embassy privately to Rome. In consequence of these disputes war broke out between the Achæans and the Lacedæmonians, and the Lacedæmonians, knowing they were not able to fight the Achæans, sent embassies to their cities and spoke privately to Diæus. All the cities returned the same answer, that if their general ordered them to take the field they could not disobey. For Diæus was in command, and he said that he intended to fight not against Sparta but against all that troubled her. And when the Spartan Senate asked who he thought were the criminals, he gave them a list of 24 men who were prominent in Sparta. Thereupon the opinion of Agasisthenes prevailed, a man previously held in good repute, and who for the following advice got still more highly thought of. He persuaded all those men whose names were mentioned to exile themselves from Lacedæmon, and not by remaining there to bring on a war on Sparta, and if they fled to Rome he said they would be soon restored by the Romans. So they departed and were nominally tried in their absence in the Spartan law-courts and condemned to death: but Callicrates and Diæus were sent by the Achæans to Rome to plead against these Spartan exiles before the Senate. And Callicrates died on the road of some illness, nor do I know whether if he had gone on to Rome he would have done the Achæans any good, or been to them the source of greater evils. But Diæus carried on a bitter controversy with Menalcidas before the Senate, not in the most decorous manner. And the Senate returned answer that they would send Ambassadors, who should arbitrate upon the differences between the Lacedæmonians and Achæans. And the journey of these ambassadors from Rome was somehow taken so leisurely, that Diæus had full time to deceive the Achæans, and Menalcidas the Lacedæmonians. The Achæans were persuaded by Diæus that the Lacedæmonians were directed by the Roman Senate to obey them in all things. While Menalcidas deceived the Lacedæmonians altogether, saying that they had been put by the Romans out of the jurisdiction of the Achæan League altogether. CHAPTER XIII.