Pyrrhus

Now, Cleonymus was of royal lineage, but because he was thought to be of a violent and arbitrary temper, he enjoyed neither goodwill nor confidence at home, but Areus was king there. This was one general ground of complaint which he had against his fellow citizens, and it was of long standing. Besides, Cleonymus in his later years had married Chilonis the daughter of Leotychides, a beautiful woman of royal lineage; but she had fallen desperately in love with Acrotatus the son of Areus, a young man in the flower of his age, and thus rendered his marriage distressing to Cleonymus, since he loved her, and at the same time disgraceful; for every Spartan was well aware that the husband was despised by his wife.

Thus his domestic vexations added themselves to his political disappointment, and in indignation and wrath he brought Pyrrhus against Sparta.[*](In 272 B.C.) Pyrrhus had twenty-five thousand foot and two thousand horse, besides twenty-four elephants, so that the magnitude of his preparations made it clear at once that he was not aiming to acquire Sparta for Cleonymus, but the Peloponnesus for himself. And yet his professions were all to the contrary, and particularly those which he made to the Lacedaemonian ambassadors themselves when they met him at Megalopolis.

He told them he had come to set free the cities which were subject to Antigonus, yes, and that he was going to send his younger sons to Sparta, if nothing prevented, to be brought up in the Lacedaemonian customs, that so they might presently have the advantage over all other princes. With these fictions he beguiled those who came to meet him on his march, but as soon as he reached Laconian territory he began to ravage and plunder it.