[3.1.1] After the figures of Hermes we reach Laconia on the west. According to the tradition of the Lacedaemonians themselves, Lelex, an aboriginal was the first king in this land, after whom his subjects were named Leleges. Lelex had a son Myles, and a younger one Polycaon. Polycaon retired into exile, the place of this retirement and its reason I will set forth elsewhere. On the death of Myles his son Eurotas succeeded to the throne. He led down to the sea by means of a trench the stagnant water on the plain, and when it had flowed away, as what was left formed a river-stream, he named it Eurotas.1

[3.1.2] Having no male issue, he left the kingdom to Lacedaemon, whose mother was Taygete, after whom the mountain was named, while according to report his father was none other than Zeus. Lacedaemon was wedded to Sparta, a daughter of Eurotas. When he came to the throne, he first changed the names of the land and its inhabitants, calling them after himself, and next he founded and named after his wife a city, which even down to our own day has been called Sparta.

[3.1.3] Amyclas, too, son of Lacedaemon, wished to leave some memorial behind him, and built a town in Laconia. Hyacinthus, the youngest and most beautiful of his sons, died before his father, and his tomb is in Amyclae below the image of Apollo. On the death of Amyclas the empire came to Aigalus, the eldest of his sons, and afterwards, when Aigalus died, to Cynortas. Cynortas had a son Oebalus.

[3.1.4] He took a wife from Argos, Gorgophone the daughter of Perseus, and begat a son Tyndareus, with whom Hippocoon disputed about the kingship, claiming the throne on the ground of being the eldest. With the end of Icarius and his partisans he had surpassed Tyndareus in power, and forced him to retire in fear; the Lacedaemonians say that he went to Pellana, but a Messenian legend about him is that he fled to Aphareus in Messenia, Aphareus being the son of Perieres and the brother of Tyndareus on his mother's side. The story goes on to say that he settled at Thalamae in Messenia, and that his children were born to him when he was living there.

[3.1.5] Subsequently Tyndareus was brought back by Heracles and recovered his throne. His sons too became kings, as did Menelaus the son of Atreus and son-in-law of Tyndareus, and Orestes the husband of Hermione the daughter of Menelaus. On the return of the Heracleidae in the reign of Tisamenus, son of Orestes, both districts, Messene and Argos, had kings put over them; Argos had Temenus and Messene Cresphontes. In Lacedaemon, as the sons of Aristodemus were twins, there arose two royal houses; for they say that the Pythian priestess approved.

[3.1.6] Tradition has it that Aristodemus himself died at Delphi before the Dorians returned to the Peloponnesus, but those who glorify his fate assert that he was shot by Apollo for not going to the oracle, having learned from Heracles, who met him before he arrived there, that the Dorians would make this return to the Peloponnesus. But the more correct account is that Aristodemus was murdered by the sons of Pylades and Electra, who were cousins of Tisamenus son of Orestes.

[3.1.7] The names given to the sons of Aristodemus were Procles and Eurysthenes, and although they were twins they were bitter enemies. Their enmity reached a high pitch, but nevertheless they combined to help Theras, the son of Autesion and the brother of their mother Argeia and their guardian as well, to found a colony. This colony Theras was dispatching to the island that was then called Calliste,2 and he hoped that the descendants of Membliarus would of their own accord give up the kingship to him. This as a matter of fact they did,

[3.1.8] taking into account that the family of Theras went back to Cadmus himself, while they were only descendants of Membliarus, who was a man of the people whom Cadmus left in the island to be the leader of the settlers. And Theras changed the name of the island, renaming it after himself, and even at the present day the people of Thera every year offer to him as their founder the sacrifices that are given to a hero. Procles and Eurysthenes were of one mind in their eagerness to serve Theras; but in all else their purposes were always widely different.

[3.1.9] Even if they had agreed together, I should never have ventured to include their descendants in a common list; for they did not altogether coincide in respect of age, so that cousins, cousins' children, and later generations were not born so as to make the steps in one pedigree coincide with those of the other. So I shall give the history of each house by itself separately, instead of combining them both in one narrative.

[3.2.1] II. Eurysthenes, the elder of the sons of Aristodemus, had, they say, a son Agis, after whom the family of Eurysthenes is called the Agiadae. In his time, when Patreus the son of Preugenes was founding in Achaea a city which even at the present day is called Patrae from this Patreus, the Lacedaemonians took part in the settlement. They also joined in an expedition overseas to found a colony. Gras the son of Echelas the son of Penthilus the son of Orestes was the leader, who was destined to occupy the land between Ionia and Mysia, called at the present day Aeolis; his ancestor Penthilus had even before this seized the island of Lesbos that lies over against this part of the mainland.

[3.2.2] When Echestratus, son of Agis, was king at Sparta, the Lacedaemonians removed all the Cynurians of military age, alleging as a reason that freebooters from the Cynurian territory were harrying Argolis, the Argives being their kinsmen, and that the Cynurians themselves openly made forays into the land. The Cynurians are said to be Argives by descent, and tradition has it that their founder was Cynurus, son of Perseus.

[3.2.3] Not many years afterwards Labotas, son of Echestratus, became king in Sparta. This Labotas Herodotus, in his history of Croesus, says was in his childhood the ward of Lycurgus the lawgiver, but he calls him Leobotes and not Labotas. It was then that the Lacedaemonians first resolved to make war upon the Argives, bringing as charges against them that they were annexing the Cynurian territory which they themselves had captured, and were causing revolts among their subjects the Perioeci (Dwellers around). On this occasion neither of the belligerents, according to the account, achieved anything worthy of mention,

[3.2.4] and the next kings of this house, Doryssus, son of Labotas, and Agesilaus, son of Doryssus, were soon both killed. Lycurgus too laid down their laws for the Lacedaemonians in the reign of Artesilaus; some say that he was taught how to do this by the Pythian priestess, others that he introduced Cretan institutions. The Cretans say that these laws of theirs were laid down by Minos, and that Minos was not without divine aid in his deliberations concerning them. Homer too, I think, refers in riddling words to the legislation of Minos in the following verses:–

     Cnossus too, great city, among them, where Minos for nine years
     Ruled as king, and enjoyed familiar converse with great Zeus. Hom. Od. 19.178 
     

[3.2.5] Of Lycurgus I shall make further mention later. Agesilaus had a son Archelaus. In his reign the Lacedaemonians took by force of arms Aegys, a city of the Perioeci, and sold the inhabitants into slavery, suspecting them of Arcadian sympathies. Charilaus, the king of the other house, helped Archelaus to destroy Aegys, but the exploits he achieved when leading the Lacedaemonians by himself, these too I shall relate when my narrative comes to treat of those called the Eurypontidae.

[3.2.6] Archelaus had a son Teleclus. In his reign the Lacedaemonians conquered in war and reduced Amyclae, Pharis, and Geranthrae, cities of the Perioeci, which were still in the possession of the Achaeans. The inhabitants of Pharis and Geranthrae, panic-stricken at the onslaught of the Dorians, made an agreement to retire from the Peloponnesus under a truce, but those of Amyclae were not driven out at the first assault, but only after a long and stubborn resistance, in which they distinguished themselves by glorious achievements. To this heroism the Dorians bore witness by raising a trophy against the Amyclaeans, implying that their success was the most memorable exploit of that time. Not long after this Teleclus was murdered by Messenians in a sanctuary of Artemis. This sanctuary was built on the frontier of Laconia and Messenia, in a place called Limniae (Lakes).

[3.2.7] After the death of Teleclus, Alcamenes his son succeeded to the throne, and the Lacedaemonians sent to Crete Charmidas the son of Euthys, who was a distinguished Spartan, to put down the civil strife among the Cretans, to persuade them to abandon the weak, inland towns, and to help them to people instead those that were conveniently situated for the coasting voyage. They also laid waste Helos, an Achaean town on the coast, and won a battle against the Argives who came to give aid to the Helots.

[3.3.1] III. On the death of Alcamenes, Polydorus his son succeeded to the throne, and the Lacedaemonians sent colonies to Croton in Italy and to the Locri by the Western headland. The war called the Messenian reached its height in the reign of this king. As to the causes of the war, the Lacedaemonian version differs from the Messenian.

[3.3.2] The accounts given by the belligerents, and the manner in which this war ended, will be set forth later in my narrative. For the present I must state thus much; the chief leader of the Lacedaemonians in the first war against the Messenians was Theopompus the son of Nicander, a king of the other house. When the war against Messene had been fought to a finish, and Messenia was enslaved to the Lacedaemonians, Polydorus, who had a great reputation at Sparta and was very popular with the masses – for he never did a violent act or said an insulting word to anyone, while as a judge he was both upright and humane –

[3.3.3] his fame having by this time spread throughout Greece, was murdered by Polemarchus, a member of a distinguished family in Lacedaemon, but, as he showed, a man of an unscrupulous temper. After his death Polydorus received many signal marks of respect from the Lacedaemonians. However, Polemarchus too has a tomb in Sparta; either he had been considered a good man before this murder, or perhaps his relatives buried him secretly.

[3.3.4] During the reign of Eurycrates, son of Polydorus, the Messenians submitted to be subjects of the Lacedaemonians, neither did any trouble befall from the Argive people. But in the reign of Anaxander, son of Eurycrates – for destiny was by this time driving the Messenians out of all the Peloponnesus – the Messenians revolted from the Lacedaemonians. For a time they held out by force of arms, but at last they were overcome and retired from the Peloponnesus under a truce. The remnant of them left behind in the land became the slaves of the Lacedaemonians, with the exception of those in the towns on the coast.

[3.3.5] The incidents of the war which the Messenians waged after the revolt from the Lacedaemonians it is not pertinent that I should set forth in the present part of my narrative. Anaxander had a son Eurycrates, and this second Eurycrates a son Leon. While these two kings were on the throne the Lacedaemonians were generally unsuccessful in the war with Tegea. But in the reign of Anaxandrides, son of Leon, the Lacedaemonians won the war with Tegea in the following manner. A Lacedaemonian, by name Lichas, came to Tegea when there chanced to be a truce between the cities.3

[3.3.6] When Lichas arrived the Spartans were seeking the bones of Orestes in accordance with an oracle. Now Lichas inferred that they were buried in a smithy, the reason for this inference being this. Everything that he saw in the smithy he compared with the oracle from Delphi, likening to the winds the bellows, for that they too sent forth a violent blast, the hammer to the “stroke,” the anvil to the “counterstroke” to it, while the iron is naturally a “woe to man,” because already men were using iron in warfare. In the time of those called heroes the god would have called bronze a woe to man.

[3.3.7] Similar to the oracle about the bones of Orestes was the one afterwards given to the Athenians, that they were to bring back Theseus from Scyros to Athens otherwise they could not take Scyros. Now the bones of Theseus were discovered by Cimon the son of Miltiades, who displayed similar sharpness of wit, and shortly afterwards took Scyros.

[3.3.8] I have evidence that in the heroic age weapons were universally of bronze in the verses of Homer4 about the axe of Peisander and the arrow of Meriones. My statement is likewise confirmed by the spear of Achilles dedicated in the sanctuary of Athena at Phaselis, and by the sword of Memnon in the Nicomedian temple of Asclepius. The point and butt-spike of the spear and the whole of the sword are made of bronze. The truth of these statements I can vouch for.

[3.3.9] Anaxandrides the son of Leon was the only Lacedaemonian to possess at one and the same time two wives and two households. For his first consort, though an excellent wife, had the misfortune to he barren. When the ephors bade him pot her away he firmly refused to do so, but made this concession to them, that he would take another wife in addition to her. The fruit of this union was a son, Cleomenes; and the former wife, who up to this time had not conceived, after the birth of Cieomenes bore Dorieus, then Leonidas, and finally Cleombrotus.

[3.3.10] And when Anaxandrides died, the Lacedaemonians, believing Dorieus to be both of a sounder judgment than Cleomenes and a better soldier, much against their will rejected him as their king, and obeyed the laws by giving the throne to the elder claimant Cleomenes.

[3.4.1] IV. Now Dorieus could not bear to stay at Lacedaemon and be subject to his brother, and so he went on a colonizing expedition. As soon as he became king, Cleomenes gathered together an army, both of the Lacedaemonians themselves and of their allies, and invaded Argolis. The Argives came out under arms to meet them, but Cleomenes won the day. Near the battlefield was a grove sacred to Argus, son of Niobe, and on being routed some five thousand of the Argives took refuge therein. Cleomenes was subject to fits of mad excitement, and on this occasion he ordered the Helots to set the grove on fire, and the flames spread all over the grove, which, as it burned, burned up the suppliants with it.

[3.4.2] He also conducted campaigns against Athens, by the first of which he delivered the Athenians from the sons of Peisistratus and won a good report among the Greeks both for himself personally and for the Lacedaemonians5; while the second campaign was to please an Athenian, Isagoras, by helping him to establish a tyranny over Athens.6 When he was disappointed, and the Athenians fought strenuously for their freedom, Cleomenes devastated the country, including, they say, the district called Orgas, which was sacred to the deities in Eleusis. He advanced as far as Aegina, and proceeded to arrest such influential Aeginetans as had shown Persian sympathies, and had persuaded the citizens to give earth and water to king Dareius, son of Hystaspes.

[3.4.3] While Cleomenes was occupied in Aegina, Demaratus, the king of the other house, was slandering him to the Lacedaemonian populace. On his return from Aegina, Cleomenes began to intrigue for the deposition of king Demaratus. He bribed the Pythian prophetess to frame responses about Demaratus according to his instructions, and instigated Leotychides, a man of royal birth and of the same family as Demaratus, to put in a claim to the throne.

[3.4.4] Leotychides seized upon the remark that Ariston in his ignorance blurted out when Demaratus was born, denying that he was his child. On the present occasion the Lacedaemonians, according to their wont, referred to the oracle at Delphi the claim against Demaratus, and the prophetess gave them a response which favoured the designs of Cleomenes.

[3.4.5] So Demaratus was deposed, not rightfully, but because Cleomenes hated him. Subsequently Cleomenes met his end in a fit of madness for seizing a sword he began to wound himself, and hacked and maimed his body all over. The Argives assert that the manner of his end was a punishment for his treatment of the suppliants of Argus; the Athenians say that it was because he had devastated Orgas; the Delphians put it down to the bribes he gave the Pythian prophetess, persuading her to give lying responses about Demaratus.

[3.4.6] It may well be too that the wrath of heroes and the wrath of gods united together to punish Cleomenes since it is a fact that for a personal wrong Protesilaus, a hero not a whit more illustrious than Argus, punished at Elaeus Artayctes, a Persian; while the Megarians never succeeded in propitiating the deities at Eleusis for having encroached upon the sacred land. As to the tampering with the oracle, we know of nobody, with the exception of Cleomenes, who has had the audacity even to attempt it.

[3.4.7] Cleomenes had no male issue, and the kingdom devolved on Leonidas, son of Anaxandrides and full brother of Dorieus. At this time Xerxes led his host against Greece, and Leonidas with three hundred Lacedaemonians met him at Thermopylae. Now although the Greeks have waged many wars, and so have foreigners among themselves, yet there are but few that have been made more illustrious by the exceptional valor of one man, in the way that Achilles shed luster on the Trojan war and Miltiades on the engagement at Marathon. But in truth the success of Leonidas surpassed, in my opinion, all later as well as all previous achievements.

[3.4.8] For Xerxes, the proudest of all who have reigned over the Medes, or over the Persians who succeeded them, the achiever of such brilliant exploits, was met on his march by Leonidas and the handful of men he led to Thermopylae,7 and they would have prevented him from even seeing Greece at all, and from ever burning Athens, if the man of Trachis had not guided the army with Hydarnes by the path that stretches across Oeta, and enabled the enemy to surround the Greeks; so Leonidas was overwhelmed and the foreigners passed along into Greece.

[3.4.9] Pausanias the son of Cleombrotus never became king. For while guardian of Pleistarchus, the son of Leonidas, who was a child when his father died, he led the Lacedaemonians to Plataea, and afterwards with their fleet to the Hellespont.8 I cannot praise too highly the way in which Pausanias treated the Coan lady, who was the daughter of a man of distinction among the Coans, Hegetorides the son of Antagoras, and the unwilling concubine of a Persian, Pharandates the son of Teaspis.

[3.4.10] When Mardonius fell in the battle of Plataea, and the foreigners were destroyed, Pausanias sent the lady back to Cos, and she took with her the apparel that the Persian had procured for her as well as the rest of her belongings. Pausanias also refused to dishonor the body of Mardonius, as Lampon the Aeginetan advised him to do.

[3.5.1] V. Shortly after Pleistarchus the son of Leonidas came to the throne he died, and the kingdom devolved on Pleistoanax, son of the Pausanias who commanded at Plataea. Pleistoanax had a son Pausanias; he was the Pausanias who invaded Attica, ostensibly to oppose Thrasybulus and the Athenians, but really to establish firmly the despotism of those to whom the government had been entrusted by Lysander.9 Although he won a battle against the Athenians holding the Peiraens, yet immediately after the battle he resolved to lead his army back home, and not to bring upon Sparta the most disgraceful of reproaches by increasing the despotic power of wicked men.

[3.5.2] When he returned from Athens with only a fruitless battle to his credit, he was brought to trial by his enemies. The court that sat to try a Lacedaemonian king consisted of the senate, “old men” as they were called, twenty eight in number, the members of the ephorate, and in addition the king of the other house. Fourteen senators, along with Agis, the king of the other house, declared that Pausanias was guilty; the rest of the court voted for his acquittal.

[3.5.3] Shortly after this the Lacedaemonians gathered an army against Thebes; the reason for so doing will be given in my account of Agesilaus. On this occasion Lysander came to Phocis, took along with him the entire Phocian army, and without any further delay entered Boeotia and began assaults upon the wall of Haliartus, the citizens of which refused to revolt from Thebes. Already a band of Thebans and Athenians had secretly entered the city; these came out and offered battle before the wall, and there fell here several Lacedaemonians, including Lysander himself.

[3.5.4] Pausanias was too late for the fight, having been collecting forces from Tegea and Arcadia generally; when he finally reached Boeotia, although he heard of the defeat of the forces with Lysander and of the death of Lysander himself, he nevertheless led his army against Thebes and purposed to take the offensive. Thereupon the Thebans offered battle, and Thrasybulus was reported to be not far away with the Athenians. He was waiting for the Lacedaemonians to take the offensive, on which his intention was to launch an attack himself against their rear.

[3.5.5] So Pausanias, fearing lest he should be caught between two enemy forces, made a truce with the Thebans and took up for burial those who had fallen under the wall of Haliartus. The Lacedaemonians disapproved of this decision, but the following reason leads me to approve it. Pausanias was well aware that the disasters of the Lacedaemonians always took place when they had been caught between two enemy forces, and the defeats at Thermopylae and on the island of Sphacteria made him afraid lest he himself should prove the occasion of a third misfortune for them.

[3.5.6] But when his fellow citizens charged him with his slowness in this Boeotian campaign, he did not wait to stand his trial, but was received by the people of Tegea as a suppliant of Athena Alea. Now this sanctuary had been respected from early days by all the Peloponnesians, and afforded peculiar safety to its suppliants, as the Lacedaemonians showed in the case of Pausanias and of Leotychides before him, and the Argives in the case of Chrysis; they never wanted even to ask for these refugees, who were sitting as suppliants in the sanctuary, to be given up.

[3.5.7] When Pausanias fled, his sons Agesipolis and Cleombrotus were still quite boys, and Aristodemus, their nearest relative, was their guardian. This Aristodemus was in command of the Lacedaemonians when they won their success at Corinth.

[3.5.8] When Agesipolis grew up and came to the throne, the first Peloponnesians against whom he waged war were the Argives. When he led his army from the territory of Tegea into that of Argos, the Argives sent a herald to make for them with Agesipolis a certain ancestral truce, which from ancient times had been an established custom between Dorians and Dorians. But Agesipolis did not make the truce with the herald, but advancing with his army proceeded to devastate the land. Then there was an earthquake, but not even so would Agesipolis consent to take away his forces. And yet more than any other Greeks were the Lacedaemonians (in this respect like the Athenians) frightened by signs from heaven.

[3.5.9] By the time that he was encamping under the wall of Argos, the earthquakes were still occurring, some of the troops had actually been killed by lightning, and some moreover had been driven out of then senses by the thunder. In this circumstance he reluctantly withdrew from Argive territory, and began another campaign, attacking Olynthus. Victorious in the war, having captured most of the cities in Chalcidice, and hoping to capture Olynthus itself, he was suddenly attacked by a disease which ended in his death.10

[3.6.1] VI.As Agesipolis died childless, the kingdom devolved upon Cleombrotus, who was general in the battle at Leuctra against the Boeotians.11 Cleombrotus showed personal bravery, but fell when the battle was only just beginning. In great disasters Providence is peculiarly apt to cut off early the general, just as the Athenians lost Hippocrates the son of Ariphron, who commanded at Delium, and later on Leosthenes in Thessaly.12

[3.6.2] Agesipolis, the elder of the sons of Cleombrotus, is not a striking figure in history, and was succeeded by his younger brother Cleomenes. His first son was Acrotatus, his second Cleonymus. Acrotatus did not outlive his father, and when Cleomenes afterwards died, there arose a dispute about the throne between Cleonymus the son of Cleomenes and Areus the son of Acrotatus. So the senators acted as arbitrators, and decided that the dignity was the inheritance of Areus the son of Acrotatus, and not of Cleonymus.

[3.6.3] Deprived of his kingship Cleonymus became violently angry, and the ephors tried to soothe his feelings by bestowing upon him various honors, especially the leadership of the armies, so as to prevent his becoming one day an enemy of Sparta. But at last he committed many hostile acts against his fatherland, and induced Pyrrhus the son of Aeacides to invade Laconia.

[3.6.4] While Areus the son of Acrotatus was king in Sparta, Antigonus the son of Demetrius attacked Athens with an army and a fleet.13 To the help of the Athenians there came the Egyptian expedition with Patroclus, and every available man of the Lacedaemonians with Areus their king at their head.

[3.6.5] Antigonus invested Athens and prevented the Athenian reinforcements from entering the city; so Patroclus dispatched messengers urging Areus and the Lacedaemonians to take the offensive against Antigonus. On their doing so, he would himself, he said, attack the Macedonians in rear; but before such a move it was not fair for Egyptian sailors to attack Macedonians on land. The Lacedaemonians were eager to make the venture, both because of their friendship for Athens and also because they were ambitious to hand down to posterity a famous achievement,

[3.6.6] but as their supplies were exhausted Areus led his army back home, thinking that desperate measures should be reserved for one's own advantage and not risked recklessly for the benefit of others. After they had held out as long as they could, Antigonus made peace with the Athenians, on condition that he brought a garrison into the Museum to be a guard over them. After a time Antigonus himself removed the garrison from Athens of his own accord while Areus begat Acrotatus, and Acrotatus Areus, who died of disease when he was just about eight years old.

[3.6.7] And as the only male representative of the house of Eurysthenes was Leonidas the son of Cleonymus, by this time a very old man, the Lacedaemonians gave him the throne. Leonidas, it so happened, had a bitter opponent in Lysander, a descendant of Lysander the son of Aristocritus. This Lysander won over to his side Leonidas' son-in-law Cleombrotus. After gaining his support he brought various charges against Leonidas, in particular that when a boy he had sworn to his father Cleonymus to ruin Sparta.

[3.6.8] So Leonidas ceased to be king and Cleombrotus came to the throne in his stead. Now if Leonidas had given way to impulse and retired, like Demaratus the son of Ariston, either to the king of Macedonia or to the Egyptian king, he would have profited nothing even by the Spartans changing their minds. But as it was, when the citizens sentenced him to exile, he went to Arcadia, whence not many years later he was recalled by the Lacedaemonians, who made him king again.

[3.6.9] Now how Cleomenes the son of Leonidas performed daring feats of valor, and how after him the Spartans ceased to be ruled by kings, I have already shown in my account of Aratus of Sicyon. My narrative also included the manner of his death in Egypt.

[3.7.1] VII. So of the family of Eurysthenes, called the Agiadae, Cleomenes the son of Leonidas was the last king in Sparta. I will now relate what I have heard about the other house. Procles the son of Aristodemus called his son Sous, whose son Eurypon they say reached such a pitch of renown that this house, hitherto called the Procleidae, came to be named after him the Eurypontidae.

[3.7.2] The son of Eurypon was Prytanis, in whose reign began the enmity of the Lacedaemonians against the Argives, although even before this quarrel they made war against the Cynurians. During the generations immediately succeeding this, while Eunomus the son of Prytanis and Polydectes the son of Eunomus were on the throne, Sparta continued at peace,

[3.7.3] but Charillus the son of Polydectes devastated the land of the Argives – for he it was who invaded Argolis – and not many years afterwards, under the leadership of Charillus, took place the campaign of the Spartans against Tegea, when lured on by a deceptive oracle the Lacedaemonians hoped to capture the city and to annex the Tegean plain from Arcadia.

[3.7.4] After the death of Charillus, Nicander his son succeeded to the throne, in whose reign the Messenians murdered, in the sanctuary of the Lady of the Lake, Teleclus the king of the other house. Nicander also invaded Argolis with an army, and laid waste the greater part of the land. The Asinaeans took part in this action with the Lacedaemonians, and shortly after were punished by the Argives, who inflicted great destruction on their fatherland and drove out the inhabitants.

[3.7.5] About Theopompus, the son of Nicander, who ascended the throne after him, I shall have more to say later on, when I come to the history of Messenia. While Theopompus was still king in Sparta there also took place the struggle of the Lacedaemonians with the Argives for what is called the Thyreatid district. Theopompus personally took no part in the affair, chiefly because of old age and sorrow, for while he was yet alive Archidamus died.

[3.7.6] Nevertheless Archidamus did not die childless, but left a son Zeuxidamus, whose son Anaxidamus succeeded to the throne. In his reign the Messenians were expelled from the Peloponnesus, being vanquished for the second time by the Spartans. Anaxidamus begat Archidamus, and Archidamus begat Agesicles. It was the lot of both of these to pass all their lives in peace, undisturbed by any wars.

[3.7.7] Ariston, son of Agesicles, married a wife who, they say, was the ugliest maiden in Sparta, but became the most beautiful of her women, because Helen changed her; seven months only after his marriage with her Ariston had born to him a son, Demaratus. As he was sitting in council with the ephors there came to him a servant with the news that a child was born to him. Ariston, forgetting the lines in the Iliad about the birth of Eurystheus, or else never having understood them at all, declared that because of the number of months the child was not his.

[3.7.8] Afterwards he repented of his words. Demaratus, a king of good repute at Sparta, particularly for his helping Cleomenes to free Athens from the Peisistratidae,14 became a private citizen through the thoughtlessness of Ariston and the hatred of Cleomenes. He retired to king Dareius in Persia, and they say that his descendants remained in Asia for a long time.

[3.7.9] Leotychides, on coming to the throne in place of Demaratus, took part with the Athenians and the Athenian general Xanthippus, the son of Ariphron, in the engagement of Mycale,15 and afterwards undertook a campaign against the Aleuadae in Thessaly. Although his uninterrupted victories in the fighting might have enabled him to reduce all Thessaly, he accepted bribes from the Aleuadae.16

[3.7.10] Or, being brought to trial in Lacedaemon he voluntarily went into exile to Tegea, where he sought sanctuary as a suppliant of Athena Alea. Zeuxidamus, the son of Leotychides, died of disease while Leotychides was still alive and before he retired into exile so his son Archidamus succeeded to the throne after the departure of Leotychides for Tegea. This Archidamus did terrible damage to the land of the Athenians, invading Attica with an army every year, on each occasion carrying destruction from end to end; he also besieged and took Plataea, which was friendly to Athens.17

[3.7.11] Nevertheless he was not eager that war should be declared between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, but to the utmost of his power tried to keep the truce between them unbroken.18 It was Sthenelaidas, an influential Spartan who was an ephor at the time, who was chiefly responsible for the war. Greece, that still stood firm, was shaken to its foundations by this war, and afterwards, when the structure had given way and was far from sound, was finally overthrown by Philip the son of Amyntas.

[3.8.1] VIII. Archidamus left sons when he died, of whom Agis was the elder and inherited the throne instead of Agesilaus. Archidamus had also a daughter, whose name was Cynisca; she was exceedingly ambitious to succeed at the Olympic games, and was the first woman to breed horses and the first to win an Olympic victory. After Cynisca other women, especially women of Lacedaemon, have won Olympic victories, but none of them was more distinguished for their victories than she.

[3.8.2] The Spartans seem to me to be of all men the least moved by poetry and the praise of poets. For with the exception of the epigram upon Cynisca, of uncertain authorship, and the still earlier one upon Pausanias that Simonides wrote on the tripod dedicated at Delphi, there is no poetic composition to commemorate the doings of the royal houses of the Lacedaemonians.

[3.8.3] In the reign of Agis the son of Archidamus the Lacedaemonians had several grievances against the people of Elis, being especially exasperated because they were debarred from the Olympic games and the sanctuary at Olympia. So they dispatched a herald commanding the people of Elis to grant home-rule to Lepreum and to any other of their neighbors19 that were subject to them. The people of Elis replied that, when they saw the cities free that were neighbors of Sparta, they would without delay set free their own subjects; whereupon the Lacedaemonians under king Agis invaded the territory of Elis.

[3.8.4] On this occasion there occurred an earthquake, and the army retired home after advancing as far as Olympia and the Alpheus but in the next year Agis devastated the country and carried off most of the booty. Xenias, a man of Elis who was a personal friend of Agis and the state-friend20 of the Lacedaemonians, rose up with the rich citizens against the people but before Agis and his army could come to their aid, Thrasydaeus, who at this time championed the interests of the popular party at Elis, overthrew in battle Xenias and his followers and cast them out of the city.

[3.8.5] When Agis led back his army, he left behind Lysistratus, a Spartan, with a portion of his forces, along with the Elean refugees, that they might help the Lepreans to ravage the land. In the third year of the war21 the Lacedaemonians under Agis again prepared to invade the territory of Elis. So Thrasydaeus and the Eleans, reduced to dire extremities, agreed to forgo their supremacy over their neighbors, to dismantle the fortifications of their city, and to allow the Lacedaemonians to sacrifice to the god and to compete in the games at Olympia.

[3.8.6] Agis used also to make continual incursions into Attica, and established the fortified post at Decelea to annoy the Athenians.22 When the Athenian navy was destroyed at Aegospotami,23 Lysander, the son of Aristocritus, and Agis violated the oaths which the Lacedaemonians as a state had sworn by the gods to the Athenians, and it was on their own initiative, and without the approval of the Spartan state, that they put before their allies the proposal to destroy Athens root and branch.

[3.8.7] Such were the most remarkable military achievements of Agis. The rash remark that Ariston made about Demaratus was also made by Agis about his son Leotychides; at the suggestion of some evil spirit he said in the hearing of the ephors that he did not believe Leotychides to be his son. Yet Agis, too, repented afterwards; he was at the time being carried home sick from Arcadia, and when he reached Heraea, he not only called the people to witness that he sincerely believed Leotychides to be his very own son, but also with prayers and tears charged them to take the tidings to the Lacedaemonians.

[3.8.8] After the death of Agis, Agesilaus tried to keep Leotychides from the throne, recalling to the minds of the Lacedaemonians what Agis once said about Leotychides. But the Arcadians from Heraea arrived and bore witness for Leotychides, stating what they had heard the dying Agis say.

[3.8.9] Yet further fuel for the controversy between Agesilaus and Leotychides was supplied by the oracle that was delivered at Delphi to this effect:–

Sparta beware! though haughty, pay heed to the warning I give thee.
Never let thy sound limbs give birth to a kingdom that lame is.
Too long then shalt thou lie in the clutches of desperate hardships;
Turmoil of war shall arise, o'erwhelming men in its billows.

[3.8.10] Leotychides on this occasion said that these words pointed to Agesilaus, who was lame in one of his feet, while Agesilaus interpreted them as alluding to the illegitimacy of Leotychides. Although they might have done so, the Lacedaemonians did not refer the disputed point to Delphi; the reason was in my opinion that Lysander, the son of Aristocritus, an active supporter of Agesilaus, would have him king at all costs.

[3.9.1] IX. So Agesilaus, son of Archidamus, became king, and the Lacedaemonians resolved to cross with a fleet to Asia in order to put down Artaxerxes, son of Dareius.24 For they were informed by several of their magistrates, especially by Lysander, that it was not Artaxerxes but Cyrus who had been supplying the pay for the fleet during the war with Athens. Agesilaus, who was appointed to lead the expedition across to Asia and to be in command of the land forces, sent round to all parts of the Peloponnesus, except Argos, and to the Greeks north of the Isthmus, asking for allies.

[3.9.2] Now the Corinthians were most eager to take part in the expedition to Asia, but considering it a bad omen that their temple of Zeus surnamed Olympian had been suddenly burnt down, they reluctantly remained behind. The Athenians excused themselves on the ground that their city was returning to its former state of prosperity after the Peloponnesian war and the epidemic of plague, and the news brought by messengers, that Conon, son of Timotheus, had gone up to the Persian king, strongly confirmed them in their policy of inactivity.

[3.9.3] The envoy dispatched to Thebes was Aristomelidas, the father of the mother of Agesilaus, a close friend of the Thebans who, when the wall of Plataea had been taken, had been one of the judges voting that the remnant of the garrison should be put to death. Now the Thebans like the Athenians refused, saying that they would give no help. When Agesilaus had assembled his Lacedaemonian forces and those of the allies, and at the same time the fleet was ready, he went to Aulis to sacrifice to Artemis, because Agamemnon too had propitiated the goddess here before leading the expedition to Troy.

[3.9.4] Agesilaus, then, claimed to be king of a more prosperous city than was Agamemnon, and to be like him overlord of all Greece, and that it would be a more glorious success to conquer Artaxerxes and acquire the riches of Persia than to destroy the empire of Priam. but even as he was sacrificing armed Thebans came upon him, threw dawn from the altar the still burning thighbones of the victims, and drove him from the sanctuary.

[3.9.5] Though vexed that the sacrifice was not completed, Agesilaus nevertheless crossed into Asia and launched an attack against Sardes for Lydia at this period was the most important district of lower Asia, and Sardes, pre-eminent for its wealth and resources, had been assigned as a residence to the satrap of the coast region, just as Susa had been to the king himself.

[3.9.6] A battle was fought on the plain of the Hermus with Tissaphernes, satrap of the parts around Ionia, in which Agesilaus conquered the cavalry of the Persians and the infantry, of which the muster on this occasion had been surpassed only in the expedition of Xerxes and in the earlier ones of Dareius against the Scythians and against Athens. The Lacedaemonians, admiring the energy of Agesilaus, added to his command the control of the fleet. But Agesilaus made his brother-in-law, Peisander, admiral, and devoted himself to carrying on the war vigorously by land.

[3.9.7] The jealousy of some deity prevented him from bringing his plans to their conclusion. For when Artaxerxes heard of the victories won by Agesilaus, and how, by attending to the task that lay before him, he advanced with his army even further and further, he put Tissaphernes to death in spite of his previous services, and sent down to the sea Tithraustes, a clever schemer who had some grudge against the Lacedaemonians.

[3.9.8] On his arrival at Sardes he at once thought out a plan by which to force the Lacedaemonians to recall their army from Asia. He sent Timocrates, a Rhodian, to Greece with money, instructing him to stir up in Greece a war against the Lacedaemonians. Those who shared in this money are said to have been the Argives Cylon and Sodamas, the Thebans Androcleides, Ismenias and Amphithemis, the Athenians Cephalus and Epicrates, with the Corinthians who had Argive sympathies, Polyanthes and Timolaus.

[3.9.9] But those who first openly started the war were the Locrians from Amphissa. For there happened to be a piece of land the ownership of which was a matter of dispute between the Locrians and the Phocians. Egged on by Ismenias and his party at Thebes, the Locrians cut the ripe corn in this land and drove off the booty. The Phocians on their side invaded Locris with all their forces, and laid waste the land.

[3.9.10] So the Locrians brought in the Thebans as allies, and devastated Phocis. Going to Lacedaemon the Phocians inveighed against the Thebans, and set forth what they had suffered at their hands. The Lacedaemonians determined to make war against Thebes, chief among their grievances being the outrageous way the Thebans behaved towards Agesilaus when he was sacrificing at Aulis.

[3.9.11] The Athenians receiving early intimation of the Lacedaemonians' intentions, sent to Sparta begging them to submit their grievances to a court of arbitration instead of appealing to arms, but the Lacedaemonians dismissed the envoys in anger. The sequel, how the Lacedaemonians set forth and how Lysander died, I have already described in my account of Pausanias.25

[3.9.12] And what was called the Corinthian war, which continually became more serious, had its origin in the expedition of the Lacedaemonians into Boeotia.26 So these circumstances compelled Agesilaus to lead his army back from Asia. Crossing with his fleet from Abydos to Sestos he passed through Thrace as far as Thessaly, where the Thessalians, to please the Thebans, tried to prevent his further progress; there was also an old friendship between them and Athens.

[3.9.13] But Agesilaus put the Thessalian cavalry to flight and passed through Thessaly, and again made his way through Boeotia, winning a victory over Thebes and the allies at Coronea. When the Boeotians were put to flight, certain of them took refuge in the sanctuary of Athena surnamed Itonia. Agesilaus, although suffering from a wound received in the battle, did not sin against the suppliants.

[3.10.1] X. Not long afterwards the Corinthians in exile for pro-Spartan sympathies held the Isthmian games. The Corinthians in the city made no move at the time, through their fear of Agesilaus but when he marched to Sparta, they too celebrated the Isthmian games along with the Argives. Agesilaus again marched with an army against Corinth, and, as the festival Hyacinthia was at hand, he gave the Amycleans leave to go back home and perform the traditional rites in honor of Apollo and Hyacinthus. This battalion was attacked on the way and annihilated by the Athenians under Iphicrates.

[3.10.2] Agesilaus went also to Aetolia to give assistance to the Aetolians, who were hard pressed in a war with, the Acarnanians27; these he compelled to put an end to the war, although they had come very near capturing Calydon and the other towns of the Aetolians. Afterwards he sailed to Egypt, to succor the Egyptians who had revolted from the king of Persia. Agesilaus performed many noteworthy achievements in Egypt, but, being by this time ah old man, he died on the march. then his dead body was brought home, the Lacedaemonians buried it with greater honors than they had given to any other king.

[3.10.3] In the reign of Archidamus, son of Agesilaus, the Phocians seized the sanctuary at Delphi.28 To help in a war with Thebes the Phocians hired with its wealth independent mercenaries, but they here also aided publicly by the Lacedaemonians and Athenians, the latter calling to mind some old service rendered by the Phocians, the former, too, pretending to be friends when their real reason was, I think, hatred of the Thebans. Theopompus, son of Damasistratus, said that Archidamus himself had a share of the Delphic money, and further that Deinicha the wife of Archidamus, receiving a bribe from the chief men of the Phocians, made Archidamus more ready to bring them reinforcements.

[3.10.4] To accept sacred money and to help men who had pillaged the most famous of oracles I do not hold praiseworthy, but the following incident does redound to his praise. The Phocians were contemplating the cruel course of killing the Delphians of vigorous age, enslaving the women and children, and levelling the city itself to the ground; it was due to the intercession of Archidamus that they escaped this fate at the hands of the Phocians.

[3.10.5] Archidamus afterwards also crossed over into Italy to help the Tarentines to wage war against their foreign neighbors. Here he was killed by the foreigners, and his corpse missed burial owing to the anger of Apollo. Agis, the elder son of this Archidamus, met his death fighting against Antipater and the Macedonians, but while the younger son, Eudamidas, was king, the Lacedaemonians enjoyed peace. The history of Agis, son of Eudamidas, and of Eurydamidas, son of Agis, my account of Sicyon has already set forth.

[3.10.6] On the way from the Hermae the whole of the region is full of oak-trees. The name of the district, Scotitas (Dark), is not due to the unbroken woods but to Zeus surnamed Scotitas, and there is a sanctuary of Zeus Scotitas on the left of the road and about ten stades from it. If you go back from the sanctuary to the road, advance a little and then turn again to the left, you come to an image of Heracles and a trophy, which I was told Heracles raised after killing Hippocoon and his sons.

[3.10.7] The third branch from the straight road is on the right, and leads to Caryae (Walnut-trees) and to the sanctuary of Artemis. For Caryae is a region sacred to Artemis and the nymphs, and here stands in the open an image of Artemis Caryatis. Here every year the Lacedaemonian maidens hold chorus-dances, and they have a traditional native dance. On returning, as you go along the highway, you come to the ruins of Sellasia. The people of this city, as I have stated already, were sold into slavery by the Achaeans after they had conquered in battle the Lacedaemonians under their king Cleomenes, the son of Leonidas.29

[3.10.8] In Thornax, which you will reach as you go along, is an image of Apollo Pythaeus, made after the style of the one at Amyclae; the fashion of it I will describe when I come to speak of the latter. For in the eyes of the Lacedaemonians the cult of the Amyclaean is the more distinguished, so that they spent on adorning the image in Amyclae even the gold which Croesus the Lydian sent for Apollo Pythaeus.30

[3.11.1] XI. Farther on from Thornax is the city, which was originally named Sparta, but in course of time came to be called Lacedaemon as well, a name which till then belonged to the land. To prevent misconception, I added in my account of Attica that I had not mentioned everything in order, but had made a selection of what was most noteworthy. This I will repeat before beginning my account of Sparta; for from the beginning the plan of my work has been to discard the many trivial stories current among the several communities, and to pick out the things most worthy of mention – an excellent rule which I will never violate.

[3.11.2] The Lacedaemonians who live in Sparta have a market-place worth seeing; the council-chamber of the senate, and the offices of the ephors, of the guardians of the laws, and of those called the Bidiaeans, are all in the market-place. The senate is the council which has the supreme control of the Lacedaemonian constitution, the other officials form the executive. Both the ephors and the Bidiaeans are five in number; it is customary for the latter to hold competitions for the lads, particularly the one at the place called Platanistas (Plane-tree Grove), while the ephors transact the most serious business, one of them giving his name to the year, just as at Athens this privilege belongs to one of those called the Nine Archons.

[3.11.3] The most striking feature in the marketplace is the portico which they call Persian because it was made from spoils taken in the Persian wars. In course of time they have altered it until it is as large and as splendid as it is now. On the pillars are white-marble figures of Persians, including Mardonius, son of Gobryas. There is also a figure of Artemisia, daughter of Lygdamis and queen of Halicarnassus. It is said that this lady voluntarily joined the expedition of Xerxes against Greece and distinguished herself at the naval engagement off Salamis.

[3.11.4] On the market-place are temples; there is one of Caesar, the first Roman to covet monarchy and the first emperor under the present constitution, and also one to his son Augustus, who put the empire on a firmer footing, and became a more famous and a more powerful man than his father. His name “Augustus” means in Greek sebastos (reverend).

[3.11.5] At the altar of Augustus they show a bronze statue of Agias. This Agias, they say, by divining for Lysander captured the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami with the exception of ten ships of war.31 These made their escape to Cyprus; all the rest the Lacedaemonians captured along with their crews. Agias was a son of Agelochus, a son of Tisamenus.

[3.11.6] Tisamenus belonged to the family of the Iamidae at Elis, and an oracle was given to him that he should win five most famous contests. So he trained for the pentathlon at Olympia, but came away defeated. And yet he was first in two events, beating Hieronymus of Andros in running and in jumping. But when he lost the wrestling bout to this competitor, and so missed the prize, he understood what the oracle meant, that the god granted him to win five contests in war by his divinations.

[3.11.7] The Lacedaemonians, hearing of the oracle the Pythian priestess had given to Tisamenus, persuaded him to migrate from Elis and to be state-diviner at Sparta. And Tisamenus won them five contests in war.32 The first was at Plataea against the Persians; the second was at Tegea, when the Lacedaemonians had engaged the Tegeans and Argives; the third was at Dipaea, an Arcadian town in Maenalia, when all the Arcadians except the Mantineans were arrayed against them.

[3.11.8] His fourth contest was against the Helots who had rebelled and left the Isthmus for Ithome.33 Not all the Helots revolted, only the Messenian element, which separated itself off from the old Helots. These events I shall relate presently. On the occasion I mention the Lacedaemonians allowed the rebels to depart under a truce, in accordance with the advice of Tisamenus and of the oracle at Delphi. The last time Tisamenus divined for them was at Tanagra, an engagement taking place with the Argives and Athenians.34

[3.11.9] Such I learned was the history of Tisamenus. On their market-place the Spartans have images of Apollo Pythaeus, of Artemis and of Leto. The whole of this region is called Choros (Dancing), because at the Gymnopaediae, a festival which the Lacedaemonians take more seriously than any other, the lads perform dances in honor of Apollo. Not far from them is a sanctuary of Earth and of Zeus of the Market-place, another of Athena of the Market-place and of Poseidon surnamed Securer, and likewise one of Apollo and of Hera.

[3.11.10] There is also dedicated a colossal statue of the Spartan People. The Lacedaemonians have also a sanctuary of the Fates, by which is the grave of Orestes, son of Agamemnon. For when the bones of Orestes were brought from Tegea in accordance with an oracle they were buried here. Beside the grave of Orestes is a statue of Polydorus, son of Alcamenes, a king who rose to such honor that the magistrates seal with his likeness everything that requires sealing.

[3.11.11] There is also Hermes of the Market-place carrying Dionysus as a child, besides the old Courts of the Ephors, as they are called, in which are the tombs of Epimenides the Cretan and of Aphareus the son of Perieres. As to Epimenides, I think the Lacedaemonian story is more probable than the Argive. Here, where the Fates are, the Lacedaemonians also have a sanctuary of Hestia. There is also Zeus Hospitable and Athena Hospitable.

[3.12.1] XII. As you go from the market-place by the road they name the Aphetaid Road, you come to the so-called Booneta.35 But my narrative must first explain why the road has this name.

[3.12.2] It is said that Icarius proposed a foot-race for the wooers of Penelope; that Odysseus won is plain, but they say that the competitors were let go (aphethenai) for the race along the Aphetaid Road. In my opinion, Icarius was imitating Danaus when he held the running-race. For Danaus contrived the following plan to solve the difficulty about his daughters. Nobody would take a wife from among them because of their pollution so Danaus sent round a notice that he would give away his daughters without bride-gifts, and that each suitor could choose the one whose beauty pleased him most. A few men came, among whom he held a foot-race the first comer was allowed to choose before all the others, after him the second, and so on to the last. The daughters that were left had to wait until other suitors arrived and competed in another foot-race.

[3.12.3] On this road the Lacedaemonians have, as I have already said, what is called the Booneta, which once was the house of their king Polydorus. When he died, they bought it from his widow, paying the price in oxen. For at that time there was as yet neither silver nor gold coinage, but they still bartered in the old way with oxen, slaves, and uncoined silver and gold.

[3.12.4] Those who sail to India say that the natives give other merchandise in exchange for Greek cargoes, knowing nothing about coinage, and that though they have plenty of gold and of bronze. On the opposite side of the office of the Bidiaeans is a sanctuary of Athena. Odysseus is said to have set up the image and to have named it Keleuthea (Lady of the Road), when he had beaten the suitors of Penelope in the foot-race. Of Keleuthea he set up sanctuaries, three in number, at some distance from each other.

[3.12.5] Farther along the Aphetaid Road are hero-shrines, of Iops, who is supposed to have been born in the time of Lelex or. Myles, and of Amphiaraus the son of Oicles. The last they think was made by the sons of Tyndareus, for that Amphiaraus was their cousin. There is a hero-shrine of Lelex himself. Not far from these is a precinct of Poseidon of Taenarum, which is the surname given him, and near by an image of Athena, which is said to have been dedicated by the colonists

[3.12.6] who left for Tarentum in Italy. As to the place they call the HeIlenium, it has been stated that those of the Greeks who were preparing to repel Xerxes when he was crossing into Europe deliberated at this place how they should resist. The other story is that those who made the expedition against Troy to please Menelaus deliberated here how they could sail out to Troy and exact satisfaction from Alexander for carrying off Helen.

[3.12.7] Near the Hellenium they point out the tomb of Talthybius. The Achaeans of Aegium too say that a tomb which they show on their market-place belongs to Talthybius. It was this Talthybius whose wrath at the murder of the heralds, who were sent to Greece by king Dareius to demand earth and water, left its mark upon the whole state of the Lacedaemonians, but in Athens fell upon individuals, the members of the house of one man, Miltiades the son of Cimon. Miltiades was responsible for the death at the hands of the Athenians of those of the heralds who came to Attica.

[3.12.8] The Lacedaemonians have an altar of Apollo Acritas, and a sanctuary, surnamed Gasepton, of Earth. Above it is set up Maleatian Apollo. At the end of the Aphetaid Road, quite close to the wall, are a sanctuary of Dictynna and the royal graves of those called the Eurypontidae. Beside the Hellenium is a sanctuary of Arsinoe, daughter of Leucippus and sister of the wives of Polydeuces and Castor. At the place called the Forts is a temple of Artemis, and a little further on has been built a tomb for the diviners from Elis, called the Iamidae.

[3.12.9] There is also a sanctuary of Maron and of Alpheius. Of the Lacedaemonians who served at Thermopylae they consider that these men distinguished themselves in the fighting more than any save Leonidas himself. The sanctuary of Zeus Tropaean (He who turns to flight) was made by the Dorians, when they had conquered in war the Amyclaeans, as well as the other Achaeans, who at that time occupied Laconia. The sanctuary of the Great Mother has paid to it the most extraordinary honors. After it come the hero-shrines of Hippolytus, son of Theseus, and of the Arcadian Aulon, son of Tlesimenes. Some say that Tlesimenes was a brother, others a son of Parthenopaeus, son of Melanion.

[3.12.10] Leading from the market-place is another road, on which they have built what is called Scias (Canopy), where even at the present day they hold their meetings of the Assembly. This Canopy was made, they say, by Theodorus of Samos, who discovered the melting of iron and the moulding of images from it.36 Here the Lacedaemonians hung the harp of Timotheus of Miletus, to express their disapproval of his innovation in harping, the addition of four strings to the seven old ones.

[3.12.11] By the Canopy is a circular building, and in it images of Zeus and Aphrodite surnamed Olympian. This, they say, was set up by Epimenides, but their account of him does not agree with that of the Argives, for the Lacedaemonians deny that they ever fought with the Cnossians.

[3.13.1] XIII. Hard by is the grave of Cynortas son of Amyclas, together with the tomb of Castor, and over the tomb there has also been made a sanctuary, for they say that it was not before the fortieth year after the fight with Idas and Lynceus that divine honors were paid to the sons of Tyndareus. By the Canopy is also shown the grave of Idas and Lynceus. Now it fits in best with their history to hold that they were buried not here but in Messenia.

[3.13.2] But the disasters of the Messenians, and the length of their exile from the Peloponnesus, even after their return wrapped in darkness much of their ancient history, and their. ignorance makes it easy for any who wish to dispute a claim with them. Opposite the Olympian Aphrodite the Lacedaemonians have a temple of the Saviour Maid. Some say that it was made by Orpheus the Thracian, others by Abairis when he had come from the Hyperboreans.

[3.13.3] Carneus, whom they surname “of the House,” had honors in Sparta even before the return of the Heracleidae, his seat being in the house of a seer, Crius (Ram) the son of Theocles. The daughter of this Crius was met as she was filling her pitcher by spies of the Dorians, who entered into conversation with her, visited Crius and learned from him how to capture Sparta.

[3.13.4] The cult of Apollo Carneus has been established among all the Dorians ever since Carnus, an Acarnanian by birth, who was a seer of Apollo. When he was killed by Hippotes the son of Phylas, the wrath of Apollo fell upon the camp of the Dorians Hippotes went into banishment because of the bloodguilt, and from this time the custom was established among the Dorians of propitiating the Acarnanian seer. But this Carnus is not the Lacedaemonian Carneus of the House, who was worshipped in the house of Crius the seer while the Achaeans were still in possession of Sparta.

[3.13.5] The poetess Praxilla represents Carneus as the son of Europa, Apollo and Leto being his nurses. There is also another account of the name; in Trojan Ida there grew in a grove of Apollo cornel-trees, which the Greeks cut down to make the Wooden Horse. Learning that the god was wroth with them they propitiated him with sacrifices and named Apollo Carneus from the cornel-tree (craneia), a custom prevalent in the olden time making them transpose the r and the a.

[3.13.6] Not far from Carneus is what is called the image of Aphetaeus. Here they say was the starting-place of the race run by the suitors of Penelope. There is a place having its porticoes in the form of a square, where of old stuff used to be sold to the people. By this is an altar of Zeus Counsellor and of Athena Counsellor, also of the Dioscuri, likewise surnamed Counsellors.

[3.13.7] Opposite is what is called the Knoll, with a temple of Dionysus of the Knoll, by which is a precinct of the hero who they say guided Dionysus on the way to Sparta. To this hero sacrifices are offered before they are offered to the god by the daughters of Dionysus and the daughters of Leucippus. For the other eleven ladies who are named daughters of Dionysus there is held a footrace; this custom came to Sparta from Delphi.

[3.13.8] Not far from the Dionysus is a sanctuary of Zeus of Fair Wind, on the right of which is a hero-shrine of Pleuron. The sons of Tyndareus were descended on their mother's side from Pleuron, for Asius in his poem says that Thestius the father of Leda was the son of Agenor the son of Pleuron. Not far from the hero-shrine is a hill, and on the hill a temple of Argive Hera, set up, they say, by Eurydice, the daughter of Lacedaemon and the wife of Acrisius the son of Abas. An oracular utterance caused to be built a sanctuary of Hera Hyperchemia (she whose hand is above) at a time when the Eurotas was flooding a great part of the land.

[3.13.9] An old wooden image they call that of Aphrodite Hera. A mother is wont to sacrifice to the goddess when a daughter is married. On the road to the right of the hill is a statue of Hetoemocles. Both Hetoemocles himself and his father Hipposthenes won Olympic victories for wrestling the two together won eleven, but Hipposthenes succeeded in beating his son by one victory.

1. Eurotas = the fair-flowing. 2. That is, “Fairest.” 3.  560-550 B.C. 4. Hom. Il. 23.611 foIl. and 650. 5. 510 B.C. 6. 508 B.C. 7. 480 B.C. 8. 479 B.C. 9.  479 B.C. 10.  380 B.C. 11. 371 B.C. 12. 424 B.C. 13. c. 262 B.C. 14. 510 B.C. 15. 479 B.C. 16. 476 B.C. 17. 427 B.C. 18. 432 B.C. 19. The cities of the Perioeci (a word which means “neighbors”), who were personally free men but had had no political rights. 20.  Proxenos ; that is, he represented Spartan interests in Elis. 21. 398 B.C. 22. 413 B.C. 23. 405 B.C. 24. 398 B.C. 25. See Paus. 3.5.3 foll. 26. 394-387 B.C. 27. 390 B.C. 28. 356 B.C. 29. 222 B.C. 30. 560-546 B.C. 31. 405 B.C. 32. 479 B.C. 33. 464 B.C. 34. 457 B.C. 35. That is, Office of the Ox-buyer's. 36. fl. c. 540 B.C.