The government of Thebes had now been for three years (since the blow struck by Phœbidas) in the hands of Leontiades and his oligarchical partisans, upheld by the Spartan garrison in the Kadmeia. Respecting the details of its proceedings we have scarce any information. We can only (as above remarked) judge of it by the analogy of the Thirty tyrants at Athens, and of the Lysandrian Dekarchies, to which it was exactly similar in origin, position, and interests. That the general spirit of it must have been cruel, oppressive, and rapacious,—we cannot doubt; though in what degree we have no means of knowing. The appetites of uncontrolled rulers, as well as those of a large foreign garrison, would ensure such a result; besides which, those rulers must have been in constant fear of risings or conspiracies amidst a body of high-spirited citizens who saw their city degraded, from being the chief of the Bœotian federation, into nothing better than a captive dependency of Sparta. Such fear was aggravated by the vicinity of a numerous body of Theban exiles, belonging to the opposite or anti-Spartan party; three or four hundred of whom had fled to Athens at the first seizure of their leader Ismenias, and had been doubtless joined subsequently by others. So strongly did the Theban rulers apprehend mischief from these exiles, that they hired assassins to take them off by private murder at Athens; and actually succeeded in thus killing Androkleidas, chief of the band and chief successor of the deceased Ismenias,—though they missed their blows at the rest.[169] And we may be sure that they made the prison in Thebes subservient to multiplied enormities and executions, when we read not only that one hundred and fifty prisoners were found in it when the government was put down,[170] but also that in the fervor of that revolutionary movement, the slain gaoler was an object of such fierce antipathy, that his corpse was trodden and spit upon by a crowd of Theban women.[171] In Thebes, as in other Grecian cities, the women not only took no part in political disputes, but rarely even showed themselves in public;[172] so that this furious demonstration of vindictive sentiment must have been generated by the loss or maltreatment of sons, husbands, and brothers. [169] Plutarch, Pelopidas, c. 6: compare Plutarch, De Gen. Socr. c. 29, p. 596 B. [170] Xenoph. Hellen. v, 4, 14. [171] Plutarch, De Gen. Socr. c. 33, p. 598 B, C. ᾧ καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐπενέβησαν καὶ προσέπτυσαν οὐκ ὀλίγαι γυναῖκες. Among the prisoners was a distinguished Theban of the democratic party, named Amphitheus. He was about to be shortly executed, and the conspirators, personally attached to him, seem to have accelerated the hour of their plot partly to preserve his life (Plutarch, De Gen. Socrat. p. 577 D, p. 586 F.).