The subject of the political ties linking the Boeotian Confederacy with its allies during the Theban Hegemony has lately been clouded. D. M. Lewis argued against the common view that the Boeotians never built some formal machinery or synod of allies to formulate and direct a common foreign policy. He relies on a passage from Xenophon (Hell. 7, 3, 11) and the Boeotian inscription IGvii 2418 to claim that the Boeotians did in fact create a synedrion with allied synedroi quite similar in nature to that established by the Athenians in their League of 378/7. Lewis admits, however, that the Boeotians did not include their allies on the mainland in this synedrion, but without explaining why they should have built a body that included their Peloponnesian allies while excluding the others. The weakness of this approach lies in its tendency to misunderstand the differences and goals of Boeotia's northern alliances from those with the southern states. Their two interests shared no common ground. Without an understanding of these realities and without adequate evidence any defense of a synedrion falls. Nor can one understand how the Byzantines became involved in this purported Boeotio-Peloponnesian synedrion. Further argument against it stems from the lack of evidence that Chios, Rhodes, Cnidus, or any other Aegean state showed anything but friendliness to Epaminondas and by extension to the Boeotians. A readier and better historically based explanation lies open: that the Boeotians dealt with all combinations.