Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/491

CLEOMENES. 483 the other side, spoke violently against him to the assem- bly, he hastily dislodged, and sent a trumpeter to de- nounce war against the Acheeans, not to Argos, but to iEgium, as Aratus writes, that he might not give them notice enough to make provision for their defence. There had also been a movement among the Achaeans them- selves, and the cities were eager for revolt ; the common people expecting a division of the land, and a release from their debts, and the chief men being in many places ill-disposed to Aratus, and some of them angry and indig- nant with him, for having brought the Macedonians into Peloponnesus. Encouraged by these misunderstandings, Cleomenes invaded Achoea, and first took Pellene by sur- prise, and beat out the Achaean garrison, and afterwards brought over Pheneus and Penteleum to his side. Now the Achaeans, suspecting some treacherous designs at Corinth and Sicyon, sent their horse and mercenaries out of Argos, to have an eye upon those cities, and they them- selves went to Argos, to celebrate the Nemean games. Cleomenes, advertised of this march, and hoping, as it afterward fell out, that upon an unexpected advance to the city, now busied in the solemnity of the games, and thronged with numerous spectators, he should raise a con- siderable terror and confusion amongst them, by night marched with his army to the walls, and taking the quar- ter of the town called Aspis, which lies above the theatre, w T ell fortified, and hard to be approached, he so terrified them that none offered to resist, but they agreed to ac- cept a garrison, to give twenty citizens for hostages, and to assist the Lacedaemonians, and that he should have the chief command. This action considerably increased his reputation and his power ; for the ancient Spartan kings, though they many ways endeavored to effect it, could never bring Argos to be permanently theirs. And Pyrrhus, the most