The Mantineans Turn Over their City to the Lacedaemonians
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 guard 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 despatched
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 utterly set 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 international law, 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
-- 154 --
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 on 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 citizens into slavery, this historian,
for the mere sake of a sensational story, has not only told 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 Tegea 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 for their anger was exceptional also.
