Artaxerxes

Now Antalcidas was a Spartan, son of Leon, and acting in the interests of the king he induced the Lacedaemonians to surrender to the king all the Greek cities of Asia, and all the islands adjacent to Asia, to possess them on payment of tribute; and peace was thus established among the Greeks, if the mockery and betrayal of Greece can be called peace, a peace than which no war ever brought a more inglorious consummation to the defeated.

For this reason Artaxerxes, although he always held other Spartans in abomination, and considered them, as Deinon tells us, the most shameless of all mankind, showed great affection for Antalcidas when he came up to Persia. On one occasion he actually took a wreath of flowers, dipped it in the most costly ointment, and sent it to Antalcidas after supper; and all men wondered at the kindness.[*](Cf. the Pelopidas, xxx. 4. )

But Antalcidas was a fit person, as it would seem, to be exquisitely treated and to receive such a wreath, now that he had danced away among the Persians the fair fame of Leonidas and Callicratidas. For Agesilaüs, as it would appear, when someone said to him: Alas for Greece, now that the Spartans are medizing, replied, Are not the Medes the rather spartanizing? However, the wittiness of the speech could not remove the shame of the deed, and the Spartans lost their supremacy in the disastrous battle of Leuctra,[*](In 371 B.C. Cf. the Agesilaüs, xxviii. 5. ) though the glory of Sparta had been lost before that by this treaty.

So long, then, as Sparta kept the first place in Greece, Artaxerxes treated Antalcidas as his guest and called him his friend; but after the Spartans had been defeated at Leuctra, they fell so low as to beg for money, and sent Agesilaüs to Egypt, while Antalcidas went up to Artaxerxes to ask him to supply the wants of the Lacedaemonians.