[Footnote 184: That is, the aristocratic or pro-Laconian party, who had been driven out by the other side.] [Footnote 185: To Medise was a phrase originally used during the great Persian invasion of Greece under Xerxes, B.C. 480, when those Greek cities who sided with the Persians, were said to Medise, that is, to take the side of the Medes. See Life of Artaxerxes, vol. iv. ch. 22, and Grote's 'History of Greece,' part ii. ch. lxxvi.] [Footnote 186: See _ante_, ch. xiii., _note_.] [Footnote 187: This name is spelt Leontiades by most writers.] [Footnote 188: I extract the following note from Grote's 'History of Greece.' "Plutarch gives this interchange of brief questions, between Agesilaus and Epameinondas, which is in substance the same as that given by Pausanias, and has every appearance of being true. But he introduces it in a very bold and abrupt way, such as cannot be conformable to the reality. To raise a question about the right of Sparta to govern Laconia was a most daring novelty. A courageous and patriotic Theban might venture upon it as a retort against those Spartans who questioned the right of Thebes to her presidency of Bœotia; but he would never do so without assigning his reasons to justify an assertion so startling to a large portion of his hearers. The reasons which I here ascribe to Epameinondas are such as we know to have formed the Theban creed, in reference to the Bœotian cities; such as were actually urged by the Theban orator in 427 B.C., when the fate of the Platæan captives was under discussion. After Epameinondas had once laid out the reasons in support of his assertion, he might then, if the same brief question were angrily put to him a second time, meet it with another equally brief counter-question or retort. It is this final interchange of thrusts which Plutarch has given, omitting the arguments previously stated by Epameinondas, and necessary to warrant the seeming paradox which he advances. We must recollect that Epameinondas does not contend that Thebes was entitled to _as much power_ in Bœotia as Sparta in Laconia. He only contends that Bœotia, under the presidency of Thebes, was as much an integral political aggregate, as Laconia under Sparta--in reference to the Grecian world."--Grote's 'History of Greece,' part ii. ch. lxvii.] LIFE OF POMPEIUS. I. Towards Pompeius the Roman people seem to have been disposed from the very first, just as the Prometheus of Aeschylus[189] was towards his deliverer Hercules, when he says:-- "Though hateful is the sire, most dear to me the son."