Battle of Sellasia

For Antigonus ordered his Illyrians and Acarnanians to go round by a secret way and envelope the other wing, which Eucleidas, the brother of Cleomenes, commanded, and then led out the rest of his forces to battle;

For if he could have held out only two days, and continued his defensive tactics, he would not have needed to fight a battle, but the Macedonians would have gone away and he could have made his own terms with the Achaeans.

Phylarchus, however, says that there was treachery also, and that this was chiefly what ruined Cleomenes.

After this, Cleomenes, having been defeated in a great battle at Sellasia, forsook Sparta and sailed off to Egypt, and Antigonus, after having accorded to Aratus fair and kindly treatment in every way, led his army back to Macedonia.

Soon, however, Antigonus the king marched with the Achaeans to give aid against Cleomenes, and finding that his enemy was occupying the heights and passes about Sellasia, he drew up his forces near by with the purpose of attacking him and forcing a passage.

But since those about him hesitated to attempt this, and since, now that the battle was at its hottest, the ardour of his ambition made him impatient to join in the struggle, by moving his legs backward and forward he broke the shaft of the weapon in two in the middle, and then ordered each fragment to be drawn out separately.

And now Philopoemen, wishing to encourage still further the king’s troops and bring them swiftly upon the enemy thus thrown into disorder, quitted his horse, and with grievous difficulty forced his way along on foot, in his horseman’s breastplate and heavy equipment, towards ground that was irregular and full of water-courses and ravines.