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Agis was sent at the head of an army to the Isthmus, and there behaved like an ancient Spartan king, sharing all the toils and hardships of the soldiers, and wearing nothing to distinguish him from them; but while he was away everything had gone wrong at Sparta; people had gone back to their old bad habits, and Agesilaus was using his office of Ephor so shamefully that he had been obliged to have a guard of soldiers to protect him from the people.
And presuming now on his power, he was grown so insolent, that of the two kings, the one he openly contemned, and if he showed any respect towards Agis, would have it thought rather an effect of his near relationship, than any duty or submission to the royal authority. He gave it out also, that he was to continue ephor the ensuing year.
Here Diphridas, the Ephor, met him, and delivered his message from Sparta, which ordered him immediately to make an inroad into Boeotia; and though he thought this fitter to have been done at another time, and with greater force, he yet obeyed the magistrates.
"I agree too with Agesilaus," said a third Ephor; "not because Pausanias is the Heracleid, but because he is the victorious general who demands gratitude and respect from every true Spartan." "Be it so," said Periclides, who, seeing himself thus outvoted in the council, covered his disappointment with the self-control habitual to his race.
But one Epitadeus happening to be ephor, a man of great influence, and of a willful, violent spirit, on some occasion of a quarrel with his son, proposed a decree, that all men should have liberty to dispose of their land by gift in their lifetime, or by their last will and testament.
With these words he, as ephor, himself put the question to the assembly of the Lacedaemonians. Accordingly he said: "All Lacedaemonians who are of opinion that the treaty has been broken, and that Athens is guilty, leave your seats and go there," pointing out a certain place; "all who are of the opposite opinion, there."
XVII. He was here met by Diphridas the Ephor, who brought him orders to invade Bœotia immediately. Although he had intended to make more extensive preparations, he thought it right at once to obey, and informed his friends that the day for which they had marched all the way from Asia would soon be at hand. He also sent for a reinforcement of two moras from the army at Corinth.
"What shall I do with this boy?" muttered the conspirator as he strode on. "I know that he will not betray me, yet can I hope for his aid? I love him so well that I would fain he shared my fortunes. Perhaps by little and little I may lead him on. Meanwhile, his race and his name are so well accredited in Sparta, his father himself an Ephor, that his presence allays suspicion.
The Lacedaemonians, however, refused to give up the Boeotian alliance the party of Xenares the ephor, and such as shared their view, carrying the day upon this point but renewed the oaths at the request of Nicias, who feared to return without having accomplished anything and to be disgraced; as was indeed his fate, he being held the author of the treaty with Lacedaemon.
"If he has medised, if he has conspired against Greece, let us accuse him to the death," said Agesilaus, Lysander's father. "We may accuse, but it rests not with us to sentence," said Periclides, disapprovingly. "And," said a fourth Ephor, with a visible shudder, "what Spartan dare counsel sentence of death to the descendant of the Gods?"
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