Timotheus’s next move, however, the installation of an Athenian cleruchy on Samos, was a capital error. An inscription published in 1995 shows that the Samian cleruchs were indeed resident and that the cleruchy featured a council of 250 members, exactly half the Athenian model or prototype. This was a large and serious influx of Athenian settlers. Timotheus’s action could be technically justified: Samos was not a member of the Athenian Confederacy, and Persia had violated the King’s Peace by installing its garrison; thus, the cleruchy could be seen as a military response to Persian provocation in an area not covered by the rules of the charter of 377. Nonetheless, its effect on Greek opinion was damaging, and the Thebans quickly tried to exploit it.
Some naval interest on the part of Thebes can perhaps already be inferred from its designs on Thessaly, with its good harbours. After 365, however, Theban rivalry with Athens became explicit; Thebes planned a fleet of 100 triremes, lured away Athenian allies such as Rhodes and Byzantium, and induced a revolt on Ceos. That scheme was no more successful in the long run than the Thessalian entanglement, except that the Athenian loss of Byzantium seems to have been permanent; that loss was a serious setback for the Athenian grain supply, given Byzantium’s geographically controlling position. Thebes’s Aegean synedrion may have been founded at this time; Byzantium was certainly a member of it in the 350s.
In Thessaly, Pelopidas was killed in 364 at Cynoscephalae. Although the immediate outcome of the battle was favourable for Thebes and although Thessaly was reorganized in a way that gave Thebes for the first time an absolute majority of votes on the Delphic Amphictyony, active Theban interference in Thessaly was over.
In the meantime the Arcadian federation in the Peloponnese had split in two; the Tegean party appealed for help to the Thebans (who in turn had for allies the Argives and Messenians), and the Mantineans to Athens and Sparta. The great Battle of Mantinea (also called “Second Mantinea” to distinguish it from the events of 418) was a technical victory for Thebes in the strictly military sense, but (as Xenophon noted) it was actually indecisive: Epaminondas’s death permanently crushed Theban hopes of leadership in Greece. The peace after the battle in effect recognized the independence of the Messenians, thus settling at the diplomatic level an issue that in reality had been settled for years. The death of Agesilaus in 360 marked the end of one era and the beginning of another, the age of Philip and Alexander. The rise of Macedon
In 359 two new strong rulers came to the throne, Artaxerxes III of Persia and Philip II of Macedon. The last decade of the long reign of Artaxerxes II had been blighted by revolts in the western half of his empire—at first sporadic, then concerted. Already in the late 370s Datames, the governor of Cappadocia, had established his independence. Then, by the middle of the decade, Ariobarzanes of Hellespontine Phrygia went into revolt, assisted by Timotheus of Athens and Agesilaus of Sparta. The last and greatest phase of the revolt was led by Orontes, described by the sources as satrap of Mysia. (Possibly an enclave in the Troy region of Anatolia, “Mysia” could, however, also be an error for “Armenia.” If so, the geographic spread of the insurrectionist satraps was still greater.) The other rebelling satraps were Mausolus of Caria (briefly) and Autophradates of Lydia. Some participation by local Greek cities in Anatolia is possible, though perhaps they merely followed the lead of their satrapal overlords; Athens and Sparta seem surreptitiously to have helped.
The aims of the revolt are a matter for speculation, but it looked serious for a long moment: a second and successful Cunaxa was a possibility. (One speculation sees the affair in dynastic terms: Orontes, who was well born, presented a greater danger to Artaxerxes than local men like Mausolus, whose ambitions were by definition limited. No one would follow a native Carian in an attempt on the kingship of Persia; it is significant that Mausolus returned to his allegiance so promptly.) At the date of Artaxerxes’ death in 359, the revolt was over, the traitors’ cause having been ruined by treachery among themselves. Despite setbacks, Artaxerxes II and the empire had weathered the Revolt of the Satraps.
The new king Artaxerxes III promptly ordered the satraps to dismiss their mercenary armies, thus preempting future trouble of the same sort. This was an early indication of the vigour with which he intended to rule and which was to regain Egypt for him.
In Macedon, Amyntas had eventually been succeeded by Perdiccas, the second of his sons by Eurydice. This happened in 365, after a turbulent five-year interval of two brief reigns, those of Alexander II and Ptolemy, and one intervention by a pretender, Pausanias. Perdiccas himself was killed in 359 in a catastrophic battle against the Illyrians, Macedon’s permanent enemies, and his younger brother Philip, the last of Amyntas’s sons by Eurydice, succeeded.
The achievements of Philip’s predecessors have naturally been overshadowed by his own, just as Philip’s were to be eclipsed by Alexander’s. To some extent the historical injustice is beyond redress, because the literary sources gave no systematic attention to Macedon until it was obvious that the activities of its kings were to be the determining factor in Greek history. That realization came later than 359, when Philip’s chances must have looked little better than those of his immediate predecessors; thus, there is not even proper information about Philip’s early consolidation of power.
Fortunately, Thucydides was specially interested in the north, for personal reasons, and he speaks with admiration of the way Archelaus had pulled Macedon together militarily in the last years of the 5th century. Regarding the culture, there is valuable evidence from Herodotus and from excavations, particularly those conducted in the 1970s and ’80s at Macedonian Verghina. The Macedonian kings of the 5th century were sufficiently Hellenized to compete in the Olympic Games (as Herodotus attests) and at the games for Argive Hera (as proved by a dedicated prize tripod found at Verghina). The poets Euripides and Agathon both moved to Macedon at the end of that century, and so evidently did first-rate Greek artists in the course of the next, judging from the paintings discovered in the Verghina tombs. In 1983 investigators discovered, again at Verghina, an inscription in extremely beautiful Greek lettering recording a dedication by Philip’s mother, “Eurydice daughter of Sirras,” which is further proof of the Hellenism of Macedon in this period.
Modern belief in the Greekness of the Macedonian language was strengthened by the publication in 1994 of an important curse tablet from Pella that appears provisionally to indicate that the Macedonian language was a form of northwest Greek. Macedonian religion looks Greek; there are local variations, but that is equally true of incontestably Greek places in, for instance, the Peloponnese. Many Macedonian personal names resemble Greek ones, and it has recently been suggested that such onomastic evidence indicates that the Macedonian settlers originally migrated from northern Thessalian Perrhaibia and the region around Mt. Olympus—as already suggested by a poem ascribed to the Archaic poet Hesiod.
Cultural Hellenization, however, was compatible with a social and military structure that was alien to Greek tradition, resembling instead the feudalism of later societies. (In some respects the contemporary society having most in common with Macedon was Achaemenid Persia.) The 4th-century Macedonian kings made grants of land in exchange for military service; this system is hinted at by literary sources and illustrated by inscriptions. Given the size and fertility of the areas controlled by the Macedonian kings, there was huge potential for military achievement, provided Macedon’s chronic enemies and invaders could be appeased or crushed.