Pelopidas

This picture, then, Menecleidas persuaded them to dedicate with Charon’s name inscribed thereon, hoping in this way to obscure the fame of Pelopidas and Epaminondas. But the ambitious scheme was a foolish one, when there were so many and such great conflicts, to bestow approval on one action and one victory, in which, we are told, a certain Gerandas, an obscure Spartan, and forty others were killed, but nothing else of importance was accomplished.

This decree was attacked as unconstitutional by Pelopidas, who insisted that it was not a custom with the Thebans to honour any one man individually, but for the whole country to have the glory of a victory. And through the whole trial of the case he continued to heap generous praise upon Charon, while he showed Menecleidas to be a slanderous and worthless fellow, and asked the Thebans if they had done nothing noble themselves; the result was that Menecleidas was fined, and being unable to pay the fine because it was so heavy, he afterwards tried to effect a revolution in the government. This episode, then, has some bearing on the Life which I am writing.

Now, since Alexander the tyrant of Pherae made open war on many of the Thessalians, and was plotting against them all, their cities sent ambassadors to Thebes asking for an armed force and a general. Pelopidas, therefore, seeing that Epaminondas was busy with his work in Peloponnesus, offered and assigned himself to the Thessalians,[*](In 369 B.C.) both because he could not suffer his own skill and ability to lie idle, and because he thought that wherever Epaminondas was there was no need of a second general.

Accordingly, after marching into Thessaly with an armed force, he straightway took Larissa, and when Alexander came to him and begged for terms, he tried to make him, instead of a tyrant, one who would govern the Thessalians mildly and according to law. But since the man was incurably brutish and full of savageness, and since there was much denunciation of his licentiousness and greed, Pelopidas became harsh and severe with him, whereupon he ran away with his guards.

Then Pelopidas, leaving the Thessalians in great security from the tyrant and in concord with one another, set out himself for Macedonia, where Ptolemy was at war with Alexander the king of the Macedonians. For both parties had invited him to come and be arbiter and judge between them, and ally and helper of the one that appeared to be wronged.

After he had come, then, and had settled their differences and brought home the exiles, he received as hostages Philip, the king’s brother, and thirty other sons of the most illustrious men, and brought them to live at Thebes, thus showing the Greeks what an advance the Theban state had made in the respect paid to its power and the trust placed in its justice.