In their civic activities, however, Agis would seem to have taken hold of things with too little spirit; he was baffled by Agesilaüs, and broke his promise to the citizens about the redistribution of lands, and in a word abandoned and left unfinished the designs which he had deliberately formed and announced, owing to a lack of courage due to his youth. Cleomenes, on the contrary, undertook his change of the constitution with too much rashness and violence, killing the ephors in unlawful fashion, when it would have been easier to win them over to his views or remove them by superiority in arms, just as he removed many others from the city.