Erato   

will or no, to attend the funeral. So these persons and the helots,
and likewise the Spartans themselves, flock together to the number
of several thousands, men and women intermingled; and all of them
smite their foreheads violently, and weep and wall without stint,
saying always that their last king was the best. If a king dies in
battle, then they make a statue of him, and placing it upon a couch
right bravely decked, so carry it to the grave. After the burial, by
the space of ten days there is no assembly, nor do they elect
magistrates, but continue mourning the whole time.
They hold with the Persians also in another custom. When a king
dies, and another comes to the throne, the newly-made monarch forgives
all the Spartans the debts which they owe either to the king or to the
public treasury. And in like manner among the Persians each king
when he begins to reign remits the tribute due from the provinces.
In one respect the Lacedaemonians resemble the Egyptians. Their
heralds and flute-players, and likewise their cooks, take their trades
by succession from their fathers. A flute-player must be the son of
a flute-player, a cook of a cook, a herald of a herald; and other
people cannot take advantage of the loudness of their voice to come
into the profession and shut out the heralds' sons; but each follows
his father's business. Such are the customs of the Lacedaemonians.
At the time of which we are speaking, while Cleomenes in Egina was
labouring for the general good of Greece, Demaratus at Sparta
continued to bring charges against him, moved not so much by love of
the Eginetans as by jealousy and hatred of his colleague. Cleomenes
therefore was no sooner returned from Egina than he considered with
himself how he might deprive Demaratus of his kingly office; and
here the following circumstance furnished a ground for him to
proceed upon. Ariston, king of Sparta, had been married to two
wives, but neither of them had borne him any children; as however he
still thought it was possible he might have offspring, he resolved
to wed a third; and this was how the wedding was brought about. He had
a certain friend, a Spartan, with whom he was more intimate than
with any other citizen. This friend was married to a wife whose beauty
far surpassed that of all the other women in Sparta; and what was
still more strange, she had once been as ugly as she now was
beautiful. For her nurse, seeing how ill-favoured she was, and how
sadly her parents, who were wealthy people, took her bad looks to
heart, bethought herself of a plan, which was to carry the child every
day to the temple of Helen at Therapna, which stands above the
Phoebeum, and there to place her before the image, and beseech the
goddess to take away the child's ugliness. One day, as she left the
temple, a woman appeared to her, and begged to know what it was she
held in her arms. The nurse told her it was a child, on which she
asked to see it; but the nurse refused; the parents, she said, had
forbidden her to show the child to any one. However the woman would
not take a denial; and the nurse, seeing how highly she prized a look,
at last let her see the child. Then the woman gently stroked its head,
and said, "One day this child shall be the fairest dame in Sparta."
And her looks began to change from that very day. When she was of
marriageable age, Agetus, son of Alcides, the same whom I have
mentioned above as the friend of Ariston, made her his wife.
Now it chanced that Ariston fell in love with this person; and his
love so preyed upon his mind that at last he devised as follows. He
went to his friend, the lady's husband, and proposed to him that
they should exchange gifts, each taking that which pleased him best
out of all the possessions of the other. His friend, who felt no alarm
about his wife, since Ariston was also married, consented readily; and
so the matter was confirmed between them by an oath. Then Ariston gave
Agetus the present, whatever it was, of which he had made choice,
and when it came to his turn to name the present which he was to
receive in exchange, required to be allowed to carry home with him
Agetus's wife. But the other demurred, and said, "except his wife,
he might have anything else": however, as he could not resist the oath