Agesilaus fled, and Agis was obliged to take sanctuary in Athene’s temple, and Cleombrotus in that of Neptune, where Leonidas found him. His wife Chilonis, with her two little children, threw herself between him and her father, pleading for his life, and promising he should leave the city; and Leonidas listened, trying to make her remain, but she clung to her husband, and went into exile with him.
Agiatis, the young wife of Agis, could not join him in the temple, being kept at home by the birth of her first babe. He never left the sanctuary, except to go to the baths, to which he was guarded by armed friends. At last two of these were bribed to betray him. One
said, “Agis, I must take you to the Ephors,” and the other threw a cloak over his head; while Leonidas came up with a guard of foreign soldiers and dragged him to prison, where the Ephors came to examine him. One asked him if he repented. “I can never repent of virtue,” he said.
They sentenced him to die; and finding that his mother and grandmother were trying to stir up the people to demand that he should be heard in public, they sent the executioners at once to put him to death. One of them came in tears, but Agis quickly said, “Weep not, friend; I am happier than those who condemn me;” and he held out his neck for the rope which strangled him just as his grandmother and mother came in. The grandmother was strangled the next moment. The mother said, “May this be for the good of Sparta,” and after laying out the limbs of her son and mother, was also put to death; and the young widow Agiatis, with her babe, was carried to the house of Leonidas. The reform of Agis had lasted only three years, and he was but twenty-two, when his plans were thus cruelly cut short.
Leonidas was thus left to reign alone, the first time such a thing had happened in Sparta. As poor Agiatis was a rich heiress, he kept her in his house, and married her to his son Cleomenes, a mere boy, much younger than herself. She was the fairest and wisest woman in Greece; and though she always was cold, grave, and stern towards the wicked old king, she loved his wife,
and was gentle towards the young boy, who was blameless of his father’s sin, and gave her all his heart for his whole life. He cared for nothing so much as to hear from her of Agis, his brave, self-denying ways, and noble plans; and thus did they live, after the untimely death of Agis, strengthened by the study of the Stoic philosophy, which taught that virtue was the highest good, and that no suffering, not even death, was to be shunned in pursuit of her.
When Leonidas died, in 236, Cleomenes became the only king, but he was so young that Aratus and the Achaians thought it a good time for extending the power of their league at the expense of Sparta; so, though no war was going on, Aratus sent a troop by night to seize Tegea and Orchomenus, cities in alliance with Sparta. But his designs were found out in time for Cleomenes to strengthen the garrisons in both places, and march himself to a place called the Athenæum, which guarded one of the passes into Laconia.
This made the attempt fail, and Cleomenes wrote to ask the cause of the night march of the Achaians. Aratus answered that it was to hinder the fortification of the Athenæum.
“What was the use, then, of torches and scaling-ladders?” asked Cleomenes.
Aratus laughed, and asked a Spartan who was in exile what kind of youth this young king was; and the Spartan made reply, “If you have any designs against