Measures for executing the stipulations made at the congress of Sparta.

Immediately after the congress at Sparta in June 371 b.c., the Athenians and Lacedæmonians both took steps to perform the covenants sworn respectively to each other as well as to the allies generally. The Athenians despatched orders to Iphiskrates, who was still at Korkyra or in the Ionian Sea, engaged in incursions against the Lacedæmonian or Peloponnesian coasts–that he should forthwith conduct his fleet home, and that if he had made any captures subsequent to the exchange of oaths at Sparta, they should all be restored; so as to prevent the misunderstanding which had occurred fifty-two years before with Brasidas, in the peninsula of Pallênê. The Lacedæmonians on their side sent to withdraw their harmosts and their garrisons from every city still under occupation. Since they had already made such promise once before, at the peace of Antalkidas, but had never performed it–commissioners, not Spartans, were now named from the general congress, to enforce the execution of the agreement.

Violent impulse of the Spartans against Thebes

No great haste, however, was probably shown in executing this part of the conditions; for the whole soul and sentiment of the Spartans were absorbed by their quarrel with Thebes. The miso-Theban impulse now drove them on with a fury which overcame all other thoughts; and which, though doubtless Agesilaus and others considered it at the time as legitimate patriotic resentment for the recent insult, appeared to the philo-Laconian Xenophon, when he looked back upon it from the subsequent season of Spartan humiliation, to be a misguiding inspiration sent by the gods–like that of the Homeric Atê.