Ηαγεμονία: A New Treaty from Classical Thebes

Abstract

The authors present the editio princeps of an inscribed document found in a rescue excavation at Thebes, in the area immediately to the south of Kadmeia, near the Electran Gates. The inscription, written in the epichoric script of Boeotia, can be dated to the early 4^th c. BC. It preserves the end of a treaty between Thebes and Histiaia which assigns war leadership (hαγεμονία) to the Thebans. By virtue of historical and paleographical analysis, they consider a date in the 370s or the 360s, but express their preference for a date ca. 377 BC when, according to Xenophon, the Thebans managed to seize the acropolis of Histiaia which had been under Spartan control. The authors also explore the possibility that the treaty was originally displayed in the shrine of Herakles, the poliadic divinity of Thebes.