) notes that "at the head of the whole League there seems to
have been, as in so many other cases, a single Federal general."
Cf. Diod. xv. 62.

(2) See above, VII. i. 46.

Faction and party strife ran high in Sicyon between the better classes
and the people, when Euphron, getting a body of foreign troops from
Athens, once more obtained his restoration. The city, with the help of
the commons, he was master of, but the Theban governor held the citadel.
Euphron, perceiving that he would never be able to dominate the state
whilst the Thebans held the acropolis, collected money and set off to
Thebes, intending to persuade the Thebans to expel the aristocrats and
once again to hand over the city to himself. But the former exiles,
having got wind of this journey of his, and of the whole intrigue, set
off themselves to Thebes in front of him. (3) When, however, they
saw the terms of intimacy on which he associated with the Theban
authorities, in terror of his succeeding in his mission some of them
staked their lives on the attempt and stabbed Euphron in the Cadmeia,
where the magistrates and senate were seated. The magistrates, indeed,
could not but indict the perpetrators of the deed before the senate, and
spoke as follows:

(3) Or, "on an opposition journey."

"Fellow-citizens, it is our duty to arraign these murderers of Euphron,
the men before you, on the capital charge. Mankind may be said to
fall into two classes: there are the wise and temperate, (4) who are
incapable of any wrong and unhallowed deed; and there are the base, the
bad, who do indeed such things, but try to escape the notice of their
fellows. The men before you are exceptional. They have so far exceeded
all the rest of men in audacity and foul villainy that, in the very
presence of the magistrates and of yourselves, who alone have the power
of life and death, they have taken the law into their own hands, (5) and
have slain this man. But they stand now before the bar of justice, and
they must needs pay the extreme penalty; for, if you spare them, what
visitor will have courage to approach the city? Nay, what will become
of the city itself, if license is to be given to any one who chooses to
murder those who come here, before they have even explained the
object of their visit? It is our part, then, to prosecute these men as
arch-villains and miscreants, whose contempt for law and justice is only
matched by the supreme indifference with which th