344 HISTORICAL TALES.

for their noble foe, and would probably have in the
end released him, had time been given them. But
Dinocrates, their general and his enemy, resolved
that Philopcemen should not. escape from his hands.
He confined him in a close prison, and, learning that
his army had returned and were determined upon
his rescue, decided that that night should be Philo-
poemen’s last.

The prisoner lay—not sleeping, but oppressed with
grief and trouble—in his prison cell, when a man en-
tered bearing poison in a cup. Philopcemen sat up,
and, taking the cup, asked the man if he had heard
anything of the Achswan horsemen.

“The most of them got off. safe,” said the man.

“Tt is well,” said Philopcemen, with a cheerful
look, “that we have not been in every way unfortu-
nate.”

Then, without a word more, he drank the poison
and lay down again. As he was old and weak from
his fall, he was quickly dead.

The news of his death filled all Achwa with lam-
entation and thirst for revenge. Messenia was rav-
aged with fire and sword till it submitted. Dinoc-
rates and all who had voted for Philopcomen’s death
~ killed themselves to escape death by torture. All
Achwa mourned at his funeral, statues were erected
to his memory, and the highest honors decreed to
him in many cities. In the words of Pausanias,
a late Greek writer, “Miltiades was the first, and
Philopemen the last, benefactor to the whole of
Greece.”