He determined to destroy it--to offer, once for all, a terrible example of the consequences of rebellion against him. The case was not one, he considered, of the ordinary conquest of a _foe_. The states of Greece--Thebes with the rest--had once solemnly conferred upon him the authority against which the Thebans had now rebelled. They were _traitors_, therefore, in his judgment, not mere enemies, and he determined that the penalty should be utter destruction.