Dr. Roel Konijnendijk

It's an absolute overturning of everything that the Greeks thought they knew about the Spartans and about their power structures and everything else.

not just demographically, which is a very important point, but also because in the final instance, Spartan hegemony rests on the idea that individually, Sparta could beat all of you.

Individually, all of those states that are allied to Sparta, if they band together, they might be able to get away with it.

But if they individually resist Sparta, Sparta is just going to destroy them.

They can do that.

They have the military power to trump each individual state.

But at this point, people are starting to say, maybe that's not actually true.

Maybe we can actually throw off the yoke and still feel safe.

I mean, yes, this is exactly what the Thebans do.

And this is why sometimes this has been considered to be the first sort of strategic offensive.

Like it's not just beating them in battle and then saying, look, we've beaten you, let's make a treaty.

But actually proceeding into the Peloponnese and dismantling Spartan power at a local level.

So what they do is they liberate Mycenae.

which at this point has been under Spartan subjection for, according to tradition, like 200 years or even longer, 400 years, depending on which source you follow on this.

But for ages, Sparta has been able to double its territory by seizing Mycenae.

It is now liberated.

It is set up as an autonomous state.

Yeah, to the west.

If you cut sort of the Peloponnese into four chunks, then Sparta is in the sort of southeastern chunk and Mycenae is the southwestern chunk.

And they used to be sort of under Spartan control for the entirety of the classical period at least.