Menalcidas

Family: Lacedæmonians · Role: General of the Achæans · First appears: Book 7 · Chapter 11

In Book 7, Chapter 11, Menalcidas, a Lacedæmonian serving as General of the Achæans, accepted ten talents from the Oropians to secure Achaean aid and promised half to Callicrates. Callicrates supported the request, and the Achæans agreed to help the Oropians against Athens. When Menalcidas and Callicrates later urged an invasion of Attica, the army refused and returned.

In Chapter 12, Menalcidas withheld Callicrates’s promised share. Callicrates removed him from office and prosecuted him on a capital charge. Menalcidas gave three talents from the Oropian payment to Diæus, his successor as General, who worked to save him despite Achaean opposition; after securing Menalcidas’s acquittal, Diæus and Menalcidas each deceived their own sides about Rome’s ruling. In Chapter 13, Menalcidas persuaded the Lacedæmonians to break the truce and storm and sack Iasus, reigniting war with the Achæans. Facing imminent danger, he “voluntarily committed suicide by poison.”