Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/195

THliBES AND SPARTA. 173 promised, if it became irksome. By such change, therefore, both Athens and Sparta were losers in power ; yet the latter to a much greater extent than the former, inasmuch as her reach of power over her allies had been more comprehensive and stringent. We here see the exact point upon which the requisition ad- dressed by Sparta to Thebes, and the controversy between Epa- minondas and Agesilaus, really turned. Agesilaus contended that the relation between Thebes and the other Boeotian cities was the same as what subsisted between Sparta and her allies ; that ac- cordingly, when Sparta renounced the indefeasible and compulsory character of her confederacy, and agreed to deal with each of its members as a self-acting and independent unit, she was entitled to demand that Thebes should do the same in reference to the Boeo- tian towns. Epaminondas, on the contrary, denied the justice of this parallel. He maintained that the proper subject of compar- ison to be taken, was the relation of Sparta, not to her extra-La- conian allies, but to the Laconian townships ; that the federal union of the Boeotian towns under Thebes was coeval with the Boeotian settlement, and among the most ancient phenomena of Greece ; that in reference to other states, Boeotia, like Laconia or Attica, was the compound and organized whole, of which each separate city was only a fraction ; that other Greeks had no more right to meddle with the internal constitution of these fractions, and convert each of them into an integer, than to insist on separate independence for each of the townships of Laconia. Epaminondas did not mean to contend that the power of Thebes over the Boeotian cities was as complete and absolute in degree, as that of Sparta over the Laconian townships ; but merely that her presidential power, and the federal system of which it formed a part, were established, indefeasible, and beyond the interference of any Hellenic convention, quite as much as the internal government of Sparta in Laconia. Once already this question had been disputed between Sparta and Thebes at the peace of Antalkidas ; and already decided onss by the superior power of the former, extorting submission from the latter. The last sixteen years had reversed the previous decision, and enabled the Thebans to reconquer those presidential rights of which the former peace had deprived them. Again, therefore, the question stood for decision, with keener antipathy