Note 184 — Chapter LXXVII · FROM THE SUBJUGATION OF OLYNTHUS BY THE LACEDÆMONIANS DOWN TO THE CONGRESS AT SPARTA, AND PARTIAL PEACE, IN 371 B.C.

The description given by Xenophon, of this assassination of the polemarchs at Thebes, differs materially from that of Plutarch. I follow Xenophon in the main; introducing, however, several of the details found in Plutarch, which are interesting, and which have the air of being authentic.

Xenophon himself intimates (Hellen. v, 4, 7), that besides the story given in the text, there was also another story told by some,—that Mellon and his companions had got access to the polemarchs in the guise of drunken revellers. It is this latter story which Plutarch has adopted, and which carries him into many details quite inconsistent with the narrative of Xenophon. I think the story, of the conspirators having been introduced in female attire, the more probable of the two. It is borne out by the exact analogy of what Herodotus tells us respecting Alexander son of Amyntas, prince of Macedonia (Herod. v, 20).

Compare Plutarch, Pelopidas, c. 10, 11; Plutarch, De Gen. Socrat. c. 31, p. 597. Polyænus (ii, 4, 3) gives a story with many different circumstances, yet agreeing in the fact that Pelopidas in female attire killed the Spartan general. The story alluded to by Aristotle (Polit. v, 5, 10), though he names both Thebes and Archias, can hardly refer to this event.

It is Plutarch, however, who mentions the presence of Kabeirichus the archon at the banquet, and the curious Theban custom that the archon during his year of office never left out of his hand the consecrated spear. As a Bœotian born, Plutarch was doubtless familiar with these old customs.

From what other authors Plutarch copied the abundant details of this revolution at Thebes, which he interweaves in the life of Pelopidas and in the treatise called De Genio Socratis—we do not know. Some critics suppose him to have borrowed from Dionysodôrus and Anaxis—Bœotian historians whose work comprised this period, but of whom not a single fragment is preserved (see Fragm. Histor. Græc. ed. Didot, vol. ii, p. 84).