Aratus

and if he despaired of the government and power of the Achaeans, he ought to have yielded to Cleomenes, and not to have made Peloponnesus quite barbarous again under Macedonian garrisons, nor to have filled Acrocorinthus with Illyrian and Gallic arms, nor, in the case of men whom he was always defeating in the fields of war and statesmanship and abusing in the pages of his Commentaries, to have made these men lords over the cities under the endearing name of allies.

And if Cleomenes was, as must be granted, lawless and arbitrary, still, Heracleidae were his ancestors, and Sparta was his native land, the meanest citizen of which was more worthy than the foremost Macedonian to be made their leader by those who had any regard for Greek nobility of birth. And yet Cleomenes asked the Achaeans for the office, with the promise that he would confer many benefits upon their cities in return for that honour and its title,

whereas Antigonus, although he was proclaimed leader with full powers by land and sea, would not accept the office until Acrocorinthus had been promised him as the pay for his leadership. In this he acted just like Aesop’s hunter. For he would not mount the Achaeans, although they prayed him to do so and presented their backs to him by way of embassies and decrees, until they consented to wear the bit and bridle of the garrison they received and the hostages they gave.