Agis and Cleomenes

and Cleombrotus, in turn, had two sons, Agesipolis and Cleomenes, of whom Agesipolis reigned only a short time and left no sons, while Cleomenes, who became king after him, lived to lose his elder son Acrotatus, but left behind him a younger son Cleonymus Cleonymus, however, did not come to the throne, but Areus,[*](See the Pyrrhus, xxvi. 8ff. ) who was a grandson of Cleomenes and son of Acrotatus; Areus fell in battle at Corinth,[*](In 265 B.C., in battle with Antigonus Gonatas.) and his son Acrotatus came to the throne;

Acrotatus also was defeated and slain at Megalopolis, by the tyrant Aristodemus, leaving his wife with child; and after she had given birth to a son, Leonidas the son of Cleonymus was made the child’s guardian. But the young king died before reaching manhood, and the kingship therefore devolved upon Leonidas,[*](About 256 B.C.) who was altogether unacceptable to the people.

For although the destruction of the constitution had already led to a general decline in manners, there was in Leonidas a very marked departure from the traditions of his country, since for a long time he had frequented oriental courts and had been a servile follower of Seleucus, and now sought to transfer the pride and pomp which prevailed abroad into Hellenic relations and a constitutional government, where they were out of place.

Agis, on the contrary, far surpassed in native excellence and in loftiness of spirit not only Leonidas, but almost all the kings who had followed the great Agesilaüs. Therefore, even before he had reached his twentieth year, and although he had been reared amid the wealth and luxury of women, namely, his mother Agesistrata and his grandmother Archidamia (who were the richest people in Sparta), he at once set his face against pleasures. He put away from his person the adornments which were thought to befit the grace of his figure, laid aside and avoided every extravagance, prided himself on his short Spartan cloak, observed sedulously the Spartan customs in his meals and baths and general ways of living, and declared that he did not want the royal power at all unless by means of it he could restore the ancient laws and discipline.

And here I may say that the Lacedaemonian state began to suffer distemper and corruption soon after its subversion of the Athenian supremacy filled it with gold and silver. However, since the number of families instituted by Lycurgus[*](See the Lycurgus, viii.f. ) was still preserved in the transmission of estates, and father left to son his inheritance, to some extent the continuance of this order and equality sustained the state in spite of its errors in other respects.

But when a certain powerful man came to be ephor who was headstrong and of a violent temper, Epitadeus by name, he had a quarrel with his son, and introduced a law permitting a man during his lifetime to give his estate and allotment to any one he wished, or in his will and testament so to leave it.

This man, then, satisfied a private grudge of his own in introducing the law; but his fellow citizens welcomed the law out of greed, made it valid, and so destroyed the most excellent of institutions. For the men of power and influence at once began to acquire estates without scruple, ejecting the rightful heirs from their inheritances; and speedily the wealth of the state streamed into the hands of a few men, and poverty became the general rule, bringing in its train lack of leisure for noble pursuits and occupations unworthy of freemen, along with envy and hatred towards the men of property.