328 HISTORY OF GREECE. inent of Xenophon with regard either to this great man or to the Thebans. It will not stand good, even if compared with the facts related by himself; still less probably would it stand, if we had the facts from an impartial witness. I have already recounted as much as can be made out of the proceedings of the Thebans, between the return of Pelopidas from Persia with the rescript (in the whiter 367-366 B.C.) to the close of 363 B. c. In 366-365 B. c., they had experienced great loss and humiliation in Thessaly connected with the detention of Pelo- pidas, whom they had with difficulty rescued from the dungeon of Pherae. In 364-363 B. c. , Pelopidas had been invested with a fresh command in Thessaly, and though he was slain, the Theban arms had been eminently successful, acquiring more complete mastery of the country than ever they possessed before ; while Epaminondas, having persuaded his countrymen to aim at naval supremacy, had spent the summer of 363 B. c. as admiral of a powerful Theban fleet on the coast of Asia. Returning to Thebes at the close of 363 B. c. , he found his friend Pelopidas slain ; while the relations of Thebes, both in Peloponnesus and in Thes- saly, were becoming sufficiently complicated to absorb his whole attention on land, without admitting farther aspirations towards maritime empire. He had doubtless watched, as it went on, the gradual change of politics in Arcadia (in the winter and spring of 363-362 B. c.), whereby the Mantinean and oligarchical party, profiting by the reaction of sentiment against the proceedings at Olympia, had made itself a majority in the Pan- Arcadian assembly and militia, so as to conclude peace with Elis, and to present the prospect of probable alliance with Sparta, Elis, and Achaia. This political tendency was doubtless kept before Epaminondas by the Tegean party in Arcadia, opposed to the party of Mantinea ; being communicated to him with partisan exaggerations even beyond the reality. The danger, actual or presumed, of Tegea, with the arrest which had been there operated, satisfied him that a powerful Theban intervention could be no longer deferred. As Boeotarch, he obtained the consent of his countrymen to assemble a Boeotian force, to summon the allied contingents, and to conduct this joint expedition into Peloponnesus. The army with which he began his march was numerous and imposing. It comprised all the Boeotians and Eubceans, with a
