Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/81

CONSPIRACY OF THE PHILO LACONIAN PARTY'. 59 detachment near the gymnasium a little way without the walls, they concerted matters as well with him as among themselves. Leontiades, Hypates, and Archias, were the chiefs of the party in Thebes favorable to Sparta ; a party decidedly in minority, yet still powerful, and at this moment so strengthened by the un- bounded ascendency of the Spartan name, that Leontiades him- self was one of the polemarchs of the city. Of the anti-Spartan, or predominant sentiment in Thebes, which included most of the wealthy and active citizens, those who came successively into office as hipparchs or generals of the cavalry, 1 the leaders were Ismenias and Androkleides. The former, especially, the foremost as well as ablest conductor of the late war against Sparta, was now in office as Polemarch, conjointly with his rival Leontiades. While Ismenias, detesting the Spartans, kept aloof from Phoe- bidas, Leontiades assiduously courted him and gained his confi- dence. On the day of the Thesmophoria, 2 a religious festival is like that of persons who had previously contemplated the possibility of it. But the original suggestion must have come from the Theban faction them- selves. 1 Plutarch (De Genio Socratis, c. 5, p. 578 B.) states that most of these gen- erals of cavalry (ruv iTmapxrjKOTuv vo/ti[taf) were afterwards in exile with Pelopidas at Athens. We have little or no information respecting the government of Thebes. It would seem to have been at this moment a liberalized oligarchy. There was a Senate, and two Polemarchs (perhaps the Polemarchs may have been more than two in all, though the words of Xenophon rather lead us to suppose only two) and there seems also to have been a civil magistrate, chosen by lot (6 Kvafiiarbf ap%av) and renewed annually, whose office was marked by his constantly having in his possession the sacred spear of state (rb lepbv 66pv) and the city-seal (Plutarch, De Gen. Socr. c. 31. p. 597 B. -C.). _ At this moment, it must be recollected, there were no such officers as Bceo- tarchs ; since the Lacedaemonians, enforcing the peace of Antalkidas, had put an end to the Boeotian federation. 2 The rhetor Aristeides (Or. xix, Eleusin. p. 452 Cant. ; p. 419 Dind.) states that the Kadmcia was seized during the Pythian festival. This festi- val would take place, July or August 382 B. c. ; near the beginning of the third year of the (99th) Olympiad. See above in this History, Vol. VI. Ch. liv, p. 455, note. Respecting the year and month in which the Pythian festival was held, there is a difference of opinion among commentators. I agree with those who assign it to the first quarter of the third Olympic year. And the date of the march of Phcebidas would perfectly harmonize with thi supposition