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40. After this, the Egyptian succeeded in establishing himself firmly and securely in power, and showed his friendliness and affection by begging Agesilaüs to remain and spend the winter with him. But Agesilaüs was eager to return to the war at home, knowing that his city needed money and was hiring mercenaries. He was therefore dismissed with great honour and ceremony, taking with him, besides other honours and gifts, two hundred and thirty talents of silver for the war at home. [2] But since it was now winter, he kept close to shore with his ships, and was borne along the coast of Libya to an uninhabited spot called the Harbour of Menelaüs. Here he died, at the age of eighty-four years. He had been king of Sparta forty-one years, and for more than thirty of these he was the greatest and most influential of all Hellenes, having been looked upon as leader and king of almost all Hellas, down to the battle of Leuctra.

[3] It was Spartan custom, when men of ordinary rank died in a foreign country, to give their bodies funeral rites and burial there, but to carry the bodies of their kings home. So the Spartans who were with Agesilaüs enclosed his dead body in melted wax, since they had no honey, and carried it back to Lacedaemon. The kingdom devolved upon Archidamus his son, and remained in his family down to Agis, who was slain by Leonidas 1 for attempting to restore the ancient constitution, being the fifth in descent from Agesilaüs.

1 In 240 B.C. See the Agis, chapters xix., xx.

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