Up to now all that had been done was right and fair according to the laws of war, but what shall I say of that which followed?
For mindful of what the Aetolians had done at <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Dium&groupId=542&placeId=1019">Dium</a> and Dodona they burnt the colonnades and destroyed the rest of the rich and artistic votive offerings, some of which were most elaborate and expensive works.
And not only did they damage the roofs of these buildings by the fire, but razed them to the ground. They also threw down the statues numbering not less than two thousand and destroyed many of them, sparing however, such as represented gods or bore inscribed dedications to gods.
On the walls they scribbled the often quoted verse due to Samus, son of Chrysogonus and a foster-brother of the king, whose talent was beginning already at this date to reveal itself:
and the king and his intimates indeed had a perverse conviction that they were acting rightly and properly in thus retaliating upon the Aetolians for their sacrilegious treatment of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Dium&groupId=542&placeId=1019">Dium</a>.
I am quite of the opposite opinion, and we have the material at hand for judging if I am right or not, by taking examples not from elsewhere but from the previous history of this royal house.
When Antigonus after defeating Cleomenes king of the Lacedaemonians in a pitched battle became master of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Sparta&groupId=660&placeId=1208">Sparta</a>
and had absolute authority to treat the city and citizens as he chose, so far from injuring those who were at his mercy, he restored to them on the contrary their national constitution and their liberty, and did not return to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Macedonia&groupId=723&placeId=428">Macedonia</a> before he had conferred the greatest public and private benefits on the Lacedaemonians.
Not only therefore was he regarded as their benefactor at the time but after his death he was venerated as their preserver, and it was not in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Sparta&groupId=660&placeId=1208">Sparta</a> alone but throughout Greece that he received undying honour and glory in acknowledgement of this conduct.
Walbank Commentary