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Among them are antique copies of the Cupid and the Faun of Praxiteles, the statue of Demosthenes, the Minerva Medica, the Athlete of Lysippus, the Torso Belvedere sculptured by Apollonius, the Belvidere Antinous, of faultless anatomy and a study for Domenichino, the Laocoön, so panegyrized by Pliny, the Apollo Belvedere, the work of Agasias of Ephesus, the Sleeping Ariadne, with numerous other statues of gods and goddesses, emperors, philosophers, poets, and statesmen of antiquity.
Agasias, observing what Callimachus was doing, and that the eyes of the whole army were upon him, and fearing that he himself might not be the first to enter the place, began to advance alone neither calling to Aristonymus who was next him, nor to Eurylochus of Lusia, both of whom were his intimate friends, nor to any other person and passed by all the rest.
Accordingly the latter interfered, drove away those who claimed the sheep as public property, and denounced them as thieves to Kleander; who desired him to bring them before him. Dexippus arrested one of them, a soldier belonging to the company of one of the best friends of Xenophon the Arcadian Agasias.
He would consent only on condition that the soldiers who had begun to throw stones as well as Agasias the interfering officer, should be delivered up to him. This latter demand was especially insisted upon by Dexippus, who hating Xenophon, had already tried to prejudice Anaxibius against him, and believed that Agasias had acted by his order.
After this speech from the philo-Laconian Xenophon so significant a testimony of the unmeasured ascendency and interference of the Lacedæmonians throughout Greece Agasias rose, and proclaimed, that what he had done was neither under the orders, nor with the privity, of Xenophon; that he had acted on a personal impulse of wrath, at seeing his own honest and innocent soldier dragged away by the traitor Dexippus; but that he now willingly gave himself up as a victim, to avert from the army the displeasure of the Lacedæmonians.
The famous antique statue of the Fighting Gladiator, which now adorns the Louvre, was executed by Agasias, a Greek sculptor of Ephesus, who flourished about B. C. 450. It was found among the ruins of a palace of the Roman Emperors at Capo d'Anzo, the ancient Antium, where also the Apollo Belvidere was discovered. The people fled; but Laocoön and his two sons fell victims to the monsters.
This generous self-sacrifice, which at the moment promised nothing less than a fatal result to Agasias, was accepted by the army: and the generals conducted both him and the soldier whom he had rescued, as prisoners to Kleander.
Presenting himself as the responsible party, Agasias at the same time explained to Kleander the infamous behavior of Dexippus to the army, and said that towards no one else would he have acted in the same manner; while the soldier whom he had rescued, and who was given up at the same time, also affirmed that he had interfered merely to prevent Dexippus and some others from overruling, for their own individual benefit, a proclaimed order of the entire army.
Agasias intimates that Apollonidês either had been a slave or at least ought to be one. =Sneeze=: any sudden, involuntary outburst, like sneezing, was considered a sign of the divine will for good or evil. As it occurred here just as Xenophon pronounced the auspicious word "preservation," it was regarded as a favorable omen sent by Zeus himself.
Now, if Agasias himself states this, I am ready to exonerate both him and all of you, and to give myself up to any extremity of punishment. I maintain too that any other man whom Kleander arraigns ought in like manner to give himself up for trial, in order that you collectively may be discharged from the imputation.
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