Besides the crown, Agesilaus at the same time acquired the large property left by the late king Agis; an acquisition which enabled him to display his generosity by transferring half of it at once to his maternal relatives,—for the most part poor persons.[448] The popularity acquired by this step was still farther increased by his manner of conducting himself towards the ephors and senate. Between these magistrates and the kings, there was generally a bad understanding. The kings, not having lost the tradition of the plenary power once enjoyed by their ancestors, displayed as much haughty reserve as they dared, towards an authority now become essentially superior to their own. But Agesilaus,—not less from his own preëstablished habits, than from anxiety to make up for the defects of his title,—adopted a line of conduct studiously opposite. He not only took pains to avoid collision with the ephors, but showed marked deference both to their orders and to their persons. He rose from his seat whenever they appeared; he conciliated both ephors and senators by timely presents.[449] By such judicious proceeding, as well as by his exact observance of the laws and customs,[450] he was himself the greatest gainer. Combined with that ability and energy in which he was never deficient, it ensured to him more real power than had ever fallen to the lot of any king of Sparta; power not merely over the military operations abroad which usually fell to the kings,—but also over the policy of the state at home. On the increase and maintenance of that real power, his chief thoughts were concentrated; new dispositions generated by kingship, which had never shown themselves in him before. Despising, like Lysander, both money, luxury, and all the outward show of power,—he exhibited, as a king, an ultra-Spartan simplicity, carried almost to affectation, in diet, clothing, and general habits. But like Lysander also, he delighted in the exercise of dominion through the medium of knots or factions of devoted partisans, whom he rarely scrupled to uphold in all their career of injustice and oppression. Though an amiable man, with no disposition to tyranny, and still less to plunder, for his own benefit,—Agesilaus thus made himself the willing instrument of both, for the benefit of his various coadjutors and friends, whose power and consequence he identified with his own.[451] [448] Xen. Agesil. iv, 5; Plutarch, Ages. c. 4. [449] Plutarch, Agesil. c. 4. [450] Xen. Agesil. vii, 2. [451] Isokrates, Orat. v, (Philipp.) s. 100; Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 3, 13-23; Plutarch, Apophthegm. Laconica, p. 209 F—212 D. See the incident alluded to by Theopompus ap. Athenæum, xiii, p. 609.