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Finally, another opportunity to revolt came in 371 B.C. after the city-state of Thebes defeated Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra.

Not alone were the Napoleonic battles thus depicted, but also the great contests of which the boys had read or heard at school,—Thermopyl�, Marathon, Leuctra, Cann�, and Pharsalus.

The battle of Leuctra transferred the hegemony from Sparta to Thebes, but the attempt to unite Greece under the leadership of Thebes was from the first doomed to failure.

As is well known, immediately after the battle of Leuctra the Arcadians proceeded to build this metropolis, as a safeguard or makeweight against the neighboring power of Sparta.

It is a very different thing to hold even the highest magistracy at Thebes or Athens from what it was in the great days of Salamis or Leuctra.