on from Rome to retire from the Achaean
confederation, upon which they restored their original constitution as
far as their great disasters permitted.

XVII. When the Romans were fighting king Antiochus in Greece,
Philopoemen was in a private station, but, seeing Antiochus lying idly
at Chalkis, wasting his time in unseasonable courtships and weddings,
while his Syrian troops, in great disorder and without officers to
control them, were scattered through the various Greek cities, living
in riotous debauchery, he was vexed at not being elected commander in
chief, and said that he envied the Romans their victory. "I," said he,
"if I had been in command, would have cut off the whole of Antiochus's
army in the taverns."

After the defeat of Antiochus the Romans began to tighten their hold
upon Greece, and to absorb the Achaean league. Many of the popular
leaders took their side, and the growing power of Rome was fated by
the divine blessing before long to become absolute in Greece.
Philopoemen, like a skilful pilot, struggling against a rough sea, was
often compelled to yield and give way for a time, yet as he was
utterly opposed to the Romans he did his best to induce the most
influential men to defend the liberties of Greece. Aristaenetus of
Megapolis, a man of great influence with the Achaeans, who urged them
in the public assembly not to oppose or to thwart the Romans in
anything, was listened to by Philopoemen for some time in silence,
until at length he was moved to exclaim, "My good sir, why be in such
a hurry to behold the end of Greece?" When Manius the Roman consul had
conquered Antiochus, he begged the Achaeans to permit the Lacedaemonian
exiles to return. Titus Flamininus seconded this request, but
Philopoemen opposed it; not because he had any quarrel with the exiles,
but because he wished their restoration to be effected by himself and
the Achaeans, of their own free will, not as a favour to Flamininus and
the Romans. Afterwards, when commander-in-chief, he himself restored
them. Thus did his high spirit make him impatient of control and
authority.

XVIII. When he was in his seventieth year, and eighth term of office
as commander-in-chief, he might reasonably expect to finish not only
his year of office, but also the rest of his life in peace; for just
as in human bodies as their strength wastes away the violence of their
diseases abates, so in the Greek states as their power failed their
quarrels graduall