Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/489

CLEOMENES. 481 show some capability of delivering itself from the inso- lence and rapacity of the Macedonians. For Aratus, (whether fearing or distrusting Cleomenes, or envying his unlooked-for success, or thinking it a disgrace for him who had commanded thirty-three years, to have a young man succeed to all his glory and his power, and be head of that government which he had been raising and set- tling so many years,) first endeavored to keep the Achseans from closing with Cleomenes ; but when they would not hearken to him, fearing Cleomenes's daring spirit, and thinking the Lacedamionians' proposals to be very reasonable, who designed only to reduce Peloponne- sus to its old model, upon this he took his last refuge in an action which was unbecoming any of the Greeks, most dishonorable to him, and most unworthy his former bravery and exploits. For he called Antigonus into Greece, and filled Peloponnesus with Macedonians, whom he himself, when a youth, having beaten their garrison out of the castle of Corinth, had driven from the same country. And there had been constant suspicion and variance between him and all the kings, and of Antigo- nus, in particular, he has said a thousand dishonorable things in the commentaries he has left behind him. And though he declares himself how he suffered considerable losses, and underwent great clangers, that he might free Athens from the garrison of the Macedonians, yet, after- wards, he brought the very same men armed into his own country, and his own house, even to the women's apart- ment. He would not endure that one of the family of Hercules, and king of Sparta, and' one that had reformed the polity of his country, as it were, from a disordered harmony, and retuned it to the plain Doric measure and rule of life of Lycurgus, should be styled head of the Tritceans and Sicyonians ; and whilst he fled the barley- cake and coarse coat, and, which were his chief accusa- VOL. iv. 31