Loss of Support
Soon afterwards, however, Lysander's term of office expired, and the ephors of the following year were opposed to Agis, and looked to restore Leonidas. They brought an accusation against Lysander and Mandrocleides, of attempting to violate the laws. Alarmed at the turn events were taking, these two convinced the king to take the unprecedented step of deposing the ephors by force and to appoint others in their stead. Leonidas, who had returned to the city, fled again, to Tegea, protected from Agis by Agesilaus, who persuaded Agis and Lysander that the most effective way to secure the consent of the wealthy to the distribution of their lands, would be to begin by cancelling the debts. Accordingly the debts were cancelled, and all bonds, registers, and securities were piled up in the market place and burned.
Agesilaus, having achieved his goal, contrived various pretexts for delaying the division of the lands. Meanwhile the Achaeans applied to Sparta for assistance against the Aetolians. Agis was accordingly sent at the head of an army. The cautious movements of Aratus gave Agis no opportunity to distinguish himself in battle, but he gained great credit by the excellent discipline he preserved among his troops. During his absence Agesilaus so angered the poorer classes by the continued postponement of the division of the lands, that they made no opposition when the enemies of Agis openly brought back Leonidas II and set him on the throne. Agis and Cleombrotus fled for sanctuary, the former to the temple of Athena Chalcioecus in Sparta, the latter to the temple of Poseidon (or Apollo) at Taenarum.
Read more about this topic: Agis IV
Famous quotes containing the words loss of, loss and/or support:
“Our ego ideal is precious to us because it repairs a loss of our earlier childhood, the loss of our image of self as perfect and whole, the loss of a major portion of our infantile, limitless, ain’t-I-wonderful narcissism which we had to give up in the face of compelling reality. Modified and reshaped into ethical goals and moral standards and a vision of what at our finest we might be, our dream of perfection lives on—our lost narcissism lives on—in our ego ideal.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)
“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to “feel good” about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“In erotic love, two people who were separate become one. In motherly love, two people who were one become separate. The mother must not only tolerate, she must wish and support the child’s separation.”
—Erich Fromm (20th century)