Whereupon, the counsel of the chief men was called, and at last this way Palladius (who by some experience, but especially by {29} reading histories, was acquainted with stratagems) invented, and was by all the rest approved, that all the men there should dress themselves like the poorest sort of the people in Arcadia, having no banners, but bloody shirts hanged upon long staves, with some bad bag-pipes instead of drum and fife: their armour they should, as well as might be, cover, or at least make them look so rustily and ill-favouredly as might well become such wearers, and this the whole number should do, saving two hundred of the best chosen gentlemen for courage and strength, whereof Palladius himself would be one, who should have their arms chained, and be put in carts like prisoners. This being performed according to the agreement, they marched on towards the town of Cardamila where Clitophon was captive; and being come two hours before sunset within view of the walls, the Helots already descrying their number, and beginning to sound the alarm, they sent a cunning fellow (so much the cunninger as that he could mask it under rudeness) who with such a kind of rhetoric as weeded out all flowers of rhetoric, delivered unto the Helots assembled together, that they were country-people of Arcadia, no less oppressed by their lords, and no less desirous of liberty than they, and therefore had put themselves in the field, and had already (besides a great number slain) taken nine or ten score gentlemen prisoners, whom they had there well and fast chained. Now because they had no strong retiring place in Arcadia, and were not yet of number enough to keep the field against the prince’s forces, they were come to them for succour; knowing that daily more and more of their quality would flock unto them, but that in the meantime, lest their prince should pursue them, or the Lacedaemonian king and nobility (for the likeness of the cause) fall upon them, they desired that if there were not room enough for them in the town, that yet they might encamp under the walls, and for surety have their prisoners (who were such men as were able to make their peace) kept within the town.