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The siege of Mantinea in 385 saw the
Spartans take advantage of their dominant position in Greece after the end of
the Corinthian War
to attack one of their long standing local rivals and a half-hearted ally in
the recent war. Mantinea was located about fifty miles from Sparta. The city
had been formed by the merger of five villages, possibly as recently as the
previous century, and had joined the Peloponnesian League. During the Great
Peloponnesian War she had sided with Athens, and after the end of that war had
been forced back into Sparta's league. During the Corinthian War Mantinea had
remained on the Spartan side, but hadn't displayed any great enthusiasm. The
Spartans were never terribly keen on having Mantinea that close to their
borders, especially as the city was a democracy. The Spartans also objected to
the construction of brick city walls around Mantinea, but without success.
After the end of the Corinthian War the Spartans demanded that the Mantineans
should dismantle their walls, claiming that they had failed to fulfil their
duties as members of the Peloponnesian League.
The Mantineans refused to comply, and began to prepare for a siege. An attempt
to gain Athenian aid failed, after the Athenians claimed that intervening would
breach the terms of the recent King's Peace, although the Spartan attack was
itself probably a breach of the same treaty. The Spartan attack probably took
place fairly late in the year, as the Mantineans were well stocked with food
after a good harvest. The Spartans gathered a Peloponnesian League army, which
was said to have included a Theban contingent in which the future leaders
Pelopidas and
Epaminondas took part.
The invasion was led by the young King
Agesipolis I, after
his more experienced co-monarch
Agesilaus II refused
to take part on the grounds that the Mantineans had helped his father against
Messenia in 464. Agesipolis invaded Mantinean territory, and after the
obligatory destruction of the surrounding countryside attacked the city itself.
An attempt to storm the defences failed, and the Spartans then settled into a
regular siege. Agesipolis had his men dig a trench all around the city, using
half of his men to do the digging and the other half to guard the diggers. The
ditch was followed by a rampart, until Mantinea was totally blockaded. The good
harvest meant that the defenders were undaunted, and continued to defy the
Spartans. They also had some supporters in the Peloponnesian army, possibly
worried that they would soon share the same fate. These supporters smuggled
some supplies into the besieged city, until Agesipolis brought in guard dogs to
block off this last supply route. In order to speed up the siege, Agesipolis
ordered a stream that flowed through the city to be dammed downstream of
Mantinea. The resulting lake flooded the town and began to undermine the brick
defensive walls. Attempts to prop them up failed, and the Mantineans offered to
obey the Spartan demands and demolish the walls. With the walls already on the
verge of collapse Agesipolis now upped his demands, and insisted that the city
of Mantinea should be dissolved back into its original five villages.
One of the terms of the King's Peace had been a guarantee of the autonomy for
each Greek community, and the Spartans are said to have used this to justify
the separation. The Mantineans had no choice other than to accept these peace
terms. Agesipolis's exiled father, the former king Pausanias, arrived from his
exile at Tegea just in time to save the lives of the leading democrats, with
whom he had a family connection. Sixty leading Democrats went into exile, the
city walls were destroyed, and the citizens of the city returned to their
original villages.
Over the next few years they acted as loyal allies of Sparta, and provided
hoplites for the Peloponnesian League up to the battle of
Leuctra in 371.
This battle saw the beginning of the end of Spartan power, and in one of the
Theban invasions of the Peloponnese that followed the city of Mantinea was
restored. Some accounts of this campaign also include a major field battle, in
which Pelopidas and Epaminondas fought on one flank of the Peloponnesian army,
where they suffered a heavy defeat and were only saved from death by King
Agesipolis. The attack on Mantinea was one of a series of high handed Spartan
actions that alienated the rest of Greece. The most serious of these was the
seizure of power in Thebes in 382, carried out by a Spartan army on its way
north to fight at Olynthus. This soon triggered an anti-Spartan uprising in
Thebes, starting the Theban-Spartan War (379-371). That war ended with the
crushing Spartan defeat at Leuctra in 371, the battle that marked the start of
a dramatic collapse in Spartan power.
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Sparta at War, Scott M. Rusch. A study of the rise, dominance
and fall of Sparta, the most famous military power in the Classical Greek
world. Sparta dominated land warfare for two centuries, before suffering a
series of defeats that broke its power. The author examines the reasons for
that success, and for Sparta's failure to bounce back from defeat.
The Spartan Supremacy 412-371 BC, Mike Roberts and Bob Bennett. . Looks
at the short spell between the end of the Great Peloponnesian War and the
battle of Leuctra where Sparta's political power matched her military
reputation. The authors look at how Sparta proved to be politically unequal to
her new position, and how this period of supremacy ended with Sparta's military
reputation in tatters and her political power fatally wounded.
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