Philopoemen

At a later time, however, when he had some ground for accusation against the Lacedaemonians, as general of the league[*](Philopoemen was for the sixth time general in 188 B.C.) Philopoemen brought back its exiles to the city, and put to death eighty Spartans, according to Polybius,[*](In a passage not extant. Livy gives the same number (xxxviii. 33).) or according to Aristocrates, three hundred and fifty.

He also tore down the walls of the city, and cutting off a large part of its territory, annexed it to Megalopolis; moreover, in the case of those who had been made citizens of Sparta by the tyrants, he removed them all into Achaia, with the exception of three thousand who would not obey him and were unwilling to go away from Sparta. These he sold into slavery, and then, as if in mockery of their fate, erected a portico in Megalopolis with the money which they brought.

And now, glutting his anger at the Lacedaemonians and unworthily trampling upon them in their misery, he treated their constitution in the most cruel and most lawless fashion. For he took away and abolished the system of training which Lycurgus had instituted, and compelled their boys and their young men to adopt the Achaean in place of their hereditary discipline, being convinced that while they were under the laws of Lycurgus they would never be humble.

For the time being, then, owing to their great calamities, the Spartans suffered Philopoemen to cut away, as it were, the sinews of their city, and became tractable and submissive; but a while afterwards,[*](In 184 B.C. (Livy, xxxix. 34).) having obtained permission from the Romans, they abandoned the Achaean polity, and resumed and re-established that which had come down from their fathers, so far as was possible after their many misfortunes and great degeneration.