After these disturbances the king\'s Phocian schemes met with some impediments, but Leontius renouncing all hope of achieving anything by his own efforts, owing to all his plans having failed, appealed to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Amphidamus&groupId=319&placeId=621">Amphidamus</a>, sending frequent messages to him to come back from <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Chalcis&groupId=457&placeId=853">Chalcis</a>, alleging his own helplessness and embarrassment owing to his difference with the king.
Now <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Amphidamus&groupId=319&placeId=621">Amphidamus</a> during his stay in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Chalcis&groupId=457&placeId=853">Chalcis</a> had assumed more authority than his position warranted,
giving out that the king was still young and was ruled by him in most matters and could do nothing of his own accord, and taking the management of affairs and the supreme power into his own hands.
Consequently the prefects and officials in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Macedonia&groupId=723&placeId=428">Macedonia</a> and <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Thessaly&groupId=1028&placeId=1816">Thessaly</a> referred all matters to him, while the Greek cities in voting gifts and honours made little mention of the king, but <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Amphidamus&groupId=319&placeId=621">Amphidamus</a> was all in all to them.
Philip, who was aware of this, had long been annoyed and aggrieved at it, especially as Aratus was always by him and took the most efficient means to work out his own project, but he bore with it for the time and let no one know what action he contemplated and what his real opinion was.
<a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Amphidamus&groupId=319&placeId=621">Amphidamus</a>, ignorant of his own true position and convinced that if he had a personal meeting with Philip he would order matters exactly as he wished, left <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Chalcis&groupId=457&placeId=853">Chalcis</a> and hastened to the help of Leontius.
On his arrival at <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Corinth&groupId=493&placeId=928">Corinth</a> Leontius, Ptolemaeus, and Megaleas, who were in command of the peltasts and the other crack corps, were at much pains to work up the soldiers to give him a fine reception.
After entering the city in great pomp owing to the number of officers and soldiers who had flocked to meet him, he proceeded without alighting to the royal quarters.
He was about to enter as had been his former custom, when one of the ushers, acting by order, stopped him, saying that the king was engaged.
Disconcerted by this unexpected rebuff, Apelles after remaining for some time in a state of bewilderment withdrew much abashed, upon which his followers at once began to drop away quite openly, so that finally he reached his lodging accompanied only by his own servants.
So brief a space of time suffices to exalt and abase men all over the world and especially those in the courts of kings,
for those are in truth exactly like counters on a . For these at the will of the reckoner are now worth a copper and now worth a talent, and courtiers at the nod of the king are at one moment universally envied and at the next universally pitied.
Megaleas seeing that the result of Apelles' intervention had not been at all what he expected, was beset by fear, and made preparations for flight.
Apelles was now invited to state banquets and received other such honours, but took no part in councils and was not admitted to the king's intimacy.
When a few days afterwards the king again sailed from <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Lechaeum&groupId=675&placeId=1234">Lechaeum</a> on his Phocian enterprise he took Apelles with him.
Walbank Commentary