Note 600 — Chapter LXXIX · FROM THE FOUNDATION OF MESSENE AND MEGALOPOLIS TO THE DEATH OF PELOPIDAS.

Demosthen. Fals. Leg. c. 42, p. 383.

In another passage of the same oration (c. 57, p. 400), Demosthenes says that Leon had been joint envoy with Timagoras for four years. Certainly this mission of Pelopidas to the Persian court cannot have lasted four years; and Xenophon states that the Athenians sent the two envoys when they heard that Pelopidas was going thither. I imagine that Leon and Timagoras may have been sent up to the Persian court shortly after the battle of Leuktra, at the time when the Athenians caused the former rescript of the Persian king to be resworn, putting Athens as head into the place of Sparta (Xen. Hellen. vi, 5, 1, 2). This was exactly four years before (371-367 B.C.). Leon and Timagoras having jointly undertaken and perhaps recently returned from their first embassy, were now sent jointly on a second. Demosthenes has summed up the time of the two as if it were one.