Plutarch's Lives, Volume 4 (of 4)

by Plutarch

XIX. Aratus promised that he would give them sixty talents if successful, and that, in case of failure, if he and they survived, he would give each of them a house and a talent. As the money had to be deposited with Ægias for the satisfaction of Erginus, Aratus, who did not possess the sum necessary, and who did not wish to lead others to suspect his design by borrowing, took the greater part of his own plate and his wife’s jewels, and pledged them with Ægias for the money. Indeed, he was of so lofty a soul, and so passionately desirous of glory, that although he knew that Phokion and Epameinondas had gained the reputation of being the most just and noble of the Greeks, by refusing large bribes and not sacrificing honour to money, he preferred to expend his fortune secretly in enterprises in which he alone risked his life on behalf of the many, who did not even know what he was doing. Who, even in our own day, could refrain from admiring and longing to share the fortunes of a man who bought for himself so great a danger at so high a price, and who pawned the most valuable of his possessions in order that he might make his way into the fortress of his enemies by night and fight for his life there, gaining by his deposit the hope of glory, but nothing else?

XX. The plot, dangerous enough in itself, was rendered even more so at its very outset by a blunder. Technon, the servant of Aratus, was sent to examine the wall together with Diokles. He had never before met Diokles, but imagining that he knew his appearance from Erginus’s description of him as a man with close curly hair, a dark complexion, and no beard, went to the rendezvous, and waited outside the city, near the place called Ornis, for Erginus, who was to meet him there with his brother Diokles. In the meantime the brother of Erginus and Diokles, named Dionysius, who was not in the plot, and knew nothing of what was going on, happened to come up. He was very like Diokles, and Technon, influenced by the likeness, inquired of him if he were in any way connected with Erginus. As he answered that he was his brother, Technon was quite certain that he was addressing Diokles; and without asking his name or waiting for any further proof of identity he gave him his hand, spoke of the compact with Erginus, and asked him questions about it. He cleverly encouraged Technon in his error, agreed to everything that he said, and, turning round, walked with him towards the city without exciting his suspicions. When he was close to the gate, and had all but inveigled Technon through it, it chanced that Erginus met them. Perceiving the trick which his brother had played, and the danger in which Technon was placed, he warned him by a sign to make his escape, and both of them, running away at full speed, got safe back to Aratus. Yet he did not despair, but at once sent Erginus to take some money to Dionysius, and to beg him to hold his tongue. Erginus accomplished his commission, and brought Dionysius back with him to Aratus. When he arrived there they would not let him go again, but kept him a close prisoner, while they themselves prepared to make the attempt.

XXI. When all was ready, Aratus ordered the greater part of his force to pass the night under arms, and himself with a chosen body of four hundred men, few of whom were in the secret, proceeded towards the gates of Corinth, near the temple of Hera. The time was the height of summer. The moon was at the full, and as the night was clear and cloudless, they began to fear that the light gleaming from their arms would betray them to the sentinels. However, when the leading men were near to the wall a fog came up from the sea, and enveloped the whole city and its neighbourhood. Now, the men all sat down and took off their shoes; for men who mount ladders with naked feet make very little noise and are not so liable to slip. Meanwhile Erginus, with seven youths dressed as wayfaring men, made his way up to the gate unsuspected. They killed the keeper of the gate, and the guard: while at the same time the scaling-ladders were placed against the walls. Aratus hastily crossed the walls with a hundred men. Bidding the remainder follow as fast as they could, he ordered the ladders to be drawn up, and, followed by his hundred men, ran through the town to the citadel, overjoyed at having got so far without raising an alarm, and already certain of success. While they were still some distance off, they met a patrol of four men carrying a light. These men could not see them because they were in the shadow of the moon, but the four men were clearly visible as they marched straight towards them. Aratus now drew his force a little aside among some ruins and low walls, so as to form an ambush, and set upon the men. Three were killed on the spot, but the fourth, though wounded in the head by a blow from a sword, ran away shouting that the enemy were within the walls. Soon after this trumpets were sounded, the whole city was disturbed, and all the streets became thronged with men running to and fro, while many lights appeared, some in the lower town, and some in the citadel above, and a confused murmur of voices was heard on every side.

XXII. While this was going on, Aratus persevered in his march, and was toiling laboriously up the cliff. At first he proceeded slowly and with difficulty, without making any real progress, because he had entirely missed the path, which wound about under the shadow of the precipitous rocks by many turnings and windings up to the citadel. At this moment it is said that the moon shone through the clouds and threw her light upon the most difficult part of the ascent in a wonderful manner, until Aratus reached the part of the wall of the citadel which he wished to attack. When he was there, she again concealed and shaded her rays behind a barrier of clouds. While this was being done, the three hundred men of Aratus’s force, who had been left outside the gate near the temple of Hera, when they made their way into the city, which was now full of confusion and lights, were not able to find the same path which had been followed by the others, or any trace of the way by which they had gone, and so in a body crouched down in a dark corner in the shade of a cliff, and waited there in great anxiety and alarm: for now the party led by Aratus was being shot at by the garrison of the citadel, and was fighting with them hand to hand, and the shouts of the battle could be plainly heard below, though the echoes of the mountains made it impossible to tell from what quarter the noise proceeded. While they were at a loss to know which way to turn, Archelaus, the leader of the Macedonian troops, marched out with a large force, with loud shouts and trumpets sounding, to attack the party under Aratus, and marched past where the three hundred lay as it were in ambush. They rushed out, charged the Macedonians, killed the first of them, and drove Archelaus and the remainder before them panic-stricken, until they dispersed themselves about the city. No sooner had this victory been won, than Erginus arrived from the citadel, announcing that Aratus was engaged with the enemy, who were offering a stubborn resistance, that a great battle was going on at the wall itself, and that immediate assistance was required. They at once bade him lead them, and mounted the hill, shouting to their friends to let them know who they were, and to encourage them. The full moon, too, as it shone upon their arms, made their numbers appear greater to the enemy on account of the length of the path, and the midnight echoes made their shouts appear to come from a much larger party of men. At last they joined their friends above, and by a united effort drove out the enemy, won the heights, and gained possession of the citadel just as day was dawning. Soon the sun rose upon their victory, and the remainder of Aratus’s force from Sikyon came up, and was welcomed by the Corinthians, who opened their gates to them, and assisted them to capture the soldiers of the Macedonian garrison.

XXIII. When all appeared to be safe, Aratus descended from the citadel to the theatre, where an enormous multitude of persons was collected, eager to see him and to hear the speech which he was about to address to the Corinthians. He placed a guard of Achæans on each side of the stage, and himself appeared in the middle, still wearing his corslet, and pale with the labours of a sleepless night, so that the triumph and delight which he felt were weighed down by sheer bodily lassitude. His appearance was greeted with enthusiastic applause, and, shifting his spear into his right hand, and slightly leaning his body against it, he stood for a long time silent, receiving the plaudits and shouts of those who praised his courage and congratulated him on his good fortune. When they had ceased and resumed their seats, he drew himself up and made them a speech worthy of the occasion, on behalf of the Achæan league, in which he prevailed upon the Corinthians to join the league, and gave up to them the keys of their gates which now came into their possession for the first time since the days of king Philip. He dismissed Archelaus, who had been taken prisoner, but put Theophrastus to death because he refused to leave his post. Persæus, when the citadel was taken, escaped to Kenchreæ. Afterwards it is said that in philosophic conversation, when some one said that he thought that the philosopher was the only true general, he answered, “By heaven, this once used to please me more than any other of Zeno’s aphorisms, but I have changed my mind since the refutation of it which I received from a young man of Sikyon.” This anecdote of Persæus is related by most historians.

XXIV. Aratus now at once made himself master of the temple of Hera, and of Lechæum, where he seized a fleet of five-and-twenty ships belonging to King Antigonus, and sold five hundred horses and four hundred Syrians whom he found there. The Achæans now garrisoned the citadel of Corinth with a force of four hundred heavy-armed soldiers, and with a pack of fifty hounds and as many huntsmen, who were all kept in the citadel.[593]

The Romans in their admiration of Philopœmen used to call him the last of the Greeks, as though no great actions were performed in Greece after his time: but I should be inclined to say that this was both the last and the most remarkable of all the great achievements of the Greeks, for both in the daring with which it was accomplished, and the good fortune with which it was attended, it will bear comparison with the noblest of deeds, as was at once proved by its results. Megara revolted from Antigonus and joined Aratus, Troezene and Epidaurus became members of the Achæan league, and Aratus made his first campaign by an expedition into Attica, in the course of which he crossed into Salamis and laid it waste, being able to make what use he pleased of the power of the Achæan league, now that it was no longer, as it were, locked up in Peloponnesus. He sent back all the freemen whom he captured to Athens without ransom, hoping to rouse them to revolt against the Macedonians. He also brought Ptolemy into alliance with the Achæan league, and constituted him commander-in-chief of their forces by land and by sea. His influence with the Achæans was so great, that, since it was illegal to elect him as their chief every year, they elected him every other year, while practically they followed his advice in all their transactions; for they saw that he preferred neither wealth, nor fame, nor the friendship of kings, nor the advantage of his own native country to the furtherance of the prosperity of the Achæans. He conceived that cities which by themselves were weak might obtain safety by means of one another, bound together by their common interest, and that just as the various parts of the human body live and move when connected with one another, but waste away and perish when cut asunder, so cities are ruined by isolation, and prosper by confederation, when they form parts of one great body, and adopt a common line of policy.

XXV. Observing that the most famous of the neighbouring cities were independent, he became grieved that the Argives lived under the rule of a despot, and began to plot the destruction of Aristomachus, their ruler; wishing also to bestow its freedom upon the city to which he owed his education, and to gain it over to the Achæan league. Men were found who dared to make the attempt, chief among whom were Æschylus and Charimenes the soothsayer, but they had no swords, because the despot had prohibited the possession of arms to the citizens under severe penalties. However, Aratus prepared at Corinth a number of small daggers, which he caused to be sewn up in pack-saddles. He then placed the saddles on pack-horses and sent them to Argos, laden with ordinary merchandise.

But Charimenes the soothsayer took another person into the plot, which so enraged Æschylus and his party that they determined to act alone, and would have nothing more to do with Charimenes. In anger at this treatment he betrayed his comrades just as they were on the point of attacking the despot, yet most of them had time to make their way out of the market-place and escape to Corinth. Shortly afterwards Aristomachus was assassinated by his own servants, and was immediately succeeded by Aristippus, a more cruel tyrant than himself. Aratus upon hearing of this at once made a hurried march to Argos at the head of as many Achæans as he could collect, hoping to find the city ready to join him. As, however, most of the Argives were now accustomed to the loss of their liberty, and no one answered his appeal, he retired, having done no more than expose the Achæans to the charge of making a warlike invasion in time of peace. For this they were tried before the Mantineans as judges, and, as Aratus did not appear, Aristippus, who was prosecutor, won his cause and got a fine of thirty minæ laid upon the Achæans. As he both hated and feared Aratus himself, he now, with the connivance of King Antigonus, endeavoured to have him assassinated; and they soon had their emissaries everywhere, watching their opportunity. There is, however, no such certain safeguard for a ruler as the love of his people; for when both the masses and the leading men have learned not to fear their chief, but to fear for him, he sees with many eyes, hears with many ears, and soon gains intelligence of any conspiracies. And in this place I wish to stop my narrative for a moment, and describe the mode of life which Aristippus was compelled to lead in consequence of being a despot, and possessing that position of absolute ruler which men are wont so greatly to admire and envy.

XXVI. Aristippus had Antigonus for his ally, kept a large force on foot for his own protection, and left none of his enemies alive in the city of Argos. He used to make his body-guard and household troops encamp in the porticoes outside his palace, and always, after supper, sent all his servants out of the room, locked the door himself, and betook himself with his mistress to a little upper chamber which was reached by a trapdoor, upon which he placed his bed and slept, as one may expect, a disturbed and frightened sleep. His mistress’s mother used to take away the ladder by which they mounted, and lock it up in another room. At daybreak she used to bring it back again, and call down this glorious monarch, who came out like a snake out of his den.