Xenophon, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
A soldier judges a man by what he does in the field, and I judged Agesilaus so. I watched him for years and I report what I saw. Take what he did against Tissaphernes. The satrap swore a truce and broke it, and Agesilaus counted the perjury a gain, because it stripped Tissaphernes of his credit with every man alive and showed himself as one who would not gainsay an article of his agreement.1
When the satrap bade him quit Asia or prepare for war, the Lacedaemonians around him were vexed, seeing how small his force was against the armaments of Persia, but his brow was lit with joy, and he told the ambassadors he was indebted to their master for a perjury that had made the gods themselves allies of Hellas.2 Then came the stratagem: Tissaphernes reasoned that Agesilaus, wroth at the deceit, must dash at Caria, and moved all his infantry there while his cavalry waited in the Maeander plain.
Agesilaus turned about and marched into Phrygia, laying city after city at his feet and taking enormous wealth by the suddenness of it.3 Whom did that serve, Sparta or the truth? A man who distrusts me may check the account against any soldier who marched there. My praise is also not the praise of a man who cannot see his hero's limits. When Agesilaus came near eighty, he went to Egypt for Tachos, hoping for the command-in-chief.
When the man who had summoned him refused the generalship, Agesilaus was like one on whom a flagrant deception had been practised, and he had to think what part to play. I set that down as it happened, and then I set down his reasoning: if he helped neither side, neither would pay his men or give them a market, and Sparta would be detested whoever won.
So he chose the truer friend of Hellas and crushed his enemy.4 A flatterer would have left out the deception. Where I praise, I give the proof that the eyes could see. His campaigns count as victories even when the enemy refused battle, as in our games we crown the man who walks over the field no less than the one who wins by blows.5 And his men followed him from loyal affection and not from discipline alone, which is the strongest battle-line there is.6
I was there to see which kind of line he led. As for Sparta, I wrote that tenderness toward one's own cannot be hidden. When Agesipolis died of fever outside the temple of Dionysus at Aphytis, Agesilaus showed none of the satisfaction one might expect at the removal of an antagonist. He wept and pined for the companionship, for the two kings had messed together, shared tales of the chase and horsemanship, and kept the reverence of younger for elder.7
I put that in the Hellenica because it was true of him. Whether it flatters Sparta I leave to you. An exile who owes his estate to the Spartans has reason to speak well of them, I grant. But ask whether I have praised everything. My book on their constitution ends by saying they no longer obey Lycurgus, and in the Hellenica I wrote that the god exacted payment for the seizure of the Cadmea.
A man bought by his hosts does not write those two things. I called him my friend and I called him my hero, and I took care that the reader could judge the one by the other.
Lycurgus made the Spartans the most obedient and the freest of men by laws that trained the body, equalised the citizens, shamed cowardice and made the magistrates feared; no other city achieved it, and he praised it because it was true.8 Agesilaus was a king who kept the laws he enforced, who was poorer than his subjects and who refused to be worshipped; he knew him and served him and the encomium is owed.9
When Sparta seized the Cadmea by treachery the gods punished her, and he wrote that too. He was exiled by Athens for the side he took and made his home where he was received; he never wrote a word against Athens, and his last book was advice for her recovery.1011
By displaying the perjury of Tissaphernes he robbed him of his credit with all the world; by the exhibition of himself in contrast as a man who ratified his oath and would not gainsay an article of his agreementAgesilaus
I hold myself indebted to your master for the perjury whereby he has obtained to himself the hostility of heaven, and made the gods themselves allies of Hellas.Agesilaus
But Agesilaus, instead of advancing upon Caria, turned right about and marched in the direction of Phrygia.Agesilaus
But when the man who had summoned him refused to confer the proffered generalship, Agesilaus, like one on whom a flagrant deception has been practised, began to consider the part he had to play.Agesilaus
they were victories truly, even when the enemy refused to encounter him, victories devoid of dangerAgesilaus
that is the strongest of all battle-lines in which obedience creates tactical efficiency, and alacrity in the field springs out of loyal affection for the general.Agesilaus
On the contrary, he wept and pined for the companionship so severed, it being the fashion at Sparta for the kings when at home to mess together and to share the same quarters.Hellenica
Which is also true of war (Socrates replied); cities are perpetually undertaking war and then making peace again. Most true (he answered). Soc. If so, what is the difference between depreciating obedience to law because laws will be repealed, and depreciating good discipline in war because peace will one day be made? But perhaps you object to enthusiasm displayed in defence of one's home and fatherland in war?The Memorabilia
For, to put it briefly, we all know well that where Agesilaus expected in any way to benefit his country there was no toil he shrank from, no danger he avoided, no money he stinted, no excuse whether of age or body he admitted, but deemed it ever the true function of a good king to shower blessings to the utmost on the subjects of his rule.Agesilaus
AGESILAUS By Xenophon Translation by H. G. Dakyns Dedicated To Rev. B. Jowett, M.A. Master of Balliol College Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford Xenophon the Athenian was born 431 B.C. He was a pupil of Socrates. He marched with the Spartans, and was exiled from Athens.Agesilaus
Entrusted with these vast powers, they do not, as do the rest of states, allow the magistrates elected to exercise authority as they like, right through the year of office; but, in the style rather of despotic monarchs, or presidents of the games, at the first symptom of an offence against the law they inflict chastisement without warning and without hesitation.The Polity of the Lacedaemonians
The oldest charge against him as a historian, and the one the texts answer most directly in the chapters his critics skip.