imprudent General of the Lacedæmonians at this crisis, and earlier still the most iniquitous person to the Achæans. CHAPTER XIV. At last the envoys, who had been sent from Rome to arbitrate between the Lacedæmonians and Achæans, arrived in Greece, among others Orestes, who summoned before him Diæus and the principal people in each city of the Achæans. And when they came to his head-quarters,[7] he disclosed to them all his views, _viz._ that the Roman Senate thought it just that neither the Lacedæmonians nor Corinth should be forced into the Achæan League, nor Argos, nor Heraclea under Mount Œta, nor the Arcadians of Orchomenus, for they had no connection with the Achæans by ancestry, but had been incorporated subsequently into the Achæan League. As Orestes said this, the principal men of the Achæans would not stay to listen to the end of his speech, but ran outside the building and called the Achæans to the meeting. And they, when they heard the decision of the Romans, immediately turned their fury on all the Spartans who at that time resided at Corinth. And they plundered everyone who they were sure was a Lacedæmonian, or whom they suspected of being so by the way he wore his hair, or by his boots or dress or name, and some who got the start of them, and fled for refuge to Orestes’ head-quarters, they dragged thence by force. And Orestes and his suite tried to check the Achæans from this outrage, and bade them remember that they were acting outrageously against Romans. And not many days afterwards the Achæans threw all the Lacedæmonians whom they had arrested into prison, but dismissed all strangers whom they had arrested on suspicion. And they sent Thearidas and several other prominent Achæans as ambassadors to Rome, who after their departure on meeting on the road some other envoys to settle the Lacedæmonian and Achæan differences, who had been despatched later than Orestes, turned back again. And after Diæus had served his time as General, Critolaus was chosen as his successor by the Achæans; this Critolaus was possessed with a grim unreasoning passion to fight against the Romans, and, as the envoys from Rome to settle the disputes between the Lacedæmonians and Achæans had just arrived, he went to Tegea in Arcadia ostensibly to confer with them, but really because he did not want the Achæans summoned to a general meeting, and, while in the hearing of the Romans he sent messengers bidding the commissioners call a general meeting of the Achæans, he privately urged the commissioners not to attend the general meeting. And when the commissioners did not come, then he displayed great guile to the Romans, for he told them to wait for another general meeting of the Achæans that would be held six months later, for he himself said that he could discuss no question privately without the common consent of the Achæans. And the Roman envoys, when they discovered they were being deceived, returned to Rome.