Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fasti Hellen. B.C. 361) assigns the conclusion of peace to the succeeding year. I do not know however what ground there is for assuming such an interval between the battle and the peace. Diodorus appears to place the latter immediately after the former. This would not count for much, indeed, against any considerable counter-probability; but the probability here (in my judgment) is rather in favor of immediate sequence between the two events.
[764] Pausanias, viii, 11, 4, 5.
[765] Cicero, Tusculan. i, 2, 4; De Orator. iii, 34, 139. “Epaminondas, princeps, meo judicio, Græciæ,” etc.
[766] Plutarch, Philopœmen, c. 3; Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 36.
[767] See the inscription of four lines copied by Pausanias from the statue of Epaminondas at Thebes (Paus. ix, 16, 3):—
Ἡμετέραις βουλαῖς Σπάρτη μὲν ἐκείρατο δόξαν, etc.
[768] Xenoph. Hellen. vii, 5, 8, 9.
[769] Demosthenes, Philipp. I, p. 51, s. 46.
[770] The remark of Diodorus (xv, 88) upon Epaminondas is more emphatic than we usually find in him,—Παρὰ μὲν γὰρ ἑκάστῳ τῶν ἄλλων ἓν ἂν εὕροι προτέρημα τῆς δόξης, παρὰ δὲ τούτῳ πάσας τὰς ἀρετὰς ἠθροισμένας.
[771] Polybius, xxxii, 8, 6. Cornelius Nepos (Epaminondas, c. 4) gives one anecdote, among several which he affirms to have found on record, of large pecuniary presents tendered to, and repudiated by, Epaminondas; an anecdote recounted with so much precision of detail, that it appears to deserve credit, though we cannot assign the exact time when the alleged briber Diomedon of Kyzicus, came to Thebes.