(M635) The war now is to be prosecuted between Sparta and Thebes, since peace was sworn between all the other States. The deputies of Thebes returned home discouraged, knowing that their city must now encounter, single-handed, the whole power of the dominant State of Greece. “The Athenians—friendly with both, yet allies with neither—suffered the dispute to be fought out without interfering.” The point of it was, whether Thebes was in the same relation to the Bœotian towns that Sparta was to the Laconian cities. Agesilaus contended that the relations between Thebes and other Bœotian cities was the same as what subsisted between Sparta and her allies. This was opposed by Epaminondas. (M636) After the congress of B.C. 371, both Sparta and Athens fulfilled the conditions to which their deputies had sworn. The latter gave orders to Iphicrates to return home with his fleet, which had threatened the Lacedæmonian coast; the former recalled her harmosts and garrisons from all the cities which she occupied, while she made preparations, with all her energies, to subdue Thebes. It was anticipated that so powerful a State as Sparta would soon accomplish her object, and few out of Bœotia doubted her success. (M637) King Cleombrotus was accordingly ordered to march out of Phocis, where he was with a powerful force, into Bœotia. Epaminondas, with a body of Thebans, occupied a narrow pass near Coronea, between a spur of Mount Helicon and the Lake Copais. But instead of forcing this pass, the Spartan king turned southward by a mountain road, over Helicon, deemed scarcely practicable, and defeated a Theban division which guarded it, and marched to Creusis, on the Gulf of Alcyonis, and captured twelve Theban triremes in the harbor. He then left a garrison to occupy the post, and proceeded over a mountainous road in the territory of Thespiæ, on the eastern declivity of Helicon, to Leuctra, where he encamped. He was now near Thebes, having a communication with Sparta through the port of Creusis. The Thebans were dismayed, and it required all the tact and eloquence of Epaminondas and Pelopidas to rally them. They marched out at length from Thebes, under their seven bœotrarchs, and posted themselves opposite the Spartan camp. Epaminondas was one of these generals, and urged immediate battle, although the Theban forces were inferior.