With these he rode back to Sparta, where he stopped in the market-place to tell his people that all was lost, and they had better make what terms they could. They should decide whether his life or death were best for him, and while they deliberated, he turned towards his own empty house, but he could not bear to enter it. A slave girl taken from Megalopolis ran out to bring him food and drink, but he would taste nothing, only being tired out he leant his arm sideways against a pillar and laid his head on it, and so he waited in silence till word was brought him that the citizens wished him to escape.
He quietly left Sparta and sailed for Alexandria, where the king, Ptolemy the Benefactor, at first was short and cold with him, because he would not cringe to him, but soon learned to admire him, treated him as a brother, promised him help to regain Sparta, and gave him a pension, which he spent in relieving other exiled Greeks. But the Benefactor died, and his son, Ptolemy Philopator, was a selfish wretch, who hated and dreaded the grave, stern man who was a continual rebuke to him, and who, the Alexandrians said, walked about like a lion in a sheepfold. He refused the fleet his father had promised, would not let Cleomenes go back alone to try his fortune on Antigonus’ death, and at last, on some report of his meaning to attack Cyrene,
had him shut up with his friends in a large room. They broke forth, and tried to fight their way to a ship, but they were hemmed in, no one came to their aid, and rather than be taken prisoners, they all fell on their own swords; and on the tidings, Ptolemy commanded all the women and children to be put to death. Cratesiclea saw her two grandsons slain before her eyes, and then crying, “Oh, children, where are ye gone?” herself held out her neck for the rope.
CHAP. XXXVII. PHILOPŒMEN, THE LAST OF THE GREEKS. b.c. 236–184.
he jealousy and rivalry of Aratus and the Achaians had made them put themselves under the power of Macedon, in order thus to overthrow Sparta. Aratus seemed to have lost all his skill and spirit, for when the robber Ætolians again made an attack on the Peloponnesus, he managed so ill as to have a great defeat; and the Achaians were forced again to call for the help of the Macedonians, whose king was now Philip, son to Antigonus.
A war went on for many years between the Macedonians, with the Achaians on the one hand and the Ætolians on the other. Aratus was a friend and adviser to Philip, but would gladly have loosened the yoke he had helped to lay on Greece. When the old Messenian town of Ithome fell into the hands of Philip, he went into the temple of Jupiter, with Aratus and another adviser called Demetrius the Pharian, to consult the sacrifices as to whether he should put a
garrison into Ithome to overawe Messenia. The omens were doubtful, and Philip asked his two friends what they thought. Demetrius said, “If you have the soul of a priest, you will restore the fort to the Messenians; if you have the soul of a prince, you will hold the ox by both his horns.”