CHAPTER II.
Eurysthenes, the eldest of the sons of Aristodemus, had a son Agis they say: (and from him they call the descendants of Eurysthenes Agidæ). During his reign, when Patreus the son of Preugenes founded the city in Achaia called to this day Patræ after him, the Lacedæmonians took part in that colony. They cooperated also with Grais, the son of Echelas, the son of Penthilus, the son of Orestes, who was sailing with a fleet to make a colony somewhere or other. And he indeed was destined to occupy the country between Ionia and Mysia, which is in our day called Æolis: his grandfather Penthilus had already occupied Lesbos, the island opposite this mainland. And during the reign of Echestratus the son of Agis at Sparta the Lacedæmonians expelled all the Cynurians that were in their prime, alleging as their excuse that robbers from Cynuria ravaged Argolis, and the Argives were their kinsmen, and that the Cynurians themselves made open incursions into Argolis. If tradition speaks true the Cynurians were originally Argives, and they say their founder was Cynurus the son of Perseus. And not many years afterwards Labotas the son of Echestratus was king at Sparta. This Labotas, as we are told by Herodotus in his account of Crœsus, had during his minority the famous legislator Lycurgus as his Regent, only Herodotus calls him Leobotes instead of Labotas. In his days first did the Lacedæmonians make war against the Argives, and they alleged as their reasons for declaring war that the Argives when they invaded Cynuria took a slice of Lacedæmonian territory, and tried to stir up their neighbouring subjects to revolt. In this war they say nothing very notable was done on either side: and those of this family who succeeded one another as kings, viz. Doryssus the son of Labotas and Agesilaus the son of Doryssus, both died at no great interval after one another. And it was when Agesilaus was king that Lycurgus legislated for the Lacedæmonians, and some say that he derived his laws from Crete, others that he was instructed by the Oracle at Delphi. And the Cretans say that their laws come from Minos, who received divine assistance in codifying them. And it seems to me that Homer has hinted as much in the following lines about the legislation of Minos, “There too is Gnossus, the great city where Minos reigned nine years, the bosom-friend of great Zeus.”[30] But of Lycurgus I shall have more to say hereafter. And the son of Agesilaus was Archelaus. In his reign the Lacedæmonians conquered in war and enslaved one of the neighbouring cities called Ægys, suspecting that the people of it had an understanding with the Arcadians. And Charillus, the king of the other family, assisted Archelaus against Ægys, and his own separate doings as leader of the Lacedæmonians I shall relate later on when I come to the so-called Eurypontidæ. And the son of Archelaus was Teleclus. In his reign the Lacedæmonians took in war the neighbouring cities of Amyclæ and Pharis and Geranthræ, which were then in the possession of the Achæans, and razed them to the ground. The inhabitants however of Pharis and Geranthræ, being terrified at the approach of the Dorians, agreed to evacuate the Peloponnese upon conditions: but the people of Amyclæ they could not drive out at first assault, but only after a long siege and the greatest exhibition of valour. And the Dorians themselves shewed this by erecting a trophy after the conquest of Amyclæ, as thinking that conquest no small feather in their cap. And not long after all this Teleclus was killed by the Messenians in the temple of Artemis in the town of Limnæ, on the borders between Laconia and Messenia. And after the death of Teleclus Alcamenes his son succeeded him, and during his reign the Lacedæmonians sent to Crete Charmidas the son of Euthys, one of the most famous men in Sparta, who put down the insurrection at Crete, and persuaded the Cretans to abandon the cities which were inland and in other respects weak, and to inhabit instead those which were conveniently situated on the coast. The Lacedæmonians also depopulated Helos, a city by the sea in the possession of the Achæans, and defeated the Argives who came to the help of the people of Helos.