Agis and Cleomenes

So Nicagoras wrote a letter to this effect and sailed away; and Sosibius, after four days had passed, brought the letter to Ptolemy, pretending that he had just received it, and so exasperated the young man that it was decided to remove Cleomenes into a large house, and while treating him in other ways just as before, to prevent his egress.

Even this usage was grievous to Cleomenes, but his hopes for the future received a greater shock from the following incident. Ptolemy the son of Chrysermus, a friend of King Ptolemy, had all the while been on friendly terms with Cleomenes, and they were quite intimate and outspoken with one another.

This Ptolemy, then, now that Cleomenes begged a visit from him, came and conversed in a reasonable way with him, seeking to remove his suspicions and excusing the conduct of the king; but when he was leaving the house and did not perceive that Cleomenes was following on behind him as far as the doors, he bitterly reproached the guards for the careless and easy watch they kept upon a great wild beast that was so hard to keep.

Cleomenes heard this with his own ears, and without Ptolemy’s being aware of his presence went back and told his friends. At once, then, they all abandoned the hopes they had been cherishing and wrathfully determined to avenge themselves on Ptolemy for his injustice and insolence, and die in a manner worthy of Sparta, instead of waiting like sacrificial victims to be first fattened and then smitten down.

For it was an intolerable thing that Cleomenes, after scorning to come to terms with Antigonus, a man who fought well and wrought much, should sit idly down and await the leisure of a begging-priest of a king, who, as soon as he could lay aside his timbrel and stop his dancing, would slay him.

Such being their resolve, and Ptolemy, as chance would have it, making a visit to Canopus, in the first place word was sent about that Cleomenes had been set free by the king; and next, in view of a custom which the king had of sending presents and a banquet to those who were going to be released from imprisonment, the friends of Cleomenes in the city prepared and sent in to him an abundance of such things, thus completely deceiving the guards, who thought the king had sent them.