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.

When the Romans went to war with Antiochus in Greece,[*](In 191 B.C. Cf. the Flamininus, xv. ) Philopoemen was without command, and seeing that Antiochus himself was sitting idly down in Chalcis and spending his time in a courtship and marriage which were not suited to his years,[*](Cf. the Flamininus, xvi. i. ) while his Syrian troops, in great disorder and without leaders, were wandering about among the cities and living luxuriously, he was distressed because he was not general of the Achaeans at that time, and kept saying that he begrudged the Romans their victory. For if I had been general, he said, I would have cut off all these fellows in their taverns.

But soon the Romans, after conquering Antiochus, applied themselves more closely to the affairs of Greece. They encompassed the Achaean league with their power, since the popular leaders gradually inclined to their support; their strength, under the guidance of the heavenly powers, grew great in all directions; and the consummation was near to which the fortunes of Greece must come in their allotted revolution. Here Philopoemen, like a good helmsman contending against a high sea, was in some points compelled to give in and yield to the times; but in most he continued his opposition, arid tried to draw to the support of freedom the men who were powerful in speech or action.

Aristaenus the Megalopolitan[*](Cf. chapter xiii. 4. ) was a man of the greatest influence among the Achaeans, but he always paid court to the Romans and thought that the Achaeans ought not to oppose or displease them in any way. As this man was once speaking in the assembly, we are told that Philopoemen listened to him a while in silent indignation, but at last, overcome by anger, said to him: My man, why art thou eager to behold the fated end of Greece?

Again, Manius, the Roman consul, after his victory over Antiochus, asked the Achaeans to permit the exiles from Sparta to go back home, and Titus Flamininus joined Manius in making this request. But Philopoemen successfully opposed the request, not out of hostility to the exiles, but from a desire that they should owe this favour to himself and the Achaeans, and not to Flamininus and the Romans; indeed, as general for the following year he restored the exiles to their city.[*](Cf. chapter xiii. 3. ) To such a degree did his lofty spirit lead him to strive and contend against men in power.