Book 38
33
The Achaeans made a most unscrupulous use of the permission which they considered to have been granted them. Philopoemen was still in office and in the first days of spring he called out the army and fixed his camp on Lacedaemonian territory. Then he sent to demand the authors of the revolt, and promised that if the city would surrender them it should remain at peace, and the men themselves should suffer no injury until their case had been heard. Fear kept the rest silent; those who had been named declared their willingness to go, as they had received from Philopoemen's emissaries a guarantee that they would be safe from violence until they had pleaded their cause. Others, men of high position, went with them to support their friends and also because they considered their cause to be the cause of the State. Never before had the Achaeans brought the exiles with them on to Lacedaemonian soil, because they thought that nothing would do more to estrange their fellow-countrymen from them, but now they were almost in the forefront of the whole army. When the Lacedaemonians came to the gate of the camp the exiles met them in a body. At first they assailed them with insults; then passions became heated on both sides, and the more ferocious of the exiles made an attack upon the Lacedaemonians. Whilst these were appealing to the gods and the pledged word of Philopoemen's emissaries, and he and his emissaries were keeping back the crowd and protecting the Lacedaemonians and preventing some from actually manacling them, a large crowd collected and the disturbance increased. The Achaeans ran up to see what was going on, and the exiles, protesting loudly about the sufferings they had endured, implored their help and told them if they let this opportunity slip they would never again have such a favourable one. "The treaty which had been solemnly published in the Capitol at Olympia and in the citadel at Athens had been set at nought by these men, and before we are bound by another treaty the guilty must be punished." This language excited the crowd, and one man shouted out "Kill them." On this they flung stones at them, and seventeen men who had been thrown into chains during the tumult were killed. On the following day sixty-three were arrested whom Philopoemen had protected from violence, not that he was concerned for their safety, but because he did not want them to perish before the day of trial. Victims to the fury of the mob, they spoke but little and that to deaf ears. All were found guilty and handed over for punishment.
