Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/227

 BOEOTIAN CITIES. 20J ing posith eiy hostile. Besides these allies, th a Thebans possessed the valuable position of Oropus, on the north-eastern frontier of Attica ; a town which had been wrested from Athens six years before, to the profound mortification of the Athenians. But o"ver and above allies without Boeotia, Thebes had prodi- giously increased the power of her city within Boeotia. She had appropriated to herself the territories of Platasa and Thespiae on her southern frontier, and of Koroneia and Orchomenus near upon her northern ; bj conquest and partial expulsion of their prior inhabitants. How and when these acquisitions had been brought about, has been explained in my preceding volume r 1 here I merely recall the fact, to appreciate the position of Thebes in 359 B. c. that these four towns, having been in 372 B. c. auton- omous joined with her only by the definite obligations of the Boeotian confederacy and partly even in actual hostility against her had now lost their autonomy with their free citizens, and had become absorbed into her property and sovereignty. The domain of Thebes thus extended across Boeotia from the frontiers of Phokis 2 on the north-west to the frontiers of Attica on the south. The new position thus acquired by Thebes in Boeotia, pur- chased at the cost of extinguishing three or four autonomous cities, is a fact of much moment in reference to the period now before us ; not simply because it swelled the power and pride of the Thebans themselves ; but also because it raised a strong body of unfavorable sentiment against them in the Hellenic mind. Just at the time when the Spartans had lost nearly one-half of Laco- nia, the Thebans had annexed to their own city one-third of the free Boeotian territory. The revival of free Messenian citizen- ship, after a suspended existence of more than two centuries, had recently been welcomed ivith universal satisfaction. How much would that same feeling be shocked when Thebes extinguished, for her own aggrandizement, four autonomous communities, all ot her own Boeotian kindred one of these communities too being Orchomenus, respected both for its antiquity and its traditionary 1 Vol. X. Ch. Ixxvii. p. 161 ; Ch. Ixxviii. p. 195 ; Ch. Ixxx. p. 312. be. 39, l.i
 * Orchomenus was conterminous with the Phokian territory (Pausanias.