During this interval, momentous events (recounted in my previous chapters) had occurred in Central Greece. In 382 B. C., the Spartans made themselves by fraud masters of Thebes, and placed a permanent garrison in the Kadmeia. In 380 B. C., they put down the Olynthian confederacy, thus attaining the maximum of their power. But in 379 B. C., there occurred the revolution at Thebes achieved by the conspiracy of Pelopidas, who expelled the Lacedæmonians from the Kadmeia. Involved in a burdensome war against Thebes and Athens, together with other allies the Lacedæmonians gradually lost ground, and had become much reduced before the peace of 371 B. C., which left them to contend with Thebes alone. Then came the fatal battle of Leuktra which prostrated their military ascendency altogether. These incidents have been already related at large in former chapters. Two years before the battle of Leuktra, Dionysius sent to the aid of the Lacedæmonians at Korkyra a squadron of ten ships, all of which were captured by Iphikrates; about three years after the battle, when the Thebans and their allies were pressing Sparta in Peloponnesus, he twice sent thither a military force of Gauls and Iberians to reinforce her army. But his troops neither stayed long, nor rendered any very conspicuous service.[89] [89] Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 2, 4, 33; vii i. 20-28. Diodor. xv. 70. In this year we hear of a fresh attack by Dionysius against the Carthaginians. Observing that they had been lately much enfeebled by pestilence and by mutiny of their African subjects, he thought the opportunity favorable for trying to recover what the peace of 383 B. C., had obliged him to relinquish. A false pretence being readily found, he invaded the Carthaginian possessions in the west of Sicily with a large land force of thirty thousand foot, and three thousand horse; together with a fleet of three hundred sail, and store ships in proportion. After ravaging much of the open territory of the Carthaginians, he succeeded in mastering Selinus, Entella, and Eryx—and then laid siege to Lilybæum. This town, close to the western cape of Sicily,[90] appears to have arisen as a substitute for the neighboring town of Motyê (of which we hear little more since its capture by Dionysius in 396 B. C.), and to have become the principal Carthaginian station. He began to attack it by active siege and battering machines. But it was so numerously garrisoned, and so well defended, that he was forced to raise the siege and confine himself to blockade. His fleet kept the harbor guarded, so as to intercept supplies from Africa. Not long afterwards, however, he received intelligence that a fire had taken place in the port of Carthage whereby all her ships had been burnt. Being thus led to conceive that there was no longer any apprehension of naval attack from Carthage, he withdrew his fleet from continuous watch off Lilybæum; keeping one hundred and thirty men-of-war near at hand, in the harbor of