The Portable Greek Historians: The Essence of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius (Portable Library)

by M. I. Finley

  50. These arguments seemed to Antigonus to have been put by Aratus with equal sincerity and ability; and after listening to them he eagerly took the first necessary step by writing a letter to the people of Megalopolis with an offer of assistance, on condition that such a measure should receive the consent of the Achaeans. When Nicophanes and Cercidas returned home and delivered this despatch from the king, reporting at the same time his other expressions of good will and zeal in the cause, the spirits of the people of Megalopolis were greatly elated; and they were all eagerness to attend the meeting of the League, and urge that measures should be taken to secure the alliance of Antigonus, and to put the management of the war in his hands with all despatch. Aratus learned privately from Nicophanes the king’s feelings towards the League and towards himself, and was delighted that his plan had not failed, and that he had not found the king completely alienated from himself, as the Aetolians hoped he would be. He regarded it also as eminently favourable to his policy that the people of Megalopolis were so eager to use the Achaean League as the channel of communication with Antigonus. For, as I said above, his first object was if possible to do without this assistance; but if he were compelled to have recourse to it, he wished that the invitation should not be sent through him personally, but that it should rather come from the Achaeans as a whole. For he feared that, if the king came, and conquered Cleomenes and the Lacedaemonians in the war, and should then adopt any policy hostile to the interests of the national constitution, he would have himself by general consent to bear the blame of the result; while Antigonus would be justified by the injury which had been inflicted on the royal house of Macedonia in the matter of the Acrocorinthus.

  Accordingly when Megalopolitan envoys appeared in the League council, and showed the royal despatch, and further declared the general friendly disposition of the king, and added an appeal to the congress to secure the king’s alliance without delay; and when also the sense of the meeting was clearly shown to be in favour of taking this course, Aratus rose, and, after setting forth the king’s zeal and complimenting the meeting upon their readiness to act in the matter, he proceeded to urge upon them in a long speech that they should try if possible to preserve their cities and territory by their own efforts, for that nothing could be more honourable or more expedient than that; but that, if it turned out that Fortune declared against them in this effort, they might then have recourse to the assistance of their friends, but not until they had tried all their own resources to the uttermost.

  51. This speech was received with general applause, and it was decided to take no fresh departure at present, and to endeavour to bring the existing war to a conclusion unaided. But when Ptolemy, despairing of retaining the League’s friendship, began to furnish Cleomenes with supplies—which he did with a view of setting him up as a foil to Antigonus, thinking the Lacedaemonians offered him better hopes than the Achaeans of being able to thwart the policy of the Macedonian kings; and when the Achaeans themselves had suffered three defeats—one at Lycaeum in an engagement with Cleomenes whom they had met on a march; and again in a pitched battle at Ladoceia in the territory of Megalopolis, in which Lydiades fell; and a third time decisively at a place called Hecatombaeum in the territory of Dyme, where their whole forces had been engaged—after these misfortunes no further delay was possible, and they were compelled by the force of circumstances to appeal unanimously to Antigonus. In this crisis Aratus sent his son to Antigonus, and ratified the terms of the subvention. The great difficulty was this: it was believed to be certain that the king would send no assistance except on the condition of the restoration of the Acrocorinthus, and of having the city of Corinth put into his hands as a base of operations in this war; and on the other hand it seemed impossible that the Achaeans should venture to put the Corinthians in the king’s power against their own consent. The final determination of the matter was accordingly postponed, that they might investigate the question of the securities to be given to the king.

  52. Meanwhile, on the strength of the dismay caused by his successes, Cleomenes was making an unopposed progress through the cities, winning some by persuasion and others by threats. In this way he got possession of Caphyae, Pellene, Pheneus, Argos, Phlius, Cleonae, Epidaurus, Hermione, Troezen, and last of all Corinth, while he personally commanded a siege of Sicyon. But this in reality relieved the Achaeans from a very grave difficulty. For the Corinthians by ordering Aratus, who was commanding, and the Achaeans to evacuate the town, and by sending messages to Cleomenes inviting his presence, gave the Achaeans a ground of action and a reasonable pretext for moving. Aratus was quick to take advantage of this, and, as the Achaeans were in actual possession of the Acrocorinthus, he made his peace with the royal family of Macedonia by offering it to Antigonus, and at the same time gave thus a sufficient guarantee for friendship in the future, and further secured Antigonus a base of operations for the war with Sparta.

  Upon learning of this compact between the League and Antigonus, Cleomenes raised the siege of Sicyon and pitched his camp near the Isthmus; and, having thrown up a line of fortification uniting the Acrocorinthus with the mountain called the Ass’s Back, began from this time to expect with confidence the empire of the Peloponnese. But Antigonus had made his preparations long in advance, in accordance with the suggestion of Aratus, and was only waiting for the right moment to act. And now the news which he received convinced him that the entrance of Cleomenes into Thessaly, at the head of an army, was only a question of a very few days; he accordingly despatched envoys to Aratus and the League to conclude the terms of the treaty and marched to the Isthmus with his army by way of Euboea. He took this route because the Aetolians, after trying other expedients for preventing Antigonus from bringing this aid, now forbade his marching south of Thermopylae with an army, threatening that, if he did, they would offer armed opposition to his passage. Thus Antigonus and Cleomenes were encamped face to face, the former desirous of effecting an entrance into the Peloponnesus, Cleomenes determined to prevent him.

  53. Meanwhile the Achaeans, in spite of their severe disasters, did not abandon their purpose or give up their self-reliance. They gave Aristotle of Argos assistance when he headed a rising against the Cleomenic faction; and, under the command of Timoxenus the general, surprised and seized Argos. And this must be regarded as the chief cause of the improvement which took place in their fortunes, for this reverse checked the ardor of Cleomenes and damped the courage of his soldiers in advance, as was clearly shown by what took place afterwards. For though Cleomenes had already possession of more advantageous posts, and was in the enjoyment of more abundant supplies than Antigonus, and was at the same time inspired with superior courage and ambition, yet, as soon as he was informed that Argos was in the hands of the Achaeans, he at once drew back, abandoned all these advantages, and retreated from the Isthmus with every appearance of precipitation, in terror of being completely surrounded by his enemies. At first he retired upon Argos and for a time made some attempt to regain the town. But the Achaeans offered a gallant resistance, and the Argives themselves were stirred up to do the same by remorse for having admitted him before; and so, having failed in this attempt also, he marched back to Sparta by way of Mantinea.

  54. On his part, Antigonus advanced without any casualty into the Peloponnesus and took over the Acrocorinthus, and, without wasting time there, pushed on in his enterprise and entered Argos. He stayed there only long enough to compliment the Argives on their conduct, and to provide for the security of the city; and then immediately starting again directed his march towards Arcadia; and after ejecting the garrisons from the posts which had been fortified by Cleomenes in the territories of Aegys and Belmina, and putting those strongholds in the hands of the people of Megalopolis, he went to Aegium to attend the meeting of the Achaean League. There he made a statement of his own proceedings and consulted with the meeting as to the measures to be taken in the future. He was appointed commander-in-chief of the allied army, and went into winter quarte
rs at Sicyon and Corinth.

  At the approach of spring [223 B.C.] he broke up his camp and got on the march. On the third day he arrived at Tegea, and, being joined there by the Achaean forces, he proceeded to invest the city. The vigor displayed by the Macedonians in conducting the siege, and especially in the digging of mines, soon reduced the Tegeans to despair, and they accordingly surrendered. After taking the proper measures for securing the town, Antigonus proceeded to extend his expedition. He now marched with all speed into Laconia, and, having found Cleomenes in position on the frontier, he was trying to bring him to an engagement, and was harassing him with skirmishing attacks, when news was brought to him by his scouts that the garrison of Orchomenus had started to join Celomenes. He at once broke up his camp, hurried thither, and carried the town by assault. Having done that, he next invested Mantinea and began to besiege it. This town also being soon terrified into surrender by the Macedonians, he started again along the road to Heraea and Telphusa. These towns, too, being secured by the voluntary surrender of their inhabitants, as the winter was by this time approaching, he went again to Aegium to attend the meeting of the League. His Macedonian soldiers he sent away to winter at home, while he himself remained to confer with the Achaeans on the existing state of affairs.

  55. But Cleomenes was on the alert. He saw that the Macedonians in the army of Antigonus had been sent home, and that the king and his mercenaries in Aegium were three days’ march from Megalopolis; and this latter town he well knew to be difficult to guard, owing to its great extent and the sparseness of its inhabitants; and, moreover, that it was just then being kept with even greater carelessness than usual, owing to Antigonus being in the country; and, what was more important than anything else, he knew that the larger number of its men of military age had fallen at the battles of Lycaeum and Ladoceia. There happened to be residing in Megalopolis some Messenian exiles, by whose help he managed, under cover of night, to get within the walls without being detected. When day broke he had a narrow escape from being ejected, if not from absolute destruction, through the valour of the citizens. This had been his fortune three months before, when he had made his way into the city by the region which is called the Colaeum; but on this occasion, by the superiority of his force, and the seizure in advance of the strongest positions in the town, he succeeded in effecting his purpose. He eventually ejected the inhabitants and took entire possession of the city, which, once in his power, he dismantled in so savage and ruthless a manner as to preclude the least hope that it might ever be restored. The reason of his acting in this manner was, I believe, that Megalopolis and Stymphalus were the only towns in which, during the vicissitudes of that period, he never succeeded in obtaining a single partisan, or inducing a single citizen to turn traitor. For the passion for liberty and loyalty of the Clitorians had been stained by the baseness of one man, Thearces, whom the Clitorians, with some reason, denied to be a native. of their city, asserting that he had been foisted in from Orchomenus and was the offspring of one of the foreign garrison there.

  56. Since, among those writers who were contemporary with Aratus, Phylarchus is accepted as trustworthy by some, and the opinions of the two authors are opposed in many points and their statements contradictory, and since I follow Aratus in my account of the Cleomenic war, it will be advantageous, or rather necessary, for me to go into the question, and not by any neglect on my part to suffer misstatements in historical writings to enjoy an authority equal to that of truth. The fact is that Phylarchus has, throughout the whole of his history, made statements at random and without discrimination. It is not, however, necessary for me to criticize him on other points on the present occasion, or to call him to strict account concerning them; but such of his statements as relate to the period which I have now in hand, that is the Cleomenic war—these I must thoroughly sift. They will be quite sufficient to enable us to form a judgement on the general spirit and character of his historical writing. It was his object to bring into prominence the cruelty of Antigonus and the Macedonians, as well as that of Aratus and the Achaeans; and he accordingly asserts that, when Mantinea fell into their hands, it was cruelly treated, and that the most ancient and important of all the Arcadian towns was involved in calamities so terrible as to move all Greece to horror and tears. And, being eager to stir the hearts of his readers to pity, and to enlist their sympathies by his story, he talks of women embracing, tearing their hair, and exposing their breasts, and again of the tears and lamentations of men and women led off into captivity along with their children and aged parents. And this he does again and again throughout his whole history, by way of bringing the terrible scene vividly before his readers.

  I say nothing of the unworthiness and unmanliness of the course Phylarchus has adopted; let us only inquire what is essential and to the purpose in history. Surely a historian’s object should not be to amaze his readers by a series of thrilling anecdotes; nor should he seek after men’s probable speeches, nor enumerate the possible consequences of the events under consideration, like a writer of tragedy; but his function is above all to record with fidelity what was actually said or done, however commonplace it may be. For the purposes of history and tragedy are not the same, but widely opposed to each other. In the latter the object is to thrill and delight the audience for the moment by words true to nature, in the former to instruct and convince serious students for all time by genuine words and deeds. In the latter, again, the power of beguiling an audience is the chief excellence, because the object is to create illusion; but in the former the thing of primary importance is truth, because the object is to benefit the learner.

  And apart from these considerations, Phylarchus, in most of the catastrophes which he relates, omits to suggest the causes which give rise to them, or the course of events which led up to them; and without knowing these it is impossible to feel the due indignation or pity at anything which occurs. For instance, everybody looks upon it as an outrage that the free should be beaten; still, if a man provokes it by an act of violence, he is considered to have got no more than he deserved, and, where it is done for correction and discipline, those who strike free men are deemed worthy of honour and gratitude. Again, the killing of a citizen is regarded as a most heinous crime, deserving the highest penalty; and yet it is notorious that the man who kills a thief or adulterer is held guiltless, while he who kills a traitor or tyrant in every country receives honours and pre-eminence. And so in everything our final judgement does not depend upon the mere things done, but upon their causes and the views of the actors, according as these differ.

  57. Now the people of Mantinea had in the first instance abandoned the League and voluntarily submitted first to the Aetolians and afterwards to Cleomenes. Being therefore, in accordance with this policy, members of the Lacedaemonian community, in the fourth year before the coming of Antigonus their city was forcibly taken possession of by the Achaeans owing to the skilful plotting of Aratus. But on that occasion, so far from being subjected to any severity for their act of treason, it became a matter of general remark how promptly the feelings of the conquerors and the conquered underwent a revolution. As soon as he had got control of the town, Aratus issued orders to his own men that no one was to lay a finger on anything that did not belong to him; and then, having summoned the Mantineans to a meeting, he bade them be of good cheer and retain their possessions, because, as long as they remained members of the League, their safety was secured. On their part, the Mantineans, surprised at this unlooked-for prospect of safety, immediately experienced a universal reversal of feeling. The very men against whom they had a little while before been engaged in a war, in which they had seen many of their kinsfolk killed, and no small number grievously wounded, they now received into their houses and entertained as their guests, interchanging every imaginable kindness with them. And naturally so. For I believe that there never were men who met with more kindly foes, or came out of a struggle with what seemed the most dreadful disasters more unscathed, than did the Mantin
eans, owing to the humanity of Aratus and the Achaeans towards them.

  58. But they still saw certain dangers ahead from intestine disorders and the hostile designs of the Aetolians and Lacedaemonians; they subsequently, therefore, sent envoys to the League asking for a garrison for their town. The request was granted, and three hundred of the League army were selected by lot to form it. These men on whom the lot fell started for Mantinea; and, abandoning their native cities and their callings in life, remained there to protect the lives and liberties of the citizens. Besides them, the League dispatched two hundred mercenaries, who joined the Achaean guard in protecting the established constitution. But this state of things did not last long: an insurrection broke out in the town, and the Mantineans called in the aid of the Lacedaemonians, delivered the city into their hands, and put to death the garrison sent by the League. It would not be easy to mention a grosser or blacker act of treachery. Even if they resolved to set utterly at nought the gratitude they owed to, and the friendship they had formed with, the League, they ought at least to have spared these men, and to have let every one of them depart under some terms or another, for this much it is the custom by the law of nations to grant even to foreign enemies. But in order to satisfy Cleomenes and the Lacedaemonians of their fidelity in the policy of the hour, they deliberately, and in violation of the law recognized by all mankind, consummated a crime of the most impious description.

  To slaughter and wreak vengeance on the men who had just before taken their city and refrained from doing them the least harm, and who were at that very moment engaged in protecting their lives and liberties—can anything be imagined more detestable? What punishment can be conceived to correspond with its enormity? If one suggests that they would be rightly served by being sold into slavery, with their wives and children, as soon as they were beaten in war, it may be answered that this much is only what, by the laws of warfare, awaits even those who have been guilty of no special act of impiety. They deserved therefore to meet with a punishment even more complete and heavy than they did; so that, even if what Phylarchus mentions did happen to them, there was no reason for the pity of Greece being bestowed upon them; praise and approval rather were due to those who exacted vengeance for their impious crime. But since, as a matter of fact, nothing worse befell the Mantineans than the plunder of their property and the selling of their free population into slavery, this historian, for the mere sake of a sensational story, has told not only a pure lie, but an improbable lie. His wilful ignorance also was so supreme that he was unable to compare with this alleged cruelty of the Achaeans the conduct of the same people in the case of Tegea, which they took by force at the same period, and yet did no injury to its inhabitants. And yet, if the natural cruelty of the perpetrators was the sole cause of the severity to Mantinea, it is to be presumed that Teagea would have been treated in the same way. But if their treatment of Mantinea was an exception to that of every other town, the necessary inference is that the cause of their anger was exceptional also.