Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.2, 1865).djvu/407

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FLAMININUS.
399

tresses, have rescued her out of the hands of insulting lords and tyrants, and reinstated her in her former liberties.[1]

Thus they entertained their tongues and thoughts; whilst Titus by his actions made good what had been proclaimed. For he immediately despatched away Lentulus to Asia, to set the Bargylians free, Titillius to Thrace, to see the garrisons of Philip removed out of the towns and islands there, while Publius Villius set sail, in order to treat with Antiochus about the freedom of the Greeks under him. Titus himself passed on to Chalcis, and sailing thence to Magnesia, dismantled the garrisons there, and surrendered the government into the people's hands. Shortly after, he was appointed at Argos to preside in the Nemean games, and did his part in the management of that solemnity singularly well; and made a second publication there by the crier, of liberty to the Greeks; and, visiting all the cities, he exhorted them to the practice of obedience to law, of constant justice, and unity, and friendship one towards another. He suppressed their factions, brought home their political exiles; and, in short, his conquest over the Macedonians did not seem to give him a more lively pleasure, than to find himself prevalent in reconciling Greeks with Greeks; so that their liberty seemed now the least part of the kindness he conferred upon them.

The story goes, that when Lycurgus the orator had rescued Xenocrates the philosopher from the collectors who were hurrying him away to prison for non-payment of the alien tax,[2] and had them punished for the license

  1. Many stories ascribed the origin of Rome actually to Greek settlers. But it would appear that the Greek might even, in consideration of the close connection between the heroes on both sides in the Iliad, regard a Trojan descent as a sort of relationship.
  2. The metæcium}} paid at Athens, by all metæci or resident foreigners: an annual charge of twelve drachmas on each family.