In the western plain of Arcadia, separated from that of Tegea and Mantinea by the Mænalus range, stood the “great city,” Megalopolis, which owed its existence to the genius and the determination of Epaminondas. He saw that Arcadia would never be secure against Spartan invasion until means could be found to unite its forces. The jealousy between Tegea and Mantinea rendered it impossible for either of these cities to be chosen as the capital, and another site was found by the banks of the Helisson, a tributary of the Alpheus. No fewer than forty small townships were merged in the new city, which was founded immediately after the battle of Leuctra. Several refused to join, and the inhabitants of one of them, called Trapezus, a very old settlement, rather than give up their independence, preferred to be put to the sword, those who escaped emigrating to their daughter-city of the same name, on the southern shore of the Black Sea. The name Megalopolis was not unsuitable, considering that the walls of the city were more than five and a half miles in circumference, and that the territory attached to it extended twenty-four miles on the north. Its stability was at various times endangered by internal discord, and nothing but the watchful eye and strong arm of Thebes could have saved the union from a speedy dissolution. Like most of the Greek cities, Megalopolis did not realise till too late what the gradual advance of the Macedonian power was to mean for Greece. In 347 B.C. the Athenian orator Æschines paid it a visit and spoke in its national assembly, the “Ten Thousand,” urging them to combine with other Powers against Philip; but without much effect, as might have been expected, considering that Æschines himself was soon to prove a traitor. Seventeen years later the city was delivered out of the hands of its Peloponnesian enemies by Antipater, the lieutenant of Alexander the Great; but it had to submit, like Argos and Athens, to the remodelling of its constitution, in order that its new master might put some of his own partisans into power to form an oligarchy. A hundred years later it fell into the hands of the Spartans under Cleomenes, who took it by a stratagem and levelled it to the ground. Most of the citizens escaped to Messene under the leadership of the brave Philopœmen, and the city was afterwards rebuilt, taking a leading part in the Achæan League, until the supremacy of Roman arms could no longer be disputed. Among its citizens at the beginning of the second century B.C., Megalopolis could boast of two of the greatest Greeks of their time, the gallant soldier just mentioned, who humbled the pride of Sparta and extorted the admiration of his Roman adversaries, and his young friend Polybius, the famous historian. The latter carried the urn containing the ashes of the mighty dead in the imposing funeral procession described by Plutarch--the precursor of still higher honours, amounting to divine