The Murderers of Brachylles
In Boeotia, after the formation of the treaty between
The effect of the collapse of Antiochus upon Boeotia. |
Rome and Antiochus, the hopes of the whole
revolutionary party were destroyed. Politics
therefore began to assume a new aspect; and
whereas the administration of justice among
them had been postponed for nearly the last twenty years,
voices began to make themselves heard in the cities to the
effect that "there ought to be an end and settlement of their
mutual disputes." But after considerable controversy on this
point, because the discontented were more numerous than the
wealthy, the following circumstance occurred which helped
accidently to support the party of order.
Resistance to the recall of Zeuxippus. |
Titus Flamininus
had for some time past been zealously working in Rome to
secure the restoration of Zeuxippus to Boeotia,
because he had found him serviceable on many
occasions during the wars with Antiochus and
Philip. And just at this time he had induced the Senate to
send a despatch to the Boeotians ordering them to recall
Zeuxippus and his fellow exiles. When this despatch arrived,
the Boeotians, fearing that, if these men were restored, they
would become detached from their good understanding with
Macedonia, determined that the legal sentence upon
Zeuxippus and the rest should be publicly proclaimed,
1
which they had formerly drawn up against them.
Thus they
condemned them on two charges, first, of sacrilege for
having stripped off the silver from the plated table of Zeus,
and, secondly, of murder for having killed
Brachylles. Having made this arrangement,
they assumed that they need pay no further attention to the
despatch of the Senate, but contented themselves with sending
Callicritus and others to Rome with the message that they
were unable to rescind what had been settled by their laws.
Zeuxippus having sent an embassy to the Senate at the same
time, the Romans wrote to the Aetolians and Achaeans an
account of the attitude assumed by the Boeotians, and ordered
them to restore Zeuxippus to his country. The Achaeans refrained from invading the country with an army, but selected
some ambassadors to go and persuade the Boeotians to obey
the orders from Rome; and also to settle the legal disputes
existing between them and the Achaeans, on the same principles as they conducted the administration of justice at home:
for it happened that there were some controversies between
the two nations that had been dragging on for a long time.
On receiving this message the Boeotians, whose Strategus was
then Hippias, promised at the moment that they would do
what was demanded of them, but shortly afterwards neglected
it at every point. Therefore, when Hippias had laid down his
office and Alcetas had succeeded him, Philopoemen gave all
who chose license to make reprisals on the territories of the
Boeotians; which proved the beginning of a serious quarrel
between the two nations. For on the cattle of Myrrichus and
Simon being driven off,
2 and a struggle arising over this
transaction, the contest soon ceased to be political, and became the beginning and prelude of open war. If indeed the
Senate had persisted in carrying out the restoration of
Zeuxippus, war would quickly have been kindled; but as it
maintained silence on the subject, the Megareans were induced
by an embassy proposing terms to stop the reprisals. . . .
3