Agesilaus

After the retirement of the enemy, none will deny that his conduct was marked by good sense. The marching and riding incidental to active service were no longer possible to a man of his years, but he saw that the state must have money if she was to gain an ally anywhere. So he applied himself to the business of raising money. At home he did all that ingenuity could suggest; and, if he saw any prospect of serving the state abroad, shrank from no measures that circumstances called for, and he was not ashamed to go out, not as a general, but as an envoy.

And even as an envoy he accomplished work worthy of a great general. For instance, Autophradates laying siege to Ariobarzanes, an ally of Sparta, at Assos, took to his heels from fear of Agesilaus. Cotys for his part, besieging Sestos, while it was still in the hands of Ariobarzanes, broke up the siege and made off. With good reason, therefore, might the victorious envoy have set up a trophy once again to record these bloodless successes.

Again, Mausolus, laying siege to both these places with a fleet of a hundred vessels, was induced, not indeed by fear, but by persuasion, to sail for home. In this affair too his success was admirable; for those who considered that they were under an obligation to him and those who fled before him, both paid. Yet again, Tachos and Mausolus (another of those who contributed money to Sparta, owing to his old ties of hospitality with Agesilaus), sent him home with a magnificent escort.

Subsequently, when he was now about eighty years of age, he became aware that the king of Egypt was bent on war with Persia, and was possessed of large forces of infantry and cavalry and plenty of money. He was delighted when a summons for help reached him from the Egyptian king, who actually promised him the chief command.

For he believed that at one stroke he would repay the Egyptian for his good offices to Sparta, would again set free the Greeks in Asia, and would chastise the Persian for his former hostility, and for demanding now, when he professed to be an ally of Sparta, that her claim to Messene should be given up.

However, when this suitor for his assistance failed to give him the command Agesilaus felt that he had been grossly deceived, and was in doubt what he ought to do. At this juncture first a portion of the Egyptian troops, operating as a separate army, revolted from the king, and then the rest of his forces deserted him. The king left Egypt and fled in terror to Sidon in Phoenicia, while the Egyptians split up into two parties, and each chose its own king.