Pelopidas

For he had learned how savage he was, and how little regard he had for right and justice, in that sometimes he buried men alive, and sometimes dressed them in the skins of wild boars or bears, and then set his hunting dogs upon them and either tore them in pieces or shot them down, making this his diversion; and at Meliboea and Scotussa, allied and friendly cities, when the people were in full assembly, he surrounded them with his body-guards and slaughtered them from the youth up; he also consecrated the spear with which he had slain his uncle Polyphron, decked it with garlands, and sacrificed to it as to a god, giving it the name of Tycho.[*](That is, Luck.)

Once when he was seeing a tragedian act the Trojan Women of Euripides, he left the theatre abruptly, and sent a message to the actor bidding him be of good courage and not put forth any less effort because of his departure, for it was not out of contempt for his acting that he had gone away, but because he was ashamed to have the citizens see him, who had never taken pity on any man that he had murdered, weeping over the sorrows of Hecuba and Andromache.

It was this tyrant, however, who, terrified at the name and fame and distinction of the generalship of Epaminondas,

1. Crouched down, though warrior bird, like slave,
2. with drooping wings,

Now, when the Thebans learned that ambassadors from Sparta and Athens were on their way to the Great King to secure an alliance, they also sent Pelopidas thither; and this was a most excellent plan, in view of his reputation. For, in the first place, he went up through the provinces of the king as a man of name and note; for the glory of his conflicts with the Lacedaemonians had not made its way slowly or to any slight extent through Asia,

but, when once the report of the battle at Leuctra had sped abroad, it was ever increased by the addition of some new success, and prevailed to the farthest recesses of the interior; and, in the second place, when the satraps and generals and commanders at the King’s court beheld him, they spoke of him with wonder, saying that this was the man who had expelled the Lacedaemonians from land and sea, and shut up between Taÿgetus and the Eurotas that Sparta which, a little while before, through Agesilaüs, had undertaken a war with the Great King and the Persians for the possession of Susa and Ecbatana.

This pleased Artaxerxes, of course and he admired Pelopidas for his high reputation, and loaded him with honours, being desirous to appear lauded and courted by the greatest men. But when he saw him face to face, and understood his proposals, which were more trustworthy than those of the Athenians, and simpler than those of the Lacedaemonians,

he was yet more delighted with him, and, with all the assurance of a king, openly showed the esteem in which he held him, and allowed the other ambassadors to see that he made most account of him. And yet he is thought to have shown Antalcidas the Lacedaemonian more honour than any other Greek, in that he took the chaplet which he had worn at a banquet, dipped it in perfume, and sent it to him.