(M618) The Lacedæmonians succeeded, after the death of Conon, in concentrating a considerable fleet near Rhodes. Against this, Thrasybulus was sent from Athens with a still larger one, and was gaining advantages, when he was slain near Aspendus, in Pamphylia, in a mutiny, and Athens lost the restorer of her renovated democracy, and an able general and honest citizen, without the vindictive animosities which characterized the great men of his day. (M619) Rhodes still held out against the Lacedæmonians, who were now commanded by Anaxibius, in the place of Dercyllidas. He was surprised by Iphicrates, and was slain, and the Athenians, under this gallant leader, again became masters of the Hellespont. But this success was balanced by the defection of Ægina, which island was constrained by the Lacedæmonians into war with Athens. I need not detail the various enterprises on both sides, until Antalcidas returned from Susa with the treaty confirmed between the Spartans and the court of Persia, which closed the war between the various contending parties, B.C. 387. This treaty was of great importance, but it indicates the loss of all Hellenic dignity when Sparta, too, descends so far as to comply with the demands of a Persian satrap. Athens and Sparta, both, at different times, invoked the aid of Persia against each other—the most mournful fact in the whole history of Greece, showing how much more powerful were the rivalries of States than the sentiment of patriotism, which should have united them against their common enemy. The sacrifice of Ionia was the price which was paid by Sparta, in order to retain her supremacy over the rest of Greece, and Persia ruled over all the Greeks on the Asiatic coast. Sparta became mistress of Corinth and of the Corinthian Isthmus. She organized anti-Theban oligarchies in the Bœotian cities, with a Spartan harmost. She decomposed the Grecian world into small fragments. She crushed Olythus, and formed a confederacy between the Persian king and the Dionysius of Syracuse. In short, she ruled with despotic sway over all the different States. We have now to show how Sparta lost the ascendency she had gained, and became involved in a war with Thebes, and how Thebes became, under Pelopidas and Epaminondas, for a time the dominant State of Greece. CHAPTER XXII. THE REPUBLIC OF THEBES. (M620) After Sparta and Athens, no State of Greece arrived at pre-eminence, until the Macedonian empire arose, except Thebes, the capital of Bœotia; and the empire of this city was short, though memorable, from the extraordinary military genius of Epaminondas.