Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/308

 286 HISTORY OF GRLECE. ptill remained a blow to Thebes and a profit to Alexander; who again became master of all or most part of Thessaly, together with the Magnetes, the Phthiot Achaeans, and other tributary nations dependent on Thessaly maintaining unimpaired his influence and connection at Athens. 1 While the Theban arms were thus losing ground in Thessaly, an important point was gamed in their favor on the other side of Boeotia. Oropus, on the north-eastern frontier of Attica adjoining Boeotia, was captured and wrested from Athens by a party of exiles who crossed over from Eretria in Eubcea, with the aid of Thernison, despot of the last-mentioned town. It had been more than once los* and regained between Athens and Thebes ; being seemingly in its origin Boeotian, and never incorporated as a Deme or equal con- stituent member of the Athenian commonwealth, but only recog- nized as a dependency ot Athens ; though, as it was close on the frontier, many of its inhabitants were also citizens of Athens, de Xenophon, in describing the embassy of Pelopidas to Persia, mentions his grounds for expecting a favorable reception, and the matters which he had to boast of (Hell, vii, 1, 35). Now if Pelopidas, immediately before ; had been seized and detained for some months in prison by Alexander of Pherae, surely Xenophon would have alluded to it as an item on the other side. I know that this inference from the silence of Xenophon is not al ways to be trusted. But in this case, we must recollect that he dislikes both the Theban leaders ; and we may fairly conclude, that where he is enume- rating the trophies of Pelopidas, he would hardly have failed to mention a signal disgrace, if there had been one, immediately preceding. Pelopidas was taken prisoner by Alexander, not in battle, but when in pacific mission, and under circumstances in which no man less infamous than Alexander would have seized him (napaanovdrj'&slf Plutarch, Apoph. p. 194 D.; Pausan. ix, 15, 1 ; "legationis jure satis tectum se arbitraretur " Corn. Nep.). His imprudence in trusting himself under any circumstances to such a man as Alexander, is blamed by Polybius (viii, 1) and others. But we must suppose such imprudence to be partly justified or explained by some plausible circumstances ; and the proclamation of the Persian re- script appears to me to present the most reasonable explanation of his pro- ceeding. On these grounds, which, in my judgment, outweigh any probabilities on the contrary side, I have placed the seizure of Pelopidas in 366 u. c., after the embassy to Persia ; not without feeling, however, that the chronology of this period cannot be rendered absolutely certain. 1 Plutarch, Pelopid c. 31-35.