[80]
23. Now, it was on account of just this sort of1
wrong-doing that the Spartans banished their ephor
Lysander, and put their king Agis to death—an act
without precedent in the history of Sparta. From
that time on—and for the same reason—dissensions
[p. 257]
so serious ensued that tyrants arose, the nobles were
sent into exile, and the state, though most admirably constituted, crumbled to pieces. Nor did it
fall alone, but by the contagion of the ills that,
starting in Lacedaemon, spread widely and more
widely, it dragged the rest of Greece down to ruin.
What shall we say of our own Gracchi, the sons of
that famous Tiberius Gracchus and grandsons of
Africanus? Was it not strife over the agrarian issue
that caused their downfall and death?
1 Instances of agrarian legislation.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
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