while he forced all those persons who had been created citizens of Sparta under the rule of the despots to leave the city and proceed to Achaea, except three hundred.  These, because they refused to obey him and leave Lacedaemon he sold for slaves, and with the money, as a wanton insult, built a public portico in Megalopolis.  Moreover, in his wrath against the Lacedaemonians, he did them a most cruel wrong, for he abolished the Lycurgean system of education and forced them to educate their children like those of the Achaeans, because he saw that they never would be humble-minded as long as they lived under the discipline of Lycurgus.  Thus was the haughty city of Sparta brought so low by its misfortunes as to permit Philopoemen to cut, as it were, its very sinews, and render it tame and crushed.  Afterwards, however, the citizens obtained permission 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.