Agesilaus

But becoming aware that supports had been hurriedly poured into the city during the night from Peiraeum, he turned about at daybreak and captured Peiraeum, finding it undefended, and everything in it, along with the fortresses that stood there, fell into his hands. Having done this, he returned home.

After these events, the Achaeans, who were zealous advocates of the alliance, begged him to join them in an expedition against Acarnania---.[*](Something seems to be lost here, probably a passage that ended with the words συστρατεύει αὐτοῖς εἰς Ἀκαρνανίαν.) And when the Acarnanians attacked him in a mountain pass he seized the heights above their heads with his light infantry,[*](The words τοῖς ψιλοῖς are probably a correction by X.; he says the heights were taken by the heavy infantry in Xen. Hell. 4.6.11.) fought an engagement and, after inflicting severe losses on them, set up a trophy; nor did he cease until he had induced the Acarnanians, Aetolians and Argives to enter into friendship with the Achaeans and alliance with himself.

[*](Peace of Antalcidas.)[*](387 B.C.)When the enemy sent embassies desiring peace, Agesilaus opposed the peace until he forced Corinth and Thebes to restore to their homes the citizens who had been exiled on account of their sympathy[*](381 B.C.) with the Lacedaemonians. And again later, having led an expedition in person against Phleius, he also restored the Phleiasian exiles who had suffered in the same cause. Possibly some may censure these actions on other grounds, but at least it is obvious that they were prompted by a spirit of true comradeship.

It was in the same spirit that he subsequently[*](377 B.C.) made an expedition against Thebes, to relieve the Lacedaemonians in that city when their opponents had taken to murdering them. Finding the city protected on all sides by a trench and stockade, he crossed the Pass of Cynoscephalae, and laid waste the country up to the city walls, offering battle to the Thebans both on the plain and on the hills, if they chose to fight. In the following year he made another expedition against Thebes, and, after crossing the stockade and trenches at Scolus, laid waste the rest of Boeotia.

Up to this time he and his city enjoyed unbroken success; and though the following years brought a series of troubles, it cannot be said that they were incurred under the leadership of Agesilaus. On the other hand, after the disaster at Leuctra, when his adversaries in league with the Mantineans were murdering his friends and acquaintances in Tegea, and a coalition of all Boeotia, Arcadia and Elis[*](370 B.C.) had been formed, he took the field with the Lacedaemonian forces only, thus disappointing the general expectation that the Lacedaemonians would not even go outside their own borders for a long time to come. It was not until he had laid waste the country of those who had murdered his friends that he returned home once more.

After this Sparta was attacked by all the Arcadians, Argives, Eleians and Boeotians, who had the support of the Phocians, both the Locrian peoples, the Thessalians, Aenianians, Acarnanians and Euboeans. In addition the slaves and many of the outlander communities were in revolt, and at least as many of the Spartan nobles had fallen in the battle of Leuctra as survived. He kept the city safe notwithstanding, and that though it was without walls, not going out into the open where the advantage would have lain wholly with the enemy, and keeping his army strongly posted where the citizens would have the advantage; for he believed that he would be surrounded on all sides if he came out into the plain, but that if he made a stand in the defiles and the heights, he would be master of the situation.