Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/242

214 attempted too much. At one time they thought of wresting the naval supremacy from Athens, and Epaminondas, who went on a kind of tentative expedition to Byzantium, was said to have threatened to remove the ornaments of the Acropolis to Thebes. They also undertook to champion the Thessalians against the tyranny of Alexander of Pherae. Pelopidas, the bosom friend of Epaminondas, who had taken the lead in expelling the Spartan garrison from the Kadmeia, was three times sent into Thessaly, and on the third occasion was defeated and killed (B.C. 363). They had, moreover, inspired the Arcadians with so much confidence in themselves that some of their cities began to be restive under the Theban supremacy. The schism was increased by a quarrel over the management of Olympia and the use to be made of its treasures. In this dispute some appealed to Athens and Sparta and others to Thebes. Mantineia was the leading state on the Spartan side, and the primary object of Epaminondas in his fourth invasion of the Peloponnese was to reduce that town. After only just failing to surprise Sparta he gave the allied troops battle at Mantineia, where he won a great victory but lost his own life (B.C. 362). Peace was then made between all the warring states, from which, however, Sparta stood aloof. There was no more fighting for four years, but the general result of the ten years of Theban supremacy was weakness and disunion everywhere, the isolation of Sparta, and a renewed bitterness of feeling between Thebes and Athens, which were still the two strongest states.