Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
abated much with their failing political greatness. But fortune or
some divine retributive power threw him down the in close of his life,
like a successful runner who stumbles at the goal. It is reported,
that being in company where one was praised for a great commander, he
replied, there was no great account to be made of a man, who had
suffered himself to be taken alive by his enemies.
A few days after, news came that Dinocrates the Messenian, a
particular enemy to Philopoemen, and for his wickedness and villanies
generally hated, had induced Messene to revolt from the Achaeans, and
was about to seize upon a little place called Colonis. Philopoemen
lay then sick of a fever at Argos. Upon the news he hasted away, and
reached Megalopolis, which was distant above four hundred furlongs,
in a day. From thence he immediately led out the horse, the noblest
of the city, young men in the vigor of their age, and eager to
proffer their service, both from attachment to Philopoemen, and zeal
for the cause. As they marched towards Messene, they met with
Dinocrates, near the hill of Evander, charged and routed him. But
five hundred fresh men, who, being left for a guard to the country,
came in late, happening to appear, the flying enemy rallied again
about the hills. Philopoemen, fearing to be enclosed, and solicitous
for his men, retreated over ground extremely disadvantageous,
bringing up the rear himself. As he often faced, and made charges
upon the enemy, he drew them upon himself; though they merely made
movements at a distance, and shouted about him, nobody daring to
approach him. In his care to save every single man, he left his main
body so often, that at last he found himself alone among the thickest
of his enemies. Yet even then none durst come up to him, but being
pelted at a distance, and driven to stony steep places, he had great
difficulty, with much spurring, to guide his horse aright. His age
was no hindrance to him, for with perpetual exercise it was both
strong and active; but being weakened with sickness, and tired with
his long journey, his horse stumbling, he fell encumbered with his
arms, and faint, upon a hard and rugged piece of ground. His head
received such a shock with the fall, that he lay awhile speechless,
so that the enemy, thinking him dead, began to turn and strip him.
But when they saw him lift up his head and open his eyes, they threw
themselves all together upon him, bound his hands behind him, and
carried him off, every kind of insult and contumely being lavished on
him who truly had never so much as dreamed of being led in triumph by
Dinocrates.
The Messenians, wonderfully elated with the news, thronged in swarms
to the city gates. But when they saw Philopoemen in a posture so
unsuitable to the glory of his great actions and famous victories,
most of them, struck with grief and cursing the deceitful vanity of
human fortune, even shed tears of compassion at the spectacle. Such
tears by little and little turned to kind words, and it was almost in
everybody's mouth that they ought to remember what he had done for
them, and how he had preserved the common liberty, by driving away
Nabis. Some few, to make their court to Dinocrates, were for
torturing and then putting him to death as a dangerous and
irreconcilable enemy; all the more formitable to Dinocrates, who had
taken him prisoner, should he after this misfortune, regain his
liberty. They put him at last into a dungeon underground, which they
called the treasury, a place into which there came no air nor light
from abroad; and, which, having no doors, was closed with a great
stone. This they rolled into the entrance and fixed, and placing a
guard about it, left him. In the mean time Philopoemen's soldiers,
recovering themselves after their flight, and fearing he was dead
when he appeared nowhere, made a stand, calling him with loud cries,
and reproaching one another with their unworthy and shameful escape;
having betrayed their general, who, to preserve their lives, had lost
his own. Then returning after much inquiry and search, hearing at
last that he was taken, they sent away messengers round about with
the news. The Achaeans resented the misfortune deeply, and decreed
to send and demand him; and, in the meantime, drew their army
together for his rescue.
While these things passed in Achaea, Dinocrates, fearing that any
delay would save Philopoemen, and resolving to be beforehand with the
Achaeans, as soon as night had dispersed the multitude, sent in the
executioner with poison, with orders not to stir from him till he had
taken it. Philopoemen had then laid down, wrapt up in his cloak, not
sleeping, but oppressed with grief and trouble; but seeing light, and
a man with poison by him, struggled to sit up; and, taking the cup,
asked the man if he heard anything of the horsemen, particularly
Lycortas? The fellow answering, that the most part had got off safe,
he nodded, and looking cheerfully upon him, "It is well," he said,
"that we have not been every way unfortunate;" and without a word
more, drank it off, and laid him down, again. His weakness offering
but little resistance to the poison, it dispatched him presently.
The news of his death filled all Achaea with grief and lamentation.
The youth, with some of the chief of the several cities, met at
Megalopolis with a resolution to take revenge without delay. They
chose Lycortas general, and falling upon the Messenians, put all to
fire and sword, till they all with one consent made their submission.
Dinocrates, with as many as had voted for Philopoemen's death,
anticipated their vengeance and killed themselves. Those who would
have had him tortured, Lycortas put in chains and reserved for
severer punishment. They burnt his body, and put the ashes into an
urn, and then marched homeward, not as in an ordinary march, but with
a kind of solemn pomp, half triumph, half funeral, crowns of victory
on their heads, and tears in their eyes, and their captive enemies in
fetters by them. Polybius, the general's son, carried the urn, so
covered with garlands and ribbons as scarcely to be visible; and the
noblest of the Achaeans accompanied him. The soldiers followed fully
armed and mounted, with looks neither altogether sad as in mourning,
nor lofty as in victory. The people from all towns and villages in
their way, flocked out to meet him, as at his return from conquest,
and, saluting the urn, fell in with the company, and followed on to
Megalopolis; where, when the old men, the women and children were
mingled with the rest, the whole city was filled with sighs,
complaints, and cries, the loss of Philopoemen seeming to them the
loss of their own greatness, and of their rank among the Achaeans.
Thus he was honorably buried according to his worth, and the
prisoners were stoned about his tomb.
Many statues were set up, and many honors decreed to him by the
several cities. One of the Romans in the time of Greece's
affliction, after the destruction of Corinth, publicly accusing
Philopoemen, as if he had been still alive, of having been the enemy
of Rome, proposed that these memorials should all be removed. A
discussion ensued, speeches were made, and Polybius answered the
sycophant at large. And neither Mummius nor the lieutenants would
suffer the honorable monuments of so great a man to be defaced,
though he had often crossed both Titus and Manius. They justly
distinguished, and as became honest men, betwixt usefulness and
virtue, -- what is good in itself, and what is profitable to
particular parties, -- judging thanks and reward due to him who does
a benefit, from him who receives it, and honor never to be denied by
the good to the good. And so much concerning Philopoemen.
FLAMININUS
What Titus Quintius Flamininus, whom we select as a parallel to
Philopoemen, was in personal appearance, those who are curious may
see by the brazen statue of him, which stands in Rome near that of
the great Apollo, brought from Carthage, opposite to the Circus
Maximus, with a Greek inscription upon it. The temper of his mind is
said to have been of the warmest both in anger and in kindness; not
indeed equally so in both respects; as in punishing, he was ever
moderate, never inflexible; but whatever courtesy or good turn he set
about, he went through with it, and was as perpetually kind and
obliging to those on whom he had poured his favors, as if they, not
he, had been the benefactors: exerting himself for the security and
preservation of what he seemed to consider his noblest possessions,
those to whom he had done good. But being ever thirsty after honor,
and passionate for glory, if anything of a greater and more
extraordinary nature were to be done, he was eager to be the doer of
it himself; and took more pleasure in those that needed, than in
those that were capable of conferring favors; looking on the former
as objects for his virtue, and on the latter as competitors in glory.
Rome had then many sharp contests going on, and her youth betaking
themselves early to the wars, learned betimes the art of commanding;
and Flamininus, having passed through the rudiments of soldiery,
received his first charge in the war against Hannibal, as tribune
under Marcellus, then consul. Marcellus, indeed, falling into an
ambuscade, was cut off. But Titus, receiving the appointment of
governor, as well of Tarentum, then retaken, as of the country about
it, grew no less famous for his administration of justice, than for
his military skill. This obtained him the office of leader and
founder of two colonies which were sent into the cities of Narnia and
Cossa; which filled him with loftier hopes, and made him aspire to
step over those previous honors which it was usual first to pass
through, the offices of tribune of the people, praetor and aedile,
and to level his aim immediately at the consulship. Having these
colonies, and all their interest ready at his service, he offered
himself as candidate; but the tribunes of the people, Fulvius and
Manius, and their party, strongly opposed him; alleging how
unbecoming a thing it was, that a man of such raw years, one who was
yet, as it were, untrained, uninitiated in the first sacred rites and
mysteries of government, should, in contempt of the laws, intrude and
force himself into the sovereignty.
However, the senate remitted it to the people's choice and suffrage;
who elected him (though not then arrived at his thirtieth year)
consul with Sextus Aelius. The war against Philip and the
Macedonians fell to Titus by lot, and some kind fortune, propitious
at that time to the Romans, seems to have so determined it; as
neither the people nor the state of things which were now to be dealt
with, were such as to require a general who would always be upon the
point of force and mere blows, but rather were accessible to
persuasion and gentle usage. It is true that the kingdom of Macedon
furnished supplies enough to Philip for actual battle with the
Romans; but to maintain a long and lingering war, he must call in aid
from Greece; must thence procure his supplies; there find his means
of retreat; Greece, in a word, would be his resource for all the
requisites of his army. Unless, therefore, the Greeks could be
withdrawn from siding with Philip, this war with him must not expect
its decision from a single battle. Now Greece (which had not
hitherto held much correspondence with the Romans, but first began an
intercourse on this occasion) would not so soon have embraced a
foreign authority, instead of the commanders she had been inured to,
had not the general of these strangers been of a kind gentle nature,
one who worked rather by fair means than force; of a persuasive