Agesilaus

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. V. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1917.

while to heat and cold he was as indifferent as if nature had given him alone the power to adapt himself to the seasons as God has tempered them. And it was most pleasing to the Greeks who dwelt in Asia to see the Persian viceroys and generals, who had long been insufferably cruel, and had revelled in wealth and luxury, now fearful and obsequious before a man who went about in a paltry cloak, and at one brief and laconic speech from him conforming themselves to his ways and changing their dress and mien, insomuch that many were moved to cite the words of Timotheus:—

  1. Ares is Lord; of gold Greece hath no fear.
[*](Cf. Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graeci, iii.4 p. 622.)

Asia being now unsettled and in many quarters inclining to revolt, Agesilaüs set the cities there in order, and restored to their governments, without killing or banishing any one, the proper form. Then he determined to go farther afield, to transfer the war from the Greek sea, to fight for the person of the King and the wealth of Ecbatana and Susa, and above all things to rob that monarch of the power to sit at leisure on his throne, playing the umpire for the Greeks in their wars, and corrupting their popular leaders.

But at this point Epicydidas the Spartan came to him with tidings that Sparta was involved in a great war with other Greeks, and that the ephors called upon him and ordered him to come to the aid of his countrymen.

  1. O barbarous ills devised by Greeks!
[*](Euripides, Troades, 766 (Kirchhoff).) How else can one speak of that jealousy which now leagued and arrayed the Greeks against one another? They laid violent hands on Fortune in her lofty flight, and turned the weapons which threatened the Barbarians, and War, which had at last been banished from Greece, back again upon themselves.

I certainly cannot agree with Demaratus the Corinthian, who said that those Greeks had missed a great pleasure who did not behold Alexander seated on the throne of Dareius, nay, I think that such might well have shed tears when they reflected that this triumph was left for Alexander and Macedonians by those who now squandered the lives of Greek generals on the fields of Leuctra, Coroneia, and Corinth, and in Arcadia.

Agesilaüs, however, never performed a nobler or a greater deed than in returning home as he now did, nor was there ever a fairer example of righteous obedience to authority. For Hannibal, though he was already in an evil plight and on the point of being driven out of Italy, could with the greatest difficulty bring himself to obey his summons to the war at home; and Alexander actually went so far as to jest when he heard of Antipater’s battle with Agis,[*](At Megalopolis, in Arcadia, 331 B.C., Agis fell fighting, and the Spartan rebellion at once collapsed. Alexander had not the slightest thought of returning home to help Antipater.) saying: It would seem, my men, that while we were conquering Dareius here, there has been a battle of mice there in Arcadia.