Pelopidas

Then, after bringing her brothers safely up, with their swords, and stationing them in front of the door, she went in herself, and taking down the sword that hung over her husband’s head, showed it to them as a sign that he was fast asleep. Finding the young men terrified and reluctant, she upbraided them, and swore in a rage that she would wake Alexander herself and tell him of the plot, and so led them, ashamed and fearful too, inside, and placed them round the bed, to which she brought the lamp.

Then one of them clutched the tyrant’s feet and held them down, another dragged his head back by the hair, and the third ran him through with his sword. The swiftness of it made his death a milder one, perhaps, than was his due; but since he was the only, or the first, tyrant to die at the hands of his own wife, and since his body was outraged after death, being cast out and trodden under foot by the Pheraeans, he may be thought to have suffered what his lawless deeds deserved.