Prodigious was the change operated throughout the Grecian world during the eighteen months between June 371 b.c. (when the general peace, including all except Thebes, was sworn at Sparta, twenty days before the battle of Leuktra), and the spring of 369 b.c., when the Thebans, after a victorious expedition into Peloponnesus, were reconducted home by Epaminondas.

Changes in Peloponnesus since the battle of Leuktra.

How that change worked in Peloponnesus, amounting to a partial re-constitution of the peninsula, has been sketched in the preceding chapter. Among most of the cities and districts hitherto dependent allies of Sparta, the local oligarchies, whereby Spartan influence had been maintained, were overthrown, not without harsh and violent reaction. Laconia had been invaded and laid waste, while the Spartans were obliged to content themselves with guarding their central hearth and their families from assault. The western and best half of Laconia had been wrested from them; Messênê had been constituted as a free city on their frontier; a large proportion of their Periœki and Helots had been converted into independent Greeks bitterly hostile to them; moreover the Arcadian population had been emancipated from their dependence, and organized into self-acting jealous neigh bours in the new city of Megalopolis, as well as in Tegea and Mantinea. The once philo-Laconian Tegea was now among the chief enemies of Sparta; and the Skiritæ, so long numbered as the bravest of the auxiliary troops of the latter, were now identified in sentiment with Arcadians and Thebans against her.