Pausanias Analysis

The judges sent from Rome to arbitrate between the Lacedaemonians and the Achaeans also arrived in Greece; among them was Orestes. He summoned before him Diaeus and those holding office in each of the Achaean cities. When they gathered in the place where he himself happened to be residing, he laid out all of the Romans' decision before them, asserting that the Roman senate deemed it right neither for the Lacedaemonians nor Corinth to belong to the Achaean League; he also declared that Argos, Heracleia near Oeta, and the Arcadian Orchomenians should be exempted from the Achaean synod. For, he said, these peoples shared no common lineage with the Achaeans and had only later attached their cities to the Achaean alliance.

As soon as Orestes had spoken these words, the Achaean leaders did not even wait to hear him finish his whole speech, but rushed from the house and called the Achaeans to assembly. When the crowd learned the decisions made by the Romans, they immediately turned against the Spartans who were then visiting Corinth, and began seizing every man whom they knew clearly to be a Spartan, as well as anyone whom they suspected might be Spartan due either to his hairstyle, footwear, clothing, or even merely his name. Some Spartans managed to flee beforehand to the house where Orestes was staying, yet even there the Achaeans pursued them, attempting by force to drag them away.

Orestes and his companions attempted to encourage the Achaeans in their boldness, urging them to remember that they were beginning hostilities against the Romans precisely because of wrongs and insolent abuses. A few days afterwards, the Achaeans sent all the Lacedaemonians whom they had captured to prison, while setting free the foreigners whom they separated from them. They also dispatched to Rome Thearidas and other leading Achaeans. When these emissaries had departed, they met on their journey Roman ambassadors who had been sent concerning the affairs of the Lacedaemonians and the Achaeans, having left Rome later than Orestes; upon encountering these men, the Achaeans themselves turned back again.

When Diaeus' term of office expired, Critolaus was chosen by the Achaeans to succeed him as general. Critolaus was seized by a bitter and utterly rash passion to wage war upon the Romans. For at this very moment the delegates sent from Rome had already arrived to arbitrate the dispute between the Spartans and the Achaeans. Critolaus went to Tegea in Arcadia and spoke before the people there, yet he absolutely refused to gather the Achaeans into a common assembly with the Roman representatives. Instead, in the hearing of the Romans, he sent messengers ordering the delegates to convene at the Achaean assembly, but privately dispatched instructions to these delegates, telling them to remain in their own cities and not assemble.

But when those delegates who were to attend the conference did not arrive, Critolaus especially displayed his deceit toward the Romans. He urged them to await another meeting of the Achaeans, which would take place in six months, asserting that he himself would not privately negotiate any matter with them apart from the common consent of the Achaeans. When they finally realized they had been deceived, the Romans departed to Rome. Critolaus, however, assembling the Achaeans at Corinth, persuaded them first to take up arms against Sparta and, afterward, convinced them to declare immediate war against the Romans.

Indeed, that a king and a city should choose war and fail was due rather to envy from the gods than to fault in their human adversaries. But recklessness joined with weakness should properly be called madness rather than mere misfortune. This condition harmed Critolaus and the Achaeans. Moreover, Pytheas, who held the office of Boeotarch in Thebes at that time, incited the Achaeans further, and the Thebans eagerly promised their own alliance in the war.

The Thebans had incurred penalties, the first of these decided upon by Metellus, requiring them to compensate the Phocians because they had invaded Phocis under arms; a second penalty was owed to the Euboeans, for they had also ravaged the land of Euboea; and a third to the Amphisseans, whose grain they had cut down just as it was ripening.