But the words which occasion most perplexity are those which follow: “Epaminondas repulses the assailants, and _having come to the city itself of the Athenians_, when Iphikrates forbade the Athenians to come out and fight, he (Epaminondas) again marched away to Thebes.” What are we to understand _by the city of the Athenians_? The natural sense of the word is certainly Athens; and so most of the commentators relate. But when the battle was fought between Corinth and Kenchreæ, can we reasonably believe that Epaminondas pursued the fugitives to Athens—through the city of Megara, which lay in the way, and which seems then (Diodor. xv, 68) to have been allied with Athens? The station of Iphikrates was _Corinth_; from thence he had marched out,—and thither his cavalry, when repulsed, would go back, as the nearest shelter. Dr. Thirlwall (Hist. Greece, vol. v, ch. 39, p. 141) understands Pausanias to mean, that Iphikrates retired with his defeated cavalry to Corinth,—that Epaminondas then marched straight on to Athens,—and that Iphikrates followed him. “Possibly (he says) the only mistake in this statement is, that it represents the _presence_ of Iphikrates, instead of his _absence_, as the cause which prevented the Athenians from fighting. According to Xenophon, Iphikrates must have been in the rear of Epaminondas.” I cannot think that we obtain this from the words of Xenophon. Neither he nor Plutarch countenance the idea that Epaminondas marched to the walls of Athens, which supposition is derived solely from the words of Pausanias. Xenophon and Plutarch intimate only that Iphikrates interposed some opposition, and not very effective opposition, near Corinth, to the retreating march of Epaminondas, from Peloponnesus into Bœotia. That Epaminondas should have marched to Athens at all, under the circumstances of the case, when he was returning to Bœotia, appears to me in itself improbable, and to be rendered still more improbable by the silence of Xenophon. Nor is it indispensable to put this construction even upon Pausanias; who may surely have meant by the words—πρὸς αὐτὸ Ἀθηναίων τὸ ἄστυ,—not Athens, but _the city then occupied by the Athenians engaged_,—that is, _Corinth_. _The city of the Athenians_, in reference to this battle, was Corinth; it was the city out of which the troops of Iphikrates had just marched, and to which, on being defeated, they naturally retired for safety, pursued by Epaminondas to the gates. The statement of Pausanias,—that Iphikrates would not let the Athenians in the town (Corinth) go out to fight,—then follows naturally. Epaminondas, finding that they would not come out, drew back his troops, and resumed his march to Thebes.