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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: whom a flagrant deception has been practised, began to consider the
part he had to play. Meanwhile a separate division[38] of the Egyptian
armies held aloof from their king. Then, the disaffection spreading,
all the rest of his troops deserted him; whereat the monarch took
flight and retired in exile to Sidon in Phoenicia, leaving the
Egyptians, split in faction, to choose to themselves a pair of
kings.[39] Thereupon Agesilaus took his decision. If he helped
neither, it meant that neither would pay the service-money due to his
Hellenes, that neither would provide a market, and that, whichever of
the two conquered in the end, Sparta would be equally detested. But if
he threw in his lot with one of them, that one would in all likelihood
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