I know how difficult it is to write an
 appreciation of Agesilaus that shall be worthy of his virtue and glory.
 Nevertheless the attempt must be made. For it would not be seemly that so
 good a man, just because of his perfection, should receive no tributes of
 praise, however inadequate. Now concerning his high birth what greater and
 nobler could be said than this, that even to-day the line of his descent
 from Heracles Agesilaus was twenty-fifth in
 line of descent from Heracles ( Hdt. 8.131 ;
 Plut. Lyc. c. i; Plut. Ages. c. i). 
 is traced through the roll of his ancestors, and those no simple citizens,
 but kings and sons of kings?