Note 206 — BOOK XXXII
Evelyn S. (Evelyn Shirley) Shuckburgh translation
The episode of Oropus here referred to, Polybius’s account of which is lost, was made remarkable by the visit of the three philosophers to Rome as ambassadors from Athens. The story, as far as Athens was concerned, as told by Pausanias, 7, 11, 4-7. The Athenians had been much impoverished by the events of the war with Perseus (B.C. 172-168), and had made a raid or raids of some sort upon Oropus. The Oropians appealed to Rome. The Romans referred the assessment of damages to an Achaean court at Sicyon. The Athenians failed to appear before the court at Sicyon, and were condemned by default to a fine of five hundred talents. Thereupon Carneades the Academician, Diogenes the Stoic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic were sent to plead for a remission of a fine which the Athenians were wholly unable to pay. They made a great impression on the Roman youth by their lectures, and Cato urged that they should get their answer and be sent away as soon as possible. The Senate reduced the fine to one hundred talents: but even that the Athenians could not collect; and they seem to have managed to induce the Oropians to allow an Athenian garrison to hold Oropus, and to give hostages for their fidelity to the Athenian government. This led to fresh quarrels and an appeal to the Achaean government. The Achaean Strategus, Menalcidas of Sparta, was bribed by a present of ten talents to induce an interference in behalf of Oropus. Thereupon the Athenians withdrew their garrison from Oropus, after pillaging the town, and henceforth took no part in the quarrels which ensued, arising from the demands of Menalcidas for his ten talents; which the Oropians refused to pay, on the ground that he had not helped them as he promised; quarrels which presently centred round the question of the continuance of Sparta in the Achaean league. The date of the original quarrel between Athens and Oropus is not fixed, but the mission of the philosophers was in B.C. 155. See Plutarch, Cato, 22; Pliny, N. H. 7, 112-113; Aulus Gellius, 6, 14; Cic. ad Att. 12, 23; Tusc. 4, § 5.