ing the valorous hearts and strong arms of its inhabitants. While
other cities were from time to time captured and occasionally destroyed,
no foeman had set foot within Sparta's streets. Not until the days of
Epaminondas was Laconia invaded by a powerful foe; and even then Sparta
remained free from the foeman's tread. Neither Philip of Macedon, nor
his son Alexander, entered this proud city, and it was not until the
troublous later times that the people of Sparta, feeling that their
ancient warlike virtue was gone, built around their city a wall of
defence.

But the humiliation of that proud city was at hand. It was to be entered
by a foeman; the laws of Lycurgus, under which it had risen to such
might, were to come to an end; and lordly Sparta was to sink into
insignificance, and its glory remain but a memory to man.

About the year 252 B.C. was born Philopoemen, the last of the great
generals of Greece. He was the son of Craugis, a citizen of Megalopolis,
the great city which Epaminondas had built in Arcadia. Here he was
thoroughly educated in philosophy and the other learning of the time;
but his natural inclination was towards the life of a soldier, and he
made a thorough study of the use of arms and the management of horses,
while sedulously seeking the full development of his bodily powers.
Epaminondas was the example he set himself, and he came little behind
that great warrior in activity, sagacity, and integrity, though he
differed from him in being possessed of a hot, contentious temper, which
often carried him beyond the bounds of judgment.

Philopoemen was marked by plain manners and a genial disposition, in
proof of which Plutarch tells an amusing story. In his later years, when
he was general of a great Grecian confederation, word was brought to a
lady of Megara that Philopoemen was coming to her house to await the
return of her husband, who was absent. The good lady, all in a tremor,
set herself hurriedly to prepare a supper worthy of her guest. While she
was thus engaged a man entered dressed in a shabby cloak, and with no
mark of distinction. Taking him for one of the general's train who had
been sent on in advance, the housewife called on him to help her prepare
for his master's visit. Nothing loath, the visitor threw off his cloak,
seized the axe she offered him, and fell lustily to work in cutting up
fire-wood.

While he was thus engaged, the husband returned, and at once recognized
in his wife's