NO READER OF THIS history should omit to have beside him Plutarch’s Lives, and there study the picturesque details of the life of the men of this age, for which there is no space in this short book. Nowhere is Plutarch more picturesque than in the opening chapters of his sketch of Aratus, drawn, no doubt, from that politician’s once well-known “Memoirs.” The habit of keeping notes of one’s own life, and leaving them as memoirs to posterity, was already fashionable, so that instead of the severe political history of Thucydides, which scorns personal details, most of our authorities now give us plenty of piquant anecdotes, witty sayings, and clever stratagems. The course of serious history is often obscured by these sallies; great national movements come to be attributed to the accident of this or that man’s action; for people are always glad to find some definite personal cause for a great vague movement, the growth of which they cannot grasp. If, however, we lose in political insight by this biographical way of treating history, we gain immensely in our knowledge of social and moral phases, in our appreciation of human nature, in the color and richness of our picture, even when it varies considerably from the reality which it professes to copy.

Aratus, like Pyrrhus, narrowly escaped death in his infancy at the hands of one of the many tyrants who in succession seized the rule of Sicyon. We see this kind of thing happening all through Greece, where any ambitious man, who could by a massacre or otherwise make himself ruler, could count on the support of Antigonus Gonatas, or of Ptolemy, as these kings found it far easier to deal with Greek cities when represented by one man, than by the changing humor of a public assembly. When this particular tyrant Abantidas murdered Cleinias, father of Aratus, and sought to slay the child, he escaped and wandered in terror and alone till he came to the house of his uncle, who was married to a sister of the tyrant. This good woman hid him, and sent him away safely to Argos.

Though an exile he grew up among rich friends and apparently with ample means and it was noted that instead of being educated in philosophy or in the science of strategy, he devoted himself to athletics, so as to compete in the Pentathlum or five events of the public games. It is characteristic of the time to note that this was thought an inferior training, for not only wa