Sparta, applying the old criterion of “what is best for Sparta,” breaks up the Mantineian polis into its four constituent villages in 385 BCE in a move intended to dismantle the physical polis of Mantineia as well as its democracy.
In the particular Mantineian context, the return to the villages strengthens the political influence of the wealthy and oligarchic landowners, whose estates adjoin the villages.
The “troublesome demagogues,” as Xenophon calls them, are expelled.
Pelopidas, a young citizen-soldier of Thebes, serves in a Theban contingent sent to support the Spartans at Mantineia, where he is seriously wounded but is saved, as legend has it, by his friend Epaminondas, the son of a Theban aristocrat.