Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/265

 AGESILAUS. 243 adherents, lie was remarkable for fervor of attachment, even foi unscrupulous partisanship, with a readiness to use all his influ- ence in screening their injustices or short-comings ; while ha was comparatively placable and generous in dealing with rivals at home, notwithstanding his eagerness to be first in every sort of competition. 1 His manners were cheerful and popular, and his physiognomy pleasing; though in stature he was not only small but mean, and though he labored under the additional defect of lameness on one leg, 2 which accounts for his constant refusal to suffer his statue to be taken. 3 He was indifferent to money, and exempt from excess of selfish feeling, except in his passion for superiority and power. In spite of his rank as brother of Agis, Agesilaus had never yet been tried in any military command, though he had probably served in the army either at Dekeleia or in Asia. Much of his character, therefore, lay as yet undisclosed. And his popularity may perhaps have been the greater at the moment when the throne became vacant, inasmuch as, having never been put in a position to excite jealousy, he stood distinguished only for accomplishments, efforts, endurances, and punctual obedience, wherein even the poorest citizens were his competitors on equal terms. Nay, so com- plete was the self-constraint, and the habit of smothering emotions, generated by a Spartan training, that even the cunning Lysander himself did not at this time know him. He and Agesilaus had been early and ultimate friends, 4 both having been placed as boys in the same herd or troop for the purposes of discipline ; a strong illus- tration of the equalizing character of this discipline, since we know that Lysander was of poor parents and condition. 5 He made the mistake of supposing Agesilaus to be of a disposition particularly gentle and manageable ; and this was his main inducement for espousing the pretensions of the latter to the throne, after the 1 Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 2-5 ; Xenoph. Agesil. vii, 3 ; Plutarch, Apophth. Laconic, p. 212 D. 2 Plutarch, Agesil. c. 2 ; Xenoph. Agesil. viii, 1. It appears that the mother of Agesilaus was a very small woman, and that Archidamus had incurred the censure of the ephors, on that especial ground, for marrying her. 3 Xenoph. Agesil. xi, 7 ; Plutarch, Agesil. c. 2
 * Plutarch, Agesil. c. 2. b Plutarch, Lysand. c. 2.