Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/408

 400 ARATUS. lie was carried thither in a litter, and helped to persuade Diogenes the governor to deUver up the Pira3us, Muny- chia, Salarais, and Sunium to the Athenians in considera- tion of a hundred and fifty talents, of which Aratus him- self contributed twenty to the city. Upon this, the ^Egine- tans and the Hennionians immediately joined the Achce- ans, and the greatest part of Arcadia entered their con- federacy ; and the Macedonians being occupied with various wars upon their own confines and with their neighbors, the Achi^an power, the ^tolians also being in alliance with them, rose to great height. But Aratus, still bent on efiecting his old project, and impatient that tyranny should maintain itself in so near a city as Argos, sent to Aristomachus to persuade him to restore liberty to that city, and to associate it to the Achaeans, and that, following Lydiades's example, he should rather choose to be the general of a great nation, with esteem and honor, than the tyrant of one city, with continual hatred and danger. Aristomachus slighted not the message, but desired Aratus to send him fifty talents, with which he might pay oiF the soldiers. In the mean- time, whilst the money was providing, Lydiades, being then general, and extremely ambitious that this advan- tage might seem to be of his procuring for the Achaeans, accused Aratus to Aristomachus, as one that bore an irreconcilable hatred to the tyrants, and, persuading him to commit the afiair to his management, he presented him to the Achaeans. But there the Achtean council gave a manifest proof of the great credit Aratus had with them and the good-will they bore him. For when he, in anger, sjDoke against Aristomachus's being admitted into the association, they rejected the proposal, but when he was afterwards pacified and came himself and spoke in its favor, they voted every thing, cheerfully and read- ily, and decreed that the Argives and Phliasians should