XXII.  He was bold in his speech, and overbearing to those who opposed him.  When the Argives had a dispute with the Lacedaemonians about their frontier, and seemed to have justice on their side, Lysander drew his sword, saying, “He that is master of this is in possession of the best argument about frontier lines.”  When some Megarian in a public meeting used considerable freedom of speech towards him, he answered, “My friend, your words require a city[155] to back them.”  He asked the Boeotians, who wished to remain neutral, whether he should pass through their country with spears held upright or levelled.  On the occasion of the revolt of Corinth, when he brought up the Lacedaemonians to assault their walls, he observed that they seemed unwilling to attack.  At this moment a hare was seen to leap across the ditch, upon which he said, “Are you not ashamed to fear such enemies as these, who are so lazy as to allow hares to sleep upon their walls?” When king Agis died, leaving a brother, Agesilaus, and a son Leotychides who was supposed to be his, Lysander, who was attached to Agesilaus, prevailed upon him to lay claim to the crown as being a genuine descendant of Herakles.  For Leotychides laboured under the imputation of being the son of Alkibiades, who carried on an intrigue with Timaea the wife of Agis, when he was living in Sparta as an exile.  It is said that Agis, after making a calculation about the time of his wife’s pregnancy treated Leotychides with neglect and openly denied that he was his father.  When however he was brought to Heraea during his last illness, and was at the point of death, he was induced by the entreaties of the youth and his friends to declare in the presence of many witnesses that Leotychides was his legitimate son, and died begging them to testify this fact to the Lacedaemonians.  They did indeed so testify in favour of Leotychides; and although Agesilaus was a man of great distinction, and had the powerful assistance of Lysander, yet his claims to the crown were seriously damaged by one Diopeithes, a man deep read in oracular lore, who quoted the following prophecy in reference to the lameness of Agesilaus: 

    “Proud Sparta, resting on two equal feet,
      Beware lest lameness on thy kings alight;
    Lest wars unnumbered toss thee to and fro,
      And thou thyself be ruined in the fight.”

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.  By this argument and his own great personal influence he prevailed, and Agesilaus became king of Sparta.