After speaking thus, Charon went out, and soon came back to report that all was well.
The Theban exiles now went to the banquet hall, where they were readily allowed to enter to amuse the company. The Spartan officers, who were no longer frugal and temperate as of old, were so heavy and stupid with wine, that the supposed dancing girls easily killed them.
One version of the story is, that Pelopidas and his companions rushed out into the street with lighted torches, and slew every Spartan they met. The Spartan soldiers, deprived of most of their officers (who had been killed in the banquet hall), and greatly frightened, fled in the darkness from what they fancied was a large army, and returned in haste to Sparta.
Imagine their shame, however, when it became known there that they had been routed by only twelve determined men! The Spartan citizens were so angry that they put the two remaining officers to death, and, collecting another army, placed it under the leadership of Cleombrotus, their second king, because Agesilaus was too ill at the time to fight.
From: H. A. Guerber, The Story of the Greeks; edited for this online publication, by ELLOPOS BLOG
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