Book 22
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After these the ambassadors from the Peloponnese wereThe Achaean ambassadors make their defence. introduced. For the Achaeans on their part had sent Apollonidas of Sicyon, and others, to justify themselves to Caecilius for his having received no answer, and generally to inform the Senate on the question of Sparta; and at the same time Areus and Alcibiades had come from Sparta as ambassadors,—two of the old exiles recently restored by Philopoemen and the Achaeans. And this was a circumstance that particularly roused the anger of the Achaeans; because they thought it the height of ingratitude on the part of the exiles, after receiving so important and recent a service at their hands, to be now sending a hostile embassy, and accusing to the sovereign people those who had been the authors of their unlooked—for preservation and restoration to their country.
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Both parties were heard in their defence in each The Spartan envoys. other’s presence. Apollonidas of Sicyon and his colleagues tried to convince the Senate that the affairs of Sparta could not have been better managed than they were managed by Philopoemen. Areus and his colleagues attempted to establish the reverse: alleging, first of all, that the power of the city was entirely destroyed by the violent withdrawal of so large a number; and, in the second place, that even those that were left were so few that their position was insecure, now that the walls were pulled down; and that their freedom of speech was entirely destroyed by the fact that they were not only amenable to the general decrees of the Achaean league, but were also made specially subject to the magistrates set over them from time to time. The decision. After hearing these envoys also, the Senate decided to give, the same legates instructions regarding them as well as the others, and appointed Appius Claudius and his colleagues commissioners for Greece.
