Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/425

 ARATUS. 417 try, then Aratus fell out with him downright, and utterly renounced his friendshii) ; for he had begun then to be fully aware of the injuries done to his son in his wife, which vexed him greatly, though he concealed them from his son, as he could but know he had been abused, with- out having any means to revenge himself. For, indeed, Philip seems to have been an instance of the greatest and strangest alteration of character ; after being a mild king and modest and chaste youth, he became a lascivious man and most cruel tyrant ; though in reality this was not a change of his nature, but a bold unmasking, when safe opportunity came, of the evil inclinations which his fear had for a long time made him dissemble. For that the respect he at the beginning bore to Ara- tus had a great alloy of fear and awe appears evidently from what he did to him at last. For being desirous to put him to death, not thinking himself, whilst he was alive, to be properly free as a man, much less at liberty to do his pleasure as a king or tyrant, he durst not at- tempt to do it by open force, but commanded Taurion, one of his captains and familiars, to make him away secretly by poison, if possible, in his absence. Taurion, therefore, made himself intimate with Aratus, and gave him a dose, not of your strong and violent poisons, but such as cause gentle, feverish heats at first, and a dull cough, and so by degrees bring on certain death. Aratus per- ceived what was done to him, but, knowing that it was in vain to make any words of it, bore it patiently and with silence, as if it had been some common and usual distem- per. Only once, a friend of his being with him in his chamber, he spat some blood, which his friend observing and wondering at, "These, Cephalon," said he, "are the wages of a king's love." Thus died he in iEgium, in his seventeenth general- ship. The Achaeans were very desirous that he .should VOL. V. 27