Agesilaus

He was of conspicuous beauty and stature, and at an age when the human flower has the greatest charm, as the boy merges into the man. Naked as he was, without either defensive armour or clothing,—for he had just anointed his body with oil,—he took a spear in one hand, and a sword in the other, leaped forth from his house, and after pushing his way through the midst of the combatants, ranged up and down among the enemy, smiting and laying low all who encountered him.

And no man gave him a wound, whether it was that a god shielded him on account of his valour, or that the enemy thought him taller and mightier than a mere man could be. For this exploit it is said that the ephors put a garland on his head, and then fined him a thousand drachmas, because he had dared to hazard his life in battle without armour.

A few days afterwards a battle was fought near Mantinea, in which Epaminondas had already routed the van of the Lacedaemonians, and was still eagerly pressing on in pursuit of them,[*](Cf. Xenophon, Hell. vii. 5, 22-24. ) when Anticrates, a Spartan, faced him and smote him with a spear, as Dioscorides tells the story; but the Lacedaemonians to this day call the descendants of Anticrates machaeriones, or swordsmen, because he used a sword for the blow.

For the Lacedaemonians were filled with such admiring love for him because of the fear in which they held Epaminondas while living, that they voted honours and gifts to Anticrates himself, and to his posterity exemption from taxes, an immunity which in my own day also is enjoyed by Callicrates, one of the descendants of Anticrates. After the battle and the death of Epaminondas, when the Greeks concluded peace among themselves, Agesilaüs and his partisans tried to exclude the Messenians from the oath of ratification, on the ground that they had no city.

And when all the rest admitted the Messenians and accepted their oaths, the Lacedaemonians held aloof from the peace, and they alone remained at war in the hope of recovering Messenia.[*](Cf. Diodorus, xv. 89, 1 f. ) Agesilaüs was therefore deemed a headstrong and stubborn man, and insatiable of war, since he did all in his power to undermine and postpone the general peace, and again since his lack of resources compelled him to lay burdens on his friends in the city and to take loans and contributions from them.

And yet it was his duty to put an end to their evils, now that opportunity offered, and not, after having lost Sparta’s whole empire, vast as it was, with its cities and its supremacy on land and sea, then to carry on a petty struggle for the goods and revenues of Messene.