ship with me, and received my aid
in the war against Philip. But, if I did these same things, at this
moment, I would not say to you, how did I thereby injure you, or
violate the friendship subsisting between us? but that, in so doing,
I acted agreeably to the practice and institutions of my ancestors.
Do not estimate what is done at Lacedaemon by the standard of your own
laws and constitution. There is no necessity for comparing particular
institutions: you are guided in your choice of a horseman, by the
quantity of his property; in your choice of a foot soldier, by the
quantity of his property; and your plan is, that a few should abound
in wealth, and that the body of the people should be in subjection
to them. Our lawgiver did not choose that the administration of
government should be in the hands of a few, such as you call a senate;
or that this or that order of citizens should have a superiority
over the rest: but he considered that, by equalizing the property and
dignity of all, he should multiply the number of those who were to
bear arms for their country. I acknowledge that I have enlarged on
these matters, beyond what consists with the conciseness customary
with my countrymen, and that the sum of the whole might be comprised
in few words: that, since I first commenced a friendship with you, I
have given you no just cause to repent it."

32. The Roman general answered: "We never contracted any friendship
or alliance with you, but with Pelops, the right and lawful king of
Lacedaemon: whose authority, while the Carthaginian, Gallic, and
other wars, succeeding one another, kept us constantly employed,
the tyrants, who after him held Lacedaemon under forced subjection,
usurped into their own hands, as did you also during the late war
with Macedonia. For what could be less fitting, than that we, who were
waging war against Philip, in favour of the liberty of Greece, should
contract friendship with a tyrant, and a tyrant the most cruel and
violent towards his subjects that ever existed? But, even supposing
that you had not either seized or held Argos by iniquitous means, it
would be incumbent on us, when we are giving liberty to all Greece, to
reinstate Lacedaemon also in its ancient freedom, and the enjoyment of
its own laws, which you just now spoke of, as if you were a rival
of Lycurgus. Shall we take pains to make Philip's garrisons evacuate
Tassus and Bargylii; and shall we leave Lacedaemon and Argos, those
two