We are not surprised to hear that such lucrative graces procured for Agesilaus many warm admirers; though the eulogies of Xenophon ought to have been confined to another point in his conduct, now to be mentioned. Agesilaus, while securing for his army the plunder of the country over which he carried his victorious arms, took great pains to prevent both cruelty and destruction of property. When any town surrendered to him on terms, his exactions were neither ruinous nor grossly humiliating.[487] Amidst all the plunder realized, too, the most valuable portion was the adult natives of both sexes, hunted down and brought in by the predatory light troops of the army, to be sold as slaves. Agesilaus was vigilant in protecting these poor victims from ill-usage; inculcating upon his soldiers the duty, “not of punishing them like wrong-doers, but simply of keeping them under guard as men.[488]” It was the practice of the poorer part of the native population often to sell their little children for exportation to travelling slave-merchants, from inability to maintain them. The children thus purchased, if they promised to be handsome, were often mutilated, and fetched large prices as eunuchs, to supply the large demand for the harems and religious worship of many Asiatic towns. But in their haste to get out of the way of a plundering army, these slave-merchants were forced often to leave by the way-side the little children whom they had purchased, exposed to the wolves, the dogs, or starvation. In this wretched condition, they were found by Agesilaus on his march. His humane disposition prompted him to see them carried to a place of safety, where he gave them in charge of those old natives whom age and feebleness had caused to be left behind as not worth carrying off. By such active kindness, rare, indeed, in a Grecian general, towards the conquered, he earned the gratitude of the captives, and the sympathies of every one around.[489] [487] Xen. Agesil. i, 20-22. [488] Xen. Hellen. iii, 4, 19; Xen. Agesil. i, 28. τοὺς ὑπὸ τῶν λῃστῶν ἁλισκομένους βαρβάρους. So the word λῃστὴς, used in reference to the fleet, means the commander of a predatory vessel or privateer (Xen. Hellen. ii, 1, 30). [489] Xen. Agesil. i, 21. Καὶ πολλάκις μὲν προηγόρευε τοῖς στρατιώταις ~τοὺς ἁλισκομένους μὴ ὡς ἀδίκους τιμωρεῖσθαι, ἀλλ᾽ ὡς ἀνθρώπους ὄντας φυλάσσειν~. Πολλάκις δὲ, ὅποτε μεταστρατοπεδεύοιτο, ~εἰ αἴσθοιτο καταλελειμμένα παιδάρια μικρὰ ἐμπόρων, (ἃ πολλοὶ ἐπώλουν, διὰ τὸ νομίζειν μὴ δύνασθαι ἂν φέρειν αὐτὰ καὶ τρέφειν)~ ἐπεμέλετο καὶ τούτων, ὅπως συγκομίζοιτό ποι· τοῖς δ᾽ αὖ διὰ γῆρας καταλελειμμένοις αἰχμαλώτοις προσέταττεν ἐπιμελεῖσθαι αὐτῶν, ὡς μήτε ὑπὸ κυνῶν, μήθ᾽ ὑπὸ λύκων, διαφθείροιντο. Ὥστε οὐ μόνον οἱ πυνθανόμενοι ταῦτα, ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτοὶ οἱ ἁλισκόμενοι εὐμενεῖς αὐτῷ ἐγίγνοντο.