Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/224

 i >8 HISTORY OF GREECE. das and the Thebans. She was no longer the head of a numer ous body of subordinate allies, sending deputies to her periodical B/nods submitting their external politics to her influence placing their military contingents under command of her officers (xenagi) and even administering their internal government through oligarchies devoted to her purposes, with the reinforce- ment, wherever needed, of a Spartan harmost and garrison. She no longer found on her northern frontier a number of detached Arcadian villages, each separately manageable under leaders de- voted to her, and furnishing her with hardy soldiers ; nor had she the friendly city of Tegea, tied to her by a long-standing philo- Laconian oligarchy and tradition. Under the strong revolution of feeling which followed on the defeat of the Spartans at Leuktra, the small Arcadian communities, encouraged and guided by Epa minondas, had consolidated themselves into the great fortified city of Megalopolis, now the centre of a Pan-Arcadian confederacy, with a synod (called the Ten thousand) frequently assembled there to decide upon matters of interest and policy common to the various sections of the Arcadian name. Tegea too had under- gone a political revolution ; so that these two cities, conterminous with each other and forming together the northern frontier of Sparta, converted her Arcadian neighbors from valuable instru- ments into formidable enemies. But this loss of foreign auxiliary force and dignity was not the worst which Sparta had suffered. On her north-western frontier (conterminous also with Megalopolis) stood the newly-constituted city of Messene, representing an amputation of nearly one-half of Spartan territory and substance. The western and more fer- tile half of Laconia had been severed from Sparta, and was divided between Messene and various other independent cities ; being tilled chiefly by those who had once been Periceki and He- lots of Sparta. In the phase of Grecian history on which we are now about to enter when the collective Hellenic world, for the first time since the invasion of Xerxes, was about to be thrown upon its de- fence against a foreign enemy from Macedonia this altered posi- tion of Sparta was a circumstance of grave moment. Not only were the Peloponnesians disunited, and deprived of their common chief ; but Megalopolis and Messene, knowing the intense hostili-