Greek Texts & Translations

They delivered their instructions to the Achaeans under Damocritus when these had already begun a campaign against Lacedaemon, and so, realizing that the Achaeans were set against their advice, proceeded on their way to Asia. The Lacedaemonians, with a spirit greater than their strength, took up arms, and sallied forth to defend their country. But they were soon crushed; a thousand of their bravest youths fell in the battle, and the rest of the soldiery fled towards the city with all the haste they could.

If Damocritus had made a vigorous effort, the Achaeans could have dashed into the walls of Sparta along with the fugitives from the field of battle. As it was, he at once recalled the Achaeans from the pursuit, and confined his future operations to raids and plunder, instead of prosecuting the siege with energy.

So Damocritus withdrew his army, and the Achaeans sentenced him to pay a fine of fifty talents for his treachery. Being unable to pay, he left the Peloponnesus and went into exile. Diaeus, who was elected general after Damocritus, agreed, when Metellus sent another embassy, to involve the Lacedaemonians in no war, but to await the arrival of the arbitrators from Rome.

But he invented another trick to embarrass the Lacedaemonians. He induced the towns around Sparta to be friendly to the Achaeans, and even introduced garrisons into them, to be Achaean bases against Sparta.

The Lacedaemonians elected Menalcidas to be their general against Diaeus, and although they were utterly unprepared for war, being especially ill-provided with money, while in addition their land had remained unsown, he nevertheless dared to break the truce, and took by assault and sacked Iasus, a town on the borders of Laconia, but at that time subject to the Achaeans.

Having again stirred up war between Lacedaemonians and Achaeans he incurred blame at the hands of his countrymen, and, failing to find a way of escape for the Lacedaemonians from the peril that threatened them, he took his own life by poison. Such was the end of Menalcidas. At the time he was in command of the Lacedaemonians, and previously he had commanded the Achaeans. In the former office he proved a most stupid general, in the latter an unparalleled villain.

The magistrates of the Achaeans did not wait for Orestes to conclude, but while he was yet speaking ran out of the house and summoned the Achaeans to an assembly. When the Achaeans heard the decision of the Romans, they at once turned against the Spartans who happened to be then residing in Corinth, and arrested every one, not only those whom they knew for certain to be Lacedaemonians, but also all those they suspected to be such from the cut of their hair, or because of their shoes, their clothes or even their names. Some of them, who succeeded in taking refuge in the lodging of Orestes, they actually attempted even from there to drag away by force.

Orestes and his colleagues tried to check their violence, reminding them that they were committing unprovoked acts of criminal insolence against the Romans. A few days afterwards the Achaeans shut up in prison the Lacedaemonians they held under arrest, but separated from them the foreigners and let them go. They also despatched to Rome Thearidas, with certain other members of the Achaean government. These set out, but meeting on the journey the Roman envoys who had been sent after Orestes to deal with the dispute between the Lacedaemonians and the Achaeans, they too turned back.

When the time came for Diaeus to relinquish his office, Critolaus was elected general by the Achaeans. This Critolaus was seized with a keen but utterly unthinking passion to make war against the Romans. The envoys from the Romans had by this time already arrived to adjudicate on the dispute between the Lacedaemonians and the Achaeans, and Critolaus had a conference with them at Tegea in Arcadia, being most unwilling to summon the Achaeans to meet them in a general assembly. However, in the hearing of the Romans he sent messengers with instructions to summon the deputies to the assembly, but privately he sent orders to the deputies of the various cities to absent themselves from the meeting.