United States or Réunion ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Spartans blamed Leotychides for his co-operation with Cleomenes; they even offered to give him up to the Aeginetans and it was finally agreed that he should accompany the ambassadors of Aegina to Athens, and insist on the surrender of the hostages.
The government of the harmosts was corrupt and oppressive; no justice could be obtained against them by an appeal to the Spartan authorities at home; and the Grecian cities soon had cause to regret the milder and more equitable sway of Athens. On the death of Agis in B.C. 398, his half-brother Agesilaus was appointed King, to the exclusion of Leotychides, the son of Agis.
But when many were persuaded by this oracle and looked to Leotychides as the true heir, Lysander said that they did not rightly understand it; for what it meant was, he argued, not that the god forbade a lame man to reign, but that the kingdom would be lame of one foot if base-born men should share the crown with those who were of the true race of Herakles.
It is reported that king Leotychides, the first of that name, was so little used to the sight of any other kind of work, that, being entertained at Corinth in a stately room, he was much surprised to see the timber and ceiling so finely carved and paneled, and asked his host whether the trees grew so in his country.
Even if Leotychides had been proved a thousand times to be a bastard, the family of Eurypon could have supplied Sparta with a legitimate and sound king, had not Lysander, for the sake of Agesilaus, deceived them as to the true meaning of the oracle.
The song runs as follows: "Though ye may sing Pausanias or Xanthippus in your lays, Or Leotychides, 'tis Aristeides whom I praise, The best of men as yet produced by holy Athens' State, Since thus upon Themistokles has fall'n Latona's hate: That liar and that traitor base, who for a bribe unclean, Refused to reinstate a man who his own guest had been.
But the Athenians had now arrived at that spirit of independence, when nor the deadly blows of Persia, nor the iron sword of Sparta, nor the treacherous hostilities of their nearest neighbour, could quell their courage or subdue their pride. They disregarded the presence and the orations of Leotychides, and peremptorily refused to surrender their hostages.
These ambassadors declared that all the Ionians waited only the moment to revolt from the Persian yoke, and that the signal would be found in the first active measures of the Grecian confederates. Leotychides, induced by these representations, received the Samians into the general league, and set sail to Samos.
When king Agis died, leaving a brother Agesilaus, and Leotychides, who was supposed his son, Lysander, being attached to Agesilaus, persuaded him to lay claim to the kingdom, as being a true descendant of Hercules; Leotychides lying under the suspicion of being the son of Alcibiades, who lived privately in familiarity with Timaea, the wife of Agis, at the time he was a fugitive in Sparta.
They accordingly did so testify in favor of Leotychides.
Word Of The Day