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Diodorus Siculus
entnommen dem PERSEUS-Server Boiotien
XV 37.1
XXXVII. While these things were going on, the Thebans made an expedition
against Orchomenus with five hundred picked men and performed a memorable
action. For as the Lacedaemonians maintained a garrison of many soldiers
in Orchomenus and had drawn up their forces against the Thebans, a stiff
battle took place in which the Thebans, attacking twice their number,
defeated the Lacedaemonians.1 Never indeed had such a thing occurred before;
it had seemed enough if they won with many against few. [2] The result
was that the Thebans swelled with pride, became more and more renowned
for their valour, and had manifestly put themselves in a position to compete
for the supremacy of Greece.
XV 57.1
[1] When the year had ended, at Athens Dysnicetus was archon, and in Rome
military tribunes with consular power were elected, four in number: Quintus
Servilius, Lucius Furius, Gaius Licinius, and Publius Coelius. During
their term of office the Thebans, taking the field with a large army against
Orchomenus, aimed to reduce the city to slavery, but when Epameinondas
advised them that any who aimed at supremacy over the Greeks ought to
safeguard by their generous treatment what they had achieved by their
valour, they changed their mind. Accordingly they reckoned the people
of Orchomenus as belonging to the territory of their allies, and later,
having made friends of the Phocians, Aetolians, and Locrians, returned
to Boeotia again. 2)
2) For the allies of the Thebans in 370 see Xen. Hell. 6.5.23; Xen. Ages.
2.24.
XV 79.3-6
[3] At that time 3) the Thebans decided to take the field against Orchomenus
for the following reasons. Certain refugees who wanted to change the constitution
of Thebes to an aristocracy induced the knights of Orchomenus, three hundred
in all, to join them in the attempt. [4] These knights, who were in the
habit of meeting with some Thebans on a stated day for a review under
arms, agreed to make the attack on this day, and along with many others
who joined the movement and added their efforts, they met at the appointed
time. [5] Now the men who had originated the action changed their minds,
and disclosed to the boeotarchs the projected attack, thus betraying their
fellow conspirators, and by this service they purchased safety for themselves.
The officials arrested the knights from Orchomenus and brought them before
the assembly, where the people voted to execute them, to sell the inhabitants
of Orchomenus into slavery, and to raze the city. For from earliest times
the Thebans had been ill-disposed towards them, having paid tribute to
the Minyae 4) in the heroic age, but later they had been liberated by
Heracles. [6] So the Thebans, thinking they had a good opportunity and
having got plausible pretexts for punishing them, took the field against
Orchomenus, occupied the city, slew the male inhabitants and sold into
slavery the women and children.
3) Diodorus' dating of the destruction of Orchomenus is established by
the fact that Isocrates (Isoc. 6.27) does not know of the event. See Paus.
9.15.3; Dem. 20.109; Plut. Comparison of Pelopidas and Marcellus 1.
4) Peoples of prehistoric Greece who from Orchomenus ruled a large area
of central Greece.
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