Considering the momentous and striking character of these facts, and the eminence of the Theban general by whom they were achieved, such silence on the part of an historian, who professes to recount the events of the time, is an inexcusable dereliction of his duty to state the _whole truth_. It is plain that Messênê and Megalopolis wounded to the quick the philo-Spartan sentiment of Xenophon. They stood as permanent evidences of the degradation of Sparta, even after the hostile armies had withdrawn from Laconia. He prefers to ignore them altogether. Yet he can find space to recount, with disproportionate prolixity, the two applications of the Spartans to Athens for aid, with the favorable reception which they obtained,—also the exploits of the Phliasians in their devoted attachment to Sparta. [497] See a striking passage in Polybius, iv, 32. Compare also Pausan. v, 29, 3; and viii, 27, 2. Megalopolis was intended not merely as a great city in itself, but as the centre of the new confederacy; which appears to have comprised all Arcadia, except Orchomenus and Heræa. It was enacted that a synod or assembly, from all the separate members of the Arcadian name, and in which probably every Arcadian citizen from the constituent communities had the right of attending, should be periodically convoked there. This assembly was called the Ten Thousand, or the Great Number. A body of Arcadian troops, called the Epariti, destined to uphold the federation, and receiving pay when on service, was also provided. Assessments were levied upon each city for their support, and a Pan-Arcadian general (probably also other officers) was named. The Ten Thousand, on behalf of all Arcadia, received foreign envoys,—concluded war, or peace, or alliance,—and tried all officers or other Arcadians brought before them on accusations of public misconduct.[498] The great Athenian orators, Kallistratus, Demosthenes, Æschines, on various occasions pleaded before it.[499] What were its times of meeting, we are unable to say. It contributed seriously, for a certain time, to sustain a Pan-Arcadian communion of action and sentiment which had never before existed;[500] and to prevent, or soften, those dissensions which had always a tendency to break out among the separate Arcadian cities. The patriotic enthusiasm, however, out of which Megalopolis had first arisen, gradually became enfeebled. The city never attained that preëminence or power which its founders contemplated, and which had caused the city to be laid out on a scale too large for the population actually inhabiting it.[501] [498] Xenoph. Hellen. vii, 1, 38; vii, 4, 2, 33, 34; vii, 3, 1. [499] Demosthen. Fals. Legat. p. 344, s. 11, p. 403, s. 220, Æschines, Fals. Leg. p. 296, c. 49; Cornel. Nepos. Epamin. c. 6. [500] Xenoph. Hellen. vii, 1, 38; vii, 4, 33; Diodor. xv, 59; Aristotle—Ἀρκάδων Πολιτεία—ap. Harpokration, v. Μύριοι, p. 106, ed. Neumann. [501] Polybius, ii, 55.