Having been thus far successful, Phyllidas conducted three of the conspirators,—Pelopidas, Kephisodôrus, and Damokleidas,—to the house of Leontiades, into which he obtained admittance by announcing himself as the bearer of an order from the polemarchs. Leontiades was reclining after supper, with his wife sitting spinning wool by his side, when they entered his chamber. Being a brave and powerful man, he started up, seized his sword, and mortally wounded Kephisodôrus in the throat; a desperate struggle then ensued between him and Pelopidas in the narrow doorway, where there was no room for a third to approach. At length, however, Pelopidas overthrew and killed him, after which they retired, enjoining the wife with threats to remain silent, and closing the door after them with peremptory commands that it should not be again opened. They then went to the house of Hypatês, whom they slew while he attempted to escape over the roof.[185]
The four great rulers of the philo-Laconian party in Thebes having been now put to death, Phyllidas proceeded with the conspirators to the prison. Here the gaoler, a confidential agent in the oppressions of the deceased governors, hesitated to admit him; but was slain by a sudden thrust with his spear, so as to ensure free admission to all. To liberate the prisoners, probably, for the most part men of kindred politics with the conspirators,—to furnish them with arms taken from the battle-spoils hanging up in the neighboring porticos,—and to range them in battle order near the temple of Amphion,—were the next proceedings; after which they began to feel some assurance of safety and triumph.[186] Epaminondas and Gorgidas, apprised of what had occurred, were the first who appeared in arms with a few friends to sustain the cause; while proclamation was everywhere made aloud, through heralds, that the despots were slain,—that Thebes was free,—and that all Thebans who valued freedom should muster in arms in the market-place. There were at that moment in Thebes many trumpeters who had come to contend for the prize at the approaching festival of the Herakleia. Hipposthenidas engaged these men to blow their trumpets in different parts of the city, and thus everywhere to excite the citizens to arms.[187]
Although during the darkness surprise was the prevalent feeling, and no one knew what to do,—yet so soon as day dawned, and the truth became known, there was but one feeling of joy and patriotic enthusiasm among the majority of the citizens.[188] Both horsemen and hoplites hastened in arms to the agora. Here for the first time since the seizure of the Kadmeia by Phœbidas, a formal assembly of the Theban people was convened, before which Pelopidas and his fellow-conspirators presented themselves. The priests of the city crowned them with wreaths, and thanked them in the name of the local gods; while the assembly hailed them with acclamations of delight and gratitude, nominating with one voice Pelopidas, Mellon, and Charon, as the first renewed Bœotarchs.[189] The revival of this title, which had been dropped since the peace of Antalkidas, was in itself an event of no mean significance; implying not merely that Thebes had waked up again into freedom, but that the Bœotian confederacy also had been, or would be, restored.
Messengers had been forthwith despatched by the conspirators to Attica to communicate their success; upon which all the remaining exiles, with the two Athenian generals privy to the plot, and a body of Athenian volunteers, or corps francs, all of whom were ready on the borders awaiting the summons,—flocked to Thebes to complete the work. The Spartan generals, on their side also, sent to Platæa and Thespiæ for aid. During the whole night, they had been distracted and alarmed by the disturbance in the city; lights showing themselves here and there, with trumpets sounding and shouts for the recent success.[190] Apprised speedily of the slaughter of the polemarchs, from whom they had been accustomed to receive orders, they knew not whom to trust or to consult, while they were doubtless beset by affrighted fugitives of the now defeated party, who would hurry up the Kadmeia for safety. They reckoned at first on a diversion in their favor from the forces at Platæa and Thespiæ. But these forces were not permitted even to approach the city gate; being vigorously charged, as soon as they came in sight, by the newly-mustered Theban cavalry, and forced to retreat with loss. The Lacedæmonians in the citadel were thus not only left without support, but saw their enemies in the city reinforced by the other exiles, and by the auxiliary volunteers.[191]
Meanwhile, Pelopidas and the other new Bœotarchs found themselves at the head of a body of armed citizens, full of devoted patriotism and unanimous in hailing the recent revolution. They availed themselves of this first burst of fervor to prepare for storming the Kadmeia without delay, knowing the importance of forestalling all aid from Sparta. And the citizens were already rushing up to the assault,—proclamation being made of large rewards to those who should first force their way in,—when the Lacedæmonian commander sent proposals for a capitulation.[192] Undisturbed egress from Thebes, with the honors of war, being readily guaranteed to him by oath, the Kadmeia was then surrendered. As the Spartans were marching out of the gates, many Thebans of the defeated party came forth also. But against these latter the exasperation of the victors was so ungovernable, that several of the most odious were seized as they passed, and put to death; in some cases, even their children along with them. And more of them would have been thus despatched, had not the Athenian auxiliaries, with generous anxiety, exerted every effort to get them out of sight and put them into safety.[193] We are not told,—nor is it certain,—that these Thebans were protected under the capitulation. Even had they been so, however, the wrathful impulse might still have prevailed against them. Of the three harmosts who thus evacuated the Kadmeia without a blow, two were put to death, the third was heavily fined and banished, by the authorities at Sparta.[194] We do not know what the fortifications of the Kadmeia were, nor how far it was provisioned. But we can hardly wonder that these officers were considered to have dishonored the Lacedæmonian arms, by making no attempt to defend it; when we recollect that hardly more than four or five days would be required to procure adequate relief from home,—and that forty-three years afterwards, the Macedonian garrison in the same place maintained itself against the Thebans in the city for more than fourteen days, until the return of Alexander from Illyria.[195] The first messenger who brought news to Sparta of the conspiracy and revolution at Thebes, appears to have communicated at the same time that the garrison had evacuated the Kadmeia and was in full retreat, with a train of Theban exiles from the defeated party.[196]
This revolution at Thebes came like an electric shock upon the Grecian world. With a modern reader, the assassination of the four leaders, in their houses and at the banquet, raises a sentiment of repugnance which withdraws his attention from the other features of this memorable deed. Now an ancient Greek not only had no such repugnance, but sympathized with the complete revenge for the seizure of the Kadmeia and the death of Ismenias; while he admired, besides, the extraordinary personal daring of Pelopidas and Mellon,—the skilful forecast of the plot,—and the sudden overthrow, by a force so contemptibly small, of a government which the day before seemed unassailable.[197] It deserves note that we here see the richest men in Thebes undertaking a risk, single-handed and with their own persons, which must have appeared on a reasonable estimate little less than desperate. From the Homeric Odysseus and Achilles down to the end of free Hellenism, the rich Greek strips in the Palæstra,[198] and exposes his person in the ranks as a soldier like the poorest citizens; being generally superior to them in strength and bodily efficiency.
As the revolution in Thebes acted forcibly on the Grecian mind from the manner in which it was accomplished, so by its positive effects it altered forthwith the balance of power in Greece. The empire of Sparta, far from being undisputed and nearly universal over Greece, is from henceforward only maintained by more or less effort, until at length it is completely overthrown.[199]
The exiles from Thebes, arriving at Sparta, inflamed both the ephors, and the miso-Theban Agesilaus, to the highest pitch. Though it was then the depth of winter,[200] an expedition was decreed forthwith against Thebes, and the allied contingents were summoned. Agesilaus declined to take the command of it, on the ground that he was above sixty years of age, and therefore no longer liable to compulsory foreign service. But this (says Xenophon[201]) was not his real reason. He was afraid that his enemies at Sparta would say,—“Here is Agesilaus again putting us to expense, in order that he may uphold despots in other cities,”—as he had just done, and had been reproached with doing, at Phlius; a second proof that the reproaches against Sparta (which I have cited a few pages above from Lysias and Isokrates) of allying herself with Greek despots as well as with foreigners to put down Grecian freedom, found an echo even in Sparta herself. Accordingly Kleombrotus, the other king of Sparta, took the command. He had recently succeeded his brother Agesipolis, and had never commanded before.
Kleombrotus conducted his army along the Isthmus of Corinth through Megara to Platæa, cutting to pieces an outpost of Thebans, composed chiefly of the prisoners set free by the recent revolution, who had been placed for the defence of the intervening mountain-pass. From Platæa he went forward to Thespiæ, and from thence to Kynoskephalæ in the Theban territory, where he lay encamped for sixteen days; after which he retreated to Thespiæ. It appears that he did nothing, and that his inaction was the subject of much wonder in his army, who are said to have even doubted whether he was really and earnestly hostile to Thebes. Perhaps the exiles, with customary exaggeration, may have led him to hope that they could provoke a rising in Thebes, if he would only come near. At any rate the bad weather must have been a serious impediment to action; since in his march back to Peloponnesus through Kreusis and Ægosthenæ the wind blew a hurricane, so that his soldiers could not proceed without leaving their shields and coming back afterwards to fetch them. Kleombrotus did not quit Bœotia, however, without leaving Sphodrias as harmost at Thespiæ, with one third of the entire army, and with a considerable sum of money to employ in hiring mercenaries and acting vigorously against the Thebans.[202]
The army of Kleombrotus, in its march from Megara to Platæa, had passed by the skirts of Attica; causing so much alarm to the Athenians, that they placed Chabrias with a body of peltasts, to guard their frontier and the neighboring road through Eleutheræ into Bœotia. This was the first time that a Lacedæmonian army had touched Attica (now no longer guarded by the lines of Corinth, as in the war between 394 and 388 B.C.) since the retirement of king Pausanias in 404 B.C.; furnishing a proof of the exposure of the country, such as to revive in the Athenian mind all the terrible recollections of Dekeleia and the Peloponnesian war. It was during the first prevalence of this alarm,—and seemingly while Kleombrotus was still with his army at Thespiæ or Kynoskephalæ, close on the Athenian frontier,—that three Lacedæmonian envoys, Etymoklês and two others, arrived at Athens to demand satisfaction for the part taken by the two Athenian generals and the Athenian volunteers, in concerting and aiding the enterprise of Pelopidas and his comrades. So overpowering was the anxiety in the public mind to avoid giving offence to Sparta, that these two generals were both of them accused before the dikastery. The first of them was condemned and executed; the second, profiting by this warning (since, pursuant to the psephism of Kannônus,[203] the two would be put on trial separately), escaped, and a sentence of banishment was passed against him.[204] These two generals had been unquestionably guilty of a grave abuse of their official functions. They had brought the state into public hazard, not merely without consulting the senate or assembly, but even without taking the sense of their own board of Ten. Nevertheless the severity of the sentence pronounced indicates the alarm, as well as the displeasure, of the general body of Athenians; while it served as a disclaimer in fact, if not in form, of all political connection with Thebes.[205]