THE RESCUE OF THEBES. 247

stroyed, and its defenders murdered, by a Spartan
army. But it is well to say here that Thebans
formed the most fiercely hostile part of that army,
and that it was the Thebans who demanded and
obtained the murder in cold blood of the hapless
prisoners.

And now we pass on to a date less than fifty
years later to find a remarkable change in the state
of affairs. Athens has fallen from her high estate.
Sparta is now the lord and master of the Grecian
world. And a harsh master has she proved, with
her controlling agents in every city, her voice the
arbiter in all political concerns.

Thebes is now the friend of Athens and the foe of
Sparta, the chief among those cities which oppose
the new order of things. Yet Thebes in 379 B.c. lies
hard and fast within the Spartan clutch. How she
got there is now for us to tell.

It was an act of treason, some three years before,
that handed this city over to the tender mercies of
her old ally, her present foe. There was a party in
Thebes favorable to Sparta, at whose head was a
man named Leontiades. And at this time Sparta
was at war with Olynthus, a city far to the north.
One Spartan army had marched to Olynthus. <An-
other, led by a general named Pheebidas, was on its
march thither, and had halted for a period of rest
near the gymnasium, a short distance outside the
walls of Thebes. There is good reason to believe
that Phoebidas well knew what Leontiades designed,
and was quite ready to play his part in the treacher-
ous scheme.