strength of that state. They especially disliked the club presided
over by Ismenias and Androkleides, of which Pelopidas was a member, as
being of democratic and revolutionary principles. Consequently Archias
and Leontidas[4] and Philippus, men of the aristocratic party, wealthy
and unscrupulous, persuaded Phœbidas, a Laconian who was passing
through the town with an armed force, to seize the Kadmeia[5] by
surprise, and, banishing the party that opposed them, establish an
aristocratic oligarchy which would be subservient to Sparta.

He was persuaded to do this, and attacked the unsuspecting Thebans
during the feast of Thesmophoria. When he gained possession of the
height, Ismenias was seized and conveyed to Lacedæmon, and there not
long afterwards made away with. Pelopidas, Pherenikus, and
Androkleides, with many others, went into exile and were outlawed by
proclamation. Epameinondas stayed at home disregarded, not being
thought to be a man of action, because of his philosophical habits,
nor a man of any power, because of his poverty.

VI. When the Lacedæmonians removed Phœbidas from his command and fined
him a hundred thousand drachmas, but nevertheless held the Kadmeia
with a garrison, all the other Greeks wondered at their inconsistency,
in punishing the doer but approving of the deed; but the Thebans, who
had lost their old constitution and were now held in bondage by the
party of Archias and Leontidas, had lost all hope of release from
their tyrants, who they perceived were merely acting as a guard to the
Spartan supremacy in Greece, and therefore could not be put a stop to,
unless their enterprise by sea and land could also be checked.
However, Leontidas and his party, learning that the exiles were living
at Athens, and were popular with the people there, and respected by
the upper classes, began to plot against them, and by sending thither