ves for a little while. The Spartans who had
been banished by Nabis had not returned home, but lived a life of
robbery, which was thought to be favoured by Philopoemen, and this
offended those at home, some of whom plundered a town called Las. The
Achaians demanded that the guilty should be given up to them for
punishment, and a war began, which ended by a savage attack on Sparta, in
which Philopoemen forgot all but the old enmity between Achaia and
Laconia, put ninety citizens to death, pulled down the walls, besides
abolishing the laws of Lycurgus, which, however, nobody had observed
since the fall of Cleomenes. Many citizens were sent into banishment,
and these went to Rome to complain of the Achaians. While they were gone
the Messenians rose against the League, while Philopoemen was lying sick
of a fever at Argos; but though he was ill, and seventy years old, he
collected a small troop of young Megalopolitan horsemen, to join the main
army with them. But he met the full force of the Messenians, and while
fighting bravely to shelter his young followers, received a blow on the
head which stunned him, so that he was made prisoner, and carried to
Messene. There his enemies showed him in the theatre, but the people
only recollected how noble he was, and how he had defended all Greece
from Nabis. So his enemies hurried him away, and put him in an
underground dungeon, where, at night, they sent an executioner to carry
him a dose of poison. Philopoemen raised himself with difficulty, for he
was very weak, and asked the man whether he could tell him what had
become of his young Megalopolitan friends. The man replied that he
thought they had most of them escaped. "You bring good news," said
Philopoemen; then, swallowing the draught, he laid himself on his back,
and, almost instantly died. He is called the Last of the Greeks, for
there never was a great man of the old sort after him.

[Picture: Livadia, The Ancient Mideia in Argolis]

CHAP. XXXVIII.--THE FALL OF GREECE. B.C. 189-146.

[Picture: Decorative chapter heading]

After the death of Philopoemen there was little real spirit left in the
Achaians, and Callicrates, who became the leading man among them, led
them to submit themselves to the senate of Rome, and do as it pleased
with regard to Sparta and Messene.

Philip of Macedon was at war with Rome all his life, and his son Perseus
went on with it. Marcus Paullus AEm