Some Greek cities of Anatolia had aided…

Around six thousand survivors make it to Trapezus, and take ship to …

…Chalcedon on the Bosporus.

Probably no other event in late Achaemenid history reveals more clearly to the Greeks the essential internal weakness of the Achaemenid Empire than the escape of so large a body of men from the very heart of the Great King's domain.

Sparta, as the victor in the twenty-seven year Peloponnesian War, has resumed leadership of all Greece.

Despite the fact that the growing internal weakness of their empire (and perhaps diplomatic constraints) prevents the Persians from exercising their full rights under the treaty with Sparta, the Spartans repudiate it and back Ionia in its conflict against the Persians.

Daily farming scenes from a Theban tomb, painted around 400, depict Egyptians breaking earth clods and sowing by hand, using oxen for plowing.

Egypt becomes independent of Persian rule concurrent with the Achaemenid civil war.

Sparta sends an army against the Persians in Asia Minor in 399 BCE.

Sparta's old helot problem recurs in 399 BCE with the attempted revolt of Cinadon.

This demonstrates Sparta's insecurity even in its local dominance in Laconia and Messenia, despite the glory of Sparta's victory over the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami, duly commemorated at Delphi, and the personal prestige of Lysander, who may even receive at this time some kind of cult at Samos (though perhaps only after his death in 395 BCE).

Moreover, Sparta's former Peloponnesian and extra-Peloponnesian allies are unhappy with what they see as alarming extensions of Spartan territorial interests.

Lysander, having failed in his efforts to make the Spartan kingship an elective monarchy, supports the Eurypontid Agesilaus in his claim to the disputed throne.

Succeeding his half-brother Agis II as Agesilaus II, one of the two Spartan kings in 399 BCE, he ignores Lysander once he is safely enthroned.

The Sophists begin their grammatical analysis of Greek around 400 or a little earlier.

Contrary philosopher-educator Socrates, about seventy in 399, is accused by the Athenian government of impiety and of corrupting the youth of the city by questioning tradition.

The example of undisciplined and restless ambition displayed by the charming, brilliant, but unscrupulous Alcibiades, who could not practice his master's virtues, strengthens the charge.

On trial for his life before an Athenian jury, Socrates (according to Plato's later Apology, whose title is from the Greek word for defense) declares himself thoroughly innocent of the charges against him, countering that his accusers are motivated by resentment caused by his deflation of their pretended wisdom.

His own wisdom, he says, consists of knowing that he is not wise, and his relentless questioning of people's assumptions is prompted by an inner voice, a “daimon,” which must be obeyed, regardless of the consequences.

Instead of being punished by the state, it should reward him for acting as its "gadfly."

The unexamined life, says Socrates, is not worth living. (Xenophon offers a different account of the defense in his Apology of Socrates.)

The government convicts Socrates and orders him to take his own life by poison.

Following the trial, his friends arrange for him to escape, but rather than do wrong to the city by flouting its laws he remains in prison and suffers the death penalty. (Plato's Phaedro records the philosopher's death scene.)

Socrates' famously shrewish wife, Xanthippe, dies about the same time.

Athenian soldier Xenophon, a follower of Socrates in his youth, had left Athens in 401 to join the mercenary army raised by Cyrus the Younger in his attempt to overthrow Artaxerxes.

Following Cyrus’ defeat and death at Cunaxa, the ten-thousand strong Greek contingent, led by Clearchus, had made a desperate retreat from Babylon through hostile territory to the Black Sea. (Xenophon survives to produce a lively firsthand account of the campaign in the Anabasis.)

Plato, whose parents were both from distinguished Athenian families-his stepfather, an associate of Pericles, had been an active participant in the political and cultural life of Periclean Athens-had apparently been destined for an aristocratic political career.

The excesses of Athenian political life seem to have led him to abandon these ambitions, however.

Socrates, who had been a close friend of Plato's family, had a profound influence on the young man (as his writings will later attest).

Following Socrates' ingestion of a lethal dose of hemlock, his twenty-nine-year-old pupil retires from active Athenian life to begin traveling around the Mediterranean.

Dionysius is a brutal military despot who, over the past eight years, has used loyal mercenaries to ruthlessly consolidate and expand his power in Sicily.

War, which includes large-scale munitions manufacture, is essential to his economy.

He has built a wall around Syracuse and fortified Epipolae.

The Greek citizens of Naxos, Catana, and Leontini have been removed from their cities; many of them have been enslaved and their homes given to Sicilian and Italian mercenaries.

He is now ready to lead his vast army against Carthage in an effort to roll back the Carthaginian power in Sicily and keep his Syracusan citizenry in line.

Dionysius sends an embassy to Carthage in 398 BCE to declare war unless they agree to give up all the Greek cities under their control.

Before the embassy returns from Carthage, Dionysius lets loose his mercenaries on Carthaginians living in Syracusan lands, putting them to the sword and plundering their property.

Then he sets out for Motya with his army, accompanied by two hundred warships and five hundred transports carrying supplies and war machines.