Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/404

 396 ARATUS. against the Lacedaemonians ; which Aratus opposing was thought to do it out of envy; and Lydiades was the second time chosen general, though Aratus acted openly against him, and labored to have the office conferred upon another. For Aratus himself had the command every other year, as has been said. Lydiades, however, succeeded so well in his pretensions, that he was thrice chosen general, governing alternately, as did Ai-atus; but at last, declaring himself his professed enemy, and accusing him frequently to the Achaeans, he was rejected, and fell into contempt, people now seeing that it was a contest between a counterfeit and a true, unadulterated virtue, and, as ^sop tells us that the cuckoo once, asking the little birds why they flew away from hei', was answered, because they feared she would one day prove a hawk, so Lydiades's former tyranny still cast a doubt upon the reality of his change. But Aratus gained new honor in the yEtolian war. For the Achaeans resolving to fall upon the ^tolians on the Megarian confines, and Agis also, the Lacedaemonian king, who came to their assistance with an army, encouraging them to fight, Aratus ojoposed this deter- mination. And patiently enduring many reproaches, many scoffs and jeerings at his soft and cowardly temper, he would not, for any appearance of disgrace, abandon what he judged to be the true common advan- tage, and suffered the enemy to pass over Geranea into Peloponnesus without a battle. But when, after they had passed by, news came that they had suddenly cap- tured Pellene, he was no longer the same man, nor would he hear of any delay, or wait to draw together his whole force, but marched towards the enemy with such as he had about him to fall upon them, as they were indeed now much less formidable through the intemperances and disorders committed in their success.