XXVI.  Sphodrias was acquitted by the court; and the Athenians, as soon as they learned this, prepared for war.  Agesilaus was now greatly blamed, and was charged with having obstructed the course of justice, and having made Sparta responsible for an outrage upon a friendly Greek state, merely in order to gratify the childish caprice of his son.  As he perceived that Kleombrotus was unwilling to attack the Thebans, he himself invaded Boeotia, disregarding the law under which on a former occasion he had pleaded exemption from military service on account of his age.  Here he fought the Thebans with varying success; for once, when he was being borne out of action wounded, Antalkidas observed to him, “A fine return you are getting from the Thebans for having taught them how to fight against their will.”  Indeed, the military power of the Thebans at that time was at its height, having as it were been exercised and practised by the many campaigns undertaken against them by the Lacedaemonians.  This was why Lykurgus of old, in his three celebrated rhetras, forbade the Lacedaemonians to fight often with the same people, lest by constant practice they should teach them how to fight.  Agesilaus was also disliked by the allies of the Lacedaemonians, because of his hatred of Thebes and his desire to destroy that state, not on any public grounds, but merely on account of his own bitter personal dislike to the Thebans.  The allies complained grievously that they, who composed the greater part of the Lacedaemonium force, should every year be led hither and thither, and exposed to great risks and dangers, merely to satisfy one man’s personal pique.  Hereupon we are told that Agesilaus, desiring to prove that this argument about their composing so large a part of the army was not founded on fact, made use of the following device:—­He ordered all the allies to sit down in one body, and made the Lacedaemonians sit down separately.  Next he gave orders, first that all the potters should stand up; and when they had risen, he ordered the smiths, carpenters, masons, and all the other tradesmen successively to do so.  When then nearly all the allies had risen to their feet, the Spartans all remained seated, for they were forbidden to learn or to practise any mechanical art.  At this Agesilaus smiled, and said, “You see, my men, how many more soldiers we send out than you do.”

XXVII.  On his return from his campaign against the Thebans, Agesilaus, while passing through Megara, was seized with violent pain in his sound leg, just as he was entering the town-hall in the Acropolis of that city.  After this it became greatly swelled and full of blood, and seemed to be dangerously inflamed.  A Syracusan physician opened a vein near the ankle, which relieved the pain, but the flow of blood was excessive, and could not be checked, so that he fainted away from weakness, and was in a very dangerous condition.  At length the bleeding stopped, and he was conveyed home to Lacedaemon, but he remained ill, and unable to serve in the wars for a long time.