Boeotian League in 218 B.C.

Boeotian League — Spring 218 BC · The Social War.

The federal koinon of the cities of Boeotia — Thebes, Orchomenus, Tanagra, Thespiae, Lebadeia, Plataea and their neighbours — gathered around the fertile basin of the Copais in central Greece, north of Attica. Once the league that broke Sparta at Leuctra and dominated all Greece, it is in 218 a tired federation past its martial prime: bound into the Hellenic Symmachy under Macedon, it stands with Philip V and the Achaeans against the Aetolians, while its enemies whisper that its citizens have given themselves over to feasting and debt.

Three generations ago the Boeotians were the masters of Greece — Epaminondas shattered the Spartan phalanx at Leuctra and Theban arms marched into the Peloponnese itself. That age is long gone. Today the league shelters under Macedon: a charter member of Philip V’s Hellenic Symmachy, it has been drawn by the Achaeans into the Social War against the raiding Aetolians, who have already once invaded Boeotia and worsted its levy in the field. The Copais grows its grain as richly as ever, but the courts sit idle, the war-spirit has cooled, and men of substance leave their estates not to their children but to dining-clubs.