garrison the place for six months, with pay
for that period. After this he dismissed the allied forces, and led the
state (14) division home. Thus the transactions concerning Phlius were
brought to a conclusion, having occupied altogether one year and eight
months.

(13) See below, "Hell." VII. i. 19.

(14) {to politokon}, the citizen army. See above, IV. iv. 19; "Pol.
Lac." xi.

Meanwhile Polybiades had reduced the citizens of Olynthus to the last
stage of misery through famine. Unable to supply themselves with corn
from their own land, or to import it by sea, they were forced to send an
embassy to Lacedaemon to sue for peace. The plenipotentiaries on their
arrival accepted articles of agreement by which they bound themselves
to have the same friends and the same foes as Lacedaemon, to follow her
lead, and to be enrolled among her allies; and so, having taken an oath
to abide by these terms, they returned home.

On every side the affairs of Lacedaemon had signally prospered: Thebes
and the rest of the Boeotian states lay absolutely at her feet; Corinth
had become her most faithful ally; Argos, unable longer to avail herself
of the subterfuge of a movable calendar, was humbled to the dust; Athens
was isolated; and, lastly, those of her own allies who displayed a
hostile feeling towards her had been punished; so that, to all outward
appearance, the foundations of her empire were at length absolutely well
and firmly laid.

IV

Abundant examples might be found, alike in Hellenic and in foreign
history, to prove that the Divine powers mark what is done amiss,
winking neither at impiety nor at the commission of unhallowed acts;
but at present I confine myself to the facts before me. (1) The
Lacedaemonians, who had pledged themselves by oath to leave the states
independent, had laid violent hands on the acropolis of Thebes, and were
eventually punished by the victims of that iniquity single-handed--the
Lacedaemonians, be it noted, who had never before been mastered by
living man; and not they alone, but those citizens of Thebes who
introduced them to their acropolis, and who wished to enslave their city
to Lacedaemon, that they might play the tyrant themselves--how fared
it with them? A bare score of the fugitives were sufficient to destroy
their government. How this happened I will now narrate in detail.

(1) Or, "it is of my own subject that I must now speak." For the
"peripety," or sudden reversal