being offered to any one.  Instead of which, by a fatality which ought to attend all designs founded in treachery, every step was taken that could tend to hasten the destruction of those who had committed it.  The commander, shut up in the palace, wasted a day and a night in searching out the tyrant’s treasures; and the Aetolians, as if they had stormed the city, of which they wished to be thought the deliverers, betook themselves to plunder.  The insolence of their behaviour, and at the same time contempt of their numbers, gave the Lacedaemonians courage to assemble in a body, when some said, that they ought to drive out the Aetolians, and resume their liberty, which had been ravished from them at the very time when it seemed to be restored; others, that, for the sake of appearance, they ought to associate with them some one of the royal family, as the director of their efforts.  There was a very young boy of that family, named Laconicus, who had been educated with the tyrant’s children; him they mounted on a horse, and taking arms, slew all the Aetolians whom they met straggling through the city.  They then assaulted the palace, where they killed Alexamenus, who, with a small party, attempted resistance.  Others of the Aetolians, who had collected together round the Chalciaecon, that is, the brazen temple of Minerva, were cut to pieces.  A few, throwing away their arms, fled, some to Tegea, others to Megalopolis, where they were seized by the magistrates, and sold as slaves.  Philopoemen, as soon as he heard of the murder of the tyrant, went to Lacedaemon, where, finding all in confusion and consternation, he called together the principal inhabitants, to whom he addressed a discourse, (such as ought to have been made by Alexamenus,) and united the Lacedaemonians to the confederacy of the Achaeans.  To this they were the more easily persuaded, because, at that very juncture, Aulus Atilius happened to arrive at Gythium with twenty-four quinqueremes.

37.  Meanwhile, Thoas, in his attempt on Chalcis, had by no means the same good fortune as Eurylochus had in getting possession of Demetrias; although, (by the intervention of Euthymidas, a man of considerable consequence, who, after the arrival of Titus Quinctius and the ambassadors, had been banished by those who adhered to the Roman alliance; and also of Herodorus, who was a merchant of Cios, and who, by means of his wealth, possessed a powerful influence at Chalcis,) he had engaged a party, composed of Euthymidas’s faction, to betray the city into his hands.  Euthymidas went from Athens, where he had fixed his residence, first to Thebes, and thence to Salganea; Herodorus to Thronium.  At a small distance, on the Malian bay, Thoas had two thousand foot and two hundred horse, with as many as thirty light transport ships.  With these vessels, carrying six hundred footmen, Herodorus was ordered to sail to the island of Atalanta, that, as soon as he should perceive the land forces approaching Aulus and the Euripus, he might pass over from thence to Chalcis; to which place Thoas himself led the rest of his forces, marching mostly by night, and with all possible expedition.