"'My master said to me, 'Take this cup'--I guessed from the look and the smell that it was hemlock--'to the prisoner, and don't leave him till he drinks it.' I went in--it wanted but a little time to midnight--and found Philopoemen awake. 'Ah!' he said, when he saw me, 'your master is a generous man, and sends me, I doubt not, a draught of one of his richest vintages. But before I drink it, answer me, if you can, one question. Have any prisoners been brought in?' I said that I had not heard of any. 'None of the young horsemen that were with me?' I said that I had not seen them. He smiled and said, 'You bring good tidings. Things have not gone altogether ill with me.' Then he took the cup and drank it up without another word. This done he lay down again. I watched by him, but though I heard him breathing heavily he never moved. Just before cock-crow I judged that he died, for it was then that breathing ceased, and when I put my hand on his heart I could feel nothing.'
"That was the end of Philopoemen, 'the last of the Greeks', as I heard an enemy, a Roman, call him. And what, my dear young friend, can Greece do without Greeks?"
13: The ancient boxing-glove, a formidable construction fitted to the hand, of leather thongs heavily loaded with lead.
14: This consisted in throwing wine out of a cup into a bowl placed at some distance. The game was played in various ways.
15: Marcellus was the Roman general in command.
16: £27,000 in our money, reckoning by weight at five shillings per ounce for silver. This would mean a great deal more in purchasing power, not less than £100,000.
Cleanor was of far too sanguine a temperament to allow himself to be daunted by the gloomy reminiscences of his friend. "Things", he said to himself, "are altered since then. Rome is more manifestly formidable, for she has rid herself of more than one rival. The mere instinct of self-preservation must make those that are left unite."
Still, he could not hide from himself various discouraging facts that forced themselves upon his notice. In the first place Corinth, or, rather, the Corinthian people, disappointed him. The place itself was intensely interesting; he did not know whether to admire more the splendid remains of the past that it had to show, or the evidences of a prosperous present with which it abounded.