuvi7aavTag z4 OarTpaTrt-

Ta;, 9aarKwOv n7xpo ruypag KaOavvaEtv El; Tov Hctpaui.

The plan miscarried. At dawn, the army had gone no further than Thria (east of Eleusis), and during the night persons who had seen its passage had gone to warn the town. Having lost the element of surprise, Sphodrias re- sorted to pillage in the Thriasian plain, and then he withdrew.

The loss of secrecy is sufficient to explain the failure of the raid. What is harder to explain is Sphodrias' conduct once he realized that the raid was doomed to failure. Until he started pillaging, the invasion might have been dismissed as a regrettable border incident. Even afterwards, as subsequent events show, the Athenians could maintain a conciliatory attitude towards the violation of their territory. Xenophon, apart from the details he gives, nevertheless stresses the fact that Sphodrias made no effort to cover his tracks, either while marching in or marching out (21): oviie6v e'vrai0' ErzO6EV 6arTE AaOe!v.

All in all Sphodrias does not appear to have been a man who was trying to present his government with a fait accompli. Far from being the actions of an adventurer whose safety depended on success, these are the actions of a man who felt he had some sort of mandate, and had no more to fear from failure than would any general acting under orders.

It is clear from the fact that charges were brought against him, and from Xenophon's agreement with the charges, that he had no orders from the only authority entitled to issue them. We must also accept from Xenophon that Agesilaos became involved in the question only after charges had been brought8. Kleombrotos, then, remains as the only possible source for the plan to seize the Piraeus.

III

Events leading to the acquittal of Sphodrias are equally difficult to square with the modern version of the raid, but they make more sense if Kleombro- tos was in fact implicated.

Xenophon implies that both kings Kleombrotos and Agesilaos were the centers of factions and that Sphodrias belonged to the faction of Kleombro-

7 Foucart, BCH XI. 100-132, verifies Xenophon's statement. 6 Specifically, only after his son, Archidamos, pleaded with him to intervene. This charming

tale is told at length (giving the whole of V. iv a somewhat baroque quality as far as narrative is

concerned) from 25-33.




tos9. He also states that the faction of Kleombrotos was alarmed over the situation Sphodrias had created at home; the anxiety, he goes on, spread to people who belonged to neither faction. Sphodrias had, it seems, become a pariah - not surprisingly, but it is hard to see why his friends should frar their association with him unless there were some issue of guilt by association.That is, it appears that the faction of Agesilaos was willing to use the guilt of Sphodrias against Kleombrotos, and that the charge of complicity was convincing enough to deter even the neutrals at Sparta. That is sufficient to establish that the content of Diodoros' claim that Kleombrotos was culpable was not the invention of Diodoros, but was contemporary with the event.

How strong was the suspicion of complicity? Another detail given by Xenophon suggests it was very strong: he says that Etymokles was the man who spread the word that Agesilaos had finally relented, and that the pro- secution of Sphodrias was being dropped. Now, Etymokles was an experi- enced ambassador and a man whose own life had been put in danger by the raid. The choice of such a man as emissary to the faction of Kleombrotos illuminates the delicate nature of the rivalry between the two kings and shows, too, that the faction of Kleombrotos was not able simply to disassociate itself from the whole affair. This situation is conceivable only if Kleombrotos had reason to fear that he too could be implicated and that the condemnation of Sphodrias would show that he could not protect his own agents10.

Iv

How had Kleombrotos allowed himself to get into so untenable a position? The first answer is perhaps the most significant: Agesilaos maneuvered him into it.

When the Thebans had expelled the Spartans and their puppets, the reac- tion at Sparta was swift and violent. The Harmost who had abandoned the Acropolis without waiting for a relief force was condemned to death and a mobilization against Thebes was ordered. The command would normally have gone to Agesilaos, but he refused, alleging as a reason his age, but really, says Xenophon, because he was already too deeply involved in The- ban affairs (an allusion to the seizure of the Kadmeia by Phoibidas in 382). To protect his own standing Agesilaos thrust the command onto Kleom- brotos11.

9 25: ot #EV O3V TOV KAEopflp6Tov plAoL, TE eiTapoL o'vtaq TrO ZoWpiz, z'o21vz&V w3roi elXoa , t6v 6i yE 'AyqiAaov xai TOV; EXEiVOV qLAovq 6q'O0oVPTO, xai ToV5 bla gdaov 5c.

10 For Etymokles and his role in the affair, see 22 and 32; cf. VI. v. 33. Surely there was inten- tional humour in the remark of Agesilaos ending the affair: "Sparta needs such soldiers" (32).

'1 13.



42 ALEXANDER MACDONALD

We know nothing of the attitude of Kleombrotos in this situation: did he welcome the command? Was it an embarassment? Did he see that he was being maneuvered? We know only that it was his first command, and Xeno- phon stresses that it would have had to be carried out under difficult conditions'2.

In spite of his lack of experience, Kleombrotos showed himself to be a competent commander. There was no serious possibility of capturing The- bes, though that seems to have been his mission. Nor did he try. He spent sixteen days in Boiotia and carefully abstained from doing any damage to the territory because, says Xenophon, he did not want to diminish its value to Sparta when it would finally be returned to the Spartan orbit by a more adequate force that he intended to bring into the field in the spring13. Evi- dently, he judged that he could do no more than make a show of force.

That decision, however, caused some discontent among his troops. Xeno- phon says that they came to him to find out whether they were at war with Thebes or at peace14. His notion of what had to be done was evidently at variance with the common understanding of what he had been sent out to do.

If we consider the position he found himself in at the end of sixteen days in Boiotia, the assertion of Diodoros becomes credible: he held a command that could achieve nothing substantial; it had been thrust upon him by his adversary; his troops were muttering against him, and would no doubt mutter more when they returned home. Furthermore, the prospect of a decisive victory in the spring was far from certain. He had already lost some standing, his prospects of losing more were certainly more open than his prospects for recouping his loss.

It is at this moment that we must suppose he opted for the raid on the Piraeus. And it is here, if anywhere, that the precedent set by Phoibidas - usually used to explain the action of Sphodrias - becomes relevant: with the problem of taking the Kadmeia before him, it was natural that he should remember the coup de main by which it had been seized before. But that tactic was no longer possible. It could, however, be used against Athens. Was he mindful, too, of the rumours, also reported by Diodoros, that Agesilaos had been behind the raid of Phoibidas?

The temptation to try such a coup must have been great. If it succeeded, it would not only establish him as a leader to be reckoned with, but it would also humiliate Agesilaos. With Athens under the control of Sparta, or merely deprived of her access to the sea, Sparta would once again have that hege- mony in Greece that Lysander had won for her, and which she had let slip slowly from her grasp during the quarter century that Agesilaos had domina-

12 14: .saAa Xe,UYCUvor 5VTO';.

'" His conduct in Boiotia is described in 15 and 16. Cf. Paul Cloche, Tbhbes de Biotie, p. 120.

" 16.




ted her councils and led her armies. It was a daring scheme, but there was much to be gained.

V

To summarize, then, the arguments in favour of Diodoros: the conduct of the raid by Sphodrias suggests that he was in fact acting under orders; Xenophon's account of the acquittal of Sphodrias shows that the content of Diodoros' statement was contemporary with the event; and, finally, the political account of the acquittal, was such as to tempt him powerfully into taking some serious risks.

There are two possible objections to the present interpretation. One is that the risk to Sphodrias was evidently greater than Kleombrotos (and no doubt Sphodrias himself) realized. Why were they so indifferent to the personal consequences of failure? The other is that they seem not to have considered the consequences of failure for Sparta's relations with her neighbours.

The answer to the first objection is that the standing of Kleombrotos among his countrymen may well have been higher at the moment he left Boiotia than it was when arrived back in Sparta. His returning army was very nearly lost in a severe storm that overtook him in the Megarid. Although we hear of no casualties, Xenophon does say that the baggage train was lost, that a large quantity of arms was also lost, that the army was dispersed, and that some considered the event to be a presage of disaster"5. The last point is important, for it can only mean that some odium attached to him personally as a result of the misfortune. In considering that point, we must also consider the point made above, that Kleombrotos was already unpopular with at least some of his troops over his conduct of the campaign in Boiotia. The impression created by his army returning in dribs and drabs can only have heightened the negative impression the campaign had created. Yet if the accident might have made a thoughtful man more hesitant about carrying out the raid on the Piraeus, it is equally possible that Kleombrotos, young and ambitious, would find in it only a more impelling imperative.

As for the second objection, Sparta had been as cavalier in honoring the king's Peace as Athens had been scrupulous. The seizure of the Kad- meia is only the most flagrant instance of Sparta's way of guaranteeing the autonomy of the Greeks, just as the condemnation by Athens of her generals who tried to aid the counter-coup at Thebes is a flagrant instance of Athenian determination to remain within the terms of the treaty and give no provocation. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the rivalry between Agesilaos and Kleombrotos hinged on differences about foreign

" 17-18.



44 ALEXANDER MACDONALD, A Note on the Raid of Sphodrias

policy18. On the contrary, Kleombrotos was certainly as willing as Agesilaos to see that Thebes, for example, remained within the Spartan orbit, the King's Peace notwithstanding. There is no reason, then, to suppose that failure would lead to a charge of recklessness. No one seems to have cared much about that. To be feared was a charge of usurpation, and the precedent set in the case of Phoibidas, as all commentators are agreed, suggested that that charge could be met. The acquittal of Sphodrias confirmed the precedent.

The University of Ghana, Legon Alexander MacDonald

1I This is not to say that such differences did not at times play a part in their continuing rivalry; only that there is no reason to suppose they had yet arisen.



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