Agesilaus

Agesilaus the Lacedaemonian was praised by other writers, and pre-eminently by Xenophon the disciple of Socrates: for he enjoyed his closest intimacy. He first had a contention about the kingship with Leotychides, his brother's son. For it was a custom among the Lacedaemonians, handed down from their ancestors, that they should always have two kings, in name rather than in power, from the two families of Procles and Eurysthenes, who, of the line of Hercules, were the first kings of Sparta. From the one of these to the other family's place it was not lawful to pass: thus each retained its own order. First, account was taken of who was eldest of the children of him who had died reigning; but if he had left no male issue, then he was chosen who was nearest in kinship. King Agis, the brother of Agesilaus, had died: he had left a son Leotychides. Him Agis, while he lived, had not acknowledged as his son, but dying had declared him to be his own. He contended about the honour of the kingship with Agesilaus, his uncle, and did not gain what he sought. For, Lysander supporting Agesilaus — a man, as we have shown above, factious and at that time powerful — Agesilaus was preferred.

As soon as he had gained the kingship, he persuaded the Lacedaemonians to send him with an army into Asia and to make war upon the king, showing that it was better to fight in Asia than in Europe. For a report had gone abroad that Artaxerxes was making ready fleets and land armies, which he would send into Greece. Power being granted him, he used such speed that he reached Asia with his forces before the king's satraps knew that he had set out. Hence it came about that he found them all unprepared and off their guard. When Tissaphernes — who then held the supreme command among the king's officers — learned this, he sought a truce of the Laconian, pretending that he was taking pains to bring about an agreement between the Lacedaemonians and the king, but in truth to make ready his forces; and he obtained one of three months. Both, moreover, swore that they would keep the truce without guile. In this compact Agesilaus abode with the utmost good faith; Tissaphernes, on the other hand, did nothing but make ready for war. Although the Laconian perceived this, yet he kept his oath, and said that he gained much thereby, in that Tissaphernes, by his perjury, both alienated men from his cause and made the gods angry with him; while he himself, by keeping his religious obligation, was strengthening his army, since he saw that the divine power was on his side, and was winning men more friendly to him, because they were wont to favour those whom they saw keeping faith.

After the day of the truce had passed, the barbarian, not doubting that — because his own dwellings were in great part in Caria, and that region was at that time thought by far the richest — the enemy would make their attack there above all, had gathered all his forces thither. But Agesilaus turned aside into Phrygia and laid it waste before Tissaphernes stirred anywhere. His soldiers being enriched with great booty, he led the army back to Ephesus to winter, and there, having set up armouries, with great industry made ready for war. And, that they might be armed the more zealously and equipped the more conspicuously, he offered prizes to be given to those whose industry in the matter had been outstanding. He did the same in the kinds of exercises, so that those who had surpassed the rest he rewarded with great gifts. By these means, then, he brought it about that he had both the best-equipped and the best-trained army. When the time seemed to him right to draw his forces out of winter quarters, he saw that, if he openly announced whither he meant to march, the enemy would not believe it and would occupy other regions with garrisons, and would not doubt that he would do something other than he had announced. And so, when he had said that he would go to Sardis, Tissaphernes thought that the same Caria must be defended. When in this his expectation had deceived him and he saw himself outwitted in counsel, too late he set out to the aid of his own. For when he had come thither, Agesilaus, having stormed many places, had already gained great booty. The Laconian, however, when he saw that the enemy were superior in cavalry, never gave them the chance of meeting him in the open plain, and joined hand to hand in those places where his foot forces were the stronger. He therefore routed, as often as he engaged, far greater forces of his adversaries, and so bore himself in Asia that in the opinion of all he was held a victor.

When he was now turning in his mind to set out for Persia and to attack the king himself, a messenger came to him from home, sent by the ephors, that the Athenians and Boeotians had declared war on the Lacedaemonians: wherefore he should not hesitate to come. In this his loyalty is no less to be admired than his warlike valour: for, though he was at the head of a victorious army and had the greatest confidence of gaining the kingdom of the Persians, with so great self-command he was obedient to the commands of the absent magistrates, as if he were a private man in the assembly at Sparta. Would that our commanders had been willing to follow his example! But let us return. Agesilaus set good repute before a most wealthy kingdom, and counted it far more glorious if he had obeyed the institutions of his country than if he had conquered Asia in war. With this mind, therefore, he led his forces across the Hellespont and used such speed that the journey which Xerxes had accomplished in a full year, he traversed in thirty days. When he was now not very far from the Peloponnese, the Athenians and Boeotians and the rest of their allies tried to bar his way at Coronea: all of whom he conquered in a hard-fought battle. Of this victory perhaps the greatest glory was this: that, when most of the enemy in their flight had thrown themselves into the temple of Minerva, and it was asked of him what he wished done with them, although he had received several wounds in that battle and seemed angry with all who had borne arms against him, yet he set religion above his anger and forbade them to be harmed. Nor indeed did he do this only in Greece, to keep the temples of the gods inviolate, but even among the barbarians he preserved with the utmost reverence all images and altars. And so he was wont to declare that he marvelled they were not reckoned among the number of the sacrilegious who had harmed the suppliants of the gods, or were not visited with heavier penalties, who lessened reverence for religion, than those who plundered shrines.

After this battle the whole war was concentrated about Corinth, and was therefore called the Corinthian War. There, when in a single battle ten thousand of the enemy had fallen, Agesilaus being leader, and by that deed the resources of his adversaries seemed to be weakened, he was so far from insolence in his glory that he pitied the fortune of Greece, because so many, conquered by him, had fallen through the fault of his adversaries: for with that multitude, had there been sound sense, Greece might have exacted vengeance from the Persians. The same man, when he had driven his adversaries within their walls and many urged him to assault Corinth, denied that this befitted his valour: for he said that he was the man who forced the erring back to their duty, not who stormed the noblest cities of Greece. 'For if,' said he, 'we wish to destroy those who stood with us against the barbarians, we shall have conquered ourselves, while they sit still. And then, without effort, when they wish, they will overwhelm us.'

Meanwhile there befell the Lacedaemonians that disaster at Leuctra. That he might not set out thither, though he was urged by very many to go forth, he pleaded his old age, as if he had divined the outcome. The same man, when Epaminondas was assailing Sparta and the town was without walls, showed himself such a commander that it appeared to all at that time that, had he not been there, Sparta would have ceased to be. In that crisis indeed the quickness of his counsel was the safety of all. For when certain young men, terrified by the enemy's coming, wished to desert to the Thebans and had seized a high place outside the city, Agesilaus, who saw that it would be most ruinous if it were noticed that anyone was trying to desert to the enemy, came thither with his own men and, as though they had acted with good intent, praised their plan, in that they had occupied that place: he too, he said, had noticed that this ought to be done. So, by feigned praise, he won back the young men, and, joining to them some of his own companions, left the place safe. For they, the number of those who had no share in the plot being increased, did not dare to stir, and the more gladly because they thought that what they had purposed lay hidden.

Without doubt, after the battle of Leuctra the Lacedaemonians never recovered themselves, nor regained their former empire; while in the meantime Agesilaus never ceased to aid his country by whatever means he could. For when the Lacedaemonians were especially in need of money, he was a protection to all who had revolted from the king: from whom, being presented with great sums of money, he relieved his country. And in this that was above all admirable, that, although the greatest gifts were offered him by kings and princes and states, he never brought anything home for himself, changed nothing of the food, nothing of the dress of the Laconians. He was content with the same house in which Eurysthenes, the founder of his line, had lived: and whoever entered it could see no sign of luxury, none of extravagance, but on the contrary very many of endurance and abstinence. For it was so furnished that in no respect did it differ from that of any poor man and private person.

And this great man, as he had Nature for a friend in bestowing the virtues of the soul, so found her malevolent in fashioning his body: for he was both of low stature and of small frame, and lame in one foot. This brought him also some unsightliness, and strangers, when they beheld his face, despised him; but those who knew his virtues could not admire him enough. This befell him, when at the age of eighty he had been sent to the aid of Tachos into Egypt, and had lain down with his men on the shore, without any covering, and had such a bed that the ground was covered with straw and nothing more than a skin had been thrown over it, all in the same humble and worn dress, so that their attire not only marked no king among them, but gave the impression that they were not even men of any great fortune. When report of his coming had been carried to the king's men, gifts of every kind were quickly brought thither. When these asked for Agesilaus, scarcely could it be believed that he was one of those who were then reclining there. When they had given him, in the king's words, what they had brought, he accepted nothing except veal and such kinds of food as the present need required: the perfumes, the garlands, and the second course he distributed among the slaves, and ordered the rest to be carried back. By this deed the barbarians despised him still more, because they thought that, through ignorance of good things, he had chosen the meanest. When he was returning from Egypt, presented by King Nectanabis with two hundred and twenty talents, which he was to give as a gift to his people, and had come to the harbour which is called the Harbour of Menelaus, lying between Cyrene and Egypt, he fell into a sickness and died. There his friends, that they might the more easily convey him to Sparta, because they had no honey, encased him in wax and so carried him home.