The new position thus acquired by Thebes in Bœotia, purchased at the cost of extinguishing three or four autonomous cities, is a fact of much moment in reference to the period now before us; not simply because it swelled the power and pride of the Thebans themselves; but also because it raised a strong body of unfavorable sentiment against them in the Hellenic mind. Just at the time when the Spartans had lost nearly one-half of Laconia, the Thebans had annexed to their own city one-third of the free Bœotian territory. The revival of free Messenian citizenship, after a suspended existence of more than two centuries, had recently been welcomed with universal satisfaction. How much would that same feeling be shocked when Thebes extinguished, for her own aggrandizement, four autonomous communities, all of her own Bœotian kindred—one of these communities too being Orchomenus, respected both for its antiquity and its traditionary legends! Little pains was taken to canvass the circumstances of the case, and to inquire whether Thebes had exceeded the measure of rigor warranted by the war-code of the time. In the patriotic and national conceptions of every Greek, Hellas consisted of an aggregate of autonomous, fraternal, city-communities. The extinction of any one of these was like the amputation of a limb from the organized body. Repugnance towards Thebes, arising out of these proceedings, affected strongly the public opinion of the time, and manifests itself especially in the language of Athenian orators, exaggerated by mortification on account of the loss of Oropus.[414] [414] Isokrates, Or. viii. De Pace, s. 21; Demosthenes adv. Leptinem, p. 490. s. 121; pro Megalopol. p. 208. s. 29; Philippic ii. p. 69. s. 15.