United States or Bangladesh ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But Aratus, having no intelligence of this, and wanting water, being disabled himself by his wound, retreated with his soldiers. Despairing henceforth to do any good this way, he fell openly with his army into Argolis, and plundered it, and, in a fierce battle with Aristippus near the river Chares, he was accused of having withdrawn out of the fight, and thereby abandoned the victory.
The power of persuading and governing the people did, indeed, equally belong to both, so that those who had armies and camps at command stood in need of their assistance; as Chares, Diopithes, and Leosthenes of Demosthenes's, Pompey and young Caesar of Cicero's, as the latter himself admits in his Memoirs addressed to Agrippa and Maecenas.
Philip, on his side, issued a manifesto declaring his wrongs, as is usual with conquerors, and announced his intention of revenge. The Athenians fitted out a fleet and sent it under Chares to the Hellespont. Philip prosecuted, on his part, the siege of Perinthus, on the Propontis, with an army of thirty thousand men, with a great number of military engines.
But ever since your hirelings have served by themselves, they have been vanquishing your friends and allies, while your enemies have become unduly great. Chares gained a victory for the satrap, and received a supply of money. But this led to a complaint and menace of war by the king, which brought serious consequences.
"The venerable Chares continued his narration thus: 'I passed several months among the Arabians, delighted with the simplicity of their life and the innocence of their manners; and would to heaven, added he, with a sigh, 'that I had accepted their friendly invitations, and never quitted the silence of their hospitable deserts!
Some say he was hanged by Alexander's orders; others, that he died of sickness in prison; but Chares writes he was kept in chains seven months after he was apprehended, on purpose that he might be proceeded against in full council, when Aristotle should be present; and that growing very fat, and contracting a disease of vermin, he there died, about the time that Alexander was wounded in India, in the country of the Malli Oxydracae, all which came to pass afterwards.
Chares, meanwhile, was indefatigable in the execution of his project; and it was not long before he had prepared a sufficient quantity to provide for the common defence. "Tigranes now approached with the rage and confidence of a lion that invades a flock of domestic animals.
"This was the decisive moment which Chares had foreseen and provided for; in an instant the bands of Lebanon retreated, by the orders of Sophron, with a precipitation bordering upon flight.
How could you then be so negligent of the safety of your country as not to employ him in this, the most dangerous of all she ever had waged? If Chares and Lysicles, the two generals you chose to conduct it, had commanded the Grecian forces at Marathon and Plataea we should have lost those battles.
V. Though one of the kindest and most affable of men, he was of a forbidding and severe countenance, so that men who did not know him well feared to address him when alone. Once when Chares in a speech mentioned Phokion's gloomy brow, the Athenians began to laugh. "Yet," said he, "his brow has never harmed you: but the laughter of these men has brought great sorrow upon the state."
Word Of The Day