Though Sparta thus saw her confidential partisans deposed, expelled, or maltreated, throughout so many of the Peloponnesian cities,—and though as yet there was no Theban interference within the isthmus, either actual or prospective,—yet she was profoundly discouraged, and incapable of any effort either to afford protection or to uphold ascendency. One single defeat had driven her to the necessity of contending for home and family;[428] probably too the dispositions of her own Periœki and Helots in Laconia, were such as to require all her force as well as all her watchfulness. At any rate, her empire and her influence over the sentiments of Greeks out of Laconia, became suddenly extinct, to a degree which astonishes us, when we recollect that it had become a sort of tradition in the Greek mind, and that, only nine years before, it had reached as far as Olynthus. How completely her ascendency had passed away, is shown in a remarkable step taken by Athens, seemingly towards the close of 371 B.C., about four months after the battle of Leuktra. Many of the Peloponnesian cities, though they had lost both their fear and their reverence for Sparta, were still anxious to continue members of a voluntary alliance under the presidency of some considerable city. Of this feeling the Athenians took advantage, to send envoys and invite them to enter into a common league at Athens, on the basis of the peace of Antalkidas, and of the peace recently sworn at Sparta.[429] Many of them, obeying the summons, entered into an engagement to the following effect: “I will adhere to the peace sent down by the Persian king, and to the resolutions of the Athenians and the allies generally. If any of the cities who have sworn this oath shall be attacked, I will assist her with all my might.” What cities, or how many, swore to this engagement, we are not told; we make out indirectly that Corinth was one;[430] but the Eleians refused it, on the ground that their right of sovereignty over the Marganeis, the Triphylians, and the Skilluntians, was not recognized. The formation of the league itself, however, with Athens as president, is a striking fact, as evidence of the sudden dethronement of Sparta, and as a warning that she would henceforward have to move in her own separate orbit, like Athens after the Peloponnesian war. Athens stepped into the place of Sparta, as president of the Peloponnesian confederacy, and guarantee of the sworn peace; though the cities which entered into this new compact were not for that reason understood to break with their ancient president.[431] [428] Xen. Hellen. vii, 1, 10. The discouragement of the Spartans is revealed by the unwilling, though indirect, intimations of Xenophon,—not less than by their actual conduct—Hellen. vi, 5, 21; vii, 1, 30-32; compare Plutarch, Agesil. c. 30. [429] Xen. Hellen. vi, 5, 1-3.