Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
History
Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.
Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
Greece -- Antiquities; Greece -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
The sacred enclosure near the temple of Persuasion, consecrated to
the Roman emperors, was formerly the house of Cleon the king. For
Clisthenes the son of Aristonymus, the son of Myro, was king of the
Sicyonians in the lower part of the city, but Cleon in what is now the
city (_i.e._ the upper part). In front of this house is a hero-chapel
to Aratus, who did the greatest exploits of all the Greeks in his
time: and this is what he did. After the death of Cleon there came
on those in authority such unbridled lust for power, that Euthydemus
and Timoclidas usurped the chief power. These the people afterwards
drove out, and put in their place Clinias the father of Aratus: and
not many years afterwards Abantidas got the chief power, (after the
death of Clinias), and either exiled Aratus, or Aratus retired of his
own free will. However the men of the country killed Abantidas, and
Pascas his father succeeded him, and Nicocles killed him, and reigned
in his room. Against him came Aratus with some Sicyonian refugees and
mercenaries from Argos, and slipping by some of the garrison in the
darkness (for he made his attack by night), and forcing others back,
got inside the walls: and (for by now it was day) leading his men to
the tyrant’s house, he made a fierce attack on it. And he took it by
storm with no great difficulty, and Nicocles slipt out at a back door
and fled. And Aratus granted the Sicyonians isonomy, reconciling them
to the refugees, and giving back to the refugees all their houses and
goods that had been sold, but not without full compensation to former
purchasers. And because all the Greeks were greatly afraid of the
Macedonians and Antigonus (the Regent for Philip the son of Demetrius),
he forced the Sicyonians, though they were Dorians, into the Achæan
league. And forthwith he was chosen commander in chief by the Achæans,
and he led them against the Locrians that live at Amphissa, and into
the territory of the hostile Ætolians, and ravaged it. And although
Antigonus held Corinth with a Macedonian garrison, he dismayed them by
the suddenness of his attack, and in a battle defeated and killed many
of them, and among others Persæus the head of the garrison, who had
been a disciple of Zeno (the son of Mnaseas) in philosophy. And when
Aratus had set Corinth free, then the Epidaurians and the Trœzenians
who occupy the coast of Argolis, and the Megarians beyond the Isthmus,
joined the Achæan league, and Ptolemy also formed an alliance with
them. But the Lacedæmonians and Agis (the son of Eudamidas) their king
were beforehand with them, and took Pellene by a _coup de main_, but
when Aratus and his army came up they were beaten in the engagement,
and evacuated Pellene, and returned home again on certain conditions.
And Aratus, as things had prospered so well in the Peloponnese, thought
it monstrous that the Piræus and Munychia, and moreover Salamis and
Sunium, should be allowed to continue in Macedonian hands, and, as he
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