Aratus

Erginus thus became well acquainted with Aegias, and having been led by him into conversation about the garrison in the citadel, said that as he was going up to see his brother he had noticed in the face of the cliff a slanting fissure leading to where the wall of the citadel was at its lowest. Thereupon Aegias fell to jesting with him, and said: Do you, then, best of men, thus for the sake of a little gold plate rifle the king’s treasures, when it is in your power to sell a single hour’s work for large sums of money? Don’t you know that burglars as well as traitors, if they are caught, have only one death to die?

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?