Sketch of the situation of Spartan affairs at this period: the ancient constitution still continued to exist in form; but the plunder of foreign countries, and particularly the permission to transfer landed estates, obtained by Epitadeus, had produced great inequality of property. The restoration of Lycurgus's constitution had, therefore, a twofold object; to favour the poor by a new agrarian law and release from debts, and to increase the power of the kings by repressing that of the ephori.--First attempt at reform 244, by king Agis III; attended in the beginning with partial success, but eventually frustrated by the other king, Leonidas, and terminating in the extinction of Agis and his family, 241. Leonidas, however, was succeeded, 236, by his son Cleomenes, who victoriously defeated the plans of Aratus to force Sparta to accede to the Achaean league, 227; this king, by a forcible revolution, overthrew the ephori, and accomplished the project of Agis, at the same time increasing the Spartans by the admission of a number of periaeci; and enforcing the laws of Lycurgus referring to private life; but as in a small republic a revolution cannot be confirmed without some external war, he attacked the Achaeans as early as 224; these being defeated, implored, through Aratus, the help of Antigonus; Cleomenes in consequence was, at the battle of Sellasia, 222, obliged to yield to superior force, and with difficulty escaped over to Egypt; while Sparta was compelled to acknowledge her independence as a gift at the hands of Antigonus. Such was the miserable success of this attempt made by a few great men on a nation already degenerate. The quarrels between the ephori and king Lycurgus and his successor Machanidas, placed Sparta in a state of anarchy, which ended, 207, in the usurpation of the sovereign power by one Nabis, who destroyed the ancient form of government. Let him who would study great revolutions commence with that just described; insignificant as it is, none perhaps furnishes more instructive lessons. PLUTARCHI _Agis et Cleomenes_. The information in which is principally drawn from the Commentaries of Aratus.