Agis and Cleomenes

The Achaeans were willing to settle matters on these terms, and invited Cleomenes to come to Lerna, where they were about to hold their assembly. But it fell out that Cleomenes, who had made a strenuous march and then too soon had drunk water, brought up a great quantity of blood and lost his speech. For this reason he sent back to the Achaeans the most prominent men among their captives, but postponed the conference and went back home to Sparta.

This ruined the cause of Greece, at a time when she was still able in some way or other to recover from her grievous plight and escape Macedonian greed and insolence. For Aratus (whether it was through distrust and fear of Cleomenes, or because he envied the king his unlooked for success, and thought it a terrible thing after three and thirty years of leadership to have his own fame and power stripped from him by an upstart of a young man,

and the authority taken over in a cause which he himself had built up and controlled for so long a time), in the first place tried to force the Achaeans aside and hinder their purpose; but when they paid no heed to him in their consternation at the daring spirit of Cleomenes, but actually saw justice in the demands of the Lacedaemonians, who were seeking to restore the Peloponnesus to its ancient status,

Aratus took a step which would have been unmeet for any Greek to take, but was most shameful for him and most unworthy of his career as soldier and statesman. For he invited Antigonus into Greece and filled the Peloponnesus with Macedonians, whom he himself had driven out of Peloponnesus when, as a young man, he delivered Acrocorinthus from their power[*](See the Aratus, xvi. ff. )-he who had incurred the suspicion and hostility of all the reigning kings, and of this very Antigonus had said countless evil things in the commentaries which he left behind him.