The year of Aratus’s office was just expiring, and his son Aratus the younger had been elected to succeed him as Strategus, and was on the point of taking over the office. Scopas was still Strategus of the Aetolians, and in fact it was just about the middle of his year. For the Aetolians hold their elections immediately after the autumn equinox, while the Achaeans hold theirs about the time of the rising of the Pleiads. As soon therefore as summer had well set in, and Aratus the younger had taken over his office, all these wars at once began simultaneously. Hannibal began besieging Saguntum; the Romans sent Lucius Aemilius with an army to Illyria against Demetrius of Pharos,—of both which I spoke in the last book; Antiochus, having had Ptolemais and Tyre betrayed to him by Theodotus, meditated attacking Coele-Syria; and Ptolemy was engaged in preparing for the war with Antiochus. While Lycurgus, wishing to make a beginning after the pattern of Cleomenes, pitched his camp near the Athenaeum of Megalopolis and was laying siege to it: the Achaeans were collecting mercenary horse and foot for the war which was upon them: and Philip, finally, was starting from Macedonia with an army consisting of ten thousand heavy-armed soldiers of the phalanx, five thousand light-armed, and eight hundred cavalry. Such was the universal state of war or preparation for war.