Description of Greece

When the Romans under Manius defeated at Thermopylae Antiochus the descendant of Seleucus, named Nicator, and the Syrian army with him, Aristaenus of Megalopolis advised the Achaeans to approve the wishes of the Romans in all respects, and to oppose them in nothing. Philopoemen looked angrily at Aristaenus, and said that he was hastening on the doom of Greece. Manius wished the Lacedaemonian exiles to return, but Philopoemen opposed his plan, and only when Manius had gone away did he allow the exiles to be restored.

But, nevertheless, Philopoemen too was to be punished for his pride. After being appointed commander of the Achaeans for the eighth time, he reproached a man of no little distinction for having been captured alive by the enemy. Now at this time the Achaeans had a grievance against the Messenians, and Philopoemen, despatching Lycortas with the army to lay waste the land of the Messenians, was very anxious two or three days later, in spite of his seventy years and a severe attack of fever, to take his share in the expedition of Lycortas. He led about sixty horsemen and targeteers.

Lycortas, however, and his army were already on their way back to their country, having neither suffered great harm nor inflicted it on the Messenians. Philopoemen, wounded in the head during the battle, fell from his horse and was taken alive to Messene. A meeting of the assembly was immediately held, at which the most widely divergent opinions were expressed.

Deinocrates, and all the Messenians whose wealth made them influential, urged that Philopoemen should be put to death; but the popular party were keen on saving his life, calling him Father, and more than Father,[*](With the reading of Madvig, “pitying him, and calling him Father of all the Greek people.”) of all the Greek people. But Deinocrates, after all, and in spite of Messenian opposition, was to bring about the death of Philopoemen, for he sent poison in to him.[*](183 B.C)

Shortly afterwards Lycortas gathered a force from Arcadia and Achaia and marched against Messene. The Messenian populace at once went over to the side of the Arcadians, and those responsible for the death of Philopoemen were caught and punished, all except Deinocrates, who perished by his own hand. The Arcadians also brought back to Megalopolis the bones of Philopoemen.

After this Greece ceased to bear good men. For Miltiades, the son of Cimon, overcame in battle the foreign invaders who had landed at Marathon, stayed the advance of the Persian army,[*](490 B.C) and so became the first benefactor of all Greece, just as Philopoemen, the son of Craugis, was the last. Those who before Miltiades accomplished brilliant deeds, Codrus, the son of Melanthus, Polydorus the Spartan, Aristomenes the Messenian, and all the rest, will be seen to have helped each his own country and not Greece as a whole.

Later than Miltiades, Leonidas, the son of Anaxandrides, and Themistocles, the son of Neocles, repulsed Xerxes from Greece,[*](480 B.C) Themistocles by the two sea-fights, Leonidas by the action at Thermopylae. But Aristeides the son of Lysimachus, and Pausanias, the son of Cleombrotus,[*](479 B.C) commanders at Plataea, were debarred from being called benefactors of Greece, Pausanias by his subsequent sins, Aristeides by his imposition of tribute on the island Greeks; for before Aristeides all the Greeks were immune from tribute.

Xanthippus, the son of Ariphron, with Leotychidaes the king of Sparta destroyed the Persian fleet at Mycale,[*](479 B.C) and with Cimon accomplished many enviable achievements on behalf of the Greeks. But those who took part in the Peloponnesian war against Athens, especially the most distinguished of them, might be said to be murderers, almost wreckers, of Greece.

When the Greek nation was reduced to a miserable condition, it recovered under the efforts of Conon,[*](394 B.C) the son of Timotheus, and of Epaminondas, the son of Polymnis, who drove out the Lacedaemonian garrisons and governors, and put down the boards of ten,[*](370-369 B.C) Conon from the islands and coasts, Epaminondas from the cities of the interior. By founding cities too, of no small fame, Messene and Arcadian Megalopolis, Epaminondas made Greece more famous.

I reckon Leosthenes also and Aratus benefactors of all the Greeks. Leosthenes, in spite of Alexander's opposition, brought back safe by sea to Greece the force of Greek mercenaries in Persia, about fifty thousand in number, who had descended to the coast. As for Aratus, I have related his exploits in my history of Sicyon.[*](See Paus. 2.8.1.)

The inscription on the statue of Philopoemen at Tegea runs thus:—

1. The valor and glory of this man are famed throughout Greece, who worked
2. Many achievements by might and many by his counsels,
3. Philopoemen, the Arcadian spearman, whom great renown attended,
4. When he commanded the lances in war.
5. Witness are two trophies, won from the despots
6. Of Sparta; the swelling flood of slavery he stayed.
7. Wherefore did Tegea set up in stone the great-hearted son of Craugis,
8. Author of blameless freedom.