25.5
For this was the way in which Agesilaüs always spoke about the trial, in his desire to gratify his son, so that Cleonymus was at once aware of the zealous efforts of Archidamus in his behalf, and the friends of Sphodrias had courage at last to come to his help. It is a fact also that Agesilaüs was excessively fond of his children, and a story is told of his joining in their childish play. Once, when they were very small, he bestrode a stick, and was playing horse with them in the house, and when he was spied doing this by one of his friends, he entreated him not to tell any one, until he himself should be a father of children.
26.1
But after Sphodrias was acquitted,Cf. Xenophon, Hell. v. 4, 24-34. and the Athenians, on learning of it, were inclined to go to war, Agesilaüs was very harshly criticized. It was thought that, to gratify an absurd and childish desire, he had opposed the course of justice in a trial, and made the city accessory to great crimes against the Greeks.
26.2
Besides, when he saw that his colleague Cleombrotus was little inclined to make war upon the Thebans, he waived the exemption by law which he had formerly claimed in the matter of the expedition, and presently led an incursion into Boeotia himself,According to Xenophon (Hell. v. 4, 35 ), he was asked to do so by the Lacedaemonians, who preferred him to Cleombrotus as a leader. This was in 378 B.C. where he inflicted damage upon the Thebans, and in his turn met with reverses, so that one day when he was wounded, Antalcidas said to him: Indeed, this is a fine tuition-fee which thou art getting from the Thebans, for teaching them how to fight when they did not wish to do it, and did not even know how.
