Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/243

VIGILANT DEFENCE OF SPARTA. 221 Under such wide-spread feelings of disaffection the defence even if Sparta itself against the assailing enemy was a task requiring all the energy of Agesilaus. After having vainly tried to hinder the Thebans from crossing the Eurotas, he was forced to abandon Amyklae and to throw himself back upon the city of Sparta, to- wards which they immediately advanced. More than one con- spiracy was on the point of breaking out, had not his vigilance forestalled the projects. Two hundred young soldiers of doubtful fidelity were marching, without orders, to occupy a strong post (sacred to Artemis) called the Issorium. Those around him were about to attack them, but Agesilaus, repressing their zeal, went up alone to the band, addressed them in language betokening no sus- picion, yet warning them that they had mistaken his orders : their services were needed, not at the Issorium, but in another part of the city. They obeyed his orders, and moved to the spot indicated ; upon which he immediately occupied the Issorium with troops whom he could trust. In the ensuing night, he seized and put to death fifteen of the leaders of the two hundred. * Another conspi- racy, said to have been on the point of breaking out, was repressed by seizing the conspirators in the house where they were assem- bled, and putting them to death untried ; the first occasion (observes Plutarch) on which any Spartan was ever put to death untried, 1 a statement which I hesitate to believe without knowing from whom he borrowed it, but which, if true, proves that the Spartan kings and ephors did not apply to Spartan citizens the same measure as to Periceki and Helots. By such severe proceedings, disaffection was kept under; while the strong posts of the city were effectively occupied, and the wider approaches barricaded by heaps of stones and earth. 2 Though destitute of walls, Sparta was extremely defensible by position. Epaminondas marched slowly up to it from Amyklas ; the Arcadians and others in his army spreading themselves to burn and plunder the neighborhood. On the third or fourth day his cavalry occupied the Hippodrome (probably a space of level ground near the river, under the hilly site of the town), where the Spar- tan cavalry, though inferior both in number and in goodness, gained 1 Plutarch, Agesil. c. 32 ; Polyasnus, ii, 1, 14; .Mian, V. H. xiv, 27. 2 JEneas, Poliorceticus, c 2, p. 16.