Pelopidas

Then there was a sudden knocking at the door. Someone ran to it, learned from the attendant that he was come from the polemarchs with a summons for Charon, and brought the news inside, much perturbed. All were at once convinced that their enterprise had been revealed, and that they themselves were all lost, before they had even done anything worthy of their valour. However, they decided that Charon must obey the summons and present himself boldly before the magistrates. Charon was generally an intrepid man and of a stern courage in the face of danger,

but in this case he was much concerned and frightened on account of his friends, arid feared that souse suspicion of treachery would fall upon him if so many and such excellent citizens now lost their lives. Accordingly, as he was about to depart, he brought his son from the women’s apartments, a mere boy as yet, but in beauty and bodily strength surpassing those of his years, and put him in the hands of Pelopidas, telling him that if he found any guile or treachery in the father, he must treat the son as an enemy and show him no mercy.

Many were moved to tears by the noble concern which Charon showed, and all were indignant that he should think any one of them so demoralized by the present peril and so mean-spirited as to suspect him or blame him in the least. They also begged him not to involve his son with them, but to put him out of harm’s way, that he might escape the tyrants and live to become an avenger of his city and his friends.

Charon, however, refused to take his son away, asking if any kind of life or any safety could be more honourable for him than a decorous death with his father and all these friends. Then he addressed the gods in prayer, and after embracing and encouraging them all, went his way, striving so to compose his countenance and modulate his voice as not to betray what he was really doing.