Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/827

P H I P H I 791 by sea, Philopcernen landed and surprised a part of the tyrant s forces not far from that town, burned their camp, and slew many. After ravaging Laconia he marched on Sparta in the hope of compelling Nabis to raise the siege. But Nabis took Gythium and awaited the Achaeans in a pass. Philopoemen was surprised, but by skilful general ship he not only extricated himself but routed the Spartans and cut off most of the fugitives. When Nabis was assassinated Philopoemen hastened to Sparta and induced it to join the Achaean League. In the same year (192) Antiochus, king of Asia, crossed into Greece to fight the Romans. By the advice, or at least with the concurrence, of Philopoemen the Achaeans rejected the king s proposal that they should remain neutral, and declared war against him and his allies the /Etolians. In the following year Diophanes, general of the League, hearing that Sparta showed signs of revolt, marched against it accompanied by Flamininus. Philopoemen had remonstrated in vain against this step, and he now boldly threw himself into Sparta, composed the disturbances, and closed the gates against Diophanes and Flamininus. The grateful Spartans offered Philopcernen a splendid present, but he bade them keep such bribes for their enemies. In 189 Philopcemen, again general, proposed and carried in an assembly, which he summoned at Argos, a decree that the general assembly of the League should meet in all the cities of the League in rotation, instead of, as hitherto, at ^Kgeum only. This measure was obviously meant to deprive Achaea of its position as head of the League, and to make the allied cities more equal. In the same year the Spartans made an unsuccessful attack on one of the maritime towns occu pied by the exiles. As these towns were under Achaean protection the League required Sparta to surrender the authors of the attack. Far from complying, the Spartans put to death thirty partisans of Philopoemen and re nounced their connexion with the League. The Achaeans declared war, and in the following spring (188) Philo pcemen, having been re-elected general, marched against Sparta, which was forced to pull down its walls, to expel the foreign mercenaries and the slaves whom the tyrants had freed, to exchange the laws and institutions of Lycurgus for those of the Achaeans, and, lastly, to receive back the exiles. It would seem that on this occasion Philopoemen allowed his hatred of the old enemy of Megalopolis to overpower his judgment ; his conduct was as unwise as it was cruel, for it afforded the Romans what Philopoemen had hitherto been careful not to furnish them with a pretext for meddling in the affairs of Greece. His treat ment of Sparta was censured by the senate, and Roman officers in Greece remonstrated with the League on the subject. In 183, the last year of his life, Philopoemen was general for the eighth time (his seventh generalship perhaps fell in 187, but this is uncertain). He lay sick of a fever at Argos when word came that Messene, under Dinocrates, had revolted from the League. At first he despatched his friend arid partisan Lycortas to put down the revolt, then growing impatient, in spite of the fever and his seventy years, he hurried in a single day to Megalopolis, and, taking with him the cavalry of his native town, entered Messenia and routed Dinocrates. But, the enemy being reinforced, he was compelled to fall back over broken ground. In his anxiety to cover the retreat of his troopers he was left alone, and, his horse stumbling, he was thrown to the ground and taken prisoner. He was conducted with his arms pinioned through the streets of Messene and cast into a dungeon. At nightfall on the second day an executioner was sent to him with a cup of poison. Seeing the light and the executioner standing by, Philopoemen sat up with difficulty, for he was weak, and, taking the cup in his hand, he asked the man, What tidings of the cavalry 1 ? Being told that they had mostly escaped, he bowed his head and said that it was well. Then he drained the cup and lay down to die. Swift vengeance overtook his murderers. The indignant Acha ans, under Lycortas, ravaged Messenia, and when the capital surrendered all who had had part in the murder of Philopcemen were obliged to kill themselves. Dinocrates had already com mitted suicide. The body of Philopcemen was burned, and his bones conveyed to Megalopolis with every mark of respect and sorrow, the urn, almost hidden in garlands, being borne by his fellow-townsman, the historian Polybius. Numerous statues were set up and honours decreed to him in the cities of the League. After the destruction of Corinth by Mummius some one proposed to destroy the statues of a man who had been no friend of the Romans ; but the Roman general rejected the base proposal. Philopoemen s lot was cast in evil days. Hardly were the Achseans freed by him from Macedonia when they had to submit to Rome. His policy towards the Romans was marked by a prudence and moderation hardly to be expected from one of his passionate nature. He saw that the final subjugation of Greece was inevitable, but he did his best to delay it, not by a war which would only have precipi tated the catastrophe, but by giving the Romans no ground for interference, and by resisting their encroachments, so far as this could be clone, by an appeal to reason and justice. Our authorities for the life of Philopoemen arc Polybius, Livy, Plutarch, a -id Pausanias. Polybius s work on Philopoemen was in three book , but it is lost. Plutarch s biography, like the account in Pausanias (viii. 49-51), is based on Polybius. (J. G. FR. ) PHILOSOPHY is a term whose meaning and scope have varied very considerably according to the usage of different authors and different ages ; and it would hardly be possible, even having regard to the present time alone, to define and divide the subject in such a way as to command the adhesion of all the philosophic schools. The aim of the present article will be, however, leaving controversial details as far as possible in the background, to state generally the essential nature of philosophy as distinguished from the special sciences, and to indicate the main divisions into Avhich, as matter of historical fact, its treatment has fallen. Historical Use of the Term. The most helpful introduc tion to such a task is afforded by a survey of the steps by which philosophy differentiated itself, in the history of Greek thought, from the idea of knowledge and culture in general. These steps may be traced in the gradual specification of the term. The tradition which assigns the first employment of the word to Pythagoras has hardly any claim to be regarded as authentic ; and the somewhat self-conscious modesty to which Diogenes Laertius attri butes the choice of the designation is, in all probability, a piece of etymology crystallized into narrative. It is true that, as a matter of fact, the earliest uses of the word (the verb <<Aoo-o(ea> occurs in Herodotus and Thucydicles) imply the idea of the pursuit of knowledge ; but the distinction between the o-oc^os, or wise man, and the <tAo cro<os, or lover of wisdom, appears first in the Platonic writings, and lends itself naturally to the so-called Socratic irony. The same thought is to be found in Xenophon, and is doubtless to be attributed to the historical Socrates. But the word soon lost this special implication. What is of real interest to us is to trace the progress from the idea of the philosopher as occupied with any and every department of knowledge to that which assigns him a special kind of knowledge as his province. A specific sense of the word first meets us in Plato, who defines the philosopher as one who appre hends the essence or reality of things in opposition to the man who dwells in appearances and the shows of sense. The philosophers, he says, "are those who are able to gras- p the eternal and immutable"; they are "those who set their