368 ARATUS. Therefore I have sent to you the life which I have writ- ten of your fellow-citizen and forefather Aratus, to whom you are no discredit in point either of reputation or of authority, not as though you had not been most dili- gently careful to inform yourself from the beginning con- cerning his actions, but that your sons, Polycrates and Pythocles, may both by hearing and reading become familiar with those family examples which it behoves them to follow and imitate. It is a piece of self-love, and not of the love of vktue, to imagine one has already attained to what is best.* The city of Sicyon, from the time that it first fell off from the pure and Doric aristocracy (its harmony being destroyed, and a mere series of seditions and per- sonal contests of popular leaders ensuing), continued to be distempered and unsettled, changing from one tyrant to another, until, Cleon being slain, Timoclides and Clinias, men of the most repute and power amongst the citizens, were chosen to the magistracy. And the commonwealth now seeming to be in a pretty settled condition, Timocli- des died, and Abantidas, the son of Paseas, to possess him- self of the tyranny, killed Clmias, and, of his kindred and friends, slew some and banished other's. He sought also to kill his son Aratus, whom he left behind him, being but seven years old. This boy in the general disorder getting out of the hoase with those that fled, and wandering about the city helpless and in great fear, by chance got undiscovered into the house of a woman who was Abantidas's sister, but married to Pro- phantus, the brother of Clinias, her name being Soso. She, being of a generous temper,' and believing the boy had by some su^iernatural guidance fled to her for shel-
- These last words are very doubtful; most 'likely they are not what
Plutarch wrote.
