2.2
As for his deformity, the beauty of his person in its youthful prime covered this from sight, while the ease and gaiety with which he bore such a misfortune, being first to jest and joke about himself, went far towards rectifying it. Indeed, his lameness brought his ambition into clearer light, since it led him to decline no hardship and no enterprise whatever. We have no likeness of him (for he himself would not consent to one, and even when he lay dying forbade the making of either statue or picture of his person), but he is said to have been a little man of unimposing presence.
2.3
And yet his gaiety and good spirits in every crisis, and his raillery, which was never offensive or harsh either in word or look, made him more lovable, down to his old age, than the young and beautiful. But according to Theophrastus, Archidamus was fined by the ephors for marrying a little woman, For she will bear us, they said, not kings, but kinglets.
3.1
It was during the reign of Agis that Alcibiades came from Sicily as an exile to Sparta, and he had not been long in the city when he incurred the charge of illicit intercourse with Timaea, the wife of the king. The child, too, that was born of her, Agis refused to recognize as his own, declaring that Alcibiades was its father. Duris says that Timaea was not very much disturbed at this, but in whispers to her Helot maids at home actually called the child Alcibiades, not Leotychides;
3.2
moreover that Alcibiades himself also declared that he had not approached Timaea out of wanton passion, but because he was ambitious to have the Spartans reigned over by his descendants.Cf. Alcibiades, xxiii. 7 f. On this account Alcibiades withdrew from Sparta, being in fear of Agis; and the boy was always an object of suspicion to Agis, and was not honoured by him as legitimate. But when the king lay sick, the supplications and tears of Leotychides prevailed upon him to declare him his son in the presence of many witnesses.
