deed, and one which required considerable boldness and good fortune to ensure its success.  Daylight, however, overtook Sphodrias before he had crossed the Thriasian plain, near Eleusis.  All hope of surprising Peiraeus by a night attack was now gone, and it is said, also, that the soldiers were alarmed and terror-stricken by certain lights which gleamed from the temples at Eleusis.  Sphodrias himself, now that his enterprise had so manifestly failed, lost heart, and after hurriedly seizing some unimportant plunder, led his men back to Thespiae.  Upon this an embassy was sent from Athens to Sparta to complain of the acts of Sphodrias; but on the arrival of the ambassadors at Sparta they found that the government there were in no need of encouragement from without to proceed against Sphodrias, for they had already summoned him home to be tried for his life.  Sphodrias durst not venture to return to Sparta, for he saw that his fellow-countrymen were angry with him and ashamed of his conduct towards the Athenians, and that they wished rather to be thought fellow-sufferers by his crime than accomplices in it.

XXV.  Sphodrias had a son, named Kleonymus, who was still quite a youth, and who was beloved by Archidamus, the son of Agesilaus.  He now assisted this youth, who was pleading his father’s cause as best he might, but he could not do so openly, because Sphodrias belonged to the party which was opposed to Agesilaus.  When, however, Kleonymus came to him, and besought him with tears and piteous entreaties to appease Agesilaus, because the party of Sphodrias dreaded him more than any one else, the young man, after two or three days’ hesitation, at length, as the day fixed for the trial approached, mustered up courage to speak to his father on the subject, telling him that Kleonymus had begged him to intercede for his father.

Agesilaus was well aware of his son’s intimacy with Kleonymus, which he had never discouraged; for Kleonymus promised to become as distinguished a man as any in Sparta.  He did not on this occasion, however, hold out to his son any hopes of a satisfactory termination of the affair, but said that he would consider what would be the most fitting and honourable course to pursue.  After this reply, Archidamus had not the heart to meet Kleonymus, although he had before been accustomed to see him several times daily.  This conduct of his plunged the friends of Sphodrias into yet deeper despair of his cause, until Etymokles, one of the friends of Agesilaus, in a conference with them, explained that what Agesilaus really thought about the matter was, that the action itself deserved the greatest censure; but yet that Sphodrias was a brave energetic man, whom Sparta could not afford to lose.

Agesilaus used this language out of a desire to gratify his son, and from it Kleonymus soon perceived that Archidamus had been true to him in using his interest with his father; while the friends of Sphodrias became much more forward in his defence.  Indeed Agesilaus was remarkably fond of children, and an anecdote is related of him, that when his children were very little he was fond of playing with them, and would bestride a reed as if it were a horse for their amusement.  When one of his friends found him at this sport, he bade him mention it to no one before he himself became the father of a family.