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The 360s BC

79 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 4th century BC. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

369 BCE12 entries

  • After driving off the Spartan army that has threatened Mantinea, Epaminondas of Thebes moves south and crosses the Evrotas River (the frontier of Sparta), which no hostile army has breached in historical memory. The Spartans, unwilling to engage the massive Theban army in battle, remain inside their city while the Thebans and their allies ravage Laconia.
  • On the death of the Macedonian King Amyntas III, his eldest son Alexander II becomes king. The young king is simultaneously faced with an Illyrian invasion from the north-west and an attack from the east by the pretender of the Macedonian throne, Pausanias (who quickly captures several cities and threatens the queen mother, Eurydice). Alexander defeats his enemies with the help of the Athenian general Iphicrates, who has been sailing along the Macedonian coast on the way to recapture Amphipolis.
  • Epaminondas briefly returns to Arcadia, then marches south to Messenia, a territory which the Spartans had conquered some 200 years before. There, Epaminondas starts the rebuilding of the ancient city of Messene on Mount Ithome, with fortifications that are among the strongest in Greece. He then issues a call to Messenian exiles all over Greece to return and rebuild their homeland. The loss of Messenia is particularly damaging to the Spartans, since the territory comprises one-third of Sparta's territory and contains half of their helot population.

368 BCE6 entries

  • At the instigation of Alexander's brother-in-law, Ptolemy of Aloros, Alexander II of Macedon is assassinated during a festival. Although Alexander's brother, Perdiccas III becomes the next king, he is under age, and Ptolemy is appointed regent.
  • Plato's Republic is completed. It lays down the rules for an ideal, righteous society and suggests that kings ought to be philosophers (or at least taught by philosophers).
  • While the previous year's intervention by the Macedonians in Thessaly is successful, after the Macedonian troops withdraw, Alexander of Pherae treats his subjects as cruelly as before. So the Thessalians seek Thebes' support. Pelopidas is sent to their assistance, but is treacherously seized and imprisoned.

367 BCE11 entries

  • Aristotle arrives in Athens and teaches at Plato's Academy.
  • During the ten-year period that Gaius Licinius (Calvus) Stolo is tribune in Rome (376 BC to 367 BC) he does much to reduce the enmity between patricians and plebs by reforming a number of laws. During his term, he proposes the Lex Licinia Sextia, which restores the consulship to the plebs, requires a plebeian consul seat, limits the amount of public land that one person can hold, and regulates debts. The patricians oppose these laws, though they are now finally passed and take effect from 366 BC.
  • The temple to Concordia on the Forum Romanum in Rome is built by Marcus Furius Camillus.

366 BCE9 entries

  • Two additional aediles, called curule ("higher") aediles, are created in the Roman hierarchy. These are at first patricians; but those of the next year are plebeians and so on year by year alternately. They are elected in the assembly of the tribes, with the consul presiding.
  • The Abduction of Persephone, detail of a wall painting in Tomb I (Small Tomb) in Vergina, Macedonia, is made (approximate date).
  • Theban leader, Epaminondas, returns to the Peloponnesus for a third time, seeking to secure the allegiance of the states of Achaea. Although no army dares to challenge him in the field, the democratic governments he establishes there are short-lived, as pro-Spartan aristocrats soon return to the cities, reestablish the oligarchies, and bind their cities ever more closely to Sparta.

365 BCE6 entries

  • Perdiccas III of Macedon, son of Amyntas III and Eurydice II, kills Ptolemy of Aloros, who has been the regent of Macedon since he arranged the assassination of Perdiccas III's brother Alexander II in 368 BC. With Ptolemy's death, Perdiccas III becomes King of Macedon in his own right.
  • The Athenian forces under general Timotheus overrun Samos, then occupied by a Persian garrison, after a 10-month siege.
  • Etruscan actors stage the first theatrical performances in Rome.

364 BCE8 entries

  • The Athenian general, Iphicrates, fails in attempts to recover Amphipolis. Retiring to Thrace, Iphicrates fights for his father-in-law, the Thracian king Cotys I, against Athens for the possession of the Thracian Chersonese. Cotys I is victorious and controls the whole Chersonese peninsula by 359 BC.
  • On the advice of the city's military leader, Epaminondas, Thebes builds a fleet of 100 triremes to help combat Athens. Thebes destroys its Boeotian rival Orchomenus.
  • The Chinese astronomer Gan De from the State of Qi reportedly discovers the moon Ganymede, belonging to Jupiter, and makes the earliest known sunspot observations.

363 BCE4 entries

  • The Egyptian pharaoh Teos (or Tachos) succeeds his father Nectanebo I to the throne. Planning a great attack on Persia, he invites Sparta to help him.
  • The Theban general, Epaminondas, makes a bold attempt to challenge Athens' naval empire. With a new Boeotian fleet, he sails to Byzantium, with the result that a number of cities in the Athenian Empire rebel against their now threatened masters.

362 BCE8 entries

  • The outbreak of civil war in the Arcadian league leads to Mantinea fighting alongside Sparta and Athens, while Tegea and other members of the league side with Thebes. The Theban general, Epaminondas leads the large allied army into the Peloponnesus, he is met by the Spartans (led by the Agiad Spartan king Agesilaus), Mantineans, Athenians, and their allies in the Battle of Mantinea. In the battle, Epaminondas is victorious, but is killed. His dying command to make peace with the enemy is followed by all sides and a general peace is established in Greece. The period of Theban domination of Greece comes to an end.
  • The states of Qin, Han and Zhao defeat the state of Wei and Qin captures the prince of Wei. The Battle of Shaoliang is then fought between Qin and Wei, which Wei loses, whereupon Qin captures the prime minister of Wei.
  • Mausolus of Caria joins the revolt of the satraps of Anatolia against the Persian king Artaxerxes II.

361 BCE5 entries

  • The Egyptians under their King Teos and the Spartans under King Agesilaus II, with some Athenian mercenaries under their general Chabrias, set out to attack the Persian King's Phoenician cities. However, they have to return almost at once due to revolts back in Egypt. Subsequently, Agesilaus II quarrels with the Egyptian king and joins a revolt against him.
  • Plato returns once more to Syracuse to teach the young Syracusan tyrant Dionysius II. He fails to reconcile the tyrant to Dion, who Dionysius II banished in 366 BC. Because of this, Plato is forced to flee Syracuse to save his life.
  • Callistratus of Aphidnae, an Athenian orator and general, and the Athenian general, Chabrias, are brought to trial in Athens on account of the refusal of the Thebans to surrender the city of Oropus, which on Callistratus' advice the Thebans have been allowed to occupy temporarily. Despite his magnificent oration in his defence (which so impresses Demosthenes that he resolves to study oratory), Callistratus is condemned to death. He flees to Methone in Macedonia, where he is accommodated by King Perdiccas III who draws on his financial expertise. Chabrias is acquitted and then accepts a command under the King of Egypt, Teos, who is defending his country against Persian attempts at reconquest.

360 BCE10 entries

  • With the help of King Agesilaus II of Sparta, Nectanebo II deposes Teos and becomes king of Egypt. Teos flees to Susa and makes peace with the Persians. Nectanebo II pays the Spartans 230 talents for their help.
  • As the Illyrians attack the Molossians, the Molossian king Arymbas brings his non-combatant people to safety elsewhere. When the Illyrians have finished looting, they are burdened with booty and are thus easily defeated by the Molossians.
  • Plato writes the dialogues Timaeus and Critias, first mentioning Atlantis.