Agesilaus

Plutarch

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

Why, then, should we not call Sparta happy in the honour paid to her by Agesilaüs, and in his deference to her laws? No sooner had the dispatch-roll come to him than he renounced and abandoned the great good fortune and power already in his grasp, and the great hopes which beckoned him on, and at once sailed off

with task all unfulfilled,

[*](Iliad, iv. 175.) leaving behind a great yearning for him among his allies, and giving the strongest confutation to the saying of Erasistratus the son of Phaeax, who declared that the Lacedaemonians were better men in public life, but the Athenians in private.

For while approving himself a most excellent king and general, he showed himself a still better and more agreeable friend and companion to those who enjoyed his intimacy. Persian coins were stamped with the figure of an archer, and Agesilaüs said, as he was breaking camp, that the King was driving him out of Asia with ten thousand archers; for so much money had been sent to Athens and Thebes and distributed among the popular leaders there, and as a consequence those peoples made war upon the Spartans.[*](According to Xenophon (Hell. iii. 5, 1 ff.), Persian money was distributed in Thebes, Corinth, and Argos. The Athenians, though they took no share of the gold, were none the less eager for war.)