Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Cleander was a man of Mantinea, of the leading family and among the most powerful of the citizens, but having met with misfortune and fled his own city, he came to Megalopolis, in large part on account of his close personal bond with Craugis, father of Philopoemen and a man esteemed in every respect,
So while Craugis lived, Cleander enjoyed everything at his hands, and when he died, repaying the debt of that hospitality, he raised his son, who was left an orphan, just as Homer says Achilles was raised by Phoenix — the boy's character taking from the very start a noble and kingly shape and growth. But when Philopoemen was already past childhood, Ecdemus and Megalophanes of Megalopolis took over his upbringing, men who had been companions of Arcesilaus in the Academy and who, more than any of their contemporaries, had carried philosophy over into public life and action.
These men had also freed their own homeland from tyranny, secretly arranging the assassins who killed Aristodemus, and together with Aratus had driven out Nicocles, the tyrant of the Sicyonians, and when the people of Cyrene asked for their help, their city being in turmoil and sick, they sailed there, established good order, and set the city in the finest arrangement.
These same men, along with their other undertakings, also made it their business to educate Philopoemen, meaning through philosophy to fashion this man into a common benefit for Greece. And indeed, as though Greece, late in her old age, had brought forth this man to crown the virtues of her ancient leaders, she loved him exceedingly and made his power grow along with his reputation. And a certain Roman spoke highly of him and dubbed him Greece's final great figure, implying that after him Greece produced no one of comparable stature, no one who measured up to her own standard.
In appearance he was not ugly, as some suppose — for we still see a statue of him standing at Delphi. As for the mistake made by his Megarian hostess, they say it came about through a certain easy-going simplicity of his: hearing word that the Achaean commander-in-chief would be lodging with them, she scrambled anxiously to get dinner ready, the man himself happening not to be present,
and meanwhile Philopoemen came in wearing a shabby little cloak, and she, thinking him one of the servants, a man come ahead of the rest, asked him to lend a hand with the chores. And he at once threw off his cloak and began splitting the firewood, and the host, coming in and seeing this, said, "What is this, Philopoemen?" And he answered, in his Doric speech, "What else, but that I am paying the penalty for my bad looks?"
Making fun of the rest of his body, Titus said, "Philopoemen, what fine hands and legs you have — but you have no belly!" for he was narrower than average through the middle. Yet this jest was really aimed at his resources rather than his body, for though he had good hoplites and cavalry, he was often short of funds. These things, then, are told about Philopoemen in leisure conversation.
In his character, his love of honor was not entirely free of contentiousness, nor rid of anger; but although he wished above all to be an emulator of Epaminondas, he imitated strongly the man's vigor, intelligence, and indifference to money, but was unable to hold fast to his gentleness, depth, and humanity amid political disputes; through anger and contentiousness he seemed to belong more to a soldier's virtue than to a statesman's,
for indeed from childhood he was a lover of soldiering, and he eagerly took to the studies useful for this — fighting in arms and horsemanship. And since he also showed a natural gift for wrestling, and some of his friends and guardians urged him toward athletic competition, he asked them whether wrestling would in any way harm his training for soldiering.
And when they said — which was true — that an athlete's body and way of life differ from a soldier's in every respect, and especially that the diet and training are different, the one kind building and preserving their condition through much sleep, constant feeding, fixed periods of exercise and rest, liable to be thrown off by any deviation or departure from the customary regimen, while the other kind must be practiced in every sort of irregularity and every kind of unevenness, and above all must be accustomed to bear scarcity easily,
and easily bear sleeplessness — hearing this, Philopoemen not only himself avoided the pursuit and laughed at it, but later, when he was general, insofar as it lay in his power, he drove out all athletic training with penalties and public humiliation, on the grounds that it rendered the most useful bodies useless for the necessary contests.
Once free of teachers and tutors, in the political campaigns which they used to conduct — raids and plundering expeditions into Laconian territory — he accustomed himself to march first among those setting out, and last among those returning. And when there was leisure, he trained his body by hunting, making it at once light and strong,
or by farming, for he had a fine field about twenty stades from the city; he would walk out to it every day after lunch or after dinner, and throwing himself down on whatever pallet was at hand, he would rest just like any of the laborers. Rising at dawn, he would join in the work with the vine-dressers or the ox-drivers, and then go back into the city and busy himself with public affairs among his friends and the magistrates.
The proceeds from his military campaigns he spent on horses, arms, and ransoms for captives, but he tried to increase his household estate through farming, the most just of all ways of making money, and he did not treat this as a mere sideline, but thought it altogether fitting that a man who meant to keep his hands off what belonged to others should possess what was properly his own. He also attended lectures and studied philosophical texts — not every one of them, only those he judged would help cultivate virtue.
And of the Homeric poems, he attended to whatever he thought stirred and sharpened images conducive to courage. Of his other reading, he was most absorbed in the tactical writings of Evangelus, and he had mastered the histories about Alexander, believing that arguments ought to issue in action, unless they were carried on merely for leisure and unfruitful talk.
For indeed, setting aside the diagrams of tactical theory drawn on tablets, he would put them to the test on actual ground and make his study there — the slopes of terrain, the cutting-off of plains, and whatever configurations and behaviors a phalanx undergoes when being torn apart and again drawn back together near streams, ditches, or narrow passes — examining these for himself on his travels and putting them as problems to those with him,
for this man seems to have devoted himself to military matters beyond what necessity required, and to have embraced war as the most varied subject-matter for virtue, and altogether to have looked down on those left out of it as men of no action.
When he was now thirty years old, Cleomenes, king of the Lacedaemonians, suddenly fell upon Megalopolis by night, forced the guards, got inside, and seized the marketplace. Philopoemen rushed out to defend the city, and though he could not overpower the enemy and drive them out, despite fighting vigorously and recklessly, he managed in a way to steal the citizens out of the city, fighting off the pursuers and drawing Cleomenes' attention onto himself, so that he was the very last to get away, and only with difficulty, having lost his horse and been wounded,
and when Cleomenes sent word to the citizens, who had gone off to Messene, offering to restore to them their city along with their property and their land, Philopoemen, seeing that the citizens were gladly receiving the offer and eager to go back, stood in their way and stopped them by argument, teaching them that Cleomenes was not giving back their city, but rather winning over the citizens, so as to hold the city more securely — for he would not be able simply to sit and guard empty houses and walls, but would be driven out even from these by their emptiness. By saying this he turned the citizens away, but he gave Cleomenes the pretext to ravage and tear down most of the city and, after gathering a great deal of money, to depart.
When King Antigonus, coming to the aid of the Achaeans against Cleomenes, marched out with them, and Cleomenes was holding the heights and passes around Sellasia, Antigonus drew up his forces intending to attack and force his way through nearby. Philopoemen was posted among the cavalry with his own fellow citizens, and he had as comrades-in-arms the Illyrians, to whom the closing end of the battle line had been entrusted, they being numerous and warlike.
They had been ordered, while holding this reserve position, to remain quiet until a purple flag stretched over a sarissa should be raised by the king from the other wing. But while the commanders were trying to force the Lacedaemonians back with the Illyrians, and the Achaeans, as they had been instructed, kept their reserve position in formation, Eucleidas, the brother of Cleomenes, noticing the gap forming around the enemy, quickly sent around the lightest of his light-armed troops, ordering them to fall upon the Illyrians from behind and encircle them, left as they were without cavalry support.
As this was happening, and the light-armed troops were encircling and throwing the Illyrians into confusion, Philopoemen judged that striking the light-armed troops would cost little effort and that this exact moment demanded it, so he first brought the idea to the king's officers; but when he could not win them over — instead he was treated with scorn, as if he were out of his mind, since he had not yet earned enough credit or trust for such a daring maneuver — he himself charged in, drawing his fellow citizens along with him.
When confusion first arose, then flight and great slaughter among the light-armed troops, wishing still further to embolden the king's men and to close quickly with the enemy while they were in disorder, he let his horse go and himself, on foot, in cavalry breastplate and heavier gear, struggled painfully and laboriously through ground that was broken and full of streams and ravines, and was pierced clean through both thighs at once by a single javelin — the wound not being fatal, but severe, so that the point was driven out on the other side.
At first, held fast as if in bonds, he was utterly helpless, for the binding of the thong made it hard to draw the javelin back out through the wounds; and as those present hesitated to touch it, and the battle still held its sharp intensity, he, quivering with rage and eagerness for the contest, by shifting and crossing his legs broke the javelin shaft in the middle and ordered the two broken pieces to be pulled out separately, one from each side.
Freed in this way, and drawing his sword, he pressed forward through the front-fighters against the enemy, so as to inspire great eagerness and rivalry of valor in those fighting alongside him. Antigonus, having won the victory, tested the Macedonians, asking why they had moved their cavalry without his order,
and when, in their own defense, they claimed they had been compelled, contrary to their better judgment, to engage the enemy after a young man from Megalopolis rushed in ahead of them, Antigonus laughed and said, "Well, that young man has done the work of a great general."
As a result of this Philopoemen won renown, as was natural, and although Antigonus was eager that he should serve as a soldier under him, and offered him a command and money, he declined, having come to know above all that his own nature was ill-suited and difficult under being ruled by another; but not wishing to remain idle and at leisure, to gain experience and hone his skill in warfare he sailed to Crete on a campaign.
And there, after training for a considerable time among men who were warlike and skilled in many kinds of warfare, and moreover disciplined and restrained in their way of living, he returned so distinguished to the Achaeans that he was immediately appointed cavalry commander.
He had taken over cavalrymen who made use, whenever a campaign came round, of whatever wretched little horses came to hand, who themselves deserted from most of the expeditions and sent others in their place, whose inexperience combined with cowardice was formidable in every man of them, and whose commanders always overlooked all this because the cavalry had the greatest power among the Achaeans and were most in control of honors and punishments. Philopoemen did not give way to this nor relax his effort,
but went around the cities and, taking each of the young men individually, roused him to a love of honor, and punished those who needed compulsion, and by using drills, parades, and mutual contests wherever the largest crowds were likely to watch, in a short time he instilled in all of them a wonderful vigor and eagerness, and,
what was most important in matters of tactics, he made them nimble and quick both at wheeling and turning by squadron and at wheeling and inclining on horseback, and he trained the whole formation to resemble a single body moving by its own voluntary impulse, so easily did it shift in its changes of maneuver.
When a hard-fought battle took place between them and the Aetolians and Eleans near the river Larisus, Damophantus, the cavalry commander of the Eleans, charged out ahead and rode at Philopoemen. Philopoemen received his charge, struck first with his spear, and brought Damophantus down.
As soon as Damophantus fell, the enemy fled, and Philopoemen was brilliant, falling behind none of the young men in strength of arm nor any of the elders in judgment, but most capable both of fighting and of commanding.
Aratus was the first to raise the Achaean League to standing and power, gathering it up out of a lowly and scattered condition, city by city, and establishing a Greek and humane constitution; then, just as in the case of waters, when a few small bodies first begin to form and settle, the streams flowing in afterward, clinging to the first and gathering around them, produce through one another a strong and solid mass,
so it was that, while Greece at that time was carried along weak and easily dissolved city by city, the Achaeans first banded together, and of the surrounding cities they took some over by helping to free them from their tyrants, and others they blended into themselves through concord and shared citizenship, intending to construct out of the Peloponnese one body and one power.
But while Aratus still lived, the Achaeans submitted for the most part to the arms of the Macedonians, courting first Ptolemy, then again Antigonus and Philip, who kept intervening in the midst of Greek affairs; but once Philopoemen advanced to the first place, being already able on their own to match those most powerful, they stopped employing imported champions,
for Aratus, who was thought rather sluggish in warlike contests, accomplished most of his business through conversation, gentleness, and royal friendships, as has been written in his Life, whereas Philopoemen, being a good warrior and vigorous through arms, and moreover fortunate and successful straightaway in his first battles, together with increasing their power raised the spirit of the Achaeans, who grew accustomed under him to winning and to good fortune in most of their contests.
First, then, he reformed the arrangements the Achaeans had regarding formations and equipment, which were in poor condition. For they used light shields, easy to carry because of their thinness but too narrow to cover the body, and spears much shorter than the sarissa, and because of this they were quick strikers and fought well from a distance owing to their lightness, but once they closed with the enemy they came off worse:
and they had no customary formation or shape drawn up into a compact body, but used a phalanx that had neither the forward defense nor the interlocking of shields that the Macedonian phalanx had, and so they were easily pressed back and torn apart. Having taught them this, Philopoemen persuaded them to take up the shield and the sarissa instead of the light shield and spear, and, protected with helmets, breastplates, and greaves, to practice a steady, standing fight instead of a running, skirmishing one.
By winning over the men of fighting age so that they would take up full armor, he first gave them confidence in their own invincibility, and then he most excellently transformed their luxury and extravagance. For it was not possible to remove all at once, from men long sick with it, their empty and vain rivalry, their love of extravagant clothing, their dyeing of bedding purple, and their competitive spending on dinners
and tables; but he, beginning to divert their love of adornment away from the unnecessary toward the useful and the beautiful, quickly persuaded and urged them all, once they had curtailed their daily expenditures on the body, to be seen distinguished and adorned instead in their military and warlike equipment,
and so one could see the workshops full of cups and Thericlean bowls being cut down, and breastplates being gilded and shields and bridles being plated with silver, and the training-grounds full of colts being broken in and young men practicing arms, and in the hands of the women, helmets and plumes being adorned with dyes, and cavalry tunics and military cloaks embroidered with many colors:
and this spectacle, increasing their boldness and stirring their impulse, made them eager to take risks and ready for dangers,
for extravagance in other spectacles brings on softness and induces effeminacy in those who indulge in it, as if the perception, through pricks and ticklings as it were, twisted the mind along with it toward weakness, but extravagance directed toward such ends as these strengthens and magnifies the spirit, just as Homer made Achilles, when the new armor was set out before him, seem to burn and rage, as it were, at the sight of it, eager for the deed to be done through it. In this way Philopoemen, having adorned the young men, trained and worked them hard, and they submitted to the exercises eagerly and with love of honor,
for the formation itself was wonderfully cherished, seeming to take on an unbreakable compactness, and their arms became handy and light to their bodies, handled and worn with pleasure because of their brightness and beauty, and they wished to fight and be put swiftly to the test against the enemy.
At that time the Lacedaemonian tyrant Machanidas was waging war against the Achaeans, who, relying on a large and powerful force, was plotting against all the Peloponnesians. When word came that he had invaded Mantinea, Philopoemen quickly led the army out against him, and near the city both sides drew up in battle order, each with many mercenaries and with nearly all their citizen forces together.
When the battle came to close quarters, Machanidas routed with his mercenaries the javelin-throwers and Tarentines whom the Achaeans had stationed in front, but instead of turning at once against those still fighting and breaking up their formation, he rushed off in pursuit and passed by the flank of the Achaean phalanx, which remained standing in order,
and Philopoemen, though so great a reverse had occurred at the very outset and their affairs seemed altogether ruined and destroyed, nevertheless pretended to disregard it and to think nothing terrible had happened; but seeing how greatly the enemy were erring in their pursuit, breaking away from their phalanx and leaving an empty space, he did not go to meet them nor stand against them as they bore down upon the fleeing men,
but let them pass by and create a great gap toward his own heavy infantry, and then led his men at once against the Lacedaemonians, seeing their phalanx left bare and undefended, and, running around their flank, fell upon them, since they had no commander present and were not expecting to fight at all: for they believed they were winning and altogether victorious, seeing Machanidas in pursuit.
Having routed them with great slaughter—for it is said that more than four thousand died—he rushed from the pursuit upon Machanidas, who was returning with his mercenaries; and since a great and deep ditch lay between them, they rode along either side of it opposite one another, the one seeking to cross and flee,
the other wishing to prevent this—and the sight was not like that of generals fighting but rather like a wild beast, driven by necessity to make a stand, confronted by a formidable hunter in Philopoemen—there where the tyrant's horse, being strong and spirited and bloodied on both flanks by the spurs, dared the crossing, and, throwing its chest against the ditch, strained to plant its forelegs on the far side.
Meanwhile Simias and Polyaenus, who were always at Philopoemen's side in battle and fought shield to shield with him, rode up together with their spear-points leveled against the tyrant, but Philopoemen forestalled them by meeting Machanidas himself, and seeing his horse raising its head in front of its body, he inclined his own horse slightly, and, grasping his spear with both hands, thrust it home and, pressing forward together with the blow, overturned the man.
In this very posture a bronze statue of him stands at Delphi, set up by the Achaeans, who admired above all both this deed of his and that generalship.
It is said that when the festival of the Nemean games was being held, Philopoemen, then general for the second time and not long before victorious in the battle at Mantinea, being at that time at leisure because of the festival, first displayed to the Greeks the phalanx arrayed and moving through its tactical rhythms with speed and strength, just as it was accustomed to do:
then, while singers to the cithara were competing, he came into the theater with the young men in their military cloaks and crimson tunics, all in the prime of their bodies and matched in age, showing much respect toward their commander and a youthful spirit shining through from many fine contests; and just as they had entered, it happened that Pylades the singer to the cithara, singing Timotheus's Persians, was beginning the words, 'forging for Greece a great and glorious ornament of freedom'—
and at the same moment as the brightness of his voice, matched by the grandeur of the poetry, the whole theater turned its gaze from every side upon Philopoemen, and applause broke out with joy, the Greeks recovering in their hopes the ancient dignity, and coming nearest, in the spirit of that moment, to genuine confidence.
In battles and dangers, just as colts that long for their accustomed riders grow skittish and behave like strangers to themselves if another mounts them, so the army of the Achaeans, when someone else was in command, grew disheartened and kept looking toward Philopoemen, and the moment he was seen it was at once upright and vigorous through confidence — since they perceived that even their enemies could not look this one general in the face, but feared his reputation and his very name, as was plain from what they did.
For Philip, king of the Macedonians, supposing that if Philopoemen were removed the Achaeans would again cower before him, sent men to Argos secretly to kill him; but when the plot was discovered he was utterly hated and discredited among the Greeks.
The Boeotians, besieging Megara and hoping to take it quickly, when a report suddenly reached them — which was not true — that Philopoemen was near, coming to help the besieged, abandoned their ladders, already set against the walls, and fled.
When Nabis, who ruled the Lacedaemonians as tyrant after Machanidas, suddenly seized Messene, Philopoemen happened at that time to be a private citizen holding no command; and since he could not persuade Lysippus, the general of the Achaeans, to help the Messenians — who claimed the city was utterly lost since the enemy was already inside — he himself went to its aid, taking up his own fellow citizens, who waited for neither law nor formal vote, but followed him as though he were by nature always their commander, being the better man.
When Nabis heard he was already near, he did not stand his ground, even though he was encamped within the city, but slipped out through other gates and led his force away in haste, thinking he would count it good fortune if he escaped; and escape he did, and Messene was freed.
These, then, were fine deeds of Philopoemen. But his second journey to Crete, when the Gortynians asked for him to serve as their general in their war, brought him criticism, on the grounds that while his own homeland was being warred upon by Nabis he was absent, avoiding the fight, or courting honor untimely among others — and yet the Megalopolitans were being warred upon so relentlessly at that time that they were living within their walls, sowing crops in the lanes between houses, their countryside cut off and the enemy encamped almost at their gates.
He, meanwhile, waging war against the Cretans and commanding overseas, gave his enemies grounds for accusation against him, as though he were fleeing the war at home. And there were some who said that, since others had been chosen as leaders of the Achaeans, Philopoemen, being a private citizen, had lent his own leisure to command for the Gortynians when they asked.
For he was a stranger to leisure, wishing, like any other possession, to keep his skill in generalship and warfare always in use and in practice, as he made clear once concerning something said about King Ptolemy. For when some were praising that king because he trained his army daily and exercised and toughened his own body diligently under arms, Philopoemen said, "And who would admire a king at that age for practicing rather than for actually commanding?"
The Megalopolitans, taking this hard and thinking themselves betrayed, tried to banish him; but the Achaeans prevented it, sending Aristaenus as general to Megalopolis, who, although he differed with Philopoemen in political matters, would not allow the sentence to be carried out.
After this, being slighted by his fellow citizens, Philopoemen caused many of the surrounding villages to revolt, teaching them to say that they had never paid tribute to Megalopolis nor belonged to it from the beginning; and when they said this publicly he supported them and helped them rise together against the city on the side of the Achaeans — but this happened later.
In Crete he fought alongside the Gortynians, not waging, as a man of the Peloponnese and an Arcadian would, some simple and noble war, but putting on the Cretan character and using their own cunning tricks, deceptions, thefts, and ambushes against them, he quickly showed them to be children, practicing foolish and empty schemes against true experience.
Admired and celebrated for these things, he returned in glory from his exploits there to the Peloponnese, and found Philip already defeated by Titus, and Nabis being warred upon by the Achaeans and the Romans. Chosen at once as commander against Nabis, he risked a sea battle and seemed to suffer the fate of Epaminondas, fighting far worse at sea than his own virtue and reputation warranted.
Except that some say Epaminondas was reluctant to let his citizens taste the advantages of the sea, lest, following Plato, they should be corrupted from steady hoplites into sailors, and so he willingly returned from Asia and the islands without accomplishing anything there;
whereas Philopoemen, convinced that his skill on land would be enough to let him fight well at sea too, learned how great a part of excellence practice is, and how much strength it adds in everything to those who are trained in it. For not only did he come off worse in the sea battle through inexperience, but he also launched and manned some ship, old but famous, after forty years, so that because it did not hold together those sailing in it were in danger.
Knowing that his enemies, because of this, held him in contempt, thinking he had entirely fled the sea, and were besieging Gythium arrogantly, he sailed against them at once, when they were not expecting it, but were relaxed because of their victory. Landing his soldiers by night and bringing them up, he set fire to their tents and burned their camp and destroyed many of them.
A few days later, when Nabis suddenly appeared to him on the road in some difficult terrain and frightened the Achaeans, who thought their safety hopeless, coming from such rough ground and now in the power of the enemy, Philopoemen, halting for a short time and taking in the nature of the place with his eyes, showed that tactics are the highest art of warfare: by shifting his phalanx only slightly and adapting it to the circumstances, he calmly and easily dispelled their difficulty, and attacking the enemy he put them to a strong rout.
When he saw that they were not fleeing toward the city but scattering, one this way and another that way over the countryside — which was wooded, full of hills, and difficult for cavalry because of streams and ravines — he held back the pursuit and made camp while it was still light; and judging that the enemy, from their flight, would make their way toward the city by ones and twos in the dark, he set ambushes in the streambeds and hills around the town, stationing many of the Achaeans there armed with daggers,
and there it happened that very many of Nabis's men died; for since they were not making their retreat in a body, but each as his own flight brought him, they were caught around the city like birds falling into the hands of the enemy.
Being loved and honored conspicuously for these deeds by the Greeks in their theaters, he quietly vexed Titus, who was jealous of honor. For Titus thought it right, as a Roman consul, to be admired by the Achaeans more than an Arcadian man, and considered it no small matter that he surpassed him in benefactions, having freed all of Greece — as much as had been enslaved to Philip and the Macedonians — by a single proclamation.
After this, Titus ended the war with Nabis, and Nabis died, treacherously murdered by the Aetolians; and with Sparta in confusion, Philopoemen seized the opportunity and fell upon it with an army, and bringing over some against their will and persuading others, he attached the city to the Achaeans and transferred it into their league.
When this had happened he won marvelous esteem among the Achaeans, having gained for them the dignity and power of so great a city — for it was no small thing for Sparta to become part of Achaea — and he also took in the best of the Lacedaemonians, who hoped to have him as guardian of their freedom.
Therefore they voted to give him, as a gift, the house and property of Nabis, which had been turned into cash and came to one hundred twenty talents in all, and they sent envoys to him about it. And here that man was shown clearly not merely to seem but truly to be the best of men. For in the first place none of the Spartans was willing to speak to such a man about a bribe, but fearing and shrinking back they put forward his own guest-friend Timolaus.
Then Timolaus himself, when he came to Megalopolis and was entertained at Philopoemen's table, and observed up close the dignity of his conversation, the plainness of his way of life, and his character — nowhere approachable nor open to capture by money — said nothing about the gift, but making some other pretext for his journey to him, went away again. And being sent a second time, he suffered the same thing,
and on his third visit, meeting him at last, he disclosed the city's eagerness. Philopoemen, hearing it gladly, came himself to Lacedaemon, and advised them not to bribe their friends and good men, who could enjoy their virtue free of charge, but rather to buy and corrupt the wicked men who were stirring up faction against the city in the council, so that, being silenced by taking the money, they might trouble them less — for it was better to take away the freedom of speech of one's enemies than of one's friends. Thus splendid was he in the matter of money.
When Diophanes, general of the Achaeans, heard again that the Lacedaemonians were making trouble and wished to punish them, while those bent on war were throwing the Peloponnese into confusion, Philopoemen tried to soothe and calm Diophanes' anger, teaching him that, with King Antiochus and the Romans hovering over Greece with such great armies, the ruler ought to keep his attention there, and not stir up matters at home, but rather overlook and pretend not to hear some of the wrongs being committed.
But since Diophanes paid no heed, and invaded Laconia together with Titus, and they marched at once against the city, Philopoemen, indignant, dared a deed neither lawful nor strictly justified, but great and done with great spirit: though a private citizen, he went into Lacedaemon and shut out both the general of the Achaeans and the Roman consul, and put an end to the disturbances in the city, and restored the Lacedaemonians again to the league, just as they had been from the beginning.
Some time later, having some complaint against the Lacedaemonians while he was general, Philopoemen brought the exiles back into the city, and, as Polybius reports, killed eighty men of Sparta there — though according
to Aristocrates, three hundred and fifty; and he tore down the walls, and cutting off much of their territory assigned it to the Megalopolitans, and all those whom the tyrants had enrolled as citizens of Sparta he uprooted entirely, carrying them off into Achaea, with the exception of three thousand; and these, since they refused and were unwilling to leave Lacedaemon, he sold, and then, as though to mock them, built a colonnade in Megalopolis with the proceeds of this money.
Growing full of himself against the Lacedaemonians and pressing his advantage over their misfortunes beyond what was fitting, he carried out the harshest and most lawless act touching their constitution. For he abolished and destroyed the Lycurgan discipline, compelling their boys and young men to exchange the Achaean upbringing for their ancestral training, on the ground that they would never think small thoughts so long as they lived under the laws of Lycurgus.
At that time, then, weighed down by great calamities, they let Philopoemen carve away what amounted to the very tendons holding their city together, and they grew docile and yielding; but afterward, as time passed, they petitioned the Romans and abandoned the Achaean constitution, resuming and re-establishing their ancestral one, so far as that was possible after such ruin and corruption.
When war between Rome and Antiochus flared up on Greek soil, Philopoemen held no public office at the time; but seeing Antiochus himself sitting in Chalcis, occupied with marriages and love affairs with young girls quite out of season, and the Syrians wandering about the cities in great disorder and without commanders, indulging themselves, he was vexed that he did not hold the Achaean generalship just then, and said that he envied the Romans their victory. "For I," he said, "had I been general, would have cut down all these men in their taverns."
But when the Romans, having defeated Antiochus, were now taking a firmer grip on Greek affairs, and were drawing the Achaeans into their power as the popular leaders bowed before them, and their strength was advancing greatly over everything together with fortune, and the end was near to which fortune, in her revolutions, was bound to arrive, Philopoemen, like a good helmsman braced against the wave, was forced in some respects to yield and give way to circumstances, but on most points he held out, and tried to draw those who were powerful in speech and action back toward freedom.
Aristaenus of Megalopolis, who had the greatest influence among the Achaeans, was always courting the Romans and thought the Achaeans ought not to oppose them or show themselves ungrateful; and it is said that in the council, while listening to him, Philopoemen kept silent and bore it heavily, until at last, overcome by anger, he said to Aristaenus, "Man, why do you hurry to see the fate of Greece fulfilled?"
When Manius, the Roman consul, who had defeated Antiochus, asked the Achaeans to allow the Lacedaemonian exiles to return, and Titus made the same request as Manius concerning the exiles, Philopoemen blocked it — not because he was hostile to the exiles, but because he wished this to be accomplished through himself and the Achaeans, and not as a favor granted by Titus or the Romans; and when he himself became general in the following year, he restored the exiles himself. So contentious and quarrelsome was his spirit even toward those in power.
Now in his seventieth year, and elected general of the Achaeans for the eighth time, he hoped not only to get through that term of office without war, but also that conditions would let him live out his remaining days undisturbed. For just as diseases seem to fade away along with the strength of the body, so in the Greek cities, as their power failed, the spirit of contention was likewise dying down.
Nevertheless some Nemesis, as it were, struck down this athlete just as he was running well toward the finish line of his life. For it is said that in some gathering, when those present were praising a man reputed to be formidable in generalship, Philopoemen said, "And how is it worth taking account of that man's words, who was taken alive by the enemy?"
A few days later Deinocrates of Messene, a man who had a private grudge against Philopoemen and was in any case burdensome to others because of his wickedness and lack of restraint, brought about the revolt of Messene from the Achaeans, and it was reported that he was about to seize a village called Colonis. Philopoemen happened to be at Argos, in a fever; but on learning of this he hastened to Megalopolis, covering more than four hundred stades in a single day.
And from there he immediately set out to help, taking with him the cavalry, who were the most distinguished of the citizens but quite young, and who campaigned as volunteers out of goodwill and admiration for Philopoemen. Riding toward Messene and near the hill of Evander,
meeting Deinocrates as he came against them, they routed him; but when the five hundred troops stationed to defend the Messenian countryside suddenly fell upon them, and the men already beaten rallied at the sight, these latter regrouped again on the hills. Philopoemen, fearing to be surrounded and sparing his cavalry, withdrew through difficult ground, himself bringing up the rear and often riding out against the enemy and altogether drawing their attention onto himself, while they did not dare to close with him but used shouts and encircling movements from a distance.
So, often falling back for the sake of the young men and sending them through one by one, he found himself, without noticing, cut off and isolated among many enemies. And no one ventured to engage him hand to hand, but pelted from afar and pushed onto steep, rock-strewn terrain, he struggled to hold his position and his horse grew exhausted.
As for himself, his old age, thanks to much training, was light and no hindrance at all to his safety; but on that occasion, sapped both by his bodily illness and by the exhausting march, his movements grown heavy and sluggish, he was pitched to the earth when his horse stumbled. The fall was hard and his head was injured, and he lay a long time without speech, so that the enemy, thinking him dead, set about turning over his body to strip it.
But when he raised his head and looked about, they closed in on him, wrenched his arms back, bound them, and marched him off, heaping insult and abuse on a man who could never even in a dream have expected to suffer such things at the hands of Deinocrates.
The townspeople, stirred to great excitement by the news, thronged toward the entrances; but when they beheld Philopoemen hauled along in a fashion beneath his renown and his past achievements and trophies, most of them were moved to pity and shared his grief, so much so that they wept and denounced the sway of human fortune as fickle and worth nothing at all.
And so, little by little, a spirit of compassion spread among many, as they recalled his former services, and the freedom he had restored to them when he drove out the tyrant Nabis. Yet a handful of men, seeking favor with Deinocrates, insisted that he ought to be put under torture and executed, branding him a savage and merciless enemy — and Deinocrates himself dreaded all the more that his captive might slip away after suffering such outrage and imprisonment at his hands.
Nevertheless, bringing him to the place called the Treasury, an underground chamber that received neither air nor light from outside nor had any doors, but was closed by a great stone rolled across it, there they placed him, and after they had rolled the stone into place they stationed armed men in a circle around it.
The Achaean cavalry, pulling themselves together after their flight, and finding no trace of Philopoemen — believing him dead — stopped for a long while, calling his name and telling one another that they were saving their own skins in a shameful and unjust way, having left behind to the enemy the general who had risked his life without stint for their sake,
then, advancing further and inquiring closely, they learned of his capture and reported it to the cities of the Achaeans, who, regarding it as a great disaster, resolved to demand the man back, sending an embassy to the Messenians, while they themselves prepared to take the field.
These, then, were their actions. But Deinocrates, fearing above all that time would prove Philopoemen's salvation, and wishing to forestall the Achaeans' demands, when night came and the crowd of Messenians had withdrawn, had the prison unlocked and dispatched a public slave bearing poison, with orders to offer it to him and remain there until it was drunk.
Philopoemen happened to be lying in his cloak, not asleep but held fast by grief and turmoil; and seeing a light and the man standing near him holding the cup of poison, he gathered himself with difficulty, weak as he was, and sat up. Taking the cup, he asked whether anything had been learned about the cavalry, and especially about Lycortas,
whether he had escaped; and when the man said that most of them had gotten away safely, he nodded his head, and looking gently at the man said, "You bring good news, if we have not fared entirely badly." And saying nothing else, uttering not a word more, he drank it off and lay back again, giving the poison little trouble, but quickly extinguished on account of his weakness.
When news of his death came to the Achaeans, a shared gloom and mourning gripped their cities; and the men of fighting age, assembling with the council of elders at Megalopolis, wasted no time whatsoever in seeking retribution, but with Lycortas chosen as general they marched into Messenian territory and laid it waste, until the Messenians collectively recovered their senses and took the Achaeans back in,
and Deinocrates, forestalling them, took his own life, while of the others, as many as had voted to kill Philopoemen died by their own hand, and as many as had voted also to torture him were seized by Lycortas to perish under torment. They burned his body and, gathering the remains into an urn, set out on the march back — not in disorder or as it happened, but blending a kind of triumphal procession together with the funeral rites.
For one could see men wearing garlands, and the same men weeping; one could see the enemy led along in bonds; and the urn itself, scarcely visible for the mass of ribbons and garlands upon it, was carried by Polybius, son of the Achaean general, with the foremost men of the Achaeans about him. The soldiers, themselves armed, with their horses adorned, followed along, neither downcast, as one might expect at so great a mourning, nor exulting in victory.
As they met people from the towns and villages along the way, who came out as if welcoming him home returning from a campaign, they touched the urn, and escorted it onward to Megalopolis. And when the elders, together with the women and children, mingled with them, a lamentation now spread through the whole army as it entered the city, which longed for the man and bore his loss heavily, thinking that it had lost along with him its primacy among the Achaeans.
So he was buried, as was fitting, with honor, and around his tomb the Messenian prisoners were stoned to death. And though there were many images of him and great honors which the cities had voted, a Roman, amid the disasters of Greece around Corinth, undertook to destroy them all and to prosecute him, as though he were still alive, on the charge of having been an enemy and ill-disposed toward the Romans,
but when arguments were made and Polybius spoke in answer to the accuser, neither Mummius nor the commissioners would consent to have the honors of a renowned man abolished, even though he had opposed Titus and Manius' circle in no small matters; but they, as it seems, distinguished virtue and honor from mere expediency, rightly and fittingly holding that reward and gratitude are owed by the benefited to those who help them, but honor is owed forever by good men to good men. So much concerning Philopoemen.