Agesilaus

[*](Peace of Antalcidas.)[*](387 B.C.)When the enemy sent embassies desiring peace, Agesilaus opposed the peace until he forced Corinth and Thebes to restore to their homes the citizens who had been exiled on account of their sympathy[*](381 B.C.) with the Lacedaemonians. And again later, having led an expedition in person against Phleius, he also restored the Phleiasian exiles who had suffered in the same cause. Possibly some may censure these actions on other grounds, but at least it is obvious that they were prompted by a spirit of true comradeship.

It was in the same spirit that he subsequently[*](377 B.C.) made an expedition against Thebes, to relieve the Lacedaemonians in that city when their opponents had taken to murdering them. Finding the city protected on all sides by a trench and stockade, he crossed the Pass of Cynoscephalae, and laid waste the country up to the city walls, offering battle to the Thebans both on the plain and on the hills, if they chose to fight. In the following year he made another expedition against Thebes, and, after crossing the stockade and trenches at Scolus, laid waste the rest of Boeotia.

Up to this time he and his city enjoyed unbroken success; and though the following years brought a series of troubles, it cannot be said that they were incurred under the leadership of Agesilaus. On the other hand, after the disaster at Leuctra, when his adversaries in league with the Mantineans were murdering his friends and acquaintances in Tegea, and a coalition of all Boeotia, Arcadia and Elis[*](370 B.C.) had been formed, he took the field with the Lacedaemonian forces only, thus disappointing the general expectation that the Lacedaemonians would not even go outside their own borders for a long time to come. It was not until he had laid waste the country of those who had murdered his friends that he returned home once more.

After this Sparta was attacked by all the Arcadians, Argives, Eleians and Boeotians, who had the support of the Phocians, both the Locrian peoples, the Thessalians, Aenianians, Acarnanians and Euboeans. In addition the slaves and many of the outlander communities were in revolt, and at least as many of the Spartan nobles had fallen in the battle of Leuctra as survived. He kept the city safe notwithstanding, and that though it was without walls, not going out into the open where the advantage would have lain wholly with the enemy, and keeping his army strongly posted where the citizens would have the advantage; for he believed that he would be surrounded on all sides if he came out into the plain, but that if he made a stand in the defiles and the heights, he would be master of the situation.

After the retirement of the enemy, none will deny that his conduct was marked by good sense. The marching and riding incidental to active service were no longer possible to a man of his years, but he saw that the state must have money if she was to gain an ally anywhere. So he applied himself to the business of raising money. At home he did all that ingenuity could suggest; and, if he saw any prospect of serving the state abroad, shrank from no measures that circumstances called for, and he was not ashamed to go out, not as a general, but as an envoy.

And even as an envoy he accomplished work worthy of a great general. For instance, Autophradates laying siege to Ariobarzanes, an ally of Sparta, at Assos, took to his heels from fear of Agesilaus. Cotys for his part, besieging Sestos, while it was still in the hands of Ariobarzanes, broke up the siege and made off. With good reason, therefore, might the victorious envoy have set up a trophy once again to record these bloodless successes.

Again, Mausolus, laying siege to both these places with a fleet of a hundred vessels, was induced, not indeed by fear, but by persuasion, to sail for home. In this affair too his success was admirable; for those who considered that they were under an obligation to him and those who fled before him, both paid. Yet again, Tachos and Mausolus (another of those who contributed money to Sparta, owing to his old ties of hospitality with Agesilaus), sent him home with a magnificent escort.

Subsequently, when he was now about eighty years of age, he became aware that the king of Egypt was bent on war with Persia, and was possessed of large forces of infantry and cavalry and plenty of money. He was delighted when a summons for help reached him from the Egyptian king, who actually promised him the chief command.

For he believed that at one stroke he would repay the Egyptian for his good offices to Sparta, would again set free the Greeks in Asia, and would chastise the Persian for his former hostility, and for demanding now, when he professed to be an ally of Sparta, that her claim to Messene should be given up.

However, when this suitor for his assistance failed to give him the command Agesilaus felt that he had been grossly deceived, and was in doubt what he ought to do. At this juncture first a portion of the Egyptian troops, operating as a separate army, revolted from the king, and then the rest of his forces deserted him. The king left Egypt and fled in terror to Sidon in Phoenicia, while the Egyptians split up into two parties, and each chose its own king.

Agesilaus now realised that if he helped neither king, neither of them would pay the Greeks their wages, neither would provide a market, and the conqueror, whichever he proved to be, would be hostile, but if he co-operated with one of them, that one, being under an obligation to him, would in all probability adopt a friendly attitude. Accordingly, having decided which of them showed the stronger signs of being a friend to the Greeks, he took the field with him. He inflicted a crushing defeat on the enemy of the Greeks, and helped to establish his rival; and so having made him the friend of Sparta, and having received a[*](362 B.C.) great sum of money in addition, he sailed home, though it was mid-winter, with all haste, in order that the state might be in a position to take action against her enemies in the coming summer.