=247.= Peace was made, leaving all parties in the same position as before the war. Agesilaus, untamed by his eighty years, sought a field of glory beyond the sea. Tachos, king of Egypt, had asked the aid of Sparta in his revolt against Persia. Agesilaus went to his assistance, at the head of a thousand heavy-armed troops. The appearance of the little, lame old man, utterly destitute of the retinue or splendor of a king, excited the ridicule of the Egyptians; but when he transferred his aid from Tachos to Nectan´abis, who had risen against him, the importance of the little Spartan was felt, for Nectanabis obtained the throne. Agesilaus did not live to bear back to Sparta his honors and rewards. He died on the road to Cyrene, and his body, embalmed in wax, was conveyed with great pomp to his native city. An ancient oracle had foretold that Sparta would lose her power under a lame sovereign. It was now fulfilled, but through no fault of the king. Agesilaus had all the virtues of his countrymen, without their common faults of avarice and deceit; and he added a warmth and tenderness in friendship which Spartans rarely possessed. He has been called “Sparta’s most perfect citizen and most consummate general, in many ways, perhaps, her greatest man.” =248.= THE SOCIAL WAR. Athens still maintained her wars in the north; by sea against Alexander of Pheræ, and by land against Macedonia and the Thracian princes. The second period of Athenian greatness reached its height in the year 358, when Eubœa, the Chersonesus, and Amphipolis were again subdued. In that year a serious revolt, called the Social War, was begun by Rhodes, Cos, Chios, and Byzantium. Sestus and other towns on the Hellespont joined in the quarrel, and Mauso´lus, king of Caria, sent aid to the insurgents. The war was inglorious and exhaustive to Athens. To obtain means of paying their sailors, the commanders aided Artabazus in his revolt against Persia, and thereby incurred the vengeance of the great king. Athens had to consent to the independence of the four rebel states, in order to avoid still greater losses and calamities. During the four years that her attention had been thus absorbed, Philip of Macedon had been able to grasp all her dependencies on the Thermaic Gulf, and thus to extend his power as far as the Peneus. [Sidenote: B. C. 357.]