Hello and welcome to another ancient warfare magazine podcast. In this episode, we'll be looking at

Volume 9, Issue 2, Struck with the Club of Heracles, the ascendancy of Thebes.

Joining me tonight is Joshua Browers, Murray Darm, Mark McCaffrey, Owen Reese and Roll Cranedag.

So we'll be looking at the rise of Thebes.

I wonder if someone would like to give us some background

to get us to the start of the period that we're going to be looking at.

Well, Thieves by this point has come through the Peloponnesian War

pretty well established and relatively unscathed, to be honest.

It's starting to form itself as a...

It's trying to form its military reputation.

It's starting to have become accepted as one of the larger powers.

And in my mind, was always...

That and Argos were probably the nearest to matching the abilities of Athens and Sparta to date

and then as the political machinations of really the turn of that century is when Thebes comes into the fore politically and really starts to frustrate

Sparta and that's when the friction really starts to occur, especially under the reign of the Spartan

King Aguzeleos, who notoriously hated the Thevens.

Anything Thebes did or did not do or achieved or did not achieve always annoyed him.

So in my mind, the clash was inevitable, but how big it was comes down to a lot of larger factors

and how well Thebes achieved their aims and goals.

Without going over everything in the magazine, you know, sort of verbatim again,

struck me that there's the political way that Thebes operate and the military way Thebes operate.

And I thought the Boeotian League would be worth a closer look.

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