In this conflict, Athens joined a coalition including Thebes, Corinth, and Argos to challenge Sparta's dominance and unfair treatment of various cities in Greece.
[3] Within the year the garrison itself was recalled and in 388 BC Chabrias was given command of a small fleet (ten ships and 800 peltasts) to assist King Evagoras of the city of Salamis on the island of Cyprus, who was attempting to secede from the Persian empire.
At the time, the Spartans had stationed a garrison on the island of Aegina which was harassing Athenian shipping through the Saronic Gulf and raiding small villages on the Attic coast.
Sparta had previously occupied Thebes’ Cadmeia, killed the leaders of the anti-Spartan faction in the city and were supporting by force a pro-Spartan regime.
Athens soon joined the war on the Theban side and in the spring of 378 BC, King Agesilaos II of Sparta led an army of eighteen thousand Peloponnesians into Boeotia to attack Thebes.
Agesilaos ordered his hoplites to attack next and as they began to climb the ridge, Chabrias gave a signal and the whole Athenian force, joined by the Theban Sacred Band, instantly stood at ease – shields leaning on each soldier's left knee and spears resting on the ground, pointing upward.
[7] It was a moral and psychological victory for Thebes, and...This device was so extolled by fame throughout Greece, that Chabrias chose to have the statue, which was erected to him at the public charge by the Athenians in the agora, made in that posture.
As Diodorus tells it,Chabrias, in command of the force dispatched by the Athenians, laid waste Histiaia, and, fortifying its Metropolis, as it is called, which is situated on a naturally steep hill, left a garrison in it, and then sailed to the Cyclades and won over Peparethos and Sciathos and some other islands which had been subject to the Lacedaemonians.
[9] Two years later (376 BC), after another expedition into Boeotia, the Sparta's Peloponnesian allies prevailed upon it to institute a naval blockade of Athens rather than put them through another long march to the north.
It is worth noting that when Chabrias had the remnants of the Spartan fleet on the run, he held back his ships so they could retrieve those in the water, both living and dead.
[10] As Diodorus relates:For he recalled the Battle of Arginusae (406 BC) and that the ekklesia, in return for the great service performed by victorious generals, condemned them to death on the charge that they had failed to bury the men who had perished in the fight; consequently he was afraid, since the circumstances were much the same, that he might run the risk of a similar fate.
Chabrias then, having won a notable victory, sailed back laden with spoils to the Peiraieus and met with an enthusiastic reception from his fellow citizens.
[11]In appreciation for this victory, and for his service to the city to date, the Athenians granted Chabrias and his descendants ateleia, or freedom from the liturgies (providing warships, as his father had done, or choruses for dramatic productions, or managing and funding a gymnasium, etc.).
In the spring of 373 BC, Chabrias "won the race at the Pythian games with his chariot and four, which he purchased from the sons of Mitys the Argive, and, on his return from Delphi, gave a banquet to celebrate the victory at Kolias (a promontory on the Attic coast south of Athens).
The combined armies created a defensive line across the isthmus outside the city but the Thebans punched through and proceeded to ravage the countryside from Troezen and Epidauros in the south to Sikyon in the north.
[17]In the rivalry which followed, the Boeotians gathered all their army in line of battle and directed a formidable blow at Korinth; but Chabrias with the Athenians advanced out of the city, took his station on superior terrain and withstood the attack of the enemy.
The Boeotians, however, relying upon the hardihood of their bodies and their experience in continuous warfare, expected to worst the Athenians by sheer might, but Chabrias' corps, having the advantage of superior ground in the struggle and of abundant supplies from the city, slew some of the attackers and severely wounded others.
(Xenophon vi.2.39) Then, in 366, the two men incurred the enmity of certain partisans in the Athenian assembly by counseling the city not to go to war over the Theban acquisition of the coastal village of Oropos in the northwest corner of Attica.
During this affair, Agesilaos transferred his allegiance to a rival for the Egyptian throne, Nektanebos, and Tachos was later compelled to flee to Persia and seek asylum with Artaxerxes.
[20] There is a brief mention in an oration of Demosthenes of Chabrias being sent on a mission to the Chersonese in 359/8 with one vessel in an abortive attempt to help an Athenodoros, an ally who capitulated to his enemies for lack of funds from Athens.
In 357 four members of the Athenian Confederacy (Byzantium, Rhodes, Chios, and Kos) suffered internal revolts in which their democratic governments were overtaken by oligarchies, the reported motivation being the heavy-handed way Athens was managing the league.
Though he might have escaped from the danger, if he had cast himself into the sea, for the fleet of the Athenians was at hand to take him up as he swam, he chose rather to die, than to throw away his arms and abandon the vessel in which he had sailed.