Agesilaus

or the decoration of his armour, or the furniture of his house, nay, he actually let its doors remain although they were very old,—one might say they were the very doors which Aristodemus[*](The great-great-grandson of Heracles; cf. Xenophon, Agesilaüs, viii. 7. ) had set up. His daughter’s kannathron, as Xenophon tells us, was no more elaborate than that of any other maid (kannathra is the name they give to the wooden figures of griffins or goat-stags in which their young girls are carried at the sacred processions).[*](These figures of animals were on wheels, and served as carriages (cf. Athenaeus, p. 139 f.).)

Xenophon, it is true, has not recorded the name of the daughter of Agesilaüs, and Dicacarchus expressed great indignation that neither her name nor that of the mother of Epaminondas was known to us; but we have found in the Lacedaemonian records that the wife of Agesilaüs was named Cleora, and his daughters Eupolia and Proauga. And one can see his spear also, which is still preserved at Sparta, and which is not at all different from that of other men.

However, on seeing that some of the citizens esteemed themselves highly and were greatly lifted up because they bred racing horses, he persuaded his sister Cynisca to enter a chariot in the contests at Olympia, wishing to show the Greeks that the victory there was not a mark of any great excellence, but simply of wealth and lavish outlay.

Also, having Xenophon the philosopher in his following, and making much of him, he ordered him to send for his sons and rear them at Sparta, that they might learn that fairest of all lessons, how to obey and how to command. Again, finding after Lysander’s death that a large society was in existence, which that commander, immediately after returning from Asia, had formed against him, Agesilaüs set out to prove what manner of citizen Lysander had been while alive.