Mediterranean Hegemon of Ancient Greece

This wave even spread to Argos. In fact, the Spartans never controlled Argos’ city-state, but due to its strength, a group of pro-Spartan parliamentarians gradually emerged in Argos’s political arena. Nowadays these wealthy parliamentarians are mostly killed with sticks by angry civilians.

In such a wave, the most benefit is the Thebes. As the winner of the battle, Thebes’ influence in the Greek mainland has increased greatly, which not only caused the remaining Pioxia city states to move closer to Thebes. Accelerate its progress to unify Pioxia, even the Phophis and Locris who are friendly with Sparta (non-Dionian Lockley, it is located in Central Greece, divided into two parts, located in Pio (Southwest and Northwest of the Xia region), and even the Ubeyas are showing good things to Thebes and want to align with it.

The reason is because they saw the weakness of Spartan power and wanted military support from a new power to help them resist the threat.The Phophis and Locris are worried about Cesari, while the Ubeya are worried about Athens.

The Thebes were mixed, and their strength was greatly enhanced. They were worried that the threat of Sparta had not been lifted. They might have to add a few more powerful enemies: Athens Needless to say, the two sides already have Fissure; Although Cesari is an ally, Jason’s previous performance has already demonstrated his ambitions. At this time, he recruited horses in the north, and when he led the army south, it was probably when the two sides met.

Under the strong suggestion of Peropidas and Ipamironda (when the battle of Ruktra made Ipamiron reach the most prestigious person in Thebes), the government of Thebes still decided to work with Fokis People, Lokris, and Ubeya formed an alliance to strengthen themselves as quickly as possible to meet the challenges ahead.

Since then, except for the Attica region (Athens), Central Greece has been under the influence of Thebes.

But Thebes is not the biggest threat to Sparta. The biggest threat comes from the Arcadia region of Peloponnese.

Arcadia is located in the center of the Peloponnesian peninsula. From the geographical point of view, Sparta is located in the east and west of Laconia. There are high mountain ranges on the south and the sea on the south. The terrain on the north side of the sub-region is relatively slow, and the army has more convenient access. Therefore, since the rise of Sparta, it has been interfering in the affairs of Arcadia's city-states and trying to bring it under its own control.

It is precisely because of the long-term suppression of Sparta, compared with other parts of Greece, the Arcadia region has never had a city-state with a certain influence on the Greek mainland, even before the Corinth War due to the disobedience of Mandinia (Mandinia is located in the northeast of the Arcadia region), invading its territory abruptly, and using water attack to completely destroy its city.The Spartan violentness really detered the Arcadians temporarily, but it also made the Arcadians increasingly vigilant.

In the past ten years or so, when Sparta frequently fought against Thebes and was unable to take care of others, the exiled Mandinians returned to their homeland one after another and began to rebuild their homes.This caused the Spartans to be vigilant, and soon sent messengers to warn the Mandinians: let them get out of the land immediately, otherwise Spartans would send troops to expel.

But within a few days, other city-states in the Arcadia region sent envoys to Sparta to plead for the Mandinians.

At this time, Sparta had lack of human resources and materials due to years of battle. More relying on allies, the Arcadians contributed a lot in it. Sparta had to reluctantly agree to their request. Of course, the Mandinians also I have to promise to re-enlist Spartan as the leader and send out citizens to help them fight.

The problem seems to be solved, but it is not.The Mandinians began to step up the construction of the city walls and rebuild the city. In order to prevent them from being flooded again, they even dug new river channels and changed the flow of the Orpheus River. The newly designed city is more sturdy and unique, and difficult to overcome.

The Mandinians were secretly carrying out another important thing while building the city.During their years of exile, one of their leaders, Luke Medes, gradually realized that Arcadia’s city-states must unite and form an alliance in order to be able to say no to Sparta’s unreasonable demands. Able to defend the Arcadians' own safety.

Therefore, Luke Medes went around tirelessly to persuade Arcadia's other city-states, and things were going very well, because these city-states had been suffering from Sparta for a long time. With Luke Medes leading, apart from a few In each city-state, everyone agreed to form a Pan Arcadia alliance.

But on the question of which city-state to choose as the capital of the alliance, there was another dispute: because the strength of Arcadia’s city-states is not much different, there is no particularly prominent city-state that is enough to overwhelm others; if you choose any one at will City-states may grow their strength rapidly after the alliance is built, which is not what other city-states want to see.

Or Luke Medes made a suggestion: gather the power of the alliance and build a new city as the capital of the alliance.

In the end, his proposal was unanimously endorsed by everyone. After much discussion, the address of the new city was selected, and more detailed discussions were held on the structure of the political system of the entire alliance...

In short, in 371 BC (23 years of the Kingdom of Dionysia), the preparations for the Pan Arcadia Alliance have been basically completed, and the implementation has begun.

Sparta learned about the "Arcade is planning to build an alliance", but at this time its war against Thebes is at a critical stage, and there is really no spare power to stop this matter, and the Arcadia city-states have been He sent troops and food to help him fight, so the Spartans pretended not to see it and wanted to wait until the problem of Thebes was resolved before going back to deal with it.

However, I did not expect that the battle of Ruktra suddenly changed the situation in Greece, and the few remaining Arcadia city-states were shaken as a result, so under the active persuasion of Lycomedes, they also began to actively request to join the Pan Arcadia Alliance.

Among these city-states are Tegia, which is located in the southeast of the Arcadia region. It has always been regarded by Sparta as a firm ally and a strong gateway to the northern frontier. Now, Tegia has fallen. This made the Spartans finally intolerable, so the prosecutors sent envoys to threaten the Arcadian city-states, demanding that they must dissolve the alliance immediately, or they would be angry by the Spartan army.

The Arcadians certainly would not succumb, but they also knew that the Spartans were so powerful that they could not fight against them by their own power, so they had to seek the support of external forces.The first goal they thought of was Athens.

Athens was happy about the decline of Sparta’s power after the Battle of Ruktra, but also worried about the rise of neighboring Thebes, so it took an action to invite its own maritime alliance city states and Peloponnese city states to represent Athens. Re-sworn the previous King’s contract, and solemnly proposed that the members of the oath should help each other when attacked by the enemy.

It seems that this action of Athens is a continuation of the Kallias contract previously signed in Sparta, and also a support for Sparta and its allies that were defeated on the battlefield, but in fact Athens is trying to expand The influence of the Peloponnese peninsula wanted to usurp the leadership of Sparta, but also wanted to draw Persia.

Several city-states of Mandonia and Arcadia also participated in this oath. According to the agreement, Athens is obliged to provide assistance, so the Arcadia sent emissaries to Athens.

On the way of the Arcadia messenger rushing to Athens, a large fleet was sailing across the Adriatic Sea towards the Peloponnesian peninsula, it was the Dionysian expedition to Sparta army.

According to the speed of the army mobilization of the Holy Kingdom of Dionia, after the order of the expedition is issued, each area is generally within four to five days (the area is more extensive and mountainous like Lucania, the military camp informs the towns, And it takes a lot of time for citizens of various towns to meet in the military camp) to complete the assembly, even if King Davers has to negotiate with the military department to make some military preparations, the time required will not exceed 15 days.

The reason why the army was ordered to go out only two months later was because the subsequent truce between Thebes and Sparta, and a series of anti-Spartan waves in the Peloponnesian Peninsula caused the high-level Dionysian Attaching importance to it, the military operations were specifically suspended to watch the situation develop, and it was not restarted until two months later.

In order to avoid the news of the expedition being detected by the Spartans in advance, Dionia announced that "it was to fight against the Lusitans who repeatedly attacked and disturbed southern Iberia", so the place where the army boarded the ship was not set in Brin Disi, but in Crotone.

The Fourth Army’s barracks were originally in Crotone. The First and Sixth Legions were in the north and one in the south, not too far apart. The three regiments soon boarded the prepared ships in the port of Crotone. The team, under the escort of the 1st Fleet, headed east.

The huge fleet passed through the heels of Italy and rested overnight in Odrum. After sailing across the Adriatic Sea on the second day, it traveled south along the west coast of Greece.

The city-state villages and towns are all worried about where the fleet passes, such as Corfu Island.The people of Greece have never seen such a large fleet. It has more than 300 troop carriers, more than 500 cargo ships carrying heavy loads, and 550 warships. A total of more than 1,200 ships are laid out on the sea. The full length of the front and back is five or six miles. This is because the entire fleet chose to go out in the past few days with better sea conditions, and the ships are densely arranged.