336 HISTORICAL TALES.

nor his son Alexander, entered this proud city, and
it was not until the troublous later times that the
people of Sparta, feeling that their ancient warlike
virtue was gone, built around their city a wall of
defence,

But the humiliation of that proud city was at hand.
It was to be entered by a foeman; the laws of Ly-
curgus, under which it had risen to such might,
were to come to an end; and lordly Sparta was to
sink into insignificance, and its glory remain but a
memory to man.

About the year 252 B.c. was born Philopemen,
the last of the great generals of Greece. He was
the son of Craugis, a citizen of Megalopolis, the
great city which Epaminondas had built in Arcadia.
Here he was thoroughly educated in philosophy and
the other learning of the time; but his natural in-
clination was towards the life of a soldier, and he
made a thorough study of the use of arms and the
management of horses, while sedulously secking the
full development of his bodily powers. Epaminon-
das was the example he set himself, and he came
little behind that great warrior in activity, sagacity,
and integrity, though he differed from him in being
possessed of a hot, contentious temper, which often
carried him beyond the bounds of judgment.

Philopeemen was marked by plain manners and a
genial disposition, in proof of which Plutarch tells
an amusing story. In his later years, when he was
general of a great Grecian confederation, word was
brought to a lady of Megara that Philopemen was

coming to her house to await the return of her hus-
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