Philip Begins to Become a Tyrant
Aratus seeing that Philip was now openly engaging in
war with
Rome, and entirely changed in his policy toward his
allies, with difficulty diverted him from his intention by
suggesting numerous difficulties and scruples.
I wish now to remind my readers of what, in my fifth Book, I
put forward merely as a promise and unsupported statement, but
which has now been confirmed by facts; in order that I may
not leave any proposition of mine unproved or open to
question.
In the course of my history of the Aetolian war,
where I had to relate the violent proceedings of
Philip in destroying the colonnades and other
sacred objects at Thermus; and added that, in consideration of
his youth, the blame of these measures ought not to be referred
to Philip so much as to his advisers; I then remarked that
the life of Aratus sufficiently proved that he would not have
committed such an act of wickedness, but that such principles
exactly suited Demetrius of Pharos; and I promised to make this
clear from what I was next to narrate.
Recapitulation of the
substance of book 7, viz. the treacherous dealings of Philip with the Messenians, B.C. 215. |
I thereby designedly
postponed the demonstration of the truth of my assertion, till
I had come to the period of which I have just
been speaking; that, namely, in which with the
presence of Demetrius, and in the absence of
Aratus, who arrived a day too late, Philip made
the first step in his career of crime; and, as
though from the first taste of human blood and
murder and treason to his allies, was changed
not into a wolf from a man, as in the Arcadian fable
mentioned by Plato, but from a king into a
savage tyrant.
But a still more decisive proof
of the sentiments of these two men is furnished
by the plot against the citadel of
Messene, and may help us to
make up our minds which of the two were responsible for the
proceedings in the Aetolian war; and, when we are satisfied
on that point, it will be easy to form a judgment on the
differences of their principles.
