Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/378

356 HISTORY OF GREECE. as well as her minister at war and commander-in-chief. The shame of acknowledging Thebes as leading state in Greece, em- bodied in the current phrases about Boeotian stupidity, would be sensibly mitigated, when her representative in an assembled con- gress spoke with the flowing abundance of the Homeric Odysseus, instead of the loud, brief, and hurried bluster of Menelaus. 1 The possession of suih eloquence, amidst the uninspiring atmosphere of Thebes, implied far greater mental force than a similar accom- plishment would have betokened at Athens. In Epaminondas, it was steadily associated with thought and action, that triple com- bination of thinking, speaking, and acting, which Isokrates and other Athenian sophists 2 set before their hearers as the stock and qualification for meritorious civic life. To the bodily training and soldier-like practice, common to all Thebans, Epaminondas added an ardent intellectual impulse and a range of discussion with the philosophical men around, peculiar to himself. He was not floated into public life by the accident of birth or wealth, nor hoisted and propped up by oligarchical clubs, nor even determined to it originally by any spontaneous ambition of his own. But the great revolution of 379 B. c., which expelled from Thebes both the Lacedaemonian garrison and the local oligarchy who ruled by its aid, forced him forward by the strongest obligations both of duty and interest ; since nothing but an energetic defence could rescue both him and every other free Theban from slavery. It was by the like necessity that the American revolution, and the first French revolution, thrust into the front rank the most instructed and capable men of the country, whether ambitious by temperament or not. As the pressure of the time impelled Epaminondas forward, so it also disposed his countrymen to look out for a competent leader wherever he was to be found ; and in 1 Homer, Iliad, iii, 210-220 (Menelaus and Odysseus) 'AAA' ore 6?) Tpusaaiv uyeipofievoiaiv efiix&nv, "Hrot HEV MeveAacj iTUTpoxudqv uyopeve, Havpa fj.lv, aAAKdV tireix 1 'Odvaiji / ipiaaeie fiporbf dAAof, etc. See Vol. VIII. of this History, Ch. Ixvii, p. 357-? 97 foovelv, AS; tit Kat irpurreiv etc.