state, to follow him as the vindicator and author of their liberty.  He could prevail on none to join him; for they saw no prospect of any attainable advantage, and much less any sufficiently powerful support.  While he exclaimed in this manner, the Lacedaemonians surrounded him and his party, and put them to death.  Many others were afterwards seized, the greater part of whom were executed, and the remaining few thrown into prison.  During the following night, great numbers, letting themselves down from the walls by ropes, came over to the Romans.

26.  As these men affirmed, that if the Roman army had been at the gates, this commotion would not have ended without effect; and that, if the camp was brought nearer, the Argives would not remain inactive; Quinctius sent some horsemen and infantry, lightly accoutred, who, meeting at the Cylarabis, a place of exercise, less than three hundred paces from the city, a party of Lacedaemonians, who sallied out of a gate, engaged them, and, without much difficulty, drove them back into the town; and the Roman general encamped on the very spot where the battle had been fought.  There he passed one day, on the look-out if any new commotion might arise; but perceiving that the inhabitants were quite depressed by fear, he called a council concerning the besieging of Argos.  All the deputies of Greece, except Aristaenus, were of one opinion, that, as that city was the sole object of the war, with it the war should commence.  This was by no means agreeable to Quinctius; but he listened, with evident marks of approbation, to Aristaenus, arguing in opposition to the joint opinion of all the rest; while he himself added, that “as the war was undertaken in favour of the Argives, against the tyrant, what could be less proper than to leave the enemy in quiet, and lay siege to Argos?  For his part, he was resolved to point his arms against the main object of the war, Lacedaemon and the tyrant.”  He then dismissed the meeting, and sent out light-armed cohorts to collect forage.  Whatever was ripe in the adjacent country, they reaped, and brought together; and what was green they trod down and destroyed, that the enemy might not subsequently get it.  He then proceeded over Mount Parthenius, and, passing by Tegaea, encamped on the third day at Caryae; where he waited for the auxiliary troops of the allies, before he entered the enemy’s territory.  Fifteen hundred Macedonians came from Philip, and four hundred horsemen of the Thessalians; and now the Roman general had no occasion to wait for more auxiliaries, having abundance; but he was obliged to stop for supplies of provisions, which he had ordered the neighbouring cities to furnish.  He was joined also by a powerful naval force; Lucius Quinctius had already come from Leucas, with forty ships; eighteen ships of war had arrived from the Rhodians; and king Eumenes was cruising among the Cyclades, with ten decked ships, thirty barks, and smaller vessels of various sorts.  Of the Lacedaemonians themselves,