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As for the Lacedaemonians, since they had cast away many of their young men in the disaster at Leuctra and in their other defeats had lost not a few, and were, taking all together, restricted by the blows of fortune to but few citizen soldiers, and, furthermore, since some of their allies had seceded and others were experiencing a shortage of men for reasons similar to their own, they sank into a state of great weakness. Hence they were compelled to have recourse to the aid of the Athenians, the very people over whom they had once set up thirty tyrants,1 whom they had forbidden to rebuild the walls of their city, whose city they had aimed utterly to destroy, and whose territory, Attica, they wished to turn into a sheepwalk.

1 The Thirty were instituted as the governing board at Athens by Lysander after the capture of the city (404 B.C.) following the defeat of Aegospotami. Though Sparta's allies wished to destroy Athens utterly, Sparta herself would not allow such drastic punishment, but did demand the dismantling of the walls, which were torn down by the Athenian populace to the accompaniment of flute music. Though forbidden to rebuild, when, after the victory of Cnidus (394 B.C.), Conon returned to Athens, the people once again built the walls.

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