Estimate the importance of Federalism in fourth century Greece.
...uctra a period of Theban Hegemony was to come. It is also important to note that the Athenian naval confederacy was still intact after the Spartan defeat. One of the Theban Hegemony’s most permanent legacies according to V. Ehrenberg, The Greek State, was the export of the federal principle and that the establishment of the Arcadian league is concrete evidence of the way Thebes in her expansion in the Aegean, capitalized on Athenian unpopularity by stealing Athens’ allies and institutions[12]. Although Theban Hegemony was to follow, Athens still made a bid for diplomatic leadership to fill the vacuum left by Sparta’s fall. It was not so much an attempt to incorporate Sparta’s allies into the naval confederacy by Athens but to inherit the hegemony of the Peloponnese, which Thebes already had. Thebes found it convenient, as we see in the establishment of the Arcadian league, to encourage federalism[13]. The Thebans encouraged the federation of Arcadia in the hope t...