MESSENE AND PHILIP V. IN B.C. 215
[10.] Democracy being established at Messene, and the men of rank having been banished, while those who Political state of Messene. had received allotments on their lands obtained the chief influence in the government, those of the old citizens who remained found it very hard to put up with the equality which these men had obtained....
Gorgus of Messene, in wealth and extraction, was inferior to no one in the town; and had been a famous athlete in his time, The character of the Messenian athlete and statesman Gorgus. See ante, 5, [5]. far surpassing all rivals in that pursuit. In fact he was not behind any man of his day in physical beauty, or the general dignity of his manner of life, or the number of prizes he had won. Again, when he gave up athletics and devoted himself to politics and the service of his country, he gained no less reputation in this department than in his former pursuit. For he was removed from the Philistinism that usually characterises athletes, and was looked upon as in the highest degree an able and clear-headed politician....
[11.] Philip, king of the Macedonians, being desirous of seizing the acropolis of Messene, told the Philip V. of Macedon at Messene, B.C. 215. See Plutarch, Arat. 49-50. leaders of the city that he wished to see it and to sacrifice to Zeus, and accordingly walked up thither with his attendants and joined in the sacrifice. When, according to custom, the entrails of the slaughtered victims were brought to him, he took them in his hands, and, turning round a little to one side, held them out to Aratus and asked him “what he thought the sacrifices indicated? To quit the citadel or hold it?” Thereupon Demetrius struck in on the spur of the moment by saying, “If you have the heart of an augur,—to quit it as quick as you can: but if of a gallant and wise king, to keep it, lest if you quit it now you may never have so good an opportunity again: for it is by thus holding the two horns that you can alone keep the ox under your control.” By the “two horns” he meant Ithome and the Acrocorinthus, and by the “ox” the Peloponnese. Thereupon Philip turned to Aratus and said, “And do you give the same advice?” Aratus not making any answer at once, he urged him to speak his real opinion. After some hesitation he said, “If you can get possession of this place without treachery to the Messenians, I advise you to do so; but if, by the act of occupying this citadel with a guard, you shall ruin all the citadels, and the guard wherewith the allies were protected when they came into your hands from Antigonus” (meaning by that, confidence), “consider whether it is not better to take your men away and leave the confidence there, and with it guard the Messenians, and the other allies as well.” As far as his own inclination was concerned, Philip was ready enough to commit an act of treachery, as his own subsequent conduct proved: but having been sharply rebuked a little while before by the younger Aratus for his destruction of human life; and seeing that, on the present occasion, the elder spoke with boldness and authority, and begged him not to neglect his advice, he gave in from sheer shame, and taking the latter by his right hand, said, “Then let us go back the same way we came.”
[12.] I wish here to stop in my narrative in order to speak briefly of the character of Philip, Deterioration in the character of Philip V. See 4, [77]. because this was the beginning of the change and deterioration in it. For I think that no more telling example can be proposed to practical statesmen who wish to correct their ideas by a study of history. For the splendour of his early career, and the brilliancy of his genius, have caused the dispositions for good and evil displayed by this king to be more conspicuous and widely known throughout Greece than is the case with any other man; as well as the contrast between the results accompanying the display of those opposite tendencies.
Now that, upon his accession to the throne, Thessaly, Macedonia, and in fact all parts of his own kingdom were more thoroughly loyal and well disposed to him, young as he was on his succeeding to the government of Macedonia, than they had ever been to any of his predecessors, may be without difficulty inferred from the following fact. Though he was with extreme frequency forced to leave Macedonia by the Aetolian and Lacedaemonian wars, not only was there no disturbance in these countries, but not a single one of the neighbouring barbarians ventured to touch Macedonia. It would be impossible, again, to speak in strong enough terms of the affection of Alexander, Chrysogonus, and his other friends towards him; or that of the Epirotes, Acarnanians, and all those on whom he had within a short time conferred great benefits. On the whole, if one may use a somewhat hyperbolical phrase, I think it has been said of Philip with very great propriety, that his beneficent policy had made him “The darling of all Greece.” And it is a conspicuous and striking proof of the advantage of lofty principle and strict integrity, that the Cretans, having at length come to an understanding with each other and made a national alliance, selected Philip to arbitrate between them; and that this settlement was completed without an appeal to arms and without danger,—a thing for which it would be difficult to find a precedent in similar circumstances. From the time of his exploits at Messene all this was utterly changed. And it was natural that it should be so. For his purposes being now entirely reversed, it inevitably followed that men’s opinions of him should be reversed also, as well as the success of his various undertakings. This actually was the case, as will become evident to attentive students from what I am now about to relate....
[13.] Aratus seeing that Philip was now openly engaging in war with Rome, and entirely changed in his policy toward his allies, with difficulty diverted him from his intention by suggesting numerous difficulties and scruples.
I wish now to remind my readers of what, in my fifth Book, I put forward merely as a promise and unsupported statement, but which has now been confirmed by facts; in order that I may not leave any proposition of mine unproved or open to question. In the course of my history of the Aetolian war, 5, [12]. where I had to relate the violent proceedings of Philip in destroying the colonnades and other sacred objects at Thermus; and added that, in consideration of his youth, the blame of these measures ought not to be referred to Philip so much as to his advisers; I then remarked that the life of Aratus sufficiently proved that he would not have committed such an act of wickedness, but that such principles exactly suited Demetrius of Pharos; and I promised to make this clear from what I was next to narrate. I thereby designedly postponed the demonstration of the truth of my assertion, Recapitulation of the substance of book 7, viz. the treacherous dealings of Philip with the Messenians, B.C. 215. till I had come to the period of which I have just been speaking; which with the presence of Demetrius, and in the absence of Aratus, who arrived a day too late, Philip made the first step in his career of crime; and, as though from the first taste of human blood and murder and treason to his allies, was changed not into a wolf from a man, as in the Arcadian fable mentioned by Plato, Plato, Rep. 565 D. but from a king into a savage tyrant. But a still more decisive proof of the sentiments of these two men is furnished by the plot against the citadel of Messene, and may help us to make up our minds which of the two were responsible for the proceedings in the Aetolian war; and, when we are satisfied on that point, it will be easy to form a judgment on the differences of their principles.
[14.] For as in this instance, under the influence of Aratus, Philip refrained from actually breaking faith with the Messenians in regard to the citadel; and thus, to use a common expression, poured a little balm into the wide wound which his slaughters had caused: so in the Aetolian war, when under the influence of Demetrius, he sinned against the gods by destroying the objects consecrated to them, and against man by transgressing the laws of war; and entirely deserted his original principles, by showing himself an implacable and bitter foe to all who opposed him. The same remark applies to the Cretan business.[316] As long as he employed Aratus as his chief director, not only without doing injustice to a single islander, but without even causing them any vexation, he kept the whole Cretan people under control; and led all the Greeks to regard him with favour, owing to the greatness of character which he displayed. So again, when under the guidance of Demetrius, he became the cause of the misfortunes I have described to the Messenians, he at once lost the goodwill of the allies and his credit with the rest of Greece. Such a decisive influence for good or evil in the security of their government has the choice by youthful sovereigns of the friends who are to surround them; though it is a subject on which by some unaccountable carelessness they take not the smallest care....