Dr. Owen Rees

There are helots, obviously, in Laconia as well.

But they have very much done the one thing the Spartans were always worried about throughout, especially sort of post-460 onwards, of losing control of the helot population that it relied so much on for its workforce.

Yeah, they do.

I guess Elias begins to actually go abroad to make money.

And the easiest way to make money was for him to sell himself as a military expert.

So he basically becomes a mercenary for hire, but as a commander.

fundamentally he's going around doing just that and then really well you might have a different view on this but I don't see Sparta as really exerting itself well at all through the 360s it is pretty much never fully recovering it's

I mean, it definitely is a final hurrah if you want to think of it like that.

I think their real last hurrah is the fact that they protect Sparta from Epaminondas himself.

So the Battle of Mantinea is sort of the big battle that sort of brings into question the dominance of the Thebans.

The Thebans are defeated is the wrong word, but sort of ends in this moment of stalemate.

Yeah.

Whereas as the Spartans went to join the many allies to resist Thebes, it is said that Ferdinandus spotted that Sparta was unprotected.

And something that always strikes me is in the aftermath of Lutra, they never ever go to destroy Sparta.

And now, as we near the Battle of Mantinea, they give it a go.

We'll attack Sparta itself.

And Agesilaus has his final moment, finally, as a big fan of his, where he races back, basically, from Mantinea with a force to protect the city.

And he protects the famously unwalled city against the Thebans.

And Achaemenon just kind of goes, oh, OK.

And then heads over to, basically, the great Battle of Mantinea as a result.