Agis and Cleomenes

For these were formerly in so low a state and so unable to help themselves, that Aetolians invaded Laconia and took away fifty thousand slaves. It was at this time, we are told, that one of the elder Spartans remarked that the enemy had helped Sparta by lightening her burden.

But now only a little time had elapsed, and they had as yet barely resumed their native customs and reentered the track of their famous discipline, when, as if before the very eyes of Lycurgus and with his cooperation, they gave abundant proof of valour and obedience to authority, by recovering the leadership of Hellas for Sparta and making all Peloponnesus their own again.

Thus Argos was taken by Cleomenes, and immediately afterwards Cleonae and Phlius came over to him. When this happened, Aratus was at Corinth, holding a judicial examination of those who were reputed to favour the Spartan cause. The unexpected tidings threw him into consternation, and perceiving that the city was leaning towards Cleomenes and wished to be rid of the Achaeans, he summoned the citizens into the council-hall, and then slipped away unnoticed to the city gate. There his horse was brought to him, and mounting it he fled to Sicyon.

The Corinthians were so eager to get to Cleomenes at Argos that, as Aratus says, all their horses were ruined. Aratus says also that Cleomenes upbraided the Corinthians for not seizing him, but letting him escape; however, Megistonoüs came to him, he says, bringing from Cleomenes a request for the surrender of Acrocorinthus (which was held by an Achaean garrison) and an offer of a large sum of money for it; to which he replied that he did not control affairs, but rather affairs controlled him. This is what Aratus writes.

But Cleomenes, marching up from Argos and taking over Troezen, Epidaurus, and Hermioné, came to Corinth. Its citadel he blockaded, since the Achaeans would not abandon it, and after summoning the friends and stewards of Aratus, ordered them to take the house and property of Aratus into their charge and management.

Then he sent Tritymallus the Messenian once more to Aratus, proposing that Acrocorinthus should be garrisoned by Achaeans and Lacedaemonians together, and promising Aratus personally double the stipend which he was receiving from King Ptolemy.[*](Ptolemy III., surnamed Euergetes, king of Egypt 247-222 B.C. See the Aratus, xli. 3. ) Aratus, however, would not listen to the proposition, but sent his son to Antigonus along with the other hostages, and persuaded the Achaeans to vote the surrender of Acrocorinthus to Antigonus. Therefore Cleomenes invaded the territory of Sicyon and ravaged it, and accepted the property of Aratus when the Corinthians voted it to him as a gift.

When Antigonus with a large force was crossing the mountain-range of Geraneia, Cleomenes thought it more advisable to fortify thoroughly, not the Isthmus, but the Oneian range of hills, and to wear out the Macedonians by a war of posts and positions, rather than to engage in formal battle with their disciplined phalanx. He carried out this plan, and thereby threw Antigonus into straits.