Dionysius had initially been victorious in his…

Agesilaus reduces Thebes to near starvation in two sieges in the years 378 and 377 BCE.

The charter of the new Athenian confederacy is issued at the beginning of 377.

Athens is right to suspect Spartan anger; an attempted raid on the Piraeus by the Spartan Sphodrias at this time, best seen as a response to the new mood in Athens, fails in its object, whatever exactly this is.

Once again, Sparta does not pursue the offender.

The “charter” document, which sets out the aims of the new confederacy, singles out Sparta as the enemy, while the main ally is Thebes.

Hostility toward Sparta, however, though it is certainly the motive shared by Athens and Thebes, does not adequately explain the participation of islanders such as …

…the Rhodians and …

…the Chians.

The main fear in these islands must be of encroachment by such Persian satraps as the energetic Hecatomnids of Caria.

The new Athenian navy defeats Sparta in the battle of Naxos in 376, a victory won under the command of the Athenian Chabrias.

Timotheus, another great Athenian commander, captures Corcyra, which forms a new alliance with Athens, and defeats the Spartans at sea off wins the battle of Alyzia (Acarnania).

Athens, which has begun to reorganize its public finances and to build ships, introduces a new system of levying taxes by taxation groups, Symmories.

To make sure there are no cash-flow difficulties, rich individuals are expected to produce money for the state from their own resources and then recoup it from their taxation group.

A large band of Triballi crosses the Haemus (Balkan) Range in 376 BCE and advances as far as Abdera.

Backed by Maroneia, a city esteemed for its wine production, they are preparing to besiege Abdera when Chabrias appears off the coast with the Athenian fleet and compels them to retire.

Dionysius is forced in 376 BCE to pay an indemnity of one thousand talents and to conclude a peace that gives Carthage control of western Sicily and sets the Syracusan boundary at the Halycus (Platani) River.

Further, Syracuse must now pay tribute to Carthage.

The Athenian successes produce new members for the confederacy, from which some states have cautiously stood aloof.

In Boeotia, which Sparta, under King Agesilaus and initially the other king, Cleombrotus I, has repeatedly invaded in the years after the liberation, there is in 375 a surprising land defeat of some Spartan contingents at the hands of the Theban “Sacred Band,” a crack professional force of three hundred infantrymen led by Pelopidas.

This, the battle of Tegyra (near Orchomenus) anticipates the more famous Spartan defeat at Leuctra four years later.

The very existence of a Sacred Band is militarily significant, indicating that others are now copying Spartan professionalism.