Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/511

CLEOMENES. 503 city, none joining with him, but all retreating from and living bis approach. Therefore, despairing of success, and saying to his friends, that it was no wonder that women ruled over men that were afraid of liberty, he bade them all die as bravely as became his followers and their own past actions. This said, Hippitas was first, as he desired, run through by one of the younger men, and then each of them readity and resolutely fell upon his own sword, except Panteus, the same who first surprised Megalopolis. This man, being of a very handsome person, and a great lover of the Spartan discipline, the king had made his dear- est friend ; and he now bade him, when he had seen him and the rest fallen, die by their example. Panteus walked over them as they lay, and pricked every one with his dagger, to try whether any was alive, when he pricked Cleomenes in the ancle, and saw him turn upon his back, he kissed him, sat down by him, and when he was quite dead, covered up the body, and then killed himself over it Thus fell Cleomenes, after the life which we have nar- rated, having been king of Sparta sixteen years. The news of their fall being noised through the city, Cratesi- clea, though a woman of a great spirit, could not bear up against the weight of this affliction ; but embracing Cle- omenes's children, broke out into lamentations. But the eldest boy, none suspecting such a spirit in a child, threw himself headlong from the top of the house. He was bruised very much, but not killed by the fall, and was taken up crying, and expressing his resentment for not being permitted to destroy himself. Ptolemy, as soon as an account of the action was brought him, gave order that Cleomenes's body should be flayed and hung up, and that his children, mother, and the women that were with her, should be killed. Amongst these was Panteus's wife, a beautiful and noble-looking woman, who had been but lately married, and suffered these disasters in the height