Our affairs being in this condition, understanding
that Epaminondas, Gorgidas, and their friends were drawing into a body about Minerva's temple, I went to them.
Many honest worthy citizens at first joined, and their number continually increased. When I had informed them
in the particulars of what was done, and desired them to
march into the market-place to assist their friends, they
proclaimed liberty; and the multitude were furnished with
arms out of the piazzas, that were stuffed with spoil, and
the neighboring armorers' shops. Then Hipposthenides
with his friends and servants appeared, having by chance
joined the trumpeters that were coming to Thebes, against
the feast of Hercules. Straight some gave the alarm in
the market-place, others in other parts of the city, distracting their enemies on all sides, as if the whole city was in
arms. Some, lighting smoky fire, concealed themselves in
the cloud and fled to the castle, drawing to them the select
band which used to keep guard about the castle all night.
The garrison of the castle, when these poured in among
them scattered and in disorder, though they saw us all in
confusion, and knew we had no standing compact body,
yet would not venture to make a descent, though they were
above five thousand strong. They were really afraid, but
pretended they dared not move without Lysanoridas's orders, who, contrary to his usual custom, was absent from
the castle that day. For which neglect, the Spartans (as I
was told), having got Lysanoridas into their hands, fined
[p. 423]
him heavily; and having taken Hermippidas and Arcesus
at Corinth, they put them both to death without delay.
And surrendering the castle to us upon articles, they
marched out with their garrison.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.