Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/285

 HUMANITY OF AGESILAUS. 265 seem at hand. Agesilaus, while he instructed the auctioneers to sell upon credit, without insisting on ready money, at the same time gave private hints to a few friends that he was very shortly about to return to the sea. The friends thus warned, bidding for the plunder on credit and purchasing at low prices, were speedily enabled to dispose of it again at a seaport, with large profits. 1 We are not surprised to hear that such lucrative graces pro- cured for Agesilaus many warm admirers ; though the eulogies of Xenophon ought to have been confined to another point in his con- duct, now to be mentioned. Agesilaus, while securing for his army the plunder of the country over which he carried his victo- rious arms, took great pains to prevent both cruelty and destruc- tion of property. When any town surrendered to him on terms, his exactions were neither ruinous nor grossly humiliating. 3 Amidst all the plunder realized, too, the most valuable portion was the adult natives of both sexes, hunted down and brought in by the predatory light troops of the army, to be sold as slaves. Agesilaus was vigilant in protecting these poor victims from ill-usage ; incul- cating upon his soldiers the duty, " not of punishing them like wrong-doers, but simply of keeping them under guard as men. 3 " It was the practice of the poorer part of the native population often to sell their little children for exportation to travelling slave- merchants, from inability to maintain them. The children thus purchased, if they promised to be handsome, were often mutilated, and fetched large prices as eunuchs, to supply the large demand for the harems and religious worship of many Asiatic towns. Buf in their haste to get out of the way of a plundering army, these slave-merchants were forced often to leave by the way-side the little children whom they had purchased, exposed to the wolves, the dogs, or starvation. In this wretched condition, they were found by Agesilaus on his march. His humane disposition prompt- ed him to see them carried to a place of safety, where he gave them in charge of those old natives whom age and feebleness had 1 Xen. Agesil. i, 18. Truvref Trainr?i.7i$j] %pr][i,aTa eAa/3oi>. 3 Xen. Hellen. iii, 4, 19 ; Xen. Agesil. i, 28. roi)f virb T&V "k-yaruv uhtff topivovi; (3ap(3apovf. So the word A??0T^f, used in reference to the fleet, means the commandei of EI predatory vessel or privateer (Xen. Hellen. ii, 1 ; 30).
 * Xen. Agesil. i, 20-22.