[199] If, indeed, we could believe Isokrates, speaking through the mouth of a Platæan, it would seem that the Thebans, immediately after their revolution, sent an humble embassy to Sparta deprecating hostility, entreating to be admitted as allies, and promising service, even against their benefactors the Athenians, just as devoted as the deposed government had rendered; an embassy which the Spartans haughtily answered by desiring them to receive back their exiles, and to cast out the assassins Pelopidas and his comrades. It is possible that the Thebans may have sent to try the possibility of escaping Spartan enmity; but it is highly improbable that they made any such promises as those here mentioned; and it is certain that they speedily began to prepare vigorously for that hostility which they saw to be approaching. See Isokrates, Or. xiv, (Plataic.) s. 31. This oration is put into the mouth of a Platæan, and seems to be an assemblage of nearly all the topics which could possibly be enforced, truly or falsely, against Thebes. The exiles from Thebes, arriving at Sparta, inflamed both the ephors, and the miso-Theban Agesilaus, to the highest pitch. Though it was then the depth of winter,[200] an expedition was decreed forthwith against Thebes, and the allied contingents were summoned. Agesilaus declined to take the command of it, on the ground that he was above sixty years of age, and therefore no longer liable to compulsory foreign service. But this (says Xenophon[201]) was not his real reason. He was afraid that his enemies at Sparta would say,—“Here is Agesilaus again putting us to expense, in order that he may uphold despots in other cities,”—as he had just done, and had been reproached with doing, at Phlius; a second proof that the reproaches against Sparta (which I have cited a few pages above from Lysias and Isokrates) of allying herself with Greek despots as well as with foreigners to put down Grecian freedom, found an echo even in Sparta herself. Accordingly Kleombrotus, the other king of Sparta, took the command. He had recently succeeded his brother Agesipolis, and had never commanded before. [200] Xen. Hellen. v, 4, 14. μάλα χειμῶνος ὄντος. [201] Xen. Hellen. v, 4, 13. εὖ εἰδὼς ὅτι, εἰ στρατηγοίη, λέξειαν οἱ πολῖται, ὡς Ἀγησίλαος, ὅπως βοηθήσειε τοῖς τυράννοις, πράγματα τῇ πόλει παρέχοι. Plutarch, Agesil. c. 24.