Moreover, Thebes had next to overcome the last resistance to Bœotian unity within her own borders. Thespiæ and Orchomenos had to be coerced before a further advance could be thought of. The next steps were naturally taken with a view to a union amongst the states of middle Greece; and by compacts with Phocis, Locris, Ætolia, and Acarnania, which acknowledged the right of the conqueror of Leuctra to be the head and chief of the new amphictyony, Thebes strove to attain the position to which her success had given her the best title. But it seems in the highest degree improbable that in all these proceedings Thebes had the interests of the whole of Greece in view, that she cherished the idea of a national uprising against Spartan oppression, that by the extension of dominion for which she strove she desired to make good the wrong done to other Greeks in earlier days by Sparta, and that, as Curtius supposes, the project for the restoration of Messenia had already been definitely conceived. The Theban leaders could not be blind to the fact that the struggle with Sparta had by no means come to an end with the battle of Leuctra, but the political conditions of the time gave them as yet no chance of forming definite resolutions and plans as to how the end was to be brought about. Curtius undoubtedly goes too far when he assumes that at that time Epaminondas was sole master of the situation and controlled the destinies of the Greeks. The Thebans did not even venture to transfer the struggle to Peloponnesian soil and denude Bœotia of her troops, on account of the menacing attitude assumed by Jason of Pheræ in the north.