Before Epaminondas could have full credit for these virtues, however, it was necessary that he should give proof of the extraordinary capacities for action with which they were combined, and that he should achieve something to earn that exclamation of praise which we shall find his enemy Agesilaus afterwards pronouncing, on seeing him at the head of the invading Theban army near Sparta,—“Oh! thou man of great deeds!”[261] In the year B.C. 379, when the Kadmeia was emancipated, he was as yet undistinguished in public life, and known only to Pelopidas with his other friends; among whom, too, his unambitious and inquisitive disposition was a subject of complaint as keeping him unduly in the background.[262] But the unparalleled phenomena of that year supplied a spur which overruled all backwardness, and smothered all rival inclinations. The Thebans, having just recovered their city by an incredible turn of fortune, found themselves exposed single-handed to the full attack of Sparta and her extensive confederacy. Not even Athens had yet declared in their favor, nor had they a single other ally. Under such circumstances, Thebes could only be saved by the energy of all her citizens,—the unambitious and philosophical as well as the rest. As the necessities of the case required such simultaneous devotion, so the electric shock of the recent revolution was sufficient to awaken enthusiasm in minds much less patriotic than that of Epaminondas. He was among the first to join the victorious exiles in arms, after the contest had been transferred from the houses of Archias and Leontiades to the open market-place; and he would probably have been among the first to mount the walls of the Kadmeia, had the Spartan harmost awaited an assault. Pelopidas being named Bœotarch, his friend Epaminondas was naturally placed among the earliest and most forward organizers of the necessary military resistance against the common enemy; in which employment his capacities speedily became manifest. Though at this moment almost an unknown man, he had acquired, in B.C. 371, seven years afterwards, so much reputation both as speaker and as general, that he was chosen as the expositor of Theban policy at Sparta, and trusted with the conduct of the battle of Leuktra, upon which the fate of Thebes hinged. Hence we may fairly conclude, that the well-planned and successful system of defence, together with the steady advance of Thebes against Sparta, during the intermediate years, was felt to have been in the main his work.[263] [261] Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 32. Ὦ τοῦ μεγαλοπράγμονος ἀνθρώπου! [262] Plutarch, De Gen. Socr. p. 576 E. Ἐπαμεινώνδας δὲ, Βοιωτῶν ἁπάντων τῷ πεπαιδεῦσθαι πρὸς ἀρετὴν ἀξιῶν διαφέρειν, ἀμβλὺς ἐστι καὶ ἀπρόθυμος.