THE HUMILIATION OF SPARTA. 267

ous position. This they gladly accepted, and marched
in haste away. On their journey home they met a
second army coming to their relief. This was no
longer needed, and the whole baffled force returned
home.

The military prestige held by Sparta met with a
serious blow from this signal defeat. The prestige
of Thebes suddenly rose into supremacy, and her
control of Beotia became complete. But the humil-
iation of Sparta was not yet near its end. Epam-
inondas was not the man to do things by halves.
In November of 370 3.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 vic-
tory, 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 Spar-
tans 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