B.C. 367. (43) But Epaminondas was bent on one more effort. With a view to forcing the Arcadians and the rest of the allies to pay better heed to Thebes, he desired first to secure the adhesion of the Achaeans, and decided to march an army into Achaea. Accordingly, he persuaded the Argive Peisias, who was at the head of military affairs in Argos, to seize and occupy Oneion in advance. Persias, having ascertained that only a sorry guard was maintained over Oneion by Naucles, the general commanding the Lacedaemonian foreign brigade, and by Timomachus the Athenian, under cover of night seized and occupied with two thousand heavy infantry the rising ground above Cenchreae, taking with him provisions for seven days. Within the interval the Thebans arrived and surmounted the pass of Oneion; whereupon the allied troops with Epaminondas at their head, advanced into Achaea. The result of the campaign was that the better classes of Achaea gave in their adhesion to him; and on his personal authority Epaminondas insisted that there should be no driving of the aristocrats into exile, nor any modification of the constitution. He was content to take a pledge of fealty from the Achaeans to this effect: "Verily and indeed we will be your allies, and follow whithersoever the Thebans lead." (44) (43) B.C. 367, according to Grote, "H. G." x. 365, note 1; al. B.C. 366. (44) See Freeman, "Hist. Fed. Gov." p. 241: "We read of local oligarchies (in the several cities of Achaia) which Epameinondas found and left in possession, but which the home government of Thebes thought good to expel, and to substitute democracies under the protection of Theban harmosts. This policy did not answer, as the large bodies of exiles thus formed contrived to recover the cities, and to bring them to a far more decided Spartan partisanship than before." So he departed home. The Arcadians, however, and the partisans of the opposite faction in Thebes were ready with an indictment against him: "Epaminondas," they said, "had merely swept and garnished Achaea for the Lacedaemonians, and then gone off." The Thebans accordingly resolved to send governors (45) into the states of Achaea; and those officers on arrival joined with the commonalty and drove out the better folk, and set up democracies throughout Achaea. On their side, these exiles coalesced, and, marching upon each separate state in turn, for they were pretty numerous, speedily won their restoration and dominated the states. As the party thus reinstated no longer steered a middle course, but went heart and soul into an alliance with Lacedaemon, the Arcadians found themselves between the upper and the nether millstone--that is to say, the Lacedaemonians and the Achaeans. (45) Lit. "harmosts."