tyrant and confined him to one spot, so as to be able to check any
attack that he might venture on, and yet not to excite his savage and
ferocious nature; for he had heard of his cruelty and disregard of
what is right, and how he would bury men alive, and dress them in the
skins of wild boars and bears and then set dogs at them and hunt them
with spears, making this his sport, and how he surrounded two
peaceful cities, Melibœa and Skottusa, with his body-guard when the
inhabitants were at their public assembly, and slew them all from the
youth upwards, and how he had consecrated and crowned the spear with
which he killed his uncle Polyphron, and used to address prayers to it
and call it the Slayer. Once when he saw a tragedian performing
Euripides' tragedy, the 'Troades,' he went suddenly out of the
theatre, and sent a message to him to be of good courage, and not act
worse for this, for he had not left the house because he disliked his
acting, but because he felt ashamed that the citizens should see him
weeping at the woes of Hekuba and Andromache, though he never had
pitied any of the people whom he had put to death himself. But he,
terrified by the prestige and reputation of Epameinondas for strategy,

"Let fall his feathers like a craven cock,"

and quickly sent an embassy to him to make peace. Epameinondas scorned
to make a treaty of peace and friendship between the Thebans and such
a man, but agreed to an armistice for thirty days, and taking
Pelopidas and Ismenias returned home.

XXX. When the Thebans heard that ambassadors were being sent from
Athens and Sparta to the Great King to make an alliance with him, they
also sent Pelopidas, a step most advantageous to his reputation. As he
went on his journey through the Persian provinces he excited the