While Ismenias, detesting the Spartans, kept aloof from Phœbidas, Leontiades assiduously courted him and gained his confidence. On the day of the Thesmophoria,[137] a religious festival celebrated by the women apart from the men, during which the acropolis or Kadmeia was consecrated to their exclusive use,—Phœbidas, affecting to have concluded his halt, put himself in march to proceed as if towards Thrace; seemingly rounding the walls of Thebes, but not going into it. The Senate was actually assembled in the portico of the agora, and the heat of a summer’s noon had driven every one out of the streets, when Leontiades, stealing away from the Senate, hastened on horseback to overtake Phœbidas, caused him to face about, and conducted the Lacedæmonians straight up to the Kadmeia; the gates of which, as well as those of the town, were opened by his order as polemarch. There were not only no citizens in the streets, but none even in the Kadmeia; no male person being permitted to be present at the feminine Thesmophoria; so that Phœbidas and his army became possessed of the Kadmeia without the smallest opposition. At the same time they became possessed of an acquisition of hardly less importance,—the persons of all the assembled Theban women; who served as hostages for the quiet submission, however reluctant, of the citizens in the town below. Leontiades handed to Phœbidas the key of the gates, and then descended into the town, giving orders that no man should go up without his order.[138] [137] The rhetor Aristeides (Or. xix, Eleusin. p. 452 Cant.; p. 419 Dind.) states that the Kadmeia was seized during the Pythian festival. This festival would take place, July or August 382 B.C.; near the beginning of the third year of the (99th) Olympiad. See above in this History, Vol. VI. Ch. liv, p. 455, note. Respecting the year and month in which the Pythian festival was held, there is a difference of opinion among commentators. I agree with those who assign it to the first quarter of the third Olympic year. And the date of the march of Phœbidas would perfectly harmonize with this supposition. Xenophon mentions nothing about the Pythian festival as being in course of celebration when Phœbidas was encamped near Thebes: for it had no particular reference to Thebes. [138] Xen. Hellen. v, 2, 28, 29.