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The enemy having been thus smitten with disaster, Philopoemen forthwith led on his forces to ravage the district of Tripolis, a part of the Lacedaemonian territory, lying next to the frontiers of the Megalopolitans, and carrying off thence a vast number of men and cattle, withdrew before the tyrant could send a force from Gythium to protect the country.
Both Livy and Plutarch, in describing Philopoemen, one of the ablest generals of antiquity, have given us a striking picture of a mind always intent on its profession, and by assiduity obtaining those excellences which some all their lives vainly expect from Nature.
He tried to persuade Lysippus, then general of the Achæans, to go to the relief of Messenia, but he refused, saying that it was lost beyond hope. Thereupon Philopoemen set out himself, followed by such of his fellow citizens as deemed him their general by nature's commission. The very wind of his coming won the town.
Philopoemen, fearing to be enclosed, and solicitous for his men, retreated over ground extremely disadvantageous, bringing up the rear himself. As he often faced, and made charges upon the enemy, he drew them upon himself; though they merely made movements at a distance, and shouted about him, nobody daring to approach him.
Then returning to the town, he would employ himself in public business or in friendly intercourse during the remainder of the day. When Philopoemen was thirty years old, Cleomenes, the Spartan king, one night attacked Megalopolis, forced the guards, broke in, and seized the market-place. The citizens sprang to arms, Philopoemen at their head, and a desperate conflict ensued in the streets.
But the third time with much ado, and faltering in his words, he acquainted Philopoemen with the good-will of the city of Sparta to him.
Philopoemen also had succeeded, in the year 192, in adding Sparta to the league, which now embraced the whole of Peloponnesus.
This was done, and Nabis was killed at a review of the troops; but, when the Aetolians dispersed to plunder the town, the Lacedaemonians found time to rally and slew them to the last man. The city was then induced by Philopoemen to join the Achaean league.
Philopoemen effected many gallant things with his own hand, but Titus none; so much so that one Archedemus, an Aetolian, made it a jest against him that while he, the Aetolian, was running with his drawn sword, where he saw the Macedonians drawn up closest and fighting hardest, Titus was standing still, and with hands stretched out to heaven, praying to the gods for aid.
Somebody was praising him for keeping his army and himself in an admirable state of discipline and exercise: "And what praise," replied Philopoemen, "for a king of his years, to be always preparing, and never performing?" However, the Megalopolitans, thinking themselves betrayed, took it so ill, that they were about to banish him.
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