Agesilaus

Accordingly, they said they had no wish to be dragged hither and thither to destruction every year, they themselves so many, and the Lacedaemonians, with whom they followed, so few. It was at this time, we are told, that Agesilaüs, wishing to refute their argument from numbers, devised the following scheme. He ordered all the allies to sit down by themselves promiscuously, and the Lacedaemonians apart by themselves.

Then his herald called upon the potters to stand up first, and after them the smiths, next, the carpenters in their turn, and the builders, and so on through all the handicrafts. In response, almost all the allies rose up, but not a man of the Lacedaemonians; for they were forbidden to learn or practise a manual art.[*](Cf. the Lycurgus, xxiv. 2. ) Then Agesilaüs said with a laugh: You see, O men, how many more soldiers than you we are sending out.

But in Megara, when he was leading his army back from Thebes,[*](From a second incursion into Boeotia, made in 377 B.C. (Xenophon, Hell. v. 4, 47-55; 58).) as he was going up to the senate-house in the acropolis, he was seized with a cramp and violent pain in his sound leg, which then swelled up, appeared to be congested, and showed signs of excessive inflammation.

As soon as a certain Syracusan physician had opened a vein below the ankle, the pains relaxed, but much blood flowed and could not be checked, so that Agesilaüs was very faint from its loss, and in dire peril of his life. At last, however, the flow of blood was stopped, and Agesilaüs was carried to Sparta, where he remained for a long time in a weak condition and unable to take the field.

During this time the Spartans met with many reverses both by land and sea, the greatest of which was at Tegyra, where for the first time they were overpowered by the Thebans in a pitched battle.[*](This battle, fought in 375 B.C., is not mentioned by Xenophon, but is described by Plutarch in the Pelopidas, chapters xvi. and xvii., doubtless on the authority of Ephorus (cf. Diodorus, xv. 81, 2).) There was, accordingly, a general sentiment in favour of a general peace, and ambassadors from all Hellas came together at Sparta to settle its terms.[*](In 371 B.C. (Xenophon, Hell. vi. 3, 3-20).)

One of these ambassadors was Epaminondas, a man of repute for culture and philosophy, although he had not yet given proof of capacity as a general. This man, seeing the rest all cringing before Agesilaüs, alone had the courage of his convictions, and made a speech, not in behalf of Thebes, his native city, but of all Greece in common, declaring that war made Sparta great at the expense of the sufferings of all the other states, and urging that peace be made on terms of equality and justice, for it would endure only when all parties to it were made equal.