Pelopidas

But now the Lacedaemonians made peace with all the other Greeks and directed the war against the Thebans alone;[*](In 371 B.C.) Cleombrotus their king invaded Boeotia with a force of ten thousand men-at-arms and a thousand horse; a new peril confronted the Thebans, since they were openly threatened with downright dispersion; and an unprecedented fear reigned in Boeotia. It was at this time that Pelopidas, on leaving his house, when his wife followed him on his way in tears and begging him not to lose his life, said:

This advice, my wife, should be given to private men; but men in authority should be told not to lose the lives of others. And when he reached the camp and found that the boeotarchs were not in accord he was first to side with Epaminondas in voting to give the enemy battle. Now Pelopidas, although he had not been appointed boeotarch, was captain of the sacred band, and highly trusted, as it was right that a man should be who had given his country such tokens of his devotion to freedom.

Accordingly, it was decided to risk a battle, and at Leuctra they encamped over against the Lacedaemonians. Here Pelopidas had a dream which greatly disturbed him. Now, in the plain of Leuctra are the tombs of the daughters of Scedasus, who are called from the place Leuctridae, for they had been buried there, after having been ravished by Spartan strangers.[*](The damsels, in shame, took their own lives. Cf. Pausanias, ix. 13, 3. )

At the commission of such a grievous and lawless act, their father, since he could get no justice at Sparta, heaped curses upon the Spartans, and then slew himself upon the tombs of the maidens; and ever after, prophecies and oracles kept warning the Spartans to be on watchful guard against the Leuctrian wrath. Most of them, however, did not fully understand the matter, but were in doubt about the place, since in Laconia there is a little town near the sea which is called Leuctra, and near Megalopolis in Arcadia there is a place of the same name. This calamity, of course, occurred long before the battle of Leuctra.