Philopoemen

Moreover, the people from the cities and villages on the way came to meet them, as if receiving Philopoemen on his return from an expedition; they laid their hands upon his urn, and accompanied him to Megalopolis. And so when they had been joined by the old men and by the women and children, a lamentation at once spread through the entire army and into the city, which longed for the presence of Philopoemen and was grievously cast down at his death, feeling that with him it had lost its supremacy among the Achaeans.

Him they put to flight; He was buried, then, as was fitting, with conspicuous honours, and at his tomb the captive Messenians were stoned to death. Many statues of him were erected and many honours decreed him by the cities. All these a Roman, in the disastrous days of Greece following the fall of Corinth,[*](In 146 B.C., at the close of Rome’s war with the Achaean league.) attempted to have removed, and he attacked the memory of Philopoemen himself, accusing him, as if still alive, of having been a malevolent enemy of the Romans.

After the proposal had been discussed and Polybius had spoken in opposition to Philopoemen’s detractor, neither Mummius nor the members of the commission[*](A commission of ten, appointed by the Roman senate to settle the affairs of Greece. It was before this body that Philopoemen’s memory was attacked and defended.) would consent that the honours paid to an illustrious man should be obliterated, although he had made no little opposition to Flamininus and Manius. These judges distinguished, as it would appear, between virtue and necessity, between honour and advantage. They rightly and fitly considered that benefactors ought always to receive reward and gratitude from their beneficiaries, and good men honour from the good. So much concerning Philopoemen.