city ever[75] had, I should still despair. Now listen to the story that I have to tell you. Don't think that I am a mere grumbler, who does his best to discourage thoughts that are too high for him to understand; I speak from a bitter experience. But you shall hear.

[75]

"I am just old enough to remember the storm and sack of my native city by the Romans. I was but five years old, but even a child of five does not forget when he sees, as I saw, his father and his elder brother killed before his eyes. I should have been killed myself—for the soldiers, who had suffered terribly in the siege, spared no one—but for Marcellus himself.15 He let the slave who waited on me carry me off to his own hut. That worthy slave and his good wife kept me for five years out of their scanty wages—he was a workman in the stone-quarries, and she sold cakes to schoolboys in the streets—till I was ten years old. Then interest was made with the Senate at Rome, and part of the family property was given back to me. You will understand that I was very restless at Syracuse, but I could not move till I was twenty-five, for my father's will had fixed this age for my becoming my own master. It is a custom in our family, and I was too dutiful to think of breaking it. But the moment I became my own master I made haste to[76] carry out a plan which I had been long thinking of. The famous soldier of the time was Philopœmen, the Arcadian. It was a privilege to serve under him as a volunteer, and there were always ten times more applications than there were places to fill. However, by great good luck, and partly, I may say, through my having had the good fortune to win the foot-race at Olympia, I was chosen. I landed here—it is more than forty-five years ago—and made my way to his home in Arcadia. He had himself just come back from Sparta, which he had brought over to the cause of Greece. Sparta, as I dare say you know, has always cared much for herself, and very little for anything or anybody else. I shall never forget what happened a few days after my arrival. The Spartans, or, I should rather say, the reforming party among the Spartans—for there never was a Greek city yet but had two parties in it at the very least—felt greatly obliged to him for what he had done, and determined to make him a present. Well, they sent three of their chief citizens to offer it to him. They came, and Philopœmen entertained them. Of course he knew nothing about the object of their coming, and they said nothing about it. They seemed ill at ease—that I could not help observing—though their host was all that was courteous and agreeable; but speak they couldn't. There was something about the man which posi[77]tively 

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