Sparta's (& Athens') Last Stand

A History of Mankind (166)

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In response to renewed Macedonian assertiveness, Greek poleis and statelets to the south formed the Aetolian and the Acheaean Leagues during the mid-3rd century BC. The latter sometimes incorporated both Athens and Sparta, for the last time allied against a common enemy in the Chremonidean War of 267-261 BC. They lost.

The two cities experimented political unrest during their period, as young leaders tried to restore old political arrangements (democracy in Athens, the Lycurgan constitution in Sparta) to rekindle old glories, and clashed against entrenched oligarchic interests and demographic realities in a Hellenic world in which neither city was large enough to matter much anymore.

The Chremonidean War was particularly dire for Athens, as it reinforced a local oligarchy happy to serve as proxy rulers for Macedonia’s Antigonid kings, and left the Piraeus port under Macedonian control, which contributed to the city’s economic decline. One year before the end of the war, the death of Philemon, a popular playwright of Alexander the Great’s generation who was almost one hundred years old at the time, was seen by many as an omen marking the end of a golden era in Athens.