Dr. Roel Konijnendijk

They're trying to fight Mycenae.

They get nowhere in any of these cases.

They win battles.

They sometimes take minor towns, but they're never able to kind of disrupt

the kind of ring of enemies that surrounds them.

Right down to the end of the fourth century, they're continuously trying to regain Mycenae.

One of the quirks of their policy in this period is that the Greeks keep signing these common pieces that repeat the terms of the king's peace.

They keep saying everybody's autonomous, we're not doing any empires, we're not doing any hegemony.

Sparta refuses to sign them.

Why do they refuse to sign them?

Because signing it means acknowledging that Mycenae is autonomous.

They cannot do it, so they must remain the sort of diplomatic pariah in the Greek world.

They must remain outside of all of those treaties because they cannot agree to anything that allows Mycenae to assert, we are an autonomous state.

So they can't sign anything that quotes the king's peace.

I would not agree with that, actually.

I'm not having it wrong.

Fair enough.

Because it depends on how we interpret fall.

If we say fall from grace, fall from hegemony, I absolutely agree with you.

That's over.