Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/379

 ARATUS. 371 exiles, who being by him presented to Aratus informed him, that that part of the wall over which he escaped was, inside, almost level with the ground, adjoining a rocky and elevated place, and that from the outside it might be scaled with ladders. Aratus, hearing this, de- spatches away Xenocles with two of his own servants, Seuthas and Technon, to view the wall, resolving, if pos- sible, secretly and with one risk to hazard all on a single trial, rather than carry on a contest as a private man against a tyrant by long war and open force. Xenocles, therefoi-e, with his companions, returning hav- ing taken the height of the wall, and declaring the place not to be impossible or indeed difficult to get over, but that it was not easy to approach it undiscovered, by reason of some small but uncommonly savage and noisy dogs belonging to a gardener hard by, he immediately undertook the business. Now the preparation of arms gave no jealousy, be- cause robberies and petty forays were at that time com- mon everywhere between one set of people and another ; and for the ladders, Euphranor, the machine-maker, made them openly, his trade rendering him unsuspected, though one of the exiles. As for men, each of his friends in Ai-gos furnished him with ten apiece out of those few they had, and he armed thirty of his own servants, and hired some few soldiers of Xenophilus, the chief of the robber captains, to whom it was given out that they were to mai'ch into the territory of Sicj'ou to seize the king's stud ; most of them were sent before, in small parties, to the tower of Polygnotus, with orders to wait there ; Caphisias also was despatched beforehand lightly armed, with four others, who were, as soon as it was dark, to come to the gardener's house, pretending to be travellers, and, procuring their lodging there, to shut up him and his dogs; for there was no other way of