Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/460

 444 HISTORY OF GREECF. Both Tegea and Mantineia held several of these smaller Are*- dian townships near them in a sort of dependence, and were anxious to extend this empire over others : during the Pelopon nesian war, we find the Mantineians establishing and garrisoning a fortress at Kypsela among the Parrhasii, near the site in which Megalopolis was afterwards built. 1 But at this period, Sparta, as the political chief of Hellas, having a strong interest in keeping all the Grecian towns,. small and great, as much isolated from each other as possible, and in checking all schemes for the formation of local confederacies, stood forward as the pro- tectress of the autonomy of these smaller Arcadians, and drove back the Mantineians within their own limits. 2 At a somewhat later period, during the acme of her power, a few years before the battle of Leuktra, she even proceeded to the extreme length of breaking up the unity of Mantineia itself, causing the walls to be razed, and the inhabitants to be again parcelled into their five original demes, a violent arrangement, which the turn of po- litical events very soon reversed. 3 It was not until after the battle of Leuktra and the depression of Sparta that any mea- sures were taken for the formation of an Arcadian political confederacy ; 4 and even then, the jealousies of the separate cites rendered it incomplete and short-lived. The great perma- nent change, the establishment of Megalopolis, was accomplished It is hardly conceivable that these Arcadian clubmen should haye pos- sessed a shield and a full panoply. The language of Xenophon in calling them hoplites, and the term kKeypufyovTo, properly referring to the inscription on the shield, appear to be conceived in a spirit of contemptuous sneering, proceeding from Xenophon's miso-Theban tendencies: " The Arcadian hop- lites, with their clubs, put themselves forward to be as good as the Thebans." That these tendencies of Xenophon show themselves in expressions very unbecoming to the dignity of history (though curious as evidences of the time), may be seen by vii. 5, 12, where he says of the Thebans, evruv&a 6% ol vvp Trveovrcf, ol veviKrjKoref rovf AaKdai/j.oviovf, oi r<p Kavrl frAeoi'tf, etc. 1 Thucyl T. 33, 47, 81. f Thucyd. 1. c. Compare the instructive speech of Klcigcnes, the envoy from Akanthus, addressed to the Lacedaemonians, B. c. 382 (Xen. Helleo v. 2, 15-16). 3 Xcnoph. Hellcn. v. 2, 1-6 ; Diodor. xv. 19.
 * Xcnooh. Hellen. vi. 5, 70-11 ; vii. 1, 23-25.