The fifth century opened with the Persian Wars, which epitomized the superiority over the barbarian of the citizen-soldier, that ideal type which was to flourish in Periclean Athens, the newly dominant city state of Greece. As an institution and in terms of official ideology (as expressed in funeral orations, for example), this ideal was to remain unchallenged until the end of the classical period. In some respects it was even reinforced after the Peloponnesian War by the admission of thetes to the ranks of the hoplites and again, in the time of Lycurgus, by improvement in the military training of epheboi.

In fact, however, the situation was already changing, for although it is true that citizens continued to the last to mobilize without too much reluctance for decisive battles, at other times in the fourth century they were only too ready to entrust their overseas campaigns to mercenaries, to the despair of those who looked back with nostalgia to the days of Athenian greatness and ancestral tradition. The same process was at work, although in varying degrees, in the majority of cities, particularly those, like the Syracuse of Dionysius I and Pherae under Jason, where the power of the tyrant could in this way be increased. It applied even to Sparta, which witnessed a dangerous diminution in the number of its Equals – not to mention the Great King and his western satraps, who were always seeking ‘men of bronze’ to settle their differences for them and to intervene in Mediterranean affairs.