Hence Euphron still retained so many partisans, that having procured from Athens a reinforcement of mercenary troops, he was enabled to return to Sikyon, and again to establish himself as master of the town in conjunction with the popular party. But as his opponents, the principal men in the place, found shelter along with the Theban garrison in the acropolis, which he vainly tried to take by assault,[587]—his possession even of the town was altogether precarious, until such formidable neighbors could be removed. Accordingly he resolved to visit Thebes, in hopes of obtaining from the authorities an order for expelling his opponents and handing over Sikyon a second time to his rule. On what grounds, after so recent a defection to the Spartans, he rested his hopes of success, we do not know; except that he took with him a large sum of money for the purpose of bribery.[588] His Sikyonian opponents, alarmed lest he should really carry his point, followed him to Thebes, where their alarm was still farther increased by seeing him in familiar converse with the magistrates. Under the first impulse of terror and despair, they assassinated Euphron in broad daylight,—on the Kadmeia, and even before the doors of the Theban Senate-house, wherein both magistrates and Senate were sitting.
For an act of violence thus patent, they were of course seized forthwith, and put upon their trial, before the Senate. The magistrates invoked upon their heads the extreme penalty of death, insisting upon the enormity and even impudence of the outrage, committed almost under the eyes of the authorities,—as well as upon the sacred duty of vindicating not merely the majesty, but even the security of the city, by exemplary punishment upon offenders who had despised its laws. How many in number were the persons implicated, we do not know. All, except one, denied actual hand-participation; but that one avowed it frankly, and stood up to justify it before the Theban Senate. He spoke in substance nearly as follows,—taking up the language of the accusing magistrates:—
“Despise you I cannot, men of Thebes; for you are masters of my person and life. It was on other grounds of confidence that I slew this man: first, I had the conviction of acting justly; next, I trusted in your righteous judgment. I knew that you did not wait for trial and sentence to slay Archias and Hypatês,[589] whom you caught after a career similar to that of Euphron,—but punished them at the earliest practicable opportunity, under the conviction that men manifest in sacrilege, treason, and despotism, were already under sentence by all men. Well! and was not Euphron, too, guilty of all these crimes? Did not he find the temples full of gold and silver offerings, and strip them until they were empty? How can there be a traitor more palpable than the man, who, favored and upheld by Sparta, first betrayed her to you; and then again, after having received every mark of confidence from you, betrayed you to her,—handing over the harbor of Sikyon to your enemies? Was not he a despot without reserve, the man who exalted slaves, not only into freemen, but into citizens? the man who despoiled, banished, or slew, not criminals, but all whom he chose, and most of all, the chief citizens? And now, after having vainly attempted, in conjunction with your enemies the Athenians, to expel your harmost by force from Sikyon, he has collected a great stock of money, and come hither to turn it to account. Had he assembled arms and soldiers against you, you would have thanked me for killing him. How then can you punish me for giving him his due, when he has come with money to corrupt you, and to purchase from you again the mastery of Sikyon, to your own disgrace as well as mischief? Had he been my enemy and your friend, I should undoubtedly have done wrong to kill him in your city; but as he is a traitor, playing you false, how is he more my enemy than yours? I shall be told that he came hither of his own accord, confiding in the laws of the city. Well! you would have thanked me for killing him anywhere out of Thebes; why not in Thebes also, when he has come hither only for the purpose of doing you new wrong in addition to the past? Where among Greeks has impunity ever been assured to traitors, deserters, or despots? Recollect, that you have passed a vote that exiles from any one of your allied cities might be seized as outlaws in any other. Now Euphron is a condemned exile, who has ventured to come back to Sikyon without any vote of the general body of allies. How can any one affirm that he has not justly incurred death? I tell you in conclusion, men of Thebes,—if you put me to death, you will have made yourselves the avengers of your very worst enemy,—if you adjudge me to have done right, you will manifest yourselves publicly as just avengers, both on your own behalf and on that of your whole body of allies.”[590]
This impressive discourse induced the Theban Senate to pronounce that Euphron had met with his due. It probably came from one of the principal citizens of Sikyon, among whom were most of the enemies as well as the victims of the deceased despot. It appeals, in a characteristic manner, to that portion of Grecian morality which bore upon men, who by their very crimes procured for themselves the means of impunity; against whom there was no legal force to protect others, and who were therefore considered as not being entitled to protection themselves, if the daggers of others could ever be made to reach them. The tyrannicide appeals to this sentiment with confidence, as diffused throughout all the free Grecian cities. It found responsive assent in the Theban Senate, and would probably have found the like assent, if set forth with equal emphasis, in most Grecian senates or assemblies elsewhere.
Very different, however, was the sentiment in Sikyon. The body of Euphron was carried thither, and enjoyed the distinguished preëminence of being buried in the market-place.[591] There, along with his tomb, a chapel was erected, in which he was worshipped as Archêgetês, or Patron-hero and Second Founder, of the city. He received the same honors as had been paid to Brasidas at Amphipolis. The humbler citizens and the slaves, upon whom he had conferred liberty and political franchise,—or at least the name of a political franchise,—remembered him with grateful admiration as their benefactor, forgetting or excusing the atrocities which he had wreaked upon their political opponents. Such is the retributive Nemesis which always menaces, and sometimes overtakes, an oligarchy who keep the mass of the citizens excluded from political privileges. A situation is thus created, enabling some ambitious and energetic citizen to confer favors and earn popularity among the many, and thus to acquire power, which, whether employed or not for the benefit of the many, goes along with their antipathies when it humbles or crushes the previously monopolizing few.
We may presume from these statements that the government of Sikyon became democratical. But the provoking brevity of Xenophon does not inform us of the subsequent arrangements made with the Theban harmost in the acropolis,—nor how the intestine dissensions, between the democracy in the town and the refugees in the citadel, were composed,—nor what became of those citizens who slew Euphron. We learn only that not long afterwards, the harbor of Sikyon, which Euphron had held in conjunction with the Lacedæmonians and Athenians, was left imperfectly defended by the recall of the latter to Athens; and that it was accordingly retaken by the forces from the town, aided by the Arcadians.[592]
It appears that these proceedings of Euphron (from his first proclamation of the democracy at Sikyon and real acquisition of despotism to himself, down to his death and the recovery of the harbor) took place throughout the year 367 B.C. and the earlier half of 366 B.C. No such enemy, probably, would have arisen to embarrass Thebes, unless the policy recommended by Epaminondas in Achaia had been reversed, and unless he himself had fallen under the displeasure of his countrymen. His influence too was probably impaired, and the policy of Thebes affected for the worse, by the accidental absence of his friend Pelopidas, who was then on his mission to the Persian court at Susa. Such a journey and return, with the transaction of the business in hand, must have occupied the greater part of the year 367 B.C., being terminated probably by the return of the envoys in the beginning of 366 B.C.
The leading Thebans had been alarmed by the language of Philiskus,—who had come over a few months before as envoy from the satrap Ariobarzanes and had threatened to employ Asiatic money in the interest of Athens and Sparta against Thebes, though his threats seem never to have been realized, as well as by the presence of the Lacedæmonian Euthyklês (after the failure of Antalkidas[593]) at the Persian court, soliciting aid. Moreover Thebes had now pretensions to the headship of Greece, at least as good as either of her two rivals; while since the fatal example set by Sparta at the peace called by the name of Antalkidas in 387 B.C., and copied by Athens after the battle of Leuktra in 371 B.C.,—it had become a sort of recognized fashion that the leading Grecian state should sue out its title from the terror-striking rescript of the Great King, and proclaim itself as enforcing terms which he had dictated. On this ground of borrowed elevation Thebes now sought to place herself. There was in her case a peculiar reason which might partly excuse the value set upon it by her leaders. It had been almost the capital act of her policy to establish the two new cities, Megalopolis and Messênê. The vitality and chance for duration, of both,—especially that of the latter, which had the inextinguishable hostility of Sparta to contend with,—would be materially improved, in the existing state of the Greek mind, if they were recognized as autonomous under a Persian rescript. To attain this object,[594] Pelopidas and Ismenias now proceeded as envoys to Susa; doubtless under a formal vote of the allied synod, since the Arcadian Antiochus, a celebrated pankratiast, the Eleian Archidamus, and a citizen from Argos, accompanied them. Informed of the proceeding, the Athenians also sent Timagoras and Leon to Susa; and we read with some surprise that these hostile envoys all went up thither in the same company.[595]
Pelopidas, though he declined to perform the usual ceremony of prostration,[596] was favorably received by the Persian court. Xenophon,—who recounts the whole proceeding in a manner unfairly invidious towards the Thebans, forgetting that they were now only copying the example of Sparta in courting Persian aid,—affirms that his application was greatly furthered by the recollection of the ancient alliance of Thebes with Xerxes, against Athens and Sparta, at the time of the battle of Platæa; and by the fact that Thebes had not only refused to second, but had actually discountenanced, the expedition of Agesilaus against Asia. We may perhaps doubt, whether this plea counted for much; or the straightforward eloquence of Pelopidas, so much extolled by Plutarch,[597] which could only reach Persian ears through an interpreter. But the main fact for the Great King to know was, that the Thebans had been victorious at Leuktra; that they had subsequently trodden down still farther the glory of Sparta, by carrying their arms over Laconia, and emancipating the conquered half of the country; that when they were no longer in Peloponnesus, their allies the Arcadians and Argeians had been shamefully defeated by the Lacedæmonians (in the Tearless Battle). Such boasts on the part of Pelopidas,—confirmed as matters of fact even by the Athenian Timagoras,—would convince the Persian ministers that it was their interest to exercise ascendency over Greece through Thebes in preference to Sparta. Accordingly Pelopidas being asked by the Great King what sort of rescript he wished, obtained his own terms. Messênê was declared autonomous and independent of Sparta: Amphipolis also was pronounced to be a free and autonomous city: the Athenians were directed to order home and lay up their ships of war now in active service, on pain of Persian intervention against them, in case of disobedience. Moreover Thebes was declared the head city of Greece, and any city refusing to follow her headship was menaced with instant compulsion by Persian force.[598] In reference to the points in dispute between Elis and Arcadia (the former claiming sovereignty over Triphylia, which professed itself Arcadian and had been admitted into the Arcadian communion), the rescript pronounced in favor of the Eleians;[599] probably at the instance of Pelopidas, since there now subsisted much coldness between the Thebans and Arcadians.
Leon the Athenian protested against the Persian rescript, observing aloud when he heard it read,—“By Zeus, Athenians, I think it is time for you to look out for some other friend than the Great King.” This remark, made in the King’s hearing and interpreted to him, produced the following addition to the rescript: “If the Athenians have anything juster to propose, let them come to the King and inform him.” So vague a modification, however, did little to appease the murmurs of the Athenians. On the return of their two envoys to Athens, Leon accused his colleague Timagoras of having not only declined to associate with him during the journey, but also of having lent himself to the purposes of Pelopidas, of being implicated in treasonable promises, and of receiving large bribes from the Persian King. On these charges Timagoras was condemned and executed.[600] The Arcadian envoy Antiochus was equally indignant at the rescript; refusing even to receive such presents of formal courtesy as were tendered to all, and accepted by Pelopidas himself, who however strictly declined everything beyond. The conduct of this eminent Theban thus exhibited a strong contrast with the large acquisitions of the Athenian Timagoras.[601] Antiochus, on returning to Arcadia, made report of his mission to the Pan-Arcadian synod, called the Ten Thousand, at Megalopolis. He spoke in the most contemptuous terms of all that he had seen at the Persian court. There were (he said) plenty of bakers, cooks, wine-pourers, porters, etc., but as for men competent to fight against Greeks, though he looked out for them with care, he could see none; and even the vaunted golden plane-tree was not large enough to furnish shade for a grasshopper.[602]