Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/101

THEBES UNDER LEONT1ADES. f$ of uncontrolled rulers, as well as those of a large foreign garrison, would ensurp such a result ; besides which, those rulers must have been in constant fear of risings or conspiracies amidst a body of high-spirited citizens who saw their city degraded, from being the chief of the Boeotian federation, into nothing better than a captive dependency of Sparta. Such fear was aggravated by the vicinity of a numerous body of Theban exiles, belonging to the opposite or anti-Spartan party ; three or four hundred of whom had fled to Athens at the first seizure of their leader Ismenias, and had been doubtless joined subsequently by others. So strong- ly did the Theban rulers apprehend mischief from these exiles, that they hired assassins to take them off by private murder at Athens ; and actually succeeded in thus killing Androkleidas, chief of the band and chief successor of the deceased Ismenias, though they missed their blows at the rest. 1 And we may be sure that they made the prison in Thebes subservient to multi- plied enormities and executions, when we read not only that one nundred and fifty prisoners were found in it when the government was put down, 2 but also that in the fervor of that revolutionary movement, the slain gaoler was an object of such fierce antipathy, that his corpse was trodden and spit upon by a crowd of Theban women. 3 In Thebes, as in other Grecian cities, the women not only took no part in political disputes, but rarely even showed themselves in public ; 4 so that this furious demonstration of vin- 1 Plutarch, Pelopidas, c. 6 : compare Plutarch, De Gen. Socr. c. 29, p. 596 B. 2 Xenoph. Hellen. v, 4, 14. 3 Plutarch, De Gen. Socr. c. 33, p. 598 B, C. u nal //#' y/uepav ETrevepi]- aav Kal TrpoaeTTTvaav OVK 6/Uyai yvvalnei;. Among the prisoners was a distinguished Theban of the democratic par- ty, named Amphitheus. He was about to be shortly executed, and the conspirators, personally attached to him, seem to have accelerated the hour of their plot partly to preserve his life (Plutarch, De Gen. Socrat. p. 577 D p. 586 F.). 4 The language of Plutarch (De Gen. Socrat. c. 33, p. 598 C.) is illus- trated by the description given in the harangue of Lykurgus cont. Leokrat. (c. xi, s. 40) of the universal alarm prevalent in Athens after the battlo of Chseroneia, such that even the women could not stay in their houses avaZ'tuf avruv Kal r^f TroAewf 6pu/isva<;, etc. Compare also the words of Makaria, in the Herakleidse of Euripides, 475 ; and Diodor. xiii, 55, in hi? description of the capture of Selinus in Sicily.