[551] Xen. Hellen. vii, 2, 5-9.
This incident may have happened in 369 B.C., just about the time when Epaminondas surprised and broke through the defensive lines of Mount Oneium. In the second chapter of the seventh Book, Xenophon takes up the history of Phlius, and carries it on from the winter of 370-369 B.C., when Epaminondas invaded Laconia, through 369, 368, 367 B.C.
[552] Xen. Hellen. vii, 2, 17.
[553] Xen. Hellen. vii, 1, 19; Diodor. xv, 69.
[554] Xen. Hellen. vii, 1, 22; Diodor. xv, 70.
Diodorus states that these mercenaries had been furnished with pay for five months; if this is correct, I presume that we must understand it as comprehending the time of their voyage from Sicily and back to Sicily. Nevertheless, the language of Xenophon would not lead us to suppose that they remained in Peloponnesus even so long as three months.
I think it certain however that much more must have passed in this campaign than what Xenophon indicates. Epaminondas would hardly have forced the passage of the Oneium for such small objects as we find mentioned in the Hellenica.
An Athenian Inscription, extremely defective, yet partially restored and published by M. Boeckh (Corp. Inscr. No. 85 a. Addenda to vol. i, p. 897), records a vote of the Athenian people and of the synod of Athenian confederates—praising Dionysius of Syracuse,—and recording him with his two sons as benefactors of Athens. It was probably passed somewhere near this time; and we know from Demosthenes that the Athenians granted the freedom of their city to Dionysius and his descendants (Demosthenes ad Philipp. Epistol. p. 161, as well as the Epistle of Philip, on which this is a comment). The Inscription is too defective to warrant any other inferences.
[555] Pausanias, ix, 15, 2.
[556] Xen. Hellen. vii, 1, 23.