Philopoemen   

CLEANDER was a man of high birth and great power in the city of Mantinea,
but by the chances of the time happened to be driven from thence.
There being an intimate friendship betwixt him and Craugis, the father
of Philopoemen, who was a person of great distinction, he settled
at Megalopolis, where, while his friend lived, he had all he could
desire. When Craugis died, he repaid the father's hospitable kindness
in the care of the orphan son; by which means Philopoemen was educated
by him, as Homer says Achilles was by Phoenix, and from his infancy
moulded to lofty and noble inclinations. But Ecdemus and Demophanes
had the principal tuition of him, after he was past the years of childhood.
They were both Megalopolitans; they had been scholars in the academic
philosophy, and friends to Arcesilaus, and had, more than any of their
contemporaries, brought philosophy to bear upon action and state affairs.
They had freed their country from tyranny by the death of Aristodemus,
whom they caused to be killed; they had assisted Aratus in driving
out the tyrant Nicocles from Sicyon; and, at the request of the Cyreneans,
whose city was in a state of extreme disorder and confusion, went
thither by sea, and succeeded in establishing good government and
happily settling their commonwealth. And among their best actions
they themselves counted the education of Philopoemen, thinking they
had done a general good to Greece by giving him the nurture of philosophy.
And indeed all Greece (which looked upon him as a kind of latter birth
brought forth, after so many noble leaders, in her decrepit age) loved
him wonderfully; and, as his glory grew, increased his power. And
one of the Romans, to praise him, calls him the last of the Greeks;
as if after him Greece had produced no great man, nor who deserved
the name of Greek.
His person was not, as some fancy, deformed; for his likeness is yet
to be seen at Delphi. The mistake of the hostess of Megara was occasioned,
it would seem, merely by his easiness of temper and his plain manners.
This hostess having word brought her that the general of the Achaeans
was coming to her house in the absence of her husband, was all in
a hurry about providing his supper. Philopoemen, in an ordinary cloak,
arriving in this point of time, she took him for one of his own train
who had been sent on before, and bid him lend her his hand in her
household work. He forthwith threw off his cloak, and fell to cutting
up the firewood. The husband returning, and seeing him at it, "What,"
says he, "may this mean, O Philopoemen?" "I am," replied he in his
Doric dialect, "paying the penalty of my ugly looks." Titus Flamininus,
jesting with him upon his figure, told him one day he had well-shaped
hands and feet, but no belly: and he was indeed slender in the waist.
But this raillery was meant to the poverty of his fortune; for he
had good horse and foot, but often wanted money to entertain and play
them. These are common anecdotes told of Philopoemen.
The love of honour and distinction was, in his character, not unalloyed
with feelings of personal rivalry and resentment. He made Epaminondas
his great example, and came not far behind him in activity, sagacity,
and incorruptible integrity; but his hot contentious temper continually
carried him out of the bounds of that gentleness, composure, and humanity
which had marked Epaminondas, and this made him thought a pattern
rather of military than of civil virtue. He was strongly inclined
to the life of a soldier even from his childhood, and he studied and
practised all that belonged to it, taking great delight in managing
of horses and handling of weapons. Because he was naturally fitted
to excel in wrestling, some of his friends and tutors recommended
his attention to athletic exercises. But he would first be satisfied
whether it would not interfere with his becoming a good soldier. They
told him, as was the truth, that the one life was directly opposite
to the other; the requisite state of body, the ways of living, and
the exercises all different: the professed athlete sleeping much and
feeding plentifully, punctually regular in his set times of exercise
and rest, and apt to spoil all by every little excess or breach of
his usual method; whereas the soldier ought to train himself in every