Agesilaus

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. V. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1917.

But if, on the other hand, his adversaries stumbled and fell, he was first to sympathize with them and give them zealous aid if they desired it, and so won the hearts and the allegiance of all. The ephors, accordingly, seeing this, and fearing his power, laid a fine upon him, alleging as a reason that he made the citizens his own, who should be the common property of the state.

Natural philosophers are of the opinion that, if strife and discord should be banished from the universe, the heavenly bodies would stand still, and all generation and motion would cease in consequence of the general harmony. And so the Spartan law-giver seems to have introduced the spirit of ambition and contention into his civil polity as an incentive to virtue, desiring that good citizens should always be somewhat at variance and in conflict with one another, and deeming that complaisance which weakly yields without debate, which knows no effort and no struggle, to be wrongly called concord.

And some think that Homer also was clearly of this mind; for he would not have represented Agamemnon as pleased when Odysseus and Achilles were carried away into abuse of one another with

frightful words,

[*](Odyssey, viii. 75 ff.) if he had not thought the general interests likely to profit by the mutual rivalry and quarrelling of the chieftains. This principle, however, must not be accepted without some reservations; for excessive rivalries are injurious to states, and productive of great perils.

Agesilaüs had but recently come to the throne, when tidings were brought from Asia that the Persian king was preparing a great armament with which to drive the Lacedaemonians from the sea. Now, Lysander was eager to be sent again into Asia, and to aid his friends there. These he had left governors and masters of the cities, but owing to their unjust and violent conduct of affairs, they were being driven out by the citizens, and even put to death. He therefore persuaded Agesilaüs to undertake the expedition and make war in behalf of Hellas, proceeding to the farthest point across the sea, and thus anticipating the preparations of the Barbarian.

At the same time he wrote to his friends in Asia urging them to send messengers to Sparta and demand Agesilaüs as their commander. Accordingly, Agesilaüs went before the assembly of the people and agreed to undertake the war if they would grant him thirty Spartans as captains and counsellors, a select corps of two thousand enfranchised Helots, and a force of allies amounting to six thousand.