Cleomenes, however, soon realized how little reliance is to be put in the favors of princes. Antigonus of Syria took the part of Aratus against him, and Ptolemy, who had been ever ready to help the valiant Spartan, did not care to invite the hostility of a greater foe. Cleomenes was defeated by Antigonus, and became an exile at the court of Ptolemy, but it proved to be a prison instead of a home. Upon the death of the elder Ptolemy, his son kept Cleomenes and his friends under restraint, and, to please Antigonus, purposed putting them to death. Cleomenes and his companions, knowing that a tragic end awaited them, determined to break through their prison bars and to rouse the populace to a revolt against Ptolemy. They easily made their escape, but the people could not be persuaded to undertake any struggle for liberty; and so the devoted band resolved to die. Then each one killed himself, except Panteus, the youngest and handsomest of them all, who was selected by Cleomenes to wait till the rest were dead, so that he might perform for them the last offices. He carefully arranged all the bodies of his comrades, and then, kissing his beloved king and throwing his arms about him, slew himself. The news of this sad event, having spread through the city, finally reached the aged mother, Cratesiclea, who, though a woman of great spirit, could hardly bear up against the weight of this affliction, especially as she knew that an equally tragic fate awaited her grandchildren. The Egyptian king ordered that Cleomenes's body should be flayed, and that his children, his mother, and the women that were with her, should be put to death. Among these was the wife of Panteus, still very young and exquisitely beautiful, who had but lately been married. Her parents would not suffer her to embark with Panteus for Egypt so soon after they had been married, though she eagerly desired it, and her father had shut her up and kept her forcibly at home. But she found means of escape. A few days after Panteus's departure, she slipped out by night, mounted a horse and rode to Taenarum, and there embarked on a vessel sailing for Egypt, where she soon found her husband, and with him cheerfully endured all the sufferings and hardships that befell them in a hostile country. She was now the moral support of the whole company of helpless women. She moved about among them, comforting and consoling. She gave her hand to Cratesiclea, as the latter was being led out by the soldiers to execution, held up her robe, and begged her to be courageous, being herself not in the least afraid of death, and desiring nothing else than to be killed before the children were put to death. When they reached the place of execution, the children were first killed before Cratesiclea's eyes; and afterward she herself suffered death, with these pathetic words on her lips: "O children, whither are you gone?" Panteus's wife, as her husband did for the men, performed the last offices for the women.