So they retired, in the first instance prepared to go into exile beyond
the territory of Corinth. It was only upon the persuasion of their
friends and the earnest entreaties of their mothers and sisters who
came out to them, supported by the solemn assurance of the men in power
themselves, who swore to guarantee them against evil consequences, that
some of them finally consented to return home. Presented to their eyes
was the spectacle of a tyranny in full exercise, and to their minds the
consciousness of the obliteration of their city, seeing that boundaries
were plucked up and the land of their fathers had come to be re-entitled
by the name of Argos instead of Corinth; and furthermore, compulsion was
put upon them to share in the constitution in vogue at Argos, for which
they had little appetite, while in their own city they wielded less
power than the resident aliens. So that a party sprang up among them
whose creed was, that life was not worth living on such terms: their
endeavour must be to make their fatherland once more the Corinth of old
days--to restore freedom to their city, purified from the murderer and
his pollution and fairly rooted in good order and legality. (6) It was
a design worth the venture: if they succeeded they would become the
saviours of their country; if not--why, in the effort to grasp the
fairest flower of happiness, they would but overreach, and find instead
a glorious termination to existence.

(6) {eunomia}. See "Pol. Ath." i. 8; Arist. "Pol." iv. 8, 6; iii. 9,
8; v. 7, 4.

It was in furtherance of this design that two men--Pasimelus and
Alcimenes--undertook to creep through a watercourse and effect a meeting
with Praxitas the polemarch of the Lacedaemonians, who was on garrison
duty with his own division in Sicyon. They told him they could give
him ingress at a point in the long walls leading to Lechaeum. Praxitas,
knowing from previous experience that the two men might be relied upon,
believed their statement; and having arranged for the further detention
in Sicyon of the division which was on the point of departure, he busied
himself with plans for the enterprise. When the two men, partly by
chance and partly by contrivance, came to be on guard at the gate where
the tophy now stands, without further ado Praxitas presented himself
with his division, taking with him also the men of Sicyon and the whole
of the Corinthian exiles. (7) Having reached the gate, he had a qualm of
misgiv