Polybius, Histories

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The King Conducted to the Stadium

But finding that his long and piteous appeals produced no effect, at last he sent out the young king with the bodyguards. As soon as they had got the king, the Macedonians placed him on a horse and conducted him to the stadium. His appearance being greeted with loud shouts and clapping of hands, they stopped the horse, and dismounting the child, ushered him to the royal stall and seated him there. But the feelings of the crowd were divided: they were delighted that the young king had been brought, but they were dissatisfied that the guilty persons had not been arrested and met with the punishment they deserved. Accordingly, they continued with loud cries to demand that the authors of all the mischief should be brought out and made an example. The day was wearing away, and yet the crowd had found no one on whom to wreak their vengeance, when Sosibius, who, though a son of the elder Sosibius, was at that time a member of the bodyguard, and as such had a special eye to the safety of the king and the State,—seeing that the furious desire of the multitude was implacable, and that the child was frightened at the unaccustomed faces that surrounded him and the uproar of the crowd, asked the king whether he would "surrender to the populace those who had injured him or his mother." The boy having nodded assent, Sosibius bade some of the bodyguard announce the king's decision, while he raised the young child from his seat and took him to his own house which was close by to receive proper attention and refreshment. When the message from the king was declared, the whole place broke out into a storm of cheering and clapping of hands. But meanwhile Agathocles and Agathocleia had separated and gone each to their own lodgings. Without loss of time soldiers, some voluntarily and others under pressure from the crowd, started in search of them.