Agesilaus

But when Cleonymus came to him in tears and begged him to mollify Agesilaüs, from whom he and his father had most to fear, for three or four days he was restrained by awe and fear from saying anything to Agesilaüs as he followed him about; but finally, when the trial was near at hand, he plucked up courage to tell him that Cleonymus had begged him to intercede for his father.

Now Agesilaüs, although he knew of the love of Archidamus, had not put a stop to it, since Cleonymus, from his early boyhood, had given special promise of becoming an earnest and worthy man. At this time, however, he did not permit his son to expect any advantage or kindness in answer to his prayer; he merely said, as he went away, that he would consider what was the honourable and fitting course in the matter.

Archidamus was therefore mortified, and ceased to visit Cleonymus, although before this he had done so many times a day. As a consequence, the friends of Sphodrias also were more in despair of his case, until Etymocles, one of the friends of Agesilaüs, conferred with them and disclosed the mind of the king, namely, that he blamed to the utmost what Sphodrias had done, but yet thought him a brave man, and saw that the city needed just such soldiers.

For this was the way in which Agesilaüs always spoke about the trial, in his desire to gratify his son, so that Cleonymus was at once aware of the zealous efforts of Archidamus in his behalf, and the friends of Sphodrias had courage at last to come to his help. It is a fact also that Agesilaüs was excessively fond of his children, and a story is told of his joining in their childish play. Once, when they were very small, he bestrode a stick, and was playing horse with them in the house, and when he was spied doing this by one of his friends, he entreated him not to tell any one, until he himself should be a father of children.

But after Sphodrias was acquitted,[*](Cf. Xenophon, Hell. v. 4, 24-34. ) and the Athenians, on learning of it, were inclined to go to war, Agesilaüs was very harshly criticized. It was thought that, to gratify an absurd and childish desire, he had opposed the course of justice in a trial, and made the city accessory to great crimes against the Greeks.

Besides, when he saw that his colleague Cleombrotus was little inclined to make war upon the Thebans, he waived the exemption by law which he had formerly claimed in the matter of the expedition, and presently led an incursion into Boeotia himself,[*](According to Xenophon (Hell. v. 4, 35 ), he was asked to do so by the Lacedaemonians, who preferred him to Cleombrotus as a leader. This was in 378 B.C.) where he inflicted damage upon the Thebans, and in his turn met with reverses, so that one day when he was wounded, Antalcidas said to him: Indeed, this is a fine tuition-fee which thou art getting from the Thebans, for teaching them how to fight when they did not wish to do it, and did not even know how.

For the Thebans are said to have been really more warlike at this time than ever before, owing to the many expeditions which the Lacedaemonians made against them, by which they were virtually schooled in arms. And Lycurgus of old, in one of his three so-called rhetras, forbade his people to make frequent expeditions against the same foes, in order that those foes might not learn how to make war.[*](Cf. the Lycurgus, xiii. 6. ) Moreover, the allies of the Lacedaemonians were offended at Agesilaüs, because, as they said, it was not upon any public ground of complaint, but by reason of some passionate resentment of his own, that he sought to destroy the Thebans.