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Updated: September 12, 2025


Agesilaus turned, and looking him in the face, "Are you not," said he, "Callippides the showman?" Being invited once to hear a man who admirably imitated the nightingale, he declined, saying, he had heard the nightingale itself.

Agesilaus was the son of king Archidamus, and half-brother to King Agis. He was about forty when he became king, through the influence of Lysamler, in preference to his nephew, and having been brought up without prospects of the throne, had passed through the unmitigated rigor of the Spartan drill and training.

During one of the wars in which Sparta and her allies were engaged, the allies complained that they, who were the majority of the army, had been forced into a quarrel which concerned nobody but the Spartans. Whereupon Agesilaus, the Spartan king, "devised this expedient to show the allies were not the greater number.

The Thebans and Athenians, unequal in force, still kept the field against him, acting on the defensive, declining battle, and occupying strong positions. After a month of desultory warfare, Agesilaus retired, leaving Phœbidas in command at Thespiæ, who was slain in an incautious pursuit of the enemy.

At which when the young boy blushed and drew back, and afterward saluted him at a more reserved distance, Agesilaus soon repenting his coldness, and changing his mind, pretended to wonder why he did not salute him with the same familiarity as formerly.

Agesilaus stroked his chin musingly. "And how?" "I cannot tell, I can only guess. But the Persian war, if I may judge by what I hear and see, cannot roll away and leave the boundaries of each Greek State the same. Two States now stand forth prominent, Athens and Sparta.

The historian Theophrastus informs us that the mother of Agesilaus was a very small woman, and that the Ephors had fined Archidamus, on that special ground, for marrying her. "She will not bring forth kings to rule us," said they, "but kinglets."

But when he found that the little, shabby, plain man under the tree was really the mighty king of Sparta, the descendant of Hercules, Pharnabazus was ashamed of all his pomp, and went down upon the ground by Agesilaus’ side, to the great damage, as the Greeks delighted to observe, of his fine, delicately-tinted robes.

The Lacedæmonians at once wished to attack them, but Agesilaus, fearing that some deep-laid conspiracy might break out, ordered them to remain quiet.

While Philip was in Thebes as a young man, old Agesilaus, who first of Greeks had conceived the idea of invading the inland East, was still seeking a way to realize his oft-frustrated project; and in the end he went off to Egypt to make a last effort after Philip was already on the throne.

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