In comparing this extraordinary self-constraint and obedience to orders, at Sparta, under the most trying circumstances,—with the sensitive and demonstrative temper, and spontaneous outburst of feeling at Athens, so much more nearly approaching to the Homeric type of Greeks,—we must at the same time remark, that in reference to active and heroic efforts for the purpose of repairing past calamities and making head against preponderant odds, the Athenians were decidedly the better of the two. I have already recounted the prodigious and unexpected energy displayed by Athens, after the ruinous loss of her two armaments before Syracuse, when no one expected that she could have held out for six months: I am now about to recount the proceedings of Sparta, after the calamity at Leuktra,—a calamity great and serious indeed, yet in positive amount inferior to what had befallen the Athenians at Syracuse. The reader will find that, looking to the intensity of active effort in both cases, the comparison is all to the advantage of Athens; excusing at least, if not justifying, the boast of Perikles[396] in his memorable funeral harangue,—that his countrymen, without the rigorous drill of Spartans, were yet found noway inferior to Spartans in daring exertion, when the hour of actual trial arrived. [396] Thucyd. ii, 39. It was the first obligation of the ephors to provide for the safety of their defeated army in Bœotia; for which purpose they put in march nearly the whole remaining force of Sparta. Of the Lacedæmonian moræ, or military divisions (seemingly six in the aggregate), two or three had been sent with Kleombrotus; all the remainder were now despatched, even including elderly citizens up to near sixty years of age, and all who had been left behind in consequence of other public offices. Archidamus took the command (Agesilaus still continuing to be disabled), and employed himself in getting together the aid promised from Tegea,—from the villages representing the disintegrated Mantinea,—from Corinth, Sikyon, Phlius, and Achaia; all these places being still under the same oligarchies which had held them under Lacedæmonian patronage, and still adhering to Sparta. Triremes were equipped at Corinth, as a means of transporting the new army across to Kreusis, and thus joining the defeated troops at Leuktra; the port of Kreusis, the recent acquisition of Kleombrotus, being now found inestimable, as the only means of access into Bœotia.[397] [397] Xen. Hellen. vi, 4, 17-19.