History of Greece, Volume 10 (of 12) — Key Ideas to Explore

The Peace of Antalkidas as a Structural Turning Point

Grote treats the Peace of Antalkidas (387 B.C.) not merely as a treaty but as a degradation of Pan-hellenic dignity. He emphasizes its form: an edict drawn up, issued, and enforced by Persia upon Greece. The language is precise: the convention established a “separate partnership between Sparta and Persia,” and Grote traces a long arc of Spartan subservience, from early appeals for Persian help before the Peloponnesian War to the active collaboration that broke Athens’ maritime empire. He notes that Athens, too, was ready to follow Sparta’s example. The peace thus becomes a structural pivot: it marks the moment when Spartan hegemony, built on Persian backing, begins to unravel. Grote’s analysis is driven by a recurring concern with the moral and political cost of foreign dependence, a theme that will echo through his treatment of Agesilaus.

Agesilaus: The Man Who Shaped Spartan Decline

Grote’s portrait of Agesilaus is carefully balanced but ultimately damning. He credits the king with military energy and personal merit, yet insists that as an adviser and politician he “deserves little esteem.” The evidence is cumulative: Agesilaus sheltered Sphodrias from punishment, provoking a war with Athens and Thebes; he was the “prominent spokesman” of the intense miso-Theban impulse that led to the disaster at Leuktra; and he stubbornly refused to acknowledge the autonomy of Messênê even when other Greeks had conceded it. Grote underscores the “melancholy contrast” between the state of Sparta at Agesilaus’ accession and at his death, paraphrasing the famous epitaph: “Marmoream invenit, lateritiam reliquit.” Yet he adds a caveat: Epaminondas was an enemy more formidable than any Sparta had faced, and Agesilaus’ last expedition to Egypt did secure the throne of Nektanebis. The judgment is nuanced, but the trajectory is clear.

The Sicilian Digression: A Separate Stream

Grote’s decision to break the volume mid-reign of Dionysius I is not a failure of planning but a deliberate acknowledgment of the Sicilian narrative’s weight. He notes that the history of the Sicilian and Italian Greeks is “reported to us by authors (Diodorus and Plutarch), who, though not themselves very judicious as selectors, had before them good contemporary witnesses.” This is a characteristic Grotean move: he is transparent about his sources’ limitations while asserting the intrinsic interest of the material. The Sicilian chapters, he promises, will include “some of the most prominent and impressive characters of the Hellenic world—Dionysius I., Dion with Plato as instructor, and Timoleon.” The reader is left with a sense of anticipation: the volume ends not with a conclusion but with a pivot, and the next volume will carry the story down to the battle of Chaeroneia and the death of Philip of Macedon.

Persian Court Intrigue and the Fragility of Empire

Grote closes the volume with a vivid episode from the Persian court: the plot of Darius, eldest son of Artaxerxes Mnemon, to assassinate his father after being denied a favorite from the harem. The story is told with a novelist’s eye for detail—the privilege of petition, the intervention of Atossa, the betrayal by Teribazus—but Grote uses it to illustrate a larger pattern. The Persian empire, he notes, survived the extensive revolt that threatened to wrest Asia Minor and Egypt from its control, but only because of the treachery of Orontes and Rheomithres. Artaxerxes died soon after, and the transmission of the sceptre was stained by “bloody tragedies.” The episode serves as a counterpoint to the Greek narrative: while Sparta and Thebes struggle for hegemony, the Persian court is consumed by dynastic violence. Yet the empire endures, a reminder of the structural forces that shape the Greek world from without.

Grote’s tenth volume is best read as a study in decline and redirection. The main narrative traces Sparta’s fall from the pinnacle of the Peace of Antalkidas to the humiliation of Leuktra, driven by the flawed leadership of Agesilaus. But the volume also opens a new front: the Sicilian Greeks, whose story will dominate the next installment. Readers should pay attention to Grote’s method of moving between theaters and his willingness to pause a narrative mid-course. The break is not a flaw but a feature, reflecting his conviction that the history of Greece is not a single stream but a delta of interconnected, yet distinct, currents.

I kept thinking about how Grote maps the moment when Spartan confidence curdles, and how often that quiet unraveling mirrors what we see in everyday choices. It reminded me of something gentler, almost—that same weight of consequence resting on small decisions. The Story of the Greeks — A Closer Reading holds that same lingering ache, somehow.