The punishment of Mantinea produced a profound effect upon the other Peloponnesian cities. With high hopes of an equally energetic interference on their behalf the aristocratic exiles from Phlius immediately turned to Sparta with the entreaty that the Spartans would intercede for their restoration to their homes. A bare admonition from the ephors to the municipal authorities to receive back the friends they had cast out for no sufficient reason, was enough to evoke a decree by which the sentence of banishment was repealed and the exiles were promised the restoration of their property. The spirit of resistance had been broken by the fate of Mantinea. The Spartans next turned their attention to Bœotia. Although the Bœotian league, not being based on the principle of autonomy, had been broken up by the second paragraph of the peace, they felt the need of taking precautions against any attempt on the part of Thebes--the city which they regarded as the author of the whole ill-starred war and which had defied them to the last to re-establish its authority. Hence, as a first step, a Spartan garrison was retained in the friendly city of Orchomenos, and both Thespiæ and Tanagra were induced to throw in their lot with Sparta. But the most telling stroke at Thebes was the restoration of Platæa. For one thing, the Thebans were thereby deprived of the usufruct of Platæan territory, and for another, the newly founded city, being of course wholly dependent upon Sparta, afforded an excellent base for attack upon Thebes itself. Here again we see the relentless and energetic policy of Sparta in action. THE OLYNTHIAN WAR [Sidenote: [383 B.C.]] More serious complications in Greek affairs soon gave the Spartans their opportunity for showing themselves masters of Hellas. In the spring of 383 ambassadors from the cities of Apollonia and Acanthus presented themselves in Sparta to beg for support against the increasing power of the Olyntho-Chalcidian league. Their petition was seconded by deputies from Amyntas, king of Macedonia, who felt the security of his dominions imperilled by the encroachments of Olynthus. The Olynthians strove more and more vigorously to assert the authority of the league. They had succeeded in persuading nearly all the cities of the Chalcidice to join their confederacy; they had pushed forward towards Macedonia, and had even brought Pella over to their interests. The league was now in a position to hold the menace of war over any cities which refused adherence, and to meditate far-reaching enterprises. By an agreement with Athens and Thebes it hoped to secure an influence upon middle Greece. By this energetic and well-considered centralisation a federal state was created, admirably calculated to serve as a bulwark of the power of Hellas against Thrace, and as a fresh starting-point for the civilisation of the barbarous North.