V. After this, the Spartans behaved towards Thebes outwardly as friends and allies, but really viewed with suspicion the spirit and strength of that state.  They especially disliked the club presided over by Ismenias and Androkleides, of which Pelopidas was a member, as being of democratic and revolutionary principles.  Consequently Archias and Leontidas[4] and Philippus, men of the aristocratic party, wealthy and unscrupulous, persuaded Phoebidas, a Laconian who was passing through the town with an armed force, to seize the Kadmeia[5] by surprise, and, banishing the party that opposed them, establish an aristocratic oligarchy which would be subservient to Sparta.

He was persuaded to do this, and attacked the unsuspecting Thebans during the feast of Thesmophoria.  When he gained possession of the height, Ismenias was seized and conveyed to Lacedaemon, and there not long afterwards made away with.  Pelopidas, Pherenikus, and Androkleides, with many others, went into exile and were outlawed by proclamation.  Epameinondas stayed at home disregarded, not being thought to be a man of action, because of his philosophical habits, nor a man of any power, because of his poverty.

VI.  When the Lacedaemonians removed Phoebidas from his command and fined him a hundred thousand drachmas, but nevertheless held the Kadmeia with a garrison, all the other Greeks wondered at their inconsistency, in punishing the doer but approving of the deed; but the Thebans, who had lost their old constitution and were now held in bondage by the party of Archias and Leontidas, had lost all hope of release from their tyrants, who they perceived were merely acting as a guard to the Spartan supremacy in Greece, and therefore could not be put a stop to, unless their enterprise by sea and land could also be checked.  However, Leontidas and his party, learning that the exiles were living at Athens, and were popular with the people there, and respected by the upper classes, began to plot against them, and by sending thither men who were unknown to the exiles, they killed Androkleides by stratagem, but failed with the others.  There came also despatches from Lacedaemon to the Athenians, ordering them not to take them in nor to meddle in the matter, but to banish the exiles, on the ground that they had been proclaimed to be public enemies by their allies.  But the Athenians, who besides their natural and innate kindness were returning a debt of gratitude to the Thebans, who had been main instruments in the re-establishment of their government, and had decreed that if an Athenian should march in arms against the tyrants through Boeotia, no Boeotian should see or hear him, did the Theban exiles no harm.