Philopoemen

As for what he got from his campaigning, he used to spend it on horses, or armour, or the ransoming of captives; but his own property he sought to increase by agriculture, which is the justest way to make money. Nor did he practise agriculture merely as a side issue, but he held that the man who purposed to keep his hands from the property of others ought by all means to have property of his own. He also listened to the discourses and applied himself to the writings of philosophers—not all of them, but those whom he thought helpful to him in his progress towards virtue.

And as for the poems of Homer, whatever in them was thought by him to rouse and stimulate the activities of the soul which made for valour, to this he would apply himself. Among other writings, however, he was most of all devoted to the Tactics of Evangelus, and was familiar with the histories of Alexander, thinking that literature was conducive to action, unless it were prosecuted merely to while away the time and afford themes for fruitless small talk.

Indeed, he would ignore the charts and diagrams for the illustration of tactical principles, and get his proofs and make his studies on the ground itself. The ways in which places slope to meet one another, and level plains come to an abrupt end, and all the vicissitudes and shapes of a phalanx when it is elongated and contracted again in the vicinity of ravines or ditches or narrow defiles, these he would investigate by himself as he wandered about, and discuss them with his companions.

For it would seem that he brought more zeal than was necessary to the study of military science, setting his affections on war as affording a most manifold basis for the practice of virtue, and despising as unsuccessful men those who left it to others.

He was now thirty years of age, when Cleomenes, King of the Lacedaemonians, suddenly attacked Megalopolis by night, forced the guard, made his way into the city, and occupied the market-place. Philopoemen came to the help of the citizens, but had not force enough to drive the enemy out, although he fought with vigour and daring. He did, however, steal the citizens out of the city, as it were, by attacking their pursuers and drawing Cleomenes against himself, so that with the greatest difficulty he got away last of all, after losing his horse and receiving a wound.

Moreover, when Cleomenes sent to them at Messene, whither they had gone, and offered to give them back their city with its valuables and their territory, Philopoemen, seeing that the citizens would be glad to accept the offer and were eager to go back home, opposed and dissuaded them from it, showing them that Cleomenes was not so much offering to restore their city as he was trying to win over to himself its citizens, that so he might have the city also more securely in his possession; for he would not be able, Philopoemen said, to remain there and guard empty houses and walls, but the solitude would force him to abandon these also. By this speech Philopoemen diverted the citizens from their purpose, but furnished Cleomenes with an excuse for devastating and demolishing the greater part of the city and marching off loaded with booty.[*](See the Cleomenes, xxiv. )

Soon, however, Antigonus the king marched with the Achaeans to give aid against Cleomenes, and finding that his enemy was occupying the heights and passes about Sellasia, he drew up his forces near by with the purpose of attacking him and forcing a passage.[*](Cf. the Cleomenes, xxvii. and xxviii. The battle of Sellasia was fought in 221 B.C.) Philopoemen was stationed among the Macedonian cavalry with his own fellow-citizens,[*](According to Polybius ii. 66. 7, a thousand Achaeans and as many Megalopolitans were stationed with the Macedonian cavalry.) and had as a support the Illyrians, a large body of good fighters, who closed up the line of battle.

They had been ordered to lie quietly in reserve until, from the other wing, a signal should be made by the king with a scarlet coat stretched upon a spear. But the Illyrians, at the command of their officers, tried to force back the Lacedaemonians, while the Achaeans, as they had been ordered to do, kept quietly waiting at their post. Therefore Eucleidas, the brother of Cleomenes, who noticed the gap thus made in the enemies’ line, quickly sent round the most agile of his light-armed troops, with orders to attack the Illyrians in the rear and rout them, now that they had lost touch with the cavalry.