The services which he had rendered to his country were in general duly appreciated by his fellow-citizens; but they excited, and did not disarm, the envy of some inferior minds, and the expedition itself, successful as it had been, afforded them a pretext for assailing him. The yearly term for which he held his office of Bœotarch had expired, it seems, soon after he entered Peloponnesus, and he and his colleagues had retained their command, without any express sanction, three or four months longer. On this ground he and Pelopidas were separately charged with a capital offence. It was merely an experiment to try the strength of their popularity; for their conduct, though perhaps it infringed the letter of the law, was manifestly in accordance with the will of the people. It is indeed somewhat surprising that their adversaries should have ventured on such an attempt, and still more that the issue, as we learn from Plutarch, was considered doubtful, because Pelopidas was first brought to trial. Epaminondas, it is said, declared himself willing to die, provided the names of Leuctra, Sparta, and Messene, and the deeds by which his own was connected with them, might be inscribed upon his tomb. Both, however, were acquitted in the most honourable manner; and Pelopidas, less magnanimous or more irritable than his philosophic friend, who would have forgiven the harmless display of malice, afterwards employed the forms of law to crush their principal accusers.[h] Niebuhr remarks that the re-establishment of Messene “is an imperishable monument to Epaminondas,” but draws therefrom a somewhat disconcerting moral: “In the restoration of Messene, Epaminondas obeyed the dictates of prudence and of his own noble heart; and he could not have acted otherwise even if he had foreseen the consequences. It must be observed that this is again one of those cases in which the accomplishment of justice was not followed by happy results. The restoration of Messene produced at a later period of Greek history, terrible consequences. The Messenians being, by their peculiar situation, the implacable enemies of Sparta, were obliged to seek support against her; and they preferred doing so at the greatest distance, which made them the humble servants of Macedonia, and the perpetual enemies and traitors of Greece. There was no people so devoted body and soul to King Philip, as the Messenians. The death of Philopœmen is an example of the mischief which Messenia created in Greece, an ineffaceable brand on the name of Messenia. Things which every honest man must desire, are in the end often followed by the saddest consequences.”[b] ATHENS IN LEAGUE WITH SPARTA