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At the time of which we are speaking, while Cleomenes in Egina was
labouring for the general good of Greece, Demaratus at Sparta
continued to bring charges against him, moved not so much by love of
the Eginetans as by jealousy and hatred of his colleague. Cleomenes
therefore was no sooner returned from Egina than he considered with
himself how he might deprive Demaratus of his kingly office; and here
the following circumstance furnished a ground for him to proceed upon.
Ariston, king of Sparta, had been married to two wives, but neither
of them had borne him any children; as however he still thought it was
possible he might have offspring, he resolved to wed a third; and this
was how the wedding was brought about. He had a certain friend, a
Spartan, with whom he was more intimate than with any other citizen.
This friend was married to a wife whose beauty far surpassed that of
all the other women in Sparta; and what was still more strange, she
had once been as ugly as she now was beautiful. For her nurse, seeing
how ill-favoured she was, and how sadly her parents, who were wealthy
people, took her bad looks to heart, bethought herself of a plan,
which was to carry the child every day to the temple of Helen at
Therapna, which stands above the Phoebeum, and there to place her
before the image, and beseech the goddess to take away the child's
ugliness. One day, as she left the temple, a woman appeared to her,
and begged to know what it was she held in her arms. The nurse told
her it was a child, on which she asked to see it; but the nurse
refused; the parents, she said, had forbidden her to show the child
to any one. However the woman would not take a denial; and the
nurse, seeing how highly she prized a look, at last let her see the
child. Then the woman gently stroked its head, and said, "One day
this child shall be the fairest dame in Sparta." And her looks began
to change from that very day. When she was of marriageable age,
Agetus, son of Alcides, the same whom I have mentioned above as the
friend of Ariston, made her his wife.
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