Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
themselves in his mind; and his natural bad inclinations,
breaking through the artificial restraints he had put upon them,
in a little time laid open and discovered his true and proper
character. And in the first place, he privately injured the
younger Aratus in his wife, which was not known of a good while,
because he was lodged and entertained at their house; then he
began to be more rough and untractable in the domestic politics
of Greece, and showed plainly that he was wishing to shake
himself loose of Aratus. This the Messenian affairs first gave
occasion to suspect. For they falling into sedition, and Aratus
being just too late with his succors, Philip, who got into the
city one day before him, at once blew up the flame of contention
amongst them, asking privately, on the one hand, the Messenian
generals, if they had not laws whereby to suppress the insolence
of the common people, and on the other, the leaders of the
people, whether they had not hands to help themselves against
their oppressors. Upon which gathering courage, the officers
attempted to lay hands on the heads of the people, and they on
the other side, coming upon the officers with the multitude,
killed them, and very near two hundred persons with them.
Philip having committed this wickedness, and doing his best to
set the Messenians by the ears together more than before, Aratus
arrived there, and both showed plainly that he took it ill
himself, and also he suffered his son bitterly to reproach and
revile him. It should seem that the young man had an attachment
for Philip, and so at this time one of his expressions to him
was, that he no longer appeared to him the handsomest, but the
most deformed of all men, after so foul an action. To all which
Philip gave him no answer, though he seemed so angry as to make
it expected he would, and though several times he cried out
aloud, while the young man was speaking. But as for the elder
Aratus, seeming to take all that he said in good part, and as if
he were by nature a politic character and had a good command of
himself, he gave him his hand and led him out of the theater,
and carried him with him to the Ithomatas, to sacrifice there
to Jupiter, and take a view of the place, for it is a post as
fortifiable as the Acro-Corinthus, and, with a garrison in it,
quite as strong and as impregnable to the attacks of all around
it. Philip therefore went up hither, and having offered
sacrifice, receiving the entrails of the ox with both his hands
from the priest, he showed them to Aratus and Demetrius the
Pharian, presenting them sometimes to the one and sometimes to
the other, asking them what they judged, by the tokens in the
sacrifice, was to be done with the fort; was he to keep it for
himself, or restore it to the Messenians. Demetrius laughed and
answered, "If you have in you the soul of soothsayer, you will
restore it, but if of a prince, you will hold the ox by both the
horns," meaning to refer to Peloponnesus, which would be wholly
in his power and at his disposal if he added the Ithomatas to
the Acro-Corinthus. Aratus said not a word for a good while;
but Philip entreating him to declare his opinion, he said "Many
and great hills are there in Crete, and many rocks in Boeotia
and Phocis, and many remarkable strong-holds both near the sea
and in the midland in Acarnania, and yet all these people obey
your orders, though you have not possessed yourself of any one
of those places. Robbers nest themselves in rocks and
precipices; but the strongest fort a king can have is confidence
and affection. These have opened to you the Cretan sea; these
make you master of Peloponnesus, and by the help of these, young
as you are, are you become captain of the one, and lord of the
other." While he was still speaking, Philip returned the
entrails to the priest, and drawing Aratus to him by the hand,
"Come, then," said he, "let us follow the same course;" as if he
felt himself forced by him, and obliged to give up the town.
From this time Aratus began to withdraw from court, and retired
by degrees from Philip's company; when he was preparing to march
into Epirus, and desired him that he would accompany him
thither, he excused himself and stayed at home, apprehending
that he should get nothing but discredit by having anything to
do with his actions. But when, afterwards, having shamefully
lost his fleet against the Romans and miscarried in all his
designs, he returned into Peloponnesus, where he tried once more
to beguile the Messenians by his artifices, and failing in this,
began openly to attack them and to ravage their country, then
Aratus fell out with him downright, and utterly renounced his
friendship; for he had begun then to be fully aware of the
injuries done to his son in his wife, which vexed him greatly,
though he concealed them from his son, as he could but know he
had been abused, without having any means to revenge himself.
For, indeed, Philip seems to have been an instance of the
greatest and strangest alteration of character; after being a
mild king and modest and chaste youth, he became a lascivious
man and most cruel tyrant; though in reality this was not a
change of his nature, but a bold unmasking, when safe
opportunity came, of the evil inclinations which his fear had
for a long time made him dissemble.
For that the respect he at the beginning bore to Aratus had a
great alloy of fear and awe appears evidently from what he did
to him at last. For being desirous to put him to death, not
thinking himself, whilst he was alive, to be properly free as a
man, much less at liberty to do his pleasure as a king or
tyrant, he durst not attempt to do it by open force, but
commanded Taurion, one of his captains and familiars, to make
him away secretly by poison, if possible, in his absence.
Taurion, therefore, made himself intimate with Aratus, and gave
him a dose, not of your strong and violent poisons, but such as
cause gentle, feverish heats at first, and a dull cough, and so
by degrees bring on certain death. Aratus perceived what was
done to him, but, knowing that it was in vain to make any words
of it, bore it patiently and with silence, as if it had been
some common and usual distemper. Only once, a friend of his
being with him in his chamber, he spat some blood, which his
friend observing and wondering at, "These, O Cephalon," said he,
"are the wages of a king's love."
Thus died he in Aegium, in his seventeenth generalship. The
Achaeans were very desirous that he should be buried there with
a funeral and monument suitable to his life, but the Sicyonians
treated it as a calamity to them if he were interred anywhere
but in their city, and prevailed with the Achaeans to grant them
the disposal of the body.
But there being an ancient law that no person should be buried
within the walls of their city, and besides the law also a
strong religious feeling about it, they sent to Delphi to ask
counsel of the Pythoness, who returned this answer: --
Sicyon, whom oft he rescued, "Where," you say,
"Shall we the relics of Aratus lay?"
The soil that would not lightly o'er him rest,
Or to be under him would feel oppressed,
Were in the sight of earth and seas and skies unblest.
This oracle being brought, all the Achaeans were well pleased at
it, but especially the Sicyonians, who, changing their mourning
into public joy, immediately fetched the body from Aegium, and
in a kind of solemn procession brought it into the city, being
crowned with garlands, and arrayed in white garments, with
singing and dancing, and, choosing a conspicuous place, they
buried him there, as the founder and savior of their city. The
place is to this day called Aratium, and there they yearly make
two solemn sacrifices to him, the one on the day he delivered
the city from tyranny, being the fifth of the month Daesius,
which the Athenians call Anthesterion, and this sacrifice they
call Soteria; the other in the month of his birth, which is
still remembered. Now the first of these was performed by the
priest of Jupiter Soter, the second by the priest of Aratus,
wearing a band around his head, not pure white, but mingled with
purple. Hymns were sung to the harp by the singers of the
feasts of Bacchus; the procession was led up by the president of
the public exercises, with the boys and young men; these were
followed by the councilors wearing garlands, and other citizens
such as pleased. Of these observances, some small traces, it is
still made a point of religion not to omit, on the appointed
days; but the greatest part of the ceremonies have through time
and other intervening accidents been disused.
And such, as history tells us, was the life and manners of the
elder Aratus. And for the younger, his son, Philip, abominably
wicked by nature and a savage abuser of his power, gave him such
poisonous medicines, as though they did not kill him indeed, yet
made him lose his senses, and run into wild and absurd attempts
and desire to do actions and satisfy appetites that were
ridiculous and shameful. So that his death, which happened to
him while he was yet young and in the flower of his age, cannot
be so much esteemed a misfortune as a deliverance and end of his
misery. However, Philip paid dearly, all through the rest of
his life, for these impious violations of friendship and
hospitality. For, being overcome by the Romans, he was forced
to put himself wholly into their hands, and, being deprived of
his other dominions and surrendering all his ships except five,
he had also to pay a fine of a thousand talents, and to give his
son for hostage, and only out of mere pity he was suffered to
keep Macedonia and its dependences; where continually putting to
death the noblest of his subjects and the nearest relations he
had, he filled the whole kingdom with horror and hatred of him.
And whereas amidst so many misfortunes he had but one good
chance, which was the having a son of great virtue and merit,
him, through jealousy and envy at the honor the Romans had for
him, he caused to be murdered, and left his kingdom to Perseus,
who, as some say, was not his own child, but supposititious,
born of a seamstress called Gnathaenion. This was he whom
Paulus Aemilius led in triumph, and in whom ended the succession
of Antigonus's line and kingdom. But the posterity of Aratus
continued still in our days at Sicyon and Pellene.
ARTAXERXES
The first Artaxerxes, among all the kings of Persia the most
remarkable for a gentle and noble spirit, was surnamed the
Long-handed, his right hand being longer than his left, and was
the son of Xerxes. The second, whose story I am now writing,
who had the surname of the Mindful, was the grandson of the
former, by his daughter Parysatis, who brought Darius four sons,
the eldest Artaxerxes, the next Cyrus, and two younger than
these, Ostanes and Oxathres. Cyrus took his name of the ancient
Cyrus, as he, they say, had his from the sun, which, in the
Persian language, is called Cyrus. Artaxerxes was at first
called Arsicas; Dinon says Oarses; but it is utterly improbable
that Ctesias (however otherwise he may have filled his books
with a perfect farrago of incredible and senseless fables)
should be ignorant of the name of the king with whom he lived as
his physician, attending upon himself, his wife, his mother, and
his children.
Cyrus, from his earliest youth, showed something of a headstrong
and vehement character; Artaxerxes, on the other side, was
gentler in everything, and of a nature more yielding and soft
in its action. He married a beautiful and virtuous wife, at the
desire of his parents, but kept her as expressly against their
wishes. For king Darius, having put her brother to death, was
purposing likewise to destroy her. But Arsicas, throwing