Unlike Ismenias, his democratic colleague, Leontiades courted Phoebidas from the period of his arrival, and, together with Archias and Philip, the other chiefs of the oligarchical party, instigated him to seize the Cadmeia with their aid.
Then, asserting that his office of polemarch gave him power to apprehend any one under suspicion of a capital offence, he caused Ismenias to be seized and thrown into prison.
Accordingly, they sent commissioners to Thebes, who condemned Ismenias to death, and fully established Leontiades and his faction in the government under the protection of the Spartan garrison.
[1] In this position, exposed to the hostility and machinations of some 400 democratic exiles, who had taken refuge at Athens,[2] Leontiades, watchful, cautious, and energetic, presented a marked contrast to Archias, his voluptuous colleague, whose reckless and insolent profligacy he discountenanced, as tending obviously to the overthrow of their joint power.
His unscrupulousness, at the same time, was at least equal to his other qualifications for a party-leader, as he sent emissaries to Athens in an effort to remove the chief of the exiles by assassination, though Androcleides was the only one who fell a victim to the plot.