The sense of their common danger, and sympathy in their mutual courage, united at once these rival states; even the rash and hitherto unrelenting Cleomenes eagerly sought a reconciliation with his former foe.

That prince went in person to Aegina, determined to ascertain the authors of the suspected treachery;--with that characteristic violence which he never provided the means to support, and which so invariably stamps this unable and headstrong Spartan, as one who would have been a fool, if he had not been a madman--Cleomenes endeavoured to seize the persons of the accused.

He was stoutly resisted, and disgracefully baffled, in this impotent rashness; and his fellow-king, Demaratus, whom we remember to have suddenly deserted Cleomenes at Eleusis, secretly connived with the Aeginetans in their opposition to his colleague, and furnished them with an excuse, by insinuating that Cleomenes had been corrupted by the Athenians.

But Demaratus was little aware of the dark and deadly passions which Cleomenes combined with his constitutional insanity.

Revenge made a great component of his character, and the Grecian history records few instances of a nature more vehemently vindictive.
There had been various rumours at Sparta respecting the legitimacy of Demaratus.