Philopoemen

He was now thirty years of age, when Cleomenes, King of the Lacedaemonians, suddenly attacked Megalopolis by night, forced the guard, made his way into the city, and occupied the market-place. Philopoemen came to the help of the citizens, but had not force enough to drive the enemy out, although he fought with vigour and daring. He did, however, steal the citizens out of the city, as it were, by attacking their pursuers and drawing Cleomenes against himself, so that with the greatest difficulty he got away last of all, after losing his horse and receiving a wound.

Moreover, when Cleomenes sent to them at Messene, whither they had gone, and offered to give them back their city with its valuables and their territory, Philopoemen, seeing that the citizens would be glad to accept the offer and were eager to go back home, opposed and dissuaded them from it, showing them that Cleomenes was not so much offering to restore their city as he was trying to win over to himself its citizens, that so he might have the city also more securely in his possession; for he would not be able, Philopoemen said, to remain there and guard empty houses and walls, but the solitude would force him to abandon these also. By this speech Philopoemen diverted the citizens from their purpose, but furnished Cleomenes with an excuse for devastating and demolishing the greater part of the city and marching off loaded with booty.[*](See the Cleomenes, xxiv. )

Soon, however, Antigonus the king marched with the Achaeans to give aid against Cleomenes, and finding that his enemy was occupying the heights and passes about Sellasia, he drew up his forces near by with the purpose of attacking him and forcing a passage.[*](Cf. the Cleomenes, xxvii. and xxviii. The battle of Sellasia was fought in 221 B.C.) Philopoemen was stationed among the Macedonian cavalry with his own fellow-citizens,[*](According to Polybius ii. 66. 7, a thousand Achaeans and as many Megalopolitans were stationed with the Macedonian cavalry.) and had as a support the Illyrians, a large body of good fighters, who closed up the line of battle.

They had been ordered to lie quietly in reserve until, from the other wing, a signal should be made by the king with a scarlet coat stretched upon a spear. But the Illyrians, at the command of their officers, tried to force back the Lacedaemonians, while the Achaeans, as they had been ordered to do, kept quietly waiting at their post. Therefore Eucleidas, the brother of Cleomenes, who noticed the gap thus made in the enemies’ line, quickly sent round the most agile of his light-armed troops, with orders to attack the Illyrians in the rear and rout them, now that they had lost touch with the cavalry.

These orders were carried out, and the light-armed troops were driving the Illyrians before them in confusion, when Philopoemen perceived that it would be no great task to attack the light-armed troops, and that the occasion prompted this step. At first he pointed this out to the king’s officers. Then, when they were not to be persuaded by him, but looked down upon him as a madman (since his reputation was not yet great enough to justify his being entrusted with so important a manoeuvre), he took matters into his own hands, formed his fellow-citizens into a wedge, and charged upon the enemy.

At first the light-armed troops were thrown into confusion, then put to rout with great slaughter. And now Philopoemen, wishing to encourage still further the king’s troops and bring them swiftly upon the enemy thus thrown into disorder, quitted his horse, and with grievous difficulty forced his way along on foot, in his horseman’s breastplate and heavy equipment, towards ground that was irregular and full of water-courses and ravines. Here he had both his thighs pierced through by a thonged javelin. The wound was not fatal, though severe, and the head of the weapon came out on the other side.