XIII.  As Pharnabazus was retiring with his friends, his son stayed behind, and running up to Agesilaus said with a smile, “Agesilaus, I make you my guest,"[178] and gave him a fine javelin which he carried in his hand.

Agesilaus gladly accepted this offer, and, delighted with the engaging manners and evident friendship of the young man, looked round for some suitable present, and seeing that the horse of his secretary Idaeus was adorned with fine trappings, took them off and gave them to the boy.  Agesilaus never forgot the connection thus formed between them, but in after days, when the son of Pharnabazus was impoverished and driven into exile by his brother, he welcomed him to the Peloponnese, and provided him with protection and a home.  He even went so far as to employ his influence in favour of an Athenian youth to whom the son of Pharnabazus was attached.  This boy had outgrown the age and size of the boy-runners in the Olympic stadium, and was consequently refused leave to compete in that race.  Upon this the Persian made a special application to Agesilaus on his behalf; and Agesilaus, willing to do anything to please his protege, with great difficulty and management induced the judges to admit the boy as a competitor.  This, indeed, was the character of Agesilaus, disinterested and just in all matters except in furthering the interests of his friends, in which case he seems to have hesitated at nothing.  A letter of his to Idrilus, the Karian, runs as follows:  “If Nikias be innocent, acquit him; if he be guilty, acquit him for my sake; but in any case acquit him.”  Such was Agesilaus in most cases where his friends were concerned; although in some few instances he allowed expediency to prevail over affection, and sacrificed his personal friend to the general advantage, as, for example, once, when owing to a sudden alarm the camp was being hurriedly broken up, he left a sick friend behind in spite of his passionate entreaties, observing as he did so, that it is hard to be wise and compassionate at the same time.  This anecdote has been preserved by the philosopher Hieronymus.

XIV.  Agesilaus was now in the second year of his command in Asia, and had become one of the foremost men of his time, being greatly admired and esteemed for his remarkable sobriety and frugality of life.  When away from his headquarters he used to pitch his tent within the precincts of the most sacred temples, thus making the gods witnesses of the most private details of his life.  Among thousands of soldiers, moreover, there was scarcely one that used a worse mattress than Agesilaus.  With regard to extremes of heat and cold, he seemed so constituted as to be able to enjoy whatever weather the gods might send.  It was a pleasant and enjoyable spectacle for the Greek inhabitants of Asia to see their former tyrants, the deputy governors of cities and generals of provinces, who used to be so offensively proud, insolent, and profusely luxurious, now trembling before a man who walked about in a plain cloak, and altering their whole conduct in obedience to his curt Laconian sayings.  Many used to quote the proverb of Timotheus, that “Ares alone is king, and Hellas fears not the power of gold.”