Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/402

 394 ARATUS. caught going through their country after joining in the games at Argos. So vehement and implacable a hater was he of the tyrants. Not long after, having notice that Aristippus had a design upon Cleonae, but was afraid of him, because he then was staying in Corinth, he assembled an army by public proclamation, and, commanding them to take along with them provision for several days, he marched to CenchreJB, hoping by this stratagem to entice Aris- tippus to fall upon CleonaB, when he supposed him far enough off And so it happened, for he immediately brought his forces against it from Argos. But Aratus, returning from Cenchreae to Corinth in the dusk of the evening, and setting posts of his troops in all the roads, led on the Achoeans, who followed him in such good order and with so much speed and alacrity, that they were undiscovered by Aristippus, not only whilst upon their march, but even when they got, still in the night, into Cleonae, and drew up in order of battle. As soon as it was morning, the gates being opened and the trumpets sounding, he fell upon the enemy with great ciies and fury, routed them at once, and kept close in pursuit, following the course which he most imagined Aristippus would choose, there being many turns that might be taken. And so the chase lasted as far as Mycen^, where the tyrant was slain by a certain Cretan called Tragiscus, as Dinias reports. Of the common soldiers, there fell above fifteen hundred. Yet though Aratus had obtained so great a victory, and that too without the loss of a man, he could not make himself master of Argos nor set it at liberty, because Agias and the younger Aristomachus got into the town with some of the king's forces, and seized upon the government. However, by this exploit he spoiled the scoffs and jests of those that flattered the tyrants, and in their.