queensthief | A bit of Quellungforschung?

From Plutarch's Life of Aemilius Paulus, concerning the final failed attempt of Perseus, King of the Macedonians, to escape the Romans. He had arranged with a fisherman to meet him on the beach. Significant parts are in bold:

26.4 Now, Perseus suffered pitifully in letting himself down through a narrow window in the fortress, together with his wife and little children, who were unacquainted with wandering and hardships; but most pitiful of all was the groan he gave when some one told him, as he wandered along the shore, that he had seen Oroandes already out at sea and under full sail. 5 For day was beginning to dawn, and so, bereft of every hope, he fled back to the fortress with his wife, before the Romans could prevent him, though they saw him. 6 His children were seized and delivered to the Romans by Ion, who of old had been a favourite of Perseus, but now became his betrayer, and furnished the most compelling reason for his coming, as a wild beast will do when its young have been captured, and surrendering himself to those who had them in their power.

The relationships (siblings rather than children) are different, but the details of the escape through the window strike me as similar to Sophos' evacuation of the women's quarters of the villa. And then there's Ion.

It looks like a nice instance of repurposing elements in a completely different way.

(Quellungforschung is the technical term for the investigation of a work's sources and use of its sources.)