Mouse war

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Mouse war
date 334-331 / 0 v. Chr.
place Peloponnese / Greece
output Macedonian victory
consequences Maintaining Macedonian hegemony
Parties to the conflict

Sparta
Athens

Macedonia
Corinthian League

Commander

Agis III. †
Demades

Antipater
Korrhagos
Amphoteros


The Mouse War , or War of the Agis , was a military conflict in ancient Greece in the 4th century BC. The city-state of Sparta under its king Agis III. challenged the hegemon of the Hellenic League of Corinth , Macedonia , and lost.

prehistory

After the victorious battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC In BC King Philip II was able to establish Macedonia's hegemony over the Hellenes in the Corinthian covenant he founded. The majority of the Greek city-states belonged to this league, some of them more or less voluntarily, like the defeated Athens and Thebes . Sparta was the only power worth mentioning that did not join this covenant, as it traditionally refused any outside control over itself. It was also in 338 BC. Not affiliated to the anti-Macedonian coalition because it rejected the leadership of its traditional rival Athens and did not want to fight alongside the mortal enemy Thebes, to whom Sparta had gained its own hegemony in the battles of Leuktra in 371 BC only a few years earlier . Chr. And Mantineia 362 v. Chr. Had to resign. Consequently, Sparta did not support Thebes' apostasy from the Corinthian League after the murder of Philip II in 336 BC. BC, which ultimately led to the destruction of Thebes by Alexander the Great .

Nevertheless, Sparta did not take a neutral stance towards Macedonian power during these times, since Macedonia, in its capacity as a hegemon, was also the protective power of the city-states of the Peloponnese, over which Sparta had exercised hegemony over Leuctra itself. Leuktra had ended this Spartan hegemony in favor of the Theban ones, manifested among other things in the foundation of Megalopolis by the military leader Thebes, Epaminondas . Chaironeia, on the other hand, had ended the Theban hegemony, but replaced it with the Macedonian one, to which the cities of the Peloponnese, in their old hostility to Sparta, resolutely admitted. Since 338 BC Reigning King Agis III. intended to bring the Peloponnese back under the rule of Sparta and to renew the glorious times of his state. To do this, however, he had to wait for the appropriate time when the Macedonian opponent showed weakness. When Alexander the Great with the bulk of his armed forces in the spring of 334 BC BC set out on his famous conquest of Asia , that time seemed to have come. As administrator of Macedonia and deputy chairman of the Corinthian League, he left the old general Antipater with around 12,000 infantrymen and 1,500 cavalrymen.

course

No sooner had Alexander withdrawn from Europe than Sparta took up its activities against Macedonia. It sent a diplomatic delegation to the court of the Persian great king Dareios III. in the hope of receiving support from him, but it was not alone in Greece either. Athens had been a member of the Hellenic League since Chaironeia, but there was an influential faction of old Macedonian enemies around the speaker Demosthenes in the city , which now sensed an upswing for their cause. At the suggestion of Lycurgus , the people's assembly accepted the motion to terminate all contracts with Alexander and to mobilize the fleet to support Sparta. The city also sent a delegation to the Persian court, led by the son of the famous general Iphikrates . Agis himself continued in 333 BC. BC with a ship to Siphnos , where he negotiated with the admirals Pharnabazos and Autophradates about a common action against the Macedonians in the Aegean Sea. The Persian naval power was eliminated as a potential ally after the defeat of Issus became known and as a result the Persian fleet disbanded. Agis received only 10 triremes and 30 talents silver as support, with which he was able to recruit 4,000 Greek mercenaries who had fled from Issus in Tainaron . With his mercenaries he first sailed on to Crete , where he lived until the end of 332 BC. BC brought some cities under his control. Alexander forced this in 331 BC. To send his fleet under Amphoteros from Phenicia to Crete.

At about the same time as the Spartan activities on Crete, Athens made contact with the Thracian-Odrysian Prince Seuthes III. on, who was able to open a second front against Macedonia as an ally. The opportunity for an engagement in Thrace seemed favorable, because the Macedonian strategist Memnon had there in the spring of 331 BC. Showing signs of insubordination towards his superior Antipater. If Thrace had been liberated from the Macedonian occupation, Antipater would have lost his direct contact with Alexander, who in turn would have been cut off from the supply of troops from home. However, Antipater immediately moved with his entire army to Thrace, in the face of which Memnon evidently gave up without a fight.

While Antipater was in Thrace, Agis and his troops (20,000 infantrymen and 2,000 cavalrymen) returned to the Peloponnese and campaigned with the Greeks to defeat the Corinthian League with a proclamation of freedom. With this he won the support of the Eleans , most of the Arcadians and Achaeans (with the exception of Pellene ). However, the proclamation went unheard by the old rivals Megalopolis , Corinth and Argos , who recognized the underlying intention for a renewal of the Spartan supremacy. The Peloponnese had to be forcibly brought to Sparta's side and Agis was able to win a first victory over a Macedonian advance command under Korrhagos . He then took up the siege of Megalopolis. After the settlement of the situation in Thrace, Antipater marched personally in the autumn of 331 BC. With over 40,000 men over the Isthmos in the Peloponnese. As it approached, Athens lost the courage to support Sparta, as the funds earmarked for it were quickly used elsewhere. But Demades, who was entrusted with the fleet command, thwarted the intentions of his hometown when he did not intervene in the fighting as decided and instead waited for the course of events. The Macedonian naval power under Amphoteros, who had entered the Aegean from Crete, may also have prevented him .

In the Peloponnese, the war ended in the late year 331 or rather in the spring of 330 BC. Decided in the battle of Megalopolis , in which Antipater achieved a complete victory over the Spartans. Agis fell in battle after telling his warriors to flee. 5,300 Spartans and 3,500 Macedonians had fallen.

consequences

Antipater refused to conquer Sparta and only allowed the city to host 50 young hostages. The assembly (Synhedrion) of the Corinthian League demanded compensation from Sparta for losses it had suffered and forced the city to send a diplomatic delegation to distant Asia, which had to formally ask Alexander for forgiveness for the war. The pursuit of the leading Macedonian opponents and agitators (Demosthenes and Lycurgus), on the other hand, was not pursued, and Athens' involvement in this war was deliberately ignored by Antipater and Alexander.

Alexander the great probably had after his victory at Issus, when the Spartan and Athenian ambassadors to the great king had fallen into his hands, or at the latest in Sidon in 332 BC. Learned from the naval officer Proteas of the activities of Sparta against Macedonia. Except for the dispatch of the fleet under Amphoteros, he had not bothered about this matter and left it to his administrator Antipater to settle it. He had dutifully fulfilled his task and with his victory maintained the Macedonian hegemony over the Greeks, which allowed Alexander to continue his campaign of conquest in Asia undisturbed.

The Battle of Megalopolis took place around the same time or only a few months after the great Battle of Gaugamela (October 1, 331 BC), which is why Alexander probably did not take place until the late 331 BC. In Sittakene or more likely not until the spring of 330 BC. BC in Ekbatana may have learned of the defeat of the Spartans. Shortly afterwards he released the Allied Greek troops, which the Corinthian League had provided for the campaign of revenge against Persia, from their obligations. Alexander disrespectfully called his administrator's dispute with Sparta "Mouse War", since, unlike Antipater, he would have to fight the bigger war in Asia. However, if you take into account the high number of losses suffered by Megalopolis on both sides, this designation seems unjustified; Alexander did not suffer such casualties in his battles against the Persians.

After Alexander's death in 323 BC Some Greek city-states under the leadership of Athens dared to revolt against Macedonia again, but in the so-called Lamian War they were again defeated by Antipater.

literature

  • Alexander Demandt : Alexander the Great - Life and Legend . Munich 2009. pp. 197-199.
  • Christian Habicht : Athens. The history of the city in Hellenistic times . 1995.
  • Marcus Niebuhr Death : A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions II. 1948.
  • Ernst Badian : Agis III , In: Hermes , Vol. 95 (1967), pp. 170-192.
  • Eugene N. Borza: The End of Agis' Revolt , In: Classical Philology , Vol. 66 (1971), pp. 230-235.
  • AB Bosworth: The Mission of Amphoterus and the Outbreak of Agis' War , in: Phoenix , Vol. 29 (1975), pp. 27-43

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Diodorus 17, 17, 5.
  2. ↑ Arrian , Anabasis 2, 15, 2; Curtius Rufus 3, 13, 15. Iphicrates the Younger was captured along with the Spartan delegation after the Battle of Issus in Damascus and died shortly afterwards of an illness.
  3. ↑ Diodorus 17, 62, 8; Arrian, Anabasis 2, 13, 4-5.
  4. ↑ Diodorus 17, 48, 1; Arrian, Anabasis 2, 13, 6; Curtius Rufus 4, 1, 39. The sources, which speak of 8,000 recruited mercenaries, related their number to those who fled from Issus. Of these, however, 4,000 moved to Egypt, which is why Agis was only able to recruit 4,000.
  5. ↑ One to June 330 BC The Athenian inscription dated back to the 3rd century BC documents an honor for Rhebulas, a son of Seuthes III, which was apparently pronounced as a result of the Attic-Thracian alliance. See Death, 198.
  6. ↑ Diodor 17, 62, 4-6; Polyainos , Strategika 4, 4, 1.
  7. ^ Aeschines , Against Ctesiphon 3, 165.
  8. ↑ An Athenian inscription from 329 BC BC documents an honor proposed by Lykurgos to a citizen from Plataiai who donated a large amount of money to Athens for the war. However, as the inscription reveals, this money was used for the organization of the Panathenaic Games when Antipater appeared. See Death, no.193.
  9. ↑ See Habicht, p. 32.
  10. ↑ Diodorus 17:63; Plutarch , Agis 3; Curtius Rufus 6, 1, 1-18; Justinus 12: 1, 4-11.
  11. ↑ The Ephor Eteocles offered Antipater, instead of the 50 young men, twice the number of old men or women as hostages. He asserted that the youths were not able to complete their training in the traditional Spartan way of life ( agoge ) because they were held hostage and thus could not acquire Spartan citizenship . Antipater refused this proposal and insisted on the extradition of the young men, which the Spartans are said to have felt worse than death. Plutarch, Moralia 235b-c = Apophthegmata Laconica 54.
  12. ↑ Diodorus 17, 73, 5-6; Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon 3, 133; Curtius Rufus 6, 1, 19-21.
  13. ↑ In the late year 331 BC A reinforcement from Macedonia reached the army in Sittakene (Curtius Rufus 5, 1, 42; Diodor 17, 65, 1) and in the spring of 330 BC. Another in media as well (Curtius Rufus 5, 7, 12).
  14. ↑ Plutarch, Agesilaus 15, 4. "It seems to me, men, while we were defeating Darius here, that some mouse war was going on there in Arcadia."