Antigonus, therefore, encamped at a distance, on the plain below, in order to watch the motions of the enemy, and to act according to circumstances. Cleomenes, reduced to the greatest distress for want of provisions, was forced to throw open his entrenchments, and, without further delay, to come to an engagement. All his skill and valour, which were eminently displayed on this occasion, could not save him from a complete defeat (221 B.C.). He fled first to Sparta, and from thence to Egypt; where, after various adventures, the loftiness of his spirit, which could not brook the indignities offered to him by the ministers of Ptolemy Philopator, brought him to an honourable but untimely end.[f]
Having eluded the vigilance of his guards he made a sally with his friends, thirteen in number, all with drawn swords, and raised the cry of liberty. The Alexandrian populace stared and applauded, as at a scene on the stage, but with as little thought of taking any part in the action. The Spartans killed the governor of the city, and another courtier, but after an ineffectual attempt to break open the prison in the citadel, finding themselves universally shunned, they abandoned their forlorn hope, and turned their swords against their own hearts. Panteus, the dearest of the king’s friends, consented at his request to survive until he saw that the others had breathed their last. Ptolemy, as soon as he had learned what had happened, ordered all the women and children belonging to the deceased to be put to death; and the young wife of Panteus is said to have paid the like pious offices to Cratesiclea, who was forced to witness the butchery of her two grandsons, as Cleomenes had received from her husband. The body of Cleomenes was flayed and hung on a cross, until, if we may believe Plutarch, an extraordinary occurrence awakened Ptolemy’s superstitious fears, gave occasion for new expiatory rites in the palace, and induced the Alexandrians to venerate Cleomenes as a hero.
Such indeed he was, when measured with them. As we turn from them to the proper subject of this history, we feel, as it were, that we are beginning again to breathe a healthier atmosphere: and we carry away a strengthened conviction, that great as were the evils which Greece suffered from the ill-regulated passion for liberty, it was still better to live there, than under the sceptre of the Ptolemies—among a people who can hardly be said to have a history, in any higher sense than a herd of animals, always prone, unless when goaded into fury.[d]
[221 B.C.]
During the absence of Antigonus, a multitude of Illyrians, and other barbarians, made an irruption into Macedon, and committed great devastation. This irruption hastened his return into his own dominions. In a decisive battle, the barbarians were defeated; but the Macedonian king, by straining his voice during the engagement, burst a blood-vessel. The consequent effusion of blood threw him into a languishing state, and he died in the space of a few days, lamented by all Greece.
Antigonus II was succeeded by Philip, the son of Demetrius, the last of the Macedonian kings of that name; a prince only in the seventeenth year of his age, intelligent, affable, munificent, and attentive to all the duties of the royal station. This excellent character was formed by a good natural disposition, cultivated by the instructions and example of Antigonus, who appointed him his successor on the Macedonian throne.
THE SOCIAL WAR
[221-216 B.C.]
The jealousy which the Ætolians had long entertained of the Achæan states, was increased by the importance which they had assumed from their alliance with Macedon. No sooner were they relieved from the dread of Antigonus, than they ravaged the Achæan coast, and committed depredations on all the neighbouring countries. Aratus having opposed to them the Achæan forces in vain, invoked and obtained the aid of the king of Macedon. Philip promised that as soon as he should have settled the affairs of his own kingdom, he would repair to Corinth, in order to meet the convention of the states in alliance with Achaia, that he might have an opportunity of settling with them a plan of future operations. In the meantime, the Ætolians, making a fresh irruption into Peloponnesus, sacked Cynætha, a city of Arcadia, put most of the inhabitants to the sword, and laid the place in ruins. The convention of the Achæan confederates, now assembled at Corinth, unanimously agreed that unless the Ætolians should make reparation, war should be declared against them, and the direction of it committed to the king of Macedon. Hence the origin of the Social War, so called from the association entered into by the several states engaged against Ætolia.
Philip commenced his operations with the siege of Ambracas, a fortress which commanded an extensive territory, belonging of right to Epirus, but now in the hands of the Ætolians. Having reduced this fortress, he restored it to the Epirots, and prepared to carry the war into Ætolia. The Ætolian spirit was not daunted either by the loss of Ambracas or the threats of Philip. They invaded Macedon, and made incursions into Achaia, which they reduced to the greatest distress. The mercenaries in the Achæan service had mutinied for want of pay; the Peloponnesian confederates became spiritless or disaffected; even the Messenians, in whose cause chiefly Achaia, had, at the beginning, taken up arms, were afraid to act against the Ætolians: whilst the Spartans, notwithstanding their engagements, at the late conventions, to Achaia, had now massacred, or sent into exile, all such of their own citizens as were in the interest of the Achæans, and openly declared against them. For the Spartans, amidst their greatest humiliation, had ever been impatient of the domination of Achaia, to which the haughtiness of that republic had, in all probability, very much contributed.