The Boeotian city of Thespiae is the…

Olynthos, a Greek city on the Khalkidhikí (Chalcidice) Peninsula and leader of the Chalcidian (or Chalcidic) League, has become the center of Greek resistance to the power of Athens and Sparta.

Meanwhile, the Spartans, after three years of fighting in order to block Athenian and Chalcidian aid to Thebes, had in 380 BCE starved Olynthus into surrender; in 379 they disband the league. (The Chalcidian cities in a few years, however, will again federate.)

The Theban government has for the past three and a half years been in the hands of the small dictatorship, backed by a Spartan garrison in the Cadmeia.

Many of the previous leaders, including Pelopidas, have been driven into exile.

Pelopidas, who had fled to Athens, has taken the lead in a conspiracy to liberate Thebes.

His friend Epaminondas has remained in private life, but when Pelopidas, returning secretly from Athens with his party, surprises and kills their chief political opponents in 379 and, by arousing the Theban people, frightens the Spartan garrison into surrender, Epaminondas is said to have been one of those who led the popular uprising in Thebes.

The Thebans, who defeat two Spartan relief forces, are helped by Athens, though at first unofficially.

Athens, whose foreign policy in the years 386-380 BCE has been cautious in the extreme, evidently feels it cannot risk Spartan reprisals for its help to Thebes without seeking moral and military support from other Greek states.

It now makes a series of alliances, with …

…Chios, …

…Byzantium, and Methymna on Lesbos, which prefigure the formation of the constitution-based Second Athenian Confederacy.

Thásos, which had again allied to Athens in 389 BCE, becomes a permanent member of the Second Athenian League.

Timotheus, the son of the celebrated general Conon, is elected strategos in 378 BCE and wins over the Acarnanians and Molossians as friends of Athens.

Argive loyalty to Corinth had soon wavered after the federal unification of 392, and, after Thebes revolts against Sparta in 379, democrats take power in Argos.

Pelopidas had been elected boeotarch, or chief magistrate, of Thebes in 379 BCE (and will be in subsequent years).

After Thebes allies defensively with the Athenians, the Boeotian league is reconstituted on an initially successful democratic basis: all Boeotians, whatever their property, are members of an assembly convened at Thebes; their vote decides all matters of policy.

The seven-man executive (one from each of the then seven districts, of which Thebes controls three) is directly responsible to the Assembly.

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