358 HISTORY OF GREECE fore. Perhaps Agesipolis would have done the same here, constru- ing the earthquake as a warning that he had done wrong, in neglect- ing the summons of the heralds, had he not been fortified by the recent oracles. He now replied, that if the earthquake had occurred before he crossed the frontier, he should have considered it as a prohibition ; but as it came after his crossing, he looked upon it as an encouragement to go forward. So fully had the Argeians counted on the success of their warning transmitted by the heralds, that they had made little preparation for defence. Their dismay and confusion were very great ; their property was still outlying, not yet removed into secure places, so that Agesipolis found much both to destroy and to appropriate. He carried his ravages even to the gates of the city, piquing him- self on advancing a little farther than Agesilaus had gone in his invasion two years before. He was at last driven to retreat by the. terror of a flash of lightning in his camp, which killed several per- sons. And a project which he had formed, of erecting a permanent fort on the Argeian frontier, was abandoned in consequence of un- favorable sacrifices. 1 Besides these transactions in and near the isthmus of Corinth, the war between Sparta and her enemies was prosecuted during the same years both in the islands and on the coast of Asia Minor ; though our information is so imperfect that we can scarcely trace the thread of events. The defeat near Knidus (394 B. c.), the triumphant maritime force of Pharnabazus and Konon at the Isth- mus of Corinth in the ensuing year (393 B. c.), the restoration of the Athenian Long Walls and fortified port, and the activity of Konon with the fleet among the islands, 2 so alarmed the 1 Xen. Hcllen. iv, 7, 7 ; Pausan. iii, 5, 6. It rather seems, by the language of these two writers, that they look upon the menacing signs, by which Agesipolis was induced to depart, as marks of some displeasure of the gods against his expedition. 1 Xen. Hellen. iv, 8, 12. Compare Isokrates, Or. vii, (Areopag.) s. 13. OTTO- arjc yap rijf 'E/lA(5of vnb TJ/V iroTuv ijfitiv {nroireaoiiaijc KOI fiera TTJV Kovwvof vavpaxiav KOI /J.ETU TTJV Tipodeov arpaTTjyiav, etc. This oration, however, was composed a long while after the events (about B. c. .353 see Mr. Clin- ton's Fast. H., in that year) ; and Isokrates exaggerates ; mistaking the break-up of the Lacedaemonian empire for a resumption of the Athenian, Demosthenes also (cont. Leptin. c. 16, p. 477) confounds the same two ideas, and even the Athenian vote of thanks to Konon, perpetuated on a corome-
