Plutarch, Aratus
Bernadotte Perrin, Ed.

33. Notwithstanding, since many peoples and dynasts were combining against the Achaeans, Aratus at once sought to make friends of the Aetolians, and with the assistance of Pantaleon, their most influential man, not only made peace, but also an alliance between them and the Achaeans.

[2] But in his eagerness to set Athens free he incurred the bitter reproaches of the Achaeans, because, though they had made a truce and suspended hostilities with the Macedonians, he attempted to seize the Peiraeus. He himself, however, in the Commentaries which he left, lays the blame for this attempt upon Erginus, with whose aid he had effected the capture of Acrocorinthus. [3] He says that Erginus attacked the Peiraeus on his own private account, and that when his scaling-ladder broke and the enemy were pursuing him, he kept calling upon Aratus by name, as if Aratus were there, and thus deceived and made his escape from them. But this defence does not seem to be convincing. For Erginus was a private man and a Syrian, and there is no likelihood that he would have conceived of so great an undertaking if he had not been under the guidance of Aratus and obtained from him the force and the fitting time for the attack. [4] And Aratus himself also made this plain, since he assaulted the Peiraeus, not twice or thrice, but many times, like a desperate lover, and would not desist in spite of his failures, but was roused to fresh courage by the very narrowness of the slight margin by which he was disappointed of his hopes. And once he actually put his leg out of joint as he fled through the Thriasian plain; and while he was under treatment for this, the knife was often used upon him, and for a long time he was carried in a litter upon his campaigns.