Dionysius sends colonists to Illyria and possibly…

Dionysius has become the chief power in Greek Italy by the time Rhegium falls to Syracuse in 386.

A Parian colony is sent to …

…the island of Pharos (Hvar, Croatia) in 385 BCE.

Sparta, applying the old criterion of “what is best for Sparta,” breaks up the Mantineian polis into its four constituent villages in 385 BCE in a move intended to dismantle the physical polis of Mantineia as well as its democracy.

In the particular Mantineian context, the return to the villages strengthens the political influence of the wealthy and oligarchic landowners, whose estates adjoin the villages.

The “troublesome demagogues,” as Xenophon calls them, are expelled.

Pelopidas, a young citizen-soldier of Thebes, serves in a Theban contingent sent to support the Spartans at Mantineia, where he is seriously wounded but is saved, as legend has it, by his friend Epaminondas, the son of a Theban aristocrat.

Olynthus, a Greek city on the Khalkidhikí (Chalcidice) Peninsula has become, as the leader of the Chalcidian (or Chalcidic) League, the center of Greek resistance to the power of Athens and Sparta by the fourth century BCE.

Founded by Olynthus as a league with complete equality and identical citizenship, commerce, and marriage laws among the member states, it includes almost all the cities on the Macedonian coast by 382 BCE, by which time the league's power has aroused the hostility of Sparta.

Grown populous and powerful since its synoecism in 432 at the instance of Perdiccas II of Macedon, the city has survived the military reorganization of Macedon by …

…Perdiccas' successor Archelaus (413 BCE-399 BCE).

Another Macedonian king, Amyntas III, who in about 393 BCE had succeeded to the Macedonian throne after a series of short, weak reigns, now joins two Greek cities, …

…Acanthus and …

…Apollonia, which are resisting forcible incorporation, in an appeal to Sparta against Olynthus.

Sparta responds to the invitation, surely welcome in view of its previous involvement in northern and central Greek, to interfere against the rising power of Olynthus.

The Spartans send Phoebidas north, but in a momentous development, …

…the general is invited into Thebes en route by a small pro-Spartan faction here.

Without reference (naturally) to the authorities at home, Phoebidas aids them in a sudden coup and installs a garrison on the Cadmeia, the Theban acropolis, in 382.