These are instructive remains, indicating the ideas of the Greeks respecting fortification in the time of Epaminondas. It appears that Mantinea was not so large as Tegea, to which last Curtius assigns a circumference of more than three miles (p. 253). The affront here offered, probably studiously offered, by Mantinean leaders who had either been exiles themselves, or sympathized with the exiles,—was only the prelude to a series of others (presently to be recounted) yet more galling and intolerable. But it was doubtless felt to the quick both by the ephors and by Agesilaus, as a public symptom of that prostration into which they had so suddenly fallen. To appreciate fully such painful sentiment, we must recollect that an exaggerated pride and sense of dignity, individual as well as collective, founded upon military excellence and earned by incredible rigor of training,—was the chief mental result imbibed by every pupil of Lykurgus, and hitherto ratified as legitimate by the general testimony of Greece. This was his principal recompense for the severe fatigue, the intense self-suppression, the narrow, monotonous, and unlettered routine, wherein he was born and died. As an individual, the Spartan citizen was pointed out by the finger of admiration at the Olympic and other festivals;[437] while he saw his city supplicated from the most distant regions of Greece, and obeyed almost everywhere near her own border, as Pan-hellenic president. On a sudden, with scarce any preparatory series of events, he now felt this proud prerogative sentiment not only robbed of its former tribute, but stung in the most mortifying manner. Agesilaus, especially, was the more open to such humiliation, since he was not only a Spartan to the core, but loaded with the consciousness of having exercised more influence than any other king before him,—of having succeeded to the throne at a moment when Sparta was at the maximum of her power,—and of having now in his old age accompanied her, in part brought her by his misjudgments, into her present degradation. [437] Isokrates, Or. vi, (Archidamus) s. 111.