XL. This victory secured the throne of Egypt for Nektanebis. He now showed great esteem for Agesilaus, and begged him to remain in Egypt during the winter. Agesilaus, however, was anxious to return home and assist in the war which was going on there, as he knew that Sparta was in great want of money, and was paying a force of mercenary troops. Nektanebis escorted him out of the country with great honour, giving him many presents, and the sum of two hundred and thirty talents of silver to be used in meeting the expenses of the war. As it was winter, and stormy weather, Agesilaus did not venture to cross the open sea, but coasted along the shores of Libya, as far as a desert spot known as the Harbour of Menelaus, where he died, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, and having been king of Sparta for forty-one years, during thirty of which he was the greatest and most powerful man in Greece, having been looked upon as all but the king of the whole country, up to the time of the battle of Leuktra.
It was the Spartan custom, in the case of citizens who died in foreign countries, to pay them the last rites wherever they might be, but to take home the remains of their kings. Consequently the Spartan counsellors enveloped the body in melted wax, as they could not obtain honey, and took it home to Lacedæmon.
Archidamus, the son of Agesilaus, succeeded him on the throne, and his posterity continued to reign until Agis, the fifth in descent from Agesilaus, was murdered by Leonidas, because he endeavoured to restore the ancient discipline of Sparta.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 174: This passage has been admirably paraphrased by Grote, 'History of Greece,' Part II. ch. lxxiii.:--
"Combined with that ability and energy in which he was never deficient, this conciliatory policy ensured him more real power than had ever fallen to the lot of any king of Sparta--power, not merely over the military operations abroad, 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-Spartan simplicity, carried almost to affectation in diet, clothing, and general habits. But like Lysander, also, he delighted in the exercise of dominion through the medium of knots or factions of devoted partizans, 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 benefit--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." See also infra, ch. xiii. et al.]
[Footnote 175: We see here the beginning of that tendency of the Neoplatonic school to find a sanction for all their theories in some perversion of the plain meaning of Homer's words.]
[Footnote 176: Compare Life of Lysander, ch. xxiii.]
[Footnote 177: In Sintenis's text of Plutarch this prince's name is spelt as above. Xenophon, however, in his Life of Agesilaus, spells it Otys; and this reading has been adopted by Grote. It must be remembered that Xenophon was probably an eye-witness of the proceedings which he records, and that Plutarch lived several centuries later.]
[Footnote 178: The Greek word here translated "guest" is explained by Liddell and Scott, s.v., to mean "any person in a foreign city with whom one has a treaty of hospitality for self and heirs, confirmed by mutual presents and an appeal to [Greek: Zeus xenios] Ζεὺς ξένιος."]
[Footnote 179: He sought to compose the dissensions and misrule which had arisen out of the Lysandrian Dekarchies, or governments of ten, in the Greco-Asiatic cities, avoiding as much as possible the infliction of death or exile.--Grote, part ii. ch. lxxiii.]
[Footnote 180: Nothing is known of this tribe. There is a city, Tralles, in Asia Minor, which Clough conjectures may possibly have been connected with them. Liddell and Scott speak of "Trallians" as "Thracian barbarians employed in Asia as mercenaries, torturers, and executioners."]
[Footnote 181: The people living about Pharsalia.]
[Footnote 182: Mora, a Spartan regiment of infantry. The number of men in each varied from 400 to 900, according as the men above 45, 50, &c., years were called out.]
[Footnote 183: The most aristocratic city in Bœotia, now allied with the Spartans. During the Theban supremacy it was utterly destroyed.]
[Footnote 184: That is, the aristocratic or pro-Laconian party, who had been driven out by the other side.]
[Footnote 185: To Medise was a phrase originally used during the great Persian invasion of Greece under Xerxes, B.C. 480, when those Greek cities who sided with the Persians, were said to Medise, that is, to take the side of the Medes. See Life of Artaxerxes, vol. iv. ch. 22, and Grote's 'History of Greece,' part ii. ch. lxxvi.]
[Footnote 186: See _ante_, ch. xiii., _note_.]
[Footnote 187: This name is spelt Leontiades by most writers.]
[Footnote 188: I extract the following note from Grote's 'History of Greece.' "Plutarch gives this interchange of brief questions, between Agesilaus and Epameinondas, which is in substance the same as that given by Pausanias, and has every appearance of being true. But he introduces it in a very bold and abrupt way, such as cannot be conformable to the reality. To raise a question about the right of Sparta to govern Laconia was a most daring novelty. A courageous and patriotic Theban might venture upon it as a retort against those Spartans who questioned the right of Thebes to her presidency of Bœotia; but he would never do so without assigning his reasons to justify an assertion so startling to a large portion of his hearers. The reasons which I here ascribe to Epameinondas are such as we know to have formed the Theban creed, in reference to the Bœotian cities; such as were actually urged by the Theban orator in 427 B.C., when the fate of the Platæan captives was under discussion. After Epameinondas had once laid out the reasons in support of his assertion, he might then, if the same brief question were angrily put to him a second time, meet it with another equally brief counter-question or retort. It is this final interchange of thrusts which Plutarch has given, omitting the arguments previously stated by Epameinondas, and necessary to warrant the seeming paradox which he advances. We must recollect that Epameinondas does not contend that Thebes was entitled to _as much power_ in Bœotia as Sparta in Laconia. He only contends that Bœotia, under the presidency of Thebes, was as much an integral political aggregate, as Laconia under Sparta--in reference to the Grecian world."--Grote's 'History of Greece,' part ii. ch. lxvii.]
LIFE OF POMPEIUS.
I. Towards Pompeius the Roman people seem to have been disposed from the very first, just as the Prometheus of Aeschylus[189] was towards his deliverer Hercules, when he says:--
"Though hateful is the sire, most dear to me the son."
For neither did the Romans ever display hatred so violent and savage towards any commander as towards Strabo[190] the father of Pompeius, whom they dreaded, when he was alive, for his military talent, for he was a man most expert in arms; and when he was killed by lightning and his body was carried out to interment they pulled it from the bier on which it was lying and treated it with indignity: nor, on the other hand, did any other Roman besides Pompeius ever receive from the people tokens of affection so strong, or so early, or which grew so rapidly with his good fortune, or abided with him so firmly in his reverses. The cause of their hatred to the father was his insatiable avarice: the causes of their affection to the son were many; his temperate life, his practice in arms, the persuasiveness of his speech, the integrity of his character, and his affability to every man who came in his way, so that there was no man from whom another could ask a favour with so little pain, and no man whose requests another would more willingly labour to satisfy. For in addition to his other endearing qualities, Pompeius could give without seeming to confer a favour, and he could receive with dignity.
II. At the beginning also his countenance contributed in no small degree to win the good-will of the people and to secure a favourable reception before he opened his mouth. For the sweetness of his expression was mingled with dignity and kindness, and while he was yet in the very bloom of youth his noble and kingly nature clearly showed itself. There was also a slight falling back of the hair and softness in the expression of his eyes, which produced a resemblance to the likenesses of Alexander, though indeed the resemblance was more talked of than real. Accordingly many at first gave him the name, which Pompeius did not object to, whence some in derision called him Alexander. It was in allusion to this that Lucius Philippus,[191] a consular man, when he was speaking in favour of Pompeius, said it was nothing strange if he who was Philippus loved Alexander. They used to report that Flora the courtesan, when she was now advanced in years, always spoke with pleasure of her intimacy with Pompeius, and said that she could never leave the embrace of Pompeius without bearing marks[192] of the ardour of his passion. Besides this, Flora used to tell that Geminius, one of the companions of Pompeius, conceived a passion for her, and plagued her much with his solicitations, and when she said that for the sake of Pompeius she could not consent, Geminius applied to Pompeius. Now Pompeius, as she told the story, gave Geminius permission, but he never after touched Flora or had a meeting with her, though it was believed that he was attached to her; and Flora did not take this as most courtesans do, but was ill for a long time through grief and regret for the loss of her lover. And indeed it is said that Flora enjoyed such reputation and was so much talked of, that Cæcilius Metellus, when he was ornamenting the temple of the Dioscuri with statues and paintings, had the portrait of Flora painted and placed in the temple on account of her beauty. The wife of his freedman Demetrius also, who had the greatest influence with Pompeius and left a property of four thousand talents, contrary to his habit he did not treat kindly nor in a manner befitting her free condition: but it was through fear of her beauty, which was irresistible and much talked about, and that he might not appear to be captivated by her. Though he was so exceedingly cautious in such matters and so much on his guard, yet he did not escape the imputations of his enemies on the ground of amours, but he was slanderously accused of commerce with married women and of betraying many of the public interests to gratify them. Of his temperance and simplicity in his way of living the following anecdote is told. On one occasion when he was ill and indisposed to his ordinary food, the physician prescribed a thrush for him. After search had been made and none found, for the season was past, some one observed that one might be found at the house of Lucullus, for he kept them all the year round: "Well then," said Pompeius, "I suppose if Lucullus were not luxurious, Pompeius could not live;" and without regarding the physician's advice he took something that was ready at hand. This, however, belongs to a later period.