Qualla: Battle of Tanagra (457 BC)

Battle of Tanagra (457 BC): Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Cimon arrived at the Athenian camp in person, with the men of his own tribe, the Oeneis, and asked to fight. He had been exiled by his own city. He was the most accomplished general Athens had ever produced, the son of Miltiades who had won at Marathon, and he had spent his political career arguing that Athens and Sparta should be friends. Now Athens was about to fight Sparta in the hill country of Boeotia, and Cimon had walked back from his exile to stand in the line. The Council of 500 turned him away. They feared he would sow confusion. He left his armor with friends and asked them to fight in his place. The Battle of Tanagra began the next morning.

Battle of Tanagra (457 BC): How the Friendship Soured

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Athens and Sparta had won the Persian War together in 480-479 BC. Within twenty years they were enemies, and the long-fuse cause was a matter of walls. After Salamis, Sparta had asked the Greek cities not to rebuild their fortifications - Persia might come back, the argument ran,...

Battle of Tanagra (457 BC): An Army on the Wrong Side of the Mountains

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 458 BC, Athens began the Long Walls. A Spartan army of 1,500 hoplites and 10,000 allies marched north into central Greece, ostensibly to rescue the small region of Doris from Phocian aggression - and, less officially, to remind Athens what Spartan friendship looked like withdr...

Battle of Tanagra (457 BC): The Battle With No Account

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Athens sent 14,000 men under Myronides, with 1,000 allied hoplites from Argos, to meet 11,500 Peloponnesians. What happened on the field is lost. Thucydides records the result and not the maneuvers; no soldier left a description; no later historian filled in the blanks with anyth...

Battle of Tanagra (457 BC): The Sixty-Two Days

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Sparta had won at Tanagra, gone home, and considered the matter closed. Athens did not. Sixty-two days after the battle, Myronides reformed his army and marched north again. At the Battle of Oenophyta, against a Boeotian army that no longer had Spartan reinforcement, the Athenian...

Battle of Tanagra (457 BC): Cimon Comes Home

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Cimon was eventually recalled from his ostracism. He had retained his peculiar credibility on both sides of the Aegean - the only Athenian both his own city and Sparta were willing to listen to - and he used it to broker a five-year peace, signed sometime in the early 450s BC, th...