Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/83

 EFFECT OF THE NEWS IN GREECE. 61 as a prisoner to the Kadmeia ; while the senators, thunderstruck and overawed, offered no resistance. Such of them as were par- tisans of the arrested polemarch, and many even of the more neutral members, left the Senate and went home, thankful to es- cape with their lives. Three hundred of them, including Andro- kleidas, Pelopidas, Mellon, and others, sought safety by voluntary exile to Athens ; after which, the remainder of the Senate, now composed of few or none except philo-Spartan partisans, passed a vote formally dismissing Ismenias, and appointing a new pole- march in his place. 1 This blow of high-handed violence against Ismenias forms a worthy counterpart to the seizure of Theramenes by Kritias, 3 twenty-two years before, in the Senate of Athens under the Thirty. Terror-striking in itself, it was probably accompanied by similar deeds of force against others of the same party. The sudden explosion and complete success of the conspiracy, plotted by the Executive Chief himself, the most irresistible of all con- spirators, the presence of Phoebidas in the Kadmeia, and of a compliant Senate in the town, the seizure or flight of Ismenias and all his leading partisans, were more than sufficient to crush all spirit of resistance on the part of the citizens ; whose first anxiety probably was, to extricate their wives and daughters from the custody of the Lacedaemonians in the Kadmeia. Having such a price to offer, Leontiades would extort submission the more easily, and would probably procure a vote of the people ratifying the new regime, the Spartan alliance, and the continued occupation of the acropolis. Having accomplished the first settlement of his authority, he proceeded without delay to Sparta, to make known the fact that " order reigned " at Thebes. The news of the seizure of the Kadmeia and of the revolution at Thebes had been received at Sparta with the greatest surprise, as well as with a mixed feeh'ng of shame and satisfaction. Every- where throughout Greece, probably, it excited a greater sensation than any event since the battle of JEgospotami. Tried by the recognized public law of Greece, it was a flagitious iniquity, for which Sparta had not the shadow of a pretence. It was even 1 Xen. Hellen. v, 2, 30, 31.
 * Xen. Hellen. ii, 3. See above in this History, Vol. VIII. Ck Ixv. p. 252