Bret Devereaux

Our most useful source is Polybius. Now Polybius was a Megalopolitan. Megalopolis was founded by the Arcadian League after Leuktra explicitly as a check against Spartan power, on land taken from Sparta. The Megalopolitans were enemies of Sparta and Plb. is no exception. 13/25

So Polybius is eager to tell us absolutely anything that makes the Spartans look like fools, but he is also a lot more careful and scrupulous than Plutarch and closer to events (and consequently, rather more reliable). 14/25

Polybius notes in a set of speeches (Plb. 9.28ff) that Philip "Accordingly he came with his army and destroyed the earth by cutting and the houses with fire, finally partitioning your [=the Spartans] town and the country... 15/25

...he allotted part of it to the Argives, part to the Tegeans and Megalopolitans and part to the Messenians" So it seems there was no battle, but just a lot of raiding and then Philip reached some settlement in which significant territory was lost to Sparta. 16/25

Plb returns in an aside on treachery (Plb. 18.14.1-15) that the Arcadians joined Philip and "by inducing Philip to enter the Peloponnesus and humbling the Lacedaemonians...allowed all of the inhabitants of the Peloponnesus to breathe freely...recovering the territory.. 17/25

...and cities of which the Lacedaemonians (=Spartans) in their prosperity had deprived the Messenians, Megalopolitans, Tegeans and Argives." This is an easy passage for the unfamiliar to mess up, because Polybius has more than one Philip to deal with. 18/25

Immediately before this digression on treachery, Polybius is talking about Philip V (r. 221-179), but what makes it clear that here he means Philip II (r. 359-336) is that he poses this thought in answer to an accusation of treachery *by Demosthenes* 19/25

And while there is more than one Demosthenes, in this case it is clear that the Athenian orator and politician (384-322) is meant, meaning that the Philip in the passage must be Philip II, not V. 20/25