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Lelantine War
Date Sometime between late 8th century BC and first half of 7th century BC Location Euboea island, Greece Result subject to debate Territorial changes Eretria lost control of Andros, Tenos, Kea islands
Combatants
Eretria and allies	Chalcis and allies
Strength
3,000 hoplites, 600 cavalry, 60 chariots plus allied forces	Superior numbers of infantry, inferior numbers of cavalry (though highly trained Thessalians)

The Lelantine War was a long war between Eretria and Chalcis in ancient Greece at either the end of the 8th century BC or the first half of the 7th century BC. Who won the war is unknown, though the true result was that both cities entered a downward spiral. Little is known about the war though Thucydides considered it important enough to place it in his History of the Peloponnesian War.

"The war between Chalkis and Eretria was the one in which most cities belonging to the rest of Greece were divided up into alliances with one side or the other."

-Thucydides (I 15, 3)

Contents 1 Origins 2 Date of the War 3 Alliances and size of opposing forces 4 Battles 5 Outcome 6 Further reading

Eretria and Chalkis had originally a political union with Athens as they were all of the Ionian tribe. Evidence of this is that the two Ionian seats in the Delphic Amphictyony were given to Athens and the Ionians of Euboea; Chalcis and Eretria. The two soon turned towards the nearby Cyclades islands and to locations further abroad for expansion and trade.

Since the beginning of the 7th century BC cooperation turned to competition, peaceful at first, later switching to armed conflicts. Due to their status as trading powers this war involved a large part of the Greek World and thus earns Thucydides' mention, along with the Trojan War, as a war that can be compared to the Peloponnesian War. The war is named Lelantine because of the Lelantine plain, a small plain between Eretria and Chalkis which was the object of the War.

We have no direct information in ancient sources to date this war. Indirect evidence point towards somewhere between the last twenty years of the 8th century BC and the middle of the 7th century BC. There is however some evidence that throughout the 8th century BC Chalkis and Eretria were cooperating, thus making this date less probable. Furthermore Theognis implies there was a conflict between Eretria and Chalkis in the middle of the 6th century BC. While a few historians have suggested this as the date of the Lelantine War, it is more probable that Theognis refers to a second, smaller and even less known Lelantine War.

Thucydides considers the Lelantine War as the only non-local war of significant extent before the Peloponnesian War. He writes:

Wars by land there were none, none at least by which power was acquired; we have the usual border contests, but of distant expeditions with conquest for object we hear nothing among the Hellenes. There was no union of subject cities round a great state, no spontaneous combination of equals for confederate expeditions; what fighting there was consisted merely of local warfare between rival neighbors. The nearest approach to a coalition took place in the old war between Chalcis and Eretria; this was a quarrel in which the rest of the Hellenic name did to some extent take sides. (Book I chapter 15 paragraphs 2.3)

Furthermore when Herodotus talks of Eretria's assistance to the Ionian Revolt he notes:

for the Milesians had once been the allies of the Eretrians in the war against Chalcis, when the Samians came to aid the Chalcidians against the Eretrians and Milesian.(Herodotus 5.99.1 edited by A.D. Godley)

At the time of the war the state of Eretria include one quarter of Euboea island and the nearby Cyclades (Andros, Tenos,Kea). Some modern historians have collected information about enemities and friendhips of Greek cities which show that at this time there were two groups of states fighting each other at the time of this war, sometimes in conflicts with duration. It cannot however be argued that every conflict between Greek states of the time was part of this war.

Eretria at its height (which was ended by this war) could field 3,000 hoplites, 600 cavalry and 60 chariots. This implies that this conflict took place at the transitional time between the Homeric aristos, entering the war on chariot and fighting his enemies like the heroes of the Iliad and the classical hoplite. The numbers of the forces of Chalkis are not known. We only know that their infantry was superior and their cavalry inferior to Eretria.

Originally the two cities fought between themselves on the plain. As Strabo notes:

Now in general these cities were in accord with one another, and when differences arose concerning the Lelantine Plain they did not so completely break off relations as to wage their wars in all respects according to the will of each, but they came to an agreement as to the conditions under which they were to conduct the fight. This fact, among others, is disclosed by a certain pillar in the Amarynthium, which forbids the use of long distance missiles.(Geography 10.1.12 edited by H.C. Hamilton, Esq., W. Falconer, M.A.)

This agreement to avoid the use of long range weapons (archers and slingshots) seems strange to us, but long range weapons in Ancient Greece was generally considered as the way of the coward.

We know only of one battle, which included allies. In the Thessalians allies of Chalkis crushed the Eretrian cavalry and thus decided the outcome of the battle. If this was the deciding battle then Chalkis won the war. But this is subject of debate. We know from archeological finds that Chalkis suffers a decline after the war while Eretria maintains stability.

As mentioned earlier the outcome of the war is unknown. Chalkis enters decline while the islands in the Cyclades that Eretria controlled earlier seem to become independent. From Theognis another conflict over the Lelantine field is implied in the 6th century, so it seems the two cities fought again. In any case after the war both cities continued the colonisation of the Chalcidice peninsula in Northern Greece. Eretria felt compelled by the help Miletus had given her to repay with assistance during the Ionian Revolt, thus leading to her destruction before the battle of Marathon in 480 BC.

• Boardman, John (1957). "Early Euboean Pottery and History". Annual of the British School at Athens 52: 1-29. 
• Bradeen, D.W. (1947). "The Lelantine War and Pheidon of Argos". Transactions of the American Philological Association 78: 223-241. 
• Burns, A.R. (1929). "The so-called ‘Trade-Leagues’ in Early Greek History and the Lelantine War". Journal of Hellenic Studies 49: 14-37. 
• Donlan, Walter (1970). "Archilochus, Strabo and the Lelantine War". Transactions of the American Philological Association 101: 131-142. DOI:10.2307/2936044. 
• Lambert, S.D. (1982). "A Thucydidean Scholium on the ‘Lelantine War’". Journal of Hellenic Studies 102: 216-220. DOI:10.2307/631143.