When he was come to the door, Archias with Phillidas came out to him, and said, “I have heard, Charon, that there are some men just come, and lurking in the town, and that some of the citizens are resorting to them.”
Charon was at first disturbed, but asking, “Who are they? and who conceals them?” and finding Archias did not thoroughly understand the matter, he concluded that none of those privy to the design had given this information, and replied, “Do not disturb yourselves for an empty rumour: I will look into it, however, for no report in such a case is to be neglected.”
Phillidas, who stood by, commending him, and leading back Archias, got him deep in drink, still prolonging the entertainment with the hopes of the women’s company at last. But when Charon returned, and found the men prepared, not as if they hoped for safety and success, but to die bravely and with the slaughter of their enemies, he told Pelopidas and his friends the truth, but pretended to others in the house that Archias talked to him about something else, inventing a story off the occasion.
This storm was just blowing over, when fortune brought another; for a messenger came with a letter from one Archias, the Hierophant at Athens, to his namesake Archias, who was his friend and guest. This did not merely contain a vague conjectural suspicion, but, as it appeared afterwards, disclosed every particular of the design. The messenger being brought in to Archias, who was now pretty well drunk, and delivering the letter, said to him, “The writer of this desired it might be read at once; it is on urgent business.”
Archias, with a smile, replied, “Urgent business tomorrow,” and so receiving the letter, he put it under his pillow, and returned to what he had been speaking of with Phillidas, and these words of his are a proverb to this day amongst the Greeks.
tl;dr:
Thebes is under military occupation by the Spartans, who support a monarchy in Thebes. Conspirators and Theban exiles (mostly operating out of Athens, which supported a Democratic government in Thebes) form a plan to take back Thebes with help from the inside, and with the support of the common people, plan to drive out the Spartans and take back the city.
So Charon, a Theban commander still in Thebes, is part of the conspiracy (secretly). He gets a message saying that there are suspicious persons in the city, and that they may be conspiring something. He asks questions about the details but, realizing the men who told him didn’t know who was and wasn’t a conspirator, kept his cool and said he’d totally deal with it. Then he comes back and finds the men ready for a fight, meaning that his smooth talking didn’t convince them. So he talks them down and basically pretends there isn’t really a threat and that the messengers were telling him something more benign, effectively squashing the rumors that he had just been warned of an attack.
Then the Spartan-backed Theban tyrant, Archias, gets handed a message detailing the entire plot. Thankfully, he was too drunk to care to read it, and his words ‘urgent business tomorrow’ became a popular saying amongst the Greeks ever since.
The plan ended up being successful, by the way, no thanks to the entire universe coming together like a slapstick comedy to try and ruin the whole thing.
Source:
Plutarch, John Dryden, and Arthur Hugh Clough. "Pelopidas." Plutarch's Lives. New York: Modern Library, 2001. 391. Print.
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