Aratus   

any one of those places. Robbers nest themselves in rocks and precipices;
but the strongest fort a king can have is confidence and affection.
These have opened to you the Cretan sea; these make you master of
Peloponnesus, and by the help of these, young as you are, are you
become captain of the one, and lord of the other." While he was still
speaking, Philip returned the entrails to the priest, and drawing
Aratus to him by the hand, "Come, then," said he, "let us follow the
same course as if he felt himself forced by him, and obliged to give
up the town.
From this time Aratus began to withdraw from court, and retired by
degrees from Philip's company; when he was preparing to march into
Epirus, and desired him that he would accompany him thither, he excused
himself and stayed at home, apprehending that he should get nothing
but discredit by having anything to do with his actions. But then,
afterwards, having shamefully lost his fleet against the Romans and
miscarried in all his designs, he returned into Peloponnesus, where
he tried once more to beguile the Messenians by his artifices, and
failing in this, began openly to attack them and to ravage their country,
then Aratus fell out with him downright, and utterly renounced his
friendship; for he had begun then to be fully aware of the injuries
done to his son in his wife, which vexed him greatly, though he concealed
them from his son, as he could but know he had been abused, without
having any means to revenge himself. For, indeed, Philip seems to
have been an instance of the greatest and strangest alteration of
character; after being a mild king and modest and chaste youth, he
became a lascivious man and most cruel tyrant; though in reality this
was not a change of his nature, but a bold unmasking, when safe opportunity
came, of the evil inclinations which his fear had for a long time
made him dissemble.
For that the respect he at the beginning bore to Aratus had a great
alloy of fear and awe appears evidently from what he did to him at
last. For being desirous to put him to death, not thinking himself,
whilst he was alive, to be properly free as a man, much less at liberty
to do his pleasure as king or tyrant, he durst not attempt to do it
by open force, but commanded Taurion, one of his captains and familiars,
to make him away secretly by poison, if possible, in his absence.
Taurion, therefore, made himself intimate with Aratus, and gave him
a dose not of your strong and violent poisons, but such as cause gentle,
feverish heats at first, and a dull cough, and so by degrees bring
on certain death. Aratus perceived what was done to him, but, knowing
that it was in vain to make any words of it, bore it patiently and
with silence, as if it had been some common and usual distemper. Only
once, a friend of his being with him in his chamber, he spat some
blood, which his friend observing and wondering at, "These, O Cephalon,"
said he, "are the wages of a king's love."
Thus died he in Aegium, in his seventeenth generalship. The Achaeans
were very desirous that he should be buried there with a funeral and
monument suitable to his life, but the Sicyonians treated it as a
calamity to them if he were interred anywhere but in their city, and
prevailed with the Achaeans to grant them the disposal of the body.
But there being an ancient law that no person should be buried within
the walls of their city, and besides the law also a strong religious
feeling about it, they sent to Delphi to ask counsel of the Pythoness,
who returned this answer:-
"Sicyon, whom oft he rescued, 'Where,' you say,
'Shall we the relics of Aratus lay?'
The soil that would not lightly o'er him rest,
Or to be under him would feel opprest,
Were in the sight of earth and seas and skies unblest."
This oracle being brought, all the Achaeans were well pleased at.
it, but especially the Sicyonians, who, changing their mourning into
public joy, immediately fetched the body from Aegium, and in a kind
of solemn procession brought it into the city, being crowned with
garlands, and arrayed in white garments, with singing and dancing,