ion of Sparta
was not yet near its end. Epaminondas was not the man to do things by
halves. In November of 370 B.C. he marched an army into Arcadia (a
country adjoining Laconia on the north), probably the largest hostile
force that had ever been seen in the Peloponnesus. With its Arcadian and
other allies it amounted to forty thousand, or, as some say, to seventy
thousand, men, and among these the Thebans formed a body of splendidly
drilled and disciplined troops, not surpassed by those of Sparta
herself. The enthusiasm arising from victory, the ardor of Pelopidas,
and the military genius of Epaminondas had made a wonderful change in
the hoplites of Thebes in a year's time.

And now a new event in the history of the Spartan commonwealth was seen.
For centuries the Spartans had done their fighting abroad, marching at
will through all parts of Greece. They were now obliged to fight on
their own soil, in defence of their own hearths and homes. Dividing his
army into four portions, Epaminondas marched into rock-bounded Laconia
by four passes.

The Arcadians had often felt the hard hand of their warlike neighbors.
Only a snort time before one of their principal cities, Mantinea, had
been robbed of its walls and converted into open villages. Since the
battle of Leuctra the villagers had rebuilt their walls and defied a
Spartan army. Now the Arcadians proved even more daring than the
Thebans. They met a Spartan force and annihilated it.

Into the country of Laconia pushed the invaders. The city of Sellasia
was taken and burned. The river Eurotas was forded. Sparta lay before
Epaminondas and his men.

It lay before them without a wall or tower. Through its whole history no
foreign army had come so near it. It trusted for defence not to walls,
but to Spartan hearts and hands. Yet now consternation reigned. Sparta
the inviolate, Sparta the unassailable, was in imminent peril of
suffering the same fate it had often meted out freely to its foes.

But the Spartans had not been idle. Allies had sent aid in all haste to
the city. Even six thousand of the Helots were armed as hoplites, though
to see such a body of their slaves in heavy armor alarmed the Spartans
almost as much as to behold their foes so near at hand. In fact, many of
the Helots and country people joined the Theban army, while others
refused to come to the aid of the imperilled city.

Epaminondas marched on until he was in sight of the city. He did not
attempt to