Every high-spirited Theban hated the power that Sparta had taken over their free state, and wanted to shake it off; but some of those who were bribed by Sparta sent word of their intentions to a Spartan general in the neighbourhood, whereupon he came down on Thebes in the middle of a festival, seized the citadel called the Cadmea, put in a Spartan garrison, and drove 300 of the best Thebans into exile.  Pelopidas was among them, while Epaminondas was thought of only as a poor student, and was unnoticed; but he went quietly on advising the Theban young men to share the warlike exercises of the Spartans in the Cadmea, so as to get themselves trained to arms in case there should be a chance of fighting for their freedom.  In the fourth year of the exile, Pelopidas wrote to beg his friend to join in a plot by which some of the banished were to creep into the city, go to a banquet that was to be given to the chief friends of the Spartans disguised as women, kill them, proclaim liberty, raise the citizens, and expel the Spartans.  But Epaminondas would have nothing to do with a scheme that involved falsehood and treachery, however much he longed to see his country free.  But on a dark, winter evening, Pelopidas and eleven more young exiles came one by one into Thebes, in the disguise of hunters, and met at the house of the friend who was going to give the feast.  They were there dressed in robes and veils, and in the height of the mirth the host brought them in, and they fell upon the half-tipsy guests and slew them, while Pelopidas had gone to the house of the most brave and sober among them, challenged him, and killed him in fair fight.  Then they shouted, “Freedom!  Down with the foe!”  The citizens rose, Epaminondas among the first; the rest of the exiles marched in at daybreak, and the Cadmea was besieged until the Spartans were obliged to march out, and Thebes was left to its own government by Bœotarchs, or rulers of Bœotia, for a year at a time, of whom Pelopidas was at once chosen to be one.