Agesilaus

A few days afterwards a battle was fought near Mantinea, in which Epaminondas had already routed the van of the Lacedaemonians, and was still eagerly pressing on in pursuit of them,[*](Cf. Xenophon, Hell. vii. 5, 22-24. ) when Anticrates, a Spartan, faced him and smote him with a spear, as Dioscorides tells the story; but the Lacedaemonians to this day call the descendants of Anticrates machaeriones, or swordsmen, because he used a sword for the blow.

For the Lacedaemonians were filled with such admiring love for him because of the fear in which they held Epaminondas while living, that they voted honours and gifts to Anticrates himself, and to his posterity exemption from taxes, an immunity which in my own day also is enjoyed by Callicrates, one of the descendants of Anticrates. After the battle and the death of Epaminondas, when the Greeks concluded peace among themselves, Agesilaüs and his partisans tried to exclude the Messenians from the oath of ratification, on the ground that they had no city.

And when all the rest admitted the Messenians and accepted their oaths, the Lacedaemonians held aloof from the peace, and they alone remained at war in the hope of recovering Messenia.[*](Cf. Diodorus, xv. 89, 1 f. ) Agesilaüs was therefore deemed a headstrong and stubborn man, and insatiable of war, since he did all in his power to undermine and postpone the general peace, and again since his lack of resources compelled him to lay burdens on his friends in the city and to take loans and contributions from them.

And yet it was his duty to put an end to their evils, now that opportunity offered, and not, after having lost Sparta’s whole empire, vast as it was, with its cities and its supremacy on land and sea, then to carry on a petty struggle for the goods and revenues of Messene.

He lost still more reputation by offering to take a command under Tachos the Egyptian. For it was thought unworthy that a man who had been judged noblest and best in Hellas, and who had filled the world with his fame, should furnish a rebel against the Great King, a mere Barbarian, with his person, his name, and his fame, and take money for him, rendering the service of a hired captain of mercenaries.[*](Xenophon (Agesilaüs, ii. 28-31) has Agesilaüs take this step in order to punish the Great King and liberate again the Greeks of Asia.)

For even if, now that he was past eighty years of age and his whole body was disfigured with wounds, he had taken up again his noble and conspicuous leadership in behalf of the freedom of the Hellenes, his ambition would not have been altogether blameless, as men thought. For honourable action has its fitting time and season; nay, rather, it is the observance of due bounds that constitutes an utter difference between honourable and base actions.

Agesilaüs, however, paid no heed to these considerations, nor did he think any public service beneath his dignity; it was more unworthy of him, in his opinion, to live an idle life in the city, and to sit down and wait for death. Therefore he collected mercenaries with the money which Tachos sent him, embarked them on transports, and put to sea, accompanied by thirty Spartan counsellors, as formerly.[*](Cf. chapter vi. 2. )

As soon as he landed in Egypt,[*](361 B.C.) the chief captains and governors of the king came down to meet him and pay him honour. There was great eagerness and expectation on the part of the other Egyptians also, owing to the name and fame of Agesilaüs, and all ran together to behold him.