Roman Parallel – Titus Flamininus
Important People
Epaminondas – A personal hero of Philopoemen’s; he can imitate him in nearly everything except his calmness (cf. Section 3). Epaminondas sets a high water mark for Theban military and political power which Philopoemen is not able to replicate with Megalopolis.
Nabis – Spartan tyrant
Machanidas – Spartan tyrant
Antigonus III Doson of Macedon (263-221 BC) –
Philip V of Macedon (238-179 BC) –
Antiochus III of Seleucid Empire (241 – 187 BC) –
Titus Flamininus – This pair of biographies marks the only time Plutarch chose to compare contemporaries. While the Roman certainly outshines the Greek, Plutarch wants to emphasize that it’s only because Titus out-Greeks (the virtues of human excellence, which the Greeks saw themselves originally as the sole source and only practicioners of) the Greeks while also out-Romaning them (i.e. larger, more disciplined, better supplied, better trained armies)
Important Places
Megalopolis –
Sparta –
Gythium –
Messene –
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Key Vices and Virtues
Contentiousness (φιλονεικία) – A contentious word in the Greek, since it differs by only one letter from a love of victory (φιλονικία). Nevertheless, Philopoemen has a cantankerous outer shell that many find off-putting. Some come across that way, but we should be encourage by this life to look under the outer shell and see the character inside.
Anger (ὀργῆ) –
Other Sources
Pausanias (Description of Greece) – Background of Philopoemen
C. 1 – Confusing Introduction (Beginning may be missing)
The setting: Megalopolis – Some history of this city as it’s important to understanding Philopoemen’s hero: Epaminondas.
Philopoemen’s father, Craugis dies when Phil is a baby. He then has three guardians and trainers, the main one if Cleander, an exile in Megalopolis from Mantineia. His two other trainers were military leaders in Megalopolis who had gone to school together at the Academy (then trained under Arcesilaus, the sixth leader after Plato, and the founder of what is called Academic Skepticism of which Cicero will be an adherent in a century). They brought philosophic wisdom to their politics: freeing their city from tyranny, helped #aratus expel the tyrant of Sicyon, and restored rule of law in Cyrene. But their greatest achievement was the raising of Philopoemen, whom one Roman called “The Last of the Greeks.”
C. 2 – Ugly? Maybe…
Plutarch thinks most misunderstand his “ugliness” and refers us to a statue at Delphi (no longer extant, obvs). At one woman’s house, she mistakes his simple attire (and perhaps ugly face) and orders him to chop wood like a slave. HIs host returns as wonder how this happened, Phil replies “I’m paying a pentaly for my ugliness” (κακᾶς ὄψεως). And #Flamininus makes fun of him as having no belly, but it wasn’t a reference to his small waist as much as his small resources. When leading an army, he was always in need of money.
C. 3 – Epaminondas Part II
Phil struggled with anger and contentiousness, but imitated his hero, Epaminondas, in energy, understanding, and indifference to wealth (ζηλωτής, τὸ δραστήριον καὶ συνετὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ ὑπὸ χρημάτων ἀπαθὲς), but struggled to imitate his mildness, gravity, and political savvy (πρᾴῳ καὶ βαθεῖ καὶ φιλανθρώπῳ). As a young man he excelled in being a soldier and in athletics, but rejected athletics forever when his friends told him that it wasn’t good preparation for the life of a soldier.
C. 4 – Learning War
As soon as he finished his formal education with teachers and such, he began to take part in raids against Sparta and kept himself fit with hunting and farming. He slept on the same bed as his laborers did at his farm not far from the city of Megalopolis (.1 miles). He used the spoils of war to buy more armor or buy back war-captives, making his money (most justly, as Plutarch observes) from agriculture. He applied himself to the philosophers, but only those who would help him grow in virtue (πρὸς ἀρετὴν ὠφελεῖσθαι.). He loved tactical manuals, and ignored the charts and drew his own, discussing it for hours with his friends. Plutarch admits he may have loved it too much, holding any who did not practice war in contempt.
C. 5 – Cleomenes Takes Megalopolis
When Phil is 30, Cleomenes attacks Megalopolis at night. Phil is wounded in what sounds like a one-on-one fight with Cleomenes that allows his fellow citizens to make their escape from the city. When Cleomenes tries to attract the citizens back to their city, Phil points out how this is a ploy to take over the citizens and the city together. (#Cleomenes 24).
C. 6 – Philopoemen Takes Another Wound
Antigonus comes to aid the Achaeans against Cleomenes and the battle of Sellasia occurs in 221 BC (#Cleomenes 27, 28). The Achaeans fight WITH the Macedonian cavalry. Cleomenes’s brother sees a gap in the line and exploits it with swift, light-armed troops. The generals ignore Phil’s risky advice to engage the light-armed troops, so Phil has to move his own Megapolitans into a wedge formation and take the risk himself. He is wounded through both thighs by a javelin that forces both legs together. He broke the shaft of the javelin just by moving his legs, and then pulled out the two pieces separately. Without hesitation, he joined battle again. Antigonus, finding out later, comments that Phil acted like “a great commander.”
C. 7 – Training in Crete and Training the Cavalry
Phil declines to work for Antigonus as a general, because he knew it would be difficult for him to work under someone else. So, he sails to Crete in search of military service (how Spartan of him!). His year or two of experience in Crete made him an even more versatile and impressive warrior, leader, and tactician. When he returns home, he is put in charge of the cavalry and notices the poor state of their horses and their training (and thus their courage and ability). In part this was because those who owned horses were rich and their commanders didn’t want to risk offending them. He trained them to move as a unit, to change direction as one horse and man. In a battle against other Greeks, a cavalry commander bore down on him, but Phil’s spear met him first and he unhorsed the leader and killed him, causing flight of the enemy and his own renown to increase.
C. 8 – From Aratus to Philopoemen
The Achaean League finally united the Greeks into a strength great enough to resist Macedon, under the leadership of Aratus. The goal was to unite the Peloponnesus, something that the Greeks in previous centuries had never managed. But Aratus derived much of his military power from Macedonian support: Egypt (Ptolemy) and Macedon (Antigonus III and Philip V). But Aratus was dead by 213 and within five years, Philopoemen was now leading the League. Philopoemen continued to strengthen them until they didn’t even need foreign protectors anymore. His early victories with them only increased their confidence.
C. 9 – Military Reform
They were the worst of all worlds. Still fighting in a phalanx but without the advantage of long spears and wide shields. Thus, they were easily scattered and couldn’t handle close-range fighting. He invested fully in the phalanx, increasing the size of their spears, the weight of their armor, and the width of their shields. Next, he made them live more like soldiers—through competition—they should want to have the best military equipment rather than boasting about tablewares or fancy clothes. Normally, tickling the senses through idle decorations would just break down “serious purpose,” but Plutarch admits that when done with the trappings of war, it has a strengthening effect, as when Achilles receives his new armor at the beginning of Book 19. With training, Phil’s new army and new outfitting made them eager for battle.
C. 10 – Mantineia
[background: How did tyrants get into Sparta? The end of kings?]
In 206 BC, Machanidas, tyrant in Sparta, brings his army to Mantineia (cf. Epaminondas echo) against the Achaeans. Both sides have mercenaries, but also citizen-soldiers. Machanidas puts Phil’s mercenaries to flight and pursues them into the distance. Phil seems to have lost the battle, but takes advantage of the gap to bring his phalanx to bear on the Spartan one, and causes great casualties among the Spartans, and then turns around to find Machanidas returning.
Yet, Machanidas and Phil are separated by a trench, and it seems that one is the hunter and the other the prey. When Machanidas’s horse leaps the trench, Phil is there to meet him with a well-timed spear. It is in this position that the statue of him was set up in Delphi.
C. 11 – Nemean Games and Poetic Truths
The following summer, Phil shows off his phalanx to the Greeks gathered at Nemea for the panHellenic games there (sacred to Heracles). As the phalanx came into view, a poet recites the following line “And he crafted a glorious crown of freedom for Greece (or Hellas).” So, all eyes fell on Philopoemen as the obvious subject of the poem. [parallel with Themistocles at the Olympics and Aristides in the theater with the “seem vs. be” line]
C. 12 – Philopoemen’s Leadership and Reputation
The Achaean army had ups and downs, and Plutarch blames the fact that the same general could not be elected two years in a row. Philip tried to send assassins to kill Phil, but this was found out and ruined Philip’s reputation among the Greeks. The Boeotians once abandoned a siege of Megara from only a RUMOR of Phil’s approach. And when not even in office as general, Phil set off with some followers to free Messene from Spartan control, Nabis, the new tyrant after Machanidas, fled in the opposite direction even though he already had control of the city, rather than risk a fight with Phil.
C. 13 – Philopoemen in Crete
People did grow angry that Phil left for Crete, though, as Megalopolis felt so consistently attacked that they planted their grain in the city and manned their walls constantly. This also gave his enemies a chance to call out his “running away.” Others still said he was putting his time without public office to good use. His bias for action even precluded only training, and he mocked King Ptolemy for drilling his army every day but never using it in battle. The leader of the Achaeans, a political rival of Phil, prevents the Megalopolitans from voting for his exile. In Crete, he practiced Cretan warfare: ambushes, traps, and tricks, which he had mastered even better than they.
C. 14 – Naval Failure and Success on Land
His return to the Peloponnesus found that Philip V had been beaten at Cynoscephalae and the Greeks were declared free by #Titus Flamininus. Now, the Achaens and Romans were fighting Nabis, and Phil given command at sea, which he failed in (similar to Epaminondas). Plutarch excuses Epam. explaining that Epam didn’t want the Thebans to get a taste of naval empire, so he made the navy succeed well enough to keep AThens in check but not well enough to own and run an empire. Phil, however, really failed to learn the lesson that so much of “superior excellence consists in practice” (τὴν ἄσκησιν ἡλίκον μέρος ἐστὶ τῆς ἀρετῆς). He manned a 40 year old ship and nearly drowned the crew… He lifted the siege at Gythium not by using a navy, but by employing something more like a marine maneuver, landing troops and night and attacking the camp. Winning another victory against Nabis through superior army-layout (i.e. tactics adjusted to the exigencies of the moment). When the men flee into woods and hills, he sets traps for those who will return to the city by night and deprives Nabis of many of his men.
C. 15 – Romans v. Greeks and Nabis’s Gift
Philopoemen once again a hometown hero, and now his reputation is overshadowing Flamininus. A Roman consul sees this Arcadian upstart as having accomplished very little; after all, Flamininus set Greece free from the Macedonian yoke with a single proclamation (#Flamininus 10). Immediately after Rome makes a treaty with Nabis, he is assassinated and Sparta once again falls into confusion. Phil now forces Sparta into the Achaean League, not as leader but as member. Even the Spartans were hopeful that this would give some stability to Spartan law.
When they liquidate Nabis’s assets (120 talents), the Spartans choose to offer the money as a gift to Phil, proving that he is an excellent man. Timolaüs, a friend of Phil’s charged by the Spartans with bringing the gift, could not force himself to bring up the money because it would seem so much like a bribe and he had a strong suspicion that Phil would refuse it. Tim fails twice. When on the third time he finally brings it up, Phil goes in person to the Spartans to advise them not to bribe good men who were friends, but rather to use money to stop bad men from ruining their city.
C. 16 – Spartan Confusion and then Destruction
The Spartans, though, do not want to be members of the Achaean League (or perhaps don’t want to obey its other generals). When Diophanes is in charge, he wants to teach Sparta a lesson. Phil wants Dio to focus on the bigger fish, the Romans to their West and Antiochus III to their East. Ignored by both Diophanes and Flamininus, Phil unjustly and illegally reaches Sparta first and arranges a way to keep them in the League before Dio and Flam arrive.
Later, however, Phil was capable of being quite harsh with the Spartans, but most of his moves seem to be geared toward purifying the evil laws the tyrants had introduced: he tears down the walls, banishes to Achaea those who had received their citizenship from the tyrants, puts 80 to death, and gives a big chunk of its territory back to Megalopolis. But the last thing he did made no sense, even to Plutarch, and could not be explained as anti-tyrranical. He abolished the Lycurgan training and forced them to train in the Achaean way, convinced that under Lycurgan laws, they could never be humble (small in the Greek – μικρὸν). Plutarch does say that, in 184 BC (after Phil’s death), and with Roman permission, they re-instituted the Spartan constitution, for what it was worth.
C. 17 – Rome v. Antiochus
As the Romans defeat Antiochus (191 BC, Cynoscephalae?), Phil sits on the sidelines and after the Roman victory, the Greeks receive more Roman attention than before. When a fellow Megalopolitan urged the Achaeans not to resist or displease the Romans in any way, Phil’s patience didn’t last long and he boiled over asking why this man hastens the fated end of Greece? He also rejected the Roman attempt to return exiles to Sparta, wanting to make sure he did it himself and that his fellow Greeks owed the favor to the Achaean League and its general (Phil). (φιλόνεικον)
C. 18 – Philopoemen’s Last Stand
At seventy, in 182 BC, he sees that his own bodily strength is declining along with the power of the Greek city-states to resist (both each other and the Romans, it seems). (φιλόνικον – love of victory). And yet, when an personal enemy of his causes Messene to revolt from the Achaean League and threatens another village, Philopoemen rises from his sick bed and marches nearly fifty miles in ONE day to resist him.
Since he was working with volunteer cavalry, he knew they were inexperienced, but they send Deinocrates (personal enemy) packing. Some cavalry in the area (Messenian it seems, some combination of scouting, reconaissance, and defence) then bear down on them and Phil doesn’t want to be surrounded, so he rides purposely in a way to draw their attacks to himself and begins to send his volunteers home one man at a time. While age didn’t weigh him down, sickness did, and it was soon him against the entire cavalry unit, forcing him into less and less advantageous ground until his horse threw him and those who approached thought he was dead.
Seeing that he was alive, they captured him as a common prisoner and take him back to Messene.
C. 19 – Philopoemen Captured
The Messenians flock to see Phil, but many cry to see such a great man brought to such straits. They don’t just cry for him, they also cry for “the inconstancy and vanity of human greatness.” A few still wanted to kill him to please Deinocrates, but most were coming to realize (or remember) the good deeds he had done for all Greeks in or near the Peloponnesus (like expelling Nabis, the tyrant). They placed him in an underground room called the Thesaurus (treasure house), which was closed by a giant rock. Rolling the rock in place, they put a guard in front.
The young raw recruits now feel bad when they can’t find their general after they’ve regrouped. News reaches the other cities of the Achaean League through these men, and anger grows against the Messenians. They prepare and embassy and an army to demand Phil’s return.
C. 20 –
Deinocrates sends in a public official to hand Phil poison and make sure he drinks it (Socrates?). Phil sat up, asked about the horsemen who had been with him, discovered most were safe, and then drank the poison.
C. 21 – The Revenge of the Achaean League
The Megalopolitans gathered for mourning, but also mustered an army and ravaged the Messenian countryside until the Messenians allowed them into the city. Deinocrates had disappeared, but anyone else involved in Phil’s poisioning was put to death. Some who had wanted to torture Phil were preserved for a harsher, slower death. They returned to Megalopolis with Philopoemen’s ashes. Polybius, an important source for Plutarch and one of a few surviving Greek historians of this period, was a young man who would later be a hostage in Rome. That Polybius carried the funeral urn of Philopoemen.
From city to city, people came out to mourn the loss of Philopoemen. The feeling grows that with the loss of Philopoemen, Megalopolis had lost its supremacy and leadership in the Achaean League. The Messenians who had wanted to torture Philopoemen before he died were stoned to death at his grave. Many statues were put up and, in the wake of the destruction of Corinth, some Romans (a Roman) tried to make Phil out to be an enemy of Rome and demanded the statues be torn down.
Polybius defended Philopoemen before a special commission of ten men set up by Rome to settle the Greek question once and for all. They would not consent that honors be obliterated when a man had acted honorably, even if doing so also meant he had resisted Flamininus and Manius. As Plutarch says, “These judges distinguishes, it seems, between virtue and necessity, honor and advantage.” ἀλλὰ τῆς χρείας τὴν ἀρετὴν ἐκεῖνοι καὶ τὸ καλὸν, ὡς ἔοικε, τοῦ λυσιτελοῦς διώριζον
