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^34 HISTORY OF GREECE. probably in any condition to furnish pecuniary aid. Their refusal occasioned much displeasure at Athens, embittered by jealousy at the strides which they had been making during the two last years, partly through the indirect effect of the naval successes of Athens. At the end of the year 377 B. c., after the two successive invasions of Agesilaus, the ruin of two home crops had so straitened the Thebans, that they were forced to import corn from Pagasae in Thessaly ; in which enterprise their ships and seamen were at first captured by the Lacedaemonian harmost at Oreus in Euboea, Alketas. His negligence, however, soon led not only to an out- break of their seamen who had been taken prisoners, but also to the revolt of the town from Sparta, so that the communication of Thebes with Pegasae became quite unimpeded. For the two succeeding years, there had been no Spartan invasion of Bceotia ; since, in 376 B. c., Kleombrotus could not surmount the heights of Kithaeron, while in 375 B. c., the attention of Sparta had been occupied by the naval operations of Timotheus in the Ionian Sea. During these two years, the Thebans had exerted them- selves vigorously against the neighboring cities of Breotia, in most of which a strong party, if not the majority of the population, was favorable to them, though the government was in the hands of the philo-Spartan oligarchy, seconded by Spartan harmosts and gar- rison. 1 We hear of one victory gained by the Theban cavalry near Plataea, under Charon; and of another near Tanagra, in which Panthoides, the Lacedaemonian harmost in that town, was slain. 2 But the most important of all their successes was that of Pelo- pidas near Tegyra. That commander, hearing that the Spartan harmost, with his two (mora3 or) divisions in garrison at Orcho- menus, had gone away on an excursion into the Lokrian territory, made a dash from Thebes with the Sacred Band and a few cavalry, to surprise the place. It was the season in which the waters of the Lake Kopais were at the fullest, so that he was obliged to take a wide circuit to the north-west, and to pass by Tegyra, on the road between Orchomenus and the Opuntian Lokris. On arriving nal xpvpuruv elcQopatf /cat TiTiareiaiQ f Atyw^f, KI / riff x<*>pa<;, ETtE&vfiTjaav Travaaa-^ai TOV Tro/ltuow. 1 Xen. Hellen. v, 4, 46-55. * Plutarch, Pdopidas, c. 15-25.