Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/497

 CLEOMENES. 489 Antigonus, having taken Tegea, and plundered Orcho- menus and Mantinea, Cleomenes was shut up within the narrow bounds of Laconia; and making such of the he- lots as could pay five Attic pounds,* free of Sparta, and, by that means, getting together five hundred talents, and arming two thousand after the Macedonian fashion, that he might make a body fit to oppose Antigonus's Leuca-- spides,-}- he undertook a great and unexpected enterprise. Megalopolis was at that time a city of itself as great and as powerful as Sparta, and had the forces of the Achseans and of Antigonus encamping beside it ; and it was chiefly the Megalopolitans' doing, that Antigonus had been called in to assist the Achaeans. Cleomenes, resolving to snatch the city (no other word so well suits so rapid and so surprising an action), ordered his men to take five days' provision, and marched to Sellasia, as if he intended to ravage the country of the Argives; but from thence making a descent into the territories of Me- galopolis, and refreshing his army about Rhoeteum, he sud- denly took the road by Helicus, and advanced directly upon the city. When he was not far off the town, he sent Panteus, with two regiments, to surprise a portion of the wall between two towers, which he learnt to be the most unguarded quarter of the Megalopolitans' forti- fications, and with the rest of his forces he followed lei- surely. Panteus not only succeeded at that point, but finding a great part of the wall without guards, he at once proceeded to pull it down in some places, and make openings through it in others, and killed all the defenders that he found. Whilst he was thus busied, Cleomenes came up to him, and was got with his army within the city, before the Megalopolitans knew of the surprise. When, after some time, they learned their misfortune, some • Attic niinae. f White-shields.