But the chief rôles in the political life of Arcadia were played by Mantinea and Tegea, cities lying in the wide eastern plains. Near them lay Pallantium, and within the territories of these three cities flourishes the modern Tripolis, in its origin an important Turkish stronghold and now one of the most prosperous towns of the new nation. The sanguinary history of Tripolis in the War of Independence was worthy of the ancient character of Mantinea and Tegea. Although Homer called Mantinea “lovely,” her life was one of military activity. Mantineans fought at Thermopylæ, but it is in the pages of the historians of later periods, of Thucydides, Xenophon, and Polybius, that they chiefly figure, fighting on their own territory against Sparta or with Sparta against Thebes. This evil coalition resulted in the famous battle of 362 B. C., in which Epaminondas fought for the last time. The description of the battle forms the close of Xenophon’s treatise on Greek History, and the chaotic results of the long-anticipated struggle, whereby “neither party, though each claimed to have conquered, was seen to gain any more in land or cities or authority than it possessed before the battle was fought,” are set forth by him with considerable vividness. But the momentous fact that in this battle the great Theban commander lost his life he disposes of in a subordinate clause. This petty injustice is the more singular because the fatal blow was generally believed to have been struck by Xenophon’s son, Grylus, who received a public burial and monument at Mantinea. It is Pausanias who admits us to the last scene of a noble life, enacted among the alien, windswept oaks of Arcadia, on the hill now known as Mytika. “When Epaminondas received his wound, they carried him out of the line of battle. He was still in life. He suffered much, but with his hand pressed on his wound he kept looking hard at the fight, and the place from which he watched it was afterwards named ‘Scope’ (the Lookout). But when the combat ended indecisively he took his hand from the wound and breathed his last, and they buried him on the battlefield.”