Agis and Cleomenes

His usual supper was held in a room which had only three couches, and was very circumscribed and Spartan; but if he was entertaining ambassadors or guest-friends, two more couches would be brought in, and the servants would make the table a trifle more brilliant, not with sauces or sweetmeats, but with more generous dishes and a kindlier wine. And indeed he censured one of his friends, when he heard that in entertaining guest-friends he had set before them the black soup and barley-bread of the public mess-tables; for, said he, in these matters and before foreigners we must not be too strictly Spartan.

After the table had been removed, a tripod would be brought in on which were a bronze mixer full of wine, two silver bowels holding a pint apiece, and drinking cups of silver, few all told, from which he who wished might drink; but no one had a cup forced upon him. Music there was none, nor was any such addition desired; for Cleomenes entertained the company himself by his conversation, now asking questions, now telling stories, and his discourse was not unpleasantly serious, but had a sportiveness that charmed and was free from rudeness.

For the hunt which all the other kings made for men, ensnaring them with gifts and bribes and corrupting them, Cleomenes considered unskillful and unjust. In his eyes it was the noblest method, and one most fit for a king, to win over his visitors and attach them to himself by an intercourse and conversation which awakened pleasure and confidence. For he felt that a hireling differed from a friend in nothing except that the one was captured by a man’s character and conversation, the other by a man’s money.

To begin with, then, the Mantineians invited him to help them, and after he had made his way into the city by night, they expelled the Achaean garrison and put themselves in his hands. Cleomenes restored to them their laws and constitution, and on the same day marched away to Tegea. Then, shortly afterwards, he fetched a compass through Arcadia and marched down upon the Achaean city of Pherae. His desire was either to fight a battle with the Achaeans, or to bring Aratus into disrepute for running away and abandoning the country to him. For although Hyperbatas was general at that time, Aratus had the entire power in the Achaean league.