Greek Texts & Translations

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 ^note 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, ^note but was in reality an enemy who had been sent for this very purpose of assassination by the Aetolians.

For this reason, and because of his courage shown against both the despots, the Lacedaemonians offered him the house ^note 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, ^note were to restore to the Lacedaemonians the discipline of their native land.

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.