Such being the members of the council, the result of their deliberations was in accord with their characters.
Not only did they at once imprison Andronidas and Lagius, but the under-strategus Sosicrates as well, alleging that he had presided over the previous council, and had taken part in the decision to send to Caecilius, and was in fact the main cause of all the evil.
On the following day they appointed a tribunal and condemned Sosicrates to death, and binding him on the rack continued the torture until he died under it without making any such avowal as they expected.
As for Lagius and Andronidas and Archippus, they released them, partly because the attention of the people had been aroused by the flagrant injustice of their treatment of Sosicrates, and partly because Diaeus received a talent from Andronidas and forty minae from Archippus;
for Diaeus could not even when he was at bay, as the saying is, abstain from such shameless and illegal exactions.
He had a short time previously behaved in a very similar manner to Philinus of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Corinth&groupId=493&placeId=928">Corinth</a>. For accusing him of communicating with Menalcidas and of being a partisan of the Romans, he continued to flog and rack Philinus himself and his sons before each others\' eyes until both the father and the boys gave up the ghost.
One is inclined to ask oneself, in view of the fact that all were guilty of such folly and demoralization as it would not be easy to find among barbarians, how it came to pass that the whole nation was not utterly destroyed.
For my part I should say that some sort of resourceful and ingenious fortune counteracted the folly and insanity of the leading statesmen — a power which, though the leaders in their folly took every means and every opportunity to expel her, yet had resolved to leave nothing undone to save <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Achaea&groupId=272&placeId=533">Achaea</a>, and like a skilful wrestler adopted the sole device left to her,
and that was to bring about the speedy discomfiture and easy defeat of the Greeks, as she in fact did.
For owing to this the indignation and wrath of the Romans were not still further aroused, nor did the forces come from <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Africa&groupId=300&placeId=294">Africa</a>, nor were the leading statesmen, whose characters were such as I said and who only wanted a pretext, able to reveal fully their guilty intentions to their countrymen.
For it is evident from the analogy of their previous conduct, such as I have described it, how they would probably have acted against their own people if they had had any opportunity or achieved any success.
Everybody in fact kept repeating the proverb, "Had we not perished so soon we would never have been saved."
Walbank Commentary