In the early summer of the year in which <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Agetas&groupId=303&placeId=595">Agetas</a> was strategus of the Aetolians and shortly after Aratus had entered on the same office in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Achaea&groupId=272&placeId=533">Achaea</a> — that being the date at which I interrupted my narrative of the Social War — Lycurgus of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Sparta&groupId=660&placeId=1208">Sparta</a> came back from Aetolia;
for the ephors, who had discovered that the charge of which he had been condemned to exile was false, sent to him and invited him to return.
He began to make arrangements with Pyrrhias the Aetolian, who was then the strategus of the Eleans, for an invasion of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Messenia&groupId=760&placeId=1380">Messenia</a>.
Aratus had found the mercenary forces of the Achaeans disaffected and the cities not at all disposed to tax themselves for the purpose of maintaining them, a state of matters due to the incompetent and careless manner in which his predecessor Eperatus had, as I mentioned above, conducted the affairs of the League.
However, he made an appeal to the Achaeans, and obtaining a decree on the subject, occupied himself actively with preparations for war.
The substance of the decree was as follows. They were to keep up a mercenary force of eight thousand foot and five hundred horse and a picked Achaean force of three thousand foot and three hundred horse,
including five hundred foot and fifty horse from <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Megalopolis&groupId=745&placeId=1360">Megalopolis</a>, all brazen-shielded, and an equal number of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Argives&groupId=361&placeId=688">Argives</a>.
They also decided to have three ships cruising off the <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Acte&groupId=279&placeId=550">Acte</a> and in the Gulf of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Argolis&groupId=360&placeId=687">Argolis</a> and three more in the neighbourhood of Patrae and Dyme and in those seas.
Walbank Commentary