*80* XXIII. Now, it was on account of just this sort of 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 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? #Aratus of Sicyon.# *81* Aratus of Sicyon, on the other hand, is justly praised. When his city had been kept for fifty years in the power of its tyrants, he came over from Argos to Sicyon, secretly entered the city and took it by surprise; he fell suddenly upon the tyrant Nicocles, recalled from banishment six hundred exiles who had been the wealthiest men of the city, and by his coming made his country free. But he found great difficulty in the matter of property and its occupancy; for he considered it most unjust, on the one hand, that those men should be left in want whom he had restored and of whose property others had taken possession; and he thought it hardly fair, on the other hand, that tenure of fifty years' standing should be disturbed. For in the course of that long period many of those estates had passed into innocent hands by right of inheritance, many by purchase, many by dower. He therefore decided that it would be wrong either to take the property away from the present incumbents or to let them keep it without compensation to its former possessors. *82* So, when he had come to the conclusion that he must have money to meet the situation, he announced that he meant to make a trip to Alexandria and gave orders that matters should remain as they were until his return. And so he went in haste to his friend Ptolemy, then upon the throne, the second king after the founding of Alexandria. To him he explained that he wished to restore constitutional liberty to his country and presented his case to him. And, being a man of the highest standing, he easily secured from that wealthy king assistance in the form of a large sum of money. And when he had returned with this to Sicyon, he called into counsel with him fifteen of the foremost men of the city. With them he investigated the cases both of those who were holding possession of other people's property and of those who had lost theirs. And he managed by a valuation of the properties to persuade some that it was more desirable to accept money and surrender their present holdings; others he convinced that it was more to their interest to take a fair price in cash for their lost estates than to try to recover possession of what had been their own. As