ebes
had the same ascendency in Boeotia that Sparta had in Laconia?" Agesilaus,
at last, indignantly started from his seat, and said to Epaminondas:
"Speak plainly. Will you, or will you not, leave to each of the Boeotian
cities its separate autonomy?" To which the other replied: "Will you leave
each of the Laconian towns autonomous?" Without saying a word, Agesilaus
struck the name of the Thebans out of the roll, and they were excluded
from the treaty.

(M635) The war now is to be prosecuted between Sparta and Thebes, since
peace was sworn between all the other States. The deputies of Thebes
returned home discouraged, knowing that their city must now encounter,
single-handed, the whole power of the dominant State of Greece. "The
Athenians--friendly with both, yet allies with neither--suffered the dispute
to be fought out without interfering." The point of it was, whether Thebes
was in the same relation to the Boeotian towns that Sparta was to the
Laconian cities. Agesilaus contended that the relations between Thebes and
other Boeotian cities was the same as what subsisted between Sparta and her
allies. This was opposed by Epaminondas.

(M636) After the congress of B.C. 371, both Sparta and Athens fulfilled
the conditions to which their deputies had sworn. The latter gave orders
to Iphicrates to return home with his fleet, which had threatened the
Lacedaemonian coast; the former recalled her harmosts and garrisons from
all the cities which she occupied, while she made preparations, with all
her energies, to subdue Thebes. It was anticipated that so powerful a
State as Sparta would soon accomplish her object, and few out of Boeotia
doubted her success.

(M637) King Cleombrotus was accordingly ordered to march out of Phocis,
where he was with a powerful force, into Boeotia. Epaminondas, with a body
of Thebans, occupied a narrow pass near Coronea, between a spur of Mount
Helicon and the Lake Copais. But instead of forcing this pass, the Spartan
king turned southward by a mountain road, over Helicon, deemed scarcely
practicable, and defeated a Theban division which guarded it, and marched
to Creusis, on the Gulf of Alcyonis, and captured twelve Theban triremes
in the harbor. He then left a garrison to occupy the post, and proceeded
over a mountainous road in the territory of Thespiae, on the eastern
declivity of Helicon, to Leuctra, where he encamped. He was now near
Thebes, having a communication with Sparta through the