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96 decided on war against the destroyer of thirty Greek cities; but it was not easy for her to see her way to such a step alone and unsupported.

The relations, too, of the states of Greece to each other and to Athens presented many difficulties. Never had there been a time when it was harder to unite them. Sparta, the leading state of the Peloponnese, could under no circumstances be easily stimulated into exertions in the Greek cause. Her statesmen were apt to take a narrow and selfish view of the politics of Greece. The other states of the Peloponnese were more afraid of being oppressed by Spartan ascendancy, of which they had had actual experience, than of danger from Macedon, of which they knew next to nothing. Here, therefore, there was but a poor prospect of coalition. Thebes and Phocis, the two remaining states, were themselves engaged in the Sacred War. Phocis had appropriated to itself the treasures of the temple of Delphi, and had thus put itself in a false position before the Greek world, as being guilty of sacrilege. And as for Thebes, it had no really great and farsighted statesmen; nor had it, to the extent which Athens still had, a sense of its duty to Greece. Its policy was often particularly selfish; and even under the most favourable circumstances, it would have been most difficult to have persuaded Thebans to co-operate heartily with Athenians. So anxious was it to crush its Phocian neighbours, with whom it had long been involved in a troublesome war, that when Philip undertook to crush them it welcomed the offer. The bait he held out was tempting; but the Thebans ought