Description of Greece

Not long afterwards the Argives celebrated the Nemean games, and Philopoemen chanced to be present at the competition of the harpists. Pylades, a man of Megalopolis, the most famous harpist of his time, who had won a Pythian victory, was then singing the Persians, an ode of Timotheus the Milesian. When he had begun the song:

1. Who to Greece gives the great and glorious jewel of freedom,

But Philip, the son of Demetrius, king of Macedonia, who poisoned Aratus of Sicyon, sent men to Megalopolis with orders to murder Philopoemen. The attempt failed, and Philip incurred the hatred of all Greece. The Thebans had defeated the Megarians in battle, and were already climbing the wall of Megara, when the Megarians deceived them into thinking that Philopoemen had come to Megara. This made the Thebans so cautious that they went away home, and abandoned their military operation.

In Lacedaemon another despot arose, Nabis, and the first of the Peloponnesians to be attacked by him were the Messenians. Coming upon them by night, when they by no means were expecting an assault, he took the city except the citadel; but when on the morrow Philopoemen arrived with an army, he evacuated Messene under a truce.

When Philopoemen's term of office as general expired, and others were chosen to be generals of the Achaeans, he again crossed to Crete and sided with the Gortynians, who were hard pressed in war. The Arcadians were wroth with him for his absence; so he returned from Crete and found that the Romans had begun a war against Nabis.

The Romans had equipped a fleet against Nabis, and Philopoemen was too enthusiastic to keep out of the quarrel. But being entirely ignorant of nautical affairs he unwittingly embarked on a leaky trireme, so that the Romans and their allies were reminded of the verses of Homer, where in the Catalogue[*](Hom. Il. 2.614) he remarks on the ignorance of the Arcadians of nautical matters.

A few days after the sea-fight, Philopoemen and his band, waiting for a moonless night, burnt down the camp of the Lacedaemonians at Gythium. Thereupon Nabis caught Philopoemen himself and the Arcadians with him in a disadvantageous position. The Arcadians, though few in number, were good soldiers,

and Philopoemen, by changing the order of his line of retreat, caused the strongest positions to be to his advantage and not to that of his enemy. He overcame Nabis in the battle and massacred during the night many of the Lacedaemonians, so raising yet higher his reputation among the Greeks.

After this Nabis secured from the Romans a truce for a fixed period, but died before this period came to an end, being assassinated by a man of Calydon, who pretended that he had come about an alliance,[*](192 B.C) but was in reality an enemy who had been sent for this very purpose of assassination by the Aetolians.

At this time Philopoemen flung himself into Sparta and forced her to join the Achaean League. Shortly afterwards Titus, the Roman commander in Greece, and Diophanes, the son of Diaeus, a Megalopolitan who had been elected general of the Achaeans, attacked Lacedaemon, accusing the Lacedaemonians of rebellion against the Romans. But Philopoemen, though at the time holding no office, shut the gates against them.

For this reason, and because of his courage shown against both the despots, the Lacedaemonians offered him the house[*](The word οἶκοςincludes more than the buildings—slaves, implements, etc.) of Nabis, worth more than a hundred talents. But he scorned the wealth, and bade the Lacedaemonians court with gifts, not himself, but those who could persuade the many in the meeting of the Achaeans—a suggestion, it is said, directed against Timolaus. He was again appointed general of the Achaeans.

At this time the Lacedaemonians were involved in civil war, and Philopoemen expelled from the Peloponnesus three hundred who were chiefly responsible for the civil war, sold some three thousand Helots, razed the walls of Sparta, and forbade the youths to train in the manner laid down by the laws of Lycurgus, ordering them to follow the training of the Achaean youths. The Romans, in course of time,[*](188 B.C) were to restore to the Lacedaemonians the discipline of their native land.