Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/383

ARATUS. 375 restored eighty exiles who had been expelled by Nicocles, and no less than five hundred who had been driven out by former tjrants and had endured a long banishment, pretty nearly, by this time, of fifty years' duration. These returning, most of them very poor, were impatient to enter upon their former possessions, and, proceeding to their several farms and houses, gave great perjilexit}' to Aratus, who considered that the city without was envied for its liberty and aimed at by Antigonus, and within was full of disorder and sedition. Wherefore, as things stood, he thought it best to associate it to the Achaean community, and so, although Dorians, they of their own will took upon them the name and citizenship of the Achseans, who at that time had neither great repute nor much power. For the most of them lived in small towns, and their territory was neither large nor fruitful, and the neighboring sea was almost wholly with- out a harbor, breaking direct upon a rocky shore. But yet these above others made it appear that the Grecian courage was invincible, whensoever it could only have order and concord within itself and a prudent general to direct it. For though they had scarcely been counted as any part of the ancient Grecian power, and at this time did not equal the strength of one ordinary city, yet by prudence and unanimity, and because they knew how not to envy and malign, but to obey and follow him amongst them that was most eminent for virtue, they not only preserved their own hberty in the midst of so many great cities, military powers, and monarchies, but went on steaddy saving and delivering from slavery great num- bers of the Greeks. As for Aratus, he was in his behavior a true gtatesman, high-minded, and more intent upon the public than his private concerns, a bitter hater of tyrants, making the common good the rule and law of his friendships and