Agis and Cleomenes

The young king laughed at their dissimulation, whereupon Amphares threatened that he would rue the day and be punished for his temerity; but another ephor, as though plainly offering Agis a way to escape from the charges against him, asked him if he had done what he did under compulsion from Lysander and Agesilaüs.

And when Agis answered that he had suffered compulsion from no one, but that in admiration and imitation of Lycurgus he had adopted the same public policy as his, the same ephor asked again if he repented of what he had done. But the young king declared that he had no repentance for what he had most excellently planned, and would not have, even if he saw that he was to suffer the extremest penalty. So they condemned him to death, and ordered the officers to lead him into the Dechas, as it was called.

This is a chamber of the prison in which they strangle those who are under sentence of death. But Damochares, when he saw that the officers did not dare to lay hands on Agis, and likewise that even the mercenaries who were there shrank from the deed and were loth to do it, feeling as they did that it was contrary to the laws of God and man to lay bands upon the person of a king, heaped threats and abuse upon them and himself dragged Agis into the chamber of death.