So there was a public assembly, and one of the Ephors proposed the reform, showing how ease and pleasure had brought their city low, and how hardihood and courage might yet bring back her true greatness.  Leonidas spoke against the changes, but Agis argued with such fire and force that he won over all that were high-minded enough to understand him, and in especial Cleombrotus, the son-in-law of Leonidas.  Agis laid down before the assembly all his father’s vast hoards, and his example was followed by many; but the other king put such difficulties in the way that the reformers found that they could do nothing unless they removed him, so they brought forward an old law, which forbade that any son of Hercules should reign who had married a foreign woman, or sojourned in a strange land.