Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/190

 168 HISTORY OF GREECE. While most of the deputies stood overawed by her dignity, repre- sented by the energetic Agesilaus as spokesman, he, like the Athenian Autokles, and with strong sympathy from many of the deputies present, had proclaimed that nothing kept alive the war except her unjust pretensions, and that no peace could be du- rable unless such pretensions were put aside. 1 Accepting the conditions of peace as finally determined, he presented himself to swear to them in the name of the Boeotian federation. But Agesi- laus, requiring that each of the Boeotian cities should take the oath for itself, appealed to those same principles of liberty which Epami- nondas himself had just invoked, and asked him whether each of the Boeotian cities had not as good a title to autonomy as Thebes. Epaminondas might have replied by asking, why Sparta had just been permitted to take the oath for her allies as well as for herself. But he took a higher ground. He contended that the presidency of Boeotia was held by Thebes on as good a title as the sovereign- ty of Laconia by Sparta. 2 He would remind the assembly that when Boeotia was first conquered and settled by its present inhabi- tants, the other towns had all been planted out from Thebes as their chief and mother-city ; that the federal union of all, adminis- tered by Boeotarchs chosen by and from all, with Thebes as presi- dent, was coeval with the first settlement of the country ; that the separate autonomy of each was qualified by an established institu- tion, devolving on the Boeotarchs and councils sitting at Thebes the management of the foreign relations of all jointly. All this had been already pleaded by the Theban orator fifty-six years earlier, before the five Spartan commissioners, assembled to deter- mine the fate of the captives after the surrender of Plataea ; when he required the condemnation of the Plataeans as guilty of treason to the ancestral institutions of Boeotia; 3 and the Spartan commis- 1 Plutarch, Agesil. c. 27. * Plutarch. Agcsil. c. 28. 3 Thucyd. iii, 61. fyfitiv (the Thebans) KTIOUVTUV IIAaratav varepov rrjt. aKkriQ Botwn'af Kal u.'k'ka xvpia //er' air^f, a %VHH'LK.TOV<; u.vdpTrov<; i^e^ucav- ref laxofiev, OVK TJ^'LOVV OVTOI (the Plataeans), &ane p Tax&7) rb TT/JW- TOV, fiyefiovEveaftai ixj? Tjfiuv, eu 6s ruv ahhuv BOIUTUV irapa- Baivovree T& ITU rpia, eTreidr) KpoffTjvayKuZoi'TO, npoaexupqaav irpbf 'A-&7jvaiovf, etc. Again (c. 65) he says respecting the oligarchical Plataeans who admitted the Theban detachment when it- came by night to surprise Plataea, d 6i