The Theban Prelude to Alexander’s Greatness

William J. Chriss, University of Texas

Abstract

The history of Greece during the early fourth century B.C.E. is often overlooked as a mere interlude between the end of the Peloponnesian War and the beginning of the Hellenistic era. It is as if Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian War and Macedon’s victory at the Battle of Chaironea almost seventy years later marked a single event: the fall of Athens and the rise of Alexander the Great. While movies and popular literature leave many casual students with the impression that Athens and Sparta comprised a uniformly bipolar classical Greece that was somehow “conquered” by Alexander the Great, this oversimplifies matters. Such editorial devices nicely streamline narratives aimed more at pageantry than precision, but they leave on the cutting room floor many stories every bit as fascinating and significant as Athens’ and Alexander’s own. One such story is that of the Theban hegemony over mainland Greece of 400 to 350 B.C.E. In many ways, this era was the indispensable precursor that foreshadowed the rise of Macedon and Alexander.