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Updated: June 12, 2025
The person who was most opposed to him was the Spartan An-tal´ci-das, who, fearing that further warfare would only result in increasing Agesilaus' popularity and glory, now began to advise peace. As the Greeks were tired of the long struggle, they sent Antalcidas to Asia to try to make a treaty with the Persians.
Antalcidas cared little for his country: his treaty was the natural result of Spartan aggressiveness and selfishness. CONTEST OF THEBES AND SPARTA. The Spartans had fallen away from the old rules of life ascribed to Lycurgus. They were possessed by a greed for gold. There were extremes of wealth and poverty among them.
So long then as Sparta continued to be the first state in Greece, Artaxerxes continued to Antalcidas the honor of being called his friend and his guest; but when, routed and humbled at the battle of Leuctra, being under great distress for money, they had dispatched Agesilaus into Egypt, and Antalcidas went up to Artaxerxes, beseeching him to supply their necessities, he so despised, slighted, and rejected him, that finding himself, on his return, mocked and insulted by his enemies, and fearing also the ephors, he starved himself to death.
Artaxerxes, however, defeating the Lacedaemonians in a sea-fight at Cnidos, under the conduct of Pharnabazus and Conon, after he had stripped them of their sovereignty by sea, at the same time, brought, so to say, the whole of Greece over to him, so that upon his own terms he dictated the celebrated peace among them, styled the peace of Antalcidas.
Ever since the peace of Antalcidas the Great King had become the recognised mediator between the states of Greece; and his fiat seemed indispensable to stamp the claims of that city which pretended to the headship.
This treaty was a disgrace, and it has always been known in history by the name of the man who signed it out of petty spite. Although all the Greek cities were to be free by the treaty of Antalcidas, the Spartans kept the Messenians under their sway and, as they were still the most powerful people in Greece, they saw that the other cities did not infringe upon their rights in any way.
In B.C. 372 Antalcidas was sent by Sparta a second time up to Susa, for the purpose of obtaining an imperial rescript, prescribing the terms on which the then existing hostilities among the Greeks should cease. In B.C. 367 Pelopidas and Ismenias proceeded with the same object from Thebes to the Persian capital.
Without thinking of anything but his hatred of Agesilaus, Antalcidas consented to all that the Persians asked, and finally signed a shameful treaty, by which all the Greek cities of Asia Minor and the Island of Cy´prus were handed over to the Persian king. The other Greek cities were declared independent, and thus Sparta was shorn of much of her power.
Assisted also by Achoris, independent monarch of Egypt, and Hecatomnus, vassal king of Caria, he was able to take the offensive, to conquer Tyre, and extend his revolt into Cilicia and Idumaea. An expedition undertaken against him by Autophradates, satrap of Lydia, seems to have failed. It was the first object of the Persians, after concluding the "Peace of Antalcidas," to crush Evagoras.
That extraordinary piece of honor which the Persian king showed Antalcidas the Spartan seemed rude and uncivil, when he dipped a garland composed of crocus and roses in ointment, and sent it him to wear, by that dipping putting a slight upon and spoiling the natural sweetness and beauty of the flowers.
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