of the image; but since it had shone from its breast, everything had been done which the god had desired to be done. So he was freed from the charge.
Madness and suicide of Cleomenes.
215.Madness afterwards attacked him; for as often as a Spartan met him, he used to dash his sceptre in his face. Since he kept doing this and was mad, his relations bound him and fastened him to a log. But he, being thus bound, on observing that only one guard was left, the others having gone out, asked for a knife, and when the guard was unwilling to give it to him at once, he threatened the man with what he intended to do to him afterwards; till terrified by the threats, he gave him the knife. Then indeed Cleomenes, having taken the steel, lacerated himself with his own hand (lit. himself) miserably, beginning from his legs. At last, on reaching his stomach, he also cut it open, until he breathed his last (lit. breathed out his life).
Explanations of the act.
216.The Argives used to affirm that he had done this since he had murdered the Argives who had betaken themselves from the fight to the grove of Argos, after tearing them away from thence, and had burnt the grove itself, despising religion. But the Spartans think that Cleomenes was not driven to madness by any god, but that he had got into the habit of drinking wine unmixed with water, and that from that cause he had fallen into madness. This is the report about Cleomenes among the Spartans.
XIX.— A DIFFICULTY.
Which is the eldest?
217.The wife of Aristodemus, king of the Spartans, bore twins. But Aristodemus died in a short time. Then the Lacedaemonians decided that he should be named king who was the elder of the boys. But since they did not know which of the two they should choose, since they were alike and of the same age, they questioned the mother. But she said that
