Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/226

 200 IIISTOLr OF GlsEE^K. sending deputies to her synod and contributing to a common fun4 for the maintenance of the joint security. She was by far thf greatest maritime power of Greece. I have recounted in icy last preceding volume, how her general Timotheus had acquired for her the important island of Samos, together with Pydna, Me- thone, and Potidaa, in the Thermaic Gulf; how he failed (as Iphikrates had failed before him) in more than one attempt upon Amphipolis ; how he planted Athenian conquest and settlers in the Thracian Chersonese, which territory, after having been at- tacked and endangered by the Thracian prince Kotys, was re- gained by the continued efforts of Athens in the year 358 B. c. Athens had sustained no considerable loss, during the struggles which ended in the pacification after the battle of Mantinea ; and her condition appears on the whole to have been better than it had ever been since her disasters at the close of the Peloponne sian war. The power of Thebes also was imposing and formidable. She had indeed lost many of those Peloponnesian allies who formed the overwhelming array of Epaminondas when he first invaded Laconia, under the fresh anti-Spartan impulse immediately suc- ceeding the battle of Leuktra. She retained only Argos, togeth- er with Tegea, Megalopolis, and Messene. The last three added little to her strength, and needed her watchful support ; a prict which Epaminondas had been perfectly willing to pay for the es tablishment of a strong frontier against Sparta. But the body of extra Peloponnesian allies grouped round Thebes was still consid- erable : l the Phokians and Lokrians, the Malians, the Herakleots most of the Thessalians, and most (if not all) of the inhabitants of Euboca ; perhaps also the Akarnanians. The Phokians were indeed reluctant allies, disposed to jircumscribe their obligations within the narrowest limits of mutual defence in case of invasion and we shall presently find the relations between the two becom- 1 Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 5 23 ; vii. 5, 4. Diodor. xv. 62. The Akarnanians had been allies of Thebes at the time of the first expedition of Epaminoa das into Peloponnesus; whether they remained so at the time of his last expcditba, is not certain. But as the Theban ascendency over Thessaly was mucn greater at the last of those two periods than at tho first, we may be sure that they had not lost their hold upon the Lokrians and Malians who (as well as the Phokians) lay between Bceotia and Thessaly.