[654] Diodor. xv, 78.
[655] Æschines, Fals. Leg. p. 276, c. 32, s. 111. Ἐπαμινώνδας, οὐχ ὑποπτήξας τὸ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἀξίωμα, εἶπε διαῤῥήδην ἐν τῷ πλήθει τῶν Θηβαίων, ὡς δεῖ τὰ τῆς Ἀθηναίων ἀκροπόλεως προπύλαια μετενεγκεῖν εἰς τὴν προστασίαν τῆς Καδμείας.
[656] Diodor. xv, 78, 79.
[657] See Vol. VI. Ch. liv. p. 475.
[658] Cornelius Nepos, Epaminond. c. 5; Plutarch, Pelopidas, c. 25; Plutarch, De Sui Laude, p. 542 A.
Neither of these the authors appear to me to conceive rightly either the attack, or the reply, in which the name of Agamemnon is here brought forward. As I have given it in the text, there is a real foundation for the attack, and a real point in the reply; as it appears in Cornelius Nepos, there is neither one nor the other.
That the Spartans regarded themselves as having inherited the leadership of Greece from Agamemnon, may be seen by Herodotus, vii, 159.
[659] Thucyd. vi, 17, 18.
[660] Plutarch (Philopœmen, c. 14) mentions that some authors represented Epaminondas as having consented unwillingly to this maritime expedition. He explains such reluctance by reference to the disparaging opinion expressed by Plato about maritime service. But this opinion of Plato is founded upon reasons foreign to the character of Epaminondas; and it seems to me evident that the authors whom Plutarch here followed, introduced the opinion only as an hypothesis to explain why so great a general on land as Epaminondas had accomplished so little at sea, when he took command of a fleet; putting himself in a function for which he had little capacity, like Philopœmen (Plutarch, Reipublic. Gerend. Præcep. p. 812 E.).
Bauch (in his tract, Epaminondas und Thebens Kampf um die Hegemonie, Breslau, 1834, p. 70, 71) maintains that Epaminondas was constrained against his own better judgment to undertake this maritime enterprise. I cannot coincide in his opinion. The oracle which Bauch cites from Pausanias (viii, 11, 6) proves as little as the above extract from Plutarch.