Second Athenian League

The alliance represented a partial revival of the Delian League, which had been disbanded in 404 BC following the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War.

[2][3] The League largely revived Athenian influence in the Greek world, reestablishing it as the strongest naval power in the eastern Mediterranean.

[1] This time, Athens made conscious efforts to avoid the strict terms that had eventually rendered the previous Delian League unpopular.

In 382 BC, Sparta sent a force led by the general Eudamidas and his brother Phoebidas to combat the expansion of Olynthus in Chalkidiki, northern Greece.

Ismenias was pro-democracy and anti-Sparta so Leontiades convinced Phoebidas, who is described by Xenophon as driven by desire to perform good deeds but lacking in reasoning capacity,[10] that it would be in Sparta's interest to help him take control of Thebes.

Diodorus Siculus claims that the invasion was ordered by the Spartan king Cleombrotus,[18] while other historians like Xenophon argue that Sphodrias was bribed by Thebes as part of a plot to bring Athens to their side in the war against Sparta.

[19] The Spartan ambassadors stationed in Athens promised that Sphodrias would be convicted and punished in Sparta, but he was acquitted in what Siculus calls a "miscarriage of justice".

[20] This caused Athens to seek alliances against Sparta, so they reached out to Aegean cities under harsh Spartan control including Chios, Byzantium, Rhodes, and Mytilene.

The terms of the league were as follows: meetings would be held in Athens, but every city would enjoy one vote no matter its size and would retain its independence.

Athens also convinced foreign powers, including Sparta and Persia, that the charter was a way to enforce the Peace of Antalcidas instead of a subversion of it.