Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks. Edward Wortley Montagu

who had married the daughter of Leonidas, and was of the royal blood, to put in his claim to the succession. Leonidas, terrified at these daring measures, fled, and took sanctuary in the temple of Minerva: he was deposed therefore for non-appearance, and his crown given to his son-in-law Cleombrotus.

      But as soon as the term of Lysander’s magistracy expired, the new Ephori, who were elected by the prevailing interest of the opposite party, immediately undertook the protection of Leonidas. They summoned Lysander and his friends to answer for their decrees for cancelling debts, and dividing the lands, as contrary to the laws, and treasonable innovations; for so they termed all attempts to restore the ancient constitution [48] of Lycurgus. Alarmed at this, Lysander persuaded the two Kings to join in opposing the Ephori; who, as he plainly proved, assumed an authority which they had not the least right to, as long as the Kings acted together in concert. The Kings, convinced by his reasons, armed a great number of the youth, released all who were prisoners for debt, and thus attended went into the Forum, where they deposed the Ephori, and procured their own friends to be elected into that office, of whom Agesilaus the uncle of Agis was one. By the care and humanity of Agis, no blood was spilt on this memorable occasion. He even protected his antagonist Leonidas against the designs which Agesilaus had formed upon his life, and sent him under a safe convoy to Tegea.

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      After this bold stroke, all opposition sunk before them, and every thing succeeded to their wishes; when the single avarice of Agesilaus, that most baneful pest, as Plutarch terms it, which had subverted a constitution the most excellent, and the most worthy of Sparta that had ever yet been established, overset the whole enterprise. By the character which Plutarch gives of Agesilaus,a he appears to have been artful and eloquent, but at the same time effemi-[49]nate, corrupt in his manners, avaritious, and so bad a man, that he engaged in this projected revolution with no other view but that of extricating himself from an immense load of debt, which he had most probably contracted to support his luxury. As soon therefore as the two Kings, who were both young men, agreed to proceed upon the abolition of debts, and the partition of lands, Agesilaus artfully persuaded them not to attempt both at once, for fear of exciting some terrible commotion in the city. He assured them farther, that if the rich should once be reconciled to the law for cancelling the debts, the law for dividing the lands would go down with them quietly and without the least obstruction. The Kings assented to his opinion, and Lysander himself was brought over to it, deceived by the same specious, though pernicious reasoning: calling in therefore all the bills, bonds, and pecuniary obligations, they piled them up, and burnt them all publickly in the Forum, to the great mortification of the moneyed men, and the usurers. But Agesilaus in the joy of his heart could not refrain from joking upon the occasion, and told them with a sneer, That whatever they might think of the matter, it was the bright-[50]est and most chearful flame, and the purest bonfire, he had ever beheld in his life-time.b Agesilaus had now carried his point, and his conduct proves, that the Spartans had learnt the art of turning publick measures into private jobs,51 as well as their politer neighbours. For though the people call loudly for the partition of the lands, and the Kings gave orders for it to be done immediately, Agesilaus contrived to throw new obstacles in the way, and protracted the time by

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      various pretences till Agis was obliged to march with the Spartan auxiliaries to assist their allies the Achaeans.54 For he was in possession of a most fertile and extensive landed estate at the very time when he owed more than he was worth; and as he had got rid of all his incumbrances at once by the first decree, and never intended to part with a single foot of his land, it was by no means his interest to promote the execution of the second.

      The Spartan troops were mostly indigent young men, who, elate with their freedom from the bonds of usury, and big with the hopes of a share in the lands at their return, followed Agis with the greatest vigour and alacrity, and behaved so well in their march, that they reminded the admiring Greeks of the excellent discipline and decorum for which the Spartans were formerly so famous under the most renowned of their [51] ancient leaders. But whilst Agis was in the field, affairs at home took a very unhappy turn in his disfavour. The tyrannical behaviour of Agesilaus, who fleeced the people with insupportable exactions, and stuck at no measure, however infamous or criminal, which would bring in money, produced another revolution in favour of Leonidas. For the people, enraged at being tricked out of the promised partition of the lands, which they imputed to Agis and Cleombrotus, and detesting the rapaciousness of Agesilaus, readily joined that party which conspired to restore Leonidas. Agis finding affairs in this desperate situation at his return, gave up all for lost, and took sanctuary in the temple of Minerva, as Cleombrotus had done in the temple of Neptune.

      Though Cleombrotus was the chief object of Leonidas’s resentment, yet he spared his life at the intercession of his daughter Chelonis, the wife of Cleombrotus; but condemned him to perpetual exile. The generous Chelonis gave a signal instance, upon this occasion, of that heroic virtue, for which the Spartan ladies were once so remarkably eminent. When her father was expelled by the intrigues of Lysander, she followed him into exile, and refused to share his crown with Cleombrotus. In this calamitous reverse of fortune, she was deaf to [52] all intreaties, and rather chose to partake of the miseries of banishment with her husband, than all the

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      pleasures and grandeur of Sparta with her father. Plutarch pays the ladies a fine compliment upon this occasion, when he says,

      That unless Cleombrotus should have been wholly corrupted by false ambition, he must have deemed himself more truly happy in a state of banishment with such a wife, than he could have been upon a throne without her.a

      But though Cleombrotus escaped death, yet nothing but the blood of Agis could satisfy the vindictive rage of the ungrateful Leonidas, who, in the former revolution, owed his life to that unfortunate Prince’s generosity. After many ineffectual attempts to entice Agis from his asylum, three of his intimate friends in whom he most confided, who used to accompany and guard him to the baths and back again to the temple, betrayed him to his enemies. Amphares, the chief of these, and the contriver of the plot, was one of the new Ephori created after the deposition of Agesilaus. This wretch had lately borrowed a quantity of valuable plate, and a number of magnificent vestments of Agis’s mother Agesistrata, and determined to make them his own by the [53] destruction of Agis and his family; at their return therefore in their usual friendly manner from the baths, he first attacked Agis by virtue of his office, whilst Demochares and Arcesilaus, the other two, seized and dragged him to the publick prison. Agis supported all these indignities with the utmost magnanimity: and when the Ephori questioned him, whether Agesilaus and Lysander did not constrain him to do what he had done, and whether he did not repent of the steps he had taken; he undauntedly took the whole upon himself, and told them that he gloried in his scheme, which was the result of his emulation to follow the example of the great Lycurgus. Stung with this answer, the Ephori condemned him to die by their own authority, and ordered the officers to carry him to the place in the prison where the malefactors were strangled. But when the officers and even the mercenary soldiers of Leonidas refused to be concerned in so infamous and unprecedented an action as laying hands upon their King, Demochares threatening and abusing them greatly for their disobedience, seized Agis with his own hands, and

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      dragged him to the execution-room, where he was ordered to be dispatched immediately. Agis submitted to his fate with equal intrepidity and resignation, reproving one of the executioners who deplor-[54]ed his calamities, and declaring himself infinitely happier than his murderers. The unfeeling and treacherous Amphares attended the execution, and as soon as Agis was dead, he admitted his mother and grandmother into the prison, who came to interceed that Agis might be allowed to make his defence before the people. The wretch assured the mother, with an insulting sneer, that her son should suffer no heavier punishment than he had done already; and immediately ordered her mother Archidamia, who was extremely old, to execution. As soon as she was dead, he bid Agesistrata enter the room, where, at the sight of the dead bodies, she could not refrain from kissing her son, and crying out, that his too great lenity and good-nature had been their ruin. The savage Amphares, laying hold of those words, told her, that as she approved of her son’s actions she should share his fate. Agesistrata met death with the resolution