Pelopidas

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. V. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1917.

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,
[*](An iambic trimeter of unknown authorship; cf. the Alcibiades, iv. 3. ) and speedily sent a deputation to him which should explain his conduct. But Epaminondas could not consent that the Thebans should make peace and friendship with such a man; he did, however, make a thirty days’ truce with him, and after receiving Pelopidas and Ismenias, returned home.

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,