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The Eleans were urgent for Lepreum; the Mantineans for Tegea; and the Argives and Athenians giving their support to the Mantineans, the Eleans went home in a rage at their not having voted for Lepreum; while the rest of the allies made ready at Mantinea for going against Tegea, which a party inside had arranged to put into their hands.
So thus the Lacedaemonian ambassadors were utterly rejected, and Alcibiades was declared general, who presently united the Argives, the Eleans, and the people of Mantinea, into a confederacy with the Athenians.
Tegea lay in the direct road from Sparta to Mantinea, and while Agesilaus was moving by a more circuitous route to the westward, Epaminondas resolved to attempt a surprise on Sparta.
The disposal of the water-supply was a constant source of dispute between the two rival cities; and Agis now prepared to turn the whole volume of the fountain towards Mantinea, expecting that the Mantineans, when they saw their fields threatened with inundation, would come down into the plain to hinder the mischief.
There is no criterion of the date of the Symposium, except that which is furnished by the allusion to the division of Arcadia after the destruction of Mantinea. This took place in the year B.C. 384, which is the forty-fourth year of Plato's life. The Symposium cannot therefore be regarded as a youthful work.
Mantinea turned out the Achaians and invited Cleomenes back, and now it was plain that the real question was whether the Spartan kingdom or the Achaian League should lead the Peloponnesus—in truth, between Aratus and Cleomenes. Another victory was gained over the Achaians, a treaty was made, and they were going to name Cleomenes head of the League, when he fell ill.
The lawgiver was not an ordinary politician. He was a state doctor, called in to prescribe for an ailing constitution. So Herodotus recounts that when the people of Cyrene asked the oracle of Delphi to help them in their dissensions, the oracle told them to go to Mantinea, and the Mantineans lent them Demonax, who acted as a "setter straight" and drew up a new constitution for Cyrene.
The soldiers never vaunted, nor did the citizens display any great joy at the news; even when the great victory, described by Thucydides, was obtained at Mantinea, the messenger that brought the news had no other reward than a piece of meat, sent by the magistrates from the common table.
This character she maintained in her misfortunes. Antigonus, having taken Tegea, and plundered Orchomenus and Mantinea, Cleomenes was shut up within the narrow bounds of Laconia; and making such of the helots as could pay five Attic pounds, free of Sparta, and, by that means, getting together five hundred talents, and arming two thousand after the Macedonian fashion, that he might make a body fit to oppose Antigonus's Leucaspides he undertook a great and unexpected enterprise.
He was so unwilling to give up his nominal claim to Messenia, although he had practically lost that country, that instead of recovering it he very nearly lost Sparta as well, as he was out-manœuvred by Epameinondas. This happened in the following manner. The people of Mantinea revolted from the Thebans, and solicited aid from the Lacedæmonians.
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