Agesilaus

There were many who chose this course, and so it came to pass that Agesilaüs quickly had a large force of warlike horsemen instead of worthless men-at-arms.[*](Cf. Xenophon, Hell. iii. 4, 15. ) For those who did not wish to do military service hired those who did, and those who did not wish to serve as horsemen hired those who did. Indeed, Agesilaüs thought Agamemnon had done well in accepting a good mare and freeing a cowardly rich man from military service.[*](Iliad, xxiii. 296 ff.)

And once when, by his orders, his prisoners of war were stripped of their clothing and offered for sale by the venders of booty, their clothing found many purchasers, but their naked bodies, which were utterly white and delicate, owing to their effeminate habits, were ridiculed as useless and worthless. Then Agesilaüs, noticing, said: These are the men with whom you fight, and these the things for which you fight.

When the season again favoured an incursion into the enemy’s country,[*](In the spring of 395 B.C.; cf. Xenophon, Hell. iii. 4, 16 ff. ) Agesilaüs gave out that he would march into Lydia, and this time he was not trying to deceive Tisaphernes. That satrap, however, utterly deluded himself, in that he disbelieved Agesilaüs because of his former trick, and thought that now, at any rate, the king would attack Caria, although it was ill-suited for cavalry, and he was far inferior in that arm of the service.

But Agesilaüs, as he had given out that he would do, marched into the plain of Sardis, and then Tisaphernes was forced to hasten thither from Caria with aid and relief; and riding through the plain with his cavalry, he cut off many straggling plunderers there. Agesilaüs, accordingly, reflecting that the enemy’s infantry had not yet come up, while his own forces were complete, made haste to give battle.