Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/269

 CONSPIRACY OF KINADON. 247 which usually fell to the kings, but also over the policy of the state at home. On the increase and maintenance of that real power, his chief thoughts were concentrated; new dispositions generated by kingship, which had never shown themselves in him before. Despising, like Lysander, both money, luxury, and all the outward show of power, he exhibited, as a king, an ultra-Spar tan simplicity, carried almost to affectation, in diet, clothing, and general habits. But like Lysander also, he delighted in the exer- cise of dominion through the medium of knots or factions of de- voted partisans, whom he rarely scrupled to uphold in all their career of injustice and oppression. Though an amiable man, with no disposition to tyranny, and still less to plunder, for his own bene- fit, Agesilaus thus made himself the willing instrument of both, for the benefit of his various coadjutors and friends, whose power and consequence he identified with his own. 1 At the moment when Agesilaus became king, Sparta was at the maximum of her power, holding nearly all the Grecian towns as subject allies, with or without tribute. She was engaged in the task (as has already been mentioned) of protecting the Asiatic Greeks against 'the Persian satraps in their neighborhood. And the most interesting portion of the life of Agesilaus consists in the earnestness with which he espoused, and the vigor and ability with which he conducted, this great Pan-hellenic duty. It will be seen that success in his very promising career was intercepted 2 by his bad, factious subservience to partisans, at home and abroad, by his unmeasured thirst for Spartan omnipotence, and his indiffer- ence or aversion to any generous scheme of combination with the cities dependent on Sparta. His attention, however, was first called to a dangerous inter- nal conspiracy with which Sparta was threatened. The " lame reign" was as yet less than twelve months old, when Agesilaus, be- ing engaged in sacrificing at one of the established state solemnities, was apprised by the officiating prophet, that the victims exhibited menacing symptoms, portending a conspiracy of the most formida- 1 Isokrates, Orat. v, (Philipp.) s. 100; Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 3, 13-23 ; Plutarch, Apophthegm. Laconica, p. 209 F 212 D. See the incident alluded to by Theopompus ap. Athenaeum, xiii, p. 509. 8 Isokrates (Orat. v, ut sup.) makes a remark in substance the same.