Aratus

Erginus burst out laughing, and as a first step agreed to make trial of Diodes (saying that he had no confidence at all in his other brothers), and a few days afterwards came back and bargained to conduct Aratus to the wall at a spot where it was not more than fifteen feet in height, and to aid in the rest of the enterprise together with Diodes.

Aratus on his part agreed to give the men sixty talents if he was successful, and in case he failed, and he as well as they got off safely, to give each of them a house and a talent. Then, since the sixty talents had to be deposited with Aegias for Erginus, and Aratus neither had them himself nor was willing by borrowing them to give anyone else a suspicion of his undertaking, he took most of his plate and his wife’s golden ornaments and deposited them with Aegias as security for the money.

For he was so exalted in spirit and had so great a passion for noble deeds that, knowing as he did that Phocion and Epaminondas were reputed to have been the justest and best of Greeks because they spurned great gifts and would not betray their honour for money, he elected to expend his own substance secretly, as an advance, on an enterprise in which he alone was risking his life for the whole body of citizens, who did not even know what was going on.

For who will not admire the magnanimity of the man, and yearn even now to lend a helping hand, who purchased at so high a price so great a danger, and pledged what he thought the most precious of his possessions in order that he might be introduced by night among his enemies and contend for his life, receiving as his security from his countrymen the hope of a noble action, and nothing else?

Now the enterprise was dangerous in itself, but was made more dangerous still by a mistake which occurred at the very beginning through ignorance. For Technon, the servant of Aratus, had been sent to inspect the wall with Diodes, and had not yet met Diodes face to face, but thought he would know how he looked because Erginus had described him as curly-haired, of a swarthy complexion, and without a beard.

Having come, therefore, to the place appointed, he was waiting for Erginus to come there with Diodes, just outside the city, near what was called the Ornis. As he was waiting, however, the oldest brother of Erginus and Diodes, named Dionysius, who was not privy to the enterprise and took no part in it, but resembled Diodes, chanced to come up. So Technon, moved by the similarity in the marks of his outward appearance, asked him if he was connected at all with Erginus;