Had the Platæans been restored to a real and honorable autonomy, such as they enjoyed in alliance with Athens before the Peloponnesian war, we should have cordially sympathized with the event. But the sequel will prove—and their own subsequent statement emphatically sets forth—that they were a mere dependency of Sparta, and an outpost of Spartan operations against Thebes.[80] They were a part of the great revolution which the Spartans now brought about in Bœotia; whereby Thebes was degraded from the president of a federation into an isolated autonomous city, while the other Bœotian cities, who had been before members of the federation, were elevated each for itself into the like autonomy; or rather (to substitute the real truth[81] in place of Spartan professions) they became enrolled and sworn in as dependent allies of Sparta, under oligarchical factions devoted to her purposes and resting upon her for support. That the Thebans should submit to such a revolution, and, above all, to the sight of Platæa as an independent neighbor with a territory abstracted from themselves,—proves how much they felt their own weakness, and how irresistible at this moment was the ascendency of their great enemy, in perverting to her own ambition the popular lure of universal autonomy held out by the peace of Antalkidas. Though compelled to acquiesce, the Thebans waited in hopes of some turn of fortune which would enable them to reörganize the Bœotian federation; while their hostile sentiment towards Sparta was not the less bitter for being suppressed. Sparta on her part kept constant watch to prevent the reunion of Bœotia;[82] an object in which she was for a time completely successful, and was even enabled, beyond her hopes, to become possessed of Thebes itself,[83] through a party of traitors within,—as will presently appear. [80] See the Orat. xiv, (called Plataicus) of Isokrates; which is a pleading probably delivered in the Athenian assembly by the Platæans (after the second destruction of their city), and, doubtless, founded upon their own statements. The painful dependence and compulsion under which they were held by Sparta, is proclaimed in the most unequivocal terms (s. 31, 33, 48); together with the presence of a Spartan harmost and garrison in their town (s. 14). [81] Xenophon says, truly enough, that Sparta made the Bœotian cities αὐτονόμους ἀπὸ τῶν Θηβαίων (v. 1, 36), which she had long desired to do. Autonomy, in the sense of disconnection from Thebes, was insured to them,—but in no other sense.