Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
His person was not, as some fancy, deformed; for his likeness is yet
to be seen at Delphi. The mistake of the hostess of Megara was
occasioned, it would seem, merely by his easiness of temper and his
plain manners. This hostess having word brought her, that the
General of the Achaeans was coming to her house in the absence of
her husband, was all in a hurry about providing his supper.
Philopoemen, in an ordinary cloak, arriving in this point of time,
she took him for one of his own train who had been sent on before,
and bid him lend her his hand in her household work. He forthwith
threw off his cloak, and fell to cutting up the fire-wood. The
husband returning, and seeing him at it, "What," says he, "may this
mean, O Philopoemen?" "I am," replied he in his Doric dialect,
"paying the penalty of my ugly looks." Titus Flamininus, jesting
with him upon his figure, told him one day, he had well-shaped hands
and feet, but no belly: and he was indeed slender in the waist. But
this raillery was meant to the poverty of his fortune; for he had
good horse and foot, but often wanted money to entertain and pay
them. These are the common anecdotes told of Philopoemen.
The love of honor and distinction was, in his character, not
unalloyed with feelings of personal rivalry and resentment. He made
Epaminondas his great example, and came not far behind him in
activity, sagacity, and incorruptible integrity; but his hot
contentious temper continually carried him out of the bounds of that
gentleness, composure, and humanity which had marked Epaminondas, and
this made him thought a pattern rather of military than of civil
virtue. He was strongly inclined to the life of a soldier even from
his childhood, and he studied and practiced all that belonged to it,
taking great delight in managing of horses, and handling of weapons.
Because he was naturally fitted to excel in wrestling, some of his
friends and tutors recommended his attention to athletic exercises.
But he would first be satisfied whether it would not interfere with
his becoming a good soldier. They told him, as was the truth, that
the one life was directly opposite to the other; the requisite state
of body, the ways of living, and the exercises all different: the
professed athlete sleeping much, and feeding plentifully, punctually
regular in his set times of exercise and rest, and apt to spoil all
by every little excess, or breach of his usual method; whereas the
soldier ought to train himself in every variety of change and
irregularity, and, above all, to bring himself to endure hunger and
loss of sleep without difficulty. Philopoemen, hearing this, not
only laid by all thoughts of wrestling and contemned it then, but
when he came to be general, discouraged it by all marks of reproach
and dishonor he could imagine, as a thing which made men, otherwise
excellently fit for war, to be utterly useless and unable to fight on
necessary occasions.
When he left off his masters and teachers, and began to bear arms in
the incursions which his citizens used to make upon the
Lacedaemonians for pillage and plunder, he would always march out the
first, and return the last. When there was nothing to do, he sought
to harden his body, and make it strong and active by hunting, or
laboring in his ground. He had a good estate about twenty furlongs
from the town, and thither he would go every day after dinner and
supper; and when night came, throw himself upon the first mattress in
his way, and there sleep as one of the laborers. At break of day he
would rise with the rest, and work either in the vineyard or at the
plow; from thence return again to the town, and employ his time with
his friends, or the magistrates in public business. What he got in
the wars, he laid out on horses, or arms, or in ransoming captives;
but endeavored to improve his own property the justest way, by
tillage; and this not slightly, by way of diversion, but thinking it
his strict duty, so to manage his own fortune, as to be out of the
temptation of wronging others.
He spent much time on eloquence and philosophy, but selected his
authors, and cared only for those by whom he might profit in virtue.
In Homer's fictions his attention was given to whatever he thought
apt to raise the courage. Of all other books he was most devoted to
the commentaries of Evangelus on military tactics, and also took
delight, at leisure hours, in the histories of Alexander; thinking
that such reading, unless undertaken for mere amusement and idle
conversation, was to the purpose for action. Even in speculations on
military subjects it was his habit to neglect maps and diagrams, and
to put the theorems to practical proof on the ground itself. He
would be exercising his thoughts, and considering, as he traveled,
and arguing with those about him of the difficulties of steep or
broken ground, what might happen at rivers, ditches, or
mountain-passes, in marching in close or in open, in this or in that
particular form of battle. The truth is, he indeed took an
immoderate pleasure in military operations and in warfare, to which
he devoted himself, as the special means for exercising all sorts of
virtue, and utterly contemned those who were not soldiers, as drones
and useless in the commonwealth.
When he was thirty years of age, Cleomenes, king of the
Lacedaemonians, surprised Megalopolis by night, forced the guards,
broke in, and seized the marketplace. Philopoemen came out upon the
alarm, and fought with desperate courage, but could not beat the
enemy out again; yet he succeeded in effecting the escape of the
citizens, who got away while he made head against the pursuers, and
amused Cleomenes, till, after losing his horse and receiving several
wounds, with much ado he came off himself, being the last man in the
retreat. The Megalopolitans escaped to Messene, whither Cleomenes
sent to offer them their town and goods again. Philopoemen
perceiving them to be only too glad at the news, and eager to return,
checked them with a speech, in which he made them sensible, that what
Cleomenes called restoring the city, was, rather, possessing himself
of the citizens, and through their means securing also the city for
the future. The mere solitude would, of itself, erelong force him
away, since there was no staying to guard empty houses and naked
walls. These reasons withheld the Megalopolitans, but gave Cleomenes
a pretext to pillage and destroy a great part of the city, and carry
away a great booty.
Awhile after king Antigonus coming down to succor the Achaeans, they
marched with their united forces against Cleomenes; who, having
seized the avenues, lay advantageously posted on the hills of
Sellasia. Antigonus drew up close by him, with a resolution to force
him in his strength. Philopoemen, with his citizens, was that day
placed among the horse, next to the Illyrian foot, a numerous body of
bold fighters, who completed the line of battle, forming, together
with the Achaeans, the reserve. Their orders were to keep their
ground, and not engage till from the other wing, where the king
fought in person, they should see a red coat lifted up on the point
of a spear. The Achaeans obeyed their order, and stood fast; but the
Illyrians were led on by their commanders to the attack. Euclidas,
the brother of Cleomenes, seeing the foot thus severed from the
horse, detached the best of his light-armed men, commanding them to
wheel about, and charge the unprotected Illyrians in the rear. This
charge putting things in confusion, Philopoemen, considering those
light-armed men would be easily repelled, went first to the king's
officers to make them sensible what the occasion required. But they
not minding what he said, but slighting him as a hare-brained fellow,
(as indeed he was not yet of any repute sufficient to give credit to
a proposal of such importance,) he charged with his own citizens, and
at the first encounter disordered, and soon after put the troops to
flight with great slaughter. Then, to encourage the king's army
further, to bring them all upon the enemy while he was in confusion,
he quitted his horse, and fighting with extreme difficulty in his
heavy horseman's dress, in rough uneven ground, full of watercourses
and hollows, had both his thighs struck through with a thonged
javelin. It was thrown with great force, so that the head came out
on the other side, and made a severe, though not a mortal, wound.
There he stood awhile, as if he had been shackled, unable to move.
The fastening which joined the thong to the javelin made it difficult
to get it drawn out, nor would any about him venture to do it. But
the fight being now at the hottest, and likely to be quickly decided,
he was transported with the desire of partaking in it, and struggled
and strained so violently, setting one leg forward, the other back,
that at last he broke the shaft in two; and thus got the pieces
pulled out. Being in this manner set at liberty, he caught up his
sword, and running through the midst of those who were fighting in
the first ranks, animated his men, and set them afire with emulation.
Antigonus, after the victory, asked the Macedonians, to try them, how
it happened the horse had charged without orders before the signal?
They answering, that they were against their wills forced to it by a
young man of Megalopolis, who had fallen in before his time: "that
young man," replied Antigonus, smiling, "did like an experienced
commander."
This, as was natural, brought Philopoemen into great reputation.
Antigonus was earnest to have him in his service, and offered him
very advantageous conditions, both as to command and pay. But
Philopoemen, who knew that his nature brooked not to be under
another, would not accept them; yet not enduring to live idle, and
hearing of wars in Crete, for practice' sake he passed over thither.
He spent some time among those very warlike, and, at the same time,
sober and temperate men, improving much by experience in all sorts of
service; and then returned with so much fame, that the Achaeans
presently chose him commander of the horse. These horsemen at that
time had neither experience nor bravery, it being the custom to take
any common horses, the first and cheapest they could procure, when
they were to march; and on almost all occasions they did not go
themselves, but hired others in their places, and staid at home.
Their former commanders winked at this, because, it being an honor
among the Achaeans to serve on horseback, these men had great power
in the commonwealth, and were able to gratify or molest whom they
pleased. Philopoemen, finding them in this condition, yielded not to
any such considerations, nor would pass it over as formerly; but
went himself from town to town, where, speaking with the young men,
one by one, he endeavored to excite a spirit of ambition and love of
honor among them, using punishment also, where it was necessary. And
then by public exercises, reviews, and contests in the presence of
numerous spectators, in a little time he made them wonderfully strong
and bold, and, which is reckoned of greatest consequence in military
service, light and agile. With use and industry they grew so
perfect, to such a command of their horses, such a ready exactness in
wheeling round in their troops, that in any change of posture the
whole body seemed to move with all the facility and promptitude, and,
as it were, with the single will of one man. In the great battle,
which they fought with the Aetolians and Eleans by the river
Larissus, he set them an example himself. Damophantus, general of
the Elean horse, singled out Philopoemen, and rode with full speed at
him. Philopoemen awaited his charge, and, before receiving the