About this time, some unlucky quarrels having arisen between the Oropians and Athenians, the former bribed Menalcidas with ten talents to help them. The assistance, however, came too late; notwithstanding which he exacted the money from them, and though he had previously promised part of it to Callicrates, he kept the whole for himself. From the charge which the latter brought against him, sprang all the woes which befell Achaia. Menalcidas did his utmost to sever Lacedæmon from the league, and he succeeded. At the time of the negotiations which took place about it at Rome, both Menalcidas and the Achæan ambassador deceived the people who had sent them: each of them carried home a false decision. It was just then the most unfortunate period of the third Punic war. Lacedæmon now severed itself, and a war broke out between the Achæans and Lacedæmonians, in which the latter had the worst of it: for Menalcidas was a wretched general, and they were so hard pressed that they had to consent to an agreement by which the Achæans got every thing that they wanted. Menalcidas laid hands upon his own life, and the Lacedæmonians again joined the Achæan league. When the Romans, in the year 605, now saw that they were about to overthrow Carthage, they also took a different tone towards Achaia. The Achæans had acted in direct disobedience to them, and had thus drawn down their vengeance upon themselves, although they had remained faithful during the revolt of the pseudo-Philip, and had given them their aid. But the very prosperity of Achaia may have led the Romans to break it up. Its extent in those times cannot be stated with exactness: it very likely took in the whole of Peloponnesus and Megara, and although Attica, Phocis, and Locris did not belong to it, several places yet farther off, by having isopolity, were in the league; for instance, Heraclea, by mount Oeta, Pleuron, in Ætolia. The Roman commissioners, C. Aurelius Orestes and his colleagues, appeared at Corinth, and announced it to be the will of the Roman senate, that Lacedæmon should be declared independent; and that all the places, which, at the time of the alliance with Philip, had not belonged to Achaia, but had been under Philip’s sway, should be separated from it: these were Corinth, Orchomenus in Arcadia, Heraclea, Pleuron. (Whether Elis and Messene belonged to the same category, is more than we know, as Appian’s notices are so scanty: the _excerpta_ of Constantinus Porphyrogenitus will very likely still bring to light a great deal more of this period.) This was about the half of the Peloponnesus, and the most distinguished of their towns. The Achæan council, then assembled in Corinth, would not listen to the end of this message; they ordered the doors to be thrown open, and the people to be called together to hear the insolence of the Romans. The rage of the people was beyond all bounds: the Romans returned to their lodgings, without having gotten