It was not merely from Akanthus and Apollonia, but also from the dispossessed Macedonian king Amyntas, that envoys reached Sparta to ask for aid against Olynthus. It seems that Amyntas, after having abandoned the kingdom and made his cession to the Olynthians, had obtained some aid from Thessaly and tried to reinstate himself by force. In this scheme he had failed, being defeated by the Olynthians. Indeed we find another person named Argæus, mentioned as competitor for the Macedonian sceptre, and possessing it for two years.[128] [128] Diodor. xiv, 92; xv, 19. Demosthenes speaks of Amyntas as having been expelled from his kingdom by the Thessalians (cont. Aristokrat. c. 29, p. 657). If this be historically correct, it must be referred to some subsequent war in which he was engaged with the Thessalians, perhaps to the time when Jason of Pheræ acquired dominion over Macedonia (Xenoph. Hellen. vi, 1, 11). After hearing these petitioners, the Lacedæmonians first declared their own readiness to comply with the prayer, and to put down Olynthus; next, they submitted the same point to the vote of the assembled allies.[129] Among these latter, there was no genuine antipathy against the Olynthians, such as that which had prevailed against Athens before the Peloponnesian war, in the synod then held at Sparta. But the power of Sparta over her allies was now far greater than it had been then. Most of their cities were under oligarchies, dependent upon her support for authority over their fellow-citizens; moreover, the recent events in Bœotia and at Mantinea had operated as a serious intimidation. Anxiety to keep the favor of Sparta was accordingly paramount, so that most of the speakers as well as most of the votes, declared for war,[130] and a combined army of ten thousand men was voted to be raised. To make up such total, a proportional contingent was assessed upon each confederate; combined with the proviso now added for the first time, that each might furnish money instead of men, at the rate of three Æginæan oboli (half an Æginæan drachma) for each hoplite. A cavalry-soldier, to those cities which furnished such, was reckoned as equivalent to four hoplites; a hoplite, as equivalent to two peltasts; or pecuniary contribution on the same scale. All cities in default were made liable to a forfeit of one stater (four drachmæ) per day, for every soldier not sent; the forfeit to be enforced by Sparta.[131] Such licensed substitution of pecuniary payment for personal service, is the same as I have already described to have taken place nearly a century before in the confederacy of Delos under the presidency of Athens.[132] It was a system not likely to be extensively acted upon among the Spartan allies, who were at once poorer and more warlike than those of Athens. But in both cases it was favorable to the ambition of the leading state; and the tendency becomes here manifest, to sanction, by the formality of a public