Agis and Cleomenes

Thou praisest Ecprepes, said Agis, who, as ephor, cut out with an adze two of the nine lute-strings of Phrynis the musician, and likewise the magistrates in the time of Timotheus, who did the same thing in their turn, but thou blamest me for trying to remove luxury, extravagance, and ostentation from Sparta, as if those magistrates also were not on the watch to prevent the pompous and superfluous in music from making such advances as our lives and manners have come to, whose excess and discord has made the city dissonant and out of tune with itself.

After this, the common people took sides with Agis, but the men of wealth entreated Leonidas not to abandon them. And by prayers and arguments with the senators, whose power lay in their privilege of presenting all measures to the people, they so far prevailed that by a single vote the proposed rhetra was rejected.

Lysander, however, who was still ephor, set on foot an indictment of Leonidas by virtue of an ancient law which forbade any descendant of Heracles to beget children by a foreign woman, and ordained that anyone who left Sparta to settle among foreigners should be put to death.[*](Plutarch here merges two separate laws. Cf. the Lycurgus, xxvii. 3. ) After instructing others to spread these charges against Leonidas, he himself, with his colleagues, proceeded to observe the traditional sign from heaven.