But these were the commands of tyrants; they were done under compulsion, and caused a feeling of dislike to the person honoured, and of absolute hatred against those who enforced them, but showed no gratitude or desire to honour the dead. They were mere displays of barbaric pride and boastful extravagance, which wastes its superfluity on vain and useless objects; whereas, here was a private citizen who died in a foreign land, without his wife, his children or his friends, and, without any one asking for it or compelling them to it, he was escorted to his grave, buried and crowned with garlands by so many provinces and cities, vying with one another in showing him honour, that he seems to have enjoyed the most blessed fate possible. For as Æsop says, the death of the fortunate is not grievous, but blessed, since it secures their felicity, and puts it out of Fortune's power. That Spartan spoke well, who, when Diagoras, the Olympic victor, was looking at his sons being in their turn crowned as victors at Olympia, with his grandchildren about him, embraced him and said, "Die, Diagoras; for you cannot rise to Olympus and be a god there." Yet I do not suppose that any one would compare all the Olympian and Pythian prizes together with one of Pelopidas's achievements, of which he performed many, and lived the most part of his life esteemed and looked up to, and at last, in his thirteenth Bœotarchy, when fighting gloriously against a tyrant, he died in defence of the liberties of Thessaly. XXXV. His death caused great sorrow to his allies, but likewise benefited them; for the Thebans as soon as they heard of the death of Pelopidas did not delay for a moment to avenge his fall, but hastily marched with an army of seven thousand hoplites and seven hundred cavalry, under Malkitus and Diogeiton, against Alexander. Finding that he was weakened and shorn of much of his power, they compelled him to restore to the Thessalians their cities, which he held, to liberate the Achæans in Magnesia and Phthiotis, to withdraw his garrisons from those countries, and to swear to the Thebans, that he would attack, and assist them to attack, any enemy they might choose.