Such things were little fitted to make Sparta a “Liberator of the Greeks,” as she professed to be when seeking to crush the imperial power of Athens; and, as soon as her military power began to decline, she gradually lost her influence. Yet it should not be forgotten that after the battle of Ægospotami (404 B.C.), when the Athenian empire was shattered and its capital lay at the mercy of the Peloponnesian allies, the Spartans refused to assent to the proposal of Corinth and Thebes that Athens should be destroyed and its inhabitants sold into slavery--declaring that they could never be a party to such treatment of a city which had laid all Greece under obligations by its conduct at the time of the Persian invasion. It is also to the credit of Sparta that as late as 338 B.C. she, alone of all the Greek states, refused to submit to Philip, who ravaged her territory, but failed to take the city, as Epaminondas had also failed to do, when he occupied the country a generation before. A hundred years later an earnest attempt was made by two Spartan kings, Agis IV. and Cleomenes III., to revive the ancient discipline and government; and some measure of immediate success was attained. But it was only the last flicker of the expiring flame. The battle of Sellasia in 221 B.C. put an end for ever to the Heracleid kingdom, and in the next generation Philopœmen abolished what was still left of the Lycurgean constitution. Thenceforth the greatness of Sparta was a thing of the past. “These are the walls of Lacedæmon,” said Agesilaus on one occasion, as he pointed to the citizens in arms. The truth of his words was proved more than once, as we have just seen. But he might also have pointed to the mountain barriers by which the country was hemmed in on every side except towards the sea, where invaders were confronted by a dangerous and inhospitable coast. The city described by Thucydides lay on the western side of the river Eurotas, in a plain four or five miles in breadth and about eighteen miles in length. It presented the appearance of a number of adjoining villages, built on low hills; and in this respect it has been compared to ancient Rome. The situation is beautiful, especially as one looks west upon the grand range of Taÿgetus, its lower slopes and valleys clothed with the richest vegetation, while its serried peaks, extending for miles towards Cape Matapan on the south, rise into the region of perpetual snow. The site of the ancient city is for the most part covered over with olive-groves and corn-fields and other vegetation. Traces of a large theatre have been found, and there is a massive stone structure which goes by the name of Leonidas’ tomb. There are a few other remains, but none of any great interest.