avery and personal risk of
its chief actors, and was, like the other, favoured by fortune. It is
difficult to mention any other persons, who with fewer numbers and
scantier means than these, conquered men more numerous and powerful
than themselves, by sheer daring and ability, or who conferred greater
blessings on their own countries; and that which made this more
remarkable was the change which it effected. The war which destroyed
the prestige of Sparta, and put an end to her empire by sea and land,
began in that night, in which Pelopidas, without having made himself
master of any fort, stronghold, or citadel, but merely coming to a
private house with eleven others, loosed and broke to pieces, if we
may use a true metaphor, the chains of Lacedaemonian supremacy, which
seemed fixed and immovable.

XIV. Now when a great Lacedaemonian army invaded Boeotia, the Athenians
manifested great alarm. They repudiated their alliance with the
Thebans, and impeached those who had shown Boeotian sympathies; some of
these men were put to death, others fined and banished. The case of
the Thebans seemed desperate, as no one offered to help them; but
Pelopidas, who with Gorgidas was Boeotarch, contrived to alienate the
Athenians from Sparta by the following plot. Sphodrias, a Spartan, of
great renown in the wars, but somewhat flighty and prone to wild
enterprises and reckless ambition, had been left near Thespiae with an
army, to receive and assist those Thebans[9] who were now sent into
exile because they favoured the Lacedaemonians. Pelopidas sent secretly
to this man a merchant, a friend of his own, who gave him a bribe, and
also made proposals which fascinated him more than the money, that he
should attempt some enterprise on a great scale, and surprise Peiraeus
by a sudden attack when the Athenians were off their guard: for the
Lacedaemonians would be better pleased with the capture of Athens than
with anything else, and the Thebans would not assist them, for they
were at variance with them and regarded them as traitors. At length
Sphodrias was prevailed upon to agree to this, and, with his soldiery,
invaded Attica by night. He got as far as Eleusis, but there the
soldiers lost heart, and the attempt was detected. So, having involved
the Spartans in a war of no slight importance, he retired to Thespiae.

XV. Upon this the Athenians again most eagerly allied themselves with
the Thebans, and, aspiring to supremacy at sea, sent embass