Under these depressing circumstances, the Lacedæmonians had recourse to the same manœuvre which had so well served their purpose fifteen years before, in 388-387 B.C. They sent Antalkidas again as envoy to Persia, to entreat both pecuniary aid,[331] and a fresh Persian intervention enforcing anew the peace which bore his name; which peace had now been infringed (according to Lacedæmonian construction) by the reconstitution of the Bœotian confederacy under Thebes as president. And it appears that in the course of the autumn or winter, Persian envoys actually did come to Greece, requiring that the belligerents should all desist from war, and wind up their dissensions on the principles of the peace of Antalkidas.[332] The Persian satraps, at this time renewing their efforts against Egypt, were anxious for the cessation of hostilities in Greece, as a means of enlarging their numbers of Grecian mercenaries; of which troops Timotheus had left Athens a few months before to take the command. [331] This second mission of Antalkidas is sufficiently verified by an indirect allusion of Xenophon (vi, 3, 12). His known philo-Laconian sentiments sufficiently explain why he avoids directly mentioning it. [332] Diodor. xv, 50. Diodorus had stated (a few chapters before, xv, 38) that Persian envoys had also come into Greece a little before the peace of 374 B.C., and had been the originators of that previous peace. But this appears to me one of the cases (not a few altogether in his history) in which he repeats himself, or gives the same event twice over under analogous circumstances. The intervention of the Persian envoys bears much more suitably on the period immediately preceding the peace of 371 B.C., than upon that which preceded the peace of 374 B.C., when, in point of fact, no peace was ever fully executed. Dionysius of Halikarnassus also (Judic. de Lysiâ, p. 479) represents the king of Persia as a party to the peace sworn by Athens and Sparta in 371 B.C. Apart, however, from this prospect of Persian intervention, which doubtless was not without effect,—Athens herself was becoming more and more disposed towards peace. That common fear and hatred of the Lacedæmonians, which had brought her into alliance with Thebes in 378 B.C., was now no longer predominant. She was actually at the head of a considerable maritime confederacy; and this she could hardly hope to increase by continuing the war, since the Lacedæmonian naval power had already been humbled. Moreover, she found the expense of warlike operations very burdensome, nowise defrayed either by the contributions of her allies or by the results of victory. The orator Kallistratus,—who had promised either to procure remittances from Athens to Iphikrates, or to recommend the conclusion of peace,—was obliged to confine himself to the latter alternative, and contributed much to promote the pacific dispositions of his countrymen.[333] [333] Xen. Hellen. vi, 3, 3.