All Greece was startled at the news of this victory; it seemed impossible that Sparta should have been beaten in the field. The Spartans themselves were quite dejected. Their allies turned their backs upon them, and in a moment all the states of Peloponnesus, which had hitherto followed their standards, threw up their connection with them, and declared themselves independent; the Phocians, Locrians, and other allies beyond the Isthmus, immediately concluded a peace and alliance with the Bœotians. Not eighteen months passed away, perhaps it was even in the very winter after the battle of Leuctra, when the Bœotians invaded Peloponnesus. The Spartans were panic-stricken and retreated. The Bœotians announced themselves as the protectors of liberty, and there can be no doubt that the personal character and the eminent qualities of Epaminondas everywhere excited great confidence, while the national character of the Thebans would certainly have called forth the opposite feeling.[b] SIGNIFICANCE OF LEUCTRA The battle of Leuctra was certainly one of those battles which are decisive of the fate of countries and which give history a new turn. It not only brought to the fore a leader of singular magnificence at the head of a new and zealous nation, but it saw the complete collapse of Sparta. It made possible the first invasion of that country which, being without walls, had felt itself girt about with imperishable granite in the brawn of its soldiery. The other nations of Greece for all their hatred of Sparta had never succeeded in invading her. It was considered glory enough to sail around the Peloponnesus or to establish a stronghold upon some portion of the coast. It remained for a Theban newcomer, whom Xenophon does not even mention in his account of the battle of Leuctra, to march into Sparta and prove that her granite wall of soldiery was only a superstition that crumbled before the onslaught of that new Theban formation which modern foot-ball players have revived and called “the flying-wedge.” [Illustration: GREEK VASE (In the British Museum)] The battle of Leuctra is significant in showing that the course of Grecian empire was taking a northward way. In its passage, Thebes was only a stepping-stone to Macedonia. Once out of the little peninsula it had thus far dwelt in, Grecian ambition was to find itself upon an unlimited field of conquest whence it would turn, not logically to the West, where Rome was young and inglorious, but to the East, with its ancient and rotting civilisation and its hoarded opulence.