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expedition, they could have stayed.
[66] Note that a threat of reprisal against Corinth is not mentioned, either here or when the
Corinthians convince the allies to reject Sparta's plan to restore Hippias (Hdt. 5. 92-93).
[67] Cf. Thuc. 1. 125; 5. 30.1 (fifth cent.). The implication underlying the meeting of allies concerning
Hippias is also that a majority consensus was being sought. However, nothing is said about a meeting
before the earlier expedition against Athens.
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denied the right of the allied parties to remain aloof from one another's private disputes. Neither the
Spartans' involvement with Croesus nor their expedition against Polycrates of Samos nor their
repeated military confrontations with the Argives nor their numerous attempts to impose their will on
Athens through armed intervention none of these belligerent actions is reported to have involved
obligatory participation by the allies. Moreover, there can be no doubt at all that the Spartans
themselves were under no obligation to support their allies in any given war, because they are clearly
neutral in the Corinthian-Corcyraean War in 435-433 (Thuc. 1. 28.1) and have to be convinced to join
Corinth in going to war with Athens in 432 (Thuc. 1. 68-86).[68] Sparta's military ascendancy at the
end of the fifth century may have resulted in de facto elimination of the traditional freedom of elective
nonparticipation for its allies, but that does not mean that understanding of it was lost or had never
existed, only that the decisive military superiority of Sparta and the perceived danger of Athenian
imperialism resulted in the submergence of the traditionally understood rights of autonomous states in
the alliance.
Summary
From the beginning, diplomatic relationships between Greek poleis were highly complex. The Greeks
probably never had the simplistic notion that relationships were not possible outside of a dichotomy of
friends and enemies.[69] With the evolution of independent communities, which conducted foreign
policy through the negotiation of formal treaties that were often publicly displayed at Panhellenic
sanctuaries, came shared expectations about what constituted proper diplomatic behavior and the
responsibilities of states to one another. At the same time the exact details of every negotiated
relationship varied in accordance with the specific circumstances
[68] Note further the reservations that have been expressed as to just how involved Sparta was in the
early years of the so-called First Peloponnesian War: Holladay, "Sparta's Role in the First
Peloponnesian War," 54-63; D. M. Lewis, "The Origins of the First Peloponnesian War," in Classical
Contributions: Studies in Honour of Malcolm Francis McGregor , ed. G. S. Shrimpton and D. J.
McCargar (Locust Valley, N.Y., 1951), 71-78.
[69] Let alone Plato's despairing assertion that all states were in fact in an eternal state of undeclared
war with one another (Laws 626A; see 3.2 above); for recent discussion, see Manicas, "War, Stasis,
and Greek Political Thought," 674-76, and Gehrke, Athen und Sparta , 52-55.
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and interests of the parties when agreement was reached. This is reflected in the extraordinarily wide
spectrum of responsibilities apparent in surviving documents and narrative accounts of diplomacy.
Specific compacts could, as we have seen (in 3.3-4 above), provide formal justification for a state's
abstention in the event of war. Universal alignment and compulsory involvement in every interstate
conflict were never imagined as inevitable. On the contrary, what emerges from an overview of
diplomatic conventions is a framework of limitations, which, at least in theory, restrained a
belligerent's use of violence against parties that remained aloof from conflict.
The foundation of restraint in Greek warfare came from the acceptance of certain special
categories of people and places as exempt from the violence of war. The respected status of heralds
and the recognition of the inviolability of sanctuaries (asylia ) provide obvious examples of customary
restrictions; the compliance with the dictates of religious truces (ekecheiriai ), however inconvenient,
shows how strongly this commitment was felt.[70] Acknowledgement of the validity of certain
unwritten rules of war (agraphoi nomoi ) also contributed to the development of a sense of interstate
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