Greek and Persian Wars | The Panhellenic Dream (Lecture 19)

Lecture 19: In 386 B.C., the Spartan Antalcidas and the satrap Tíríbazus worked out the terms of the King’s Peace (also known as the Peace of Antalcidas). This Spartan-Persian initiative protected the Spartans and limited resurgent Athenian expansion but at a horrible cost: The Great King of Persia had, at a stroke, been recognized as overlord of the Greeks almost without having had the trouble of fighting a war. The reactionary Panhellenic crusade, spurred by the orations of Lysias and Isocrates, sought to unite all of Greece against Persia. A key source of the Panhellenic dream was Isocrates’s epic speech “Panegyricus,” which turned Lysias’s themes into a cosmic vision by claiming that Persia suffered from malakia (“softness”) and calling for a united Athenian-Spartan leadership in a war on the Great King. Some 30 years later, with no unity in sight, the aged Isocrates appealed to a new power: the energetic King Philip of Macedon.

Recommended Reading:
Isocrates, Orations.
Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire: Achaemenid Period.