Pyrrhus

Thus his domestic vexations added themselves to his political disappointment, and in indignation and wrath he brought Pyrrhus against Sparta.[*](In 272 B.C.) Pyrrhus had twenty-five thousand foot and two thousand horse, besides twenty-four elephants, so that the magnitude of his preparations made it clear at once that he was not aiming to acquire Sparta for Cleonymus, but the Peloponnesus for himself. And yet his professions were all to the contrary, and particularly those which he made to the Lacedaemonian ambassadors themselves when they met him at Megalopolis.

He told them he had come to set free the cities which were subject to Antigonus, yes, and that he was going to send his younger sons to Sparta, if nothing prevented, to be brought up in the Lacedaemonian customs, that so they might presently have the advantage over all other princes. With these fictions he beguiled those who came to meet him on his march, but as soon as he reached Laconian territory he began to ravage and plunder it.

And when the Spartan ambassadors upbraided him for making war upon them without previous declaration, he said: Yet we know that you Spartans also do not tell others beforehand what you are going to do. Whereupon one of those who were present, Mandrocleidas by name, said to him in the broad Spartan dialect: If thou art a god, we shall suffer no harm at thy hands; for we have done thee no wrong; but if a man, another will be found who is even stronger than thou.

After this, he marched down against the city of Sparta. Cleonymus urged him to make the assault as soon as he arrived, but Pyrrhus was afraid, as we are told, that his soldiers would plunder the city if they fell upon it at night, and therefore restrained them, saying that they would accomplish just as much by day. For there were but few men in the city, and they were unprepared, owing to the suddenness of the peril; and Areus was not at home, but in Crete, whither he was bringing military aid for the Gortynians. And this, indeed, more than anything else, proved the salvation of the city, which its weakness and lack of defenders caused to be despised.