venture to justify it openly, and Phoebidas was made the scape-goat of her affected displeasure. As a sort of atonement to the violated feeling of Greece, he was censured, fined, and dismissed. But that this was a mere farce is evident from the fact, of his subsequent restoration to command; and, however indignant the Lacedaemonians affected to appear at the act of Phoebidas, they took care to reap the fruits of it by retaining their garrison in the Cadmea. The once haughty Thebes was now enrolled a member of the Lacedaemonian alliance, and furnished her contingent--the grateful offering of the new Theban government--for the war which Sparta was prosecuting with redoubled vigour against Olynthus. This city was taken by the Lacedaemonians in B.C. 379; the Olynthian confederacy was dissolved; the Grecian cities belonging to it were compelled to join the Lacedaemonian alliance; whilst the maritime towns of Macedonia were reduced under the dominion of Amyntas, the king of Macedon. The power of Sparta on land had now attained its greatest height. Her unpopularity in Greece was commensurate with the extent of her harshly administered dominion. She was leagued on all slides with the enemies of Grecian freedom--with the Persians, with Amyntas of Macedon, and with Dionysius of Syracuse. But she had now reached the turning-point of her fortunes, and her successes, which had been earned without scruple, were soon to be followed by misfortunes and disgrace. The first blow came from Thebes, where she had perpetrated her most signal injustice.