FOOTNOTES
[48] [Freeman[i] comparing the two great Leagues says: “The political conduct of the Achæan League with some mistakes and some faults, is, on the whole, highly honourable. The political conduct of the Ætolian League is, throughout the century in which we know it best, simply infamous.”]
[49] [Freeman[i] praises Marcus of Cerynea, as the probable founder or “Washington of the original League,” though obscured later by Aratus.]
[50] [Freeman[i] calls Aratus “the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer” of the League and bitterly compares his surrender of Corinth with Cavour’s delivery of Savoy and Nice to Napoleon III.]
[51] [“This infamous action,” says Polybius,[b] “was not for some time discovered to the world; for the poison was not of that kind which procures immediate death; but was one of those which weaken the habit of the body, and destroy life by slow degrees. Aratus himself was very sensible of the injury that he had received. ‘Such, Cephalo,’ he said to a favourite servant, ‘is the reward of the friendship which I have had for Philip.’ So great and excellent a thing is moderation, which disposed the sufferer, and not the author of the injury, to feel the greatest shame when he found that all the glorious actions which he had shared with Philip, in order to promote the service of that prince, had been at last so basely recompensed.
“Such was the end of this magistrate, who received after his death, not from his own country alone, but from the whole republic of the Achæans, all the honours that were due a man who had so often held the administration of their government, and performed such signal services for the State. For they decreed sacrifices to him, with the other honours that belong to heroes, and, in a word, omitting nothing that could serve to render his name immortal.”]
The Plain of Argos