Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/416

 408 ARATUS. hung about him, weeping and embracing him as their common father and defender. But he, having comforted and encouraged them as well as he could, got on horse- back, and being accompanied with ten of his friends and his son, then a youth, got away to the sea-side, and finding vessels there waiting off the shore, went on board of them and sailed to iEgium to the assembly ; in which it was decreed that Antigonus should be called in to their aid, and should have the Acro-Corinthus delivered to him. Aratus also sent his son to him with the other hostages. The Corinthians, extremely angry at this proceeding, now plundered his property, and gave his house as a present to Cleomenes. Antigonus being now near at hand with his army, consisting of twenty thousand Macedonian foot and one thousand three hundred horse, Aratus, with the Members of Council,* went to meet him by sea, and got, unob- served by the enemy, to Pegse, having no great confi- dence either in Antigonus or the Macedonians. For he was very sensible that his own greatness had been made out of the losses he had caused them, and that the first great principle of his public conduct had been hostility to the former Antigonus. But perceiving the necessity that was now upon him, and the pressure of the time, that lord and master of those we call rulers, to be inex- orable, he resolved to put all to the venture. So soon, therefore, as Antigonus was told that Aratus was coming up to him, he saluted the rest of the company after the ordinary manner, but him he received at the very first approach with especial honor, and finding him afterwards to be both good and wise, admitted him to his nearer one for each Achajan town, formed Council of a hundred and twenty a sort of Executive Council under members ; and as the base of all, the Chief Magistrate or General, the general Assembly.
 * The demiurgi, ten in number, Next untlor them came a Great