Sources

Topography and unlettered monuments cannot of themselves generate any narrative discourse of events. The foregoing chapters have amply demonstrated how archaeological remains, even in a historically well-documented and archaeologically well-studied period, can be subject to widely divergent interpretations. Narrative discourse can arise only from narrative sources, and these naturally become the center of attention in a historical essay such as this, to be only periodically, though not insignificantly, illuminated by the evidence of topography and monuments. The histories of Xenophon and Diodoros, the former the work of a contemporary and the latter derived from a near contemporary to these events, are thus the basis for what follows.

The imperfections of both of these sources have long exercised scholars, especially in connection with the present subject. Their accounts are enriched, but never immediately clarified, by passages from a wide variety of other sources. Problems inherent in construing our source material can only be dealt with in detail. In this essay, I have chosen to make my own narrative of events the primary mode of discourse and to comment on problems raised by our sources on a secondary and, I hope, less obtrusive level than has been common practice. It will be useful, there-fore, to characterize briefly the shortcomings of Xenophon and Diodoros as I perceive them, so that their salient features may more readily be recognized in my comments on sources in the narrative that follows.

Xenophon, in treating this period in his Hellenika , narrates events al-most exclusively from the standpoint of their effect on the hegemony of Sparta. The relevant portion of his narrative begins with his summary of apparent Spartan strength in 379 (5.3.27), following the surrender of both Phleious and Olynthos to Sparta. The Theban uprising then marks the beginning of a series of events that led, through divinely ordained retribution for past Spartan excesses, to the catastrophic defeat of Sparta by the Thebans at Leuktra eight years later (cf. 5.4.1 and 6.4.2-3). The

concern for the experience of Sparta throughout this narrative is marked by the lengthy vignettes devoted to the trial of Sphodrias (5.4.25-33) and the mission of Polydamas of Pharsalos to Sparta (6.1.2-19). The former reveals Xenophon's fixation on the immediate cause of the Athenian entry into the war, since as far as Xenophon's narrative is concerned, the Sphodrias affair seems to be the only reason for Athenian involvement (cf. 5.4.63, in which Athenian enthusiasm for the war three years later is still attributed to their anger over Sphodrias). The latter episode serves to underscore Sparta's waning influence outside of the Peloponnese. Likewise, the three speeches by Athenian ambassadors at Sparta in 371 (6.3.4-17) provide commentaries primarily on the position of Sparta at that time, shortly before the ill-fated decision by the Spartans to send Kleombrotos from Phokis into Boiotia.

Yet even the reliability of Xenophon's judgment of the causes of Sparta's downfall may be called into question by his concurrent concern to present his esteemed Agesilaos as free from the blame that he attaches either anonymously to Spartan deliberative bodies or by name to a few individuals, chief among whom is Kleombrotos, Agesilaos' counterpart in kingship. As I have described in detail elsewhere, Xenophon's ac-count, through both explicit comments and significant omissions, pro-vides a comparison of these two men that serves to magnify Agesilaos and discredit Kleombrotos, often unfairly.^[3] With such preoccupations, Xenophon's account not only fails completely to mention important developments on the Athenian side (the foundation of the second Athenian naval confederacy is the most egregious of these omissions), but it also provides a noticeably skewed picture of Spartan capabilities and accomplishments.

Diodoros provides a very different sort of narrative, counteracting some of the weaknesses of Xenophon but, at the same time, presenting very different problems. Although Diodoros, like all of his predecessors including Xenophon, cannot resist focusing the narrative on the over-arching theme of Sparta's excesses leading to its downfall (e.g., 15.1.1-6, 33.2-3, 50.2), he does succeed in presenting a more balanced appraisal of the concerns of all three of the chief contenders: Sparta, Thebes, and

Athens. His history is, however, a condensation of the lengthier account given by Ephoros and shows flaws that are virtually inevitable in such a compressed and secondhand account. Much has been left out, and what this has deprived us of we can only guess. In what we can evaluate, we find clarity sacrificed to brevity (for example, the battle described in 15.34.1-2) and outright errors (such as the reported death of Chabrias in 15.36.4; cf. 16.7.3-4; and, probably, numbers; cf. 15.29.7 and Polybios 2.62.6).

The most serious flaw in Diodoros' history here, as elsewhere, is his mutilation of Ephoros' topically arranged narrative for the sake of creating an annalistic one. This has caused chronological distortions, the mildest of which is that for the whole narrative of the war of 378-375, events are dated at least one archon-year too late by Diodoros. More serious confusion arises when events which Ephoros narrated out of chronological order, but according to their logical coherence, are re-ported by Diodoros all within a single year. The worst case is 15.28-35, all of which supposedly occurred within the archonship of Kalleas.^[4]

The demonstrable flaws in Diodoros' account have for a long time led many scholars to treat his authority as distinctly secondary to Xenophon wherever the two seem to be at odds. The most important of these divergences concerns the Athenian involvement in the Theban uprising of 379/8. It has seemed appropriate to many to dismiss much of Diodoros' testimony on this matter as erroneous, in part because of the apparent occurrence of yet another of Diodoros' occasional chronological monstrosities, the doublet, or narration of the same event in two different forms as two events (in this case 15.26.1 and 26.2-3, which have been regarded as doublets of 15.29.7 and 32.2-3).^[5] Diodoros' account

of the peace of 375 is likewise considered defective because it contains a doublet of the peace of 371 (15.38-39 and 50.4-6).^[6] In neither case, however, are the apparent difficulties easily resolved by the excision of one or another passage of Diodoros. There has been a growing, though by no means unanimous, tendency in recent years to regard apparent contradictions between Diodoros and Xenophon, and even within Diodoros' own narrative, as indicative not of blunders of the compiler or of fabrications in his source material but of nuances in the import of events, obscured at times by Diodoros' abridgment but otherwise faithful to events as they occurred and as they were variously perceived and rep-resented by the participants.^[7] I support this tendency in general, and I have, by and large, taken it farther than most so far have cared to do.