Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
Sparta was rolling in cheese by the end of the Peoloponessian war thanks to Cyrus the Younger's subsidies and all that loot.
That's not exactly the story i heard in my antiquity class. Apparently Sparte came out considerably weakened from this war. Notably, their lands have been raided, and the citizens of Sparte depended on the productivity of those lands to remain citizens, which sparked something of a crisis.
Whatever the causes of their weakness, allies turned their own way and conquered territories rebelled, including Athens, and Sparte could do nothing about it. Thebes had a short "proeminent" period before Philippos II installed his makedonian hegemony on Greece.