Immediately after the congress at Sparta in June 371 B.C., the Athenians and Lacedæmonians both took steps to perform the covenants sworn respectively to each other as well as to the allies generally. The Athenians despatched orders to Iphikrates, who was still at Korkyra or in the Ionian Sea, engaged in incursions against the Lacedæmonian or Peloponnesian coasts,—that he should forthwith conduct his fleet home, and that if he had made any captures subsequent to the exchange of oaths at Sparta, they should all be restored;[365] so as to prevent the misunderstanding which had occurred fifty-two years before with Brasidas,[366] in the peninsula of Pallênê. The Lacedæmonians on their side sent to withdraw their harmosts and their garrisons from every city still under occupation. Since they had already made such promise once before, at the peace of Antalkidas, but had never performed it,—commissioners,[367] not Spartans, were now named from the general congress, to enforce the execution of the agreement. [365] Xen. Hellen. vi, 4, 1. [366] Thucyd. iv. [367] Diodorus, xv, 38. ἐξαγωγεῖς, Xen. Hellen. _l. c._ Diodorus refers the statements in this chapter to the peace between Athens and Sparta in 374 B.C. I have already remarked that they belong properly to the peace of 371 B.C.; as Wesseling suspects in his note. No great haste, however, was probably shown in executing this part of the conditions; for the whole soul and sentiment of the Spartans were absorbed by their quarrel with Thebes. The miso-Theban impulse now drove them on with a fury which overcame all other thoughts; and which, though doubtless Agesilaus and others considered it at the time as legitimate patriotic resentment for the recent insult, appeared to the philo-Laconian Xenophon, when he looked back upon it from the subsequent season of Spartan humiliation, to be a misguiding inspiration sent by the gods,[368]—like that of the Homeric Atê. Now that Thebes stood isolated from Athens and all other allies out of Bœotia, Agesilaus had full confidence of being able to subdue her thoroughly. The same impression of the superiority of Spartan force was also entertained both by the Athenians and by other Greeks; to a great degree even by the Thebans themselves. It was anticipated that the Spartans would break up the city of Thebes into villages (as they had done at Mantinea) or perhaps retaliate upon her the fate which she had inflicted upon Platæa—or even decimate her citizens and her property to the profit of the Delphian god, pursuant to the vow that had been taken more than a century before, in consequence of the assistance lent by the Thebans to Xerxes.[369] Few persons out of Bœotia doubted of the success of Sparta. [368] Xen. Hellen. vi, 4, 3. ἤδη γὰρ, ὡς ἔοικε, τὸ δαιμόνιον ἦγεν, etc. [369] Xen. Hellen. vi, 3, 20; Plutarch, Pelopid. c. 20; Diodor. xv, 51.