Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/381

 ARATUS. 373 promising to retire in case the dogs were too trouble- some ; and at the same time sending forward those that carried the ladders, conducted by Ecdelus and Mnasi- theus, he followed them himself leisurely, the dogs already barking very loud and following the steps of Ecdelus and his companions. However, they got to the wall, and reared the ladders with- safety. But as the foremost men were mounting them, the captain of the watch that was to be relieved by the morning guard passed on his way with the bell, and there were many lights, and a noise of people coming up. Hearing which, they clapt themselves close to the ladders, and so were unobserved ; but as the other watch also was coming up to meet this, they were in extreme danger of being dis- covered. But when this also went by without observing them, immediately Mnasitheus and Ecdelus got upon the wall, and, possessing themselves of the approaches inside and out, sent away Technon to Aratus, desiring .him to make all the haste he could. Now there was no great distance from the garden to the wall and to the tower, in which latter a large hound was kept. The hound did not hear their steps of himself, whether that he were naturally drowsy, or overwearied the day before, but, the gardener's curs awaking him, he first began to growl and grumble in response, and then as they passed by to bark out aloud. And the barking was now so great, that the sentinel opposite shouted out to the dog's keeper to know why the dog kept such a barking, and whether any thing was the matter ; who answered, that it was nothing, but only that his dog had been set barking by the lights of the watch and the noise of the bell. This reply much encouraged Aratus's soldiers, who thought the dog's keeper was privy to their design, and U'ished to conceal what was passing, and that many others in the city were of the conspiracy. But when