Greek Texts & Translations

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.

When the deputies did not attend, Critolaus showed very clearly how he was hoodwinking the Romans. He urged them to wait for another meeting of the Achaeans, to take place five months later, declaring that he would not confer with them without the general assembly of the Achaeans. When the envoys realized that they were being deceived, they departed for Rome but Critolaus summoned a meeting of the Achaeans at Corinth, and persuaded them both to take up arms against Sparta and also to declare war openly on Rome.

For a king or state to undertake a war and be unlucky is due to the jealousy of some divinity rather than to the fault of the combatants; but audacity combined with weakness should be called madness rather than ill-luck. But it was such a combination that overthrew Critolaus and the Achaeans. The Achaeans were also encouraged by Pytheas, who at that time was Boeotarch at Thebes, and the Thebans promised to give enthusiastic support in the war.

The Thebans had been sentenced, at the first ruling given by Metellus, to pay a fine for invading the territory of Phocis with an armed force; at the second to compensate the Euboeans for laying waste Euboea; at the third to compensate the people of Amphissa for ravaging their territory when the corn was ripe for harvest.

So he despatched envoys to the Achaeans, bidding them release from the League the Lacedaemonians and the other states mentioned in the order of the Romans, promising that the Romans would entirely forgive them for their disobedience on the previous occasion. While making these proposals for peace he marched from Macedonia through Thessaly and along the gulf of Lamia. But Critolaus and the Achaeans would listen to no suggestions for an agreement, and sat down to besiege Heracleia, which refused to join the Achaean League.

Then, when Critolaus was informed by his scouts that the Romans under Metellus had crossed the Spercheius, he fled to Scarpheia in Locris, without daring even to draw up the Achaeans in the pass between Heracleia and Thermopylae, and to await Metellus there. To such a depth of terror did he sink that brighter hopes were not suggested even by the spot itself, the site of the Lacedaemonian effort to save Greece ^note, and of the no less glorious exploit of the Athenians against the Gauls ^note.

Critolaus and the Achaeans took to flight, but at a short distance from Scarpheia they were overtaken by the men of Metellus, who killed many and took about a thousand prisoners. Critolaus was neither seen alive after the battle nor found among the dead. If he dared to plunge into the marsh of the sea at the foot of Mount Oeta he must inevitably have sunk into the depths without leaving a trace to tell the tale.