in his honour: Agesilaus lived in the most frugal style alike at home and in the field, and though his campaigns were undertaken largely to secure booty, he was content to enrich the state and his friends and to return as poor as he had set forth. Selected quotes When someone was praising an orator for his ability to magnify small points, Agesilaus said, "In my opinion it's not a good cobbler who fits large shoes on small feet." Another time Agesilaus watched a mouse being pulled from its hole by a small boy. When the mouse turned around, bit the hand of its captor and escaped, he pointed this out to those present and said, "When the tiniest creature defends itself like this against aggressors, what ought men to do, do you reckon?" Certainly when somebody asked what gain the laws of Lycurgus had brought Sparta, Agesilaus answered, "Contempt for pleasures." Asked once how far Sparta's boundaries stretched, Agesilaus brandished his spear and said, "As far as this can reach." On noticing a house in Asia roofed with square beams, Agesilaus asked the owner whether timber grew square in that area. When told no, it grew round, he said, "What then? If it were square, would you make it round?" Invited to hear an actor who could perfectly imitate the nightingale, Agesilaus declined, saying he had heard the nightingale itself. Notes References Sources Ancient sources Plutarch, Parallel Lives. Xenophon, Hellenica. Modern sources Hans Beck & Peter Funke, Federalism in Greek Antiquity, Cambridge University Press, 2015. Paul Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia, A Regional History 1300–362 BC, London, Routledge, 1979 (originally published in 1979). Cawkwell, G.L. "Agesilaus and Sparta", The Classical Quarterly 26 (1976): 62–84. David, Ephraim. Sparta Between Empire and Revolution (404-243 BC): Internal Problems and Their Impact on Contemporary Greek Consciousness. New York: Arno Press, 1981. Forrest, W.G. A History of Sparta, 950-192 B.C. 2d ed. London: Duckworth, 1980. Dustin A. Gish, "Spartan Justice: The Conspiracy of Kinadon in Xenophon's Hellenika", in Polis, vol. 26, no. 2, 2009, pp. 339–369. Hamilton, Charles D. Sparta's Bitter Victories: Politics and Diplomacy in the Corinthian War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979. D. M. Lewis, John Boardman, Simon Hornblower, M. Ostwald (editors), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. VI, The Fourth Century B.C., Cambridge University Press, 1994. Anton Powell (editor), A Companion to Sparta, Volume I, Hoboken/Chichester, Wiley Blackwell, 2018. Maria Stamatopoulou, "Thessalians