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Updated: September 26, 2025
Demaratus, being asked in a troublesome manner by an importunate fellow, Who was the best man in Lacedaemon? answered at last, "He, Sir, that is the least like you." Some, in company where Agis was, much extolled the Eleans for their just and honorable management of the Olympic tames; "Indeed," said Agis, "they are highly to be commended if they can do justice one day in five years."
Much astonished at the account he received, Xerxes sent for Demaratus, and detailing to him what the messenger had seen, inquired what it might portend, and whether this handful of men amusing themselves in the defile could seriously mean to resist his arms.
Yet Demaratus himself had been too long a stranger to Greece, and he knew little of any state save that of Sparta. Lives he still?" "Surely yes, in honour and renown; little less than the son of Darius himself." "And what reward would Xerxes bestow on one of greater influence than Demaratus; on one who has hitherto conquered every foe, and now beholds before him the conquest of Greece herself?"
But when the barbarian, having possessed himself of the avenues, was got into their confines, and Demaratus the Spartan, favoring in right of hospitality Attaginus, the chief of the oligarchy, had so wrought that he became the King's friend and familiar, whilst the other Greeks were in their ships, and none came on by land; then at last being forsaken did they accept conditions of peace, to which they were compelled by great necessity.
At length he asked the king whether it was his wish that he should respond by speaking the blunt and honest truth, or by saying what would be polite and agreeable. Xerxes replied that he wished him, of course, to speak the truth. The truth itself would be what he should consider the most agreeable. "Since you desire it, then," said Demaratus, "I will speak the exact truth.
Demaratus heard, and formed his decision: he escaped from Sparta, baffled his pursuers, and fled into Asia, where he was honourably received and largely endowed by the beneficent Darius.
The story of the political difficulties in which Demaratus became involved in his native land, and which led to his flight from Greece, was very extraordinary. It was this: The mother of Demaratus was the daughter of parents of high rank and great affluence in Sparta, but in her childhood her features were extremely plain and repulsive.
He, however, afterward retracted this disavowal, and owned Demaratus as his son. The child grew up, and in process of time, when his father died, he succeeded to the throne.
The first intelligence was communicated to the Spartans by Demaratus himself, while he was at Susa, in the following singular manner. It was the custom, in those days, to write with a steel point on a smooth surface of wax. The wax was spread for this purpose on a board or tablet of metal, in a very thin stratum, forming a ground upon which the letters traced with the point were easily legible.
Now Cossus and Marcellus drove into the city in chariots and four, carrying the trophies in their own hands; but Dionysius is in error when he says that Romulus used a chariot and four, for the historians tell us that Tarquinius, the son of Demaratus, was the first of the kings who introduced this pomp into his triumphs. Others say that Poplicola was the first to triumph in a chariot.
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