Greek Texts & Translations

So Pausanias, fearing lest he should be caught between two enemy forces, made a truce with the Thebans and took up for burial those who had fallen under the wall of Haliartus. The Lacedaemonians disapproved of this decision, but the following reason leads me to approve it. Pausanias was well aware that the disasters of the Lacedaemonians always took place when they had been caught between two enemy forces, and the defeats at Thermopylae and on the island of Sphacteria made him afraid lest he himself should prove the occasion of a third misfortune for them.

But when his fellow citizens charged him with his slowness in this Boeotian campaign, he did not wait to stand his trial, but was received by the people of Tegea as a suppliant of Athena Alea. Now this sanctuary had been respected from early days by all the Peloponnesians, and afforded peculiar safety to its suppliants, as the Lacedaemonians showed in the case of Pausanias and of Leotychides before him, and the Argives in the case of Chrysis; they never wanted even to ask for these refugees, who were sitting as suppliants in the sanctuary, to be given up.

When Pausanias fled, his sons Agesipolis and Cleombrotus were still quite boys, and Aristodemus, their nearest relative, was their guardian. This Aristodemus was in command of the Lacedaemonians when they won their success at Corinth.

When Agesipolis grew up and came to the throne, the first Peloponnesians against whom he waged war were the Argives. When he led his army from the territory of Tegea into that of Argos, the Argives sent a herald to make for them with Agesipolis a certain ancestral truce, which from ancient times had been an established custom between Dorians and Dorians. But Agesipolis did not make the truce with the herald, but advancing with his army proceeded to devastate the land. Then there was an earthquake, but not even so would Agesipolis consent to take away his forces. And yet more than any other Greeks were the Lacedaemonians (in this respect like the Athenians) frightened by signs from heaven.

By the time that he was encamping under the wall of Argos, the earthquakes were still occurring, some of the troops had actually been killed by lightning, and some moreover had been driven out of then senses by the thunder. In this circumstance he reluctantly withdrew from Argive territory, and began another campaign, attacking Olynthus. Victorious in the war, having captured most of the cities in Chalcidice, and hoping to capture Olynthus itself, he was suddenly attacked by a disease which ended in his death. ^note

Agesipolis, the elder of the sons of Cleombrotus, is not a striking figure in history, and was succeeded by his younger brother Cleomenes. His first son was Acrotatus, his second Cleonymus. Acrotatus did not outlive his father, and when Cleomenes afterwards died, there arose a dispute about the throne between Cleonymus the son of Cleomenes and Areus the son of Acrotatus. So the senators acted as arbitrators, and decided that the dignity was the inheritance of Areus the son of Acrotatus, and not of Cleonymus.

Deprived of his kingship Cleonymus became violently angry, and the ephors tried to soothe his feelings by bestowing upon him various honors, especially the leadership of the armies, so as to prevent his becoming one day an enemy of Sparta. But at last he committed many hostile acts against his fatherland, and induced Pyrrhus the son of Aeacides to invade Laconia.

While Areus the son of Acrotatus was king in Sparta, Antigonus the son of Demetrius attacked Athens with an army and a fleet. ^note To the help of the Athenians there came the Egyptian expedition with Patroclus, and every available man of the Lacedaemonians with Areus their king at their head.