<head>Messene surrenders to the Achaeans</head>Lycortas, the strategus of the Achaeans, having cowed the Messenians by the war . . .
The Messenians had long been overawed by their leaders, but now certain of them just ventured to open their mouths, relying on the protection of the enemy, and to advise sending an embassy to ask for peace.
Deinocrates and the others in power, no longer daring to face the people, as they were encompassed by perils, yielded to circumstances and retired to their own dwellings.
The people now, entreated by the elders and chiefly by the Boeotian envoys Epaenetus and Apollodorus,
who had previously arrived to make peace, and by a happy chance were still in Messene, readily gave ear, and appointed and dispatched envoys craving pardon for the errors they had committed.
The strategus of the Achaeans summoned his colleagues, and after listening to the envoys replied that the Messenians could make peace with the League on no other terms
than by giving up to him now the authors of their defection and of the murder of Philopoemen, and by submitting all other matters to the discretion of the Achaeans and at once admitting a garrison into their citadel.
When these terms were announced to the people, those who had been throughout hostile to the authors of the war were ready to arrest and surrender the latter, while all who were convinced that they would not be harshly treated by the Achaeans gladly agreed to the unconditional submission;
and as, above all, they had no choice in the matter, they unanimously accepted the proposal.
The strategus upon this at once took over the citadel and introduced the peltasts into it,
and after this, accompanied by competent members of his force, he entered the city, and summoning the populace addressed them in terms suitable to the occasion, promising that they would never repent of having entrusted their future to him.
He referred the whole question to the League — it happened that at that very time the Achaeans, as if for this very purpose, were holding their second assembly at <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Megalopolis&groupId=745&placeId=1360">Megalopolis</a> — ordering those among the guilty Messenians who had actually at the time participated in the death of Philopoemen, to put an end to their own lives without delay.
Walbank Commentary