shown by forbearance in political strife, bore this contemptible
attack with patience, but Pelopidas, who was of a hotter temper, and
whose friends encouraged him to revenge, chose this for its
opportunity. Menekleides the orator had been one of the conspirators
who came with Pelopidas and Mellon to Charon's house. As, after the
revolution, he did not obtain equal rights with the rest, being a man
of great ability in speaking, but reckless and ill-conditioned, he
took to using his powers to slander and assail the men in power, and
was not silenced even by the result of that trial. He got Epameinondas
turned out of his office of Bœotarch, and for a long time succeeded in
lessening his influence in the state; but Pelopidas he could not
misrepresent to the people, so he endeavoured to make a quarrel
between him and Charon. He used the usual method of detractors, who if
they themselves be inferior to the object of their spite, try at any
rate to prove that he is inferior to some one else; and having the ear
of the people, he was ever singing the praises of Charon, and uttering
panegyrics on his skill and his success. He endeavoured to set up a
memorial of the cavalry battle at Platæa, before the battle of
Leuktra, in which the Thebans under Charon were victorious, in the
following manner. Androkydes of Kyzikus had been entrusted by the
state with the task of painting a picture of some other battle, and
had been engaged on it at Thebes. When the war broke out, this
picture, nearly completed, was left in the hands of the Thebans; and
Menekleides persuaded them to put it up publicly and to write on it
the name of Charon, in order to throw the glory of Pelopidas and
Epameinondas into the shade; a silly exhibition of ill-feeling indeed,
to compare one poor skirmish, in which Gerandas, an obscure Spartan,
and some forty men fell, with the great and important services of the
others.