This very unjust and insolent demand threw the Achæans into a state of frenzy; even before Orestes had finished his speech, the council hastened to the market-place, calling upon the people to assemble, and it cannot excite wonder, though it is a proof of the utter want of common sense among the Achæans, that they fell upon the Roman ambassadors, and insultingly drove them out of the theatre. All the Lacedæmonians who happened to be in the city were arrested. After this the Achæans again marched into Laconia, where Menalcidas had, in the meantime, made away with himself, because he had broken a truce which he had been ordered to observe by the Romans.
At this time the Macedonian insurrection was not yet quelled, and fortune was still undecided. Metellus had not yet come over. Simultaneously the Third Punic War was going on; the Spaniards and Iberians were stirring; Masinissa’s family was suspected, and in short the Romans were pressed on all sides. Their cunning policy therefore was mildness: they said that they were willing to pardon the Achæans, if they would but acknowledge their guilt, and apologise. But almost the whole nation was now in a state of intoxication, “according to the words of Scripture, that God makes the nations intoxicated for their own destruction.” Critolaus the strategus, played the part of a hero, and inflamed the minds of the people—especially of the populace, which was already in commotion at Corinth. When the Roman ambassadors commenced speaking no one listened to them; they were obliged to stop, and as the tumult became too great, they went away. Critolaus, and still more, Diæus, now goaded the Achæans into the madness of declaring war against the Romans, and marching towards Thermopylæ. The war was decreed nominally against the Lacedæmonians, but in reality against the Romans.
We have only very scanty information about the course of this war; but the Excerpts of Porphyrogenitus from Polybius[c] will throw light upon it. “Posterity can form no conception,” says Polybius, “of the madness with which the war was carried on; it was as if men rushed into it for the purpose of perishing.”
Critolaus assembled a considerable army. The Bœotians, headed by the Thebans under the wretched Pytheas, and the Chalcidians, were the only Greeks that sided with the Achæans; the Ætolians and the other nations were neutral; the Lacedæmonians, on the other hand, were hostile towards the Achæans, for which reason all of the Achæans could not leave their country. The allied army advanced as far as Heraclea near Mount Œta, and laid siege to that town in order to protect Thermopylæ. But everything was there managed so senselessly, that when Metellus, who on being informed of this, without waiting for orders, had broken in from Macedonia with the rapidity of lightning, came to its relief, the Achæans under Diæus and Critolaus hastily fled back through the pass of Thermopylæ.
Metellus overtook them near Scarphe, attacked and defeated them so completely that within a few hours the Achæan army was utterly annihilated; many were slain, many were taken prisoners, and many dispersed in flight. Diæus fled, Critolaus was not to be found, having perhaps perished in a marsh. The whole army was scattered. An Arcadian contingent of one thousand men, which arrived too late, was carried away by the flight of the others, and a few days later, in the neighbourhood of Chæronea, it was partly taken and partly cut to pieces by the Romans. The Achæans fled in disorder into Peloponnesus. In Bœotia all the people, quitting the towns, took refuge in the mountains; Thebes was deserted; many made away with themselves from despair, and many implored the Romans to kill them, declaring themselves to be the authors of all the misfortunes.
Diæus succeeded Critolaus in the command of the army; he was a person of the utmost incapacity, and formidable only to those who obeyed him. He had recourse to the most extreme measures; he decreed that all judicial trials for debts should be stopped, all imprisoned debtors should be set free, and that no debt should become due before the close of the war—a sad decree for the wealthy, but it made him popular among the rabble. Twelve thousand slaves were to be manumitted and armed (they are called παράτροφοι—i.e., milk-brothers, the children of female slaves or nurses); and heavy war contributions were levied. Four thousand men were sent to Megara to defend that place, and Diæus himself assembled the army on the isthmus. When Metellus appeared, those four thousand soon evacuated Megara, and all the forces were concentrated on the isthmus close to the walls of Corinth.
[146 B.C.]
Greek Water Vessel
(Berlin Museum)