Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/307

Rh with Cleomenes of Sparta (B.C. 227–222), it was a reversal of all his previous policy for Aratus to ask the aid of Antigonus Doson. It alienated King Ptolemy (Euergetes), who began sending help to Cleomenes, and it, in the end, riveted the Macedonian yoke once more upon Greece, till it was superseded by that of Rome.

The war thus began was a cause of much misery in the Peloponnese, and was at first wholly favourable to Cleomenes. But the complexion of affairs was changed, when Antigonus Doson arrived on the scene and was allowed to occupy the Acrocorinthus as his base (B.C. 224). From that time things went steadily wrong with Cleomenes, till after his defeat at Sellasia (B.C. 222) he fled to Alexandria and dis- appears from Greek history. But the effect of the policy of Aratus was altogether evil. Antigonus, indeed, "restored" the ancient constitution at Sparta, but it lasted only two years, and was succeeded by a series of tyrannies, which hampered progress much more than the opposition of the Spartan constitutional kings. The Achaean League, too, had had to concede the permanent occupation of the Acrocorinthus—one of the "fetters" of Greece—and of Orchomenus, in Arcadia, by Macedonian garrisons, and to agree not to apply for aid to any other sovereign. The fatal result of this policy was shown under the next Macedonian king.

Antigonus was succeeded in B.C. 220, by Philip V. (of whom he had been rightfully only guardian) a young man who soon showed that his ambition was not to be satisfied by anything less than complete