After these exploits33 the Achaeans were urgent for an alliance

After these exploits33 the Achaeans were urgent for an alliance, and begged him to join them in an expedition against Acarnania. In the course of this the Acarnanians attacked him in a defile. Storming the heights above his head with his light troops,34 he gave them battle, and slew many of them, and set up a trophy, nor stayed his hand until he had united the Acarnanians, the Aetolians, and the Argives,35 in friendship with the Achaeans and alliance with himself.
When the enemy, being desirous of peace, sent an embassy, it was Agesilaus who spoke against the peace,36 until he had forced the states of Corinth and of Thebes to welcome back those of them who, for Lacedaemon’s sake, had suffered banishment.
And still later,37 again, he restored the exiles of the Phliasians, who had suffered in the same cause, and with that object marched in person against Phlius, a proceeding which, however liable to censure on other grounds, showed unmistakable attachment to his party.38
Thus, when the adverse faction had put to death those of the Lacedaemonians then in Thebes, he brought succour to his friends, and marched upon Thebes.39 Finding the entire country fenced with ditch and palisading, he crossed Cynoscephalae40 and ravaged the district right up to the city itself, giving the Thebans an opportunity of engaging him in the plain or upon the hills, as they preferred. And once more, in the ensuing year,41 he marched against Thebes, and now surmounting these palisades and entrenchments at Scolus,42 he ravaged the remainder of Boeotia.
Hitherto fortune had smiled in common upon the king himself and upon his city. And as for the disasters which presently befell, no one can maintain that they were brought about under the leadership of Agesilaus. But the day came when, after the disaster which had occurred at Leuctra, the rival powers in conjunction with the Mantineans fell to massacring his friends and adherents43 in Tegea (the confederacy between all the states of Boeotia, the Arcadians, and the Eleians being already an accomplished fact). Thereupon, with the forces of Lacedaemon alone,44 he took the field, and thus belied the current opinion that it would be a long while before the Lacedaemonians ventured to leave their own territory again. Having ravaged the country of those who had done his friends to death, he was content, and returned home.
After this Lacedaemon was invaded by the united Arcadians, Argives, Eleians, and Boeotians, who were assisted by the Phocians, both sections of the Locrians, the Thessalians, Aenianians, Acarnanians, and Euboeans; moreover, the slaves had revolted and several of the provincial cities;45 while of the Spartans themselves as many had fallen on the field of Leuctra as survived. But in spite of all, he safely guarded the city, and that too a city without walls and bulwarks. Forbearing to engage in the open field, where the gain would lie wholly with the enemy, he lay stoutly embattled on ground where the citizens must reap advantage; since, as he doggedly persisted, to march out meant to be surrounded on every side; whereas to stand at bay where every defile gave a coign of vantage, would give him mastery complete.46