Sacred Band of Thebes

[Paralus]

All the Greek city-states were highly self-interested, but even Sparta occasionally acted for the greater good - and - recognised the actions of those who also acted in the greater good. After the Peloponnesian War, Thebes (and others it must be said) were all too keen to see Athens razed from the Attikan landscape. The Spartans refused citing Athens' worthy behaviour in the Persian Wars. They also no doubt did this to spite Thebes (and to keep an arrow in the Boiotian League's side) but generally I don't believe they were quite so vindictive as Thebes.

All Greek states were indeed highly self interested and would, in general, act on that self-interest. Whether one was more self-interested than another is a matter based, necessarily, in some subjectivity.

There was a great deal of hatred in Greece toward Athens at war's end and the view of the Thebans was, in no way, confined simply to them (Xen.Anab.2.2.19):

When they arrived, the ephors called an assembly, at which the Corinthians and Thebans in particular, though many other Greeks agreed with them, opposed making a treaty with the Athenians and favoured destroying their city.

Whilst there may well have been Spartans unwilling to see Athens destroyed, the "arrow" in Thebes' side is far more the likely reason. The imperialists in Lacedaemon were unlikely to throw away what Antigonus Monophthalmos would later call the "gangway to Greece".

In 427 the Spartans, on orders from home, asked the Plataeans if they'd surrender their city to Sparta after near four years of siege. This was done so as to keep the place in the event of a peace (Thuc.2.52.2). Five days later the judges from Sparta arrived and the Plataeans were brought before them (2.52.4):

Upon their (the judges) arrival no charge was preferred; they simply called up the Plataeans, and asked them whether they had done the Lacedaemonians and allies any service in the war then raging.

The question was, of course, both as fatuous as it was contrived. The Plataeans could only answer none and the Spartans well knew it (2.68.1):

they (the Spartans) brought them in again one by one and asked each of them the same question, that is to say, whether they had done the Lacedaemonians and allies any service in the war; and upon their saying that they had not, took them out and slew them all without exception.

The result, as Thucydides reports, was murder of the citizenry and destruction of Plataea (2.68.2-3):

The number of Plataeans thus massacred was not less than two hundred, with twenty-five Athenians who had shared in the siege. The women were taken as slaves. The city the Thebans gave for about a year to some political emigrants from Megara, and to the surviving Plataeans of their own party to inhabit, and afterwards razed it to the ground from the very foundations...

This was no strategic outpost of empire for the Athenians; no overarching territorial gain accrued to the Spartans as a result. What gain was there in such an atrocious act? Neatly slotted between the Athenians' treatment of Mytilene and the the civil war on Corcyra, Thucydides - correctly - supplies the answer (2.68.4):

The adverse attitude of the Lacedaemonians — in the whole Plataean affair - was mainly adopted to please the Thebans, who were thought to be useful in the war at that moment raging.

Plataea's actions for the "greater good" - both at Marathon and during the "great invasion" - mattered not one whit.

Clearly, the relationship (if only strategic) between Sparta and Thebes was slightly different in 404. Sparta of 404, too, was not the "ideological creature" of 432/1, Then she could claim the status of "liberator of the Hellenes'("we were going to war with the Athenians in order to free Hellas" Thuc.4.82.1). In 411 that changed and changed forever when the Spartans, in pursuit of Persian gold and ships, signed their first treaty with the Great King. The second point in the royal rescript Thucydides reports as (8.58.2):

The country of the king in Asia shall be the king's, and the king shall treat his own country as he pleases.

The Spartans will have been only too well aware of what that meant ("the Persians believe all Asia to belong to themselves and whoever is their king" Her.9.116) and thus the triple reporting of the treaty by Thucydides. Not a few Spartans might have disagreed with the signing away of these "Greeks of Asia". In time Sparta came to accept this as business as usual as the rescript of the Peace of Antalkidas makes absolutely plain (Xen.Hell. 5.1.31):

King Artaxerxes thinks it just that the cities in Asia should belong to him, as well as Clazomenae and Cyprus among the islands

This is a logical outcome of Spartan policy (suggested by Archidamus) at war’s beginning. Then (1.82.1) Archidamus tells the Spartans to "seek the acquisition of allies, Hellenic or barbarian it matters not, so long as they are an accession to our strength naval or pecuniary" and which they followed at 2.7.1 ("They resolved to send embassies to the king and to such other of the barbarian powers as either party could look to for assistance…"). One Persian response to these embassies is seen in the capture of Artaphernes in 425. His letters to Sparta "in substance told the Lacedaemonians that the king did not know what they wanted, as of the many ambassadors they had sent him no two ever told the same story" (4.50.2). One can well imagine what "story" was the crux: the King’s ancestral right to his lands – including all of Asia.

Thebes - and Argos - were often the non-joiners in events of pan-Hellenic import. They both 'medized' to some degree or remained neutral. Their latterday Pan-Greekness at Khaironeia was a very late development of common conscience (if indeed it was that at all) ...

Actually Thebes is remarkably consistent. Despite the venom reserved for them by Xenophon, they stuck very much to the programme. Thebes would abide by the King's Peace and acknowledge the terms of its renewals. The difference being the "autonomy" of the Boeotian states which Thebes saw (rightly) reflected in the status of Messenia. After Sparta's eclipse Thebes would call on the Greeks to ratify that same peace only this time with herself as Persia's "cop". Decades later she would call Greeks to defend liberty - in accordance with that common peace - against Macedonia. The Persians would call upon the Greek Islands to do the same about the time of Issus.

Never doubt self-interest: it trumps high minded rhetoric near every time when it comes to geopolitical gain.