[44]
And again, when fortune shifted her favor1 and the Thebans and the Peloponnesians were one and all trying to devastate Lacedaemon, we alone among the Hellenes formed2 an alliance with the Lacedaemonians and helped to save them from destruction.3
1 Thebes became the supreme power in Greece by the battle of Leuctra, 371 B.C.
2 361 B.C.
3 In 362 B.C., when Epaminondas, at the head of the Thebans and their allies, including the Argives, Arcadians, Messenians, and the Eleans, marched on Sparta to destroy her, the Athenians dispatched Iphicrates with an army of twelve thousand to the rescue. See Isoc. 8.105; Xen. Hell. 6.5.23 ff.; Grote, Hist. x. pp. 89 ff.