Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/389

 ARATUS. 381 of the Achseans, ravaged the country of Locris and Caly- don, just over against Achasa, and then went to assist the Boeotians with ten thousand soldiers, but came not up to them until after the battle near Choeronea had been fought, in which they were beaten by the jEtolians, with the loss of Aboeocritus the Boeotarch, and a thousand men besides. A year after, being again elected general, he resolved to attempt the capture of the Acro-Corinthus, not so much for the advantage of the Sicyonians or Achaeans, as considering that by expelling the Macedo- nian garrison he should free all Greece alike from a tyr- anny which oppressed every part of her. Chares the Athenian, having the good fortune to get the better, in a certain battle, of the king's generals, wrote to the people of Athens that this victory was " sister to that at Mara- thon." And so may this action be veiy safely termed sister to those of Pelopidas the Theban and Thi'asybulus the Athenian, in which they slew the tyrants ; except, perhaps, it exceed them upon this account, that it was not against natural Grecians, but against a foreign and stranger domination. The Isthmus, rising like a bank between the seas, collects into a single spot and com- presses together the Avhole continent of Greece ; and Acro-Corinthus, being a high mountain springing up out of the very middle of what here is Greece, whensoever it is held with a garrison, stands in the way and cuts off all Peloponnesus from intercourse of every kind, free pas- sage of men and arms, and all traffic by sea and land, and makes him lord of all, that is master of it. Wherefore the younger Philip did not jest, but said very true, when he called the city of Corinth " the fetters of Greece." So that this post was always much contended for, especially by the kings and tyrants ; and so vehemently was it longed for by Antigonus, that his passion for it came lit- tle short of that of frantic love ; he was continually occu-