Capture of Megalopolis
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
-- 150 --
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
Cōlaeum: 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 the 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.
