Book 22
3
AFTER the execution of the men at Compasium,In B. C. 191 Philopoemen secured the adhesion of Sparta to the Achaean league: but the Spartans were never united in their loyalty to it, and during his year as Strategus (B. C. 189) he punished a massacre of some Achaean sympathisers in Sparta by an execution of eighty Spartans at Compasium on the frontier of Laconia. This number Plutarch gives on the authority of Polybius, but another account stated it at three hundred and fifty. Plut. Phil. 16. some of the, Lacedaemonians, incensed at what had been done, and believing that the power and authority of the Romans had been set at naught by Philopoemen, went to Rome and accused Philopoemen and his proceedings; and finally obtained a letter addressed to the Achaeans from Marcus Lepidus, the consul of the year, and afterwards Pontifex Maximus, in which he told the Achaeans that they had not acted equitably in the matters of the Lacedaemonians. An appeal to Rome against Philopoemen. B. C. 187. Coss. M. Aemilius Lepidus, C. Flamininus, At the same time as this mission from Sparta, Philopoemen also appointed Nicodemus of Elis and others to go on an embassy to Rome.
