Philopoemen

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.

But being now seventy years of age, and for the eighth time general of the Achaeans,[*](In 182 B.C. Plutarch passes over the years 187-183, during which the Achaean league and Philopoemen came increasingly into collision with the Roman power.) he hoped not only to pass that year of office without war, but also that affairs would permit him to spend the rest of his life in peace and quiet. For as our diseases seem to lose their virulence as our bodily strength declines, so among the Greek cities the spirit of contention lapsed as their power waned.

Nevertheless, some divine displeasure threw him down, like an all but victorious runner, at the very goal of his life. For it is recorded that at some conference, when others present were lavishing praise upon one who was reputed to be a redoubtable general, Philopoemen contemptuously said: Yet why should any account be made of this man, who has been taken alive by his enemies?

And a few days afterwards Deinocrates the Messenian, a man who had a private quarrel with Philopoemen[*](Cf. the Flamininus, xvii. 3. ) and was obnoxious to everybody else because of his baseness and unbridled life, induced Messene to revolt from the Achaean league, and was reported about to seize the village called Colonis. Philopoemen at the time lay sick of a fever at Argos, but on learning these facts, he hastened to Megalopolis in a single day, a journey of more than four hundred furlongs.