Book 7
13.5
So Damocritus withdrew his army, and the Achaeans sentenced him to pay a fine of fifty talents for his treachery. Being unable to pay, he left the Peloponnesus and went into exile. Diaeus, who was elected general after Damocritus, agreed, when Metellus sent another embassy, to involve the Lacedaemonians in no war, but to await the arrival of the arbitrators from Rome.
13.6
But he invented another trick to embarrass the Lacedaemonians. He induced the towns around Sparta to be friendly to the Achaeans, and even introduced garrisons into them, to be Achaean bases against Sparta.
13.7
The Lacedaemonians elected Menalcidas to be their general against Diaeus, and although they were utterly unprepared for war, being especially ill-provided with money, while in addition their land had remained unsown, he nevertheless dared to break the truce, and took by assault and sacked Iasus, a town on the borders of Laconia, but at that time subject to the Achaeans.
13.8
Having again stirred up war between Lacedaemonians and Achaeans he incurred blame at the hands of his countrymen, and, failing to find a way of escape for the Lacedaemonians from the peril that threatened them, he took his own life by poison. Such was the end of Menalcidas. At the time he was in command of the Lacedaemonians, and previously he had commanded the Achaeans. In the former office he proved a most stupid general, in the latter an unparalleled villain.
