Agesilaus

He was also informed of another and a larger conspiracy of Spartans, who met secretly in a house and there plotted revolution. It was impracticable either to bring these men to trial in a time of so much confusion, or to overlook their plots. Accordingly, Agesilaüs conferred with the ephors, and then put these men also to death without process of law, although no Spartan had ever before met with such a death.

At this time, also, many of the provincials and Helots who had been enrolled in the army ran away from the city and joined the enemy, and this caused very deep discouragement. Agesilaüs therefore instructed his servants to go every morning before it was light to the barracks and take the arms of the deserters and hide them, that their numbers might not be known.

As for the reason why the Thebans withdrew from Laconia, most writers say that it was because winter storms came on and the Arcadians began to melt away and disband; others, because they had remained there three entire months and thoroughly ravaged most of the country;[*](All three reasons are given by Xenophon (Hell. vi. 5. 50).) but Theopompus says that when the Theban chief magistrates had already determined to take their army back, Phrixus, a Spartan, came to them, bringing ten talents from Agesilaüs to pay for their withdrawal, so that they were only doing what they had long ago decided to do, and had their expenses paid by their enemies besides.

This story may be true, although I know not how all other writers could be ignorant of it, while Theopompus alone heard it; but, at any rate, all agree that the salvation of Sparta at this time was due to Agesilaüs, because he renounced his inherent passions of contentiousness and ambition, and adopted a policy of safety.

He could not, however, restore the power and reputation of his city after its fall, for it was like a human body that is sound, indeed, but has followed all the while too strict and severe a regimen; a single error turned the scale and brought down the entire prosperity of the city. Nor was this strange. For to a civil polity best arranged for peace and virtue and unanimity they had attached empires and sovereignties won by force, not one of which Lycurgus thought needful for a city that was to live in happiness; and therefore they fell.

Agesilaüs himself now declined military service on account of his years, but Archidamus his son, with assistance which came from the tyrant of Sicily,[*](Dionysius the Elder.) conquered the Arcadians in the so-called tearless battle, where not one of his own men fell, and he slew great numbers of the enemy.[*](In 368 B.C. (Xenophon, Hell. vii. 1, 28-32).) This victory, more than anything else, showed the weakness of the city.

For up to this time they were wont to think the conquest of their enemies so customary and natural a thing for them to achieve, that no sacrifice for victory was offered in the city to the gods, beyond that of a cock, neither did the winners of the contest exult, nor those who heard of their victory show great joy. Nay, even after the battle at Mantinea,[*](In 418 B.C., when the Lacedaemonians defeated an allied force of Mantineans, Argives, and Athenians (Thucydides, v. 64-75).) which Thucydides has described, the one who first announced the victory had no other reward for his glad tidings than a piece of meat sent by the magistrates from the public mess.

But now, at the news of the Arcadian victory and at the approach of Archidamus, no one could restrain himself, but first his father went to meet him, weeping for joy, and after him the chief magistrates, while the elderly men and the women went down in a throng to the river, lifting their hands to heaven and blessing the gods, as if Sparta had wiped away her unmerited disgraces and now saw the light shine bright again as of old; for before this, we are told, her men could not so much as look their wives in the face, out of shame at their disasters.