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15.
Aratus, when Agis joined him near Corinth, was still deliberating whether or not to meet the enemy in open battle. Here Agis displayed great ardour, and courage which was sane and calculating. For he declared that in his opinion it was best to fight a decisive battle and not to abandon the gate of the Peloponnesus and suffer the enemy to pass inside:
‘However,’ he said,
‘I will do as seems best to Aratus, for Aratus is an older man, and is general of the Achaeans; I did not come hither to be their leader or to give them orders, but to give them aid and share their expedition.’
[2]
Baton of Sinopé, however, says that Agis himself was unwilling to give battle although Aratus urged it; but Baton has not read what Aratus wrote about this matter,1 urging in self-defence that he thought it better, now that the husbandmen had gathered in almost all their crops, to suffer the enemy to pass by, instead of risking everything in battle.
[3]
When, therefore, Aratus decided not to give battle, and dismissed his allies with praises for their proffered aid, Agis, who had won universal admiration, led his forces back to Sparta, where there was already much commotion and a revolution.
1 In his ‘Commentaries.’ See the Aratus, iii. 2.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives. with an English Translation by. Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. 10.
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