Polybios, in the course of a long fragment on the knowledge necessary for a general, preserved in the Codex Urbinas (IX, 17), has an account of an ineffectual attack on the town of Cynaetha in North Arcadia by Aratos during one of his early generalships. Aratos, he tells us, had made full arrangements for a simultaneous attack on the town from traitors within and Achaean troops without, and as a signal to the latter a man was to go and stand on a certain hillock dressed in a cloak. Unfortunately a sheep-owner, while looking for his shepherd, went and unwittingly stood on this very hill, whereupon the Achaeans attacked too soon and were disastrously repulsed. What was the cause of the failure asks Polybios, and answers ‘῾τὸ ποιήσαοθαι τὸν στρατηγὸν ἁπλοῦν τὸ σύνθημα, νέον ἀκμἡν ὄντα καὶ τῆς τῶν διπλῶν συνθημάτων καὶ παρασυνθημάτων ἀκριβείας ἄπειρον,᾿’ because the general was still young and ignorant of the principle of signals and counter-signals.

The incident has been inexplicably neglected: Beloch, Tarn and Ferrabino omit it entirely; Niese omits it from his article on Aratos in Pauly-Wissowa, and in his large work writes simply ‘Aratos unternahm einmal einen Versuch, sie (sc. Cynaetha) zu überrumpeln,’ vaguely indicating a date in the neighbourhood of 245–40; Pieske writing on ‘Kynaitha’ in Pauly-Wissowa, has a bare reference, and Freeman, mentioning it in a note, declares that the attack was one of the first of a series of events leading up to Cynaetha's joining the Achaean League. The words νέον ἀκμὴν ὄντα can, he adds, refer only to one of the earliest of Aratos' generalships, or possibly to some subordinate command held before he was general. In short, the incident has been almost completely ignored, and no attempt has been made to set it in its historical context. The purpose of this paper is to shew that it offers important evidence both for the date of Aratos' birth, and also for Achaean and Aetolian policy during the years 245–35.

‘The story, which ends with the poisoning and suffocation of Demetrius, has reached us in a form which suggests, as do also certain other features of the later life of Philip and of the reign of Perseus, that some author or authors wrote tragedies or historical novels dealing with the ruin of the Macedonian royal house.’ Such is the startling, if cautiously phrased conclusion of a recent historian, discussing the last years of Philip V in a standard work; it is a conclusion which deserves careful consideration, for if it can be substantiated, it will be necessary to revise seriously our usual estimate of Polybius' merits as a historian. And since no discussion of the problem can be fruitful until Polybius' own attitude towards tragedy and its relations to history has been considered, it is from this aspect that Benecke's suggestion must be approached.

There is little need now to emphasise the importance of the declaration of war against Philip V of Macedon in the history of Roman imperialism, or to formulate the problem of the causes of the Roman decision to intervene in the East. The work of M. Holleaux has defined the problem and indicated its historical implications, and subsequent research has kept the issue clear. We have rather to justify a paper upon this subject which returns to details of reconstruction already fully treated. Yet the reconstruction of events has not received its final exposition, and a better understanding of the details is essential for the historical interpretation of the political situation in 200 B.C.