Amidst the last moments of this gallant band, we turn with repugnance to the desertion and surrender of the Thebans. They are said to have taken part in the final battle, though only to save appearances and under the pressure of necessity: but when the Spartans and Thespians, exhausted and disarmed, retreated to die upon the little hillock within the pass, the Thebans then separated themselves, approached the enemy with outstretched hands, and entreated quarter. They now loudly proclaimed that they were friends and subjects of the Great King, and had come to Thermopylæ against their own consent; all which was confirmed by the Thessalians in the Persian army. Though some few were slain before this proceeding was understood by the Persians, the rest were admitted to quarter; not without the signal disgrace, however, of being branded with the regal mark as untrustworthy slaves,—an indignity to which their commander, Leontiadês was compelled to submit along with the rest. Such is the narrative which Herodotus recounts, without any expression of mistrust or even of doubt: Plutarch emphatically contradicts it, and even cites a Bœotian author,[182] who affirms that Anaxarchus, not Leontiadês, was commander of the Thebans at Thermopylæ. Without calling in question the equivocal conduct and surrender of this Theban detachment, we may reasonably dismiss the story of this ignominious branding, as an invention of that strong anti-Theban feeling which prevailed in Greece after the repulse of Xerxes. [182] Herodot. vii, 233; Plutarch, Herodot. Malign. p. 867. The Bœotian history of Aristophanês, cited by the latter, professed to be founded in part upon memorials arranged according to the sequence of magistrates and generals—ἐκ τῶν κατὰ ἄρχοντας ὑπομνημάτων ἱστόρησε.