The reproach repeated -ad nauseam- by the erudite rabble in Hellenic and post-Hellenic times--that the Romans had been at pains to stir up internal discord in Greece--is one of the most foolish absurdities which philologues dealing in politics have ever invented.

It was not the Romans that carried strife to Greece--which in truth would have been "carrying owls to Athens"-- but the Greeks that carried their dissensions to Rome.
Quarrels between Achaeans and Spartans The Achaeans in particular, who, in their eagerness to round their territory, wholly failed to see how much it would have been for their own good that Flamininus had not incorporated the towns of Aetolian sympathies with their league, acquired in Lacedaemon and Messene a very hydra of intestine strife.

Members of these communities were incessantly at Rome, entreating and beseeching to be released from the odious connection; and amongst them, characteristically enough, were even those who were indebted to the Achaeans for their return to their native land.

The Achaean league was incessantly occupied in the work of reformation and restoration at Sparta and Messene; the wildest refugees from these quarters determined the measures of the diet.
Four years after the nominal admission of Sparta to the confederacy matters came even to open war and to an insanely thorough restoration, in which all the slaves on whom Nabis had conferred citizenship were once more sold into slavery, and a colonnade was built from the proceeds in the Achaean city of Megalopolis; the old state of property in Sparta was re-established, the of Lycurgus were superseded by Achaean laws, and the walls were pulled down (566).

At last the Roman senate was summoned by all parties to arbitrate on all these doings -- an annoying task, which was the righteous punishment of the sentimental policy that the senate had pursued.