Pelopidas

After this the Spartans ostensibly treated the Thebans as friends and allies, but they really looked with suspicion on the ambitious spirit and the power of the city, and above all they hated the party of Ismenias and Androcleides, to which Pelopidas belonged, and which was thought to be friendly to freedom and a popular form of government.

Therefore Archias, Leontidas, and Philip, men of the oligarchical faction who were rich and immoderately ambitious, sought to persuade Phoebidas the Spartan, as he was marching past with an army, to take the Cadmeia by surprise, expel from the city the party opposed to them, and bring the government into subserviency to the Lacedaemonians by putting it in the hands of a few men.

Phoebidas yielded to their persuasions, made his attack upon the Thebans when they did not expect it, since it was the festival of the Thesmophoria, and got possession of the citadel.[*](In the winter of 382 B.C. Cf. the Agesilaüs, xxiii. 3-7. ) Then Ismenias was arrested, carried to Sparta, and after a little while put to death; while Pelopidas, Pherenicus, Androcleides and many others took to flight and were proclaimed outlaws. Epaminondas, however, was suffered to remain in the city, because his philosophy made him to be looked down upon as a recluse, and his poverty as impotent.