Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/192

 170 HISTORY OF GREECE. account of antipathy to clear off with Thebes ; their own wrong- doing in seizing the Kadmeia, their subsequent humiliation in losing it and being unable to recover it, their recent short-com- ings and failures, in the last seven years of war against Athens and Thebes jointly. To aggravate this deep-seated train of hostile associations, their pride was now wounded in an unforeseen point, the tenderest of all. Agesilaus, full to overflowing of the national sentiment, which in the mind of a Spartan passed for the first of virtues, was stung to the quick. Had he been an Athenian orator Jake Kallistratus, his wrath would have found vent in an animated harangue. But a king of Sparta was anxious only to close these offensive discussions with scornful abruptness, thus leaving to the presumptuous Theban no middle ground between humble retrac- tion and acknowledged hostility. Indignantly starting from his seat, he said to Epaminondas, " Speak plainly, will you, or will you not, leave to each of the Boeotian cities its separate auto- nomy ? " To which the other replied " Will you leave each of the Laconian towns autonomous ? " Without saying another word, Agesilaus immediately caused the name of the Thebans to be struck out of the roll, and proclaimed them excluded from the treaty. 1 than consent to the relinquishment of Messenia, Trep? fiev u/Uwv TIVUV ufiQiaflijTJjaeie, eyiyvovro, irepl 6e MeaaqvT/f, ovre f3aai%ei)(, ovd' i] TUV 'Atf??- vaiuv TroAif, ov6e TrwTrot?' ?/fj,lv IveKuhecrsv uf ud'iKus KEKTTj/'^voif OVTTJV (Isok. Arch. s. 32). In the spring of 371 B. c., what had once boeu Messenia, was only a portion of Laconia, which no one thought of distinguishing from the other portions (see Thucyd. iv, 3, 11). 1 Plutarch, Agesil. c. 28; Pausanias, ix, 13, 1 ; compare Diodor. xv, 51, Pausanias erroneously assigns the debate to the congress preceding the peace of Antalkidas in 387 B.C.; at which time Epaminondas was an un- known rnan. Plutarch gives this interchange of brief questions, between Agesilaus and Epaminondas, which is in substance the same as that givn by Pausanias. and has every appearance of being the truth. But he introduces it in a very bold and abrupt way, such as cannot be conformable to the reality To raise a question about the right of Sparta to govern Laconia, was a most daring novelty. A courageous and patriotic Theban migb*; venture upon it as a retort against those Spartans who questioned the rigb f, of Thebes tc her presidency of Boeotia; but he would never do so without assigning hit reasons to justify an assertion so startling to a large portio-a rf his hear-rg The reasons which I here ascribe to Epnminondas are such -v- *VP rn 4