274 HISTORY OF GREECE. fenders who had despised its laws. How many in number were the persons implicated, we do not know. All, except one, denied actual hand-participation ; but that one avowed it frankly, and stood up to justify it before the Theban Senate. He spoke in sub- stance nearly as follows, taking up the language of the accusing magistrates : " Despise you I cannot, men of Thebes ; for you are masters of my person and life. It was on other grounds of confidence that I slew this man : first, I had the conviction of acting justly ; next, I trusted in your righteous judgment. I knew that you did not wait for trial and sentence to slay Archias and Hypates, 1 whom you caught after a career similar to that of Euphron, but punished them at the earliest practicable opportunity, under the conviction that men manifest in sacrilege, treason, and despotism, were already under sentence by all men. "Well ! and was not Euphron, too, guilty of all these crimes ? Did not he find the temples full of gold and silver offerings, and strip them until they were empty ? How can there be a traitor more palpable than the man, who, favored and upheld by Sparta, first betrayed her to you ; and then again, after having received every mark of confidence from you, betrayed you to her, handing over the harbor of Sikyon to your enemies? Was not he a despot without reserve, the man who exalted slaves, not only into freemen, but into citizens ? the man who despoiled, banished, or slew, not criminals, but all whom he chose, and most of all, the chief citizens ? And now, after having vainly attempted, in conjunction with your enemies the Athenians, to expel your har- most by force from Sikyon, he has collected a great stock of money, and come hither to turn it to account. Had he assembled arms and soldiers against you, you would have thanked me for killing him. How then can you punish me for giving him his due, when he has come with money to corrupt you, and to purchase from you again the mastery of Sikyon, to your own disgrace as well as mis- 1 This refers to the secret expedition of Pelopidas and the six other Theban conspirators from Athens to Thebes, at the time when the Lace- daemonians were masters of that town and garrisoned the Kadmcia. The conspirators, through the contrivance of the secretary Phyllidas, got accesa in disguise to the oligarchical leaders of Thebes, who were governing un ler Lacedaemonian ascendency, and put them to death. This event is descri fed in a former chapter, Ch. Ixxvii, p. 85 seq.
