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Nicostratus, praetor of the Achaeans, was at Sicyon, with two thousand foot and one hundred horse; but seeing himself so inferior, both in the number and kind of troops, he did not go outside the walls: the king's forces, in various excursions, were ravaging the lands of Pellene, Phliasus, and Cleone.
In the evil times, Sicyon, a city near Achaia, fell under the power of a tyrant, and about the time that Pyrrhus was killed, Clinias, a citizen of Sicyon, made a great attempt to free his townsmen, but he was found out, his house attacked, and he and his family all put to death, except his son Aratus, a little boy of seven years old, who ran away from the dreadful sight, and went wandering about the town, till by chance he came into the house of the tyrant’s sister.
At the age of twenty, therefore, he assembled a few comrades, entered Sicyon, called all the lovers of liberty to his aid, and drove away the tyrant without shedding any blood. The town, thus freed, joined the Achæan League, of which Aratus soon became the leader.
A Corinthian named Erginus had come to Sicyon on business, and there met a friend of Aratus, to whom he chanced to mention that there was a narrow path leading up to the Acro-Corinthus at a place where the wall was low.
The people gathered round him, and he caused it to be proclaimed with a loud voice, “Aratus, the son of Clinias, calls on Sicyon to resume her liberty.” The people all began rushing to the tyrant’s house. He fled by an underground passage, and his house was set on fire, but not one person on either side was killed or wounded.
The campaign had been disastrous to the Athenians, and a truce of one year was agreed upon by the belligerent parties—Athens of the one party, and Sparta, Corinth, Sicyon, Epidaurus, and Megara, of the other.
But there being an ancient law that no person should be buried within the walls of their city, and besides the law also a strong religious feeling about it, they sent to Delphi to ask counsel of the Pythoness, who returned this answer: Sicyon, whom oft he rescued, "Where," you say, "Shall we the relics of Aratus lay?"
By express orders from the senate the Corinthian citizens were seized, and such as were not killed were sold into slavery; the city itself was not only deprived of its walls and its citadel a measure which, if the Romans were not disposed permanently to garrison it, was certainly inevitable but was levelled with the ground, and all rebuilding on the desolate site was prohibited in the usual forms of accursing; part of its territory was given to Sicyon under the obligation that the latter should defray the costs of the Isthmian national festival in room of Corinth, but the greater portion was declared to be public land of Rome.
He had with him five thousand foot, of whom were light-armed, and three hundred horse; with this force he waited there, having despatched scouts to watch on what quarter the enemy should make their irregular inroads. Androsthenes, utterly ignorant of all these proceedings, set out from Corinth, and encamped on the Nemea, a river running between the confines of Corinth and Sicyon.
The murder of a Spartan king, Teleclus, at a temple on the confines of Laconia and Messenia, where sacrifices were offered in common, gave occasion for the first war, which lasted nineteen years, B.C. 743. Other States were involved in the quarrel—Corinth on the side of Sparta, and Sicyon and Arcadia on the part of the Messenians.
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