Dr. Roel Konijnendijk

When they go to war against Elis, the Thebans and the Corinthians refuse to march with them.

When they go across to Asia Minor to fight the Persians, Thebans and Corinthians refuse to march with them.

They just keep saying, yeah, you can tell us to go, but we just won't go.

Which is telling you so much about the extent to which Sparta is still able to tell people, to order people around.

Big question, actually.

Yeah, this is actually Alcibiades' influence, right?

So he is the one who seduces the other Spartan king's wife, which is where his offspring is of doubted parentage, which allows Agesilaus to become king.

So it's all Alcibiades' fault.

Let's move on that.

He's dead now.

We don't need to talk about him anymore.

So, Augustus Laeus takes over in Asia Minor, leads a large army.

This is obviously when the Persians realized they have to respond in force.

And there's different stories about how the eventual Corinthian war breaks out.

One of those stories is very prominent in the sources.

It's essentially that the Persians send a guy to the mainland Greeks with a big bag of money saying, would you like to fight the Spartans?

in exchange for this big bag of money.

Xenophon implies that a lot of people are very happy with this big bag of money that others rejected but are happy to fight the Spartans anyway.

Supposedly the Athenians are like, no, we'll do it for free.

There is a lot of discontent that sort of bubbles to the surface at that point and the money may or may not have been a sort of nudge, a further sort of nudge in that direction.