Titus Flamininus

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. X. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1921.

Accordingly, the other parts of Greece came over to the side of Titus without any trouble; but as he was entering Boeotia without hostile demonstrations, the leading men of Thebes came to meet him. They were in sympathy with the Macedonian cause through the efforts of Brachyllas, but welcomed Titus and showed him honour, professing to be on friendly terms with both parties.

Titus met and greeted them kindly, and then proceeded quietly on his journey, sometimes asking questions for his own information and sometimes discoursing at length, and purposely diverting them until his soldiers should come up from their march.

Then he led them forward and entered the city along with the Thebans, who were not at all pleased thereat, but hesitated to oppose him, since a goodly number of soldiers were in his following. Titus, however, just as though the city were not in his power, came before their assembly and tried to persuade them to side with the Romans, and Attalus the king seconded him in his appeals and exhortations to the Thebans. But Attalus, as it would appear, in his eagerness to play the orator for Titus, went beyond his aged strength, and in the very midst of his speech, being seized with a vertigo or an apoplexy, suddenly fainted and fell, and shortly afterwards was conveyed by his fleet to Asia, where he died. The Boeotians allied themselves with the Romans.