death fifteen of the leaders of the two hundred.  Another more important conspiracy was betrayed to him, whose members, full Spartan citizens, were met together in one house to arrange revolutionary schemes.  At such a crisis it was equally impossible to bring these men to a regular trial, and to allow them to carry on their intrigues.  Agesilaus therefore, after taking the Ephors into his confidence, put them all to death untried, though before that time no Spartan had ever been executed without a trial.

As many of the Perioeki and helots who had been entrusted with arms escaped out of the city and deserted to the enemy, which greatly disheartened the Spartans, he ordered his servants to visit the quarters of these soldiers at daybreak every morning, and wherever any one was gone, to hide his arms, so that the number of deserters might not be known.

We are told by some historians that the Thebans left Laconia because the weather became stormy, and their Arcadian allies began to melt away from them.  Others say that they spent three entire months in the country, and laid nearly all of it waste.  Theopompus relates that when the Boeotarchs had decided to leave the country, Phrixus, a Spartan, came from Agesilaus and offered them ten talents to be gone, thus paying them for doing what they had long before determined to do of their own accord.

XXXIII.  I cannot tell, however, how it was that Theopompus discovered this fact, and that no other historian mentions it.  All writers agree, nevertheless, in declaring that at this crisis Sparta was saved by Agesilaus, who proved himself superior to party-spirit and desire of personal distinction, and steadily refused to risk an engagement.  Yet he never was able to restore the city to the glorious and powerful condition which it had previously held, for Sparta, like an athlete who has been carefully trained throughout his life, suddenly broke down, and never recovered her former strength and prosperity.  It is very natural that this should have happened, for the Spartan constitution was an excellent one for promoting courage, good order, and peace within the city itself; but when Sparta became the head of a great empire to be maintained by the sword, which Lykurgus would have thought a totally useless appendage to a well-governed and prosperous city, it utterly failed.

Agesilaus was now too old for active service in the field, but his son, Archidamus, with some Sicilian mercenary troops which had been sent to the aid of the Spartans by the despot Dionysius, defeated the Arcadians in what was known as the ‘Tearless Battle,’ where he did not lose one of his own men, but slew many of the enemy.  This battle strikingly proved the weakness of the city, for in former times the Spartans used to regard it as such a natural and commonplace event for them to conquer their enemies, that they only sacrificed a cock to the gods, while those who had won a victory never boasted of it, and those who heard of it expressed