[411] Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 5, 23; vii 5, 4. Diodor. xv. 62. The Akarnanians had been allies of Thebes at the time of the first expedition of Epaminondas into Peloponnesus; whether they remained so at the time of his last expedition, is not certain. But as the Theban ascendency over Thessaly was much greater at the last of those two periods than at the first, we may be sure that they had not lost their hold upon the Lokrians and Malians who (as well as the Phokians) lay between Bœotia and Thessaly. But ever and above allies without Bœotia, Thebes had prodigiously increased the power of her city within Bœotia. She had appropriated to herself the territories of Platæa and Thespiæ on her southern frontier, and of Koroneia and Orchomenus near upon her northern; by conquest and partial expulsion of their prior inhabitants. How and when these acquisitions had been brought about, has been explained in my preceding volume:[412] here I merely recall the fact, to appreciate the position of Thebes in 359 B. C.—that these four towns, having been in 372 B. C. autonomous—joined with her only by the definite obligations of the Bœotian confederacy—and partly even in actual hostility against her—had now lost their autonomy with their free citizens, and had become absorbed into her property and sovereignty. The domain of Thebes thus extended across Bœotia from the frontiers of Phokis[413] on the north-west to the frontiers of Attica on the south. [412] Vol. X. Ch. lxxvii. p. 161; Ch. lxxviii. p. 195; Ch. lxxx. p. 312. [413] Orchomenus was conterminous with the Phokian territory (Pausanias, ix. 39, 1.)