ce--is one of the most
foolish absurdities which philologues dealing in politics have ever
invented. It was not the Romans that carried strife to Greece--which
in truth would have been "carrying owls to Athens"--but the Greeks
that carried their dissensions to Rome.

Quarrels between Achaeans and Spartans

The Achaeans in particular, who, in their eagerness to round their
territory, wholly failed to see how much it would have been for their
own good that Flamininus had not incorporated the towns of Aetolian
sympathies with their league, acquired in Lacedaemon and Messene a
very hydra of intestine strife. Members of these communities were
incessantly at Rome, entreating and beseeching to be released from the
odious connection; and amongst them, characteristically enough, were
even those who were indebted to the Achaeans for their return to their
native land. The Achaean league was incessantly occupied in the work
of reformation and restoration at Sparta and Messene; the wildest
refugees from these quarters determined the measures of the diet.
Four years after the nominal admission of Sparta to the confederacy
matters came even to open war and to an insanely thorough restoration,
in which all the slaves on whom Nabis had conferred citizenship were
once more sold into slavery, and a colonnade was built from the
proceeds in the Achaean city of Megalopolis; the old state of property
in Sparta was re-established, the of Lycurgus were superseded by
Achaean laws, and the walls were pulled down (566). At last the Roman
senate was summoned by all parties to arbitrate on all these doings
--an annoying task, which was the righteous punishment of the
sentimental policy that the senate had pursued. Far from mixing
itself up too much in these affairs, the senate not only bore the
sarcasms of Achaean candour with exemplary composure, but even
manifested a culpable indifference while the worst outrages were
committed. There was cordial rejoicing in Achaia when, after that
restoration, the news arrived from Rome that the senate had found
fault with it, but had not annulled it. Nothing was done for the
Lacedaemonians by Rome, except that the senate, shocked at the
judicial murder of from sixty to eighty Spartans committed by the
Achaeans, deprived the diet of criminal jurisdiction over the
Spartans--truly a heinous interference with the internal affairs of
an independent state! The Roman statesmen gave themselves as little
conc