Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks. Edward Wortley Montagu

people, struck with the magnanimity and generosity of Agis, received his offer with the loudest applause, and extolled him, as the only king who for three hundred years past had been worthy of the throne of Sparta. This provoked Leonidas to fly out into the most open and violent opposition from the double motive of avarice and envy. For he was sensible, that if this scheme took place, he should not only be compelled to follow their example, but that the surrender of his estate would then come from him with so ill a grace, that the honour of the whole measure would be attributed solely to his colleague. Lysander, finding Leonidas and his party too powerful in the senate, determined to prosecute and expel him for the breach of a very old law, which forbid any of the royal family to intermarry with foreigners, or to bring up any children which they might have by such marriage, and inflicted the penalty of death upon any one who should leave Sparta to reside in foreign countries.

      After Lysander had taken care that Leonidas should be informed of the crime laid to his charge, he with the rest of the ephori, who were of his party, addressed themselves to the ceremony of observing a sign from heaven.30 A piece of state craft most probably introduced formerly by the ephori to keep the kings in awe, and perfectly well adapted to the superstition of the people. Lysander affirming that they had seen the usual sign, which declared that Leonidas had sinned against the gods, summoned him to his trial, and produced evidence sufficient to convict him. At the same time he spirited up Cleombrotus, who had married the daughter of Leonidas, and was of the royal blood, to put in his claim to the succession. Leonidas, terrified at these daring measures, fled, and took sanctuary in the temple of Minerva: he was deposed therefore for non-appearance, and his crown given to his son-in-law Cleombrotus.

      But as soon as the term of Lysander’s magistracy expired, the new ephori, who were elected by the prevailing interest of the opposite party, immediately undertook the protection of Leonidas. They summoned Lysander and his friends to answer for their decrees for cancelling debts, and dividing the lands, as contrary to the laws, and treasonable innovations; for so they termed all attempts to restore the ancient constitution of Lycurgus. Alarmed at this, Lysander persuaded the two kings to join in opposing the ephori; who, as he plainly proved, assumed an authority which they had not the least right to, as long as the kings acted together in concert. The kings, convinced by his reasons, armed a great number of the youth, released all who were prisoners for debt, and thus attended went into the forum, where they deposed the ephori, and procured their own friends to be elected into that office, of whom Agesilaus the uncle of Agis was one. By the care and humanity of Agis, no blood was spilt on this memorable occasion. He even protected his antagonist Leonidas against the designs which Agesilaus had formed upon his life, and sent him under a safe convoy to Tegea.

      After this bold stroke, all opposition sunk before them, and every thing succeeded to their wishes; when the single avarice of Agesilaus, that most baneful pest, as Plutarch terms it, which had subverted a constitution the most excellent, and the most worthy of Sparta that had ever yet been established, overset the whole enterprise. By the character which Plutarch gives of Agesilaus, he appears to have been artful and eloquent, but at the same time effeminate, corrupt in his manners, avaricious, and so bad a man, that he engaged in this projected revolution with no other view but that of extricating himself from an immense load of debt, which he had most probably contracted to support his luxury.31 As soon therefore as the two kings, who were both young men, agreed to proceed upon the abolition of debts, and the partition of lands, Agesilaus artfully persuaded them not to attempt both at once, for fear of exciting some terrible commotion in the city. He assured them farther that if the rich should once be reconciled to the law for cancelling the debts, the law for dividing the lands would go down with them quietly and without the least obstruction. The kings assented to his opinion, and Lysander himself was brought over to it, deceived by the same specious, though pernicious reasoning: calling in therefore all the bills, bonds, and pecuniary obligations, they piled them up, and burnt them all publickly in the forum, to the great mortification of the moneyed men, and the usurers. But Agesilaus in the joy of his heart could not refrain from joking upon the occasion, and told them with a sneer, that whatever they might think of the matter, it was the brightest and most cheerful flame, and the purest bonfire, he had ever beheld in his lifetime.32 Agesilaus had now carried his point, and his conduct proves, that the Spartans had learned the art of turning publick measures into private jobs, as well as their politer neighbours. For though the people called loudly for the partition of lands, and the kings gave orders for it to be done immediately, Agesilaus contrived to throw new obstacles in the way, and protracted the time by various pretences, until Agis was obliged to march with the Spartan auxiliaries to assist their allies the Achæans. For he was in possession of a most fertile and extensive landed estate at the very time when he owed more than he was worth; and as he had got rid of all his incumbrances at once by the first decree, and never intended to part with a single foot of his land, it was by no means his interest to promote the execution of the second.

      The Spartan troops were mostly indigent young men, who elate with their freedom from the bonds of usury, and big with the hopes of a share in the lands at their return, followed Agis with the greatest vigour and alacrity, and behaved so well in their march, that they reminded the admiring Greeks of the excellent discipline and decorum for which the Spartans were formerly so famous under the most renowned of their ancient leaders. But whilst Agis was in the field, affairs at home took a very unhappy turn in his disfavour. The tyrannical behaviour of Agesilaus, who fleeced the people with insupportable exactions, and stuck at no measure, however infamous or criminal, which would bring in money, produced another revolution in favour of Leonidas. For the people, enraged at being tricked out of the promised partition of the lands, which they imputed to Agis and Cleombrotus, and detesting the rapaciousness of Agesilaus, readily joined that party which conspired to restore Leonidas. Agis finding affairs in this desperate situation at his return, gave up all for lost, and took sanctuary in the temple of Minerva, as Cleombrotus had done in the temple of Neptune.

      Though Cleombrotus was the chief object of Leonidas’s resentment, yet he spared his life at the intercession of his daughter Chelonis, the wife of Cleombrotus; but condemned him to perpetual exile. The generous Chelonis gave a signal instance, upon this occasion, of that heroick virtue, for which the Spartan ladies were once so remarkably eminent. When her father was expelled by the intrigues of Lysander, she followed him into exile, and refused to share his crown with Cleombrotus. In this calamitous reverse of fortune, she was deaf to all entreaties, and rather chose to partake of the miseries of banishment with her husband, than all the pleasures and grandeur of Sparta with her father. Plutarch pays the ladies a fine compliment, upon this occasion, when he says, “that unless Cleombrotus should have been wholly corrupted by false ambition, he must have deemed himself more truly happy in a state of banishment with such a wife, than he could have been upon a throne without her.”33