Corinthian War (395–387 BC)

In 404 BC after Peloponnesian War, Sparta emerged victorious, claiming Athens' title of hegemon. Sparta's domineering attitude soured its relations with its allies, and in 399 BC the Spartan–Persian alliance collapsed.

King Agesilaus and Lysander (the admiral who had been responsible for Athens' defeat) started Sparta's reign as hegemon with lots of support from the other Greek city-states.

However, Sparta claimed all of the plunder from the Peloponnesian War and it had totally disregarded the wishes and interests of her allies. Sparta had pursued a policy of aggressive expansion in the Peloponnese, central and northern Greece and the Aegean which had at times seemed directed specifically against them.

The name called Corinthian War (395–386) because much of it took place on Corinthian territory, was fought against Sparta by a coalition of Athens (with help from Persia), Boeotia, Corinth, and Argos.

In 394 BC Athenians, Thebans, Corinthians and Argives assemble near Corinth. The Spartans generally demonstrated the superiority of their heavy infantry in pitched battles such as that at Nemea, though in 390BC light peltasts under the Athenian Iphicrates defeated a Spartan hoplite unit in a running battle at Lechaeum. This prevent Spartans from entering central Greece through the isthmus;

Sparta eventually won the war, but only after the Persians had switched support from Athens to Sparta.

With its powerful ally as guarantor, Sparta was able to dictate the terms of the so‐called King's Peace in 386 BC.
Corinthian War (395–387 BC)

Winifred Lamb: Aegean Prehistorian and Museum Curator

Cover image: British School at Athens

My biography of Winifred Lamb is due to be published in September 2018. The study covers her time as a student at the British School at Athens (as well as her preliminary visit to the Mycenae excavations before she was admitted), and her excavations at Mycenae, Sparta, in Macedonia, on Lesbos and on Chios. Her active fieldwork in the Aegean continued into the 1930s when she shifted her interests to Anatolia (through the excavation at Kusura).

Lamb was simultaneously the honorary keeper of Greek Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, where she created a prehistoric gallery displaying finds from British excavations on Crete and on Melos.

Corinthian War

Name given by modern historians to the conflict of 395-387 BC fought between Sparta with allies and an alliance of Corinth, Athens, Boeotia, Argos, Euboea and the kingdom of Persia. It was so named because much of the war occurred in Corinthian territory.

The grand alliance was remarkable for combining traditional enemies in a united campaign against Spartan supremacy.

The background of the Corinthian War is Sparta’s victory over Athens on the huge Peloponnesian War (404 BC), and established herself as hegemon of the Greek world and marked the beginning of Sparta’s oppressive rule over all the Greek states, former friend and foe alike.

Corinth and Thebes rejected hegemony and openly refused to participate in Peloponnesian League activities. In 395 Thebes maneuvered Locris into conflict with Phocis, which was still an Ally of Sparta. The Spartan response, triggered what became the Corinthian War. Thebes, Corinth and Locris were joined by Athens, Argos and cities in Euboea and Thessaly against Sparta.

Sparta eventually won the war, but only after the Persian had switched support from Athens to Sparta. In fact, the winning side was the old combination that had proved victorious in the Peloponnesian War.

The treaty called King’s Peace which was signed in 387 BC, ending the Corinthian War.

The Corinthian War resulted in the appearance of several new features in relations between the Greeks and Persian, including , diplomacy by conference in the form of peace negotiation at Sardis and Sparta of 393-392 BC.
Corinthian War

Peloponnesian War

The history of the Peloponnesian War is an account of the Peloponnesian War in Ancient Greece, fought between the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta an d the Athenian league (led by Athens).

In the second half of the 5th century BC the two leading powers in Greece were Athens, which was democratic and innovative and whose navy built up an empire in the Aegean Sea and Sparta, which was oligarchic and conservative and whose army of heavy infantry enabled it to dominate the southern part of the Greek mainland.

It was fought between 431 and 404 BC, Athens foresaw the war, and knew they could not defeat the Spartan Army in a straight up battle.

So they constructed a walled corridor between Athens and their port of Piraeus. When the Spartans invaded, the Athenians withdrew behind their walls and the Spartans could not successfully storm the long walls.

War came on a winter in early March 431. Some three hundred men from Thebes, a city allied with Sparta’s Peloponnesian League, made a treacherous attack upon neighboring community of Plataia an ally of Athens.

The Thebans were natural enemies of the Plataians,since they had long been striving to bring all the Beotian towns under their direct overlordship.

This neighborly clash quickly touched off hostilities all around Greece, and soon a Spartan was marching on Athens, while Athenian fleets were sailing and raiding around the Peloponnesos.

At the same time that Athens was under attack from Sparta, the city state also suffered a terrible plaque, beginning in 430s BC.

The plaque killed about a third of Athens’s citizens, This contributed to Athens’s eventually defeat at the hands of its Spartan rivals during the Peloponnesian War.

The conflict marked the end of Athenian command of the sea. The war between the two city-states ended in a victory for Sparta.

Peloponnesian War

Piet de Jong: Architect and Archaeological Illustrator

Piet de Jong (1887-1967) is described in this new collection of his work as “one of the great archaeological illustrators of the 20th century” (Papadopoulos 2007: xix). Although the focus is on the American work in the Athenian agora, de Jong started his association with the British School at Athens on Alan J.B. Wace's excavations at Mycenae. He then worked with Sir Arthur Evans on Crete, Arthur M. Woodward at Sparta, and Humfry G.G. Payne at Perachora (see the caricatures in Hood 1998). De Jong also designed extensions to the BSA Hostel and Library.

• Review in Bryn Mawr Classical Review (David W.J. Gill)
• Greek edition
  

Reference
Hood, R. 1998. Faces of archaeology in Greece: caricatures by Piet de Jong. Oxford: Leopard's Head Press. [Worldcat]
Papadopoulos, J. K. Editor. 2007. The art of antiquity: Piet de Jong and the Athenian Agora. Princeton, NJ: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. [Worldcat]

Sparta: a visit in 1914

In the spring of 1914 Agnes Ethel Conway (1885-1950) and Evelyn Radford (1887-1969) visited Sparta as part of a wider tour of the Peloponnese. Both had studied at Newnham College, Cambridge.

We found the remains of a barely recognizable theatre almost hidden in cornfields, and a bit of a Roman wall. As for the excavations of the precinct of Artemis Orthia, which have yielded the British archæologists objects of great importance in an unbroken succession from the tenth century B.C. downward, we could scarcely believe that the rubbishy foundation walls had not been built the other day by peasants. Had we come upon such things ourselves, we should have shamefacedly covered them up again and said nothing about them! A shepherd’s hut on the edge of the enclosure was infinitely better built.

The excavations had been completed under Richard Dawkins.

BSA and Museum Catalogues

John L. Myres held to prepare a Catalogue of the Cyprus Museum (1899) that presented some of the work of the Cyprus Exploration Fund directed by Ernest Gardner. He subsequently researched the catalogue of the Cesnola Collection in New York.

As part of Bosanquet's work in Laconia, M.N. Tod and A.J.B. Wace prepared A Catalogue of the Sparta Museum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906). This led to invitation for the BSA to be involved with the production of a catalogue for the Acropolis Museum. One of the key researchers was Guy Dickins (who was killed during the First World War): Stanley Casson had to prepare the second volume for publication in 1921. Dorothy Lamb worked on the terracottas.

References
Ohnefalsch-Richter, M. H., and J. L. Myres. 1899. A Catalogue of the Cyprus Museum: with a Chronicle of Excavations Undertaken since the British Occupation, and Introductory Notes on Cypriote Archaeology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Tod, M. N., and A. J. B. Wace. 1906. A Catalogue of the Sparta Museum. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Myres, J. L. 1914. Handbook of the Cesnola Collection of Antiquities from Cyprus. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Dickins, G. 1912. Catalogue of the Acropolis Museum I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Casson, S. (ed.) 1921. Catalogue of the Acropolis Museum II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.