Plutarch: Parallel Lives
The Plainspoken Classics - Scriptorium Press (First Edition, 2026)
An original AI translation made directly from the source language.
https://openscriptorium.com


======== Theseus ========

Just as, in their maps of the world, historians, Sossius Senecio, crowd onto the outermost edges of the tableau the places that elude their knowledge, appending notes such as “beyond this lie waterless sand-dunes full of wild beasts,” or “impenetrable swampland,” or “Scythian frost,” or “an ice-locked sea” — and likewise, as I compose these Parallel Lives, having gone through the periods that are accessible to plausible reasoning and rest on a footing of history dealing with real events, I might well say of the earlier ages: “beyond this lie the marvelous and the fantastic, territory the poets and myth-makers occupy, and it no longer admits of credibility or clarity.”
But since, once I had issued the narrative concerning Lycurgus the legislator paired with Numa the sovereign, it seemed not unreasonable to proceed on up to Romulus as well, now that our history had come close to his times — as I considered the question, in the words of Aeschylus, “Who will be set against him? Who will stand as his match? Who is his equal?” — it appeared to me that the founder of beautiful and celebrated Athens ought to be set opposite, and compared with, the father of unconquered and gloriously famous Rome.
May it be granted us, then, to purge the mythical matter by reason and make it take on the look of history; but wherever it stubbornly disdains plausibility and admits no mixture with the credible, we shall ask for indulgent hearers, who will receive this venture into antiquity with good will.
Theseus, then, seemed to match Romulus in many respects. Both were born without a legitimate father, in secrecy, and won repute as sons of gods; both were warriors, as we all know; and both possessed intelligence together with strength. Of the most illustrious cities, the one founded Rome, the other united Athens into one city; and the abduction of women belongs to each of them.
Neither escaped misfortune in his own household, nor an inborn vengeance that pursued his line, but both, it is said, in the end came into conflict with their own citizens — if there is anything of use for the truth in what is said, in however untragic a fashion.
On his father's side Theseus's lineage goes back to Erechtheus and the first native-born inhabitants of Attica; on his mother's side he was descended from Pelops. For Pelops was the mightiest of the kings of the Peloponnese, not so much through abundance of wealth as through the number of his children, since he gave many daughters in marriage to the best men and sowed many sons as rulers into the cities. One of these, Pittheus, the grandfather of Theseus, founded the not-large city of Troezen, but won a reputation, above all men of his day, as an eloquent man and the wisest.
The nature and power of that wisdom of his was, it seems, of the sort that made Hesiod especially esteemed for the maxims in his Works. And they say one of these maxims in particular was Pittheus's own: “Let the wage promised to a friend be assured.” This is also attributed to Aristotle the philosopher; and Euripides, by calling Hippolytus “the pupil of holy Pittheus,” shows the reputation Pittheus had.
They say that when Aegeus, wanting children, consulted the oracle, the Pythia gave him the famous response bidding him not to have intercourse with any woman before he came to Athens — though she did not seem to state this altogether clearly. Hence, on his way, he stopped at Troezen and reported to Pittheus the god's utterance, which ran thus: “Loosen not the jutting foot of the wineskin, great chief of the people, until you have come to the land of the Athenians.” Pittheus, evidently understanding this,
persuaded him, or tricked him, into lying with Aethra. When Aegeus, having done so, learned that he had lain with Pittheus's daughter, and suspected that she was pregnant, he left behind a sword and sandals, concealing them beneath a massive boulder that had a cavity within it, sized so as to fit precisely what he had put there.
He told this to Aethra alone, and instructed her that if a son should be born to him and, on reaching manhood, prove able to lift the rock and take up what had been left there, she should send him to Aegeus with these tokens, without anyone knowing, keeping it as secret as possible from everyone — for he greatly feared Pallas's fifty sons, who were scheming against him and looked down on him for lacking children of his own — and so he departed.
When Aethra bore a son, some say he was named Theseus at once, because of the placing of the tokens; others say he received this name later at Athens, when Aegeus formally acknowledged him as his child. Raised by Pittheus, he had as overseer and tutor a man named Connidas, and even now, on the eve of the Theseia each year, the Athenians offer him a ram in sacrifice — a far more fitting tribute of memory and honor than what they pay Silanion and Parrhasius, who did nothing more than paint or sculpt Theseus's image.
It being still the custom in those days for those passing out of boyhood to go to Delphi and offer the god the first-cuttings of their hair, Theseus too went to Delphi — and they say a place there is still called after him the Theseia — and he clipped only the hair at the front of his skull, the same fashion Homer attributes to the Abantes; from him this style of cropping took the name “Theseis.”
It was the Abantes who first wore their hair cropped in this fashion; the reason was not, as some claim, instruction from the Arabians, nor imitation of the Mysians, but because they were warlike and fought at close quarters, and had learned, more than any people, to press into hand-to-hand combat with their enemies, as Archilochus also testifies in these lines:
“Not many bows will then be drawn, nor slings flung thick and fast, when Ares gathers the press of battle on the plain, but there will be the many-groaning work of swords; for of that kind of fighting those men are masters and lords, the spear-famed men of Euboea.”
To deny enemies any grip on their locks, they wore it cropped in this fashion. And Alexander of Macedon, grasping the same principle, is said to have for like reason directed his commanders to shave every Macedonian's beard, since in combat a beard was the easiest thing of all to seize.
For the rest of that time Aethra kept hidden the true origin of Theseus; a story was spread by Pittheus that he had been fathered by Poseidon. For the Troezenians worship Poseidon exceptionally; he is their city's guardian god, to whom they offer the firstfruits of their crops, and they bear the trident as the emblem on their coinage.
But when, still a young man, along with bodily strength he began to show courage and a firm, sensible judgment, Aethra led him to the boulder, revealed to him the true story of his birth, and directed him to retrieve the tokens his father had left there and sail on to Athens.
He crept under the rock and lifted it easily, but he refused to go by sea, though it was safer, and though his grandfather and mother begged him to. For it was a hard thing to travel the road to Athens on foot, since no part of it was free from danger, being infested by robbers and criminals.
For that age had produced men who, in the exploits of their hands, the speed of their feet, and the strength of their bodies, were, it seems, extraordinary and tireless, but who put their natural gifts to no fair or useful purpose; rather they delighted in insolent violence, and enjoyed their power through cruelty and bitterness, through mastering, forcing, and destroying whatever crossed their path, while as for shame, justice, fairness, and humanity — these, they thought, most men praised only out of cowardice in doing wrong and fear of suffering it, things that had nothing to do with those who had the power to take more.
Of these men Heracles cut down and destroyed some as he made his rounds; but others, who escaped his notice as he passed by, cowered, slunk away, and were left to their own petty doings. But when misfortune befell Heracles, and after killing Iphitus he departed to Lydia and served for a long time there as a slave to Omphale, imposing this penalty on himself for the murder, at that time Lydia's affairs were enjoying deep calm and safety; but throughout the districts surrounding Greece the old troubles flared up and spread once more, since no one was there to check or contain them.
The journey on foot to Athens from the Peloponnese was therefore deadly; and as Pittheus described each of these criminals — what sort of man he was and what he did to strangers — he tried to persuade Theseus to travel by sea. But Theseus, it seems, had long been secretly burning with the fame of Heracles's valor, and thought a great deal of him, and listened with the keenest interest to whatever anyone reported about the sort of man he was, above all those who had witnessed him
in action or heard him speak: at that time he was clearly affected exactly as, many years later, Themistocles was affected, when he said that Miltiades's trophy would not let him sleep — in just this way Theseus, in his admiration for the valor of Heracles, had Heracles's deeds as his dreams by night, and by day his zealous rivalry drove him on and spurred him to plan the same exploits himself.
They happened, moreover, to be kinsmen, being cousins. For Aethra was Pittheus's daughter, while Alcmene was the daughter of Lysidice; and Lysidice was Pittheus's own sister, both of them offspring of Pelops and Hippodameia. He therefore found it a hard and intolerable thing that Heracles should go about purging land and sea of wicked men everywhere, while he himself fled from the trials that lay in his own path,
disgracing the father he was said and reputed to have, by traveling to him by sea in flight, and offering as tokens to the man who was in fact his father mere sandals and an unbloodied sword, without displaying at once, through good deeds and actions, a clear mark of his noble birth. It was with such a spirit and such reasoning that he set out, meaning to wrong no one, but to punish those who committed violence against him.
And first, within the borders of Epidaurus, he confronted and slew Periphetes, a man whose chosen weapon was a club — hence his nickname Corynetes, “the Club-bearer” — when this man seized him and tried to block his path. Taken with the club, Theseus kept it afterward as his own, going on using it much as Heracles made use of the lion's hide. To Heracles that skin was a demonstration of the size of the beast he had mastered by wearing it; Theseus, in the same way, showed off the club as a thing defeated by him, though unconquerable in his hands.
At the Isthmus he destroyed Sinis the Pine-Bender by the very method by which Sinis had killed many men, though Theseus had had no practice or training in it, thereby showing that valor surpasses any skill or training whatsoever. Sinis had a daughter, most beautiful and tall, named Perigoune. When her father was killed she fled, and Theseus went about seeking her; she had gone off to a place thick with brushwood, wild asparagus, and rushes, and, quite innocently and like a child, as though these plants could hear her, prayed to them with oaths that, if they saved her and hid her, she would never harm them nor burn them.
When Theseus called out to her, giving his word that he would take good care of her and do her no wrong, she came forward; and after uniting with Theseus she bore Melanippus, and was later given by Theseus in marriage to Deioneus, son of Eurytus of Oechalia. From Melanippus, Theseus's son, was born Ioxus, who joined Ornytus in the colonizing of Caria; hence it became a traditional custom among the Ioxids and Ioxisians never to burn either the thorn of the wild asparagus or the rush, but to hold them in reverence and honor.
The sow of Crommyon, which they called Phaea, was no ordinary beast, but a fierce and difficult creature to overcome. This Theseus, as an extra task on his way, so that it might not seem that he undertook everything only under compulsion, went out of his way to kill — thinking at once that a good man should defend himself against wicked men only when attacked, but should attack and take on the risk against savage beasts even before being attacked. Some say, however, that Phaea was a woman, a murderous and lawless brigand, who lived at Crommyon, and was nicknamed “sow” for her character and way of life, and was later killed by Theseus.
Before reaching the territory of Megara he killed Sciron by hurling him down from the rocks, according to the common account because he robbed travelers who passed by; but according to some, out of arrogance and wantonness he would stretch out his feet to strangers and order them to wash them, and then, as they washed, kick them off into the sea.
But the writers of Megara, going directly against this reputation and, as Simonides says, “waging war against long-established time,” say that Sciron was neither an arrogant man nor a robber, but rather someone who punished robbers, allied by kinship and friendship to men of decency and justice. For Aeacus, so they say, is reckoned the most upright man among the Greeks, and Cychreus of Salamis has divine honors at Athens, and the virtue of Peleus and Telamon is unknown to no one.
Sciron, then, was the son-in-law of Cychreus, the father-in-law of Aeacus, and the grandfather of Peleus and Telamon, born to Endeis, the child of Sciron and Chariclo. It seems improbable, then, that men of the highest character would have entered into kinship with the worst, giving and receiving what is most precious and honored. They say, rather, that Theseus did not kill Sciron on his first journey to Athens, but later, when he took Eleusis from the Megarians who held it, by deceiving their ruler Diocles, and it was then that he killed Sciron. These matters, then, admit of such disputes.
At Eleusis he wrestled down and killed Cercyon the Arcadian; and going on a little further, he killed Damastes, called Procrustes, at Erineus, forcing him to fit his own body to the beds, just as Procrustes had done to strangers. In this he was imitating Heracles. For Heracles too took vengeance on those who plotted against him by the very methods they used against others: he sacrificed Busiris, threw Antaeus in wrestling, overcame Cycnus in one-on-one combat, and dispatched Termerus by crushing his skull.
It is from this, they say, that the phrase “Termerian evil” comes: for Termerus, it seems, used to kill people he met by striking them with his head. In this way, then, Theseus too went about punishing the wicked, making them suffer the very violence with which they had oppressed others, and, in the manner of their own crimes, receiving the justice due to them.
As he went forward and came to the Cephisus, men of the clan of the Phytalidae met him and were the first to greet him, and when he asked to be purified, they cleansed him according to custom, performed rites of propitiation, and entertained him in their home — no one else along the road having shown him any kindness before this. It is said that his descent took place on Cronius's eighth day, the month now known as Hecatombaeon. When he came down into the city, turmoil and division filled public affairs, while the household of Aegeus was privately afflicted with sickness of its own.
For Medea, fleeing from Corinth, had promised Aegeus that she would free him from childlessness by her drugs, and was living with him. She perceived beforehand who Theseus was, though Aegeus did not know, and since he was now an old man and fearful of everything because of the factional strife, she persuaded him to poison the stranger at a feast. So Theseus, coming to the meal, did not think it right to declare who he was first; instead, wishing to give Aegeus an occasion to discover it himself, when the meats were set before him he drew his sword as though to cut the meat with it, and showed it to Aegeus.
Aegeus, recognizing it at once, dashed the poisoned cup to the ground; then, questioning his son, he threw his arms around him, gathered the citizens, and presented him to them, and they welcomed him gladly for his valor. It is said that the spot where the poison spilled when the cup fell down is now the enclosed precinct in the Delphinium, since Aegeus's house stood there, and the Hermes standing east of the shrine bears the name Hermes-by-Aegeus's-Gate.
The Pallantidae had earlier hoped to hold the kingship themselves once Aegeus, being childless, should die; but when Theseus was proclaimed his successor, they took it hard that Aegeus — himself only adopted by Pandion and having no kinship at all with the Erechtheidae — should be king, while Theseus in turn, a newcomer and a foreigner, should be king after him; and they set themselves to war.
Dividing themselves, some marched openly from Sphettus against the city with their father, while the others, from Gargettus, hid themselves and lay in ambush, meaning to fall upon their opponents from two sides at once. Among them was a herald, a certain Leos from the deme of Hagnus. This man reported to Theseus what the Pallantidae had planned.
Theseus, falling suddenly upon those lying in ambush, destroyed them all. Those with Pallas, learning of it, scattered. From this, they say, arose the rule that the deme of Pallene may not intermarry with that of Hagnus, nor may the local herald's cry "Hear ye, people!" be proclaimed among them — for they hate that word because of the man's treachery.
Theseus, wishing to be active and at the same time to court the favor of the people, went out against the bull of Marathon, which was causing no small trouble to the inhabitants of the Tetrapolis; and having mastered it, he paraded it alive across the city before offering it up as a sacrifice to Apollo Delphinius.
As for Hecale and the story told about her — the hospitality and reception she gave him — it seems not wholly lacking in truth. For the surrounding demes used to gather and offer sacrifice at the Hecalesia to Zeus Hecalus, and they honored Hecale, calling her by the affectionate diminutive Hecaline, because she too, in receiving Theseus, who was then quite young, greeted and made much of him in an old woman's way, with such endearments.
And since she had vowed to Zeus on his behalf, as he set out for the fight, that she would sacrifice if he returned safe, but died before he came back, she received the recompense described at Theseus's own command, as Philochorus has recorded.
A little later, for the third occasion, envoys arrived from Crete to gather the tribute. Now as to the fact that when Androgeos was thought to have died by treachery in Attic territory, Minos, waging war, inflicted many evils upon the people, and the divine power ravaged the land besides (for great barrenness and pestilence fell upon it, and the rivers dried up), and that when the god commanded that if they propitiated Minos and were reconciled to him the wrath would relax and their misfortunes would finally cease, they sent heralds and, after entreaty, made a compact to send, once every nine years, seven young men together with an equal number of maidens as tribute — on this most of the historians agree.
As for the children carried off to Crete, the most tragic version of the story declares that the Minotaur destroyed them in the Labyrinth, or else that they wandered there, unable to find the way out, and died in that place, and that the Minotaur, in Euripides's phrase, was a hybrid, monstrous being, and 'of double form, of bull and man commingled.'
Philochorus says that the Cretans do not agree with this account, but say instead that the Labyrinth was nothing but a prison, holding no evil except that those guarded there could not escape, and that Minos held a gymnastic contest in honor of Androgeos, and gave the children as prizes to the victors, they being kept meanwhile under guard in the Labyrinth; and that the man who won the earlier contests, the one who held the greatest power at that time and served as general, a man named Taurus, was harsh and ungentle in character, and treated the Athenian children arrogantly and cruelly.
Aristotle himself, too, in his Constitution of the Bottiaeans, plainly does not believe that the children were killed by Minos, but that they lived out their lives as servants in Crete; and that once, when the Cretans were paying an old vow by sending a firstfruits-offering of men to Delphi, the descendants of those children were mingled among those sent and went out along with them; and that, finding they could not make a living in that place, they crossed the sea to Italy first and settled around Iapygia, then were carried onward from there to Thrace, where they were called Bottiaeans; and that for this reason the maidens of the Bottiaeans, in performing a certain sacrifice, sing, 'Let us go to Athens.' For it seems truly a hard thing to be hated by a city that has a voice and a Muse.
For Minos was continually spoken ill of and reviled in the theaters of Attica, and neither Hesiod's calling him 'most kingly' nor Homer's calling him 'the confidant of Zeus' did him any good, but the tragedians prevailed and poured down much disrepute upon him from the stage, portraying him as harsh and violent. And yet the tradition holds that Minos ruled as a king and gave laws, and that Rhadamanthus served as judge, upholding the just decrees Minos had established.
When the time for the third tribute arrived, and the fathers who had unmarried sons had to present them for the lot, accusations again sprang up against Aegeus among the citizens, who lamented and were indignant that he, though the cause of all their troubles, bore none of the penalty himself, but having fixed the succession on an illegitimate, foreign-born son looked on while they were stripped of their own lawful children and left childless.
This distressed Theseus, and thinking it right not to overlook it but to share the citizens' fortune, he came forward and offered himself without a lot being cast. To the rest his high-mindedness appeared admirable, and they were delighted with his love of the people; but Aegeus, when his entreaties and supplications found him unmoved and unshaken, cast lots for the remaining children.
Hellanicus, however, says that it was not those chosen by lot whom the city sent out, but that Minos himself came and made the selection, and chose Theseus first of all, on the terms established; and that under the terms agreed, Athens was to supply the vessel, the youths sailing with him were to carry no arms whatsoever, and the moment the Minotaur died the whole penalty would be discharged.
Now before this time no hope of safety had ever been entertained; and so they used to send the ship with a black sail, as for a disaster foreknown. But this time, since Theseus was encouraging his father and speaking boldly of how he would master the Minotaur, Aegeus gave the helmsman a second sail, a white one, ordering him to raise the white one on the return voyage if Theseus survived, and otherwise to fly the black, marking out the calamity.
Simonides, however, holds that Aegeus gave him not a white sail but 'a crimson sail dyed with the juice of the luxuriant scarlet-oak's flower,' and that this served as the sign marking their safe return. And the ship, according to Simonides, was steered by Phereclus son of Amarsyas.
Philochorus says that Theseus received from Scirus of Salamis a helmsman named Nausithous and a lookout named Phaeax, the Athenians not yet at that time being given to seafaring, and that one of the young men, Menesthes, was a grandson of Scirus on his daughter's side. Witness to this is given by the shrines of Nausithous and Phaeax, which Theseus set up at Phalerum next to the sanctuary of Scirus, and it is said that the festival called the Cybernesia is celebrated in their honor.
When the lot had been cast, Theseus took those chosen from the Prytaneum, went to the Delphinium, and laid down for them there the suppliant's branch for Apollo — a branch from the sacred olive, wreathed with white wool. Having prayed, he made his way down to the shore, choosing the Munychion month's sixth day, its earliest days, which remains to this day the date when the maidens are still sent to propitiate the god at the Delphinium.
It is said that the god at Delphi told him to take Aphrodite as his guide and to invite her as a fellow traveler, and that as he sacrificed the she-goat by the sea, it turned of its own accord into a he-goat; for which reason the goddess is called Epitragia.
When he had sailed to Crete, as most writers record and as the songs tell it, Ariadne fell in love with him and gave him the thread; guided by her instructions on threading the Labyrinth's winding passages, he killed the Minotaur and sailed away, taking with him Ariadne and the young men. Pherecydes says that Theseus also broke open the hulls of the Cretan ships, to deprive them of the means of pursuit.
Demon says that Minos's general Taurus died in a naval battle within the harbor just as Theseus was putting out to sea. Philochorus, on the other hand, records it differently: when Minos was holding the games, Taurus, expected once more to sweep every contest as he had before, drew envy; for his power was oppressive because of his character, and he was under suspicion of being too intimate with Pasiphaë. For this reason, when Theseus asked to compete, Minos granted it.
As Cretan custom permitted women to attend the games too, Ariadne, being present, was struck with amazement at the sight of Theseus and admired his prowess when he overcame all his opponents. And Minos too was delighted, above all at seeing Taurus thrown down and disgraced, so he restored the children to Theseus and released the city from its tribute.
Cleidemus, however, has reported these matters in his own peculiar and elaborate way, beginning far back, saying that it was a common decree of the Greeks that no trireme should sail from anywhere carrying more than five men, the sole exception being Jason, commander of the Argo, who sailed about clearing the sea of pirates. When Daedalus fled by ship to Athens, Minos, pursuing him with warships in violation of the decree, was driven by a storm to Sicily and there ended his life.
When Deucalion, his son, being hostile toward the Athenians, sent word demanding that they surrender Daedalus to him, and threatening otherwise to kill the boys whom Minos had taken as hostages, Theseus answered him mildly, begging off on Daedalus's behalf, since Daedalus was his own cousin and kin to him as well, being the son of Merope daughter of Erechtheus; and he himself began building a fleet, part of it there at Thymoetadae, far from the road foreigners used, and part through Pittheus at Troezen,
wishing to keep it secret. When his ships were ready he sailed out, taking Daedalus and Cretan exiles as his guides; and since no one had any warning, but the Cretans supposed the ships approaching to be friendly, he seized the harbor and, disembarking, got to Knossos before word could spread; and joining battle at the gates of the Labyrinth, he killed Deucalion and his bodyguard.
Since Ariadne now had a hand in affairs, he made a treaty with her, took back the young men, and forged a bond of friendship joining Athens and Crete, whose people swore never to begin a war.
Many other stories are still told about these matters and about Ariadne, and they agree in nothing. Some say that she hanged herself after being abandoned by Theseus; others, that sailors carried her to Naxos where she lived with Oenarus, priest of Dionysus, and that Theseus left her because his heart belonged to someone else — 'for a terrible love for Aegle, daughter of Panopeus, wore him down.'
For this verse, Hereas of Megara says, was struck out of Hesiod's poems by Peisistratus, just as, conversely, he says, the line 'Theseus and Pirithous, glorious children of the gods' was inserted into Homer's Nekyia to gratify the Athenians. Some also say that Ariadne bore Theseus two sons, Staphylus and Oenopion; Ion of Chios is one authority for this, and in describing his native island he says 'which Oenopion, son of Theseus, founded in ages past.' But as for the most reverent version of these legends, nearly everyone has it by heart. Paeon of Amathus, however, has published his own particular account of these matters.
He says that Theseus, driven by a storm to Cyprus, and having Ariadne with him pregnant and in a bad way from the tossing of the sea and finding it hard to bear, put her ashore alone, while he himself, going to help the ship, was carried back out to sea away from the land. The women of the country then took Ariadne in and cared for her in her despondency at being left alone, and brought her forged letters as though written to her by Theseus, and helped and assisted her through her labor pains; and when she died without giving birth, they buried her.
Theseus, on returning and finding himself overcome with grief, left money with the people of the country, arranging that they should sacrifice to Ariadne, and had two small statuettes set up, one of silver, one of bronze. And at the sacrifice, held on Gorpiaeus's second day, a young man lies down, cries out, and mimics a woman in labor; and the grove where her tomb is shown to visitors bears the name of the Amathusian Aphrodite Ariadne.
Some of the Naxians give a version peculiar to themselves, holding that there had actually been a pair of Minoses and a pair of Ariadnes; the elder Ariadne, on this account, was wedded to Dionysus on Naxos and became mother to Staphylus and his brothers, whereas the younger woman was seized by Theseus, and, once left behind, arrived at Naxos accompanied by a nurse called Corcyne, whose tomb can be seen there still. This Ariadne, they say, died there too, and receives honors not like those given to the first. For the earlier one is celebrated with joy and revelry, but the sacrifices performed for this one are mixed with a certain mourning and gloom.
Setting out from Crete, he made land at Delos; there, once he had offered sacrifice to the god and set up as an offering the statue of Aphrodite given him by Ariadne, he led the young men in a dance that the Delians claim they still perform even now, one that mimicked the twists and turnings of the Labyrinth, done to a fixed rhythm made up of turns answered by counter-turns.
This kind of dance is called by the Delians the crane, as Dicaearchus records. He danced it around the altar called Keraton, which is built up entirely of horns taken from the left side. They say he also instituted a contest at Delos, and that it was he who first gave a palm branch to the victors.
As they neared Attica, both Theseus and the helmsman, overcome with gladness, neglected to hoist the sail that was meant to signal their safe return to Aegeus; and Aegeus, overwhelmed with grief, cast himself down from the cliff to his death. But once Theseus had brought the ship to land, he first carried out, at Phalerum, the offerings he had pledged to the gods before departing, and only then dispatched a herald into the city to bring word that they had come home unharmed.
This man encountered many who were lamenting the king's death, and others, as one would expect, who were rejoicing, eager to greet him kindly and to crown him for their safe deliverance. He accepted the crowns, but wreathed his herald's staff with them instead; and returning to the sea, since Theseus had not yet finished making his libations, he waited outside, unwilling to disturb the sacrifice.
When the libations were complete, he announced the death of Aegeus. And they, with weeping and uproar, hurried up into the city. Hence even now at the Oschophoria, they say, it is not the herald who is crowned but the herald's staff, and those present cry out during the libations, "Eleleu, iou, iou" — the first of which they are accustomed to shout when hurrying along in a paean, the second belonging to consternation and confusion.
After his father's burial, he discharged the vow made to Apollo, doing so on Pyanepsion's seventh day, since that was the very day their ascent to the city had taken place. The boiling of pulses is said to take place because those who were saved gathered together the remains of their food and, boiling them all in one common pot, feasted together and ate of the same food.
They carry out the eiresione, a branch of olive wound about with wool, just as the suppliant-branch was then, laden with all sorts of first-fruits because the famine had come to an end, singing as they go: "Eiresione brings figs and rich loaves, and honey in a cup, and oil to rub down with, and a strong cup of wine, that one may go to sleep drunk." And yet some say these rites belong to the Heraclids, who were thus supported by the Athenians; but the majority say what has been stated above.
The thirty-oared ship on which Theseus had sailed with the youths and made his return, the Athenians kept in existence all the way down to Demetrius of Phalerum's day; they would take away whichever planks had decayed and replace them with sound new timber, joining the pieces so skillfully that the vessel turned into a stock illustration for philosophers arguing over the puzzle of growth and identity, with some maintaining it stayed one and the same ship and others insisting it did not.
They also hold the festival of the Oschophoria, established by Theseus. For he did not lead out all the maidens who had been chosen by lot at that time, but instead picked two young men of his acquaintance who were girlish in appearance but young, yet manly in spirit and eager, and by warm baths and shade-rearing and by anointing and adorning their hair, complexion, and skin, transformed them entirely, and taught them to imitate as far as possible in voice, bearing, and gait the likeness of maidens, so that they seemed no different at all; he then inserted them among the number of the maidens and they went entirely unnoticed. And when he returned,
he himself led the procession, and the young men marched dressed just as those who now carry the vine-branches are dressed. They carry them in honor of Dionysus and Ariadne, because of the story, or rather because they returned at the time when the fruit harvest was being gathered in. And the dinner-carrying women take part and join in the sacrifice, imitating the mothers of those who had been chosen by lot; for these mothers used to visit their children bringing them food and delicacies; and stories are told because those women, for the sake of cheer and comfort, used to tell stories to their children. These things Demon has recorded. A precinct was also set apart for him, and he ordained that those from the houses that had furnished the tribute should pay contributions for a sacrifice to him; and the Phytalidae had charge of the sacrifice, Theseus having granted them this in return for their hospitality.
After the death of Aegeus, conceiving a great and marvelous project, he brought together into one city all those who dwelt in Attica, and made them a single people of a single city, whereas before they had been scattered about and difficult to summon together for the common good of all, and were even, at times, at variance and at war with one another.
He went from group to group, deme by deme and clan by clan, urging his proposal on them; the common folk and the poor gave their consent at once, while for the powerful he painted a picture of rule without kings, a democratic order in which he alone would hold the roles of war-leader and protector of the law, leaving everyone else an equal portion.
Some agreed to these conditions; as for the rest, wary already of how formidable he had become and of his daring nature, they preferred consenting willingly to being forced into it. He therefore did away with the separate council-chambers, town-halls, and offices that belonged to each community, replacing them with a single shared town-hall and council-house on the site the city now occupies, gave the city the name Athens, and founded the Panathenaea as a sacrifice open to all.
He also sacrificed the Metoikia on the sixteenth of Hecatombaeon, which they still sacrifice to this day. And laying down his kingship, just as he had agreed, he set the constitution in order, beginning with the gods; for an oracle had come to him from Delphi when he consulted it concerning the city:
"Son of Aegeus, offspring of Pittheus' daughter, my father has set within many cities the bounds and threads of destiny, in your city too. But you must not grieve too much within your heart with troubles: for a wineskin will make its way over the swelling sea." And they say that later the Sibyl too spoke this same oracle to the city, crying out: "You are dipped like a wineskin: it is not fated for you to sink."
Wishing to increase the city still further, he invited all to come on equal terms, and the proclamation "Come hither, all you people" is said to have been made by Theseus, as he established a kind of general gathering of the population. Yet he did not allow the resulting democracy to become disordered or confused through the mass of people poured in without discrimination, but was the first to divide the people, apart from one another, into nobles, farmers, and craftsmen,
granting to the nobles the office of knowing sacred matters and providing magistrates, and being teachers of the laws and interpreters of things sacred and profane, while he set the other citizens on an equal footing with them in a sense, since the nobles seemed to excel in reputation, the farmers in usefulness, and the craftsmen in numbers. That he was the first to incline toward the common people, as Aristotle says, and gave up sole rule, Homer too seems to bear witness, in the Catalogue of Ships calling the Athenians alone "the people."
He also struck a coinage, stamping it with an ox, either because of the bull of Marathon, or because of Minos's general, or to encourage his citizens toward farming. From this, they say, the terms "hecatomboion" and "dekaboion" derive their names. Having securely added the Megarid to Attica, he set up the celebrated pillar on the Isthmus, inscribing on it the epigram that marked the boundary of the land in two trimeters, of which one, facing east, declared: "This is not the Peloponnese, but Ionia"; and the other, facing west: "This is the Peloponnese, not Ionia."
And he was the first to institute the games, in emulation of Heracles, being ambitious that just as the Greeks held the Olympic games for Zeus because of Heracles, so too because of himself they should hold the Isthmian games for Poseidon. For the games established there in honor of Melicertes had been conducted at night, having more the character of a mystic rite than of a spectacle and festival gathering. But some say the Isthmian games were established in honor of Sciron, Theseus performing an act of atonement for his killing because of their kinship, Sciron being the son of Canethus and Henioche, daughter of Pittheus. Others say it was for Sinis,
not Sciron, and that it was on his account, not the other's, that the games were established by Theseus. He also arranged and stipulated with the Corinthians that the Athenians who came to the Isthmian games should be given a place of honor covering as much ground as could be covered when the sail of the sacred embassy-ship was spread out, as Hellanicus and Andron of Halicarnassus have recorded.
He also sailed into the Euxine Sea, according to Philochorus and certain others, joining Heracles in his campaign against the Amazons, and receiving Antiope as his prize; but most writers—among them Pherecydes, Hellanicus, and Herodorus—hold instead that Theseus made a separate voyage of his own afterward, without Heracles, and seized the Amazon himself; this version carries more weight. For no one else among those who campaigned with him is recorded as having taken an Amazon captive.
Bion says that he tricked her and made off with her, taking her by deceit; for the Amazons, being by nature fond of men, neither fled from Theseus when he attacked their land, but even sent him gifts of hospitality; and that he invited the woman bringing them to come aboard the ship, and when she had come aboard, he put out to sea. But a certain Menecrates, who has published a history concerning Nicaea, the city in Bithynia, says that Theseus, having Antiope with him, spent time in that region,
and that there happened to be serving with him three young men from Athens, brothers of one another, Euneos, Thoas, and Soloeis. This last one, being in love with Antiope and hiding it from the others, revealed it to one of his companions; and this man, having spoken with Antiope about the matter, found her firmly rejecting the attempt, but she bore the whole affair with both discretion and gentleness, and did not accuse him to Theseus.
But when Soloeis, unable to bear it, flung himself into a river and died, Theseus, on learning afterward the reason and what the young man had gone through, was deeply troubled, and in his grief he remembered an oracle he had once received at Delphi: the Pythia had told him that at whatever moment abroad he felt greatest anguish and heaviest sorrow, he was to establish a city on that spot and leave some of his followers there to lead it. Out of this came the city
which he founded, he named Pythopolis after the god, and the nearby river Soloeis in honor of the young man. He also left behind the young man's brothers as overseers and lawgivers, and with them Hermus, a man of the Athenian nobility; from whom the people of Pythopolis take the name of a certain spot they call "the house of Hermus"—wrongly placing the accent on the second syllable and thereby shifting the credit from a hero to a god.
This, then, was the pretext for the war with the Amazons; but it appears that the affair was not a trivial or womanish one. For they would not have encamped within the city itself, nor joined battle at close quarters near the Pnyx and the Museum, unless, having already gained control of the surrounding country, they had approached the city without fear.
As for Hellanicus's claim that the Amazons crossed the frozen Cimmerian Bosporus and circled around, that is hard to credit; yet that they made camp almost inside the city walls finds support in both the place-names that survive and the tombs of the fallen. For a long stretch both sides held back, reluctant to engage; but Theseus, at last following a particular oracle, made an offering to Fear and brought on the fight.
The battle took place in the month of Boedromion, on which day the Athenians to this day sacrifice the Boedromia. Cleidemus, wanting to set down every detail with precision, writes that on the Amazon side the left flank reached toward the spot now known as the Amazoneum, while their right came up near the Pnyx by the Chrysa. It was against that flank, he reports, that the Athenians launched their assault, meeting the Amazons in battle from the direction of the Museum, and that the fallen were buried along the broad street running to the gates by Chalcodon's shrine, a street now called the Piraic.
And at this point, he says, the Athenians were driven back all the way to the sanctuary of the Eumenides and yielded ground before the women, but a counterattack coming from the Palladium, the Ardettus, and the Lyceum drove the enemy's right flank back to their own camp, cutting many of them down. By the fourth month a truce had been arranged through Hippolyta; this author, that is, gives the name Hippolyta rather than Antiope to the woman who shared Theseus's life. Other accounts, however, hold that she died in the fighting at Theseus's side, cut down by a spear cast by Molpadia, and that the column set beside the shrine of Olympian Zeus commemorates her.
Nor is it surprising that, in matters so ancient, the historical record should wander, since they even say that the wounded among the Amazons were secretly sent off by Antiope to Chalcis for treatment, and that some of them were laid to rest nearby, in the spot people today call the Amazoneum. Yet proof that hostilities were settled by a formal agreement can be found both in the name given the ground next to Theseus's shrine, the Horcomosium, and in the offering once made to the Amazons ahead of the Theseia.
The Megarians too show a burial place of the Amazons among themselves, as one walks toward the place called Rhus from the marketplace, where the Rhomboid stands. It is also said that others of them died near Chaeronea and were buried beside the little stream which, it seems, was formerly called Thermodon but is now called Haemon; concerning these things it has been written in the Life of Demosthenes. Nor does it appear that the Amazons passed through Thessaly without incident either: for their graves are still shown even now around Scotussa and the Dog's Heads.
These things, then, are worth recording concerning the Amazons. For the uprising of the Amazons which the poet of the Theseid has written, in which Antiope attacks Theseus as he is marrying Phaedra, and the Amazons with her defend themselves, and Heracles kills them, plainly appears to be myth and invention.
After Antiope died, he married Phaedra, though he already had a son, Hippolytus, by Antiope, or as Pindar says, Demophon. As for the misfortunes concerning her and his son, since nothing in the historians contradicts the tragedians, we must suppose these to have happened just as all the tragedians have represented them.
There are, however, other stories about Theseus's marriages that have escaped the stage, having neither honorable beginnings nor happy endings. For it is said that he carried off a certain Anaxo of Troezen, and that after killing Sinis and Cercyon he lay with their daughters by force; that he took Periboea as well — Ajax's mother — to wife, and afterward Phereboea,
and Iope, daughter of Iphicles; and that because of his passion for Aegle, daughter of Panopeus, he abandoned Ariadne, as has been said, in a way neither noble nor fitting; and finally, that his abduction of Helen filled Attica with war and ended for him in exile and destruction — of which a little will be said shortly.
Since many contests for the noblest men took place at that time, Herodorus supposes that Theseus took part in none of them except that he alone shared in the Lapiths' war against the Centaurs; others say he was also with Jason among the Colchians and helped Meleager kill the boar, and that this is the origin of the saying "no deed without Theseus" — meaning that he, requiring no partner, achieved many noble feats on his own, so that people came to call him "a second Heracles."
He also helped Adrastus recover the bodies of those who had fallen beneath the walls of Cadmeia, not, as Euripides represents in his tragedy, by defeating the Thebans in battle, but by persuasion and a treaty — for so most say; Philochorus says these were in fact the first truces ever made for the recovery of the dead.
The claim that Heracles first restored fallen enemies for burial appears in the narrative devoted to Heracles. The graves of the common soldiers are shown at Eleutherae, those of the leaders near Eleusis, this too being a favor of Theseus to Adrastus. The Eleusinians of Aeschylus bear this out against the Suppliants of Euripides, in which Theseus is made to say these very things.
They say his friendship with Pirithous came about in this way. Theseus had the greatest reputation for strength and courage; wishing to test him and put him to proof, Pirithous drove off some cattle of his from Marathon, and on learning that Theseus, armed, had set out after him, he did not run away but wheeled around and advanced to face him.
But when each saw the other, and each admired the other's beauty and marveled at his boldness, they held back from fighting; Pirithous, stretching out his right hand first, bade Theseus himself be judge of the cattle-raid, saying he would willingly submit to whatever penalty he might set; but Theseus both released him from the penalty and invited him to be his friend and ally; and they made their friendship binding by oath.
After this, when Pirithous was marrying Deidameia, he asked Theseus to come and see the country and meet the Lapiths. He happened also to have invited the Centaurs to the feast. When these, in their wanton drunkenness, would not keep their hands off the women, the Lapiths turned to defend themselves: some of the Centaurs they killed outright, and the rest, defeating them later in war, they drove out of the country, Theseus fighting alongside them and sharing in the war.
Herodorus, however, says this did not happen so, but that Theseus arrived to help the Lapiths only after the war had already begun, and that it was then, for the first time, that he came to know Heracles by sight, having made a point of meeting him near Trachis, where Heracles had already ceased from his wanderings and his labors; and that the meeting between them was marked by honor, warmth, and much mutual praise.
Still, one should rather give heed to those who record that the two met many times: that Theseus, out of eagerness, arranged for Heracles's initiation into the Mysteries, and also the purification that had to precede the initiation, since Heracles needed it on account of certain unwilled deeds.
Being now fifty years old, as Hellanicus says, he carried out the affair concerning Helen, a deed unbecoming his years. Hence, as though correcting what was thought the gravest of the charges against him, some say it was not he who carried off Helen, but that Idas and Lynceus carried her off and gave her to him to guard as a trust, whom he refused to surrender when the Dioscuri came demanding her back; or else, by Zeus, that Tyndareus himself entrusted her to him, out of fear that Enarsphorus, son of Hippocoon, would take Helen by force while she was still a child. But the most plausible account, and the one supported by most witnesses, is this:
Both of them went to Sparta, and having seized the girl as she danced in the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, they fled with her; and since those sent in pursuit followed no farther than Tegea, once they were safe, having passed through the Peloponnese, they made an agreement: whichever of them won her by lot should have Helen as wife, but each would help the other win a different marriage.
On these terms they cast lots, and Theseus won. He took the girl, who was not yet of marriageable age, and brought her to Aphidnae; and having installed her mother along with her, he entrusted them to Aphidnus, who was his friend, charging him to guard them and to keep them hidden from everyone else.
Theseus himself, repaying Pirithous the favor, went abroad with him to Epirus after the daughter of Aidoneus, king of the Molossians, who had named his wife Persephone, his daughter Kore, and his dog Cerberus, and proclaimed that whoever wished to woo his daughter must fight the dog, and that whoever won should have her. But learning that Pirithous and his companions had come not as suitors but to carry her off by force, he seized them: Pirithous he destroyed at once by setting the dog upon him, while Theseus he held bound in captivity.
During this time Menestheus, son of Peteos, son of Orneus, son of Erechtheus, the first man, they say, to take up demagoguery and to speak for the pleasure of the crowd, worked to rouse and organize the powerful men, who had long resented Theseus, believing he had stripped each of the noble families of his rule and kingship over his own people, and had herded them all together into a single city to be used as subjects and slaves; and he stirred up and slandered the common people too, telling them that they were looking at a mere dream of freedom, while in fact they had been robbed of their homelands and their shrines, so that in place of the many worthy kings who shared their own blood, they now had to look to a single ruler who was both an outsider and a stranger to them.
While Menestheus was busy with these schemes, the war added a great impetus to his revolutionary designs, when the sons of Tyndareus invaded; and some say the invasion happened entirely at his urging. At first they did no wrong, but simply demanded back their sister. When the townspeople replied that she was not in their hands and that they had no idea where she had been hidden, the two sides went to war.
Academus, however, having somehow learned of it, told them of her concealment at Aphidnae. For this, he received honors from the sons of Tyndareus while he lived, and afterward, whenever the Lacedaemonians invaded Attica and laid waste the whole country, out of regard for Academus they left the Academy untouched.
Dicaearchus says that Echedemus and Marathus, who were then campaigning with the sons of Tyndareus from Arcadia, gave their names respectively to what is now called the Academy, once called Echedemia, and to the deme of Marathon, Marathus having offered himself willingly, in accordance with an oracle, to be sacrificed before the battle line. So they came to Aphidnae, and, winning by battle, took the place.
There, they say, fell also Alycus, son of Sciron, who was then campaigning with the Dioscuri, from whom a place in the Megarid is called Alycus, since his body was buried there. But Hereas records that Alycus was killed by Theseus himself near Aphidnae, and offers as evidence these verses about Alycus: "him who once fought in wide-spaced Aphidnae, Theseus slew, for fair-haired Helen's sake." Yet it is not likely that, with Theseus himself present, his mother and Aphidnae would have been captured.
In any case, once Aphidnae had fallen, and the people in the city were afraid, Menestheus persuaded the people to admit the sons of Tyndareus into the city and treat them kindly, since they were making war only on Theseus, who alone had wronged them, while to everyone else they were benefactors and saviors of mankind. And their own conduct bore this out: for although complete masters of everything, they asked for nothing except to be initiated into the Mysteries, since they belonged to the city no less than Heracles did.
This too was granted them, Aphidnus adopting them as his sons, just as Pylius had adopted Heracles; and they received honors equal to the gods, being called Anakes, either because of the truce that was made, or because of their care and concern that no one should suffer harm while so great an army was within the city — for the Athenians use the phrase "to keep anakos," of those who watch over or guard anything; and perhaps for this reason kings too are called anaktes. But there are those who say they were named Anakes because of the appearing of the stars, since the Attic people call "up" anekas, and "from of old" anekathen.
They say that Aethra, Theseus's mother, was taken captive and carried off to Lacedaemon, and afterward to Troy in Helen's company; Homer, it is claimed, confirms this when he says she attended Helen: "Aethra, daughter of Pittheus, and ox-eyed Clymene." Some, however, dispute this verse as well as the whole legend about Munychus, whom they say Laodice, having secretly borne him to Demophon, gave to Aethra to raise together with herself at Troy.
In book thirteen of his Attic History, Ister offers a strange and quite different version of the Aethra story, according to which some say that Alexander, that is Paris, suffered defeat in combat against Achilles and Patroclus near the Spercheius river in Thessaly, and that Hector, after capturing the city of Troezen, sacked it and carried off Aethra, who had been left behind there. But this account contains a great deal of improbability.
When Aidoneus the Molossian was entertaining Heracles, and by chance mentioned the affair of Theseus and Pirithous — what they had come intending to do, and what they had suffered on being found out — Heracles took it hard, that the one had perished so ignobly, and the other was still perishing. About Pirithous he thought there was nothing more he could do by protesting, but for Theseus he pleaded, and asked that this favor be granted him.
Aidoneus consented, and Theseus, once freed, returned to Athens, where his friends had not yet been entirely overpowered, and consecrated to Heracles all the precincts that had previously belonged to him from the city, renaming them Heraclea instead of Theseia, except for four, as Philochorus records. Then, wishing once more to rule and lead the government as before, he fell into factions and disturbances: those who had abandoned him he found now hating him, having added contempt to their hatred since they no longer feared him, while among the people he saw much corruption, wanting to be flattered rather than to do what was commanded of them in silence.
So when he tried to use force he was outmaneuvered by demagogues and factions. In the end, despairing of affairs, he sent his sons away secretly to Euboea, to Elephenor, son of Chalcodon, while he himself, at Gargettus, laid curses upon the Athenians — the place is still called the Araterion — and sailed off to Scyros, believing he had friends there and ancestral lands on the island. Lycomedes was then king of the Scyrians.
Coming to him, Theseus sought to recover his fields, intending to settle there; but some say he asked Lycomedes to help him against the Athenians. Lycomedes, either fearing the man's reputation or wishing to please Menestheus, led him up to the heights of the country, as if to show him the fields from there, and pushed him off the rocks and killed him. Some say he fell of his own accord, having stumbled after dinner,
while walking, as was his habit. At first no one paid any attention to his death, and Menestheus ruled as king of the Athenians, while his sons, living as private citizens, campaigned with Elephenor to Troy. There, when Menestheus died, they returned and recovered the kingship. Long afterward, various events led the Athenians to honor Theseus as a hero, and not a few of those fighting the Medes at Marathon thought they saw the apparition of Theseus in arms, charging ahead of them against the barbarians.
After the Persian Wars, in the archonship of Phaedon, the Athenians, consulting the oracle, were told by the Pythia to recover the bones of Theseus and, placing them with honor, to keep them among themselves. But it was difficult even to obtain them and to learn the location of the grave, because of the inhospitality and harshness of the Dolopians who inhabited the island. Nevertheless, Cimon, having taken the island, as is written in the account concerning him, and being eager to find the grave, noticed by some divine chance a mound-like place where an eagle was pecking with its beak and tearing at it with its talons, and, understanding the sign, dug it up.
There was found a coffin containing a body of great size, with a bronze spear-point and a sword lying beside it. When these were brought back by Cimon on his trireme, the delighted Athenians welcomed them with lavish processions and offerings, as if Theseus in person were coming home to the city. He now rests at the city's center, close to the gymnasium that stands there today, and the spot serves as a refuge for slaves and all the lowly who fear those stronger than themselves, since Theseus in his lifetime was a protector and a helper, and welcomed with kindness the pleas of the humble.
They offer him the greatest sacrifice on the eighth of Pyanepsion, the day on which he returned from Crete with the youths. But they also honor him on the other eighth days of the month, either because he first arrived from Troezen on the eighth of Hecatombaion, as Diodorus the Topographer records, or because they think this number belongs to him more fittingly than to any other, since he is said to be the son of Poseidon.
For indeed they honor Poseidon on the eighth days too. For the number eight, being the first cube from an even number, and twice the first square, has an affinity with what is stable and hard to move, which belongs to the power of the god whom we call the Securer and the Earth-Holder.

======== Romulus ========

The great name of Rome, which has spread through fame among all mankind, is not agreed upon by the historians as to who gave it to the city and for what reason, but according to some, the Pelasgians, having roamed across a great part of the inhabited earth and conquered most of its peoples, made their settlement here, naming the city for their martial strength (rhome),
while others say that some who had escaped when Troy was captured, and who had come upon ships, were carried by winds to Tyrrhenia, and put in near the river Thybris; and that their women, being already at a loss and impatient with the sea, were persuaded by one of them—who seemed both to excel in birth and to be the most sensible—whose name was Rhome, to burn the ships.
Once this was accomplished, the men were furious at first; yet, forced by circumstance, they made their settlement around the Palatine, and before long things turned out better than they had expected, for the ground proved fertile and their neighbors received them kindly; and so they granted Rhome a still greater honor, naming the city after her as its cause.
From that time, they say, it has remained the custom for kinswomen and womenfolk to greet their male relatives with a kiss on the mouth: for those women too, when they had burned the ships, greeted and made much of the men in this way, begging them and trying to turn aside their anger.
Others say that Rhome, daughter of Italus and Leucaria (or, as some say, of Telephus the son of Heracles), who had been married to Aeneas (or, as others say, to Ascanius the son of Aeneas), gave the name to the city; others that Romanus, son of Odysseus and Circe, founded the city; others that Rhomus, son of Emathion, sent from Troy by Diomedes, did so; still others that Rhomis, ruler of the Latins, expelled the Tyrrhenians, a people who had migrated from Thessaly to Lydia and thence from Lydia into Italy. Nor indeed do those who declare Romulus, by the most just of the accounts, to be the one after whom the city is named agree among themselves about his lineage.
For some claim he was born to Aeneas and to Dexithea, daughter of Phorbas, and that as an infant he was brought to Italy together with his brother Rhomus; and when the river flooded and destroyed all the other boats, the one carrying the children drifted gently onto a soft bank, and, being saved unexpectedly, was given the name Rhome.
Others say that Rhome, daughter of that Trojan woman, married to Latinus the son of Telemachus, bore Romulus; still others hold that Aemilia—child of Aeneas and Lavinia—lay with Ares and bore him. Still others relate a story wholly mythical about his birth. For to Tarchetius, king of the Albans, a most lawless and cruel man, a divine apparition appeared at home: a phallus rose up out of the hearth and remained there for many days.
There was in Tyrrhenia an oracle of Tethys, from which a response was brought to Tarchetius, that a virgin should have union with the apparition; for from her would be born a most illustrious child, surpassing in virtue, fortune, and strength. So Tarchetius told the oracle to one of his daughters, and ordered her to have union with the phallus; but she thought herself unworthy of it, and sent in a servant girl instead.
When Tarchetius learned of this he was harshly angry, and seized both women to put them to death; but in a dream Hestia came to him and prohibited the killing, and so he charged the girls to weave a certain web while bound, on the understanding that when they had finished weaving it they would be given in marriage. So they wove by day, but Tarchetius ordered other women to unravel the web by night. And when the servant girl bore twins from the phallus, Tarchetius gave them to a certain Teratius, and ordered him to do away with them.
He carried them off and set them down near the river, where a she-wolf came and gave them her teat, and birds of every kind brought scraps of food and placed them in the infants' mouths, until a herdsman saw them, and in wonder dared to approach and take up the children. Having been saved in this way, when they were grown they attacked Tarchetius and overpowered him. This account, at any rate, is given by a certain Promathion, who composed a history of Italy.
But the version most widely credited and best attested was set down for Greek readers, in its essential outline, by Diocles of Peparethus; Fabius Pictor, too, followed this account in most of its details. There have been various divergences even about these matters, but in outline the story is as follows.
The succession of the kings descended from Aeneas at Alba came down to two brothers, Numitor and Amulius. When Amulius divided everything into two parts, and set against the kingship itself the treasure and the gold that had been brought from Troy, Numitor chose the kingship. Amulius, then, having the money and being more powerful because of it than Numitor, took the kingship from him easily, and, fearing that children might be born from Numitor's daughter, appointed her priestess of Hestia, to live forever unmarried and a virgin.
This woman some call Ilia, others Rhea, others Silvia. Not long after she is caught pregnant, contrary to the established law for the priestesses of Hestia; and the king's daughter Antho begged her father that she should not suffer an irreparable fate, and so pleaded on her behalf; but she was shut up and kept in confinement so that Amulius should not learn of her giving birth. She bore two children, extraordinary in size and beauty.
For this reason Amulius, all the more afraid, ordered a servant to take them and throw them away. Some say this man was called Faustulus, others that it was not he but the one who took them up. So he put the infants into a trough, went down to the river meaning to throw them in, but seeing it coming down in a great and rough current, was afraid to go near, and, setting the trough down near the bank, went away.
The river, overflowing, took up the trough with its flood and gently carried it, lifting it up, to a fairly soft spot, which they now call Cermalus, but which was formerly called Germanus, it seems because they also call brothers 'germani.'
Close by stood a wild fig, given the name Ruminalis—so called, most people suppose, after Romulus himself, or perhaps because cattle would rest chewing their cud in its shade, or, most likely, because of the infants' suckling, since the ancients called the teat 'ruma,' and they name a certain goddess who is thought to watch over the nursing of infants Rumina, and offer her sober libations, and pour milk over the sacrifices.
There, then, as the infants lay, they say the she-wolf was seen suckling them, and a woodpecker was also present, helping to feed and guard them. These creatures are held sacred to Ares, and the Latins especially venerate and honor the woodpecker; and this above all gave credit to the mother's claim that she had borne the children by Ares. Yet they say she was deceived into this misfortune, having been violated by Amulius, who appeared to her in armor and forced himself upon her.
Others say that ambiguity over the nurse's name gave the story its mythical turn: for the Latins called both she-wolves among beasts and women who were prostitutes 'lupae'; and such, they say, was the wife of Faustulus who nursed the infants, Acca Larentia by name. To her too the Romans offer sacrifice, and the priest of Ares brings her libations in the month of April, and they call the festival the Larentalia.
They honor another Larentia for the following reason. The temple-keeper of Heracles, being at a loss it seems from idleness, challenged the god to a dice match, on terms that if he himself came out ahead he would receive some benefit from the god, whereas should he be defeated he would furnish the god a lavish table and a lovely woman to share his bed.
Having thrown the dice, some for the god and some for himself, he turned out to have lost. Determined to honor his word and holding it proper to stand by the agreement reached, he laid on a dinner for the god, and hired Larentia, who was then in her bloom but not yet famous, and feasted her in the temple, having spread a couch, and after dinner shut her in, as though the god were to have her.
And indeed they say the god did have intercourse with the woman, and bade her go at dawn to the marketplace, and make a friend of the first man she met after greeting him. So there met her a citizen advanced in years and who had amassed a sufficient fortune, but who was childless and had lived without a wife, named Tarrutius.
This man came to know Larentia and grew fond of her, and when he died he made her the heiress of a great deal of valuable property, most of which she willed over to the people. It is said that she, being already famous and thought beloved of the gods, vanished from sight around the place where that earlier Larentia was also said to lie.
Velabrum is the name given to that place today, since in times when the river repeatedly rose over its banks, people would be ferried across right there heading toward the marketplace; and the word for ferrying in their tongue is 'velatura.' Some say instead that those who provided the spectacle used to cover with awnings the passage leading from the marketplace to the circus, beginning there; and in the Roman tongue they call an awning 'velum.' For these reasons the second Larentia is held in honor among the Romans.
The infants were taken up by Faustulus, Amulius's swineherd, unbeknownst to everyone; or, as some say, who keep closer to what is likely, with Numitor's knowledge, who secretly supplied provisions to those raising them. And the boys are said to have learned letters and other things, as befits the well-born, having been sent to Gabii.
They say these two were also called Romulus and Remus from the teat, because they were seen suckling from the beast. Now the nobility in their bodies, even while they were infants, at once showed forth their nature in size and appearance, and as they grew they were both high-spirited and manly, possessing a mind undaunted before whatever seemed fearful and courage altogether unshaken; but Romulus seemed to have the better judgment and to possess political understanding, showing in his dealings with the neighbors over pastures and hunting grounds a good deal of insight into one born by nature to lead rather than to obey.
For this reason they were beloved by their fellow slaves and those of lower station, but looked down on the king's overseers and bailiffs and herd-masters as being no better than themselves in worth, and gave no thought to their threats or their anger. They pursued pastimes and pursuits befitting free men, not counting leisure and ease as the mark of freedom, but rather exercises, hunting, running, and fending off robbers, catching thieves, and rescuing the wronged from violence. For these reasons they became famous far and wide.
A dispute having arisen between Numitor's herdsmen and those of Amulius over the driving off of cattle, the brothers would not put up with it, but struck them down and routed them, and carried off a good part of the herd. Though Numitor was angry, they thought little of it, and gathered and welcomed many needy men and many slaves, thereby laying the beginnings of a rebellious boldness and spirit.
While Romulus had turned aside to attend to a sacrifice (for he was fond of sacrificing and of divination), Numitor's herdsmen, coming upon Remus walking with a few companions, fell to fighting with him, and when blows and wounds had been exchanged on both sides, Numitor's men prevailed and took Remus alive. He was brought before Numitor and accused, but Numitor did not punish him himself, fearing his brother, who was harsh; instead he went to Amulius and asked to obtain justice, since he was Amulius's brother and had been insulted by the servants of one who was a king.
When the people of Alba shared his indignation and thought the man had suffered unjustly, Amulius was moved and handed Remus over to Numitor, to deal with him as he wished. Numitor took him, and when he came home, marveling at the young man's physique, since he surpassed all in size and strength, and seeing in his face the boldness and vigor of his spirit unenslaved and unshaken by his present circumstances,
and hearing that his deeds and actions matched what he saw, and above all, it seemed, that a god was present with him and guiding the beginnings of great undertakings, seizing upon the truth through suspicion and chance, he asked him who he was and how he had come to be, addressing him in a gentle voice and with a kindly look that inspired trust along with hope.
Taking courage, Remus said: "But I will hide nothing from you; for indeed you seem more kingly than Amulius. You listen and question before punishing; but he hands men over without a trial. Up to now we took ourselves for sons of Faustulus and Larentia, who serve the king (we are twin brothers); but now that we have come under accusation before you and under slanders and contests for our lives, we hear great things about ourselves; and whether they are to be trusted, the present danger seems now about to decide."
"Our birth, they say, is unspeakable; our upbringing and nursing were still stranger for newborns, since we were cast out to birds and beasts, and were nourished by them—a she-wolf gave suck, and a woodpecker brought scraps—while we lay inside a trough beside that mighty river. That same trough survives to this day, kept safe and bound about with bronze bands on which faint letters are engraved, which might perhaps later prove useless tokens for our parents, once they are lost to us."
Numitor, then, from these words, and reckoning the time by looking at his face, did not flee the hope that was creeping over him, but took thought how he might secretly meet with his daughter and speak with her about these matters; for she was still kept under close guard.
When Faustulus heard of Remus's arrest and his handing-over, he thought it right to go help Romulus, at that point explaining to him plainly about his birth—before this he had only hinted and indicated so much as would keep him from thinking small of himself. He himself, carrying the trough, went off toward Numitor, full of haste and fear because of the crisis.
So he aroused the suspicion of the guards at the gates of the king, and, being eyed with suspicion by them and thrown into confusion by their questioning, he did not escape notice as he wrapped the trough in his cloak. There happened to be among them one of the men who had taken the infants to expose them and had been present at the exposure. This man, seeing the trough then and recognizing it by its make and the letters on it, hit upon a suspicion of the truth, and did not neglect it, but reported the matter to the king and had Faustulus brought in for questioning.
Under many great constraints Faustulus neither kept himself entirely unyielding, nor, though pressed hard, was he wholly forced to break: he admitted that the boys were alive, but said they were far from Alba, tending flocks; he himself, he said, was carrying this news to Ilia, since she had often longed, in firmer hope, to see and touch her children.
Now what commonly happens to men thrown into confusion and acting in fear or anger over anything, this is what befell Amulius. For he sent, in haste, a man otherwise decent and a friend of Numitor, ordering him to inquire of Numitor whether any report had reached him that the boys were alive.
So the man came and, seeing Remus at that very moment in the embraces and affectionate greetings of Numitor, made the man's faith in his hope strong, and urged him to lay hold of matters quickly, and now joined them and worked together with them. And the moment itself did not allow even those willing to hesitate to hold back. For Romulus was already near, and no small number of the citizens ran out to him, out of hatred and fear of Amulius.
He brought with himself also a large force organized into companies of a hundred; and each company had a man leading it who held up, on a pole, an armful of hay and brushwood—the Latins call these maniples, and from that even now in the armies they call such men maniple-commanders. At the same time, as Remus was stirring up those within and Romulus was advancing from outside, the tyrant, having done nothing and planned nothing to save himself, from helplessness and confusion, was seized and killed.
Most of this is told both by Fabius and by Diocles of Peparethus, who appears to be the earliest writer to have set down this story of Rome's founding; the theatrical, invented feel of it breeds doubt in some, but one ought not to disbelieve, seeing what sort of works Fortune is a craftsman of, and reckoning up the affairs of the Romans—how they would never have advanced to such power had they not taken some divine beginning, one containing nothing small or unremarkable.
When Amulius had died and affairs were settled, they were unwilling either to dwell in Alba, since they were not its rulers, or to rule it while their grandfather still lived; so, having restored the rule to him and given fitting honors to their mother, they decided instead to settle apart on their own, founding a city in the places where from the beginning they had been reared—for this was the most fitting of the reasons.
It was, perhaps, necessary, since many household slaves and runaways had gathered to them, either to be utterly undone if these were scattered, or to dwell together privately with them. That Alba's own people considered it wrong to blend these runaways into their community or grant them citizenship was demonstrated first by what was done regarding the women—an act ventured not out of insolence but out of necessity, from the want of willing marriages; for they honored the women exceedingly by seizing them.
Then, as the city was receiving its first foundation, they built a certain sanctuary of refuge for those fleeing to them, which they called the shrine of the God of Asylum, and they received everyone, handing over neither a slave to his masters, nor a hired man to his creditors, nor a murderer to the magistrates, but declaring, by an oracle given at Delphi, that they made the asylum sure for all—so that the city quickly grew full, since they say the first households numbered no more than a thousand. But this happened later.
As soon as they set out to found the city together, a dispute at once arose between them over the place. Romulus founded the so-called Roma Quadrata (that is, "the square one"), preferring to raise the city there, but Remus chose a strong position on the Aventine, which was named Remoria after him, though it is now called Rignarium.
Having agreed to let favorable birds arbitrate their dispute, and sitting apart from each other, they say six vultures appeared to Remus, but twice as many to Romulus; others say Remus truly saw his, but Romulus lied, and that when Remus came, then the twelve appeared to Romulus—which is why even now the Romans especially use vultures in taking auspices. Herodorus of Pontus records that Heracles too rejoiced when a vulture appeared before an undertaking.
For it is the most harmless of all creatures, doing no damage to anything men sow or plant or pasture, and it feeds on dead bodies, and kills nothing nor does harm to anything possessing life, and because of kinship with birds it does not even approach their corpses. But eagles and owls and hawks strike down and kill their own kind while still living; and yet, in Aeschylus's words, how could one bird be pure that feeds on another bird?
Further, the other birds circle about, so to speak, right before our eyes and constantly present themselves to our notice, whereas one seldom catches sight of a vulture, and vulture chicks are hardly ever come upon; this too has given some a strange suspicion, that they come down here from some other land, its rarity and inconstancy being, as the seers hold, a mark of what is not natural nor of itself, but appears by divine dispensation.
When Remus learned of the deception, he grew angry, and as Romulus was digging the trench along which the wall was to run, he mocked some parts of the work and got in the way of others. At last, as he leapt across it, they say he fell there, struck—some say by Romulus himself, others by one of his companions, Celer.
Faustulus too fell in the fighting, and Plistinus, who they record was Faustulus's brother and had joined in raising Romulus and his companions. Celer withdrew to Tyrrhenia, and from him the Romans call swift and sharp men "celeres"; and they gave Quintus Metellus this surname, "Celer," in admiration of the speed of his preparation, because when his father died he put on a gladiatorial contest within a few days.
Romulus, having buried Remus together with his foster-parents at Remoria, set about founding the city, summoning men from Tyrrhenia who guided every step by certain sacred rites and writings and taught it as in an initiation. A circular pit was excavated in the area that is now the Comitium, and into it were placed first-fruits of everything reckoned good by convention and needed by nature. And at the end each man, bringing a small portion of earth from the land he had come from, cast it in together and mixed it in.
This pit they call, by the same name as Olympus, "mundus." Then, as if with a compass, they traced the city in a circle around a center. The founder fitted a bronze plowshare to a plow, put a bull and cow together under the yoke, and himself drove them, cutting a deep furrow along the boundary lines, while it was the task of those following to turn inward the clods the plow threw up, and let none turn outward be overlooked.
With this furrow-line they lay out where the wall is to run, and the term "pomerium" arose by contraction, meaning as much as "behind the wall" or "after the wall"; wherever they intend to set a gate, they take out the plowshare and lift the plow over, making a gap. Hence they consider the whole wall sacred except the gates; but considering the gates sacred was not possible without scruple, since through them they must let in and send out things necessary yet not clean.
It is agreed that the founding took place on the day eleven days before the Kalends of May, and the Romans keep this day as a festival, calling it the birthday of the fatherland. At the beginning, as they say, they sacrificed no living thing, but thought they ought to keep the feast named for the birth of their fatherland pure and bloodless. Yet even before the founding they had a certain pastoral festival on this day, and called it the Parilia.
Now the Roman new moons agree in nothing with the Greek; but that day on which Romulus founded the city, they say, happened to fall exactly on the thirtieth, and that an eclipse of the sun by the moon occurred on it—which they think even Antimachus of Teos the epic poet knew of, it having coincided with the third year of the sixth Olympiad.
In the era of the philosopher Varro, a scholar deeply versed in Roman antiquities, he had a friend named Tarutius, otherwise a philosopher and a mathematician, who had taken up, for the sake of theory, the study concerning the astrological chart, and was thought to be exceptional in it.
To him Varro proposed that he trace back Romulus's birth to a day and hour, making his calculation from the reported outcomes of the man's life, just as the analyses of geometrical problems guide the way—for it belongs to the same science to take the time and foretell the course of a man's life, and, given the life, to track down the time.
Tarutius then complied with the request, and after reviewing the man's experiences and exploits, and weighing together the span of his life, how he died, and other details of that kind, he declared, quite boldly and confidently, that the conception of Romulus in his mother's womb had occurred in the second Olympiad, in its first year, during the Egyptian month of Choiak, on its twenty-third day, at the third hour—the moment when the sun was wholly eclipsed—and that he came visibly into the world in the month of Thoth, on its twenty-first day, close to sunrise;
and that he laid Rome's foundations on the ninth day of Pharmuthi, sometime between the second hour and the third. For they hold that a city, no less than a man, has an allotted lifespan, to be reckoned from its first origin by reference to the positions of the stars. But these things, and such as these, will perhaps recommend themselves to the reader more by their strangeness and singularity than trouble him through their mythical character.
When the city had been founded, first he divided all who were of military age into companies. Each company consisted of three thousand foot and three hundred horse. It was called a "legion," because the fighting men were picked out from all. Then he used the rest as the common people, and the multitude was named "populus"; and he appointed a hundred of the best as senators, and these he called "patricians," and the body he named the "senate."
"Senatus," strictly, means "council of elders"; and as for why the senators were called "patricians," some say it was because they were fathers of legitimate children, others rather because they could show fathers of their own—which was not the case for many of those who had first streamed together into the city; others trace it to "patronage," the name they gave then, as now, to the office of protector, holding that a man called Patron, among those who had accompanied Evander, was so attentive and useful to those weaker than himself that his own name became attached to the custom.
One would come nearest the truth by supposing that Romulus wanted the leading and most powerful men to watch over the common people the way a father watches over his own, while also teaching the rest not to fear or resent the honors of their betters, but to treat and regard and address them with goodwill as fathers, named them so accordingly.
For indeed, even to this day, those who serve in the senate are called by outsiders "lords," but the Romans themselves call them "enrolled fathers," using the name that carries the greatest dignity and honor with the least envy. At first they called them only "fathers," but later, as more were added, they called them "enrolled fathers."
This, then, was a more solemn name for him, marking the distinction of the senatorial order from the common people; by another distinction he divided the powerful from the many, calling the former "patrons," which is "protectors," and the latter "clients," which is "dependents": and at the same time he produced between them a remarkable mutual goodwill and a great set of obligations. For the patrons offered themselves as expounders of the laws, and as advocates for their clients in lawsuits, and as counselors and guardians in every matter,
while the clients in turn served them, not only honoring them, but also, when the patrons were poor, joining in giving away their daughters in marriage and helping pay off their debts; and no law nor magistrate compelled a client to testify against his patron, or a patron against his client. Later, though the other obligations remained, it was thought shameful and ignoble for the powerful to take money from the humbler. So much, then, for these matters.
In the fourth month after the founding, as Fabius records, the seizure of the women was ventured. Some say that Romulus himself, being warlike by nature, and persuaded by certain oracles that Rome was fated, nourished and increased by wars, to become greatest, was the one who set this violence against the Sabines in motion—seizing only thirty young women rather than a great number, since what he wanted was a pretext for war, not wives.
But this is not likely: rather, seeing the city at once filling up with settlers, few of whom had wives, while the majority, being a mixed lot of poor and obscure men, were looked down upon and not expected to hold together securely, and hoping that the wrong done would in some way afford a beginning of mixture and fellowship with the Sabines once they held the women as hostages, he set about the deed in this manner.
A story was first spread by him, that he had found an altar of some god hidden beneath the earth. They called the god Consus, either as a god of counsel (for even now they call a council a "consilium," and the consuls "consules," as it were counselors), or as Poseidon Hippios, the Horse-god. For the altar is in the larger of the racecourses, hidden the rest of the time, but uncovered during the horse-races.
Others say outright that, since the plan was secret and concealed, it was not without reason that the altar of the god came to be underground and hidden. But once it was revealed, he celebrated upon it a splendid sacrifice, together with games and a public spectacle proclaimed in advance. Many people gathered together, and Romulus himself sat in front with the chief men, adorned in purple.
The signal for the moment of the attempt was this: he was to rise, fold his purple robe, and put it on again. Many men, therefore, holding swords, kept watch on him, and when the signal was given, they drew their swords and, rushing forward with a shout, seized the daughters of the Sabines, while they let the men themselves flee unhindered.
Some say that only thirty were seized, from whom the wards (phratries) were afterward named; Valerius Antias, however, puts the number of virgins at five hundred twenty-seven, while Juba counts five hundred eighty-three. This was the greatest point in Romulus's defense: that he himself had taken no woman except Hersilia alone, who escaped their notice, since they had gone about the seizure not out of insolence or wrongdoing, but with the intention, under the greatest necessity, of mingling and joining the two peoples into one.
Some say that Hersilia married Hostilius, a most distinguished man among the Romans; others, that she married Romulus himself, and that she bore him children, one daughter named Prima, so called from the order of her birth, and one son only, whom he named Aollius, from the gathering (athroisis) of the citizens that had been brought about by him, though later generations called him Abillius. But Zenodotus of Troezen, in reporting this, has many who dispute it.
Among those seizing the maidens at that time, they say, it happened that some men of no great distinction were carrying off a girl who far surpassed the others in both beauty and stature. When some of the more powerful men, meeting them, tried to take her away, those carrying her cried out that they were bringing her for Talasius, a young man, but a man of good repute and worth.
On hearing this, the others cheered good words and clapped in approval, and some even turned back and followed along out of goodwill and favor toward Talasius, shouting his name with a cry. From this it is that even now the Romans, just as the Greeks sing Hymenaeus, chant "Talasius" at weddings; for they say that Talasius did indeed find good fortune in his marriage. Sextius Sulla, however — a Carthaginian by birth, yet a man well furnished with both learning and charm — told us that this cry was the very watchword Romulus himself had given for the seizure:
for all those carrying off the maidens shouted "Talasius," and for this reason the custom has persisted at weddings. But most people think, Juba among them, that it is an exhortation and encouragement to industry and wool-working (talasia), since at that time Greek words had not yet been poured over the Italian ones. But if this is not wrongly said — that is, that the Romans at that time used the word talasia just as we do — one might conjecture another, more plausible cause.
For when the Sabines, after making war on the Romans, were reconciled, agreements were made concerning the women, that the men should require of them no other work than that pertaining to wool-working. It remained the custom, therefore, for those who afterward gave brides away, or escorted them, or were simply present, to cry out "Talasius" in jest, calling on those present to witness that the woman was being brought in for no other service than wool-working.
It remains the custom to this day that the bride herself does not step over the threshold into the bedroom on her own, but is carried in, because the women then, having been seized by force, did not enter of their own will. Some also say that the parting of the bride's hair with the point of a spear is a symbol that the first marriage came about with fighting and in a warlike manner: about these things we have spoken more fully in our Roman Questions. The seizure, then, was ventured on about the eighteenth day of the month then called Sextilis, now August, on which day they celebrate the festival of the Consualia.
The Sabines were a populous nation given to war, yet they lived in villages without walls, judging it proper — as settlers descended from the Lacedaemonians — to remain bold and unafraid.
Nevertheless, seeing themselves bound by such great pledges, and anxious on their daughters' account, they dispatched envoys with demands that were fair and restrained: Romulus was to restore the girls to them and undo the violent deed, and only afterward, through persuasion and lawful means, establish, between the two nations, bonds of friendship and kinship. Yet Romulus refused to surrender the girls, urging the Sabines instead to accept the union;
and while the rest deliberated and made preparations, delaying, Acron, king of the Caeninenses, a spirited man and formidable in war, had held Romulus's first bold act in suspicion from the start, and now, considering what had been done concerning the women to be already a thing fearful to all and not to be endured unless punished, rose up first for war and advanced against him with a great force, and Romulus advanced against him in turn.
Coming into sight of one another and catching sight of each other, they challenged one another to single combat, while the armies stood motionless under arms. Romulus, then, having vowed that if he prevailed and struck the man down, he would carry his arms and dedicate them to Zeus, struck him down after prevailing, and put the army to flight when battle was joined, and took the city besides. Yet he did no wrong to those captured within it, but ordered them to tear down their houses and follow him to Rome, to become citizens on equal terms.
Indeed, nothing did more to increase Rome than this — its constant practice of attaching to itself and incorporating those whom it conquered. Romulus, considering how he might best make his vow both pleasing to Zeus and a delightful sight for the citizens to behold, cut down an oak of huge size in the camp and shaped it like a trophy, fitting and fastening each piece of Acron's armor upon it in due order; he himself girded on his tunic and crowned his flowing hair with laurel.
Then, taking up the trophy, resting it upright against his right shoulder, he marched forth leading a paean of victory, the army following under arms, while the citizens received them with joy and wonder. This procession furnished the beginning and the model that later triumphs sought to emulate, and the trophy was named an offering to Zeus Feretrius — for the Romans call "to strike" ferire, and he had vowed to strike the man down and fell him —
and the spoils are called "opima," says Varro, on the grounds that they also call abundance (wealth) "ops"; though one might more plausibly say it is on account of the deed itself, for the deed is called "opus," and the consecration of opima spoils belongs only to a commander who, by his own hand and through a feat of valor, has slain the opposing general. Only three Roman commanders ever achieved this: first Romulus, who killed Acron the Caeninensian; second, Cornelius Cossus, who killed Tolumnius the Etruscan; and last of all, Claudius Marcellus, who overcame Britomartus, king of the Gauls.
Cossus and Marcellus rode into the city in chariots drawn by four horses, themselves carrying the trophies; but Dionysius says that Romulus did not use a chariot — wrongly, in fact. For it is recorded that Tarquin, son of Demaratus, was the first of the kings to raise the triumph to this splendid and imposing form; others say that Publicola was the first to celebrate a triumph in a chariot. As for Romulus's images, one may still see in Rome all the trophy-bearing statues of him on foot.
After the capture of the Caeninenses, even as the remaining Sabines went on readying themselves, the peoples of Fidenae, Crustumerium, and Antemnae joined forces in opposition to Rome, and, meeting the same defeat in battle, allowed Romulus to seize their towns, parcel out their territory, and transplant them to Rome. Romulus distributed the rest of the land to the citizens, but allowed the fathers of the seized maidens to keep whatever land they themselves already held.
Angered by this, the remaining Sabines appointed Tatius as their general and marched against Rome. The city was hard to approach, having as its defense what is now the Capitoline, on which a garrison had been stationed, with Tarpeius as its commander — not the maiden Tarpeia, as some say, making Romulus out to be foolish; rather, Tarpeia, daughter of the commander, betrayed the fortress to the Sabines, having conceived a desire for the golden bracelets she saw them wearing on their arms, and asked as the price of her betrayal whatever they carried on their left hands.
Tatius having agreed, she unbarred one gate under cover of darkness and admitted the Sabine force. It was not Antigonus alone who is said to have favored betrayal itself while despising the men who carried it out, nor was Caesar alone in remarking, of the Thracian Rhoemetalces, that treachery pleased him even as the traitor disgusted him; rather, this is a feeling common toward the wicked, shared by all who need their services, just as some need the venom and gall of certain beasts — for they are glad of the use while they are getting it, but detest the vice once they have obtained it.
This is what Tatius felt then toward Tarpeia: he ordered the Sabines, remembering their agreement, to grudge her nothing of what they carried on their left arms, and he himself was the first to take off both the bracelet from his arm and his shield, and throw it upon her. As all the others did the same, being pelted with the gold and buried under the shields, she died beneath the weight and the mass of them.
Tarpeius himself was also arrested and prosecuted for treason by Romulus, as Juba says Sulpicius Galba records. Among the others who give a different account of Tarpeia, unconvincing are those who claim she was Tatius the Sabine general's own daughter, kept with Romulus against her will, and that both her actions and her sufferings came about at her father's urging — Antigonus is among these. But Simylus the poet talks utter nonsense, imagining that it was not to the Sabines but to the Celts that Tarpeia betrayed the Capitol, having fallen in love with their king. He says this: "And she who dwells near the steep of the Capitoline, Tarpeia, became the betrayer of Rome's wall, she who, longing to become the bride of the sceptered lord of the Celts, did not guard her fathers' halls." And a little further on, concerning her death: "Her the Boii and the countless tribes of the Celts, camped within the streams of the Po, cast down their weapons from furious hands and heaped upon the hateful girl as her adornment — her death."
Now when Tarpeia was buried there, the hill was called the Tarpeian, until, in the reign of King Tarquin, when the place was consecrated to Zeus, her remains were removed, and the name of Tarpeia was lost — except that a certain rock on the Capitoline is still known as the Tarpeian Rock, the place from which wrongdoers were once hurled to their deaths.
While the height was held by the Sabines, Romulus, in his anger, kept challenging them to battle, and Tatius took heart, seeing that they had a strong line of retreat should they be forced back. For the ground between them, where they were to meet, being enclosed by many hills, seemed likely to afford both sides a sharp and difficult contest owing to the roughness of the terrain, but only brief opportunities for flight and pursuit within so narrow a space.
It happened that the river, having flooded not many days before, had left behind a deep and treacherous marsh in the level ground where the present Forum now is, so that it was not clearly visible nor easy to guard against, and was otherwise hazardous and unsound underfoot. This became, through their ignorance of it, a stroke of fortune for the Sabines.
For Curtius, a man distinguished in reputation and proud in spirit, riding his horse, was advancing far ahead of the rest; and when the pit received his horse, for a while he tried, using blows and urging, to drive it out, but when this proved impossible, he abandoned the horse and saved himself. The place, because of him, is still called the Curtian Lake to this day. Having thus escaped the danger, the Sabines fought a fierce battle, which reached no decision, though many fell, among them Hostilius.
They say that this man was the husband of Hersilia and the grandfather of the Hostilius who later became king after Numa. Again, as many contests naturally arose in a short time, they especially remember one, the last, in which Romulus was struck on the head by a stone and came within a little of falling, and, his resistance faltering, the Romans gave way before the Sabines and made for the Palatine in flight, being pushed back out of the level ground.
But Romulus, now recovering from the blow, wished to turn and face those fleeing before the enemy, and, shouting loudly, called on them to stand and fight. But as the flight poured around him on every side, and no one dared to turn back, he stretched his hands up to heaven and prayed to Zeus to halt the army and not to look on unmoved while the fortunes of Rome fell, but to set them upright again.
When the prayer was made, shame for their king took hold of many, and courage came upon the fleeing men through this sudden change of heart. They stopped first where now the temple of Zeus Stator stands, a name one might render as "the Stayer," and then, locking their shields together again, they pushed the Sabines back once more, as far as what is now called the Regia and the shrine of Hestia.
There, just as they were preparing to fight again as though from the beginning, a terrible sight held them back, a spectacle beyond words. For the seized daughters of the Sabines were seen, streaming this way and that with cries and shrieks through the weapons and the dead, as if possessed by a god, making for their husbands and their fathers — some carrying infant children in their arms, others holding out their hair loosened and disheveled, all calling out by the dearest names, now to the Sabines, now to the Romans.
Both sides were moved to pity, and made room for the women to come and stand between the battle-lines, and weeping went up through the whole army, and there was great compassion both at the sight and, still more, at their words, which ended in supplication and entreaty after beginning with pleas of justice and open speech.
"What terrible or grievous thing," they said, "have we done to you, that we should have suffered what we have already suffered, and now suffer these dreadful evils still? We were seized by those who now possess us with violence and against all law; and having been seized, we were neglected by our brothers and fathers and kinsmen for so long a time that this very time, mixing us with our bitterest enemies through the greatest necessities, has now made us fear for the very men who used force and broke the law, and weep when they are dying in battle.
"For you did not come to avenge us, when we were maidens, against those who wronged us; but now, tearing wives away from the husbands they wed and children away from their mothers, you bring us, in our misery, a more pitiable help than that earlier neglect and betrayal. Such was the love we received from these men, and such is the pity we now receive from you. Even if you were fighting for some other cause, you ought to have stopped for our sake, since you have become fathers-in-law and grandfathers and kinsmen to them."
"But if the war is being fought on our account, then take us along with our husbands and children, and give us back our fathers and kinsmen — only do not take from us our children and our men. We beg you, do not let us become captives again." As Hersilia made this long appeal, and the other women joined in the entreaty, a truce was struck, and the commanders came together to confer.
Meanwhile the women led their men and offspring before their own fathers and brothers, brought food and drink to whoever needed it, and carried the wounded home to tend them, and let it be seen that they ruled their own households, that their husbands deferred to them, and paid them every honor with goodwill.
From this it was agreed that the women who wished to remain living with their husbands should do so, being exempt, as has been said, from all labor and service except spinning wool; that Romans and Sabines together should dwell as one people in the city; that the city, after Romulus, should bear the name Rome, but all the Romans should be called Quirites after the native land of Tatius; and that both kings should reign jointly and hold joint command. The place where they made this agreement is still called the Comitium to this day, for the Romans call a coming-together "coire."
When the city had been doubled in this way, a hundred patricians were enrolled additionally from the Sabines, and the legions came to number six thousand foot and six hundred horse. They established three tribes, naming one, after Romulus, the Ramnenses, another, after Tatius, the Tatienses, and a third the Lucerenses, from the sacred grove into which many had fled and, since the community had granted them asylum, been made citizens.
The Romans call sacred groves "luci." That there were just so many tribes is confirmed by the name itself: for even now they call the tribes "tribus," and the heads of the tribes "tribunes." Each tribe contained ten curiae, which some say were named after those women. But this seems to be false, for many of them take their names from localities.
They did, however, grant the women many other honors, among which are these: that men should step aside for them when walking, that it should be shameful for anyone to speak an indecent word in a woman's presence, or to appear naked before one, or that a man could not be brought to trial before the officials who judge cases of bloodshed; and that their children should wear the ornament called the "bulla," named from its shape — a pendant like a bubble — bordered with purple.
The kings did not deliberate jointly with one another from the outset, but each first took counsel privately with his own hundred, and only then did they bring everyone together in the same place. Tatius lived where the temple of Moneta now stands, and Romulus by the place called the Steps of the Fair Shore. These are near the descent from the Palatine to the great Circus.
There, too, they say, the sacred cornel tree came to grow, according to a story that Romulus, testing his own strength, hurled a spear from the Aventine with a shaft of cornel wood; the point sank deep into the ground, and though many tried, no one was able to pull it out, but the wood, being alive, was nourished by the earth, put out shoots, and grew into a cornel tree of considerable size. Those who came after Romulus, regarding it as one of the most sacred objects, guarded and revered it, and built a wall around it.
If anyone approaching it thought it did not look flourishing and green, but rather withered and dying, he would at once cry out to those nearby, and they, as if rushing to a fire, would shout "water, water," and run from every direction bringing full vessels to the spot. But when Gaius Caesar, they say, was repairing the steps nearby, and his workmen were digging around the area, the roots were accidentally damaged beyond repair, and the plant withered away.
The Romans adopted the months of the Sabines, and whatever was good in that arrangement has been recorded in the Life of Numa. Romulus took up their long shields for his own use, and altered both his own equipment and the Romans' — who up to then had borne shields of the Argive pattern. Both peoples shared in each other's festivals and sacrifices, keeping those which each had celebrated before without abolishing them, and establishing new ones besides, among which are the Matronalia, given to the women in honor of the ending of the war, and the Carmentalia.
Some think that Carmenta is a Fate presiding over the birth of human beings, and for this reason mothers honor her; others say it was the spouse of Evander of Arcadia who, endowed with a kind of prophetic and inspired power of uttering oracles in verse, was named Carmenta (for they call verses "carmina"), and that her proper name was Nicostrata. This much is agreed upon; but some give a more plausible explanation of the name Carmenta, as meaning "deprived of mind," because of the derangement that comes with such inspired frenzies — for the Romans call being deprived "carere," and mind they call "mens."
Concerning the Parilia, this has already been discussed. As for the Lupercalia, if one goes by the season in which it falls, it would appear to be a rite of purification, since it is performed on the unlucky days of the month of February, a name which one might interpret as meaning "purificatory," and that day was anciently called Februata. The name of the festival, translated into Greek, signifies the "Lycaea," and for this reason it seems to be extremely ancient, deriving from the Arcadians who came with Evander.
But this is a common view, for the name could equally derive from "lupa," the she-wolf. Indeed one can note that the Luperci set out on their run precisely from the place where Romulus, so the story goes, was left exposed. Yet the ceremony itself make the true reason hard to guess: for they slaughter goats, then, when two boys of noble family are brought to them, some touch their foreheads with a bloodied knife, while others wipe it off at once, applying wool soaked in milk;
and the boys must laugh after the wiping. After this they cut up the goatskins and run about girded only with strips of the hide, naked, striking with the thongs whoever is in their path. Women of childbearing age do not flee from being struck, believing it aids easy delivery and conception. It is also peculiar to this festival that the Luperci sacrifice a dog.
A certain Butas, who set down the legendary origins of Rome's customs in verses of elegiac meter, says that when the followers of Romulus overcame the men of Amulius, they ran with joy to the spot where the she-wolf had once given her teat to the infants, and that the festival is celebrated in imitation of that run of theirs, and that men of noble family run striking those in their way, just as then, with swords in hand, Romulus and Remus ran from Alba. And the bloodied sword applied to the forehead is a symbol of that killing and danger then, while the cleansing with milk is a reminder of the nourishment they received.
Gaius Acilius records that before the founding of the city, the flocks belonging to the followers of Romulus disappeared, and that after praying to Faunus they ran out naked to search for them, so as not to be troubled by sweat, and that for this reason the Luperci run about naked. As for the dog, one might say, if the sacrifice is one of purification, that it is offered because it is used as a purificatory victim,
for the Greeks too bring out puppies at purification rites, and in many places use what are called "peri-skylakismoi" (purifications by puppy). But if this offering is made as thanksgiving to the she-wolf, and in payment for the nurture and saving of Romulus, then killing the dog makes good sense, seeing that it counts among the wolf's enemies — unless, that is, the animal is punished instead as a nuisance to the Luperci when they run about.
It is said that Romulus was also the first to establish the sacred rite concerning fire, appointing sacred virgins called the Vestals. Others attribute this to Numa, but otherwise record that Romulus was exceptionally devout, and also that he was skilled in divination, and carried for this purpose the staff called the lituus — a curved rod, with which those seated to observe the flight of birds mark off the regions of the sky.
This staff, kept on the Palatine, disappeared when the city was captured by the Gauls; but afterward, when the barbarians had been driven out, it was found beneath deep ashes, unharmed by the fire, though everything else around it had been destroyed and ruined.
He also established certain laws, one of which is severe: it does not allow a wife to leave her husband, but allows a husband to cast out his wife for poisoning his children, for counterfeiting his keys, and for adultery; but if a man sent his wife away for any other reason, half of his property was to belong to the wife, and the other half was to be consecrated to Demeter; and a man who sold his wife was to be sacrificed to the gods of the underworld.
It is peculiar that, while he set no penalty at all for killing a father, he called every homicide "parricide," as though the one crime were accursed and the other simply impossible. And for a long time this seemed to have been rightly judged: for no one committed such a crime in Rome for nearly six hundred years, and the first recorded parricide, after the Hannibalic war, was Lucius Hostius. Let this suffice concerning these matters.
In the fifth year that Tatius reigned, some of his own relatives and kin, meeting on the road envoys who were traveling from Laurentum toward Rome, tried by force to seize their belongings, and when the envoys refused to surrender them and fought back instead, the relatives killed them. When this terrible deed had been dared, Romulus at once thought the wrongdoers should be punished, but Tatius kept blocking and putting it off.
This was the one and only cause of open disagreement between them; in all else, ordering their affairs as best they could, they conducted matters jointly and in harmony. But the relatives of the murdered men, being barred from any lawful justice on account of Tatius, fell upon him at Lavinium while he was sacrificing together with Romulus, and killed him, but escorted Romulus away, praising him as a just man.
Romulus had the body of Tatius brought back and buried with honor, and it lies near the place called the Armilustrium on the Aventine; but he entirely neglected to seek justice for the murder. Some historians record that the frightened city of the Laurentines offered up those who had killed Tatius, yet Romulus dismissed them unpunished, declaring that one murder had thereby paid for the other.
This gave rise to a certain rumor and suspicion, as though he had been glad to be rid of his co-ruler; but it disturbed nothing in practice, nor did it set the Sabines against him — rather, some through genuine affection for him, others from dread of what he could do, and still others because they saw he treated everyone with a goodwill befitting the gods, continued to hold him in wonder.
Many people outside Rome as well came to admire Romulus, and the older Latin peoples sent to him and made friendship and alliance with him. He took Fidenae, a city neighboring Rome — according to some, by dispatching his horsemen ahead without warning, ordering them to sever the gate-pins, while he himself then appeared out of nowhere;
others say that the people of Fidenae struck first, driving off plunder and doing much damage to the territory and the suburbs, and that Romulus laid a trap for them, wiped out many, and captured the city. Even so he did not demolish it or level it flat, but instead turned it into a colony of Rome, sending two thousand five hundred settlers on the Ides of April.
After this a plague fell upon them, bringing sudden deaths to people without any sickness, and also striking their crops with barrenness and their herds with sterility. The city was also rained on with drops of blood, so that great superstitious fear was added to these unavoidable sufferings. And when the same things befell the inhabitants of Laurentum as well, it now seemed altogether certain that some divine wrath, on account of the justice left unsettled in the matter of Tatius and the murdered ambassadors, was driving both cities.
When the murderers were handed over and punished by both sides, the terrible visitations plainly abated, and Romulus cleansed the cities with rites of purification, said to be carried out even now at the Ferentine Gate, down to the present day. Yet before the plague had run its course, the people of Cameria fell upon the Romans and ravaged their land, supposing them unable to defend themselves because of their affliction.
At once Romulus marched out against them, and, defeating them in battle, killed six thousand, and having taken the city, resettled half of the survivors in Rome, while transferring from Rome to Cameria twice as many of those who remained, on the Kalends of Sextilis (August). So great was the surplus of citizens he had, in the roughly sixteen years he had governed Rome. Among the other spoils he brought back a bronze four-horse chariot from Cameria, which he set up in the temple of Hephaestus, having had himself represented on it being crowned by Victory.
As Roman power grew stronger in this way, the weaker of the neighboring peoples submitted, and, gaining safety, were content; but the more powerful, out of fear and envy, thought they should not look on passively, but should oppose and check the growth of Romulus. The first of the Etruscans to do so were the people of Veii, who possessed extensive territory and inhabited a great city; they began a war by demanding back Fidenae as belonging to them.
This demand was not only unjust but also absurd, since, when the men of Fidenae had been in danger and under attack, they had not come to their aid but had let them perish, and now they were demanding back houses and land held by others. Insulted, then, by the answers Romulus gave them, they split their forces in two: with one part they pressed against the army of the men of Fidenae, and with the other they went to meet Romulus. Near Fidenae they overcame and killed two thousand Romans, but they were defeated by Romulus and lost more than eight thousand men.
Again they fought at Fidenae, and everyone agrees that most of the work there was Romulus's own, since he displayed every kind of skill along with daring, and seemed to make use of a strength and speed of foot far beyond human measure; but what some say is thoroughly mythical, or rather altogether incredible — that of fourteen thousand who fell, more than half were killed by Romulus's own hand — is a claim on the order of the Messenians' boast about Aristomenes, that he three times sacrificed a hundred slain from among the Lacedaemonians.
When the rout occurred, Romulus let the survivors flee and advanced against the city itself. They, unable to bear the great disaster that had befallen them, sued for terms and reached a hundred-year pact of friendship, surrendering a large portion of their land, the part called Septempagium, meaning "the seven-part district," and withdrawing from the salt-works along the river, and handing over fifty of their best men as hostages.
He celebrated a triumph for these victories too, on the Ides of October, bringing along many other captives and the leader of the Veientines, an old man who was thought to have acted foolishly and, contrary to his age, inexperienced in affairs. That is why even now, when they offer sacrifices for victory, an old man dressed in purple is led through the forum up to the Capitol, with a child's bulla fastened on him, while the herald proclaims: "Sardians for sale." For the Tyrrhenians are said to be colonists of the Sardians, and Veii is a Tyrrhenian city.
This was the last war Romulus waged. Then what happens to most people — indeed to all but a few who are lifted by great and unexpected good fortune to power and grandeur — he too did not escape suffering: emboldened by his successes and adopting a haughtier bearing, he abandoned his popular ways and turned toward a monarchy oppressive and offensive, beginning with the very outward form in which he arrayed himself.
For he put on a purple tunic and wore a toga bordered with purple, and he transacted business seated on a reclining throne. Around him were always young men called the Celeres, from the swiftness with which they carried out their duties. Others walked in front of him with staffs, holding back the crowd, and wore belts of leather straps so as to bind at once whomever he ordered.
To bind, in the old Latin tongue, was "ligare," now called "alligare": hence the rod-bearers are called "lictors" and the rods themselves "bacilla," from their use of staffs at that time. It is likely that they are now called "lictors" with the letter kappa inserted, whereas before they were "litores," being in Greek terms "public servants": for the Greeks still now call the public property "leiton," and the populace "laos."
Once Numitor, his grandfather, passed away in Alba and the throne there rightfully devolved on Romulus, he put the constitution in the people's hands by courting their favor, and appointed a magistrate for the Albans year by year; and he taught the powerful men in Rome as well to seek a state without a king, self-governing, ruled and ruling in turn. For not even the men called patricians took part in affairs, but only an honored name and outward form remained to them, gathering in the senate-house more from custom than from any real deliberation:
then they would listen in silence to his commands, and being the first to learn his decision before the many, they would depart with that advantage over the rest. Everything else was of lesser importance; but when he himself divided among the soldiers, on his own authority, the land won by the spear, and gave back to the Veientines their hostages without the senate's consent or wish, he seemed thoroughly to insult the senate.
For this reason he fell into suspicion and slander, when a short time later he vanished in an unaccountable way. He vanished on the Nones of July, as they are now named, but at that time called the Nones of Quintilis, leaving nothing certain to say, nor any agreed account to be learned about his end, except the date, as has been said before. For even now many things are done on that day resembling that ancient calamity.
One should not be surprised at the obscurity, since when Scipio Africanus died at home after dinner, the manner of his death met with neither confirmation nor refutation, but some say he simply fell ill, being naturally sickly, others that he took his own life by poison, and others that his enemies broke in by night and stopped his breath.
And yet Scipio lay dead, visible for all to see, and his body, seen by everyone, offered some ground for suspicion and inquiry into what had happened; but when Romulus suddenly departed, no part of his body was seen, nor any remnant of his clothing. Some conjectured that the senators, having risen against him in the temple of Hephaestus, destroyed him, dividing up the body and each carrying off a part concealed in his cloak;
others think that the disappearance did not occur in the temple of Hephaestus, nor with only the senators present, but that Romulus happened to be holding an assembly outside near the place called the Goat's Marsh [or the Roe's Marsh], and that suddenly wondrous and indescribable disturbances came over the sky, with incredible changes: the sun's light gave out and darkness fell, not soft or calm, but with terrible thunders and blasts of wind driving a storm from every side;
and in this the great crowd scattered and fled, while the powerful men drew together with one another; and when the disturbance ceased and the light shone out again, and the many came back together to the same place, there was a search for the king and a longing for him, and the powerful men would not allow the people to investigate or meddle further, but urged all to honor and revere Romulus, as having been snatched up among the gods and destined to become a kindly god for them in place of a good king.
So most of the people, believing this and rejoicing, went their way, worshipping with good hopes; but there were some who, examining the matter bitterly and with ill will, troubled the patricians and accused them of persuading the people of foolish things while themselves being the murderers of the king.
Accordingly, one of the patricians, first in birth and most esteemed in character, a trusted intimate of Romulus himself, one of the settlers from Alba, Julius Proculus, came forward into the forum and, laying hold of the most sacred objects and swearing an oath, declared before everyone that as he was walking along the road Romulus had appeared to him coming from the opposite direction, looking more handsome and tall than ever before, adorned in bright, gleaming armor.
He himself, struck with amazement at the sight, said: "O King, what has happened, or what were you thinking, that you have left us under unjust and wicked suspicions, and abandoned the whole city orphaned in boundless grief?" And Romulus answered: "It pleased the gods, Proculus, that we should spend so much time among men, we who came from there, and having founded a city of the greatest power and glory, should again dwell in heaven. But now farewell; carry word to the Romans that if they combine self-restraint with valor, they will come to the height of human power. And I will be a kindly guardian spirit for you, Quirinus."
This seemed credible to the Romans because of the character of the man who told it and because of his oath; but indeed also some divine influence took hold of them, a feeling akin to inspired possession: for no one contradicted it, but all, setting aside every suspicion and accusation, prayed to Quirinus and called on him as a god.
Now these stories resemble those told by the Greeks about Aristeas of Proconnesus and Cleomedes of Astypalaea. For it is told that Aristeas met his death inside a certain fuller's workshop, and when his friends went to fetch the body it had vanished; and some say that people just returning from abroad met Aristeas traveling toward Croton. Cleomedes, who was of monstrous strength and bodily size, and violent and mad in his ways, did many acts of violence, and finally, in a certain schoolhouse for boys, struck with his hand the pillar supporting the roof and broke it in the middle, bringing down the roof.
When the boys were killed and pursuers came after him, he took refuge inside a large chest and, closing the lid, held it closed from within, so that many pulling together could not tear it open; but when they broke open the chest, they found the man neither alive nor dead within. Astonished, they sent envoys to Delphi, to whom the Pythia said: "Last of heroes is Cleomedes of Astypalaea."
It is also said that when Alcmene's body was being carried out for burial, it vanished from sight, and in its place a stone was discovered resting on the bier; and altogether the Greeks tell many such stories, deifying, beyond what is reasonable, the mortal part of nature together with the divine. To deny altogether the divine element in virtue is impious and base, but to mix earth with heaven is foolish. We must say, then, holding to what is safe, in the words of Pindar, that the body of everyone follows overpowering death, but a living image of eternity still remains; for that alone comes from the gods.
For it comes from there, and returns there — not together with the body, but only when it is set free and separated from the body as completely as possible, and becomes wholly pure and fleshless and undefiled. "For that is the best soul," as Heraclitus says, "which darts away from the body like lightning from a cloud." But the soul that is fouled and thoroughly filled with the body, like a heavy and misty exhalation, is slow to kindle and slow to rise back up.
There is therefore no need to send up the bodies of good men to heaven along with them, contrary to nature, but rather to hold that virtues and souls altogether, by nature and by divine law, pass from men into heroes, and from heroes into guardian spirits, and from guardian spirits, if they are perfectly purified and made holy, as in a rite of initiation, escaping altogether whatever is mortal and subject to feeling, are carried up to the gods — not by any law of the city, but in truth and by reasonable account — receiving the noblest and most blessed end of all.
As for the surname that came to be given to Romulus, Quirinus, some call it "Enyalius" [the war-god], others say it means "citizen," since they also called the citizens "Quirites"; others say the ancients called a spearpoint or spear "curis," and that the statue of Hera Curitis is set up on a spear, and that in the Regia a spear set up is addressed as Ares, and that men who excel in war are honored with a spear: so it seems Romulus was named Quirinus as a kind of warlike or spear-bearing god.
A shrine has been built for him on the hill called, because of him, the Quirinal. The day of his disappearance carries two names, "Populifugia" and "the Nones of the Goats"; on that day the citizens go outside the city to offer sacrifice at the spot known as the Goat's Marsh, since "capra" was their term for a goat. As they go out to the sacrifice they cry aloud many of the local names, such as Marcus, Lucius, Gaius, imitating the rout of that time and the calling out to one another amid fear and confusion.
Others, though, claim this reenactment reflects not flight but haste and readiness, tracing the story to a cause of this kind. After the Gauls captured Rome and Camillus then expelled them, the city, left enfeebled, could not easily recover itself, many of the Latins marched against it, with Livius Postumius as their commander. Not far from Rome he set up camp with his forces and dispatched a herald, announcing that the Latins wished to rekindle their old kinship and relationship, now that it had faded, by mixing the families again through new intermarriages.
If, then, the Romans would send a good number of unmarried girls and widowed women, there would be peace and friendship with them, just as had earlier existed with the Sabines on similar terms. On hearing this, the Romans feared war, and thought that handing over the women was no better than captivity outright. While they were at a loss, a servant-girl named Philotis, or, as some call her, Tutula, urged them to choose neither course but instead, through a ruse, to avoid both the war and the surrender of hostages at once.
The trick was this: to dress up Philotis herself, along with some comely servant-girls, as though they were free women, and send them off to the enemy; then at night Philotis was to raise a torch, and the Romans would come up with their weapons and set upon the enemy while they slept. This was done, with the Latins persuaded to accept the women, and Philotis raised the torch from a wild fig tree, screening it with coverings and curtains behind it so that the light was invisible to the enemy but plain to the Romans.
As soon as they saw it, they went out at once in haste, and in their eagerness kept calling to one another repeatedly around the gates. Falling upon the enemy unexpectedly and overpowering them, they now keep the festival as a victory celebration. And the Nones bear the name "Caprotine" from the wild fig tree, which the Romans term "caprificus." They feast the women outdoors, shaded by branches of fig; and the servant-girls run about gathering people and playing games, then strike and pelt one another with stones, just as they then came to the Romans' aid and fought alongside them in battle.
Now many of the historians accept this account; but the fact that the calling of names is done in daylight, and that people go to the Goat's Marsh as if to a sacrifice, seems rather to support the former account — unless, by Zeus, both events happened to occur on the same day in different eras. It is said that Romulus, at fifty-four years of age, in the thirty-eighth year of ruling, disappeared from among mankind.

======== Comparison Of Romulus With Theseus ========

These, then, are the things worth knowing that have come down to us about Romulus and Theseus. And it appears, first, that the one acted by deliberate choice, with no one compelling him — though it was open to him to reign undisturbed at Troezen, succeeding to a kingdom of no small repute, he himself, of his own accord, reached after great things; while the other, with slavery at hand for him to flee and vengeance bearing down upon him, became, in the exact words of Plato, brave simply out of fear, and through dread of suffering the worst arrived, by sheer necessity, at doing great deeds.
Then again, the greatest deed of this latter man was to destroy a single tyrant, the tyrant of Alba; whereas for the other these were mere byplay and preliminary contests — Sciron, Sinis, Procrustes, Corynetes — whom he killed and punished, ridding Greece of terrible tyrants even before the very people he rescued knew his identity; and it was possible for him to travel unmolested by sea, wronged by none of the robbers, while it was not possible for Romulus to be free of trouble so long as Amulius lived.
A great proof of this is that the one, though himself suffering no wrong, set out against the wicked on behalf of others, while the others, so long as they themselves suffered no ill at the tyrant's hands, looked on while he wronged everyone else. And indeed, if it is a great thing to have been wounded fighting the Sabines, and to have killed Acron, and to have overcome many enemies in battle, one may set against these deeds the battle with the Centaurs and the affair with the Amazons.
But what Theseus dared with regard to the Cretan tribute — whether as food for some beast, or as an offering at the tomb of Androgeos, or, the mildest version of what is told, to serve in shameful and dishonored bondage among insolent and hostile men — offering himself willingly, sailing along with the maidens and young boys, no one could say how great was the daring, or the greatness of soul, or the justice toward the common good, or the longing for glory and virtue, in this.
So it seems to me that the philosophers are not wrong when they describe love as a duty performed for the gods, meant to protect and preserve the young. As for the love Ariadne felt seems, more than anything, to have been the work of a god and a device contrived for the young man's salvation; and it is not right to blame the woman who loved, but rather to marvel that not all men and all women are so affected; and if she alone suffered this, I for my part would readily say that she was made worthy of a god's love, being one who loved beauty and goodness, and had a passion for the best things.
Both, then, being by nature men suited to statesmanship, neither preserved the kingly manner; each swerved and underwent a change — the one toward the popular, the other toward the tyrannical — erring in the same way from opposite passions. For a ruler must, above all, preserve the rule itself; and it is preserved no less by abstaining from what does not belong to it than by holding fast to what does.
Whoever relaxes or overextends it ceases to be a king or ruler, and turns instead into either a rabble-pleaser or a tyrant, and produces in his subjects either hatred or contempt. Yet the one failing seems to belong to fairness and kindliness, the other to self-love and harshness.
But if we must not attribute their misfortunes entirely to fortune, but should rather seek in them differences of character and passion, then let no one excuse the one man in his dealings with his brother, nor the other in his dealings with his son, on the ground of an unreasoning anger of sudden onset — yet the occasion that stirred the anger deserves more indulgence when the man was overthrown by a greater cause, as if by a heavier blow.
For in Romulus's case, since the quarrel arose out of counsel and deliberation over the common interest, no one would suppose that his mind was suddenly overcome by so great a passion; but Theseus, toward his son, was undone — as very few among men have escaped being undone — by love and jealousy and a woman's slanders. And what is more, Romulus's anger issued in an act and a deed that had an unfortunate end, while Theseus's wrath went no further than words, abuse, and an old man's curse — in all else the young man seems to have left things to fortune. So that on this count one might award the vote to Theseus.
For Romulus, first, there stands to his credit the great fact of having risen from the smallest beginnings to power. For men called slaves and sons of swineherds, before they themselves became free, freed nearly all the Latins, obtaining at one and the same time the finest of titles — slayers of enemies, saviors of their own people, kings of nations, and founders of cities, not mere transplanters of populations, as Theseus was, who put together and built up one dwelling-place out of many, destroying in the process many cities named after ancient kings and heroes.
Romulus did this too, later, forcing his enemies, once they had thrown down and destroyed their own homes, to attach themselves to the victors; but at the very first he did not transform or enlarge an existing state, but made one out of what did not exist, acquiring for himself all at once a country, a fatherland, a kingdom, kinsfolk, marriages, and family ties; he destroyed no one and ruined no one, but rather benefited a people willing, though homeless and hearthless, to become citizens; and robbers and wrongdoers he did not kill, but rather brought nations to him by war, overthrew cities, and led kings and commanders in triumph.
As for the death of Remus, the one who struck the blow is disputed, and most writers turn the blame onto others; but Romulus conspicuously saved his mother when she was being put to death, and set his grandfather, who was living in obscure and dishonored servitude, upon the throne of Aeneas, and did many good deeds willingly.
Nor did he even unwillingly do him harm; whereas Theseus's forgetfulness and neglect of the instruction concerning the sail could scarcely, I think, escape the charge of patricide even with a long defense and before indulgent judges — a point which some Attic writer, seeing how very hard it is to defend, worked around by inventing that Aegeus, as the ship approached, ran up eagerly to the acropolis to view it and, stumbling, fell down, as though he had no attendants, or as though on his hurried way to the sea no one was there to help him.
Furthermore, the offenses concerning the seizing of women give Theseus no honorable excuse. First, because he did it often — he seized Ariadne, and Antiope, and Anaxo the Troezenian, and, beyond all these, Helen, when he himself was past his prime and she not yet in hers, but a mere child, unripe for marriage, while he, already of an age to have finished with marriage and lawful unions, took her anyway; and then there is the reason itself, for the daughters of the Troezenians and Laconians and Amazons, unbetrothed, were no more worthy to bear his children than the daughters of the Erechtheids and Cecropids at Athens.
But these acts lie under suspicion of having been done out of arrogance and for pleasure's sake. Romulus, on the other hand, having seized nearly eight hundred women — not taking all of them for himself, but only one, Hersilia, as they say — distributed the rest among the good men of the citizenry; and afterward, by the honor, affection, and justice he showed toward the women, he demonstrated that that act of violence and wrong had become the finest and most statesmanlike deed toward binding the community together.
Thus he mingled and welded the two peoples together, and provided a wellspring of future goodwill and strength for the state. And time is witness to the reverence, friendship, and constancy he brought about in these marriages; since across two hundred and thirty years, not a single man dared abandon his wife, nor any woman her husband's household — but just as among the Greeks the truly exceptional cases are remembered as the first patricide or matricide, so all Romans recognize that Spurius Carvilius was the very first man to divorce his wife, on a charge of barrenness.
And the deeds themselves bear witness to that long span of time. For the kings shared their rule, and the two peoples shared citizenship, because of that marriage-alliance; while, by contrast, from Theseus's marriages the people of Athens gained no friendship or fellowship through any compact with anyone, but rather hatreds and wars and the killing of citizens, and in the end the loss of Aphidnae, and they were barely spared, through the enemy's pity — after bowing down and invoking the gods — from suffering what the Trojans suffered on account of Alexander.
The mother of Theseus, however, did not share in the danger, but suffered the fate of Hecuba, abandoned and given up by her son — if indeed the story of her captivity is not itself invented, as this, like most of the rest, ought to be judged a falsehood, since the mythical tales about the divine also make a great difference here. For Romulus's deliverance came with the great favor of the gods, whereas the oracle given to Aegeus, to abstain from a woman in a foreign land, seems to show that Theseus's begetting of a child happened against the will of the gods.

======== Lycurgus ========

Concerning Lycurgus the lawgiver, nothing at all can be said that is beyond dispute, since his lineage, his travels abroad, his death, and above all his work on the laws and the constitution have been given differing accounts, and on no point is there less agreement than on the era to which the man belongs. According to one tradition he was a contemporary of Iphitus and worked jointly with him to set up the Olympic truce, and Aristotle the philosopher is among those who hold this view, citing as evidence the Olympia discus bearing an inscription that preserves Lycurgus's name.
Others, reckoning the time by the succession of the kings who reigned at Sparta, as Eratosthenes and Apollodorus do, show him to be older by not a few years than the first Olympiad. But Timaeus suspects that, since there were two men named Lycurgus at Sparta and not at the same time, the deeds of both were attributed to the one on account of his fame, and that, of the two, the older man belonged to an era close to Homer's own — indeed some say he even met Homer face to face.
Xenophon too gives grounds for supposing his antiquity, in the passage where he says the man lived in the time of the Heraclidae. For by birth, of course, even the most recent of the Spartan kings were Heraclidae, but Xenophon seems to mean, when he wishes to call those first and earliest ones Heraclidae, those nearest to Heracles himself. Nevertheless, though the history is so confused, we shall try, by following the accounts that have the least contradiction or the most reputable witnesses, to give our narrative of the man.
For Simonides the poet says that Lycurgus's father was not Eunomus but Prytanis, and that Prytanis was father to both Lycurgus and Eunomus alike; but most writers trace the genealogy differently, not so, but say that from Procles son of Aristodemus came Soüs, from Soüs Eurypon, from him Prytanis, from this man Eunomus, from Eunomus Polydectes by an earlier wife, and Lycurgus, the younger son, by Dionassa, as Diëutychidas has recorded — the sixth in descent from Procles, and the eleventh from Heracles.
Of his ancestors the most admired was Soüs, in whose time the Spartans made the Helots slaves and acquired a great deal of land, cutting it off from the Arcadians. It is said that Soüs, besieged by the Cleitorians in a difficult and waterless spot, agreed to give up the conquered land to them if he and all who were with him
should drink from the nearby spring; and when the oaths had been sworn, he gathered those with him and offered the kingship to whoever would not drink. But no one held out, and all drank; then he himself went down last of all and, though the enemy were still present, merely sprinkled himself, and then went away and kept possession of the land, on the ground that not all had drunk. But although they admired him for this, they did not name the house after him but after his son, calling it the Eurypontidae, because Eurypon seems to have been the first to relax the too monarchical character of the kingship, courting the people and indulging the many.
From this sort of relaxation the people grew bolder, while the later kings, on the one hand incurring hatred by using force against the many, and on the other yielding either out of a wish to please or out of weakness, lawlessness and disorder held Sparta for a long time, by which it also came about that the father of Lycurgus, while reigning, met his death. For while trying to check some brawl, he was struck by a butcher's cleaver and died, leaving the kingship to his elder son Polydectes.
When this man too died not long afterward, it was expected by all that Lycurgus would be king; and indeed he did reign, until it became clear that his brother's wife was pregnant. As soon as he learned this, he declared that the throne belonged to the child if a boy were born, and he himself merely managed affairs in the capacity of guardian. Those who guarded orphaned kings the Lacedaemonians called prodikoi.
But when the woman sent to him secretly and opened negotiations, wishing to destroy the infant so that she might marry him while he was king of Sparta, he loathed her character, yet did not openly oppose her proposal, but pretending to approve and accept it, said that she ought not to harm her body by inducing miscarriage and taking drugs and risking her life, for he himself would take charge of the matter and, the moment the infant came into the world, would arrange for it to be disposed of.
Having in this way led the woman along right up to her time of delivery, when he learned she was in labor he sent attendants and guards to be present at the birth, with orders that a female child should be turned over to the women, whereas a male child should be brought to him, whatever he happened to be doing. It happened that he was dining with the magistrates when a male child was born, and the servants came bringing the little boy to him,
and he, taking the child, said, as the story goes, to those present, "A king has been born to you, Spartans," and laid him down in the royal seat and named him Charilaus, because of the general joy at his own high-mindedness and justice. He had reigned in all eight months, but was also otherwise held in high regard by the citizens, and more people obeyed him out of admiration for his virtue than obeyed him merely as guardian of the king and holder of royal authority, being ready to do whatever he ordered.
But there was also envy, which as he grew, being still young, tried to stand in his way — chiefly the relatives and kinsmen of the king's mother, who felt she had been slighted, and her brother Leonidas, who once even railed at Lycurgus rather boldly, hinting that he knew well enough that Lycurgus intended to become king, giving grounds for suspicion and preparing in advance, by slander, to make Lycurgus appear, should anything happen to the king, to have plotted against him. Such talk also went about, spread by the woman herself, and Lycurgus, taking this hard and fearing the uncertainty of it, decided to escape the suspicion by going into exile, and to wander abroad until his nephew, having come of age, should beget a successor to the kingship.
Setting out in this way, he came first to Crete; and having studied the constitutions there and associated with the men of highest repute, some of their laws he admired and adopted, intending to take them home and make use of them, but some he disdained. One of those there reputed wise and skilled in statecraft he persuaded, by kindness and friendship, to go to Sparta — Thales, who passed for a poet of lyric songs and made that art his outward pretext, but in fact was doing the work of the ablest lawgivers
at heart. For his odes were speeches urging obedience and concord, set to melodies and rhythms possessing much order and composure, by listening to which men's characters were imperceptibly softened, and they were drawn into fellow-feeling with what was noble, away from the ill-will then prevailing among them toward one another, so that in a way this man paved the road for Lycurgus toward the education of the Spartans.
From Crete Lycurgus sailed to Asia, wishing, it is said, by comparing the Cretan way of life, which was frugal and austere, with the extravagance and luxury of the Ionians — as a physician compares healthy bodies with sickly and diseased ones — to observe the difference between the two ways of life and the two constitutions.
There too he first met, it seems, the poems of Homer, preserved among the descendants of Creophylus, and observing in them, mixed in with the entertainment devoted to pleasure and self-indulgence, a political and educational element worth no less serious attention, he eagerly copied them out and gathered them together, meaning to bring them here. For there was already some dim fame of the epics among the Greeks, but only a few possessed scattered portions of the poetry, which was passed around haphazardly as chance would have it; and it was Lycurgus above all who first made it widely known.
The Egyptians, for their part, believe that Lycurgus came to them too, and that he admired above all their separation of the military class from the other classes, and transferred this to Sparta, and by setting apart the vulgar craftsmen and manual laborers made the citizen body truly refined and pure. This much, then, some of the Greek writers also
attest on the Egyptians' behalf; but that Lycurgus also visited Libya and Iberia, and, wandering about near India, conversed with the Gymnosophists, we know of no one who has said this except Aristocrates son of Hipparchus, a Spartan.
The Lacedaemonians missed Lycurgus while he was away and sent for him many times, on the ground that their kings had the name and the honor but nothing else beyond the rest, whereas in him there was a commanding nature and a power to lead men. Nor indeed was the man's presence unwelcome to the kings themselves, but they hoped that with him present the people would be less insolent toward them.
Returning, then, to a people so disposed, he set at once about changing the present order and transforming the constitution, on the ground that particular laws were of no use or benefit unless, as with a body that is diseased and full of every kind of sickness, one melts down and changes the existing constitution by drugs and purgings and begins a wholly new regimen.
Having resolved on this, he first went abroad to Delphi; and having sacrificed to the god and consulted the oracle, he returned bringing that famous response, in which the Pythia declared him beloved of the gods, more divine than mortal, and pronounced that the deity had granted and sanctioned the constitution he sought, and that it would prove by far the finest of all constitutions.
Encouraged by this, he brought over the best men and called on them to join with him, conversing secretly with his friends first, and then in this way gradually reaching more people and organizing them for the undertaking. When the moment came, he ordered thirty of the leading men to go out armed into the marketplace at dawn, for the sake of striking terror and fear into those who opposed him. Of these Hermippus recorded the names of the twenty most distinguished; but the one who shared most fully in all of Lycurgus's works and helped him labor over the laws they call Arthmiadas.
When the disturbance began, King Charilaus, frightened that the whole undertaking was being organized against him, took refuge in the sanctuary of the Bronze-House Athena; then, being persuaded and receiving oaths, he rose up and took part in what was being done, being naturally mild — as indeed it is said that when Archelaus, who shared the kingship with him, said to those praising the young man, "How could Charilaus be a good man, seeing he is not even harsh to the wicked?"
Of the many innovations made by Lycurgus, the first and greatest was the establishment of the council of elders, which Plato says, being mixed with the fevered power of the kings and made equal to it in voting, provided salvation together with moderation for the most important matters. For the constitution, swaying and inclining now toward the kings into tyranny, now toward the multitude into democracy,
by placing the office of the elders in the middle, like ballast, and balancing it, achieved the safest arrangement and order, since the twenty-eight elders were always added to the kings' side just enough to resist democracy, but in turn strengthened the people against the coming into being of tyranny. Aristotle says that so many elders were established because, of the thirty leading men who were with Lycurgus at first, two lost heart and abandoned the undertaking out of cowardice.
But Sphaerus says that from the beginning that many took part in the plan. There might also be something in the fact that the number results from seven multiplied by four, and that, since it equals the total of its own divisors, it ranks as a perfect number next after six. But to me it seems most likely that he made the elders that number so that the whole would be thirty, with the twenty-eight added to the two kings.
Lycurgus was so intent on establishing this office that he brought back an oracle from Delphi concerning it, which they call the Rhetra. It runs thus: "Having founded a temple of Zeus Syllanius and Athena Syllania, having divided into tribes and formed into obes, having established a council of thirty elders together with the founder-kings, they shall hold assemblies from time to time in the ground between Babyca and Cnacion, bringing measures forward and withdrawing them in this fashion, and the people are to have the final
authority and power." In this, to have divided into tribes and formed into obes means to divide and distribute the multitude into groups, some of which he called tribes and others obes; and by "founder-kings" are meant the kings, and "to hold assembly" means to convene the assembly, because he attached the origin and the authority of the constitution to the Pythian god. The Babyca they now call Cheimarrus, and the Cnacion they now call Oenus; but Aristotle says the Cnacion is a river, and the Babyca a bridge.
Between these two they held their assemblies, there being no porticoes or any other structure, for he thought these things contributed nothing to good counsel, but rather did harm, making foolish and puffing up with empty conceit the minds of those assembled, whenever, in holding assembly, they gazed upon statues and paintings or the elaborately worked proscenia of theaters or the roofs of council-chambers ornamented beyond need. When the multitude had gathered, no one of the rest was permitted to offer an opinion, but the people had authority to decide on the motion put forward by the elders and the kings,
but later, when the many, by taking away and adding to the motions, distorted them and did violence to them, the kings Polydorus and Theopompus added the following to the Rhetra: "But if the people should choose a crooked measure, the elders and the founder-kings are to be setters-aside" — that is, not to ratify it, but altogether to dissolve the assembly and disperse the people, on the ground that they were perverting and altering the motion contrary to what was best. And they persuaded the city that the god himself commanded this, as Tyrtaeus somewhere recalls in these words: "Having heard the voice of Phoebus, they brought home from Pytho the oracle of the god and his words of fulfillment: the god-honored kings, to whom the lovely city of Sparta is dear, are to begin the counsel, and the elder elders, and after them the men of the people, answering back with straight rhetras."
Though Lycurgus had thus mixed the constitution, still those who came after him, seeing the oligarchy still unmixed and strong, seething and full of passion, as Plato says, threw upon it, like a bridle, the power of the ephors, about one hundred and thirty years after Lycurgus, when the first of the ephors around Elatus were established, in the reign of Theopompus.
They say that when he was reproached by his own wife for being about to hand over to his sons a kingship smaller than the one he had received, he replied, "No — greater, insofar as it will last longer." And indeed, by casting off excess along with the envy it breeds, he escaped the danger of suffering what the Messenian and Argive kings suffered at the hands of their own peoples, who were unwilling to yield or relax any of their power in favor of the common people. This above all made Lycurgus's wisdom and foresight evident, when one looks at the factions and misgovernment that afflicted the Argive and Messenian peoples and their kings, Sparta's own kin and neighbors,
who, having received equal shares from the start, and having in the division seemed even to have more than the Spartans, did not prosper for long, but through the arrogance of their kings and the disobedience of their masses, threw their institutions into confusion, and showed that it was truly a divine stroke of fortune for the Spartans to have the one who fitted together and blended their constitution for them. But that belongs to a later time.
The second and boldest of Lycurgus's political measures was his redistribution of the land, since a shocking inequality prevailed, and many propertyless and destitute people were becoming a burden on the city, while wealth had flowed together entirely into the hands of a few; and wishing to drive out arrogance, envy, wrongdoing, luxury, and the still older and greater diseases of a state, wealth and poverty,
he persuaded them to pool all the land together and redistribute it from the start, and to live with one another as equals in their possessions, all alike in their way of life, seeking the first place through virtue alone, on the ground that nothing else set one man apart in worth from another, except the disgrace attaching to base conduct and the honor attaching to noble conduct.
Putting action behind his words, he distributed the rest of Laconia among the perioikoi in thirty thousand allotments, and the land belonging to the city of Sparta itself in nine thousand: for that many allotments were made for the Spartiates. Some say that Lycurgus distributed six thousand, and that Polydorus later supplemented this with a further three thousand; still others hold that Polydorus gave out half of the nine thousand himself, with Lycurgus accounting for the remaining half.
Each allotment was of such a size as to yield seventy medimnoi of barley as return for a man, and twelve for a woman, with the liquid produce in proportion. For he thought that this much would be enough for them, since it was sufficient for good bodily condition and health, and they would need nothing further. It is said that some time later, passing through the countryside on returning from a journey abroad, just after the harvest, he saw the heaps of grain lying side by side and equal in size, and smiled, and said to those present that all Laconia looked like the estate of many brothers who had just divided their inheritance.
Having also undertaken to divide up movable property, so as to eliminate inequality and unevenness altogether, since he saw that people would resist an outright confiscation, he went about it by another route and put down the greed connected with such possessions by political means. First, he invalidated all gold and silver coinage and ordered that only iron currency be used; and even to this he gave, for a great weight and bulk, only a small value, so that ten minas' worth required a large storeroom in the house and a yoke of oxen to carry it,
and once this was established, many kinds of wrongdoing vanished from Lacedaemon. For who was going to steal, or take bribes, or defraud, or plunder something that could neither be hidden nor be worth owning, and that could not even profitably be cut up? For the iron, while still glowing hot, was quenched in vinegar, as they say, which destroyed its temper and took away its usefulness and strength for any other purpose, making it brittle and unworkable.
After this he brought about the expulsion of useless and superfluous trades. Even without his driving them out, most of these would have vanished along with the common currency, since their products had no market: for the iron money could not be exported to the other Greeks, nor did it have any value, being mocked, so that there was nothing available with which to buy any foreign or trivial goods, nor did merchant cargo sail into the harbors, nor did any teacher of rhetoric set foot in Laconia, nor any wandering fortune-teller, nor any keeper of courtesans, nor any maker of gold or silver ornaments, since there was no currency.
But in this way luxury, gradually deprived of what kindled and nourished it, withered away of itself: and those who possessed much gained no advantage from it, since their abundance had no outlet into the public sphere but lay shut up and idle at home. That is why the everyday and necessary furnishings — beds, chairs, and tables — were made among them with the greatest skill, and the Laconian drinking-cup, they say, was especially prized for military campaigns, as Critias says,
for the water they were forced to drink, unpleasant to look at, was hidden by its color, and as the murky part struck against the inside of the cup and clung to its rim, the drink reached the mouth in a purer state. And the lawgiver was responsible for this too: for the craftsmen, freed from useless work, displayed their skill on necessary things.
Wishing to attack luxury still further and to strip away the eagerness for wealth, he introduced his third and finest political measure, the establishment of the common messes, so that they would come together and dine with one another on shared and fixed meats and grains, and not live at home, reclining on expensive couches at expensive tables, fattened in the dark by the hands of servants and cooks, like gluttonous animals,
and thereby corrupting their bodies along with their characters, letting themselves go to every desire and to satiety, which requires long sleep, warm baths, much rest, and a kind of daily nursing. This alone was a great achievement, but greater still was that, as Theophrastus says, he made wealth something not to be envied and, in effect, not wealth at all, through the common sharing of the meals and the simplicity of the diet,
for there was no use to be made of it, no enjoyment, no display or show at all of great possessions, since the poor man walked to the very same dinner as the rich man. So that this famous thing — visible only in Sparta among all the cities under the sun — came about, that wealth was blind and lay there like a lifeless and motionless picture. For it was not permitted to dine at home beforehand and then go to the common messes already full, but the rest kept careful watch on anyone who did not drink or eat with them, and reproached him as undisciplined and as growing soft against their common way of life.
This is why, they say, the wealthy became especially hostile to Lycurgus over this measure, and banding together against him they cried out and grew angry, and in the end, pelted by many of them, he fled the marketplace at a run. He outran the rest and took refuge in a temple, but one young man, not otherwise untalented, but quick-tempered and hot-blooded, Alcander, pressing close and pursuing him, when Lycurgus turned around, struck him with his staff and knocked out his eye.
Lycurgus, in no way giving way to his suffering, but standing and facing them, showed the citizens his bloodied face and ruined eye; and great shame and dejection seized those who saw it, so that they handed Alcander over to him and escorted him all the way to his house, sharing in his indignation. Lycurgus, having thanked them, let them go, but took Alcander into his own house; he did him no harm and said nothing harsh, but dismissed his usual attendants and servants and ordered Alcander to serve him instead.
Alcander, not being of ignoble nature, carried out what was ordered in silence, and staying constantly with Lycurgus and sharing his life, in observing his gentleness and the imperturbability of his soul and the austerity of his way of living and his unbending endurance of hardship, was himself remarkably affected in his feelings toward the man, and used to say to his companions and friends that Lycurgus was not harsh or self-willed at all, but was the only one who was gentle and mild toward others.
In this way, then, Alcander was disciplined and paid such a penalty — becoming out of a wicked and self-willed youth the most well-mannered and moderate of men — and Lycurgus, as a memorial of what he had suffered, founded a temple of Athena, whom he named Optilitis; for the Dorians there call the eyes 'optiloi.' Some, however — Dioscorides, author of a work on the Laconian constitution, among them — claim that Lycurgus was struck but did not lose the eye, and that he built the shrine to the goddess in gratitude for the cure he received. In any case, after that misfortune, the Spartans, when they held assembly, gave up the practice of carrying a staff.
The common messes the Cretans call andreia, but the Lacedaemonians call them phiditia, either because the word implies friendship and goodwill, with a d substituted for an l, or because such gatherings train men toward frugality and plain living. Nothing prevents the initial sound also being an outside addition, as some say, the word being derived from editia, referring to diet and eating,
They came together in groups of about fifteen, a little more or a little fewer. Each of the mess-members brought per month a medimnos of barley meal, eight choes of wine, five minas of cheese, five half-minas of figs, and in addition to these a small sum of money for relishes; and besides this, anyone who had made a sacrifice or gone hunting sent a portion to the common mess. For it was permitted to dine at home whenever someone was delayed by a sacrifice or by hunting, but the rest had to be present.
And for a long time they kept strict watch over attendance at the common meals. At any rate, when King Agis, on returning from a campaign in which he had defeated the Athenians, wished to dine with his wife and sent for his portions, the polemarchs did not send them; and when the next day, in anger, he failed to offer the sacrifice he was required to make, they fined him.
Even boys attended the common messes, as if brought to schools of self-discipline, and there they listened to political discussion and saw models of freedom, and they themselves grew accustomed to joking and being mocked without vulgarity, and to not taking offense at being mocked. For it was thought to be especially characteristic of Sparta to be able to endure a joke; but if one could not bear it, it was permitted to ask to be let off, and the one joking would stop.
As each man entered, the eldest present would point to the doors and say, "Through these no word goes outside." And it is said that a man wishing to be admitted to a mess was tested in this way: each of the mess-members took a bit of bread in his hand, and when the attendant carried the vessel on his head, cast it in silently as if it were a ballot — the one approving simply, the one rejecting pressing it hard with his hand.
For the pressed piece has the effect of the pierced one. And if they find even a single one like this, they do not admit the candidate, wishing all the members to be pleased with one another. The man rejected in this way is said to have been "kaddichos'd": for the vessel into which they cast the bits of bread is called a kaddichos. Among their dishes the most highly esteemed was the black broth, so much so that the older men had no need even of a bit of meat, but yielded it to the young men, while they themselves feasted, pouring the broth over themselves.
One of the kings of Pontus, it is reported, went so far as to purchase a Laconian cook on account of this broth; but then, having tasted it, found it disagreeable. And the cook said, "O king, this broth needs to be relished by men who have first bathed in the Eurotas." After drinking moderately, they went away without a torch, for it was not permitted to walk by torchlight, either on this occasion or any other, so that they might grow accustomed to walking confidently and fearlessly in darkness and at night. Such, then, was the arrangement of the common messes.
Lycurgus did not set down written laws, but one of the so-called rhetrai is this. For the things that were most authoritative and most important for a city's happiness and virtue, he thought, once fixed as elements in the characters and habits of the citizens, would remain unmoved and secure, since deliberate choice provides a stronger bond than compulsion, the kind that education instills in the young, producing in each of them the disposition of a lawgiver.
But small matters, contracts concerning money, and things that shift with changing needs from one time to another, it was better not to bind by written rules or fixed customs, but to leave to be settled according to circumstance, taking on additions and subtractions as those who were educated should approve. For the whole and entire work of his legislation he made hinge upon education.
One of the rhetrai, then, as has been said, was not to use written laws. Another, in turn, was against extravagance, that every house should have its roof worked only with the axe, and its doors made only with the saw and no other tool — for the remark later attributed to Epaminondas, spoken at his own table, that a dinner of this sort leaves no room for treachery — Lycurgus was the first to grasp this idea, namely that such a house does not admit luxury and extravagance,
nor is there anyone so lacking in taste and so foolish as to bring into a plain and common house couches with silver feet and purple coverlets and golden cups and the extravagance that follows these, but of necessity he must fit and match his couch to his house, his clothing to his couch, and the rest of his furnishings and equipment to that,
and from this habit, they say, Leotychidas the Elder, dining in Corinth, on seeing the costly and coffered ceiling of the house, asked his host whether trees grow square-shaped where he lived. A third rhetra of Lycurgus is remembered, the one forbidding them to campaign often against the same enemies, so that the enemy, growing used to defending itself repeatedly, should not become skilled in war.
And this above all they charge against King Agesilaus later, that his repeated raids and expeditions, launched again and again against Boeotia, trained the Thebans into worthy opponents of the Lacedaemonians; wherefore Antalcidas, seeing him wounded, said, "A fine tuition fee you are collecting from the Thebans, having taught them to fight when they neither wished nor knew how." Such enactments, then, he called rhetrai, as being brought from the god and being oracles.
As for education, which he held to be the greatest and finest work of the lawgiver, he began far back, looking first to matters of marriage and childbearing. For it is not true, as Aristotle says, that after attempting to make the women modest he gave up, unable to master their great license and the rule of women brought on by the men's many campaigns, in which they were forced to leave their wives as mistresses of the household, and for this reason paid them more deference than was fitting and addressed them as "mistresses" — no, he gave to these matters too all the care that circumstances allowed.
The bodies of the girls he trained hard with runs and wrestling and throwing the discus and javelin, so that the offspring they would conceive, taking root in strong bodies, might grow better from a strong beginning, and so that the girls themselves, enduring their labors with strength, might contend well and easily against the pains of childbirth. Doing away with softness and shade-rearing and all effeminacy, he made the girls no less than the boys accustomed to march naked in processions, and to dance and sing at certain sacred rites with the young men present and watching.
There were times when, speaking bantering words to each young man, they took hold usefully of his faults, and again, reciting praises composed with song for those who deserved them, they created great ambition and rivalry in the young men. The youth praised for manly courage and given renown before the girls would leave the scene puffed up by the compliments he had earned, and the stinging remarks delivered in play and jest cut no less deeply than admonitions meant in earnest, since the kings and elders too walked along together with the other citizens to watch the spectacle.
The nakedness of the maidens held nothing shameful in it, since modesty was present and lack of self-control absent; rather it produced a simple habit and a zeal for fitness, and gave the female sex a taste of no ignoble pride, as having a share, no less than men, in virtue and ambition. Hence it came to them to speak and think in the manner recorded of Gorgo, wife of Leonidas: when a certain foreign woman, it seems, remarked to her, "Only among you Spartans do the women hold sway over the men," she answered, "Yes, for we are the only ones who give birth to men."
These practices, then, were also incentives toward marriage — I mean the processions of the maidens, and their undressing, and the contests held in view of the young men, who were led on not by any geometric necessity but, as Plato says, by erotic necessity. And yet he attached a certain dishonor to those who remained unmarried. They were shut out from watching the Gymnopaidiai; while in the winter season the officials directed them to circle the marketplace unclothed,
and as they walked around they sang a certain song composed about themselves, saying that they suffered justly, since they disobeyed the laws. They were also deprived of the honor and service which the young paid to their elders. Hence no one blamed what was said to Dercyllidas, distinguished general though he was. As he approached, one of the younger men did not yield his seat to him, saying, "You have fathered no one who will yield his seat to me."
They married by abduction, and not girls who were small or unripe for marriage, but ones in their prime and mature. The woman who had been seized was taken in hand by the so-called "bridesmaid," who cropped her head close to the skin, dressed her in a man's cloak and sandals, and laid her down on a pallet, alone, without light. The bridegroom, not drunk nor unmanned by indulgence but sober, as always, having dined in the common messes, would slip in, loosen her belt, and lift her and carry her to the bed.
After spending a short time with her, he would go off discreetly, as was his custom before, and rest among his fellow young men. And thereafter he continued in this way, spending his days and resting with his age-mates, but visiting his bride in secret and with caution, ashamed and afraid that someone in the house might notice, while his bride for her part contrived and helped devise ways that they might come together at the right moment without being seen.
This practice went on well beyond a brief span, so much so that some men fathered children before ever setting eyes on their wives in the light of day. Such intercourse was not only a practice of self-restraint and moderation but also brought them together for procreation still fertile in body and, in their love, always fresh and newly desiring one another, never sated or worn thin as those are who indulge in unrestrained intercourse, but always leaving behind in each other some remnant and kindling spark of longing and grace.
Having established such reverence and order about marriage, he nonetheless banished empty and womanish jealousy just as thoroughly, by making it honorable to exclude all outrage and unworthy behavior from marriage while sharing children and their begetting with worthy men, and by making men laugh at those who pursue such things as unmixable and unshareable, avenging them with murders and wars.
For it was permitted for an older man with a young wife, if he admired and approved some fine young man, to bring him in to her, and having filled her with noble seed, to make the child born his own. And again it was permitted for a good man who admired some other man's wife for her fine children and her modesty, to persuade her husband to let him consort with her, as it were planting in fruitful soil and producing good children who would be kin and of the same blood as good men.
To begin with, Lycurgus refused to regard children as the private property of their fathers, treating them instead as belonging jointly to the city, and for this reason he wished the citizens to be born not from random men but from the best. Then too he saw much foolishness and conceit in the legislation of other peoples on this subject, who have their dogs and horses covered by the finest studs, persuading the owners by favor or by payment, while they lock up and guard their wives, insisting that they bear children by themselves alone, even if they are foolish, or past their prime, or sickly —
as though children born of bad stock were not first of all bad for those who possess and raise them, if they come from bad parents, and, on the contrary, good, should they happen upon such a birth from good ones. And these practices, so conducted for reasons both natural and civic, were then so far removed from what is later said to have become licentiousness among women that adultery was altogether unheard of among
them. And a story is remembered of a certain Geradas, one of the Spartans of very ancient times, who, when asked by a foreigner what punishment adulterers suffered among them, said, "Stranger, there is no adulterer among us." And when the other took him up, saying, "But if there were one?" Geradas said, "He would pay a bull so large that, standing over Taygetus, it could drink from the Eurotas." And when the man wondered and said, "How could there be an ox so large?", Geradas laughed and said, "How could Sparta ever produce an adulterer?" This, then, is what is recorded about marriages.
The father who had begotten a child was not the one with authority to raise it; instead he carried it to a certain place called the Lesche, where the eldest men of the tribe sat and examined the infant. When it was found sound of frame and vigorous, they directed that it be reared, and assigned to it one of the nine thousand allotments; but if it was ill-born and misshapen, they sent it away to the place called the Apothetae, a chasm-like spot by Taygetus,
reasoning that such a life would benefit neither the child itself nor the community if, from the very beginning, it was not well constituted for health and strength. For this reason the women did not bathe their newborns in water but in wine, making a kind of test of their constitution. It is said that infants prone to seizures or frailty are thrown into convulsions and lose their senses from the undiluted wine, whereas the sturdy ones only grow tougher and more robust from it.
There was also a kind of careful skill among the nurses, so that they raised infants without swaddling bands, making their limbs and figures free, and further making them easygoing in their habits, not fussy about food, unafraid of darkness, unafraid of being left alone, and free of the ignoble ill temper and whimpering of children. On this account some foreigners bought Laconian nurses for their own children; and they say that Amycla, who nursed the Athenian Alcibiades, was a Spartan woman.
But upon Alcibiades, as Plato says, Pericles set as tutor Zopyrus, who differed in no way from the other slaves; whereas Lycurgus did not put the sons of Spartans under bought or hired tutors, nor was it permitted for each father to raise and educate his son as he wished. Rather, as soon as they turned seven, he took them all himself and enrolled them in companies, making them live and be reared together, and accustomed them to play and study together.
Over each company he set as leader the boy who excelled in judgment and was most spirited in fighting; and toward him the others looked, obeying his commands and enduring his punishments, so that their whole education was a practice in ready obedience. The elders watched over them at their play, and by continually setting them at various contests and rivalries, they observed carefully what each boy's nature was in daring and in refusing to shrink from a fight.
Letters they learned only so far as was useful; the rest of their whole education was directed toward learning to obey well, to endure hardship, and to conquer in battle. So as they grew older, they intensified their training, cropping their hair close, accustoming them to go barefoot, and to spend most of their play unclothed. When they turned twelve they went about already without a tunic, receiving one cloak for the whole year, unwashed in body and unacquainted with baths and ointments, except for a few days each year when they were allowed such indulgence.
They slept together, by troop and company, on pallets which they gathered for themselves, breaking off with their bare hands, without iron, the tips of the reed growing along the Eurotas. In winter they added the so-called "wolf's-foot" plant and mixed it into their bedding, since this material was thought to have some warming quality.
By this age, lovers from among the men of good repute would already associate with the fine young men, and the elders paid attention, coming more often to the gymnasia and being present when the boys fought and jested with one another, not carelessly but as though all felt themselves in some sense fathers and tutors and rulers of all, so that there was no occasion and no place left free from someone to admonish the wrongdoer and punish him.
Moreover a boy-herder was appointed from among the finest men, and over each company they set in charge, from among the so-called eirenes, always the most temperate and the most warlike. They call "eirenes" those who are already in their second year out of boyhood, and "mell-eirenes" the oldest of the boys still. This eiren, then, a young man of twenty, commands those under him in their mock battles, and at home uses them as attendants for his dinner.
He orders the sturdier ones to fetch wood, the smaller ones vegetables, and they fetch them by stealing — some going to the gardens, others slipping in among the men's common messes very craftily and cautiously. If one is caught, he receives many blows of the whip, on the ground that he stole carelessly and without skill. They also steal whatever food they can, learning cleverly to attack those who are asleep or keep careless watch.
For the one caught the penalty is blows and hunger. For their dinner is meager by design, so that fighting off want by their own efforts they may be forced to be bold and resourceful. This is the direct purpose of the scant food; a side benefit, they say, is the growth of their bodies. For growth in height comes, they say, when the vital breath is not much occupied and taken up, pressed down into depth and breadth by an abundance of food, but travels upward freely, the body yielding easily and readily as it grows.
This same cause seems also to make them handsome; for lean and spare frames respond better to the shaping of the joints, while heavy and overfed frames resist because of their weight — just as, indeed, the infants of women who are purged during pregnancy are born thin but well-formed and shapely, the lighter material being more easily mastered by that which shapes it. But let the explanation of this phenomenon be left open for consideration.
The boys steal so deliberately that a certain one, they say, having stolen a fox cub and hidden it under his cloak, endured being torn at the belly by the beast's claws and teeth, even to death, rather than be discovered. And this is not incredible even from what we see of the ephebes of our own day, many of whom we have seen dying under the lash at the altar of Orthia.
After dinner the eiren, reclining, would direct one of the boys to perform a song, and put to another some question requiring a carefully considered answer — for instance, who was the best of men, or what was such-and-such a man's deed. In this way they were trained, from the very start, to judge what is fine and to be inquisitive about their fellow citizens; for if a boy, asked which citizen was good or which was not well regarded, was at a loss for an answer, they took this as a sign of a sluggish soul with no ambition toward virtue.
The answer had to include both a reason and a proof compressed into a brief and terse statement; and whoever answered poorly was punished by receiving a bite on the thumb from the eiren. Often, too, with elders and magistrates present, the eiren would punish the boys, giving proof whether he punished with reason and as he should; and while punishing he was not hindered, but once the boys had left he was called to account if he had disciplined more harshly than was fitting, or on the contrary too laxly and feebly.
The lovers shared in the boys' reputation for good or ill alike; and it is said that once, when a boy let out an ignoble cry while fighting, his lover was fined by the magistrates. And loving was so far approved among them that even the noble and good women loved the maidens; but there was no rivalry in this love — rather, those who loved the same person made this the beginning of friendship with one another, and continued zealously in common to make their beloved as excellent as possible.
They also taught the boys to use speech that had bitterness mixed with charm, and much reflection packed into few words. For just as Lycurgus, as has been said, made the iron currency of small value despite its great weight, so, in the opposite way, he fashioned the currency of speech to yield, from cheap and scant wording, a rich and abundant meaning, contriving through much silence to make the boys pointed in speech and well trained in their answers. For just as the seed of those given over to excess in intercourse is for the most part barren and unfruitful, so licentiousness in talking makes speech empty and senseless.
Now King Agis, when a certain Athenian mocked the smallness of the Spartan daggers and said that jugglers in the theaters swallowed them easily, replied, "And yet we reach our enemies with these very daggers best of all." And I observe that the Laconic style of speech, though it seems terse, in fact gets at the matter most precisely and takes hold of the minds of its hearers.
For Lycurgus himself seems to have been a man of few words and given to pithy sayings, if one may judge by the anecdotes remembered of him: such as his answer about constitutions to the man who urged him to set up a democracy in the city — "You," he said, "first make a democracy in your own household." And about sacrifices, to one who asked why he had ordained them so small and cheap, he said, "So that we may never leave off honoring the divine."
And about athletic contests, he permitted the citizens to compete only in those in which the hand is not raised against another. Letters of his are also preserved containing such answers to the citizens. How should we ward off an invasion of enemies? "By remaining poor, and by none of you desiring to be greater than another." And again about walls: "A city is not without walls which is crowned with men and not with bricks." Concerning these letters and others like them it is neither easy to disbelieve nor easy to believe them.
Of the slander against the length of their speeches, such specimens as these of their sayings are proof. King Leonidas, when someone spoke at an inopportune time on matters not without use, said, "Stranger, you use what is needed at a time it is not needed." And Charilaus, the nephew of Lycurgus, when asked about the fewness of his laws, said that men who do not use many words have no need of many laws either.
And Archidamidas, when some found fault with Hecataeus the sophist because, though admitted to the common mess, he said nothing, replied, "Whoever has skill in speaking also has skill in judging the fitting moment." And of the sort of biting anecdotes I said were not without charm, such are these. When Demaratus was being pestered by a worthless fellow with untimely questions, and in particular being repeatedly asked, "Who is the best of the Spartans?" he said, "The one least like you."
And Agis, when some were praising the Eleans for conducting the Olympic games well and justly, said, "And what great thing is it, if the Eleans practice justice for one day every five years?" And Theopompus, when a certain stranger displayed his goodwill and said that among his own citizens he was called a "friend of Sparta," replied, "It would be finer, stranger, to be called a friend of your own citizens."
And Pleistoanax, son of Pausanias, when an Athenian orator called the Lacedaemonians ignorant, said, "You speak rightly: for we alone of the Greeks have learned no evil from you." And Archidamidas, to one who asked how many Spartans there were, said, "Enough, stranger, to keep away the wicked."
One can also judge their habit of mind from what they said in jest, for they were accustomed never to use speech carelessly, nor to let fall a word that did not somehow contain a thought worth pondering. For one man, when invited to hear someone imitate the nightingale, said, "I have heard the bird itself." And another, reading this inscription — "These men, once quenching tyranny, were seized by bronze Ares; and around the gates of Selinus they died" — said, "They died justly; for they ought to have let it burn to the ground entirely."
And a young man, to one who promised to give him fighting-cocks that died in battle, said, "Not those — but give me instead ones that kill in battle." And another, seeing men seated on stools during a retreat, said, "May I never sit in a place from which one cannot rise to make way for an elder." Such, then, was the character of their sayings, so that some not unreasonably say that among the Spartans loving wisdom was practiced more than loving exercise.
The training in songs and melodies was pursued no less earnestly than the purity and correctness of speech; indeed their melodies had a sting that roused the spirit and inspired an eager and effective impulse, and the diction was plain and unaffected, dealing with grave and character-forming matters. For the songs were mostly hymns of praise for men who had given their lives on Sparta's behalf, pronouncing them blessed, alongside reproaches of those who had played the coward, saying that they lived a painful and ill-fated life, and promises and boasts of valor befitting each age.
Of these it will do no harm to bring forward one example. For when three choruses were formed according to the three ages at the festivals, the chorus of old men began by singing: "We once were valiant young men." Then the chorus of men in their prime answered: "We are that now — look, if you will, and see." And the third, the chorus of boys, said: "But we shall be far mightier still."
And indeed, if one should attend closely to the Laconic poems, some of which survive still to our own day, and take up the marching rhythms which they used with the flute when advancing on the enemy, one would not judge wrongly in thinking that Terpander and Pindar joined courage together with music. For the one has written of the Lacedaemonians: "There where the spear of youths flourishes, and the clear-voiced Muse, and Justice of the broad streets—"
and Pindar says: "Where the counsels of elders and the spears of young men excel, and choruses and the Muse and splendor." For they show them to be at once most musical and most warlike: "for playing the lyre well weighs equal against the sword," as the Laconian poet has said. And indeed in battles the king first sacrificed to the Muses, reminding them, it seems, of their training and their judgments, so that they might be ready in the face of danger and might render the deeds of the fighters worthy of being told.
At that time, too, in relaxing the harshest features of the training for the young, they did not prevent them from adorning themselves as to their hair and the ornament of their weapons and cloaks, taking pleasure, as with horses, in their preening and prancing before contests. Hence, letting their hair grow from the age of youth onward, they took special care, especially before dangers, that their hair should appear sleek and well-parted, recalling a certain saying of Lycurgus about hair, that it makes handsome men more attractive and ugly men more terrifying.
They also used gentler exercises during their campaigns, and allowed the young men's other manner of living to be less strict and less subject to scrutiny, so that for them alone of men war was a rest from the training for war. Now when their phalanx was already drawn up and the enemy present, the king would sacrifice the she-goat and command all to crown themselves with garlands and order the flute-players to play the tune of Castor;
and at the same time he would lead off the marching paean, so that the sight was at once solemn and awe-inspiring, as they marched in step to the flute, neither breaking ranks in the phalanx nor being thrown into confusion in spirit, but being led on to danger calmly and cheerfully by the music. For it is not likely that either excessive fear or excessive rage arises in men so disposed, but rather a steady confidence joined with hope and boldness, as though the god were present with them.
The king advanced against the enemy having with him one who had won a crown in the games. And they say that a certain man, when much money was offered him at the Olympic games, refused it, and instead, after a great struggle, threw down his opponent; and when someone said to him, "What good has come to you, Spartan, from your victory?" he said, smiling, "I shall fight the enemy stationed before the king."
When they had routed and defeated the enemy, they pursued only so far as to confirm the victory by the enemy's flight, and then withdrew at once, thinking it neither noble nor Greek to cut down and slaughter men who had given up and yielded ground. This was not only honorable and magnanimous, but also useful. For those fighting against them, knowing that they killed those who stood firm but spared those who gave way, judged that flight was more profitable than standing fast.
As for Lycurgus himself, Hippias the sophist says that he was most warlike and experienced in many campaigns; and Philostephanus attributes to Lycurgus even the division of the cavalry into squadrons, the squadron, as he organized it, being a body of fifty horsemen arrayed in a square formation. But Demetrius of Phalerum says that he laid down the constitution in a time of peace, having had no part in any warlike action.
And indeed the idea of the Olympic truce seems to belong to a man of gentle temper and one naturally inclined to peace, although some say, as Hermippus records, that Lycurgus had no connection at all with Iphitus and did not share in the matter at the outset, but happened to be present there and a spectator by chance, and heard a voice as of some man behind him rebuking him and expressing surprise that he did not urge his own citizens to take part in the festival; and when he turned around and the speaker was nowhere to be seen, he judged it to be divine, and so turned to Iphitus, and by joining in arranging the festival made it more renowned and more secure.
Their education extended even to grown men. For no one was permitted to live as he pleased, but the city was, as it were, a single camp, in which they had a fixed regimen and a fixed occupation with public affairs, and altogether they went on believing that they belonged not to themselves but to their fatherland — unless some other duty had been assigned to them — overseeing the boys, teaching them something useful, or themselves learning from their elders.
For indeed this too was one of the good and blessed things which Lycurgus provided for his own citizens: an abundance of leisure, since they were altogether forbidden to touch any menial trade, and had no need at all to gather wealth, with all its laborious business, since wealth had become entirely without envy and without honor.
The Helots worked their land for them, paying the assessed rent. And it is told that a Spartan, staying in Athens during a sitting of the law-courts, and learning that a certain man had been convicted for idleness and was walking away in low spirits, escorted by friends who shared his grief and took it hard, asked those present to point out to him the man convicted of the charge of "freedom" — so slavish did they consider a preoccupation with trades and money-making.
Lawsuits, as one would expect, disappeared along with money, since neither greed nor want was present among them, but equality prevailed in their plenty, and ease of life owing to their simple way of living. Choruses and festivals and banquets and pastimes concerning hunting and gymnastics and conversations occupied all their time whenever they were not on campaign.
Those younger than thirty years did not go down into the marketplace at all, but managed their necessary household business through their relatives and lovers. And for the older men it was shameful to be seen continually occupying themselves with such matters, rather than spending the greater part of the day around the gymnasia and the so-called "lounges." For when they gathered at these places they passed their leisure fittingly together, mentioning nothing at all pertaining to money-making or marketplace business;
but the greatest part of such occupation was to praise some fine deed, or to censure some shameful one, with playfulness and laughter, lightly carrying the hearer along toward admonition and correction. For Lycurgus himself was not unrelentingly severe; indeed Sosibius records that he set up a little statue of Laughter, having introduced playfulness, like a seasoning of toil and of daily life, in due season into their banquets and such gatherings.
On the whole he shaped the citizens so that they possessed neither the desire nor the ability to lead a private, self-centered life, but instead, like bees, to be grown together with the community, always clustering about their ruler together with one another, all but beside themselves with enthusiasm and ambition, and to belong wholly to their fatherland: as one may indeed perceive their cast of mind from certain sayings of theirs.
For Paedaretus, when he was not chosen among the Three Hundred, went away quite cheerful, as though rejoicing that the city had three hundred men better than himself. And Polycratidas, sent as ambassador with others to the king's generals, when they asked whether they had come in a private capacity or as public envoys, said, "If we succeed, as public envoys; if we fail, in a private capacity."
And Argileonis, the mother of Brasidas, when some men from Amphipolis, having arrived at Lacedaemon, came in to see her, asked whether Brasidas's death had been noble and fitting for a Spartan; and when they praised him highly and declared there was no man in Sparta like him, she said, "Say not so, strangers: for Brasidas was indeed a good and noble man, but Lacedaemon has many men mightier than he."
The Elders he himself, as has been said, first appointed from among those who had shared in his design; but afterward he ordained that, in place of one who died, the man judged best in virtue among those over sixty years of age should be appointed, and this seemed to be the greatest and most keenly contested of all contests among men. For the winner was not decided by who ran fastest or who had the greatest bodily strength, but rather it was whoever, among men both good and disciplined, proved best and most self-controlled among the good and self-controlled who was to be judged and to hold, as the prize of virtue for the whole of his life, what one might call the supreme power in the state, having authority over life and death and disfranchisement and, in general, over the greatest matters. And the judgment took place in the following manner.
When the assembly had gathered, chosen men were shut up nearby in a building, seeing neither the faces of those in the assembly nor being seen by them, but hearing only the shouting of those in assembly. For as in other matters, they judged the competitors by shout, not all together, but each brought in separately by lot and passing through the assembly in silence.
Now those who were shut in held writing tablets, and for each contestant they recorded how loud the acclaim was, without knowing in whose favor the noise rose, except that he was first or second or third or whatever number among those brought in. Whoever received the greatest and loudest shout, him they proclaimed victor. He then, crowned, made his round of the gods' shrines; many young men followed him, admiring and extolling him, and many women too, praising his virtue in song and calling his life blessed.
Each of his friends, setting a meal before him, would say that the city was honoring him with this table. Having made his round he went off to his mess-hall; there everything else proceeded as usual, but when a second portion was set before him, he kept it, taking it up; and after dinner, at the doors of the phiditium, with the women of his household present, he would summon whichever of them he happened to hold in highest honor, and giving her the portion he would say that he himself had received it as a prize of excellence and was giving it to her, so that she too, envied by the other women, was escorted home.
Moreover he arranged their burial customs in the best way. First, doing away with all superstition, he did not prevent them from burying their dead within the city, nor from having the graves near the temples, making the young familiar and accustomed to such sights, so that they would not be disturbed nor dread death as something that defiles those who touch a corpse or walk among tombs. Next, he allowed nothing to be buried with the body, but they wrapped it in a red cloak and olive leaves and laid it out.
It was not permitted to those who buried the dead to inscribe the name on the tomb, except for a man who died in war or a woman who died in the service of the sacred rites; and he set a short period of mourning, eleven days, and on the twelfth they had to sacrifice to Demeter and put an end to their grief. For nothing was left idle or unregulated, but he mixed into all necessary things some incitement to virtue or reproach of vice, and filled the city densely with examples, so that those who constantly encountered and were reared among them were necessarily led and molded as they went toward what is good.
For this reason he did not allow those who wished to travel abroad and wander, gathering foreign customs and imitations of uneducated ways of life and different constitutions, but he even drove out those who crowded into the city to no useful end and poured in upon it — not, as Thucydides says, out of worry that these visitors would copy the Spartan order and pick up something valuable for virtue, but rather so that no such person would end up teaching the Spartans some vice.
For along with foreign persons foreign words must necessarily come in too; and new words bring in new judgments. From these many passions and inclinations at odds with the established constitution are bound to spring up, as with a musical harmony. He therefore thought it more necessary to guard the city so that it would not be filled with corrupt characters, than to guard against diseased bodies entering from outside.
In these things, then, there is no trace of injustice or of grasping greed, which some charge against the laws of Lycurgus, as being adequate for courage but deficient in justice. As for the so-called krypteia, if it truly counts among Lycurgus's arrangements, as Aristotle claims it did, this may well be the practice that shaped Plato's own judgment about the constitution and about the man. It was of this sort:
From time to time the magistrates would send out into the countryside, in a different fashion, those of the young men who seemed to have the best sense, equipped with daggers and necessary provisions but nothing else. By day they scattered into obscure places, hid themselves and rested, but by night they would come down to the roads and slaughter any helot they caught.
Often too, going out over the fields, they would kill the strongest and most capable of them. Just as Thucydides also records in his history of the Peloponnesian War, that those helots singled out by the Spartans for courage, as having become free men, were crowned and made a round of the temples of the gods, but a little later all of them, more than two thousand in number, vanished, so that neither at the time nor afterward could anyone say by what manner they had perished.
Aristotle in particular says that the ephors, as soon as they entered upon their office, would declare war on the helots, so that killing them would involve no religious pollution. And in other respects too they treated them harshly and cruelly: they would force them to drink much unmixed wine and bring them into the common messes, displaying to the young what drunkenness looks like. They would command them to perform vulgar, laughable songs and dances, while barring them from those fitting for free men.
That is why they say that later, during the Theban invasion of Laconia, the captured helots, when ordered to sing the songs of Terpander and Alcman and Spendon the Laconian, refused, saying that their masters did not wish it. So those who say that in Lacedaemon the free man is most free and the slave most a slave were not observing the difference badly.
I myself think that such harshness developed among the Spartans later, especially after the great earthquake, when accounts tell that the helots banded with the Messenians against them, inflicting immense damage on the countryside and placing the city itself in gravest peril. Speaking for myself, I would not lay so ugly a practice as the krypteia at Lycurgus's door, judging his character from the rest of his gentleness and justice, to which the divine also bore witness.
Now when the most important matters had already been secured by him through custom, and the constitution had been sufficiently reared and was able to sustain and preserve itself by its own strength — just as Plato says that god rejoiced when the universe had come into being and had received its first motion — so Lycurgus, admiring and cherishing the beauty and greatness of his legislation now in operation and proceeding on its way, desired, so far as was possible from human foresight, to leave it immortal and unshaken for the future. He therefore gathered everyone into an assembly,
and said that the other matters were adequately and sufficiently arranged for the happiness and virtue of the city, but that the most important and greatest matter he could not disclose to them before he had consulted the god. They were therefore to keep to the laws already set down, altering or changing nothing, until he came back from Delphi; for upon his return he would do whatever seemed good to the god.
When all agreed and bade him go, he exacted oaths, first from the kings and the elders, then from the remaining citizens, binding them to keep and follow the constitution as it stood until Lycurgus came back; and he set out for Delphi. Arriving at the oracle and having sacrificed to the god, he asked whether the laws were well and sufficiently established for the happiness and virtue of the city.
When the god answered that the laws were well established, and that the city would remain most glorious as long as it kept to the constitution of Lycurgus, he wrote down the oracle and sent it to Sparta. He himself, having sacrificed once more to the god and embraced his friends and his son, resolved never to release the citizens from their oath, but to end his own life by his own choice, being at an age when it is fitting for one who wishes both to have lived and to have ceased, and when his affairs seemed to be sufficiently disposed toward happiness.
He therefore died by starving himself, holding that even the death of a statesman ought not to be without political purpose nor an idle end to his life, but should come as part of virtue and action. For to him, having accomplished the noblest deeds, his end would truly be the completion of his happiness; and for the citizens, he would leave his death as a guardian of the good things he had provided for them through his life, since they had sworn to abide by the constitution until he returned.
And he was not deceived in his reckoning: so far did the city outstrip the rest of Greece in good order and repute, keeping Lycurgus's laws in force across five centuries, which none of the fourteen kings who followed him down to Agis son of Archidamus tampered with. For the establishment of the ephors was not a relaxation but a tightening of the constitution, and though it seemed to have arisen in favor of the people, it made the aristocracy stronger.
In the reign of Agis, coined money first flowed into Sparta, and along with money came greed and a passion for wealth, brought about through Lysander, who, though himself incorruptible by money, filled his homeland with love of riches and luxury, bringing back gold and silver from the war and undermining the laws of Lycurgus,
under whose earlier prevalence Sparta had the way of life not of a city's constitution but of a single ascetic and wise man; or rather, just as the poets tell in myth that Heracles, wearing a lion-skin and carrying a club, went about the inhabited world, punishing lawless and beastly tyrants, so this city, ruling with a single scytale-staff and a single cloak, ruled Greece willingly and gladly, put down unjust dynasties and tyrannies in the various states, arbitrated wars and quelled factions, frequently accomplishing this without lifting even one shield, merely by dispatching a lone envoy, whose every command they obeyed at once, just as bees, when their leader appears, rush together and fall into order around him. So great was the city's superiority in good order and justice.
Hence I myself am amazed at those who say that the Lacedaemonians knew how to be ruled but did not know how to rule, and who praise the saying of King Theopompus, who, when someone said that Sparta was preserved because its kings knew how to command, replied, "Rather because the citizens know how to obey."
For men do not endure listening to those who are unable to lead; but obedience is a lesson taught by the ruler, for the one who leads well produces the willingness to follow well. And just as the achievement of the horseman's art is to render the horse gentle and obedient, so the task of royal skill is to work obedience into men; and the Lacedaemonians produced in others not mere obedience, but a positive desire to be ruled and to submit to them,
for they asked of them neither ships nor money nor sending of hoplites, but a single Spartan commander; and once they got him they treated him with honor and awe, as the Sicilians did Gylippus and the Chalcidians Brasidas, and as all the Greeks living in Asia treated Lysander and Callicratidas and Agesilaus, calling these men harmosts and correctors of the peoples and rulers everywhere, while they looked upon the whole city of the Spartans as a tutor or teacher of a decorous life and an ordered constitution,
at which Stratonicus too seems to have jested, when in play he laid down a law bidding the Athenians conduct the mysteries and processions, the Eleans hold the games, since they did these things most excellently, and the Lacedaemonians, if these others erred, be whipped. This was said in jest; but Antisthenes the Socratic, seeing the Thebans exulting greatly after the battle of Leuctra, said they were no different from schoolboys proud at having beaten up their tutor.
This, however, was not Lycurgus's chief aim at the time, to leave his city as leader over the greatest number; but, believing that happiness comes to the life of a single man and to a whole city alike from virtue and from concord with itself, he arranged and fitted everything toward this, so that, becoming free, self-sufficient, and self-controlled, they might continue so for as long a time as possible.
This aim Plato too took up as the foundation of his Republic, as did Diogenes and Zeno and all who have attempted to say anything worthwhile on these matters and are praised for it — though they left behind only writings and words. But he left behind not writings and words, but in deed brought into the light a constitution beyond imitation, and, to those who suppose that the disposition spoken of concerning the wise man does not exist in reality, he showed a whole city practicing philosophy; and so he rightly surpassed in fame all who ever governed among the Greeks.
For this reason Aristotle says he received lesser honors than were fitting for him to have in Lacedaemon, although he holds the greatest ones. For there is a shrine of his, and they sacrifice to him every year as to a god. And the story goes that once his remains were carried back, lightning struck his tomb — a thing which did not easily happen to any other famous man afterward except Euripides, who died and was buried in Macedonia near Arethusa. So it stands as a great vindication and testimony for those who love Euripides, that alone among men after death this same thing befell him which had earlier befallen the most god-beloved and most holy of men.
As for the death of Lycurgus, some say it occurred at Cirrha; Apollothemis says he was carried off to Elis; Timaeus and Aristoxenus say he lived out his life in Crete, and Aristoxenus says his tomb is shown by the Cretans of Pergamia near the foreign road. It is said he left a single son, Antiorus, and when this son died childless, his line died out with him.
His companions and household set up a kind of ongoing fellowship and gathering that persisted for many years, naming the occasions on which they met the Lycurgides. Aristocrates son of Hipparchus reports that after Lycurgus died in Crete, his foreign friends cremated the corpse and cast the remains into the sea, doing so at his own request and out of foresight, lest, if his remains were ever brought to Lacedaemon, people might suppose that he had returned and that the oaths had been released, and so change the constitution. So much, then, concerning Lycurgus.

======== Numa Pompilius ========

There is also a fierce dispute about the times of King Numa, when he lived, even though from the beginning the royal lines are thought to be traced with precision. But a certain Claudius, in a work called Refutation of Chronologies (for such is roughly the title of the book), insists that the ancient records perished in the calamities the city suffered when the Gauls sacked it, and that the records now in circulation were falsely compiled by men currying favor with certain families, forcing them into the leading clans and most distinguished houses to which they did not truly belong.
As it is said, then, that Numa became a companion of Pythagoras, some hold altogether that Numa had no share in Greek education at all -- as though it were possible either for a man to become sufficient in virtue by nature alone, or for the king to have received his education from some barbarian better than Pythagoras -- while others say that Pythagoras lived later, some five generations removed from the time of Numa,
and that it was the Spartan Pythagoras -- who won the footrace at the sixteenth Olympiad, in whose third year Numa took up the kingship -- who wandered through Italy and fell in with Numa and helped him arrange the constitution, whence not a few Laconian practices were mixed in with Roman customs by Pythagoras's teaching; but otherwise Numa was Sabine by birth, and the Sabines claim to be colonists of the Lacedaemonians.
Now it is difficult to establish the dates with precision, especially those reckoned from the Olympic victors, whose record they say Hippias of Elis published late, starting from nothing necessary for certainty. But the things we have received as worth telling about Numa we shall set forth, taking a fitting beginning.
Rome was now in its thirty-seventh year of being inhabited under the kingship of Romulus. On the fifth day of the month -- the day they now call the Nones Caprotinae -- Romulus was offering a public sacrifice before the city near the place called the Goat's Marsh, and the senate was present along with most of the people.
Suddenly a great disturbance arose in the air, and a cloud settled upon the earth together with wind and storm; the rest of the crowd, struck with panic, fled and scattered, while Romulus vanished, and neither he himself nor any part of his dead body was ever found. A grave suspicion fell upon the patricians, and a rumor spread among the people against them, that, long resentful of being ruled by a king and wishing to transfer power into their own hands, they had done away with the king -- for indeed he already seemed to be dealing with them more harshly and more like a monarch.
But they allayed this suspicion by raising Romulus to the honors of a god, on the grounds that he had not died but had passed to a better lot; and Proculus, a distinguished man, swore an oath that he had seen Romulus being carried up into the heavens with his weapons, and had heard a voice bidding that he be called Quirinus.
Another disturbance and factional strife seized the city over who was to be declared king next, since the newcomers had not yet fully merged with the original body of citizens, and the populace still surged with much unrest within itself, and the patricians were held in suspicion of each other because of their differences; still, all agreed that they should be ruled by a king, but they quarreled and were divided not merely over a man but over a people -- which of the two should furnish the ruler. For those who had been with Romulus
as the first settlers of the city, found it intolerable that the Sabines, who had merely been received into the city and its territory, should force their way into ruling over those who had admitted them for that purpose. Yet the Sabines had a fair argument of their own: since their king Tatius had died, they had not risen against Romulus but had let him rule alone, and now they thought it fair that the ruler should come from their side in turn; for they had not attached themselves to their betters from a position of inferiority, but by joining had strengthened them in numbers and had raised them to the dignity of a city alongside themselves. Over these matters, then, they contended.
So that the strife should not, amid the anarchy, produce confusion while the government hung in suspense, the patricians -- who numbered a hundred and fifty -- arranged that each in turn, adorned with the royal insignia, should perform the usual offerings to the gods and handle public business, six hours by night and six by day.
For this division of the times into equal shares seemed to the rulers themselves to preserve fairness among them, and to the people it seemed to remove envy from the exercise of power, seeing the same private citizen become king and then, within the same day and night, a private citizen again. This form of rule the Romans call an interregnum.
But although they seemed to conduct affairs in this way so constitutionally and inoffensively, they fell under suspicion and uproar, as though they were shifting the state into an oligarchy and managing the government among themselves, unwilling to be ruled by a king. Out of this the two factions came to an agreement with each other, that one faction should choose the king from the other:
for in this way, above all, the present rivalry would be brought to an end, and the man chosen would be equally disposed toward both sides -- cherishing the one faction as having chosen him, and being well-disposed to the other through kinship. And when the choice was granted first to the Romans over the Sabines, they decided it was better to designate a Sabine themselves than to allow the Sabines to hand over a Roman of their own choosing.
So, deliberating among themselves, they designated Numa Pompilius, a Sabine, a man who had not been among those who settled in Rome, but who was so well known to all for his virtue that when his name was proposed, the Sabines accepted it even more eagerly than those who had chosen him. Having announced their decision to the people, then, they sent envoys to the man jointly, the foremost men from both sides, to go and entreat him to come and take up the kingship.
Now Numa came from Cures, a city of note among the Sabines, and it was from this town that the Romans, once the Sabines had been mingled among them, took the name Quirites for themselves; he was the son of Pomponius, a man of good repute, and the youngest of four brothers. He had been born, by a certain divine fortune, on the very day on which Romulus and his companions founded Rome -- that is, the eleventh day before the Kalends of May --
and being by nature well tempered in character toward every virtue, he made himself gentler still through education and hardship and philosophy, ridding himself not only of the passions the soul is reproached for, but also of that violence and greed so admired among barbarians, holding that true courage lay in the reasoned restraint of one's desires within oneself,
and for this reason he banished from his own household all luxury and extravagance alike, while offering himself to every citizen and stranger as a blameless judge and counselor; in his own leisure time he devoted himself to nothing that served pleasure or profit, but rather to the worship of the gods and to contemplation, through reason, of their nature and power, so that he had a great name and reputation, such that even Tatius, who had shared the kingship at Rome with Romulus, having but one daughter, Tatia, made Numa his son-in-law,
yet he was not so elated by the marriage as to move to his father-in-law's house, but remained in Sabine territory, attending his own aged father, while Tatia too chose the quiet life of her husband as a private citizen over the honor and glory to be had at Rome for her father's sake. She is said to have died in the thirteenth year after the marriage.
Numa, forsaking his time spent in the city, wished for the most part to live in the countryside and wander alone, making his dwelling in groves sacred to the gods and in holy meadows and deserted places. From this, more than anything, arose the story about the goddess -- that Numa had not left the life among men out of any distress or wandering of soul,
but rather, having tasted a more solemn kind of intercourse and been deemed worthy of divine marriage, he consorted and lived together with the divine spirit Egeria, who loved him, and so became a happy man and one instructed in things divine. That this resembles many of the very old myths -- those which the Phrygians tell about Attis, the Bithynians about Herodotus, the Arcadians about Endymion, and others about other men reputed happy and beloved of the gods -- is not unclear.
And perhaps it makes sense that the god -- not a lover of horses or of birds, but a lover of mankind -- should wish to keep company with men of outstanding goodness, and should not disdain or scorn the companionship of a pious and self-controlled man. But whether there is any communion and favor between a god or spirit and a human body and its bloom of youth -- that is already a hard thing to be persuaded of.
And yet the Egyptians seem not unpersuasively to distinguish that while it is not impossible for a woman to be approached by the breath of a god and to conceive certain beginnings of generation, there is for a man no union or bodily intercourse with a god. But they fail to see that whatever is mingled with returns the same kind of communion to that with which it mingles. Still, it would be fitting that there be a friendship of a god toward a man, and that the love spoken of in this connection, growing into a concern for character and virtue, should exist.
And those do not err who tell in myth that Phorbas and Hyacinthus and Admetus were beloved of Apollo, nor again those who tell it of Hippolytus of Sicyon, of whom they say that as often as he happened to sail across to Cirrha from Sicyon, the Pythia, as though the god perceived it and rejoiced, would utter this oracle: 'and again the dear head of Hippolytus goes down to the sea.'
They tell in myth that Pan became a lover of Pindar and his songs. Some divine favor is likewise said to have honored Archilochus and Hesiod once they had died, on account of the Muses. And there is a story that Asclepius was a guest of Sophocles even while he lived, preserving many proofs of it to this day, and that when he died, another god, as they say, provided for his burial.
Is it worthwhile, then, granting these things in these cases, to disbelieve that the divine power visited Zaleucus and Minos and Zoroaster and Numa and Lycurgus as they governed kingdoms and set states in order toward the same end -- or is it likely that with these men, gods in earnest consorted with them for the teaching and counsel of what is best, but with poets and lyric singers they merely toy, if indeed they do so at all, in playful humor?
But if anyone says otherwise, then, in the words of Bacchylides, 'broad is the road.' For neither account is base -- the one they tell about Lycurgus and Numa and other such men, that in mastering unruly and hard-to-please multitudes and introducing great innovations into their constitutions, they laid claim to a reputation as sent from god, a claim that was salutary for the very people toward whom they contrived it.
But when Numa had already completed his fortieth year, the envoys came from Rome urging him to accept the kingship. The speeches were made by Proclus and Velesus, of whom the people had earlier been expected to choose one or the other as king -- Proclus favored by the followers of Romulus, Velesus especially by those of Tatius. These men, then, spoke briefly, supposing that the meeting itself would be welcome to Numa;
but it proved, it seems, no small task, but one requiring much speech and entreaty, to persuade and change the mind of a man who had lived his life in quiet and peace, and to turn it toward the rule of a city that had come into being and grown, in a sense, through war. So he spoke, with his father present and Marcius, one of his kinsmen, saying: 'Every change in human life is fraught with danger; but for a man who lacks nothing sufficient and finds nothing to blame in his present circumstances, nothing but folly could move and dislodge him from his accustomed ways -- to which, even if nothing else recommended them,'
'they are superior to the uncertain by their very certainty; but neither are the affairs of kingship free from uncertainty, if one judges by the sufferings of Romulus -- he himself incurred the wicked reputation of plotting against his co-ruler Tatius, and brought upon his peers the wicked reputation of having done away with him, even though these same men now sing of Romulus as though he were divinely fathered, and speak of some miraculous rearing and preservation of him as a helpless infant. But for me, both my birth is mortal, and my nurture and education have been at the hands of men, as you are not unaware:'
'and the qualities praised in the character of a man far from wishing to be king are these -- much quiet, and time spent in unhurried discourse, and that formidable love of peace, bred and nurtured alongside it, and of unwarlike pursuits, and of men who come together for the honor of the gods and in mutual friendliness, while otherwise tending their fields or their flocks on their own account.'
'But for you, Romans, Romulus has perhaps left behind many unwanted wars, which the city, standing against them, needs an experienced and vigorous king to face; and much habituation and eagerness have arisen in the people through their good fortune, and it has not escaped anyone's notice that they wish to grow and to master others -- so that it would be laughable for me, a man who worships the gods and honors justice, and who teaches men to hate violence and war, to lead a city that needs a general more than a king.'
When the man had thus, with such words, tried to absolve himself of the kingship, the Romans made every effort, entreating and beseeching him not to cast them back again into partisan strife and internal war, for there was no one else both sides would accept; and his father and Marcius, once the envoys had withdrawn, pressed him privately and tried to persuade Numa to accept the great and divine gift.
'And if you yourself have no need of wealth, being self-sufficient, nor have you coveted the glory of rule and power, holding a greater glory through virtue -- but if you consider kingship a service to god, who indeed raises up and does not allow such great justice as is in you to lie idle and unused, then do not flee nor run from rule, which is for a wise man a field for fair and great deeds, in which there are also magnificent services of the gods, and men most easily and swiftly turn toward reverence when they are guided by'
who prevailed, these same men had also embraced Tatius, a foreigner, as their leader, and they honor Romulus's memory with divine rites. Who knows whether even a victorious people has its fill of war, and, glutted with triumphs and spoils, longs for a gentle leader and a companion of justice, for good government and peace? But if they are altogether unrestrained and mad for war, is it not better to turn their impulse elsewhere, holding the reins in hand, and thereby forge, between the fatherland and the entire Sabine nation, ties of mutual affection and friendship with a city both thriving and mighty?" To these arguments there was added,
as is said, favorable signs and the eagerness and zeal of the townspeople, who, once word of the embassy reached them, begged him to go and take up the kingship, in a merging and joint partnership of the citizens.
So, since it had been decided, he sacrificed to the gods and made his way toward Rome. He was greeted there by the senate and the populace with a remarkable outpouring of affection; fitting acclamations of the women arose, and sacrifices at the shrines, and joy of all, as though the city were not receiving a king but a kingdom itself. And when they had taken their stand in the forum, Spurius Vettius, who at that time held the office of interrex, put the question to the citizens, and all cast their vote; but when the royal insignia were brought to him, he ordered them to hold off and said that he still needed the god to confirm the kingship for him.
Taking with him seers and priests, he went up to the Capitoline, called by the Romans of that era the Tarpeian hill. There the leading seer turned him, veiled, to face south, while he himself stood behind him, and, laying his right hand on his head, offered a prayer, and looked all around for what might be shown forth by the gods in birds or in signs, turning his gaze everywhere,
and an incredible silence held the forum, full of such a multitude, as they waited in suspense and hung upon what was to come, until favorable and auspicious birds appeared and gave leave. Then, taking up the royal robe, Numa came down from the height to the multitude, and then there were shouts and greetings, as of men receiving one most pious and most beloved of the gods.
Taking up the government, he first disbanded the company of three hundred men whom Romulus had continually kept near him as bodyguards, styled Celeres, meaning "the swift ones"; for he did not think it right either to distrust those who trusted him or to rule over men who distrusted him. Second, to the priests already existing of Zeus and Ares he added a third, that of Romulus, whom he named the Flamen Quirinalis.
They called even the earlier priests Flamens, from the felt caps they wore around their heads, being, as they relate, certain "pilamenae," since at that time Greek names were mixed in with the Latin even more than now. And indeed the cloaks the priests wore, which Juba says are called "laenae," he says are the same as "chlainai," and that the freeborn boy who assisted the priest of Zeus was called Camillus, just as some of the Greeks likewise called Hermes Camillus from his service.
Having so governed the state to the goodwill and favor of the people, Numa at once undertook to make the city, like iron, softer and more just out of its hard and warlike condition. For that city was, in the exact sense, what Plato calls an inflamed city, having been formed from the outset by a certain daring and reckless boldness of the boldest and most warlike men thrust together there from every side,
and nourished and increased in its power by many campaigns and continuous wars, and, like things driven into the ground that become more firmly fixed by being shaken, seeming to grow strong through dangers — so then, thinking it no small or trivial task to handle and remold toward peace a people so restless and unsettled, he called in the help that comes from the gods,
for the most part by sacrifices and processions and dances, which he himself instituted and established, having along with their solemnity a pleasant and humane enjoyment of pastime, thereby winning over and taming the spirited and war-loving temper; and sometimes too, by announcing certain fears from the god and strange apparitions of spirits and unfriendly voices, he enslaved and made humble their minds through superstitious fear.
From these things especially arose the account of the man's wisdom and education, that he had been a companion of Pythagoras. For it was a great part, as of Pythagoras's philosophy, so of Numa's statesmanship, to observe reverence toward the divine and to be occupied with it. And it is said that he also assumed the outward bearing and appearance of the same cast of mind as Pythagoras.
For indeed that man is said to have tamed an eagle, arresting it with certain cries and bringing it down as it flew overhead, and to have displayed a golden thigh as he walked through the Olympic festival; and they report other marvelous devices and deeds of his, on account of which Timon of Phlius also wrote: "and Pythagoras, inclining toward juggler's opinions, a hunter after men, a companion of solemn talk—"
For Numa's story was a love and secret intercourse with some goddess or mountain nymph, as has been said, and shared communion with the Muses. Most of his prophecies he credited to the Muses, and it was he who instructed the Romans in the special reverence of one particular Muse, giving her the name Tacita, meaning “she who says nothing,” or the mute goddess — which seems to be a recollection and honoring of the Pythagorean discipline of silence.
The legislation regarding cult images too is altogether akin to the doctrines of Pythagoras. For he supposed that the First Principle was neither perceptible by sense nor subject to passion, but invisible and uncreated and knowable only by the mind; and Numa likewise forbade the Romans to conceive of god in human or animal form. Nor was there among them formerly either a painted or a molded image of god,
but across a span of a hundred and seventy years the Romans continued building temples and founding sacred shrines without ever fashioning any image with a shape, since they held it neither pious to liken the better to the worse, nor possible to touch god otherwise than by thought. Their manner of sacrifice too is altogether close to the Pythagorean rite; for most of their sacrifices were bloodless, made of barley meal and libation and the cheapest of offerings.
Apart from these, those who would connect the man with the man contend also with other outside proofs. One of these is that the Romans enrolled Pythagoras as a citizen, as Epicharmus the comic poet has related in a certain discourse written to Antenor — an old writer and one who had shared in the Pythagorean discipline; another, that when four sons were born to King Numa, he named one Mamercus after the son of Pythagoras.
From him they say the house of the Aemilii too, once mingled with the patricians, took its name, the king thus giving an affectionate diminutive to the man's charm and grace in speech ("haimylia"); and we ourselves have heard many at Rome relate that once, when an oracle instructed the Romans to erect statues of the most sagacious and the most courageous man among the Greeks, two bronze images went up in the forum as a result, one representing Alcibiades and the other Pythagoras. These matters, however, admit of much dispute, and to pursue them at greater length, and to insist upon them, belongs to a rather boyish love of contention.
To Numa also they attribute the arrangement and establishment of the chief priests whom they call Pontifices, and they say that he himself was the first of these. Some say the Pontifices were so called because they serve the gods, who are powerful and lords of all things — for "powerful" is called "potens" by the Romans;
others say the name arose by way of exception with regard to "the possible," since the lawgiver ordered the priests to perform such sacred rites as were possible, and not to be blamed if there were some greater hindrance. But most, and especially those who favor the more amusing of the derivations, hold that the men were called nothing else than "bridge-builders," from the rites performed about the bridge, which are most sacred and most ancient — for the Latins call the bridge "pons."
They hold, moreover, that its upkeep and repair, like that of any other immovable and ancestral sacred thing, belonged to the priests. For it is not lawful, but accursed, in the judgment of the Romans, to dismantle the wooden bridge; and it is said that it was, according to a certain oracle, fastened together entirely without iron, wholly of wood, while the stone bridge was built many years later under the quaestorship of Aemilius.
Nevertheless they say that the wooden bridge is left over from Numa's own time, having been completed under the reign of Marcius, Numa's grandson. And the greatest of the Pontifices has been allotted the rank of an expounder and a prophet, or rather of a hierophant, overseeing not only what is done publicly, but also watching those who sacrifice privately, and preventing them from transgressing the established customs, and teaching whatever anyone needs for honoring the gods or for propitiation.
He was also overseer of the sacred virgins, whom they call Vestals. For it is to Numa that they credit not only the dedication of the Vestal virgins but also, more broadly, the care and reverence shown toward the undying fire which these women guard, whether because they thought the substance of fire pure and incorruptible and fit to be entrusted to unstained and undefiled bodies, or because they associated its barrenness and unfruitfulness with virginity. Since indeed, wherever in Greece there is an unquenchable fire, as at Delphi and at Athens, it is not virgins but women past marriage who have the charge of it; and if by some chance it should go out,
just as at Athens, it is said, under the tyranny of Aristion the sacred lamp went dark, and at Delphi, when the sanctuary was consumed by fire set by the Persians, and during the Mithridatic wars and the civil war of the Romans the fire vanished along with the altar — they say one must not kindle it again from another fire, but must make a new and fresh one, lighting a pure and undefiled flame from the sun.
They kindle it chiefly by means of concave mirrors, which are constructed hollowed out from the side of an isosceles right-angled triangle, and converge from their circumference to a single center. When, then, such a mirror is placed opposite the sun, so that the rays, reflected back from every side, gather together and interweave about the center, it separates the air itself, which grows rarefied, and quickly kindles whatever light and dry material is applied, by the resistance, the ray receiving a fiery body and force.
Some, then, suppose that nothing is guarded by the sacred virgins except that unquenchable fire; others say that there are certain sacred objects hidden and unseen by others, concerning which whatever it is lawful both to inquire and to tell has been written in the Life of Camillus.
First, then, the account holds that Gegania and Verenia received consecration at Numa's hands, followed next by Canuleia and Tarpeia; later, when Servius added two others, the number was kept at this total down to these times. The king established for the sacred virgins a period of purity of thirty years, during the first ten of which they learn what they must do, in the middle ten they perform what they have learned, and in the third ten they themselves teach others.
Then, after this period, it is permitted to any who wish to take up marriage as well and to turn to another life, once released from the sacred service; but few, it is said, have embraced this freedom, nor did good things befall those who did embrace it, but living the rest of their life in regret and dejection, they drove the others into superstitious fear, so that they persevere and remain virgins even to old age and death.
He gave them great honors, among which is the right to make a will while their father still lives, and to conduct their other affairs without a guardian, just as women who have borne three children. They are attended by lictors as they go forth; and if they should by chance meet someone being led to execution, he is not put to death, provided the virgin swears that the encounter was involuntary and by chance and not deliberately arranged. And whoever passes beneath the litter
as they carry her is put to death. As punishment for other offenses the virgins are whipped, the chief Pontifex sometimes chastising the offender even while stripped, behind a curtain drawn in a darkened place; but the one who has forfeited her virginity through disgrace is entombed while still living, close by the gate known as Collina, where a certain earthen mound stretches some distance within the city,
called in the Latin tongue an "agger." There an underground chamber is built, not large, having a stairway leading down from above. In it are placed a couch spread with bedding, a lamp burning, and small first-fruits of the necessities of life — such as bread, water in a vessel, milk, oil — as if to absolve themselves of the guilt of destroying by starvation a body consecrated to the greatest rites.
The woman being punished is herself placed in a litter, covered over on the outside and bound about with straps, so that not even her voice can be heard, and is carried through the forum; all withdraw in silence and escort her without a word, in a kind of dreadful dejection, nor is there any other spectacle more horrifying, nor does the city pass any other day more gloomy than that one.
When the litter has been brought to the place, the attendants loose the bonds, and the chief of the priests, having offered certain secret prayers and stretched forth his hands to the gods before the necessity is carried out, leads her forth, veiled, and sets her upon the ladder leading down into the chamber below. Then he himself, along with the remaining priests, turns his back; once she has descended, the ladder is withdrawn and the chamber concealed, much earth being heaped upon it from above, so that the place becomes level with the rest of the mound. Thus are those punished who have abandoned their sacred virginity.
Numa is also said to have surrounded the shrine of Vesta in a circle as a guard for the unquenchable fire, imitating not the shape of the earth, on the supposition that this is Vesta, but that of the universe as a whole, at the center of which the Pythagoreans believe fire to be established, and this they call Hestia and the Monad;
The earth, they held, is neither motionless nor set at the middle of the revolving heavens, but is suspended in a circle around the fire, belonging to none of the most honored or foremost portions of the universe. And they say that Plato too, when he had grown old, came to think along these lines about the earth—that it occupies a different region, while the middle and most sovereign place belongs to something else more excellent.
The Pontiffs also explain the ancestral customs concerning burials to those who need them, since Numa taught that none of these things should be regarded as pollution, but that the gods below are to be worshipped with the rites established for them, as receiving what is most sovereign among our concerns—above all the goddess called Libitina, who oversees the sacred rites for the dying, whether she is Persephone or, as those Romans most versed in such lore would have it, Aphrodite instead—not badly attaching the affairs of birth and death to the power of a single goddess.
He himself also fixed periods of mourning according to age and time: a child younger than three should not be mourned at all, nor one older than that for more months than the years he had lived, up to ten years, and beyond that age no period at all, but the longest period of mourning should be ten months, the same span for which widowed wives of the dead remain unmarried; and a woman who remarried before this term was to sacrifice a pregnant cow, by his legislation.
Since Numa established many other priesthoods as well, I shall mention two more—that of the Salii and that of the Fetiales—which especially display the man's piety. The Fetiales were a kind of guardians of peace, and, as it seems to me, took their name from this very function; they used to put an end to quarrels by speech, not allowing war to be waged until every hope of a just settlement had been cut off.
For the Greeks call it "peace" (eirene) when men resolve their differences by speech rather than force, and the Roman Fetiales would often go to those doing wrong and try themselves to persuade them to act reasonably; and if they proved unreasonable, the Fetiales called the gods to witness, invoking many terrible curses upon themselves and upon their country if they were not pursuing a just cause, and only then declared war upon them.
If the Fetiales forbade it or did not consent, it was lawful neither for a soldier nor for the king of the Romans to take up arms; rather, the ruler had first to receive the opening of the war from them as a just cause, and only then deliberate about expediency. It is said that that disaster with the Celts befell the city because these priests had been treated unlawfully.
For the barbarians happened to be besieging the people of Clusium, and Fabius Ambustus was sent as an envoy to their camp to negotiate a settlement on behalf of the besieged. Having received answers that were not reasonable, and thinking that his embassy had reached its end, he rashly took up arms before the eyes of the Clusians and called out, for a duel of one against one, whichever barbarian was boldest.
The battle went well for him, and having struck the man down he stripped his armor; but the Celts, recognizing him, sent a herald to Rome accusing Fabius of having broken the truce and acted treacherously, and of having brought war upon them without a formal declaration. At this the Fetiales made an attempt to induce the Senate to surrender the man to the Celts; but he took refuge with the people, and by making use of the eager support of the populace he evaded justice. Shortly afterward the Celts came upon Rome and sacked the whole city except the Capitol. But these events are set out more precisely in the Life of Camillus.
The priesthood of the Salii, it is said, came about for the reason now to be told. In the eighth year that Numa reigned, a plague spread across Italy and threw Rome into turmoil as well. While the people were in despair, the story goes that a bronze shield fell from the sky into the hands of Numa. Concerning it the king told a marvelous tale, which he said he had learned from Egeria and the Muses.
The weapon, he said, had descended for the city's deliverance, and it must be protected by having eleven other shields fashioned to resemble it in shape, size, and form, so that it would be impossible for a thief, because of the similarity, to lay hold of the one that fell from heaven. Furthermore, that spot and the meadows around it, where the Muses often came and spent time together, must be consecrated to them. And the spring that watered the place he declared should be made sacred water for the Vestal virgins, so that they might draw it daily to purify and sprinkle the shrine.
To these claims, they say, the plague itself bore witness, ceasing at once. When Numa set forth the shield and bade the craftsmen compete in matching it, all the others gave up, but Veturius Mamurius, one of the finest artisans, achieved such a likeness that he made all of them alike, so that not even Numa himself could any longer distinguish the original. Numa then appointed the priests of the Salii as guardians and attendants of these shields.
They got the name Salii not, as some tell it in legend, from a certain Salius of Samothrace or Mantinea who was supposedly the first to teach the dance in arms, but rather from the leaping motion of the dance itself (from 'salire'), which they perform while passing through the city on the occasions when they carry the sacred shields during March, dressed in purple tunics and cinched with wide bronze belts, bronze helmets on their heads, striking their weapons with short daggers.
The rest of the dance is a matter of footwork: they move delightfully, performing certain windings and changes in a rhythm that has both speed and density, combined with strength and lightness. The shields themselves they call "ancilia" because of their shape; for it is not a circle, nor does it, like a pelta, give a rounded circumference, but has the cut-out form of a spiral line, whose curving ends, bending and turning together with the density of the design, form
a hooked (ancylon) shape with one another, or from the elbow (ankon) about which they are turned—for so Juba says, in his eagerness to give the name a Greek derivation. But it could rather have taken its name first from the shield's descent from above, or from the healing of the sick, or from the ending of droughts, or further from the warding off of terrible things—in accordance with which the Athenians called the Dioscuri "Anakes," if indeed one must trace the name back to the Greek dialect.
As payment for that craftsmanship, they say, Mamurius received a certain remembrance in a song performed by the Salii together with the Pyrrhic dance. But others say that it is not Veturius Mamurius who is sung of, but "veterem memoriam," that is, "ancient memory."
When he had organized the priesthoods, Numa built near the shrine of Vesta the building called the Regia, a kind of royal residence; and he spent most of his time there performing sacred rites, or teaching the priests, or devoting himself in leisure to some contemplation of divine matters. He also had a second dwelling on the Quirinal, and its location is even now shown to visitors. In processions generally, and above all in those of the priests, heralds went ahead throughout the city bidding people be still and putting a stop to their work.
For just as, they say, the Pythagoreans forbade offering worship or prayer to the gods in a hurried, casual manner, but bade them go from home already prepared in mind for that very purpose, so too Numa thought that the citizens ought neither to hear nor to see anything of the divine carelessly and as a side matter, but, taking leisure from other concerns and directing their attention as to the greatest of undertakings—that concerning piety—should keep the streets clear for the sacred rites of noises and clatter and groaning and all such things that accompany necessary and menial labors. A trace of this practice is preserved even now: whenever a magistrate is occupied with the auspices or with sacrifices, they cry out "Hoc age"—the phrase means "attend to this"—turning and composing those who happen to be present.
Many of his other precepts, too, resembled those of the Pythagoreans. For just as the Pythagoreans advised not to sit on a grain-measure, not to stir a fire with a knife, not to look back when setting out on a journey, and to sacrifice odd numbers to the heavenly gods but even numbers to the gods below—concealing from the many the meaning of each of these—so too some of Numa's ancestral customs contain a hidden meaning, such as not to pour libations to the gods from unpruned vines, nor to sacrifice without barley meal, and to worship while turning oneself around, and to sit down after worshipping.
The first two of these seem to teach the cultivation of the earth, as being a part of piety; but the worshipper's act of turning about is said to represent, in miniature, the revolving motion of the cosmos. It would seem rather, however, that since the sacred buildings face east, the worshipper, having his back turned to the rising sun, turns himself around at that point and revolves toward the god, making a circle and joining together the completion of his prayer
through both directions—unless, by Zeus, this points to something like the Egyptian wheels, and the change of position teaches something similar: that nothing among human affairs stands still, but that however God turns and unrolls our life, it is fitting to accept and welcome it. As for sitting down after worshipping, they say it is an omen of firmness for one's prayers and of endurance for one's blessings. They also say that the pause is a way of marking a division between actions:
as though, having set an end to the former action, they sit down beside the gods, so that they may take up the beginning of another from them in turn. This too can agree with what has been said, since the lawgiver accustomed us not to make our approaches to the divine while occupied and hastily as though in passing, but whenever we have time and are at leisure.
From such training in matters divine the city had become so tame and so awed by Numa's power that it accepted stories whose strangeness resembled myths, and believed that nothing was incredible or beyond his power to accomplish.
It is said, at any rate, that once, having invited a good number of citizens to his table, he set before them plain vessels and a meal quite modest and common; but when they had begun to dine, he let drop the remark that the goddess who kept company with him was about to pay him a visit, and suddenly displayed the house filled with costly drinking-cups and the tables laden with all manner of delicacies and lavish provision.
But every strangeness is surpassed by what is recorded concerning his converse with Zeus. For the tale is told that on the Aventine hill—which at that time lay outside the city and was uninhabited, though it held plentiful springs and glens deep in shade—two spirits used to resort, Picus and Faunus, whom one might liken in other respects to a race of Satyrs or Pans, but who, by the power of drugs and by skill in dealing with divine sorcery, are said to wander about Italy practicing the same arts attributed by the Greeks to the Idaean Dactyls.
These, they say, Numa overpowered by mixing wine and honey into the spring from which they habitually drank. Once caught, they turned themselves into many shapes, shedding their own nature and putting forth strange and fearsome apparitions to the sight; but when they realized they were held fast in a strong and inescapable capture, they foretold many things to come, and taught him the rite of purification for thunderbolts, which is still performed to this day by means of onions, hairs, and pilchards.
Others say that it was not the spirits who suggested the purification, but that they, having worked their magic, brought Zeus down; and the god, angered at Numa, commanded that the purification be performed "with heads"—whereupon Numa, taking him up, said, "of onions?" and the god, again turning aside the harshness of the command, said, "of men," to which Numa asked, "with hairs?" and when Zeus answered, "of living things," Numa added, "of pilchards?"—having been taught to say these things by Egeria.
And the god departed, made gracious; and the place was called Ilicium from that event, and the purification is performed in this manner to this day. Now these mythical and absurd tales reveal the disposition toward the divine of the people of that time, which their custom had instilled in them. But Numa himself, they say, was so wholly bound to the divine by his hopes that once, when word came to him that enemies were approaching, he only smiled and said, "But I am sacrificing."
First, they say, he also established a shrine of Faith and of Terminus. Faith he made the greatest oath of the Romans, one which they continue to use to this day; Terminus would be a boundary-god, and both publicly and privately they sacrifice to him along the boundary-lines of their fields—now with living victims, but in ancient times the sacrifice was bloodless, Numa having reasoned as a philosopher that this god of boundaries, since he watches over peace and testifies to fair dealing, should be kept unstained by killing,
and it seems that this king was, on the whole, the one who fixed the boundaries of the territory, since Romulus had been unwilling to acknowledge, by any measurement of his own, the extent of what he had taken from others; for a boundary is, if observed, a bond upon one's power, but if not observed, a proof of injustice. Indeed the city did not have an abundant territory at the outset, but Romulus had acquired most of it by the spear;
and all of this Numa distributed among the poorer citizens, thereby removing poverty as a compulsion to injustice, and turning the people to farming, so that they might be civilized together with the land itself. For no other pursuit produces so keen and swift a love of peace as a life drawn from the earth, in which the fighting spirit's readiness to defend one's own remains and is present, while the part of it inclined toward injustice and greed is cut away.
For this reason Numa, having mixed farming into the citizens' lives as a kind of love-charm for peace, and valuing the craft more as a shaper of character than as a producer of wealth, divided the land into portions which he called "pagi" (districts), and over each he set overseers and patrolmen; sometimes he himself would inspect them, judging the characters of the citizens from their works, and would advance to honors and positions of trust those who worked well, while rebuking and reproaching the lazy and careless, thereby bringing them to their senses.
Among his other political measures, the distribution of the populace according to trades is especially admired. For since the city seemed, as has been said, to be composed of two peoples, yet remained divided and in no way willing to become one, nor to erase, as it were, its otherness and difference, but instead had constant clashes and rivalries between its two parts, he reasoned that just as bodies naturally hard to mix and stubborn are broken up and divided in order to be blended, coming together with one another more readily because of their smallness,
so he resolved to cut the whole populace into more numerous divisions, so that, by throwing them into other differences, he might make that first great division disappear, scattered among the smaller ones. The distribution was made according to trades: flute-players, goldsmiths, carpenters, dyers, shoemakers, leather-tanners, bronze-workers, potters; and the remaining trades he gathered together and made into a single guild composed of them all.
Having assigned to each group its own fellowship, gatherings, and honors to the gods proper to it, he was the first to remove from the city the practice of calling and considering some people Sabines and others Romans, some belonging to Tatius's people and others to Romulus's, so that in place of division there came about a mutual blending and harmony of everyone together.
Among his political measures is also praised his correction of the law that allowed fathers to sell their children, in which he excepted those who had married, provided the marriage had taken place with the father's approval and at his bidding; for he thought it a terrible thing that a woman married as a free person should live with a slave.
He also took up the study of the heavens, neither with full precision nor altogether without observation. For in the reign of Romulus the Romans used the months irrationally and without order, reckoning some at not even twenty days, others at thirty-five, and others at still more, having no notion of the irregularity that arises with respect to the moon and the sun, but adhering to a single fixed rule, namely that a year must total three hundred sixty days.
Numa, calculating that the discrepancy of the irregularity amounted to eleven days—since the lunar year has three hundred fifty-four days and the solar year three hundred sixty-five—doubled this eleven-day gap and, every second year, inserted an extra month right after February, one the Romans termed Mercedinus, twenty-two days long.
But this remedy of his for the irregularity was destined to require greater remedies still. He likewise rearranged the sequence of months: March, formerly first, he shifted to third place, and set January, eleventh under Romulus, in the leading position, while February, once twelfth and final, now stands second. Many say that these months, January and February, were added by Numa,
and that from the beginning only ten months were used for the year, as some barbarian peoples use three, and among the Greeks the Arcadians four, the Acarnanians six, while for the Egyptians the year was originally a single month, then four months, as they say. This is why, though they inhabit the youngest land, they seem to be the most ancient, and reckon an impossible multitude of years in their genealogies, since they count months as years.
That the Romans once counted only ten months in a year rather than twelve can be seen from what they call the final month: even today its name means 'tenth.' And that March was first is shown by the order: for they called the month after it the fifth, the next the sixth, and each of the others in like succession, since when January and February were set before March, it turned out that the month in question, though named fifth, was in fact counted seventh.
There was also good reason for March, consecrated to Ares, to be named first by Romulus, and for the second to be April, named for Aphrodite, in which women, garlanded with myrtle, sacrifice to the goddess and bathe on the calends. But some say that April is not named for Aphrodite, but, taking the word in its plain sense, that the month is called Aprilis because, as the height of spring is coming on, it opens up and uncovers the buds of plants—for this is what the word signifies.
Of the following months, they call May from Maia, since it is consecrated to Hermes, and June from Hera. But there are some who say these are named for age groups, elder and younger: for the elders among them are called maiores, and the younger iuniores; and each of the rest they named from its place in the order, as though counting, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth.
Then the fifth was named Julius, from Caesar who overcame Pompey; and the sixth was named Augustus, from the man who ruled second and was surnamed Augustus. The months following these Domitian incorporated into his own titles, but not for long; for when he was slain they resumed their own names, the seventh and the eighth, and only the last two have kept, as they had from the beginning, their names taken from their numerical order.
Of the months added or transposed by Numa, February would be, so to speak, a purificatory one; the word itself all but says so, and it is in this month that they carry out rites on behalf of the dead and hold the Lupercalia festival, a rite that in most of its features looks like a cleansing ceremony. January, the first month, is named from Janus. It seems to me that Numa removed March, which was named for Ares, from its position of primacy because he wished, in every respect, to give precedence to the civic power over the military.
For Janus, in very ancient times, whether a divine spirit or a king, is said to have changed his way of life from something savage and beastlike to one civilized and sociable. And for this reason they fashion him with two faces, as one who brought about, through his life, a change from one shape and disposition to another.
There is also a temple of his in Rome with two doors, which they call the Gate of War. It is customary for it to stand open whenever there is war, and to be closed when peace comes about—something that was difficult and rarely achieved, since the empire was always entangled in some war, defending itself, because of its greatness, against the barbarian peoples poured round about it on every side.
It was closed, however, under Augustus Caesar, after his defeat of Antony, and before that, in the consulship of Marcus Atilius and Titus Manlius, for a short time—but it was reopened at once when war broke out again. Yet during Numa's reign it was not observed open on even one day, staying shut without interruption across forty-three years: so completely was war banished, root and branch, on every side,
for not only was the Roman people made gentle and charmed by the justice and mildness of the king, but the cities round about, as though some breeze or wholesome wind blew from that source, took the beginning of a change, and a longing came over them all for good order and peace, and for tilling the earth and rearing children in quiet, and
for honoring the gods; and festivals, feasts, and, as people went fearlessly to one another and mingled, hospitalities and friendly exchanges held Italy fast, as though from the spring of Numa's wisdom the streams of what is good and just flowed out over all, and the calm that surrounded him spread abroad—so that they say even the exaggerations of the poets fall short of the condition of that time:
"On iron-bound shield-handles the works of tawny spiders": and, "Rust destroys the pointed spears and the double-edged swords, and no longer is there the din of bronze trumpets, nor is honey-sweet sleep robbed from the eyelids." For neither war nor faction nor any revolution in the state is recorded during the reign of Numa; nor indeed was there against that man himself any hatred or envy or plot or conspiracy of men arising from desire for the kingship,
but whether it was fear of the gods, who seemed to watch over the man, or reverence for his virtue, or some divine fortune that kept his life throughout that time untouched and pure of all wickedness, he furnished a clear example and proof of that saying of Plato's, which he himself, coming long afterward, ventured to utter concerning government—
that there is but one cessation and release from evils for mankind: that by some divine chance a philosophic mind and a kingly power should coincide in the same person, so as to make virtue master and superior to vice. "For blessed indeed is he," the truly wise man, "and blessed are those who hear the words that come from a wise man's mouth."
For perhaps there is no need at all of compulsion or threat toward the many; rather, seeing virtue itself set forth in a clear and shining example in the life of their ruler, they of their own accord become moderate and are shaped, in friendship and concord with him, toward a blameless and blessed life lived with justice and moderation—wherein lies the finest end of every form of government, and he is the most truly kingly of all who can bring about this life and this disposition in his subjects. These things, then, Numa evidently perceived better than anyone.
Concerning his children and his marriages the historians disagree. Some say that he took no wife other than Tatia, and became father of no child but a single daughter, Pompilia; others record, besides her, four sons of his—Pompo, Pinus, Calpus, and Mamercus—each of whom left behind a line of descent and an honored family.
The Pomponii, it is said, trace back to Pompo; the Pinarii to Pinus; the Calpurnii to Calpus; and the Mamercii to Mamercus, a family additionally given the surname Rex, meaning "kings," was also given. And there is a third group who accuse these families of currying favor and adding untrue lines of descent tracing back to Numa, and who say that Pompilia was not born of Tatia at all, but of another woman
—Lucretia, whom he married after he was already king. All, however, agree that Pompilia was married to Marcius. This Marcius was the son of that Marcius who had urged Numa to accept the kingship; for he had moved with him to Rome and had a seat in the senate with honor, and after Numa's death, entering into a contest with Hostilius over the kingship and being defeated, he starved himself to death. His son Marcius, having Pompilia as wife, remained in Rome and begot Marcius Ancus, who reigned after Tullus Hostilius.
This grandson, they say, Numa left five years old when he died, his end coming not swiftly or suddenly, but wasting away little by little through old age and a gentle illness, as Piso has recorded. He died not long after reaching the age of eighty.
The allied and friendly peoples made his life enviable even in his burial, coming together for the funeral with public offerings and garlands, while the patricians themselves lifted his bier, and the priests of the gods were present and escorted him, and the rest of the throng, women and children mixed in among them, followed along not as if attending the burial rites of an old man who had been king, but each mourner wailing and lamenting as though some cherished friend had been torn away while still in his prime,
They did not, however, give his body to the fire, since he himself, it is said, had forbidden it; instead, having made two stone coffins, they set them beneath the Janiculum, one containing his body, the other the sacred books which he himself had written, just as the Greek lawgivers wrote their tables of laws. Having, while still alive, taught the priests what was written and worked into them a full grasp and understanding of it all, he ordered that the books be buried with his body, on the ground that it was not right for such secrets to be guarded merely in lifeless writings.
For this same reason, they say, not even the Pythagoreans committed their teachings to writing, but instilled memory and instruction of them, unwritten, in those who were worthy. And indeed, when the treatment of the difficult and so-called ineffable methods in geometry was published to one who was unworthy, they said that the divine power showed its displeasure by pursuing, with some great and common calamity, the lawlessness and impiety that had occurred.
So one may readily forgive those who, on the strength of so many similarities, are eager to bring Numa together with Pythagoras in this same regard. The circle of Antias record that there were twelve sacred books, and twelve others of Greek philosophy, placed together in the coffin. When about four hundred years had passed, in the consulship of Publius Cornelius and Marcus Baebius, after heavy rains fell and an embankment was torn away, the flood forced the coffins out;
and when the lids fell off, the one was seen to be entirely empty, having not even a trace or remnant of the body, whereas in the second chest the documents turned up; these, according to the account, Petilius, praetor at the time, read through and carried before the senate, saying that he did not think it lawful or right for what was written to become known to the many; and so the books, having been carried to the Comitium, were burned.
Now with all men who are just and virtuous, a fuller measure of praise tends to come later, once they are gone, because envy fails to outlast them for long and in some instances perishes even sooner; yet what happened to the kings who succeeded him made his own reputation shine all the more. Of the five who ruled after him, the last was driven from power and lived out his old age in exile; and as for the remaining four, every single one met a death that was not natural: three fell victim to conspiracy and were killed, and Tullus Hostilius,
who reigned after Numa, having mocked and abused most, and above all, that reverence toward the divine, as sluggish and womanish, turned the citizens toward war, and did not himself hold fast to these youthful excesses, but, his mind changed by a harsh and manifold illness, fell into a superstitiousness in no way resembling the piety of Numa, and, they say, brought this same affliction all the more upon others, being himself consumed by thunderbolts.

======== Comparison Of Numa With Lycurgus ========

But since we have gone through the lives of Numa and Lycurgus, both now set out before us, it is a hard task, yet one we must not shrink from, to bring together their points of difference. Their common traits are plain in their actions — the moderation of the men, their piety, their statesmanship, their devotion to education, the fact that both received the single foundation of their legislation from the gods. But of the merits proper to each individually, the first is that Numa received his kingship while Lycurgus gave his up.
The one, without asking, received it; the other, having it, gave it back. Numa was made master of himself by others, though he was a private citizen and a foreigner; Lycurgus made himself a private citizen out of a king, by his own act. It is a fine thing to gain a kingship through justice, but it is also fine to prefer justice to a kingship — for virtue made the one man so renowned that he was deemed worthy of a kingdom, and made the other so great that he came to despise one.
In the second place, just as musicians tuning a lyre, the one tightened Sparta, which had grown slack and soft, while the other relaxed the vehement tension of Rome — so the harder task belongs to Lycurgus. For he was not persuading his citizens to strip off their breastplates and lay down their swords, but to give up gold and silver, and to throw out their expensive dining-couches and tables; his aim was not that they should abandon warfare in order to keep festivals and offer sacrifices, but rather that, abandoning feasts and drinking-parties, they should toil and drill themselves under arms and in the wrestling-grounds.
Hence the one man accomplished everything through goodwill and honor, persuading; the other, facing danger and being struck at, barely prevailed. Yet Numa's muse was gentle and humane, refashioning his citizens toward peace and justice, and softening them out of their unrestrained and fiery ways. But if someone should force us, on account of the matter concerning the Helots,
a most savage and most lawless deed, to place it within Lycurgus's constitution, we shall say that Numa was by far the more Greek-spirited lawgiver, seeing that he gave even acknowledged slaves a taste of free honor, accustoming them to feast together with their masters, mingled among them, at the festival of the Kronia. Indeed they say this too is one of Numa's ancestral institutions, since he brought in his fellow-workers to share in the yearly enjoyment of the crops; and some tell the story that this is preserved as a reminder of that equality under Kronos, when neither slave nor master was recognized, but all were reckoned kinsmen and equals in honor.
Altogether, both men appear alike to have led their peoples toward self-sufficiency and moderation; but of the other virtues, the one cherished courage the more, the other justice — unless, by Zeus, it was because of the underlying nature or custom of each polity, which, being unlike, required unlike preparation.
For Numa did not put a stop to warfare out of cowardice, but so as not to commit wrong; nor did Lycurgus train his people for war so as to commit wrong, but so that they might not be wronged. So then, in removing excesses and filling up deficiencies among their citizens' resources, both were compelled to make great changes.
And indeed, as to the ordering and division of their constitutions, that of Numa is thoroughly popular and courts the multitude, making the people a motley and much-variegated body out of goldsmiths and flute-players and cobblers, whereas that of Lycurgus is austere and aristocratic, purging out the vulgar crafts into the hands of servants and resident aliens, and gathering the citizens themselves to shield and spear, craftsmen of war and servants of Ares, knowing and practicing nothing else than to obey their rulers and to overcome their enemies.
For it was not permitted to free men to make money, so that they might be free wholly and once for all; but the business of money was given over to slaves and Helots, just as the service of dinner and relish was. Numa, however, made no such distinction; although he brought an end to the plundering habits of soldiers, he left other forms of profit-seeking untouched, and did nothing to settle the inequality that followed from it,
but allowed wealth to proceed without limit, and neglected the poverty that was gathering and seeping into the city, though he ought, right at the beginning, while inequality was not yet great or extensive but lives were still level and much alike, to have set himself against greed, as Lycurgus did, and guarded against the harms arising from it — harms that proved not small, but that furnished the seed and origin of most of the greatest evils that later came together.
The redistribution of land, in my judgment, neither makes Lycurgus blameworthy for having carried it out, nor Numa for not having done so. For Lycurgus this equality furnished a seat and foundation for the constitution, whereas for Numa, since the allotment was still fresh, nothing pressed him to introduce another redistribution or to disturb the first division, which, it is reasonable to think, remained in place.
As to the community established over marriage and childbearing, both men rightly and in statesmanlike fashion instilled freedom from jealousy in their husbands, yet they did not come together entirely in the same way about it: the Roman husband, if sufficiently provided with children, being persuaded by another man in need of offspring, would withdraw from his wife, having authority to give her away and give her away again; whereas the Spartan, with his wife remaining at home with him and the marriage continuing on its original terms, shared her with the man who persuaded him, for the begetting of children.
And many, as has been said, would even invite in men from whom they thought their children were most likely to turn out fair and good. What then is the distinction between the two customs? Is it that the one is a strong and unmixed indifference toward one's own wife and toward the things that trouble and inflame most men with jealousy, while the other is a kind of bashful modesty, drawing the marriage-bond over itself as a veil, and confessing how hard it is to endure such a sharing?
Further, the guarding of maidens is kept much more modest and decorous under Numa toward the feminine and orderly, whereas that of Lycurgus, being entirely thrown open and unfeminine, has given the poets occasion for talk. For they call them 'thigh-showers,' as Ibycus does, and revile them as man-mad, as Euripides does, saying: 'who with young men leave their homes empty, with naked thighs and unbound robes.'
For indeed the flaps of the maiden's tunic were not sewn together at the bottom, but would open and, in walking, bare the whole thigh together. And Sophocles has stated the fact most clearly in these lines: 'and the newly-wed Hermione, whose unfastened tunic still folds about the outer thigh.'
For this reason they are said to have become bolder, and, toward their own men first of all, mannish, inasmuch as they ruled their households with full authority, and in public affairs took a share of counsel and free speech about the greatest matters; whereas Numa preserved for wedded wives the standing and honor which they had before their husbands, which they had held ever since being cared for after their seizure under Romulus, but he set over them much modesty, and took away meddlesomeness, and taught them sobriety, and accustomed them to silence, keeping them altogether from wine, and, in speech, not even venturing to speak of necessary matters without their husbands.
At any rate it is said that once, when a woman had pleaded her own case in the marketplace, the senate sent to consult the god, inquiring what, then, the occurrence portended for the city. And a great proof of the general obedience and gentleness of Roman women is the record kept of the worse cases. For just as our own historians write of those who were first to commit kindred murder, or to make war on brothers, or to become slayers of their own father or mother,
so too the Romans record that the first man to divorce a wife was Spurius Carvilius, a full two centuries and thirty years after Rome's founding, nothing of the kind having occurred before that time; and the first woman to do so was Thalaea, wife of Pinarius, who quarreled with her mother-in-law Gegania during the reign of Tarquinius Superbus — so well, so decorously, had the lawgiver arranged the affairs of marriage.
In the rest of the training of maidens, the matter of giving them in marriage agrees as well: Lycurgus gave brides in marriage when they were mature and ripe, so that their union, since nature now required it, might be the beginning of affection and friendship rather than of hatred and fear from being forced against nature, and so that their bodies might have the strength to bear conception and the pains of labor, on the ground that they were married for nothing else than the work of childbearing; whereas the Romans gave girls in marriage at twelve years or younger, for in this way, they thought, both body and character would come to the husband especially pure and untouched.
It is clear, then, that the one practice looks more to nature for the sake of childbearing, the other more to character for the sake of living together. But surely, in the oversight and herding-together of children, in their upbringing and their fellowship, in matters of meals and exercises and the ordered arrangement of their games, Lycurgus shows Numa to have been no better than any ordinary lawgiver, since he shaped the training of the young according to the desires or needs of the fathers,
whether one wished to make his son a farmer, or to teach him shipbuilding or smithing or flute-playing — as though they ought not from the start to be led and turned together in their characters toward one single end, but, like passengers coming aboard a ship each from a different occupation and purpose, join together for the common good only out of fear for their own safety in dangers, and otherwise each look out for himself alone.
And most lawgivers are not to be blamed for falling short, either through ignorance or through weakness; but for a wise man who took over a kingship of a people newly formed and offering no resistance, what ought he to have made his first concern, if not the rearing of children and the training of the young, so that they might not become discordant or turbulent in character, but, being molded and shaped from the very beginning toward one common trace of virtue, might come into agreement with one another?
This indeed benefited Lycurgus, both in other respects and for the preservation of his laws. For the fear of oaths would have been a small thing, had he not, through education and training, so to speak steeped the laws in the characters of the children, and made the citizens' zeal for the constitution at home with their upbringing, with the result that across more than five centuries the principal and most important features of his legislation held firm, as if set fast by a pure and potent dye.
But for Numa, that very thing which was the end of his statesmanship — that Rome should exist in peace and friendship — perished immediately along with him. And after his death, the double-doored shrine, which he himself had kept closed, as though truly taming and confining war within it, they threw open from both sides, and filled Italy with blood and corpses; nor did the fairest and most just order of things remain even a short time, seeing that it did not have within itself the bond that holds things together — education.
'What then,' someone will say, 'did not Rome advance to something better through its wars?' He asks a question requiring a long answer, addressed to men who set the better in wealth and luxury and dominion rather than in safety and gentleness and self-sufficiency joined with justice. Not but that this too will seem, somehow, to help Lycurgus's case — that the Romans, having exchanged the order established under Numa, so greatly increased their power,
while the Lacedaemonians, as soon as they first departed from Lycurgus's arrangement, fell from being the greatest to being the most humbled, and, having lost the leadership of the Greeks, ran the risk of utter ruin. Yet that which is truly great and divine in Numa remains — that though a foreigner sent for from abroad, he changed everything by persuasion, and gained mastery over a city not yet breathing as one, needing neither arms nor any force, unlike Lycurgus, who led the best men against the common people, but by wisdom and justice won all of them over and fitted them together.

======== Solon ========

In a work answering Asclepiades on the matter of Solon's axones, Didymus the grammarian quotes one Philocles, who claims Solon's father was Euphorion — a view at odds with what every other writer on Solon has stated. Everyone else, by contrast, holds that his father was Execestides, a citizen of moderate property and standing who nonetheless belonged to a leading family, tracing descent from Codrus.
Heraclides of Pontus records that Solon's mother was a cousin of Pisistratus's mother. And at first there was great friendship between them, both because of their kinship and because of Pisistratus's natural gifts and good looks — indeed some say Solon greeted him with the affection of a lover. Hence later, when they came into conflict over politics, it seems that their enmity produced nothing harsh or savage, but the old feelings of goodwill remained in their hearts, guarding, like a fire of Zeus still smoldering, a living flame — the memory and grace of that love.
That Solon was not proof against handsome men, nor bold enough to stand up against Love "as a boxer stands up to meet his opponent's hands," one can gather from his poems; and he wrote a law forbidding a slave to oil himself in the gymnasium or to love boys, placing the practice among the honorable and dignified pursuits, and in a way inviting the worthy to it while driving away the unworthy.
It is also said that Pisistratus became the lover of Charmus, and dedicated the statue of Eros in the Academy, where those who run the sacred torch-race light their flame.
Solon, then, whose father had reduced the family estate through certain acts of generosity and kindness, as Hermippus says, was not the sort who would have lacked people willing to help him, but he was ashamed to accept from others, coming as he did from a house accustomed to helping others; so, while still young, he set out into trade. Yet some say that Solon traveled more for the sake of broad experience and learning than for profit. Indeed there is no denying that he loved wisdom above all else,
as one who even in old age said, "I grow old always learning many things." Wealth he did not admire; rather he says that a man is equally rich who has much silver and gold, fields of wheat-bearing land, and horses and mules, and one who has only this: comfort for belly and side and feet, and, when the season for it comes, the bloom of a boy or a woman, timed fittingly to his years.
But elsewhere he says: "Wealth I do long to have, but to possess it unjustly I do not wish: justice always comes in the end." Nothing prevents a good and public-spirited man from neither being zealous for superfluous possessions nor despising the use of what is necessary and sufficient. In those days, as Hesiod says, no work was a disgrace, nor did a trade make any difference in status; commerce indeed carried honor, since it brought familiarity with foreign peoples, procured the friendship of kings, and gave experience of many affairs.
Some men actually became founders of great cities, as Protis, beloved by the Celts around the Rhone, founded Massalia. They say that Thales too engaged in trade, and Hippocrates the mathematician, and that Plato financed his travels in Egypt by selling a quantity of oil there.
Solon's readiness to spend and his easy way of living, and his rather coarse than philosophical manner of speaking about pleasures in his poems, have led some to think that these traits were rubbed off on him by his mercantile life: for a man who runs many great risks demands in turn certain comforts and enjoyments.
That he counted himself with the poor, not the wealthy, is plain enough from these verses: "Many bad men are rich, and good men are poor; but we will not exchange our virtue for their wealth, since virtue always remains, while riches now belong to one man, now to another."
In his poetry, at first he seems to have used it for nothing serious, but rather as play and pastime for his leisure hours. Later, however, he wove philosophical maxims into it, and included much political matter as well, not for the sake of record and memory, but to explain and justify what he had done, and in places to exhort, admonish, and rebuke the Athenians.
Some also say that he attempted to set out his laws in verse, and they still remember the opening, which ran thus: "First let us pray to lord Zeus, son of Cronus, that he grant good fortune and glory to these ordinances." Of moral philosophy, he was devoted above all to its political side, as most of the sages were. In natural philosophy he is very simple and old-fashioned, as is clear from these lines:
"From the cloud comes the force of snow and hail; thunder comes from the bright lightning-flash. The sea is stirred up by the winds; but if no one disturbs it, it is the most just of all things." And altogether it seems that only the wisdom of Thales at that time reached, in its speculation, beyond practical need; the rest owed their reputation for wisdom to their political virtue.
They are said to have come together with one another both at Delphi and again at Corinth, when Periander arranged a common gathering and banquet for them. They were brought into still greater repute and fame by the circuit of the tripod, its passing around from one to another and the courteous yielding that took place among them with generous rivalry.
For, as the story goes, some Coan men were dragging in a fishing-net, and Milesian visitors had already purchased the haul sight unseen, when a golden tripod turned up tangled inside it, which they say Helen, sailing from Troy, had thrown in there, remembering some old oracle. When a dispute first arose between the strangers and the fishermen over the tripod, and then the two cities took up the quarrel and it came near to war, the Pythia gave an oracle to both that the tripod should be given to the wisest man.
First, the tripod went to Thales in Miletus — the Coans handing over, without objection, the very object that had nearly brought them to war against the whole Milesian people. But Thales judged Bias the wiser man and passed it on to him, and Bias in turn sent it to another he deemed wiser still. So it traveled the full circuit from hand to hand until it reached Thales once more, and was then taken from Miletus over to Thebes, where it was offered up to Ismenian Apollo.
Theophrastus, however, says that it was sent first to Bias at Priene, and second to Thales at Miletus, Bias having sent it on; and that thus, going all the round again, it came back to Bias, and was finally sent to Delphi. This story is told by many in various forms, except that some say the gift, instead of a tripod, was a bowl sent by Croesus, while others say it was a cup left by Bathycles.
As for their private meetings, writers record a conversation between Anacharsis and Solon, and again one between Anacharsis and Thales, of the following kind. They say Anacharsis came to Athens and knocked at Solon's door, saying that as a stranger he had come to make friendship and hospitality with him. When Solon answered that it is better to make friendships at home, Anacharsis said, "Well then, you are at home — make friendship and hospitality with us."
Solon, admiring the man's quickness of wit, received him kindly and kept him with him for some time, being at that point already engaged in public affairs and drafting his laws. When Anacharsis learned of this, he is said to have laughed at Solon's undertaking, thinking that he could restrain the injustice and greed of the citizens by written statutes, which he said were no different from spiders' webs: as those webs hold fast the weak and small creatures caught in them, but are torn through by the strong and wealthy.
To this Solon is said to have replied that men keep their agreements when it is to neither party's advantage to break them, and that he was shaping his laws to suit the citizens so that all could see acting rightly served them better than breaking the statutes. But things turned out more as Anacharsis had guessed than as Solon had hoped. Anacharsis also said, once he had attended an assembly, that he was amazed that among the Greeks the wise men speak, but the ignorant decide.
When Solon came to Thales at Miletus, he expressed surprise that Thales had entirely neglected marriage and the begetting of children. Thales said nothing at the time, but a few days later arranged for a stranger to appear, pretending he had just arrived from Athens ten days before. When Solon asked whether there was any news at Athens, the man, having been coached in what to say, replied, "Nothing else, except that a young man's funeral was held, and the whole city escorted it.
For he was, they said, the son of a man of good repute, foremost among the citizens in virtue; the father was not present, but they said he had already been abroad a long time." "How unfortunate that man is," Solon said. "And what did they call him?" "I heard the name," said the man, "but I don't remember it, except that there was much talk of his wisdom and justice." So with each answer Solon was drawn further into fear, and at last, already thoroughly disturbed, he himself supplied the name to the stranger, asking whether the dead man was called the son of Solon.
When the man said yes, Solon began beating his head and acting and speaking in every way that men overwhelmed by sorrow do; but Thales took hold of him, and laughing, said, "This, Solon, is what keeps me from marriage and children — things that overwhelm even you, the strongest of men. But take heart concerning this story: it is not true." This tale, at any rate, Hermippus says he found recorded by Pataecus, who claimed to possess the soul of Aesop.
It is absurd and ignoble for a man, out of fear of losing something, to forgo acquiring what he ought to have; for by that reasoning one would never welcome wealth, or reputation, or wisdom when it comes, for fear of being deprived of it later. Indeed we see even virtue, than which no possession is greater or sweeter, driven out by diseases and drugs; and for Thales himself, not marrying gained him no more freedom from fear, unless he also avoided acquiring friends, relatives, and a homeland.
But in fact he did have an adopted son, having made his sister's son, Cybisthus, as they say, his own. For since the soul has within itself a capacity for affection, and is so constituted that, just as it perceives and thinks and remembers, so too it loves, something always attaches itself to this and takes root there among external things to which it is not naturally akin; and just as a house or a field left without legitimate heirs is occupied and taken over by strangers and illegitimate children or servants, so affection, once it has taken up residence, brings with it care and fear on their behalf, along with the loving itself.
So it is that you can find men of a fairly harsh temperament holding forth on wedlock and having offspring, and those identical men, when children born to house-slaves or of concubines, wasting away with longing and giving voice to ignoble cries. Some too have been reduced by grief to a shameful and unlivable state at the death of dogs and horses. Yet others, having lost good children, have suffered nothing terrible and done nothing shameful, but have continued to live out the rest of their lives reasonably.
For it is weakness, not affection, that brings endless griefs and fears upon men untrained by reason against fortune, men who get no enjoyment even from the presence of what they desire, since the thought of the future always brings them pangs and trembling and struggles over the possibility of losing it. One ought to be fortified against the loss of money not by poverty, nor against the loss of friends by friendlessness, nor against the death of children by childlessness, but against all these things by reason. But this, for the present, is more than enough.
When the men of the city, worn out by a long and difficult war with the Megarians over the island of Salamis, passed a law that no one should ever again propose or speak in favor of the city's laying claim to Salamis, on pain of death, Solon, bearing the disgrace heavily, and seeing many of the young men eager for a chance to renew the war but not daring to begin because of the law, feigned a derangement of his reasoning,
A rumor spread through the city from his own household that he was behaving strangely. He had secretly composed elegiac verses and rehearsed them so as to recite them from memory, and he suddenly rushed out into the marketplace wearing a felt cap on his head. When a great crowd had gathered around him, he climbed onto the herald's stone and, in a kind of chant, recited the elegy through to the end. Its opening runs: “I myself have come as a herald from lovely Salamis, having composed a song of verses in place of a speech.” (Solon, fr. 1 Bergk)
This poem is entitled Salamis and consists of a hundred lines, composed with great charm. It was sung then, and Solon's friends began to praise it, and above all Pisistratus urged the citizens on and pressed them to be persuaded by the speaker; so they repealed the law and took up the war again, putting Solon in charge.
The popular account of what followed runs as follows: Solon sailed to Colias together with Pisistratus, and finding all the women there performing the ancestral sacrifice to Demeter, he sent a trusted man to Salamis pretending to be a deserter, who urged the Megarians that if they wished to seize the foremost women of the Athenians, they should sail to Colias with him as quickly as possible.
When the Megarians took the bait and sent men across in the ship, and Solon spotted the vessel being rowed toward him from the island, he had the women withdraw where no one could see them, while instructing the beardless young men to put on the women's robes, headbands, and sandals, conceal daggers on themselves, and dance and frolic along the shore until the enemy had come ashore and the ship lay in Athenian hands.
So it was done. The Megarians, deceived by the sight, drew near and leapt out as if going after women, competing eagerly with one another, so that not one of them escaped but all were killed; and the Athenians, sailing at once against the island, took it.
Others say the capture did not happen in this way, but that first the god at Delphi gave Solon this oracle: “Propitiate with sacrifices the heroes who dwell in that land, the founders, whom the Asopian plain enfolds in its bosom, who though dead look out toward the setting sun”; and that Solon, sailing across by night to the island, offered victims to the heroes Periphemus and Cychreus.
Then he took five hundred volunteers from the Athenians, it having been decreed that if they took the island they should hold authority over its governance. He put out to sea with a number of fishing boats accompanied by a thirty-oared vessel, and anchored off Salamis near a certain headland facing toward Euboea. The Megarians on Salamis, hearing some rumor but nothing certain, rushed in confusion to arms and sent out a ship to reconnoiter the enemy.
When this ship drew close, Solon captured it and trapped the Megarians on board. He then had the most capable Athenians board and sail toward the city, staying hidden as best they could, while he took the remaining Athenians and clashed with the Megarian forces on land; and before that battle was decided, the men from the ship arrived ahead of the rest and took the city.
What actually happens seems to bear out this account. For an Attic ship sailed in, silent at first, but then, as they bore down with shouting and battle-cry, a single armed man leapt out and ran with a shout toward the headland of Sciradion, facing those advancing from the land. Nearby stands the shrine of Enyalius, founded by Solon. For he defeated the Megarians, and all who were not killed in the battle he released under truce.
Nevertheless, since the Megarians persisted, doing and suffering many evils in the war, they made the Lacedaemonians arbitrators and judges. Most say that the reputation of Homer aided Solon in this: for he is said to have inserted a line into the Catalogue of Ships and read it out at the trial: “Ajax led twelve ships from Salamis, and brought them to station where the Athenian ranks stood.” (Homer, Iliad 2.557–558)
But the Athenians themselves regard this story as absurd, insisting rather that Solon demonstrated before the arbitrators how Ajax's sons, Philaeus and Eurysaces, became Athenian citizens, handed the island over to Athens, and made their homes — one at Brauron in Attica, the other settling at Melite — and that a deme, the Philaidae, bears Philaeus's name and traces Pisistratus's descent.
Wishing still further to refute the Megarians, he insisted concerning the dead that they were not buried in the manner the Megarians use, but in the manner the Athenians use. The Megarians bury their dead facing east, the Athenians facing west. But Hereas the Megarian, disputing this, says that the Megarians too turn the bodies of their dead to face west; and, more telling still, that each Athenian has his own single grave, while the Megarians place three or four in one grave.
They say too that certain Pythian oracles came to Solon's aid, in which the god addressed Salamis as “Ionian.” This case was judged by five Spartan men: Critolaidas, Amompharetus, Hypsichidas, Anaxilas, and Cleomenes.
By this point Solon was already famous and great on account of these deeds. But he was even more admired and talked about among the Greeks for what he said concerning the temple at Delphi—that they must come to its aid and not overlook the Cirrhaeans as they committed outrage against the oracle, but must defend Delphi on the god's behalf. For persuaded by him, the Amphictyons set out for war, as others attest and as Aristotle, in his record of the victors at the Pythian Games, ascribes the idea to Solon.
Contrary to what Hermippus claims (citing Euanthes of Samos), Solon did not in fact hold the generalship in this war: Aeschines the orator makes no such claim either, and the archives preserved at Delphi list Alcmaeon, not Solon, as the Athenian general.
The taint left by the Cylon affair had long since plunged the city into unrest, ever since Megacles the archon convinced Cylon's fellow-conspirators, who had taken refuge as the goddess's suppliants, to descend and face judgment. They fastened a length of spun thread to the statue and gripped it as they descended; yet on arriving at the sanctuary of the Solemn Goddesses, the thread snapped on its own, whereupon Megacles together with the other archons dashed forward to lay hold of them, taking this as a sign that the goddess had refused their plea. Some were stoned outside the walls; others fled toward the altars and were cut down right there, and only those found safety who threw themselves on the mercy of the archons' wives.
From this the men so involved were called “accursed” and were hated; and those of Cylon's faction who survived grew strong again, and were continually at odds with the descendants of Megacles. At that time the factional strife had reached its height and the people were sharply divided, when Solon, already having a reputation, came forward into their midst together with the best of the Athenians, and by entreaty and instruction persuaded those called accursed to submit to trial and be judged by three hundred men chosen for their excellence.
Myron of Phlya acted as prosecutor, and the men were convicted; those still living were banished, and the bodies of those who had died were dug up and cast out beyond the borders. Amid these troubles, the Megarians attacked as well, and the Athenians lost Nisaea and were again expelled from Salamis. Certain fears arising from superstition, along with apparitions, gripped the city, and the seers proclaimed that pollutions and defilements requiring purification were being revealed through the sacrifices.
So they sent for Epimenides of Phaestus from Crete, whom some who do not admit Periander count as the seventh among the wise men. He was thought to be beloved of the gods and wise in matters divine, possessing an inspired and ritual wisdom, and for this reason the people of that time called him the child of a nymph named Balte, and a new Curetes. Coming to Athens and making friends with Solon, he did much to prepare the ground and pave the way for his legislation.
For he made the sacred rites simple and made the customs surrounding mourning gentler, immediately mixing in certain sacrifices with the funeral rites, and removing the harshness and the barbaric excess that had previously constrained most of the women. And, most important, by certain propitiations, purifications, and foundations he consecrated and hallowed the city, rendering it obedient to justice and more compliant toward concord. It is said that when he saw Munychia and had studied it for a long time, he said to those present that man is blind
to the future: for the Athenians would tear it out with their own teeth, could they foresee the grief that spot would one day cause the city. A similar prediction is attributed to Thales: he arranged to be buried in some humble, disregarded corner of Milesian ground, having predicted that this spot would eventually become a marketplace for the Milesians. Epimenides, for his part, won great admiration, and although the Athenians offered him considerable wealth and high honors, he requested and accepted nothing beyond a cutting from the sacred olive, and then he left.
Now the Athenians, once the disturbance over Cylon had ceased and those under the curse had been banished, as has been said, fell once more into their old factional strife over the constitution, the city being divided into as many parts as the land had differences. For the clan of the Diacrii was the most democratic, that of the Pediei the most oligarchic, while a third group, the Paralii, chose a middle and mixed form of constitution, and stood in the way, preventing either of the other two from prevailing.
At that time, with the gulf between rich and poor having grown, so to speak, as wide as it would ever get, the city stood in a thoroughly unstable state, and it looked as though only the imposition of a tyranny could restore order and put an end to the unrest. For virtually the entire populace of ordinary citizens owed money to the wealthy. They either worked the rich men's fields for a sixth of what they produced, earning the name sixth-parters or hired hands, or they borrowed against their own persons as collateral and thus stood exposed to seizure by their creditors, some ending up enslaved at home, others sold off abroad.
Many were forced to sell even their own children (for no law forbade it) and to flee the city because of the harshness of their creditors. But most of them, and the strongest among them, banded together and urged one another not to overlook this, but to choose one trustworthy man as their champion, free those overdue in their debts, redistribute the land, and change the constitution altogether.
At this point the most prudent of the Athenians, seeing that Solon alone stood clear of the wrongdoing on both sides, sharing neither in the injustice of the rich nor being bound by the necessities of the poor, begged him to come forward into public affairs and put an end to the disputes. And yet Phanias of Lesbos records that Solon himself, using a deception on both sides for the sake of the city's safety, secretly promised the poor a redistribution of land, and the wealthy a confirmation of their contracts.
But Solon himself says that he hesitated at first to lay hold of public affairs, fearing on the one side men's love of money, and on the other their arrogance. He was elected archon after Philombrotus, and at the same time both arbitrator and lawgiver, both sides accepting him readily—the rich because he was a man of means, the poor because he was honest. There is also a saying of his reported from before this time, that he said equality does not make war, meaning that it pleases both the propertied and the propertyless, the one in worth and merit, the other in measure and number,
expecting to have equality. Hence, since both sides had come to have great hopes, their leading men pressed upon Solon, urging him toward tyranny and persuading him to lay hold of the city more boldly once he had gained control of it. And many of the citizens in between, seeing that change brought about by reason and law was laborious and difficult, were not averse to setting up one man, the most just and prudent, in charge of affairs.
Some say that an oracle was also given to Solon at Delphi to this effect: “Sit in the middle of the ship, steering with a straight hand at the helm; many of the Athenians are your helpers.” And his close friends especially reproached him if he shrank from monarchy merely because of the name, as though it would not at once become a true kingship through the virtue of the one who took it—just as had happened before with Tynnondas among the Euboeans, and now with Pittacus, chosen tyrant by the Mytilenaeans.
None of this deflected Solon from his own resolve; instead he said to his friends, as the story goes, that tyranny was a fine piece of ground but had no way down from it, and to Phocus he wrote in his poems: "If I spared my native land, and did not lay hold of tyranny and pitiless force, staining and disgracing my good name, I feel no shame; for in this way I think I shall surpass all men the more." (Solon, fr. 32 Bergk.) From this it is quite clear that even before his lawgiving he had great renown.
What many said mockingly of him after he had fled from tyranny, he has written thus: "Solon was not a deep-thinking man, nor a man of sound counsel; for when god was offering him good things, he himself did not accept them. Having cast his net around the catch, he was too amazed to draw in the great net, failing both in spirit and in mind. Yet had I only gained mastery, taken boundless wealth, and been tyrant of Athens for a single day, I would gladly afterward be flayed as a wineskin and have my line wiped out." (Solon, fr. 33 Bergk.)
These verses have made the many and the base speak of him in this way. Yet though he refused the tyranny, he did not manage affairs in the gentlest manner, nor did he soften or yield to the powerful, nor frame his laws to gratify those who had chosen him; rather, where it was best, he brought in no remedy or innovation, fearing that if he threw the city into utter confusion and turmoil he would be too weak afterward to restore and refit it
to the best condition; but what he hoped he could persuade men to accept, and what he could compel those who would submit to endure, this he did, joining together, as he himself says, force and justice. (Solon, fr. 36.14 Bergk.) Hence, when he was later asked whether he had given the Athenians the best laws, he said, "The best of those they would have accepted." As for what modern writers say — that the Athenians veil the harshness of things with pleasant and kindly names, giving them charming euphemisms —
calling prostitutes "companions," tributes "contributions," garrisons of cities "guard-posts," and the prison a "chamber" — this device, it seems, was first Solon's, who named the cancellation of debts a "shaking-off of burdens." For this was the first measure of state he enacted, writing that existing debts should be released, and that for the future no one should lend on the security of the body.
Yet some have written — among them Androtion — that the poor were relieved and content not through a cancellation of debts but through a moderation of interest, and that this benevolent act was called the "shaking-off of burdens," along with the increase of measures and the raising of the value of coinage that came with it. For he made the mina consist of a hundred drachmas, whereas before it had been seventy-three, so that though debtors paid back the same number, its actual worth was less, and thus those settling their debts gained greatly while those receiving payment suffered no harm at all.
But most writers, taken together, say that the "shaking-off of burdens" consisted in a wholesale abolition of debts, and the poems agree with this view rather more. For Solon takes pride in these lines, that he removed the boundary-markers fixed in many places over the previously mortgaged land: "formerly enslaved, but now free" (Solon, fr. 36.4-5 Bergk); and that of the citizens who had been sold abroad for money, some he brought back from foreign lands, no longer speaking the Attic tongue, as men who had wandered far and wide, while others held here in shameful servitude (fr. 36.9-12 Bergk) he says he made free.
It is said that a most distressing thing happened to him as a result of that action. For when he set his mind on cancelling the debts and was seeking suitable arguments and a fitting way to begin, he shared his intent with those of his friends whom he most trusted and relied upon — Conon, Clinias, and Hipponicus — namely that he did not intend to redistribute the land, but had decided to cancel debts. These men, seizing the opportunity ahead of everyone else, at once borrowed large sums of money from the wealthy and bought up great tracts of land.
Then, when the decree was issued, they enjoyed the produce of the properties while not repaying the money to those who had lent it, and thereby brought great blame and slander upon Solon, as though he were not a fellow victim of the wrong but a partner in it. This charge, however, was soon dispelled thanks to a sum of five talents; it came to light that this was the amount he himself had loaned out, and he was the very first to cancel it under his own law. Some say fifteen talents, among them Polyzelus the Rhodian. His friends, however, continued to be called "debt-dodgers."
He pleased neither side, but distressed the wealthy by annulling their contracts, and distressed the poor even more, because he did not carry out a redistribution of the land as they had hoped, nor did he, like Lycurgus, make everyone entirely equal in their manner of life. But Lycurgus, being eleventh in descent from Heracles and having reigned many years over Lacedaemon, had great prestige, friends, and power to support what he had rightly determined for the constitution, and by using force more than persuasion — so much so that his eye was struck out — he achieved the greatest thing for the safety and harmony of the city: that none of its citizens should be either poor or rich;
Solon, however, did not attain this in his constitution, being a man of the people and of the middle rank, yet he applied no less than the power he actually possessed, setting out solely from the citizens' willingness and trust in him. That he offended most people, who had expected other things, he himself has said of them: "At first they had vain notions, and now, angry with me, they all look at me sidelong, as at an enemy." (Solon, fr. 34 Bergk.) And yet he says that if any other had had the same power, he would not have restrained the people, nor stopped, before he had stirred it up and skimmed off the cream, leaving the milk. (Solon; Aristotle, Ath. Pol. 12.5)
Soon, however, perceiving where their advantage lay, they let go of their private grievances and offered a common sacrifice, naming the sacrifice the "Seisachtheia," and they proclaimed Solon corrector of the constitution and lawgiver, entrusting to him not some things and not others, but all things alike — magistracies, assemblies, courts, councils — and bidding him fix the property qualification, the number, and the term of each of these, dissolving or preserving of the existing and established institutions whatever he thought fit.
First, then, he abolished all of Draco's laws except those concerning murder, because of their harshness and the severity of their penalties. For nearly every offender alike faced the single penalty of death, with the result that men found guilty merely of laziness were executed, and those caught pilfering vegetables or fruit received the same punishment as temple-robbers and killers.
For this reason Demades later won approval by saying that Draco had written his laws in blood, not in ink. Draco himself, they say, when asked why he had set death as the penalty for most offenses, answered that he considered the small ones deserving of it, and for the great ones he had no greater penalty to give.
Second, Solon, wishing to leave all the offices, as they were, in the hands of the wealthy, but to mix in the rest of the constitution, in which the common people had had no share, took the property assessments of the citizens, and those who made five hundred measures, dry and liquid combined, he ranked first and called "men of the five-hundred-measure class"; second, those able to keep a horse or make three hundred measures,
and these were called those "paying the cavalry rate"; those of the third assessment were named "yoke-men," whose measure of both together was two hundred. All the rest were called "laborers," to whom he gave no office to hold, but they took part in the constitution only by joining in the assembly and sitting in judgment. This at first seemed nothing, but later proved to be of the greatest importance; for most disputes came before the jurors. Indeed, whatever cases he assigned to the magistrates to judge, he likewise granted, in those very matters, appeals to the court to anyone who wished.
It is also said that by writing the laws rather obscurely, and giving them many possible interpretations, he increased the power of the courts; for since people could not settle their disputes by the laws themselves, it followed that they always needed judges, and brought every point of contention before them, since these were in a sense masters of the laws.
He himself notes his own estimation of this in these words: "To the people I gave as much power as suffices, neither taking away their honor nor reaching out for more; and for those who had power and were admired for their wealth, I took care that they should suffer nothing unseemly. I stood, holding a mighty shield over both, and allowed neither side to win an unjust victory." (Solon, fr. 5 Bergk; Aristotle, Ath. Pol. 12.1.)
Yet, thinking he must still further support the weakness of the many, he granted to every man the right to seek redress on behalf of one who had been wronged. For if one man was struck, forced, or injured, it was open to anyone able and willing to indict the wrongdoer and prosecute him, the lawgiver rightly accustoming the citizens, as parts of one body, to feel and suffer together with one another. A saying of his that agrees with this law is remembered: when asked, it seems, which city was best governed, he replied, "That one in which those who are not wronged press charges and punish the wrongdoers no less than those who are wronged."
Having established the Council of the Areopagus from those who had held office year by year, of which he himself was also a member by virtue of having held office, and observing further that the people were swelling with pride and growing bold from the release of debts, he set up a second council besides, choosing a hundred men from each of the four tribes, whom he appointed to deliberate in advance for the people and to allow nothing to be brought before the assembly without prior deliberation.
He appointed the upper council to watch over everything and to act as protector of the statutes, believing that the state, held as it were by two anchors in its pair of councils, would be tossed about less and would keep its citizens steadier. Most writers, then, say that Solon established the Council of the Areopagus, as has been said; and it seems to support them strongly that nowhere does Draco speak of or name "Areopagites," but always addresses the "ephetae" concerning cases of murder.
The thirteenth axon of Solon contains the eighth of his laws, written in these very words: "Those who were disenfranchised before Solon's archonship are to be restored to their rights, except those who had been condemned either by the Areopagus, or by the ephetae, or before the kings in the Prytaneum, on a charge of murder or slaughter, or for tyranny, and who were in exile at the time this decree was published."
This again shows that the Council of the Areopagus existed before Solon's archonship and legislation. For who could those men be, condemned in the Areopagus before Solon's time, if it was Solon who first granted that body its judicial authority? Unless, by Zeus, there has been some obscurity or omission in the text, so that those convicted on the charges which the Areopagites, ephetae, and Prytanes now judge, at the time this decree was published, remained disenfranchised, while the others were restored to their rights. This point, then, the reader may examine for himself.
Among his other laws, the most peculiar and paradoxical is the one commanding that whoever, in time of civil strife, took neither side should be disenfranchised. He wishes, it seems, that a man should not remain untouched or unfeeling toward the common good, securing his own affairs and priding himself on not sharing in the suffering or sickness of his country, but should from the outset attach himself to those acting for the better and more just cause, sharing the danger and giving help, rather than waiting in safety to see which side prevails.
Strange and even absurd, too, appears the law concerning the heiress: that if the man who has become her master and guardian according to law is himself unable to have intercourse with her, she is to be mated by the nearest kinsman of the husband. Some say this is rightly aimed at those who, unable to have relations with her, take heiresses for the sake of money and use the law to do violence to nature. For, seeing that the heiress may consort with whomever she wishes, they will either give up the marriage or keep her in disgrace, paying the penalty for their greed and insolence.
It is also well judged that the heiress should be given not to any man at all, but to whichever of her husband's kinsmen she wishes to consort with, so that the child born may be a member of the household and share in the family line. It contributes to this same end that the bride is shut in together with the bridegroom after eating a quince, and that the man who has taken her is required to come to the heiress at least three times each month. For even if no children should result, still this is a mark of honor from a husband toward a virtuous wife, and a token of affection that removes many of the vexations that gather from time to time, and does not allow their differences to turn into complete estrangement.
From other marriages he removed dowries, ordaining that the bride bring only three garments and household furnishings worth little, and nothing beyond that. He did not want marriage to resemble a transaction of hire or sale, but wished the union of husband and wife to arise for begetting children, for mutual affection, and for love. Dionysius, when his mother asked to be given in marriage to one of the citizens, said that his tyranny had let him override the city's statutes, yet he could not compel nature's laws by contriving a marriage that ran against the natural order of age;
and in cities this disorder ought not to be allowed, nor should one countenance untimely and graceless unions that serve no purpose and reach no fitting end of marriage. Rather, to an old man taking a young wife, a sensible magistrate or lawgiver might say what was said to Philoctetes: "Fine indeed is the marriage you are making, poor wretch" (an uncertain author, Philoctetes; Nauck, Trag. Graec. Fr. [2], p. 841) — and finding a young man grown sleek from intercourse in the chamber of a rich old woman, like a partridge, he should transplant him to live with a young bride in need of a husband. So much, then, for these matters.
Solon is also praised for the law forbidding one to speak ill of the dead. Reverence toward those who have passed on is a mark of piety, leaving the absent unassailed is simple justice, and doing away with the endless renewal of grudges is sound policy. He forbade speaking ill of the living at temples, in courts, in public offices, and during the viewing of games, setting a penalty of three drachmas to be paid to the private party and two more to the public treasury. For never to master one's anger is uneducated and unrestrained, and to do so everywhere is difficult, indeed for some impossible; a law must be framed with regard to what is possible, if it means to punish a few usefully rather than many uselessly.
He also won approval for his law on wills. Previously it was not permitted, but the property and estate of the deceased had to remain within his family; but Solon, if a man had no children, allowed him to give his own possessions to whomever he wished, thus honoring friendship above kinship and personal choice above compulsion, and making property truly the possession of its owners.
Yet he did not grant such gifts freely or without qualification, but only if the man were not compelled by illness, drugs, imprisonment, necessity, or the persuasion of a wife—rightly and fittingly holding that being persuaded away from what is best is no different from being compelled by force, and putting deception in the same category as compulsion, and pleasure in the same category as pain, since both are equally capable of driving a man out of his right judgment.
He also imposed a law on women's excursions, mournings, and festivals, checking disorder and excess: a woman going out was to wear no more than three garments, carry no more than an obol's worth of food or drink, nor a basket larger than a cubit, and was not to travel by night except in a wagon with a lamp burning before it. He abolished the lacerating of mourners, the ritualized dirge, and the wailing of one person over another's funeral.
He did not allow the sacrifice of an ox at the tomb, nor the burial of more than three garments with the dead, nor visiting the tombs of others except at the funeral itself. Most of these practices are likewise forbidden by our own laws; but ours add that those who do such things are to be punished by the women-overseers, on the grounds that they are caught up in unmanly and womanish passions and errors regarding mourning.
Seeing that the city was constantly filling up with people streaming in from everywhere to Attica in safety, while most of the land was poor and worthless, and that those who used the sea were not accustomed to bring anything in return to those who had nothing to give, he turned the citizens toward the crafts, and wrote a law that a son should not be compelled to support a father who had not taught him a trade.
For Lycurgus, ruling a city free of foreign crowds and possessing a country large enough for far more people than it had—twice as many again, according to Euripides—and above all a mass of helots, which it was better not to leave idle but always to wear down and keep humbled by toil, surrounding Lacedaemon as it did, it was well for him to free the citizens from burdensome and menial occupations and keep them under arms, learning and practicing this one skill alone.
But Solon, fitting his laws to the actual circumstances rather than forcing circumstances to fit his laws, and seeing that the nature of the land could barely support those who farmed it, and could not sustain an idle, leisured crowd, gave standing to the crafts, and appointed the Council of the Areopagus to oversee where each man got his livelihood, and to punish the idle.
This next measure was even more severe: that fathers should not be compelled to support children born of a courtesan, as Heraclides of Pontus records. For a man who disregards what is honorable in marriage clearly does not marry for the sake of children but is led by pleasure alone to take a wife, and he has already received his payment, and he leaves himself no right to reproach the children so born, since he has made the very fact of their birth a disgrace to them.
In general, Solon's laws concerning women seem to contain the greatest inconsistency. He granted the right to kill an adulterer caught in the act; but if a man abducts and rapes a free woman, he set the penalty at a hundred drachmas; and if he acts as a procurer, twenty drachmas—except in the case of those women who sell themselves openly, meaning the courtesans, for these openly go to those who pay them.
Moreover, he does not permit a man to sell his daughters or sisters, except if he catches a virgin who has had relations with a man. Yet it is inconsistent to punish the same act harshly and without mercy in one case, and lightly and almost playfully in another, fixing a trivial fine; unless it was that, since currency was then scarce in the city, the difficulty of procuring it made the monetary penalties heavy.
In the valuations set for sacrifices, a sheep and a drachma are reckoned equal to a medimnus; the victor at the Isthmian games was to be given a hundred drachmas, the victor at the Olympic games five hundred; whoever killed a wolf received five drachmas as reward, and one drachma for a wolf cub—sums which Demetrius of Phalerum explains corresponded, respectively, to what an ox and what a sheep then cost. For the prices which he fixes in the sixteenth of his tablets for choice sacrificial animals are likely to be many times higher, though even those, by our present standards, are cheap.
It was an old Athenian custom to make war on wolves, since the land was better suited to pasture than to farming. And there are some who say that the tribes were named not after the sons of Ion, but after the occupations into which the population was first divided—the fighting class called Hoplitai, the working class Ergadeis; and of the remaining two, Geleontes the farmers, and Aigikoreis those occupied with pasture and flocks.
Since the country was not well supplied with water, having neither ever-flowing rivers nor lakes nor abundant springs, but most people used dug wells, he wrote a law requiring anyone living within a hippikon of a public well—the hippikon measuring four stades—to draw from it, while those farther off were to seek their own supply; but if a man dug down ten fathoms on his own ground and struck no water there, he was permitted to fetch six choes daily from a neighbor's well. For he thought it right to help against real need, not to supply resources for idleness. He also set the measurements for plantings with great expertise,
ordering that those planting anything else in a field should keep five feet from a neighbor's land, but those planting a fig tree or an olive, nine feet. For these reach further with their roots, and are not harmless neighbors to all plants, but draw away nourishment and give off an emanation harmful to some. He allowed anyone who wished to dig pits and trenches, keeping back from his neighbor's land a distance equal to the depth dug; and anyone setting up beehives was to keep three hundred feet from hives already established by another.
Of the produce of the land he permitted only olive oil to be exported to foreigners, and forbade the export of anything else; and he ordered the archon to pronounce curses against those who exported other goods, or else himself pay a hundred drachmas to the public treasury. This is the first tablet that contains this law. One need not think it altogether implausible, then, when some say that the export of figs was also once forbidden, and that those who informed against exporters, by pointing them out, were called sycophants ('fig-showers'). He also wrote a law on damage done by four-footed animals, in which he orders that a dog that has bitten someone be handed over bound with a collar three cubits long—a clever precaution for safety.
The law concerning naturalized citizens also presents difficulty, in that it does not grant citizenship except to those who are permanently exiled from their own homeland, or to whole families who move to Athens to practice a trade. They say he did this not so much to drive away others as to invite these people to Athens with the assurance of a firm share in citizenship, and at the same time because he considered trustworthy those who had lost their own country through necessity, and those who had left it by deliberate choice.
Peculiar to Solon too is his provision on public maintenance at the state's expense, which he himself called 'dining alongside.' For he does not allow the same man to be fed at public expense often, but if one to whom it is due is unwilling, he punishes him—regarding the one case as greed, the other as contempt for the common good.
He decreed that all his laws should remain binding for a century; they were inscribed on wooden tablets mounted in rotating frames, small remnants of which were still preserved in my own time in the Prytaneum; and they were called, as Aristotle says, kyrbeis. And Cratinus the comic poet says somewhere: 'By Solon and Draco, whose tablets men now use to roast their barley.'
Some say that specifically those tablets containing sacred matters and sacrifices were called kyrbeis, and the rest axones. The council swore a common oath to uphold Solon's laws, and each of the thesmothetai swore individually at the stone in the marketplace, declaring that if he transgressed any of the ordinances, he would dedicate a gold statue of his own weight at Delphi.
Noticing how uneven the month was, and that the moon's course did not line up exactly either with the sun's setting or its rising, but often on the same day both overtook and passed the sun, he ordered that this day itself be called 'old and new,' considering the portion before the conjunction to belong to the ending month, and the remainder already to the beginning one—being, it seems, the first to understand correctly Homer's words, 'of the month waning' and 'of the month rising'; and he called the following day the new moon. And the days after the twentieth he numbered not by adding but by subtracting and counting down, just as he observed the light of the moon, down to the thirtieth.
When the laws had been introduced, some people came to Solon every day, praising or blaming them or advising him to insert or remove something from what was written; and very many questioned him closely, asking him to explain and clarify the meaning and intent of each provision,
seeing that to act on these requests would be strange, and not to act would give offense, and wishing altogether to escape these difficulties and evade the citizens' fault-finding and captiousness (for in great undertakings, as he himself said, it is hard to please everyone), he made a pretext of trading by sea and sailed away, having asked the Athenians for ten years' leave of absence. For he hoped that in that time they would grow accustomed to his laws.
He first arrived in Egypt and stayed there, as he himself says, 'near the outpourings of the Nile at the Canobic shore.' For some time he pursued philosophical study alongside two of the most learned priests, Psenophis from Heliopolis and Sonchis from Sais; and from them, hearing the account of Atlantis, as Plato says, he attempted to bring it to the Greeks in the form of a poem.
Then, sailing to Cyprus, he was received with special affection by a certain Philocyprus, one of the kings there, who held a small city founded by Demophon son of Theseus, near the river Clarius, situated in a place that was strong but otherwise difficult and poor. Solon then persuaded him, since there was a fine plain lying below, to move the city and build it more pleasant and larger.
And being present himself, he took charge of the resettlement, and helped organize it both for the best manner of living and for security, so that many settlers came together to join Philocyprus, and the other kings envied him; and so, in return for the honor to Solon, he renamed the city, formerly called Aepeia, Soloi after him.
And Solon himself recalls this resettlement; for addressing Philocyprus in his elegies, he says: 'Now may you long rule here over the people of Soloi, and dwell in this city with your line; but as for me, may violet-crowned Cypris send me safe in my swift ship from your famous island, and grant favor and good renown to this settlement, and a safe return to my own homeland.'
Some think they can refute, on chronological grounds, his supposed meeting with Croesus, as if it were an invention. But for my part, a story so famous, resting on so many witnesses, and, what is more important, so fitting to Solon's character and worthy of his greatness of mind and wisdom, I do not think I should abandon merely on account of certain so-called chronological canons, which countless scholars, correcting them down to this day, have never managed to bring into agreement with one another.
Now they say that when Solon came to Sardis at Croesus's invitation, he experienced something like what happens to a man from inland coming down to the sea for the first time. That man, seeing river after river, supposes each one to be the sea; and so it was with Solon: making his way through the palace courtyard, he beheld many of the king's men decked out lavishly, and moving about amid a crowd of escorts and spearmen — each one seemed to him to be Croesus, until he was brought before the man himself, who had arrayed about his person every kind of splendor in gems, in dyed robes, in wrought gold that seemed striking or extravagant or enviable, so that he might be seen as the most solemn and gorgeous of spectacles.
But when Solon, standing directly before him, showed no reaction and said nothing of what Croesus expected at the sight, but was plainly, to men of good sense, contemptuous of such tastelessness and pettiness, Croesus ordered his treasure-chambers opened for him, and had him led about and shown the rest of his furnishings and extravagance, though Solon wanted none of it — for Solon by himself sufficed to make his character understood. When Solon had gone round and seen everything, Croesus asked him whether he knew of any man more blessed than himself.
Solon declared that he knew Tellus, a fellow citizen of his, and explained that Tellus, having been a good man, and having left behind well-regarded children, and a life lacking none of life's necessities, had died gloriously, having fought bravely for his country. By now Croesus thought him a strange and boorish fellow, since he did not measure happiness by great silver and gold, but preferred the life and death of a common, private man to so great a power and kingship.
Even so, he asked him again whether, after Tellus, he knew of any other man more fortunate. And again Solon said that he knew Cleobis and Biton, men remarkably devoted to their sister and their mother, who, when the oxen were slow in coming, yoked themselves to their mother's cart and drew her to the temple of Hera, while she was blessed and rejoiced in the sight of the citizens; then, after sacrificing and drinking, they did not rise again the next day, but were found dead, having met a painless and griefless death amid so great a glory,
"But us," said Croesus, now growing angry, "do you not count among any number of the fortunate?" And Solon, wishing neither to flatter him nor to provoke him further, said, "To the Greeks, O king of the Lydians, the god has given a moderate share in other things, and a certain wisdom that is cautious and of the common sort, not royal or splendid; this, by virtue of its moderation, watching life as it is always subject to fortunes of every kind, does not allow us to be puffed up over present goods, nor to marvel at a man's good fortune while that fortune still has time to turn.
"For to each man the future comes on in varied and unforeseen ways; but the one to whom heaven has granted good fortune all the way to the end, this man we consider blessed. To call a man blessed while he still lives and is at risk in life is like proclaiming and crowning a contestant while the contest is still underway — it is uncertain and has no authority." Having said this, Solon took his leave, having pained Croesus, but not having taught him anything.
Now the storyteller Aesop, who happened to have been summoned to Sardis by Croesus and was held in honor there, was troubled that Solon met with no kindness; and urging him, he said, "Solon, one ought to converse with kings as little as possible, or as pleasantly as possible." And Solon replied, "No, by Zeus, but as little as possible, or as well as possible."
So it was that Croesus at that time held Solon in contempt. But when he had joined battle with Cyrus and been defeated, and had lost his city, and, having been taken alive, was about to be burned, and when the pyre had been built he was led up onto it bound, with all the Persians looking on and Cyrus himself present, as far as he could reach and was able with his voice, he cried out three times, "O Solon." Cyrus, astonished, sent men to ask who among men or gods this Solon was, whom he alone called upon in his hopeless circumstances.
And Croesus, hiding nothing, said, "This was one of the wise men among the Greeks, whom I sent for, not wishing to hear or learn anything I lacked, but so that he might become a spectator and witness of that happiness of mine, the loss of which turns out to be a greater evil than the gaining of it was a good. For while it was present it was only talk and reputation, but its reversal has ended, in fact, in terrible sufferings and irreparable disasters.
"And that man, judging present things from the past, told me to look to the end of life, and not to grow bold and insolent on the strength of unstable expectations." When this was reported to Cyrus, being a wiser man than Croesus and seeing Solon's point borne out by what now lay plainly before him, he freed Croesus outright and went on honoring him for the rest of his life. And Solon gained the reputation, by a single utterance, of having both saved one king and instructed another.
Meanwhile, back home, the citizens had once more split into rival factions during Solon's time away. Lycurgus stood at the head of the men of the Plain, Megacles son of Alcmaeon at the head of the men of the Coast, and Pisistratus at the head of the men of the Hills, among whom was the laboring crowd, who were especially resentful of the rich. As a result, though the city still made use of the laws, everyone already expected and longed for a different arrangement of affairs, not hoping for equality, but for gaining more in the change and utterly prevailing over their rivals.
Such being the state of affairs, Solon, on returning to Athens, was held in reverence and honor by all, but was no longer able or willing, given his advanced age, to speak and act publicly the way he once had. Instead, meeting privately with the leading men of the factions, he tried to reconcile and bring them together, with Pisistratus seeming to pay him the most attention. For Pisistratus had a certain persuasive and winning manner in conversation, was helpful to the poor, and was fair and moderate in his enmities.
And even the qualities he did not naturally possess, he imitated, and was trusted for them even more than those who actually had them — as a cautious and orderly man, and one especially devoted to equality, and displeased if anyone should disturb the present order or reach for revolution. By these means he deceived the majority. But Solon soon saw through him, being the very first to grasp what he was up to; yet he did not hate him, but tried to soften and admonish him, saying to him and to others that if someone could remove the love of being first from his soul and cure his desire for tyranny, there would be no man more naturally suited to virtue, nor a better citizen.
When Thespis and his followers were just beginning to set tragedy in motion, and the novelty of the thing was drawing the crowds, though it had not yet been brought into competitive contest, Solon, who was by nature fond of listening and learning, and even more so in old age, as he passed his time in leisure and amusement and, by Zeus, in drinking and music, went to watch Thespis himself acting, as was the custom of the old poets.
After the performance, he addressed him and asked whether he was not ashamed to tell such great lies in front of so many people. When Thespis replied that there was nothing terrible in saying and doing such things in play, Solon struck the ground hard with his staff and said, "Soon enough, though, if we praise and honor this kind of play, we shall find it in our contracts."
When Pisistratus, having wounded himself, came into the marketplace riding in a chariot, and provoked the people, claiming that he had been plotted against by his enemies on account of his political stance, and had many people indignant and shouting in his support, Solon came up close and, standing beside him, said, "This is not a fine performance, son of Hippocrates, of Homer's Odysseus; for you are doing to deceive your fellow citizens what that man did to deceive his enemies, by disfiguring himself."
After this the majority of the people were ready to fight on Pisistratus's behalf, and the people assembled in the assembly. When Ariston proposed that fifty club-bearers be granted to Pisistratus as a bodyguard, Solon rose in opposition and said many things similar to what he had written in his poems: "Look to the tongue and to the words of a smooth-talking man. Each one of you walks in the footsteps of a fox, but all of you together have an empty mind."
Seeing the poor eager to gratify Pisistratus and clamoring for it, and the rich fleeing and shrinking back in cowardice, he left, remarking that in wisdom he surpassed one group and in courage the other: the first simply failed to grasp what was happening, while the second grasped it but were too fearful to resist the tyranny. Having ratified the decree, the people no longer quibbled at all over the number of club-bearers, but openly allowed Pisistratus to maintain and gather as many as he wished, until he seized the Acropolis.
When this had happened and the city was thrown into confusion, Megacles at once fled along with the rest of the Alcmaeonids. Solon, though by now a very old man and without supporters, nevertheless came forward into the marketplace and spoke to the citizens, partly reproaching their lack of resolve and their softness, and partly urging and calling on them still not to give up their freedom;
and it was then that he spoke the memorable words, that stopping the tyranny before it ever arose would once have cost them far less effort, yet now, with it already formed and grown, uprooting and destroying it was the nobler, weightier task. But since no one heeded him out of fear, he went off to his own house, and taking up his weapons and setting them out before his doors in the narrow street, he said, "For my part, I have given my country and its laws all the help I could."
And for the rest he kept quiet, and though his friends urged him to flee, he paid no heed, but composed poems in which he reproached the Athenians: "If you have suffered grievous things through your own wickedness, do not lay the blame for this upon the gods. For you yourselves built up these men by giving them power, and because of this you have fallen into wretched slavery."
At this, many cautioned him that the tyrant would have him killed, and asked what gave him the confidence to act so recklessly. "On my old age," he said. Yet Pisistratus, once he had gained control of affairs, so thoroughly courted Solon, honoring him and treating him kindly and sending for him, that Solon even became his adviser and approved of many of his actions. Indeed, Pisistratus preserved most of Solon's laws, being the first to abide by them himself and compelling his friends to do the same.
Indeed, when he was summoned on a charge of murder before the Areopagus, though he was already tyrant, he came in orderly fashion to defend himself, but his accuser did not show up. He himself wrote other laws, among them the one requiring that men maimed in war be maintained at public expense. Heraclides claims that Solon had already legislated this earlier on behalf of Thersippus, a man disabled in war, and that Pisistratus was merely following his precedent. But as Theophrastus has recorded, the law concerning idleness was established not by Solon but by Pisistratus, by which he made the countryside more productive and the city more peaceful.
Solon, having taken up a great undertaking concerning an account, whether history or myth, about Atlantis, which he had learned from the priests at Sais as pertaining to the Athenians, gave it up — not, as Plato claims, for want of free time, but rather owing to his advanced years, daunted by how vast the undertaking was. That he in fact had leisure enough to spare is shown by lines of his such as, "Even in old age I keep on learning many things," and, "Now dear to me are the works of the Cyprus-born goddess and of Dionysus and of the Muses, which bring men joys."
But as Plato, eager to work up and adorn the ground of a fair country left empty, yet somehow belonging to him by kinship, set about the subject of Atlantis, he furnished its opening with great gateways and enclosures and courtyards such as no other account, myth, or poem ever had,
but having begun late, he left his work unfinished at his death, and the more delight what he wrote affords, the more grief it causes for what was left undone. For just as the city of the Athenians has its unfinished Olympieion, so the wisdom of Plato, among many fine works, has this one unfinished work, the Atlantic tale.
Solon lived on after Pisistratus began his tyranny — according to Heraclides of Pontus, for a considerable time, but according to Phanias of Eresus, for less than two years. For Pisistratus began his tyranny in the archonship of Comias, and according to Phanias, Solon's death fell in the year Hegestratus held the archonship, the successor to Comias.
As for the story that his ashes, after his cremation, were scattered around the island of Salamis, this is altogether implausible and fabulous because of its strangeness, yet it has been recorded both by other notable men and by the philosopher Aristotle.

======== Poplicola ========

Being such a man as this, we compare Solon with Poplicola, a name the Roman people later devised for him as an honor; before that he was called Publius Valerius, and was believed to descend from that early Valerius who, more than any other man, turned Romans and Sabines from enemies into one united people: for it was he who chiefly persuaded the kings to meet on common ground and reconciled them.
Valerius, related to him by family, as they say, was already a distinguished man while Rome was still ruled by kings, both for his eloquence and his wealth; the one he always used rightly and with frankness on behalf of justice, and from the other he supplied those in need freely and generously, so that it was clear at once that, should a democracy come about, he would take the leading place.
But when the people, hating and burdened by Tarquinius Superbus—who had neither taken power honorably, but impiously and unlawfully, nor exercised it in kingly fashion, but with insolence and tyranny—took the suffering of Lucretia, who destroyed herself after being violated, as the beginning of their revolt, Lucius Brutus, taking hold of the business of change, went first to Valerius, and, finding him most eager, joined with him in casting out the kings,
so long as the people were expected to elect one man as general in place of the king, Valerius kept quiet, thinking it more fitting for Brutus to rule, since he had become the leader of their liberty; but when the very name of monarchy became distasteful, and it seemed the people would bear the office more easily if it were divided, and they proposed and called for two men, Valerius, hoping to be chosen along with Brutus and to hold the consulship jointly with him, was disappointed.
For chosen as colleague to Brutus, against Brutus's own wish, instead of Valerius, was Tarquinius Collatinus, the husband of Lucretia, a man in no way superior to Valerius in virtue; but the powerful men, still fearing the kings, who were making many attempts from outside and working to soften the city, wanted to have as general the man most intensely hostile to them, as one who would not yield.
Valerius, then, indignant that he was not trusted to be doing everything for the sake of the fatherland, simply because he had suffered no private wrong from the tyrants, withdrew from the senate, gave up his advocacy, and abandoned public business altogether, so that he gave the many cause for talk and worry, fearing that out of anger he might join the kings and overturn affairs and the city, which was in a precarious state:
but when Brutus, harboring suspicion also of certain others, wished to bind the senate by oath over sacrificial victims and announced a day for it, Valerius came down to the forum in high spirits, and was the first to swear that he would yield nothing nor give way to the Tarquins, but would fight with all his strength for liberty, giving pleasure to the senate and courage at the same time to the magistrates. And at once his deeds confirmed the oath.
For envoys came from Tarquinius bearing letters designed to win over the people, and reasonable-sounding words, by which they thought most of all to corrupt the many, claiming that the king had let go of his pride and now wished only for moderate terms. When the consuls thought these envoys should be brought before the multitude, Valerius would not allow it, but opposed and prevented it, so that no occasion or pretext for revolution should arise among poor men who were more burdened by the war than by the tyranny.
After this other envoys came, saying that Tarquinius would give up his claim to kingship and cease making war, but demanding the return of the money and property belonging to himself and his friends and household, from which they might live in their exile. Many were inclined to yield, especially Collatinus, who spoke in favor of it; but Brutus, a man unbending and harsh in temper, rushed out into the forum, calling his colleague a traitor, for granting the resources of war and tyranny to men for whom it would truly be terrible to vote provisions for their flight.
When the citizens had assembled, a private man, Gaius Minucius, spoke first before the people, urging Brutus on and exhorting the Romans to see to it that the money, remaining with them, should fight against the tyrants rather than, going with them, fight against the Romans. And indeed it seemed right to the Romans, who held their liberty, for the sake of which they had been at war, not to let go of peace for the sake of money, but to cast out this too along with the tyrants. Now for Tarquinius the matter of the money mattered least; the demand was at once a test of the people and a device for treachery,
and this the envoys carried out, staying on under the pretext of the money, saying that some of it was to be sold, some kept, some sent off, until they had corrupted two households reckoned among the good and noble—that of the Aquillii, which had three senators, and that of the Vitellii, which had two. All of these were, on their mothers' side, nephews of Collatinus the consul, and the Vitellii besides had another tie of kinship with Brutus. For Brutus had their sister as his wife, and by her several children:
of these, two who were of age and were at once kinsmen and companions, the Vitellii won over and persuaded to join in the treachery, and, by mingling themselves with the great house of the Tarquins and its royal hopes, to be rid of their father's foolishness and harshness—calling his harshness his inflexibility toward wrongdoers, and his foolishness, as it seems, a pretense and a mask he had long employed, for safety's sake, against the tyrants; nor did he later escape that reputation.
So when the young men had been won over and came to speech with the Aquillii, it seemed right to all of them to swear a great and terrible oath, pouring out a libation of a slaughtered man's blood and touching his entrails, and upon this they gathered together in the house of the Aquillii. The house in which they were to do this was, as one would expect, deserted and dark. But a servant named Vindicius, unnoticed by them, had hidden himself inside—not out of any plot
or foreknowledge of what was to come, but happening to be inside, and, seeing them approaching in haste, took fright and hid himself, setting a chest before him, so that he became both a spectator of what was done and a listener to what was planned. It seemed good to them to kill the consuls, and, writing letters declaring this, they gave them to the envoys to carry to Tarquinius; for the envoys were lodging there, having become guest-friends of the Aquillii, and were then present at the conspiracy.
When they had done this and departed, Vindicius slipped out secretly, but he did not know what to do with what had befallen him; he was at a loss, thinking it terrible—as indeed it was—to denounce, to a father, Brutus, the unspeakable crime of his sons, or, to an uncle, Collatinus, that of his nephews, and thinking no private citizen of the Romans
trustworthy enough for secrets of such weight. Yet, unable in any way to keep quiet, driven by his knowledge of the deed, he made his way somehow to Valerius, drawn especially by the man's openness and humanity, since he was accessible to all who were in need, always kept his house open, and never turned away anyone's word or want, however humble.
So when Vindicius came up to him and told him everything—only Marcus his brother and his wife being present—Valerius, struck with fear, no longer let the man go, but shut him up in a chamber and set his own wife to guard the doors; his brother he ordered to surround the royal residence and seize the letters, if possible, and keep watch on the servants, while he himself, accompanied by his usual crowd of clients and friends and a sizable escort, made his way to the dwelling of the Aquillii, finding them absent.
So, no one expecting it, he burst in through the doors and came upon the letters lying where the envoys were lodging. While he was doing this, the Aquillii came running, and, meeting him at the doors, tried to snatch away the letters. His men resisted, and, throwing their cloaks around the necks of the Aquillii, by force and with difficulty, pushing and being pushed, drove them through the narrow streets into the forum. The same thing was happening at the royal residence at the same time, Marcus seizing other letters carried among the baggage, and dragging as many of the king's men as he could into the forum.
When the consuls had quieted the uproar and, at Valerius's command, Vindicius was brought out from the house, and, after the accusation was made, the letters were read, and the men dared say nothing in reply, there was dejection and silence among the rest, while a few, wishing to please Brutus, spoke of exile. Collatinus, too, in tears, gave them some hope of leniency, and Valerius was silent; but Brutus, calling each of his sons by name, said, "Come, Titus," "Come, Tiberius, why do you not answer the charge?"
When, though asked three times, they answered nothing, he turned his face away toward the attendants and said, "The rest is now your work." And they at once seized the young men, tore off their garments, drew their hands behind them, and lashed their bodies with rods,
and while the rest could not bear to look on or endure it, he alone, it is said, neither turned his eyes elsewhere nor softened by any pity the anger and severity set upon his face, but gazed grimly at his sons as they were punished, until, stretching them out on the ground, they cut off their heads with an axe. Having thus dealt with the rest for the sake of his fellow consul, he rose and departed, having done a deed neither worthy to be praised by those willing to praise it nor possible to condemn.
For either the height of virtue raised his soul beyond passion, or the greatness of his passion beyond feeling. Neither is a small thing, nor a human one, but either divine or bestial. It is right that judgment should follow the man's reputation rather than that his virtue be disbelieved through the weakness of the one judging. For the Romans think the founding of the city was not so great a deed of Romulus as was Brutus's creation and establishment of their government.
When he had then departed from the forum, for a long time astonishment and horror and silence held everyone at what had been done; but at Collatinus's softness and hesitation the Aquillii took courage, and asked to be given time to make their defense, and that Vindicius, being a slave, be handed back to them, and not remain with their accusers.
Collatinus was willing to grant this and was dissolving the assembly on these terms, but Valerius was unable either to release the man, mingled as he was with the crowd around him, or to allow the people to let the traitors go free. In the end, laying hands upon the bodies, he called out to Brutus, and cried out that Collatinus was doing a terrible thing, if, having thrust upon his colleague the necessity of killing his own sons, he now thought he should himself grant favor to the women by handing back the traitors and enemies of the fatherland to them.
When the consul grew angry and ordered Vindicius led away, the attendants pushed through the crowd and laid hold of the man, striking those who tried to take him away; but Valerius's friends stood their ground and defended him, and the people cried out, demanding that Brutus be present. So he came back again, and, when silence fell for him, said that as for his own sons he himself had been a sufficient judge, but concerning the others he gave the vote to the citizens, who were free: let whoever wished speak and persuade the people. No further words were needed, however; once the vote was given, they were all condemned and beheaded.
Collatinus, it seems, was already under some suspicion because of his kinship with the kings, and men were also displeased with him over his second name, since they wished to purge away all trace of Tarquinius. When this affair too fell out as it did, altogether resentful, he willingly gave up the office and quietly withdrew from the city. So, when a new election was held, Valerius was brilliantly declared consul, receiving a reward worthy of his zeal—
in return for which, thinking Vindicius too ought to enjoy some benefit, he moved that he be the first freedman to become a citizen at Rome, and to cast his vote assigned to whatever tribe he wished. To the rest of the freedmen it was only later, after a long time, that Appius gave the right to vote for popular favor; but the full act of manumission is called, to this day, "vindicta," they say, because of that Vindicius.
After this they gave over the money of the kings to the Romans to plunder, and razed the house and the estate; and of the finest part of the Campus Martius, which had belonged to Tarquinius, this too they consecrated to the god. It happened to have been just harvested, and, the sheaves still lying there, they thought it not right to thresh them or make use of them because of the consecration, but, running together, carried the bundles down to the river.
In the same way they cut down the trees too and threw them in, leaving the place entirely idle and unfruitful, as an offering to the god. As many things were pushed against one another, all in a mass, the current carried them not far, but where the first things swept together caught against something solid and stuck fast, since what followed had no way through, but became entangled and interwoven, the mass gained strength and took root, growing
by the action of the current; for it brought down much silt, which, settling, provided both nourishment and adhesion, and the waves caused no disturbance, but pressing gently drove everything together into one and molded it. Through its size and stability it gained further size still, taking in the ground most of what the river carried down. This is now a sacred island by the city; it has temples of the gods and walking paths, and is called in the Latin tongue "Between the Two Bridges."
Some, however, record that this happened not when Tarquinius's field was consecrated, but at a later time, when another plot adjoining it was given up by Tarquinia. Tarquinia was a virgin priestess, one of the Vestals, and received in return great honors, among which was that she alone of women should have her testimony accepted, and, though granted leave to marry, she did not accept it. Such is the legendary account of how this came about.
The Tyrrhenians eagerly received Tarquinius, who had given up hope of recovering his throne through treachery, and were bringing him back with a great force. The consuls led the Romans out against them, and formed their battle lines in consecrated ground, one spot named the Arsian Grove, the other known as the Aesuvian Meadow. As they began to close for battle, Arruns, son of Tarquinius, and Brutus, the Roman consul, fell upon each other—not by chance, but out of hatred and rage—
the one as against a tyrant and enemy of the fatherland, the other defending against his exile, and they charged together on their horses. Engaging with more passion than reckoning, they had no regard for themselves and died together, killing one another. So terrible was this opening clash that the battle did not come to any gentler end, but the armies, having done and suffered alike, were separated by a storm.
Valerius was therefore at a loss, not knowing the outcome of the battle, but seeing his soldiers disheartened at the sight of their own dead, yet elated at the sight of the enemy's—so indiscriminate and matched, because of the numbers, had the slaughter been; and yet in each case the losses seen close at hand rather confirmed defeat than did the enemy's losses, guessed at, suggest victory,
and when night came on, such as one would expect after fighting like this, and the camps had settled into quiet, they say the grove was shaken, and from it a great voice rang out, declaring that one more of the Tyrrhenians had died in the battle than of the Romans. And this voice was in truth something divine: for at once it gave the one side courage to raise a great and confident shout, while the Tyrrhenians, seized with fear and thrown into confusion, broke out of their camp and scattered
Most of them were scattered in flight; but those who were left behind, a little fewer than five thousand, the Romans attacked and captured, and plundered the rest. When the dead were counted, the enemy's were found to be thirteen hundred, while the Romans' losses were nearly as many minus one. They say this battle took place the day before the Kalends of March, and Valerius celebrated a triumph for it, riding in on a four-horse chariot, the first of the consuls to do so.
The spectacle presented a solemn and magnificent sight, not one that gave offense or pained those who watched, as some say; for otherwise it would not have inspired such emulation and such ambition, persisting for so many years as it did. They also welcomed the honors Valerius paid to his fellow consul, with which he adorned his colleague's funeral procession and burial.
And he delivered over him a funeral oration, which was so beloved by the Romans and won such favor that from that time it became customary for all good and great men to be eulogized at their deaths by the finest of their fellow citizens. It is said that this funeral oration was even older than the Greek funeral orations, unless this practice too belongs to Solon, as Anaximenes the rhetorician has recorded.
But it was rather for other reasons that they were vexed with Valerius and took offense at him: because Brutus, whom the people regarded as the father of their liberty, had not thought it right to rule alone, but had chosen first one colleague to share his rule and then a second — "whereas this man," they said, "having gathered everything unto himself, is no heir of Brutus's consulship, which belongs to no one, but rather of Tarquin's tyranny."
"And yet what need is there to praise Brutus in word while imitating Tarquin in deed, descending alone, under all the rods and axes together, from a house so great in size that not even the king's house, which Brutus tore down, was so great?" And indeed Valerius really did dwell in a rather theatrical manner, in a house above the district called Velia, overhanging the Forum and looking down on everything from its height, while being difficult and forbidding to approach from below — so that as he came down, the very shape of his descent seemed lofty and kingly, and the pomp of his escort had a regal weight to it.
How great a good it is, then, in office and in great affairs, to have ears open to frank speech rather than flattery, and to true words, he demonstrated. For when he heard that he seemed to most people to be doing wrong, as his friends reported to him, he did not contend against it nor grow angry, but quickly gathered together many workmen, while it was still night, and tore down the house and razed it entirely to the ground,
so that when day came the Romans, seeing this and gathering together, admired and marveled at the man's greatness of spirit, but were grieved over the house and longed for its size and beauty, as though it were a person unjustly destroyed through envy, and grieved for their magistrate, as though he were now without a hearth, living in another's house. For his friends took Valerius in until the people gave him a plot of ground and built for him a house more modest than the other, where now stands the temple called Vica Pota.
Wishing not only himself but also his office to be, instead of fearsome, gentle and endearing to the many, he released the axes from the rods, and when he came before the assembly he lowered the very rods themselves before the people and inclined them down, making much of this outward show of democracy — and this the magistrates preserve even to this day.
It escaped the notice of the many that he was not, as they supposed, making himself humble, but rather was cutting down and curtailing envy by this moderation, while adding to himself as much greatness of power as he seemed to be taking away from his authority — the people submitting to him with pleasure and bearing it willingly, so that they even named him Publicola; and the name signifies "one who cares for the people": and this prevailed more than his ancestral name, which we too shall use for the rest of our account of the man's life.
He allowed the consulship to be sought and canvassed for by those who wished it; but before his colleague's installation, not knowing who would be chosen, and fearing opposition arising from some envy or ignorance, he used his sole rule for the finest and greatest of political measures. For first he filled up the senate, which had grown thin in numbers, since some had died earlier under Tarquin, and others recently in the battle.
Those enrolled by him are said to have numbered one hundred and sixty-four. After this he wrote laws, of which the most powerful he made those chief ones giving the people the right to appeal from the consuls to the people on behalf of one on trial; the second, condemning to death those who assumed office which the people had not granted;
a third after these, which came to the aid of the poor, by relieving the citizens of their taxes and making everyone more eager to take up their trades. And the law written against those who disobeyed the consuls seemed no less favorable to the people, and to have been written more for the many than for the powerful; for he set the penalty for disobedience at five oxen and two sheep.
For the value of a sheep was then ten obols, of an ox a hundred, since the Romans at that time did not yet make much use of coined money, but flourished through flocks and cattle-raising. That is why even now they call their properties "peculia," from the word for sheep ("pecus"), and on their oldest coins they stamped an ox or a sheep or a pig. And they gave their children names like Suillus and Bubulcus and Caprarius and Porcius: calling goats "caprae" and pigs "porci."
Though in these matters he showed himself so favorable to the people and moderate as a lawgiver, in the matter of punishment he went beyond moderation. For he wrote a law that anyone might, without trial, kill the man who sought to seize tyranny, and made the killer clean of murder, if he could produce proof of the wrongdoing. For since it was not possible for a man attempting so great a thing to escape everyone's notice, but it was possible, once noticed, to seize a position of power before he could be brought to trial — a trial which the wrongdoing itself does away with — he gave the one with the power to act first against the wrongdoer.
He was also praised for his law concerning the treasury. Because the war made it needful that citizens draw on their own estates and contribute funds, and since he wished neither to lay hands on the administration of it himself, nor to allow his friends to do so, nor in general for public money to pass into a private man's house, he designated the temple of Saturn as the treasury, which they continue to use to this day, and gave the people the right to appoint two of the young men as quaestors,
and the two men first chosen for this office were Publius Veturius and Marcus Minucius, whereupon a great sum of money was collected — for one hundred thirty thousand registered their property — the contribution being remitted for orphaned children and widowed women.
Having managed these matters, he appointed as his own colleague Lucretius, the father of Lucretia, to whom, as he was the elder, he yielded the more commanding rank and handed over the fasces called "first" — and this precedence has remained from that time to us, preserved for the elder colleagues. But since Lucretius died a few days later, when the elections were held again Marcus Horatius was chosen, and he shared office with Publicola for the remainder of the year.
When Tarquin was stirring up a second war against the Romans in Etruria, a great sign is said to have occurred: for while Tarquin was still king and possessed the temple of Capitoline Jupiter, not yet quite completed, whether because of some prophecy or because it simply seemed good to him, he commissioned certain Etruscan craftsmen from Veii to set upon its peak a terracotta chariot; and shortly after he was driven from power,
and when the Etruscans had thrown the modeled four-horse chariot into the kiln, it did not undergo what clay is meant to undergo in fire — to become dense and to shrink as its moisture is dried out — but instead it expanded and swelled and grew to such size and strength and hardness together that it was scarcely possible to remove it, once the roof of the kiln had been dismantled and the walls taken down.
Since it seemed to the seers to be a divine sign of good fortune and power for those with whom the chariot would remain, the people of Veii resolved not to give it up to the Romans when they demanded it, and answered that it belonged to the Tarquins, not to those who had cast the Tarquins out. A few days later they held horse races, and in other respects the spectacle proceeded with its accustomed show and eagerness, but the winning chariot's driver was riding out of the hippodrome at a walk, crowned with the victor's wreath,
when the horses, startled for no visible reason, but by some divine agency or chance, sped off at full speed toward the city of the Romans, carrying their driver with them — for there was nothing he could do by pulling on the reins or trying to calm them, but he was simply swept along, given over to their rush and carried along — until, reaching the Capitol, they threw him out there, by the gate now called the Ratumena. When this happened, the people of Veii, marveling and afraid, allowed the chariot to be given back to the craftsmen.
Tarquin, son of Demaratus, had vowed to dedicate the temple of Capitoline Jupiter while at war with the Sabines, but it was Tarquin Superbus, either son or grandson of the man who made the vow, who built it: he did not manage to consecrate it, but it fell only a little short of completion when Tarquin was driven out. So when it had been entirely finished and had the ornamentation befitting it, Publicola had a keen ambition to perform its consecration.
Many of the powerful men were envious, and were less troubled by his other honors, which he had gained appropriately as a lawgiver and general; but this honor, being foreign to him, they thought should not fall to him as well, and they kept urging and provoking Horatius to lay claim to the consecration. So when a military campaign became necessary for Publicola, they, having voted that Horatius should perform the consecration, led him up to the Capitol, thinking that they would not be able to prevail while Publicola was present.
Some, however, say that it fell to him by lot among the consuls to go on the campaign, unwillingly, and to the other to perform the consecration. It is possible to conjecture about these matters from what happened at the consecration itself. On the Ides of September, which falls around the full moon of the month Metageitnion, when all had assembled at the Capitol,
Horatius, when silence had fallen, having performed the other rites and having laid hold of the doors, as is customary, was pronouncing the words prescribed for the consecration; but the brother of Publicola, Marcus, who had for a long time been standing by the doors watching for his moment, said, "Consul, your son has died in the camp, having fallen ill."
This grieved all who heard it; but Horatius, not in the least disturbed, said only this much: "Throw the corpse then wherever you wish, for I do not accept the mourning," and went on to complete the rest of the consecration. Now the report was not true, but Marcus had lied in order to make Horatius withdraw. The man was admirable, then, for his steadiness of mind, whether he saw through the deception in that brief moment, or whether, believing the report to be true, it did not move him.
It seems that a similar fortune attended the consecration of the second temple as well. For the first, as has been said, Tarquin had built and Horatius had consecrated, and fire destroyed it in the civil wars; the second Sulla erected, but at its consecration the dedication was inscribed to Catulus, since Sulla had died before it.
This one in turn was destroyed in the disturbances under Vitellius, and Vespasian, having enjoyed good fortune in this as in all else, raised the third from beginning to end, and lived to see it completed but did not live to see it destroyed shortly after — so much did he surpass Sulla in good fortune, in that the one died before the dedication of the work, while the other died before its destruction. For at the very moment Vespasian died, the Capitol was burned down.
This fourth temple was both completed and consecrated under Domitian. It is said that Tarquin spent forty thousand pounds of silver on the foundations alone; but the greatest private fortune in Rome in our own day, if reckoned out, would not cover the expense of the gilding of this one, which came to more than twelve thousand talents.
The columns were cut from Pentelic stone, having the most beautiful proportion of thickness to length; for we saw them at Athens. But in Rome, having been cut down again and re-polished, they gained not so much in refinement as they lost in proportion and beauty, appearing hollow and slack.
Yet whoever marveled at the extravagance of the Capitol, if he had seen just one colonnade or basilica or bathhouse or dwelling for the concubines in Domitian's house, would have been moved to say to Domitian something like what Epicharmus said to the wastrel: "You are not a kind man, you have a disease, you delight in giving" — rather, "you are neither pious nor honor-loving; you have a disease, you delight in building," like that Midas of old, wishing everything around him to become gold and stone. So much, then, for these matters,
Tarquin, after the great battle in which he also lost his son, who had fought a duel with Brutus, fled for refuge to Clusium and supplicated Lars Porsenna, a man who possessed the greatest power among the kings of Italy and had a reputation for being good and honor-loving; and he promised to help him. And first he sent to Rome bidding them receive Tarquin back; but when the Romans did not obey, he declared war on them, announcing the time and also the place into which he intended to invade, and arrived with a great force.
Publicola was chosen consul for the second time while absent, and with him Titus Lucretius; and returning to Rome, wishing first to outdo Porsenna in spirit, he founded a city, Sigliuria, though Porsenna was already nearby, and having fortified it at great expense he sent seven hundred settlers there, as one bearing the war lightly and without fear.
Nevertheless, when a sharp assault was made on the wall, the guards were driven out by Porsenna, and in their flight very nearly dragged the enemy along with them into the city. But Publicola rushed out to help before the gates, and joining battle by the river held out against the enemy pressing on him in great numbers, until, struck by severe wounds, he was carried off, borne on a litter, from the battle,
and when the same thing happened to his colleague Lucretius, despair fell upon the Romans, and they saved themselves by flight toward the city; and as the enemy pressed on through the wooden bridge, Rome was in danger of being taken by storm. But first Horatius Cocles, and with him two of the most distinguished men, Herminius and Larcius, stood their ground at the wooden bridge.
Horatius got the surname Cocles in war, from having one of his eyes struck out; or, as some say, because his nose was so flattened and sunk in that there was no division between his eyes and his brows ran together, so that people, wishing to call him Cyclops, had the word slip on their tongues and, through common usage, he came to be called Cocles instead.
This man stood before the bridge and held off the enemy until the men with him had cut down the bridge behind him. Then, throwing himself into the river with his armor on, he swam across, though he reached the far bank having been struck in the buttock by a Tyrrhenian spear.
Poplicola, admiring his courage, immediately proposed that all the Romans should contribute and give him as much food as each of them consumed in a day, and further, as much land as he himself could plow around in a day; and besides this they set up a bronze statue of him in the temple of Hephaestus, consoling with honor the lameness that had come upon the man from his wound.
While Porsina was pressing the city and famine was gripping the Romans, another Tyrrhenian army invaded the countryside on its own account. Poplicola, holding his third consulship, thought it necessary to remain quiet toward Porsina and guard the city, but he went out against the Tyrrhenians, and joining battle, routed them and killed five thousand of them. The story about Mucius has been told by many and in different ways, but it must be told as it is most credibly believed, and by us as well.
He was a man good in every virtue, and best in matters of war. Plotting to kill Porsina, he made his way into the camp wearing Tyrrhenian dress and using a similar accent. Going around the platform where the king was sitting, and not knowing him for certain, but afraid to ask about him, he drew his sword and killed the man he most supposed, among those sitting together, to be the king.
For this he was seized and interrogated; and when a small brazier with fire in it, brought for Porsina who was about to sacrifice, was set before him, he held his right hand over it, and while his flesh was burning stood looking at Porsina with a bold and unflinching face, until the king, astonished, released him and, giving back his sword, held it out from the platform; and Mucius took it with his left hand extended. And on account of this they say he got the surname Scaevola, which means "left-handed."
He said that, having conquered his fear of Porsina, he was conquered by his virtue, and that out of gratitude he was revealing what he would not have confessed under compulsion. "For three hundred Romans," he said, "holding the same resolve as I, are wandering about in your camp watching for their opportunity. I drew the lot and made the first attempt, and I am not troubled by my fortune, having failed to kill a good man, one more fitting to be a friend of the Romans than an enemy."
When Porsina heard this he believed it, and was the more inclined toward a settlement — not so much, it seems to me, out of fear of the three hundred, as out of admiration and wonder at the spirit and virtue of the Romans. This man, whom nearly everyone calls Mucius and Scaevola together, Athenodorus the son of Sandon says, in his work addressed to Octavia the sister of Caesar, was also named Opsigonus.
Poplicola himself, however, thinking Porsina, as an enemy, not so burdensome as he was worth much as a friend and ally of the city, did not shrink from having the matter judged before him against Tarquin, but was confident and repeatedly challenged him to it, confident he could show Tarquin to be the most wicked of men, rightly stripped of his throne. But when Tarquin answered rather harshly that he would accept no one as judge, least of all Porsina, if Porsina, being an ally, changed sides,
Porsina, displeased and condemning him for this, and at the same time his son Arruns begging and pressing on behalf of the Romans, brought the war to an end, on condition that they give up the Tyrrhenian land they had taken and send back the prisoners, receiving in return the deserters; and in addition to this the Romans gave as hostages ten young men of noble birth wearing the purple border, and as many maidens, among whom was Valeria, the daughter of Poplicola.
While this was being arranged, and Porsina had by now laid down all preparation for war on the strength of this pledge of trust, the maidens of the Romans went down to bathe, at a place where a crescent-shaped bank curving around the river made the current especially calm and still. Since they saw no guard, nor anyone passing by except by boat, they were seized with a desire to swim across against the strong current and deep eddies.
Some say that one of them, named Cloelia, rode the crossing on horseback, urging on and encouraging the others who were swimming. When they returned safely to Poplicola, he was not amazed nor pleased, but distressed, because Porsina would appear the lesser in good faith, and the maidens' bold act would be charged as a wrongdoing on the part of the Romans. So he took them and sent them back again to Porsina.
But Tarquin's people, learning of this beforehand, set an ambush for those escorting the girls, and, being more numerous, attacked them at the crossing. Though those escorting the girls fought back, Poplicola's daughter Valeria dashed through the midst of the fighters and escaped, and three servants who broke out with her kept her safe; but as the others were caught up dangerously among the combatants, Arruns, Porsina's son, perceiving this, quickly came to their aid, and when the enemy was put to flight, saved the Romans.
When Porsina saw the maidens brought back, he sought out the one who had begun the deed and had urged on the others. Hearing the name Cloelia, he looked upon her with a kindly and cheerful face, and ordering one of the royal horses to be brought, finely adorned, gave it to her as a gift. This is used as testimony by those who say that Cloelia alone rode the river on horseback.
Others deny this, saying rather that the Tyrrhenian honored her manly courage in general. There stands, for those traveling the Sacred Way toward the Palatine, an equestrian statue of her, which some say is not of Cloelia but of Valeria. Porsina, once reconciled with the Romans, showed the city much further magnanimity besides, and, ordering the Tyrrhenians to take back their arms and nothing else,
he had them abandon the camp, full of much grain and money of every kind, and handed it over to the Romans. For this reason, even down to our own day, when public property is sold, the auctioneers cry first "the goods of Porsina," preserving in memory an everlasting honor for the man's kindness. There also stood a bronze statue of him beside the senate house, simple and archaic in workmanship.
After this, when the Sabines invaded the countryside, Marcus Valerius, brother of Poplicola, was appointed consul, along with Postumius Tubertus. While the greatest matters were being carried out under the judgment and presence of Poplicola, Marcus won two great battles, in the second of which, without losing a single Roman, he killed thirteen thousand of the enemy.
And as a prize for his triumphs he received a house built for him at public expense on the Palatine. And whereas all other houses at that time had their doors opening inward into an entryway, for this house alone they arranged that the outer door should open outward, so that, as it were, by the concession of this honor it might always encroach further upon the public space.
They say that all Greek houses formerly were built this way too, taking this from the comedies, in which those about to go out knock and make noise on their own doors from inside, so that those passing by outside, or standing before the door, might be aware, and not be caught by the doors as they opened outward into the narrow street.
In the following year Poplicola again held the consulship, his fourth. There was expectation of war, with the Sabines and Latins uniting; and at the same time a certain superstitious fear took hold of the city, for all the women then pregnant were miscarrying deformed children, and in the end no birth came to term. Whereupon Poplicola, propitiating Hades according to the Sibylline books, and instituting certain games ordered by the Pythian oracle, and rendering the city's hopes toward the divine more cheerful, now turned his attention to the fears arising from men. For the preparation and combination of the enemy appeared great.
Now there was among the Sabines Appius Clausus, a man powerful in wealth and conspicuous for bodily strength and vigor, but foremost above all in reputation for virtue and skill in speech. And what happens to all great men he did not escape suffering: he was envied. And he gave those who envied him a pretext, by putting a stop to the war and increasing the power of Rome, on the charge of aiming at tyranny and the enslavement of his country,
and perceiving that these words were spoken to please the multitude, and that he had come into conflict with the war-makers and the military men, he feared a formal trial, and, having a faction and the strength of friends and kinsmen defending him, kept up a factional struggle around himself. And this became a delay and hesitation of the war for the Sabines.
Poplicola, then, not only made it his business to know of these things, but also to stir and drive on the faction further; he had suitable men who spoke to Clausus on his behalf in such terms as these: that Poplicola believed a man as upright and just as he ought not to defend himself against his fellow citizens by any harmful means, even though wronged; but if he should wish to save himself by changing sides and fleeing those who hated him, he would receive him publicly and privately in a manner worthy both of his own virtue and of the splendor of Rome.
As Clausus turned these words over repeatedly, they appeared to him the best course among necessities, and calling together his friends, and many of them likewise persuading others in turn, he led five thousand households, with children and wives — which was the most peaceable and orderly part of the Sabine population, fitting for a life of quiet and settled order — into Rome, with Poplicola knowing beforehand and receiving them kindly and eagerly on all just terms.
For he at once mixed the households into the citizen body, and assigned to each a portion of two plethra of land around the river Anio, but to Clausus he gave twenty-five plethra of land, and enrolled him himself in the Senate, a beginning of political life which, used wisely, he rose from to the first rank and great power, and left behind the family of the Claudii, from himself descended, second to none in Rome.
But once the Sabine situation had been settled in this way through the resettlement of the men, the popular leaders would not allow it to rest and settle quietly, complaining bitterly that Clausus, having become an exile and an enemy, would accomplish what he had failed to persuade them of while present among them — that the Romans should not pay the penalty for their insolence. So, raising a large army, they camped near Fidenae, and placing an ambush of two thousand heavy infantry before Rome, in wooded and hollow ground, they intended at daybreak to drive off plunder openly with a few horsemen.
They had instructed these men that, when they drew near the city, they should retreat until they drew the enemy into the ambush. Poplicola, learning of this the very same day from deserters, quickly arranged everything and divided his forces. For Postumius Balbus, his son-in-law, with three thousand heavy infantry, went out already in the evening and, occupying the hilltops under which the Sabines lay in ambush,
kept watch there; and his fellow consul Lucretius, taking the lightest and most valiant troops in the city, was assigned to attack the horsemen driving off the plunder, while he himself, taking the rest of the army, went around the enemy in a circle. And as it happened, a deep mist fell, and about dawn, Postumius, shouting, fell upon those lying in ambush and struck them from the heights, while Lucretius let his men loose upon those who had ridden out ahead, and Poplicola fell upon the enemy's camps.
So the Sabines were everywhere thrown into ruin and destroyed; and those there who were not even defending themselves but fleeing, the Romans killed at once, since their hope had turned most disastrously against them. For each side, supposing the others were safe, did not attend to fighting and standing firm, but some fled from their strongholds toward those lying in ambush,
while others in turn, running toward the camp as if toward those men, fell in among the very fugitives fleeing from that side, running into the men from whom they were fleeing and who themselves needed the help they had hoped would come to them. That not all the Sabines perished, but some survived, was owing to the city of Fidenae being nearby, especially for those who broke through from the camps as it was being captured. But as many as failed to reach Fidenae were destroyed, or led off alive by their captors.
This success the Romans, though accustomed to attribute the divine hand to all great things, considered to be the work of one man, the general, alone. And it was said, first among those who had fought, that Poplicola had handed the enemy over to their swords lame and blind and all but bound. The people, too, were strengthened in wealth from the spoils and the captives.
Poplicola, having celebrated his triumph and handed over the city to the consuls appointed after him, died soon after, having brought his own life to completion as nearly as is possible for men reputed to be noble and good in the accepted sense. The people, as though they had done nothing worthy for him while he lived, but owed him every gratitude, voted that his body be buried at public expense, and that each person contribute a quarter as a mark of honor.
The women, coming together privately among themselves, mourned him for a full year in honored and emulated grief. And he was buried, by vote of the citizens, within the city, beside the place called the Velia, so that his whole family might share in that burial place. Now, however, none of his descendants is actually buried there; but they bring the body there and set it down, and someone takes a lit torch and holds it beneath only as long as it takes to be lifted away again, bearing witness in this act that it is permitted, while foregoing the honor, and so they carry the body off elsewhere.

======== Comparison Of Poplicola With Solon ========

Is there, then, something peculiar to this comparison, and not altogether shared with any other of those I have written, namely that the one man became an imitator of the other, and the other a witness to him? For consider the pronouncement Solon made to Croesus about happiness, how it fits Poplicola better than it fits Tellus.
For Tellus, whom he said had been most blessed on account of his good fortune, his virtue, and his fine children, neither he himself was ever mentioned in poetry as a good man, nor did his children, nor did any office of his, rise to fame; whereas Poplicola, while he lived, held the first place in power and reputation among the Romans on account of his virtue, and after his death, down to our own day, families of the greatest distinction and lineage—Poplicolae, Messalae, and Valerii—trace back the glory of their nobility through six hundred years.
And Tellus was killed by the enemy, standing his ground and fighting like a good man; but Poplicola, having slain his enemies—which is a happier fate than falling—and having lived to see his fatherland victorious through his own action as ruler and general, and having been honored and celebrated in triumph, met with that end which Solon envied and pronounced blessed.
Further, consider what he adds in his reply to Mimnermus concerning the span of life: 'let not death come to me unwept, but may I, in dying, cause my friends grief and lamentation'—for Poplicola, in dying, brought tears and longing and dejection over himself not only upon friends and kinsmen but upon the whole city, upon many tens of thousands; for the women of Rome mourned him as though they had each lost a son, a brother, or a common father.
'I long to have wealth,' says Solon, 'but I am unwilling to possess it unjustly,' as though justice were coming after it; but for Poplicola it was given not only not to grow rich wickedly, but also to spend nobly, doing good to those in need, so that if Solon was wisest of all men, Poplicola was happiest of all. For those goods which Solon prayed for as the greatest and finest, these it was given to Poplicola both to acquire and to keep, using them to the very end.
Thus Solon has adorned Poplicola; but Poplicola, in turn, set Solon before himself as the finest of models in statesmanship for a man adorning a democracy. For he took away the harshness of the office and made it gracious and untroublesome to all, and he made use of many of Solon's laws; indeed he made the many masters of the establishment of magistrates, and he granted to defendants the right to appeal to the people, just as Solon gave them the right to appeal to the jurors. And he did not create another council, as Solon did, but increased the existing one, nearly doubling it in number.
The institution of the treasurers over the funds also came from there, so that the ruler, if he is upright, might not have his attention drawn away from greater matters, nor, if he is base, might have all the more occasion for wrongdoing, by being master both of the affairs and of the money. But the hatred of tyranny is fiercer in Poplicola. For if anyone should attempt to make himself tyrant, the one imposes the penalty of law upon him once he is caught, while the other grants that he may be killed even before trial.
And though Solon rightly and justly took pride in the fact that, when circumstances offered him the chance to become tyrant and the citizens were not unwilling to receive him as such, he refused, it is no less admirable in Poplicola that, having received power that was tyrannical, he made it more democratic, and did not even use what he was entitled to use. And this too Solon seems to have perceived earlier, that a people would best follow along with its leaders when neither too much slackened nor oppressed.
Peculiar to Solon is the cancellation of debts, by which above all he secured liberty for the citizens. For there is no benefit in laws providing equality if debts take that equality away from the poor; rather, in the very places where men seem most to enjoy their liberty, there they are most enslaved to the rich, being ordered about and made to serve in judging, ruling, and speaking.
And greater still than this: whereas every cancellation of debts is followed by civil strife, in this one case alone, Solon, using it like a drastic but powerful medicine applied at the right moment, both dissolved the strife that existed and overcame, by his own virtue and reputation, the disrepute and slander of the measure itself. In the beginning of the whole course of his statesmanship Solon is the more brilliant—for he led and did not follow, and acting alone, not with others, accomplished most and the greatest of the public measures—but in the end the other man was fortunate and enviable.
For Solon himself lived to see his own constitution overthrown, whereas Poplicola's arrangement kept the city stable and well-governed all the way up until the civil wars; for the one, as soon as he had laid down his laws in wood and writing, left them undefended and departed from Athens, while the other, remaining and ruling and taking part in politics, established and set the constitution on a secure footing.
Further, it was not given to the one even to prevent the coming of Peisistratus, though he foresaw it—rather he was defeated as the tyranny was being formed—while the other cast out and dissolved a kingship that had already been strong for many years and held sway, displaying an equal virtue and a like resolve, but employing fortune and effective power in the service of his virtue.
As for military matters, Daimachus of Plataea has not testified even to Solon's dealings against the Megarians, as we ourselves have gone through; but Poplicola, both fighting himself and commanding as general, brought the greatest struggles to a successful end. And further, even in his political actions, the one took up a kind of playful pretense of madness, on behalf of
Salamis, and came forward in his passion for it; but the other, from the very start, risked the greatest of dangers openly: he rose up against the Tarquins and detected their treachery, and being most responsible for the punishment of the wicked men and their failure to escape, he not only drove the bodies of the tyrants from the city but cut off their hopes as well. And having thus met, vigorously and unflinchingly, the struggle and passion and opposition that circumstances presented, he made even better use of dealings that called for peaceable intercourse and yielding persuasion, winning over Porsenna, an unconquerable and formidable man, with tact, and turning him into a friend.
And yet someone might say here that Solon recovered Salamis for the Athenians after they had given it up, while Poplicola withdrew from land the Romans already possessed. But one must judge actions in view of the circumstances underlying them. For the statesman, being versatile, will handle each situation in the manner by which it can best be managed, and often preserves the whole by sacrificing a portion of it, gaining the greater prize through conceding the lesser one,
just as that man did then, when, by withdrawing from another's territory, he securely saved the whole of his own; and by things that mattered greatly for preserving the city, he gained in addition the very camp of the besiegers, having entrusted the enemy to be judge, and having prevailed in the judgment, he received as much as it was gratifying to win even by giving concessions: for he both put an end to the war and left them the equipment of war, on account of the trust in virtue and nobility of character which the ruler had instilled in him on behalf of all.

======== Themistocles ========

As for Themistocles, his lineage did little to enhance his reputation: his father was Neocles, a man not especially prominent at Athens, of the deme Phrearrii, of the tribe Leontis; and on his mother's side he was illegitimate, as they say — his mother was Abrotonon, a Thracian woman by birth. But I say it was to the Greeks that Themistocles the great was born. Athenaeus 13.576.
Phanias, however, gives a different account: he writes that Themistocles' mother came not from Thrace but from Caria, and that her true name was Euterpe rather than Abrotonon; Neanthes further adds that her home city in Caria was Halicarnassus. For this reason — since illegitimate sons were assigned to the Cynosarges (a gymnasium of Heracles outside the gates, since that god too was not legitimate among the gods, but was tainted with illegitimacy because his mother was mortal) — Themistocles used to persuade some of the well-born young men to go down to the Cynosarges and exercise with him there. And by doing this he seems, by a clever stroke, to have done away with the distinction between the illegitimate and the legitimate.
That he did share in the clan of the Lycomidae is clear: for the initiation-hall at Phlya, which belonged in common to the Lycomidae, when it was burned by the barbarians, he himself had it repaired and adorned with paintings, as Simonides has recorded.
Even as a boy he is agreed to have been full of impulse, by nature intelligent, but in his ambitions given to great undertakings and to political life. For in the free time and leisure that came after his lessons, he did not play or idle as the other boys did, but was found rehearsing and composing speeches to himself. And the speeches were either an accusation or a defense of one of the boys.
Hence his teacher used to say to him, "You will be nothing small, my boy, but altogether something great, either for good or for ill." For indeed, of the branches of education aimed at forming character, or pursued for some pleasure and a gentleman's grace, he learned them reluctantly and without eagerness; but in those said to conduce to intelligence or to action he was plainly, beyond his years, contemptuous of the rest, as one who trusted in his own nature.
Hence later, in the free and witty gatherings, as they are called, of those who were reputed to be well educated, when he was mocked he was forced to defend himself rather crudely, saying that he did not know how to tune a lyre or handle a harp, but that, taking over a city that was small and without repute, he could render it renowned and powerful. Stesimbrotus, however, claims that Themistocles attended the lectures of Anaxagoras and studied under the natural philosopher Melissus — not getting his dates right; for it was with Pericles, who was much younger than Themistocles, that Melissus was opposed as a general when he besieged the Samians, and it was with Pericles that Anaxagoras spent his time.
One might rather give heed to those who say that Themistocles became a devoted follower of Mnesiphilus of Phrearrii, a man who was neither an orator nor one of those called natural philosophers, but who had made a practice of what was then called "wisdom," being in fact political shrewdness and practical intelligence, and who preserved it as a kind of school handed down in succession from Solon — a school which those who came after mixed with the arts of the law-courts and transferred from practical affairs to mere rhetoric, and were called sophists. It was with this man, then, that Themistocles associated when he had already entered public life.
In the first impulses of his youth he was uneven and unsteady, since he was following his nature by itself, without reason or education, which by itself produces great swings in both directions in one's pursuits, and often turns toward the worse — as he himself later admitted, saying that the roughest colts turn out the best horses, when they get the training and discipline that is fitting for them.
Some have attached invented stories to this period — that his father cast him off, and that grief over her son's shame drove his mother to take her own life — but these tales appear to be untrue; and there are, on the contrary, those who say that his father, trying to turn him away from public affairs, pointed out to him by the sea the old triremes cast up and neglected, implying that the people treat their popular leaders the same way, once they are seen to be of no more use.
Yet public affairs seem to have taken hold of Themistocles quickly and vigorously, and his impulse toward glory to have mastered him entirely. For this reason, right from the start, eager to hold first place, he boldly took on the hostility of those who were powerful and preeminent in the city, and especially of Aristides son of Lysimachus, who always took the opposite course from him. And yet it seems that the enmity toward this man had an altogether boyish origin: for both fell in love with the beautiful Stesilaus, a Cean by birth, as Ariston the philosopher has recorded.
From this they continued at odds also in public affairs. Yet the dissimilarity of their lives and characters seems to have increased the difference between them. For Aristides, being by nature gentle and of an honorable character, and conducting his politics not for favor or for glory but from what was best, with safety and justice, was forced often to oppose Themistocles, who was stirring up the people to much and introducing great innovations, standing in the way of his advancement.
For it is said that he was so carried away by his love of glory and, out of ambition, so passionate a lover of great deeds, that while still a young man, after the battle against the barbarians at Marathon had taken place and the generalship of Miltiades was being talked of everywhere, he was seen deep in thought by himself much of the time, and lay awake at night, and declined the drinking parties he used to attend,
and to those who questioned and wondered at this change in his habits, he would answer that Miltiades' trophy robbed him of his sleep. For where others supposed that the rout of the barbarians at Marathon had brought the war to a close, Themistocles judged it merely the opening round of far larger conflicts still to come, for which he was training himself on behalf of the whole of Greece, and preparing the city, still looking far ahead to what was to come.
And first, as to the revenue from the silver mines at Laurium, which the Athenians were accustomed to distribute among themselves, he alone dared to come forward before the people and say that they should give up the distribution and, with that money, build triremes for the war against the Aeginetans. For that war was then at its height in Greece, and the islanders controlled the sea with the number of their ships.
And so Themistocles the more easily persuaded them, not by raising the specter of Darius or the Persians (for these were far away and inspired no very sure fear that they would come), but by making timely use of the citizens' anger and rivalry toward the Aeginetans for his preparations. For a hundred triremes were built from that money, with which they also fought at sea against Xerxes.
From this point, little by little leading and drawing the city down toward the sea, on the ground that by land they were not even a match for their neighbors, but by the strength of their ships they could both ward off the barbarians and rule Greece, he made the Athenians, instead of steady hoplites, as Plato says, sailors and men of the sea, and brought a reproach upon himself, namely that Themistocles, by taking away spear and shield from the citizens, had reduced the Athenian people to the rowing-bench and the oar. And he did this by overpowering Miltiades, who spoke against it, as Stesimbrotus records.
Now whether he damaged the strictness and purity of the constitution, or not, by doing this, let that be a question for a more philosophical inquiry to consider; but that at that time salvation for the Greeks came from the sea, and that those triremes raised up the city of Athens again, Xerxes himself, among other things, bore witness. For while his land forces remained unbroken, he fled after the defeat of his ships, as no longer a match for them, and left Mardonius behind, in my judgment, more to hinder the Greeks from pursuit than with any thought of enslaving them.
That he became an intense money-maker, some say was due to generosity: for being fond of sacrifices and lavish in his expenditures on entertaining foreigners, he needed an ungrudging supply of funds; while others, on the contrary, accuse him of a great deal of stinginess and pettiness, saying that he even used to sell off the food that was sent to him as gifts.
When Philides the horse-breeder, being asked by him for a colt, did not give it, he threatened that he would quickly turn his house into a wooden horse, hinting that he would stir up charges and lawsuits against the man from certain of his own relatives. In love of honor he surpassed everyone, so that while still young and unknown he pressed Epicles of Hermione, the lyre-player who was in demand among the Athenians, to practice at his house, being eager that many should seek out his house and resort to him.
When he went to Olympia and vied with Cimon over dinners and tents and the rest of his splendor and display, he did not please the Greeks. For in Cimon's case, being young and from a great house, they thought it right to allow such things; but Themistocles, not yet being well known, but seeming to be raising himself up from nothing and beyond his worth, incurred a charge of pretension.
He also won a victory as a producer of tragedies, at a time when that contest already had great seriousness and rivalry attached to it, and he set up a tablet commemorating the victory with this inscription: "Themistocles of Phrearrii was producer, Phrynichus was the trainer, Adeimantus was archon." Nevertheless he made himself agreeable to the many, both by addressing each of the citizens by name from memory, and by offering himself as a reliable arbitrator in matters of contract, so that he even said to Simonides of Ceos, when the latter asked something excessive of him while he was general, that Simonides would not be a good poet if he sang out of tune, nor would he himself be a decent ruler if he showed favors contrary to the law.
And again on another occasion, mocking Simonides, he said the man had no sense, since he reviled the Corinthians though they lived in a great city, while having images made of himself, though he was so ugly to look at. As he grew in power and pleased the many, he finally formed a faction against Aristides and had him ostracized and removed.
Now when the Mede was already coming down upon Greece and the Athenians were deliberating about a general, the others, they say, willingly withdrew from the generalship, terrified at the danger, but Epicydes, whose father was Euphemides, a demagogue skilled in speech yet weak-willed and open to bribery, was eager for the command and was expected to win it by the vote. Themistocles, fearing that affairs would be utterly ruined if the leadership fell to that man, bought off his ambition with money from Epicydes.
He is also praised for his action concerning the bilingual interpreter, in the matter of those sent by the King to demand earth and water. For having seized the interpreter, he had him put to death by decree, because he had dared to use the Greek tongue in the service of barbarian commands.
There is also the matter of Arthmius of Zelea: for when Themistocles proposed it, they inscribed him too, along with his children and his family, among the disenfranchised, because he had brought Median gold to the Greeks. Yet of all his accomplishments none surpassed his bringing the wars among the Greeks to a close and restoring the cities to concord with each other, persuading them to put off their hostilities on account of the war; and in this they say Chileos the Arcadian worked together with him most of all.
Having taken up his command, he immediately set about putting the citizens aboard the triremes, and tried to persuade the city to abandon it and meet the barbarian by sea as far as possible from Greece. When many opposed this, he led out a large force to Tempe together with the Lacedaemonians, so as to fight there in defense of Thessaly, which was not yet thought to be siding with the Medes,
but when they withdrew from there without having accomplished anything, and the Thessalians, having gone over to the king, along with the territory up to Boeotia, had medized, the Athenians now paid more heed to Themistocles concerning the sea, and he was sent with ships to Artemisium to guard the straits. There, when the Greeks bade Eurybiades and the Lacedaemonians take the lead, but the Athenians, because in number of ships they surpassed all the others together, thought it unworthy to follow others,
Themistocles, perceiving the danger, himself yielded the command to Eurybiades and calmed the Athenians, promising that if they proved good men in the war, he would see to it that the Greeks would afterward willingly obey them. For this reason he seems to have been most responsible for the salvation of Greece, and above all to have advanced the Athenians to glory, as men who prevailed over their enemies by courage and over their allies by good sense.
When the barbarian fleet had reached Aphetae, Eurybiades was alarmed at the number of ships facing him, and on learning that another two hundred were sailing around Sciathos, he wished to withdraw as quickly as possible into the interior of Greece, to reach the Peloponnese and join the fleet to the land army, considering the king's naval strength altogether unbeatable. The Euboeans, fearing that the Greeks would abandon them, secretly conferred with Themistocles, sending Pelagon to him with a large sum of money.
Themistocles took this money, as Herodotus has recorded, and gave it to Eurybiades and his circle. Since Architeles, the trierarch of the sacred ship, opposed him most strongly among his countrymen — for lacking funds to pay his crew he was eager to sail away — Themistocles further incited the crews of the triremes against him, so that they ran together and seized his dinner.
When Architeles was despondent over this and taking it hard, Themistocles sent to him in a chest a dinner of bread and meat, with a talent of silver placed beneath, and told him to dine for the present and to look after his crew the next day; otherwise he would denounce him to the men present as one who had taken silver from the enemy. This account comes from Phanias of Lesbos.
The battles that then took place against the barbarian ships in the straits produced no great decision for the whole war, but by the experience of them they benefited the Greeks enormously, for they were taught by their actions amid the dangers that neither numbers of ships nor the adornment and splendor of figureheads, nor boastful shouts or barbarian war-cries, strike fear into men willing to close the distance and risk hand-to-hand combat; rather, one should hold such things in contempt and press directly against the enemy's own bodies, grappling and fighting it out against them.
This is indeed what Pindar seems to have understood well when he said of the battle at Artemisium: 'where the sons of the Athenians laid the shining foundation of freedom' (Bergk, fr. 77). For truly the beginning of victory is courage. Artemisium is a stretch of Euboea beyond Hestiaea, a shore facing north, and opposite it lies, more or less, the region that was once under Philoctetes, Olizon. It has a temple, not large, of Artemis surnamed 'of the Dawn,' and trees grow around it, and pillars of white stone stand in a circle; the stone, when rubbed with the hand, gives off a color and smell like saffron.
On one of the pillars this elegiac verse was inscribed: 'Of men of every race from the land of Asia, the sons of the Athenians once, in a sea-battle in these waters, having overcome them, when the army of the Medes had perished, set up these markers to the maiden Artemis' (Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. iii. 44, p. 480). A place is also shown on the shore where, amid the great surrounding sand, ashen and black dust rises from below, as if from a place burnt by fire, in which they think the wrecks and the dead were burned.
When those at Thermopylae reported to the fleet at Artemisium that they had learned Leonidas had fallen and that Xerxes was master of the land routes, they withdrew into the interior of Greece, the Athenians being posted last in the line on account of their valor and taking great pride in what they had accomplished. As Themistocles sailed along the coast, wherever he saw harbors necessary for landing and refuge available to the enemy, he carved conspicuous inscriptions on the stones,
some he found already suitable by chance, others he himself set up near the anchorages and watering places, urging the Ionians through these inscriptions, if possible, to change sides toward them, since they were their fathers and were risking their lives for the Ionians' freedom; but if not, at least to harm the barbarian forces in battle and throw them into confusion. He hoped by this either to win the Ionians over or to unsettle them, making them objects of suspicion to the barbarians.
When Xerxes invaded Phocis from above through Doris and was burning the towns of the Phocians, the Greeks did not come to their defense, although the Athenians begged them to meet the enemy in Boeotia before reaching Attica, just as they themselves had gone by sea to help at Artemisium. But no one listened to them; instead the Greeks clung to the Peloponnese and were eager to gather all their forces within the Isthmus, and were building a wall across the Isthmus from sea to sea,
and at once anger at this betrayal seized the Athenians, and at the same time despondency and gloom, since they found themselves abandoned. They had no intention of fighting so many myriads of troops; and the one thing that was now necessary — to give up the city and cling to their ships — most of them heard with dismay, feeling that they wanted no victory and knew no safety if it meant abandoning the temples of the gods and the graves of their fathers.
At this point Themistocles, unable to win over the multitude by human reasoning, brought forward, as in a tragedy, a divine device — signs and oracles. As a sign he took the matter of the sacred serpent, which in those days seemed to have vanished from its precinct; and when the priests found the daily offerings set out for it untouched, they announced to the people, with Themistocles supplying the interpretation, that the goddess had abandoned the city and was leading them on ahead toward the sea.
He used the oracle again to sway the people, saying that nothing else was meant by the 'wooden wall' than the ships; and that this was why the god called Salamis 'divine,' not 'dreadful' or 'cruel,' since its name was meant to mark a splendid stroke of luck coming to the Greeks. Having brought the assembly around to his view, he drafted a decree that the city be entrusted to Athena, guardian of the Athenians, and that every man of fighting age go aboard the triremes, while children, women, and slaves should each be gotten to safety however possible.
Once the decree was ratified, most of the Athenians sent their children and wives away to Troezen, where the Troezenians received them with great generosity — indeed they voted to maintain them at public expense, giving each two obols, and allowed the children to gather fruit from anywhere, and further paid teachers' fees on their behalf. The decree was proposed by Nicagoras.
Since the Athenians had no public funds, Aristotle says that the Council of the Areopagus, by providing eight drachmas to each man serving, was chiefly responsible for the manning of the triremes; but Cleidemus makes this too a stratagem of Themistocles. For he says that while the Athenians were making their way down toward Piraeus, it was discovered that the Gorgon's head was missing from the statue of the goddess; and Themistocles, pretending to search for it and rummaging through everything, discovered a great quantity of money hidden among the baggage, which, when brought out into the open, supplied those embarking on the ships with provisions.
As the city sailed away, the sight caused pity in some and wonder at their daring in others, as they sent their families off to another place while they themselves, unmoved by the wailing and tears and embraces of their parents, crossed over to the island. Yet many citizens who were left behind on account of old age felt pity; and there was also a certain sweetness of feeling stirred by the tame and domesticated animals, which ran alongside with howling and longing for their masters as they boarded the ships.
Among these it is recorded that Xanthippus — the man who fathered Pericles — owned a dog that could not endure being left behind, and it leapt into the sea and, swimming alongside the trireme, came ashore at Salamis, and, fainting, died at once; and they say that the place still shown today and called the Dog's Grave is his tomb.
These were great achievements of Themistocles; and perceiving that the citizens longed for Aristides and feared that in anger he might go over to the barbarian and overturn the cause of Greece (for he had been ostracized before the war, having been overpowered in factional strife by Themistocles), Themistocles drafted a decree allowing those exiled for a fixed period to return and to act and speak for the best interests of Greece together with the other citizens.
Eurybiades held command of the fleet on account of Sparta's standing, but he was faint-hearted in the face of danger and wished to weigh anchor and sail to the Isthmus, where the Peloponnesian land forces had also gathered; Themistocles opposed him. It was then that the famous exchange is said to have taken place. When Eurybiades said to him, 'Themistocles, in the games they whip those who start before the signal,' Themistocles replied, 'Yes, but they do not crown those left behind.'
When Eurybiades raised his staff as if to strike him, Themistocles said, 'Strike, but listen.' Eurybiades, astonished at his composure, told him to speak, and Themistocles brought him back around to his argument. When someone objected that a man with no city of his own had no standing to press those who did have one into abandoning and surrendering their homelands, Themistocles turned the argument back on him: 'We indeed,'
he said, 'you wretch, have left behind our houses and our walls, not thinking it right to be slaves for the sake of lifeless things; but we have a city, the greatest of the Greek cities, our two hundred triremes, which stand ready right now to rescue you, should you want their protection; but should you instead sail away and betray us a second time, some Greek will soon discover that the Athenians hold a free city and land no worse than what they lost.'
When Themistocles said this, fear and anxious thought about the Athenians seized Eurybiades, lest they should go off and abandon them. When the Eretrian tried to say something against him, Themistocles said, 'Do you indeed have any say about war, you who, like the squid, have a blade but no heart?'
It is said by some that Themistocles was arguing these points from the deck up on the ship, and that an owl was seen flying past on the right of the ships and settling on the mastheads; and it was chiefly for this reason that they were won over to his view and prepared to fight at sea.
But when the enemy's fleet, bearing down on Attica by way of Phalerum, hid the surrounding shores from view, and the king himself was seen coming down to the sea with his land army in a mass, and the two forces were now joined together, Themistocles' arguments slipped from the Greeks' minds, and the Peloponnesians again looked anxiously toward the Isthmus, growing angry if anyone said anything else, and it was decided to withdraw that night, and sailing orders were given to the pilots,
at which point Themistocles, taking it hard that the Greeks, having given up the advantage of the place and the straits, would scatter city by city, deliberated and put together the scheme involving Sicinnus. Sicinnus was Persian by birth, a prisoner of war, but well disposed toward Themistocles and tutor to his children.
Him he sent secretly to Xerxes, instructing him to say that Themistocles the Athenian general, choosing the king's side, was the first to report to him that the Greeks were running away, and urged him not to let them escape, but, while they were in confusion, separated from their land forces, to attack and destroy their naval power.
Xerxes, receiving this as spoken out of goodwill, was delighted, and at once gave orders to the commanders of the ships to man the rest of the fleet at leisure, but with two hundred ships already put to sea to encircle the whole channel in a ring and to blockade the islands, so that none of the enemy should escape.
While this was being done, Aristides son of Lysimachus was the first to notice it, and he made his way to Themistocles' tent — not as a friend, but rather as someone who had actually been ostracized on his account, as already mentioned — and stepping forward, he informed Themistocles of the encirclement. Themistocles, knowing the man's fine character generally and admiring his coming at that moment, told him about Sicinnus's mission and asked him to help persuade and encourage the Greeks with greater confidence, so that they might fight the battle in the straits.
So Aristides, praising Themistocles, went to the other generals and trierarchs, urging them on to battle. Yet as they still disbelieved, a Tenian trireme appeared as a deserter, commanded by Panaetius, reporting the encirclement, so that the Greeks, with both anger and necessity driving them, rushed to face the danger.
At daybreak Xerxes sat above, overseeing his fleet and its battle order — as Phanodemus says, above the Heracleum, where the island is separated from Attica by a narrow strait; but as Acestodorus says, on the border of the Megarid above the place called the Horns — having set up a golden throne and stationed beside him many secretaries, whose task it was to record everything done in the battle.
As Themistocles was sacrificing beside his flagship, three prisoners were brought to him, most beautiful to look upon and splendidly adorned in dress and gold. They were said to be the children of Sandauce, the King's sister, and of Artayctes. When the seer Euphrantides saw them, at the very moment a great and conspicuous flame blazed up from the sacrificial offerings and a sneeze sounded on the right as a sign, he clasped Themistocles' hand and urged that the young men be consecrated and every one of them sacrificed, with a prayer, to Dionysus Eater-of-Raw-Flesh; for in this way, he said, the Greeks would win both safety and victory.
Themistocles was thrown into confusion, since the prophecy was momentous and terrible, as usually happens in great struggles and difficult circumstances; but the multitude, hoping for safety rather from what defies reason than from what is reasonable, called upon the god together with one voice, and dragging the captives to the altar compelled the sacrifice to be carried out just as the seer had ordered. This is the account given by Phanias of Lesbos, a philosopher not unacquainted with historical writings.
As to the number of the barbarian ships, the poet Aeschylus, speaking as one who knew and could vouch for it, says this in his tragedy the Persians: 'For Xerxes — for I know — led a fleet numbering a thousand; and those exceeding this in speed were two hundred and seven: so runs the count.' Of the Attic ships, one hundred eighty in number, each carried eighteen men fighting from the deck, four of whom were archers, the rest hoplites.
Themistocles seems to have grasped the right moment no less well than the right place, and took care not to bring his triremes prow to prow against the barbarian ships before the usual hour arrived, when a fresh wind always blows in from the open sea and drives a swell through the straits. This did no harm to the Greek ships, which rode low upon the water and were somewhat squat in build, but it struck and threw off balance the barbarian ships, which had raised sterns and towering, heavy decks, and it delivered them broadside to the Greeks, who bore down on them swiftly and kept their eyes on Themistocles, since he best saw what was advantageous.
It was also opposite him that Xerxes' admiral Ariamenes, aboard a great ship, shot arrows and hurled javelins as if from a wall — a brave man, easily the bravest and most upright among the King's brothers. Ameinias of Decelea and Socles of Paeania, sailing together, engaged him: as their ships met prow to prow and were locked together by their bronze rams, they stood their ground as he tried to board their trireme and struck him with their spears and cast him into the sea; and Artemisia, recognizing his body as it drifted among the other wreckage, brought it back to Xerxes.
During this struggle a great light, they say, blazed out from Eleusis, and a sound and a voice filled the Thriasian plain all the way down to the sea, as though a multitude of people together were leading forth the mystic Iacchus. And out of the crowd of those crying out, a cloud seemed to rise little by little from the earth, and then to descend again and settle down upon the triremes. Others thought they saw phantoms and apparitions of armed men, raising their hands from Aegina before the Greek triremes — men they guessed to be the sons of Aeacus, called upon in prayers before the battle to bring aid.
The first to take an enemy ship was Lycomedes, an Athenian trierarch, who cut off its figurehead and offered it up to Apollo the Laurel-bearer at Phlya. The rest of the Greeks, matched in number against the barbarians in the narrow strait and coming on them one squadron at a time, colliding with one another, put them to flight, holding out until evening, as Simonides has said, and won that fair and famous victory, than which no more brilliant deed at sea has been accomplished by either Greeks or barbarians — by the courage and eagerness shared by all who fought at sea, and by the judgment and skill of Themistocles.
After the sea battle, Xerxes, still raging over his failure, attempted to build causeways and march his infantry over to Salamis to face the Greeks, sealing off the channel between. But Themistocles, testing Aristides, proposed as if in earnest that they take the fleet to the Hellespont and demolish the bridge, "so that," he said, "we may capture Asia within Europe."
Aristides was displeased and said, "As it is, we have been fighting a barbarian given over to extravagance; but if we pen him inside Greece and drive to desperation, through fear, a man who commands such vast forces, he will no longer recline beneath a golden canopy watching the battle at his ease, but daring everything and being present himself at everything because of the danger, he will set right what has been neglected and take better counsel for the whole of his affairs. It is not the bridge that now exists, then,"
he said, "that we ought to destroy, Themistocles, but rather, if it is at all possible, we should build another one in addition and drive the man out of Europe as quickly as we can." "Well then," said Themistocles, "if this seems advantageous, it is time for all of us to consider and devise a plan by which he will be got out of Greece as swiftly as possible."
When this was decided, he found among the prisoners a certain royal eunuch named Arnaces, and sent him to tell the King that the Greeks, now victorious at sea, had decided to sail up to the Hellespont to the bridge and break it apart, but that Themistocles, out of concern for the King, advised him to hasten to his own sea and cross over, while he himself would create delays and postponements for the allies in their pursuit.
When the barbarian heard this he was overcome with fear and made his retreat in haste. And the wisdom of Themistocles and Aristides was put to the proof in the case of Mardonius, since with only a small fraction of Xerxes' force the Greeks fought it out at Plataea and put the whole issue to the risk.
Herodotus says that of the cities, that of the Aeginetans distinguished itself most, but that to Themistocles all the generals, though unwillingly out of jealousy, awarded the prize for excellence. For when they had withdrawn to the Isthmus and were casting their votes from the altar, each first declared himself best in valor, but second, after himself, named Themistocles. The Spartans brought him back to Sparta and gave to Eurybiades a crown of olive as the prize for valor, but to Themistocles one for wisdom, and they presented him with the finest chariot the city possessed, and dispatched three hundred of their young men to escort him as far as the borders.
The story goes that at the following Olympic games, when Themistocles entered the stadium, those present ignored the competitors and gazed at him all day long, pointing him out to visitors with wonder and applause, so that he himself, delighted, confessed to his friends he was finally gathering in the harvest of his labors on behalf of Greece.
For by nature he was exceedingly ambitious for honor, if one may judge from the things remembered of him. For when he was chosen admiral by the city, he would not settle any business, private or public, piece by piece, but always put off whatever came up to that very day on which he was about to set sail, so that by managing many affairs together and dealing with all sorts of people he might seem great and to have the greatest power.
As he was examining the bodies of the dead cast up along the shore, when he saw gold bracelets and necklaces lying on them, he himself passed them by, but pointed them out to a friend following him and said, "Take these for yourself, for you are not Themistocles." And to one of the handsome young men, Antiphates, who had earlier treated him with disdain but later courted him because of his fame, he said, "Young man, it has taken a long time, but we have both come to our senses at the same moment."
He used to say that the Athenians did not honor or admire him, but treated him as they would a plane tree — running for shelter under it when a storm threatened and in danger, but when fine weather came, plucking off its leaves and lopping its branches. When a man of Seriphos told him that he had won his fame not through himself but through his city, he replied, "True, but neither would I, if I were a Seriphian, have become famous, nor would you, if you were an Athenian."
When another of the generals, thinking he had accomplished something useful for the city, grew bold toward Themistocles and set his own achievements against his, Themistocles said that once the day after a festival had quarreled with the festival itself, saying that the festival was full of trouble and toil, while on the day after everyone enjoyed at leisure what had been prepared; and the festival replied to this, "True, but if I had not existed, you would not exist either." "So too," he said, "if I had not existed then,
where would you be now?" And when his son was overbearing toward his mother and, on her account, taunted him, Themistocles said that this boy had the greatest power of all the Greeks: for the Greeks obeyed the Athenians, the Athenians obeyed him, he obeyed the boy's mother, and the mother obeyed the boy. Wishing to be distinctive in everything, when he was selling a piece of land he ordered the crier to announce that it also had a good neighbor; and among those courting his daughter he preferred the honorable man over the rich one, saying that he sought a man in need of money rather than money in need of a man. Such, then, was he in his sayings.
Immediately after those exploits, he set about rebuilding the city and fortifying it with walls — as Theopompus records, by bribing the ephors so that they would not oppose it, but as most say, by deceiving them. For he came to Sparta claiming to be there on an embassy; and when the Spartans charged that the Athenians were building city walls, and Polyarchus, sent expressly from Aegina for the purpose, brought the accusation,
he denied it and urged them to dispatch envoys to Athens who could verify matters for themselves, thereby gaining time for the wall-building through the delay, while also wishing the Athenians to hold those very envoys as hostages in his place. And this is exactly what happened: once the Spartans learned the facts, they inflicted no harm on him, but hid their anger and sent him away. After this he set about building the Piraeus, having recognized the natural advantage of its harbors and fitting the whole city to the sea, in a certain way pursuing a policy opposed to that of the ancient kings of Athens.
For those kings, it is said, in their effort to pull the citizens back from the sea and habituate them to living not as sailors but as tillers of the land, spread the story about Athena, how in her contest with Poseidon over the land she won the verdict of the judges by showing them the olive tree. But Themistocles did not, as the comic poet Aristophanes says, "stick the Piraeus onto the city"; rather he fastened the city
to the Piraeus, and bound the land to the sea. From this he strengthened the common people against the notables and instilled in them confidence, because power passed into the hands of sailors, boatswains, and pilots. This is why the speaker's platform on the Pnyx, which had been built to face the sea, was later turned by the Thirty to face the land, since they thought that mastery by sea was the origin of democracy, while farmers were less resentful of oligarchy.
Themistocles conceived something still greater concerning naval power. For when the Greek fleet, after Xerxes had withdrawn, put in at Pagasae and wintered there, he addressed the Athenians in assembly and said that he had a plan that would be beneficial to them, though it was not something that could be disclosed to the multitude.
When the Athenians ordered him to tell it to Aristides alone, and if he approved it, to carry it out, Themistocles told Aristides that he intended to burn the fleet of the Greeks in its dockyard; and Aristides, coming before the people, said that of the action which Themistocles intended to carry out, nothing was more advantageous, nor anything more unjust. So the Athenians, on account of this, ordered Themistocles to abandon it.
In the Amphictyonic councils, when the Spartans proposed that those cities which had not joined in the fight against the Mede should be barred from the Amphictyony, Themistocles, fearing that if they expelled the Thessalians, the Argives, and also the Thebans from the council, the Spartans would gain complete mastery of the votes and their will would prevail, spoke in support of the cities and changed the minds of the delegates, showing them
that only thirty-one cities in all had shared in the war effort, and that the majority of them were quite small; it would be a terrible thing, he said, if the rest of Greece were shut out from the league while the council came under the control of the two or three greatest cities. By this above all he offended the Spartans; and for this reason they advanced Cimon in honors, setting him up in the city's politics as a rival to Themistocles.
He was also burdensome to the allies, sailing around the islands and extracting money from them: for instance, when the Andrians refused him silver, Herodotus says he told them, and heard from them, the following. He said he had come bringing two gods with him, Persuasion and Force; and they answered that they too had two great gods among them, Poverty and Impossibility,
by whom they were prevented from giving him money. Timocreon of Rhodes, the lyric poet, attacks Themistocles rather bitterly in a song, on the ground that he arranged the return of other exiles for money, but abandoned him, though a guest-friend and a friend, for the sake of silver. He writes as follows: "But if you praise Pausanias, or Xanthippus, or Leutychidas, I for my part praise Aristides, the one best man to come from sacred Athens: since Themistocles was hated by Leto,"
"a liar, unjust, a traitor, who, though Timocreon was his guest-friend, was persuaded by wretched bribes of silver not to bring him back to his fatherland Ialysus; instead, accepting three silver talents, he sailed off to ruin, unjustly restoring some, driving out others, killing still others, gorged with silver, and at the Isthmus he ran an inn, absurdly, dishing out cold meat: and they ate it and prayed that Themistocles's season would never come."
Timocreon used still more unrestrained and open abuse against Themistocles after his exile and condemnation, in a song he composed, which begins: "Muse, spread the fame of this song among the Greeks," as is fitting and deserved. Timocreon, it is reported, was banished for medizing, Themistocles having cast his vote with the rest against him.
So when Themistocles himself came under the charge of medizing, Timocreon wrote these lines against him: "So Timocreon is not alone in swearing oaths with the Medes — other scoundrels do so as well: I am not the only docked fox; other foxes exist too."
By now, since the citizens gladly welcomed slanders against him out of envy, he was forced to be tiresome, often reminding them of his own achievements in the assembly; and to those who were annoyed by this he said, "Why are you weary of being benefited repeatedly by the same men?" He also vexed the many by establishing a temple of Artemis, whom he named Aristoboule, "of best counsel," on the ground that he had counseled best for the city and for the Greeks,
and he built the temple near his own house in Melite, where nowadays the public executioners cast out the bodies of those put to death, and carry out the clothing and the ropes of those who were hanged and taken down. There stood also a small statue of Themistocles in the temple of Aristoboule, still in our own day; and he appears to have been heroic not only in soul but also in looks.
They carried out ostracism against him, then, curtailing his reputation and pre-eminence, just as was their custom with everyone they regarded as oppressive in power and disproportionate to democratic equality. For ostracism was not a punishment, but a consolation and relief of envy, which delights in humbling those who stand out, and breathes its ill-will into this dishonor.
When he had been cast out of the city and was living at Argos, the affair of Pausanias, as it turned out, gave his enemies a handle against him. The man who indicted him for treason was Leobotes, son of Alcmaeon, of Agraule, with the Spartans joining in the accusation. For Pausanias, in carrying out that business of treason, at first concealed it from Themistocles,
even though he was a friend; but when he saw him cast out of public life and bearing it badly, he took courage to invite him into a share of his undertakings, showing him letters sent by the King and urging him on against the Greeks as wicked and ungrateful. Themistocles rejected Pausanias's request and refused the partnership entirely, yet he disclosed the conversation to no one and did not denounce the scheme, whether because he expected Pausanias would stop, or because he thought the man would otherwise become exposed anyway, reaching out with no rational plan for things so strange and reckless.
So once Pausanias had been executed, various letters and papers uncovered concerning these matters cast suspicion on Themistocles: and the Lacedaemonians cried out against him, while those citizens who envied him brought accusations, he not being present but defending himself by letters, chiefly against the earlier charges.
For being slandered by his enemies before the citizens, he wrote that he who was always seeking to rule, and by nature unfitted and unwilling to be ruled, would never sell himself, along with Greece, to barbarians or enemies. Nevertheless, the people, persuaded by his accusers, sent men who were ordered to arrest him and bring him back to be tried before the Greeks.
Perceiving this beforehand, he crossed over to Corcyra, since he had done that city a service. For having become their arbitrator in a dispute they had with the Corinthians, he settled the quarrel by ruling that the Corinthians should pay twenty talents and that Leucas should be jointly held as a colony of both. From there he escaped to Epirus; and since the Athenians and Lacedaemonians were pursuing him, he cast himself upon difficult and desperate hopes, taking refuge with Admetus,
king of the Molossians; Admetus, having once been denied a request by the Athenians and insulted by Themistocles during the period Themistocles wielded greatest influence in the city, bore him a lasting grudge and made it plain that, should he catch him, he would exact revenge. But in his present misfortune Themistocles feared more the fresh and recent envy of his fellow citizens than an old and royal wrath, and so he committed himself to that danger, becoming a suppliant of Admetus in a peculiar and unusual manner.
For taking the king's son, still a child, he fell before the hearth with him, this being considered by the Molossians the greatest and almost the only irrefusable form of supplication. Some say that Phthia, the king's wife, suggested this act of supplication to Themistocles and had her son sit at the hearth with him: others say that Admetus himself, so as to have an excuse before his pursuers for the necessity that kept him from surrendering the man, arranged and staged the whole supplication together with him.
There Epicrates of Acharnae, having smuggled his wife and children out of Athens, sent them to him: for which Cimon later tried and put him to death, as Stesimbrotus relates. Then, I do not know how, forgetting these facts, or making Themistocles forget them, he says that he sailed to Sicily and asked Hiero the tyrant for his daughter in marriage, promising to make the Greeks subject to him: and when Hiero refused, that he thereupon sailed off to Asia.
It is not likely that these things happened in this way. For Theophrastus, in his work On Kingship, relates that when Hiero sent racehorses to Olympia to compete and set up a tent furnished at great expense, Themistocles made a speech among the Greeks urging that the tyrant's tent should be torn apart and his horses barred from competing.
Thucydides says that he sailed down to the other sea from Pydna, none of his fellow travelers aware of his identity, until the merchant vessel, driven by the wind toward Naxos, then under siege by the Athenians, he grew frightened and revealed himself to the shipowner and the pilot, and partly by entreaty, partly by threats, saying that he would denounce them and falsely accuse them before the Athenians, claiming that they had taken him aboard not in ignorance but persuaded by money from the start, he forced them in this way to sail past and put in at the coast of Asia.
Much of his money was secretly smuggled out to Asia by his friends; but of what became known and was collected for the public treasury, Theopompus says the amount was a hundred talents, Theophrastus says eighty, though Themistocles had not possessed property worth even three talents before he entered public life.
When he had put in at Cyme and perceived that many of those along the coast were watching to seize him, especially Ergoteles and Pythodorus (for the hunt was profitable to those who loved gain from any source, since the King had proclaimed a reward of two hundred talents for him), he escaped to Aegae, a small town of the Aeolians, unknown to everyone there except his guest-friend Nicogenes, who possessed the greatest wealth of the Aeolians and was known to the powerful men above.
Hiding at his house, he spent a few days there: then, after dinner, following some sacrifice, Olbius, the tutor of Nicogenes's children, fell into a trance, becoming possessed by the god, and cried out in verse these words: "To night give voice, to night give counsel, to night give victory." And after this Themistocles, going to sleep, seemed to see in a dream a serpent coiling around his belly and creeping up toward his neck: then, becoming an eagle,
as it touched his face, it spread its wings and lifted him up and carried him a long way, and then, when a golden herald's staff appeared, it set him firmly upon it, freed from an overwhelming terror and confusion. So he was sent off by Nicogenes, who contrived some such device as this. The greater part of the barbarian race, and especially the Persian, is by nature fierce and harsh in its jealousy concerning women.
For they keep close watch not merely over their lawful wives, but also over their purchased slave-women and concubines, so that they are seen by none from outside, but live shut up at home, and on journeys are carried in covered wagons, fenced round on every side with curtains. Such a covered carriage was fitted out for Themistocles, and he was carried inside it, while those around him always told anyone they met and who asked that they were bringing a Greek woman from Ionia to one of the men at the King's court.
Thucydides, then, and Charon of Lampsacus relate that Xerxes had already died, and that it was with his son that Themistocles had his meeting: but Ephorus and Deinon and Cleitarchus and Heracleides, and still others besides, say that he came before Xerxes himself. Thucydides seems more in agreement with the chronology, though even the chronologists themselves are not perfectly consistent.
Themistocles, then, when he came right up to the danger point, first met with Artabanus the chiliarch, informing him that he was Greek and desired an audience with the King on matters of the greatest importance and matters in which the King himself happened to be especially concerned. Artabanus said: "Stranger, the customs of men differ: different things are noble to different peoples: but it is noble for all to honor and preserve their own ways.
You, it is said, admire freedom and equality above all: but among us, though we have many noble customs, this is the noblest, to honor the King, and to prostrate oneself before him as the image of the god who preserves all things. If, then, you will prostrate yourself in approval of our ways, you may both behold the King and address him: but if you think otherwise, you will have to use other messengers to reach him. For it is not our ancestral custom for the King to listen to anyone who has failed to prostrate himself."
Hearing this, Themistocles said to him: "But I for my part, Artabanus, have come to increase the King's fame and power, and I myself will submit to your customs, since it is the will of the god who exalts the Persians that it be so, and through me more men than now will prostrate themselves before the King. So let this be no hindrance to what I wish to say to him."
"But which of the Greeks," said Artabanus, "shall we say has come? For your mind does not seem like that of an ordinary man." And Themistocles said: "No one, Artabanus, could learn this before the King himself." So Phanias says. But Eratosthenes, in his work On Wealth, adds further that it was through an Eretrian woman, whom the chiliarch kept, that the meeting and introduction to Themistocles came about.
When at last he was brought in before the King and, after doing obeisance, stood in silence, the King ordered his interpreter to ask who he was, and when the interpreter asked, he said: "I have come to you, O King, I, Themistocles the Athenian, a fugitive pursued by the Greeks. Many are the evils the Persians owe to me, but greater are the goods, since I stopped the pursuit, when Greece, once safe, allowed me, from what was preserved at home, to do you a favor as well."
"For my part, then, everything suits my present misfortunes, and I have come prepared both to receive kindly the favor of one who is reconciled and to beg off the anger of one who still remembers wrongs done him. But you, taking my enemies as witnesses of the benefits I did the Persians, should now make use of my fortunes to display virtue rather than to satisfy anger. For you will save a suppliant of yours, but destroy a man who became an enemy of the Greeks."
Having said this, Themistocles gave his speech a divine coloring by going on to relate the vision he had seen at Nicogenes' house, and the oracle of Zeus of Dodona, how, being bidden to go to the one who bore the same name as the god, he had understood this to mean he should betake himself to him — for both were great, and both called kings. When the Persian heard this, he made no answer to him directly, although he marveled at his spirit and
his boldness. But he counted himself blessed before his friends, as at the greatest good fortune, and prayed that Ariman­ius would always give such minds to his enemies, so that they would drive out their best men from among themselves; and he is said to have sacrificed to the gods and at once turned to drinking, and, in the depths of night as sleep held him, to have shouted for joy three separate times: "I have Themistocles the Athenian."
As soon as dawn broke he summoned his friends and had Themistocles brought before him, though Themistocles expected nothing good from what he saw of the men at the doors — how, when they learned his name as he stood there, they were harshly disposed and spoke ill of him. Moreover, as Themistocles approached him, while the King sat and the others were silent, Roxanes the chiliarch, sighing quietly, said: "The subtle Greek serpent — the King's guardian spirit has brought you here."
Nevertheless, when he came into the King's presence and again did obeisance, the King welcomed him with a friendly greeting, and told him that two hundred talents were already owed to him as a debt; since he had delivered himself into custody, he was rightly entitled to the reward announced for whoever captured him. He promised much more than this besides, and encouraged him, and gave him leave to speak freely and say what he wished about Greek affairs.
Themistocles answered that a man's speech was like an embroidered carpet: as with the carpet, so with speech, when it is spread out it displays its patterns, but when it is folded up it hides and spoils them. Hence he needed time. The King, delighted with the comparison and bidding him take it, granted him a year, and having in that time learned the Persian tongue sufficiently, he began to converse with the King directly,
which gave those outside the impression that he had been discussing Greek affairs; but since many innovations were being made at that time around the court and among the King's friends, he incurred the envy of the powerful, since he had also dared to speak his mind freely against them to the King. For the honors paid him were nothing like those given other foreigners, but he even shared in the King's hunts and in his pastimes at home, so that he even came into the presence of the King's mother and grew intimate with her, and by the King's order he was even instructed in the teachings of the Magi.
When Demaratus the Spartan was invited to request whatever gift he wished and asked to be allowed to ride through Sardis wearing the upright tiara, as the kings do, Mithropaustes, a cousin of the King's, touching Demaratus' turban, said: "This tiara has no brain to cover, and you
will not be Zeus even if you take the thunderbolt." The King, angered at the request, pushed Demaratus away and seemed to be implacably set against him; but Themistocles, by entreaty, persuaded him and reconciled them. And it is said that the later kings too, under whom Persian and Greek affairs were more mingled together, whenever they had need of a Greek man, would each promise in writing that he would stand higher in their favor than Themistocles.
They say that Themistocles himself, when he was already great and courted by many, once, when a splendid table was set before him, said to his sons: "Boys, we would have been ruined, if we had not been ruined." Most say that three cities were given him for bread, wine, and delicacies — Magnesia, Lampsacus, and Myus; but Neanthes of Cyzicus together with Phanias name a further pair, Percote and Palaescepsis, for bedding and clothing.
As he went down toward the sea to attend to Greek affairs, a Persian man named Epixyes, satrap of upper Phrygia, plotted against him, having long before arranged for some Pisidians to kill him whenever he came and lodged for the night in the village called Lion's Head. As he slept at midday, they say, the goddess who is Mother of the Gods came to him in a vision as he slept and spoke: "Themistocles, keep away from the head of lions, so that you do not fall in with a lion. In return for this I ask of you the servant girl Mnesiptolema."
Themistocles, disturbed, prayed to the goddess, left the main road, made a detour along a different path so as to steer clear of that spot, and, since night had already fallen, took lodging somewhere else. But one of the pack animals carrying his tent fell into the river, and Themistocles' servants, spreading out the tent-hangings that had gotten soaked, hung them out to dry. Meanwhile the Pisidians, taking their swords, came upon them, and not seeing clearly by moonlight the things drying, thought them to be Themistocles' tent and that they would find him inside, resting.
But when they drew near and lifted the hanging, the guards fell upon them and seized them. Having thus escaped the danger and marveling at the goddess's manifestation, he built a temple to her at Magnesia, to Dindymene, and appointed his daughter Mnesiptolema as priestess.
When he came to Sardis and, with time on his hands, was touring the buildings of the temples along with their abundant dedications, he noticed inside the shrine of the Mother a bronze maiden bearing water, two cubits in size, which he himself, when he was overseer of the waters at Athens, had dedicated out of the fine he exacted from those who were stealing the water and diverting it — whether he felt some emotion at the offering being taken captive, or wished to show the Athenians how much honor and power he held in the King's affairs, he made a proposal to the satrap of Lydia, asking him to send the maiden to Athens.
The barbarian took offense and declared that he would send the King a written account of the matter; and Themistocles, alarmed, took refuge in the women's quarters and, courting the satrap's concubines with money, both soothed his anger and in other matters made himself more cautious, now fearing the envy of the barbarians as well. For he did not wander about Asia, as Theopompus says, but lived in Magnesia, enjoying great gifts and honored equally with the best of the Persians, and passed a long time free from fear, since the King was not paying much attention to Greek affairs, being occupied with matters in the upper regions.
But when Egypt revolted with Athenian help, and Greek triremes made their way out to Cyprus and Cilicia, and Cimon, master of the sea, turned the King's attention to opposing the Greeks and checking their growth against him, and forces were already being set in motion and generals sent about, and messages came down to Themistocles, the King bidding him to take up Greek affairs and make good his promises,
neither provoked by any anger against his fellow citizens nor puffed up by so great an honor and power for making war, but perhaps also considering the task not attainable, since Greece then had other great generals and Cimon was prospering extraordinarily in war, but most of all out of reverence for the glory of his own deeds and those trophies of his, having concluded that the best course was to bring his life to a fitting close,
he sacrificed to the gods, and gathering his friends and greeting them, as the common account has it, drank bull's blood, though some say he took a swift-acting poison, and died at Magnesia at the age of sixty-five, having devoted the greater part of those years to public life and to holding positions of command. And they say that once the King learned how and why he had died, his admiration for the man only deepened, and he went on showing kindness toward Themistocles' friends and household.
Themistocles left children: by Archippe, daughter of Lysander of Alopece, Archeptolis, Polyeuctus, and Cleophantus, of whom Plato the philosopher makes mention as an excellent horseman, but as nothing else of worth. Of the eldest, Neocles, while still a boy, died from a horse bite, and Diocles was adopted as a son by his grandfather Lysander.
He was also father to a number of daughters; among them Mnesiptolema, whose mother was the wife he married later, was wed by her half-brother Archeptolis, who was not her full brother by the same mother; Italia was wed by Panthoides of Chios, Sybaris by Nicomedes the Athenian; Nicomache was taken by Phrasicles, Themistocles' nephew, who sailed to Magnesia and received her from her brothers after Themistocles himself had already died, and Asia, the youngest of all his children, he raised himself.
The Magnesians have a splendid tomb of his in their marketplace; but as for his remains, it is not worth heeding Andocides, who says in his speech Against His Companions that the Athenians, discovering the remains, scattered them (for he is lying, provoking the oligarchs against the democracy), nor Phylarchus, who, as if in a tragedy raising nearly a stage-machine, brings forward certain Neocles and Demopolis as sons of Themistocles, wishing to stir up a contest and a display of pathos which no ordinary person would fail to recognize as invented.
Diodorus the guide, in his work On Tombs, has said, more by conjecture than by knowledge, that near the great harbor of Piraeus, from the headland at Alcimus, there juts out a kind of elbow, and if one rounds this on the inner side, where the sea is calm, there is a fairly large foundation, and around it an altar-shaped tomb of Themistocles.
He thinks that Plato the comic poet also bears witness to him in these lines: "Your tomb, heaped up in a fair place, will be a greeting everywhere to the merchants, and will see those sailing out and sailing in, and whenever there is a contest of ships, it will watch." And certain honors for those of Themistocles' family were preserved at Magnesia down to our own times, which Themistocles the Athenian enjoyed, a man who became our friend and companion at the house of Ammonius the philosopher.

======== Camillus ========

Of the many great things said about Furius Camillus, one seems especially distinctive and remarkable: that although he achieved the most and the greatest successes in commands, was chosen dictator five times, celebrated four triumphs, and is recorded as the second founder of Rome, he never once held the consulship.
The cause of this was the condition of the state at that time: as a result of the quarrel between the people and the senate, the people contended not to have consuls appointed, but instead elected military tribunes to the command; and although these men did everything with the authority and power of consuls, their office was less oppressive because of their number — for having six men, and not two, placed over affairs eased the burden for those who resented the oligarchy.
It was at just such a moment, when he was at the height of his reputation and influence, that Camillus did not think it right to become consul against the people's will, even though during this period the constitution had often admitted consular elections; but in the many and varied other commands he held, he showed himself such a man that, while the authority even of sole command was shared in common, the glory belonged to him alone even when he served as general along with others — the one due to the moderation with which he ruled without arousing envy, the other to the good sense by which he plainly held the first place.
Since there was not yet great distinction attached to the house of the Furii, he was the first of his own line to advance to fame, distinguishing himself when the Romans fought a massive engagement against Aequian and Volscian forces, serving under the dictator Postumius Tubertus. Riding ahead of the army and being struck by a wound in the thigh, he did not give way, but pressing on with the missile still lodged in the wound, and grappling with the bravest of the enemy, he turned them to flight.
For this he received other honors as well and was appointed censor, an office that carried great dignity in those times. It is recorded of him as censor that he did a fine thing: persuading the unmarried men by argument and threatening them with penalties, he joined them to widowed women — of whom there were many because of the wars — and it was also necessary to make the orphans liable to taxation, whereas before they had been exempt,
the cause being the continual campaigns, which required great expenditures, and especially pressing was the siege of Veii (some call these people Veientines). The city was the show-piece of Etruria, not inferior to Rome in the number of its weapons and the multitude of its soldiers, but exulting in wealth and luxury of life and extravagance, and it fought many fine contests for glory and dominion in its war against the Romans.
But at that time it had abandoned its ambitions, having been broken in great battles; and having thrown up great and strong walls and filled the city with weapons, missiles, grain, and every kind of supply, they endured the siege without fear — a long siege, one that wore down the attackers with just as much toil and hardship as it did the defenders.
For being accustomed to campaign abroad for not a long time, in the summer season, and to spend the winter at home, they were then for the first time compelled by the military tribunes, after building forts and fortifying the camp, to join winter and summer together in enemy territory, the war already nearly ending its seventh year. As a result the commanders were blamed and, seeming to prosecute the siege feebly, were removed from office, and new men were selected to carry on the war; among them was Camillus, now holding the military tribunate for a second term,
and he did nothing concerning the siege itself in that period, having been assigned to make war on the Faliscans and Capenates, peoples who had seized on the general confusion to lay waste the countryside extensively and stir up trouble throughout the entire Etruscan conflict; Camillus pressed them hard and drove them back behind their walls, inflicting heavy losses.
After this, the disaster concerning the Alban Lake, which occurred while the war was at its height, was no less than the incredible marvels to inquire into, on account of the absence of any common explanation, and it caused fear even though it had a rational origin. For it was autumn, and the summer was ending, one that had not been rainy nor troubled by south winds,
which had manifestly become severe; and though Italy has many lakes and rivers and streams of every kind, some of these failed altogether, while others held out only meagerly and with difficulty, and all the rivers, as always low and shallow through the summer, ran on. But the Alban Lake, having its beginning and its end within itself, enclosed by fertile mountains, for no apparent cause — unless it was something divine — visibly swelled and rose up, pressing against the foothills and reaching level with the highest ridges, rising up without surge or wave.
And at first it was a wonder to the shepherds and herdsmen; but when the sort of isthmus that separated the lake from the country below burst open under the weight and volume of the water, a great flood ran down through the plowed and planted lands to the sea, and it caused astonishment not only to the Romans themselves, but seemed to all the inhabitants of Italy to be the sign of no small thing. And there was the greatest talk of it in the camp besieging Veii, so that this news of the disaster concerning the lake reached even the enemy.
As happens in a siege prolonged over time, which brings many exchanges and conversations with the enemy, a certain Roman had struck up an acquaintance and grown open in conversation with a citizen of Veii — a man versed in the old oracles and reputed to have more insight than most through his skill at divination. This Roman, when he heard of the rising of the lake, and saw the man exulting greatly and laughing at the siege, said that this was not the only marvel the present time had brought, but that other signs stranger than these had occurred for the Romans, concerning which he wished to share with him, in case, by conferring, he might be able to arrange his own affairs better while the common affairs were in trouble.
When the man eagerly agreed and gave himself over to the conversation, expecting to be a listener to certain secrets, the Roman, talking with him little by little and leading him on, once they had gotten farther from the gates, lifted him up bodily, being the stronger, and with the help of some who ran up from the camp, overpowered him and delivered him, held fast, to the generals.
The man, now under compulsion, and learning that what was fated could not be escaped, revealed secret oracles concerning his own homeland: that it could not be captured before the Alban Lake, once it had overflowed and was running along other channels, was pushed back by the enemy and diverted, so that they prevented it from mingling with the sea.
When the senate heard this and was in perplexity, it seemed best to send to Delphi to consult the god. The men sent on this errand were men of note and standing — Cossus Licinius, Valerius Potitus, and Fabius Ambustus — and after making the crossing and receiving the god's responses, they returned home carrying additional oracles as well, which told them of a neglect of certain ancestral rites concerning the festival called the Latin festival,
and they ordered that the water of the Alban Lake, so far as possible, be shut off and driven back into its ancient channel; or, if that could not be done, that it be diverted by ditches and trenches into the plain and consumed there. When this was reported, the priests set about the sacrifices, and the people went to the work and diverted the water.
By the war's tenth year the senate set aside the other offices and named Camillus dictator; he then picked Cornelius Scipio to serve as his master of horse, and before anything else vowed to the gods that, should the war come to a triumphant end, he would celebrate the great games and dedicate a shrine to the deity known among the Romans as Mater Matuta.
One might judge from the rites performed that this goddess is most nearly Leucothea; for they bring a servant-girl into the shrine and strike her, then drive her out, and embrace the children of their sisters before their own, and perform in the sacrifice acts resembling those of the nurses of Dionysus and the sufferings of Ino on account of the concubine. Once the vows were made, Camillus marched into Faliscan territory and, in a decisive engagement, crushed both them and the Capenates who had come to their assistance.
Then, turning his attention back to Veii under siege, he judged a frontal assault too costly and difficult, so he cut tunnels, the ground around the city yielding to the digging and allowing the works to be carried down to a depth unknown to the enemy. So, as the hope of success advanced, he himself made assaults from outside, drawing the enemy up onto the walls, while others, advancing unseen through the tunnels, made their way inside the citadel undetected, at the temple of Hera, which was the largest in the city and held in the greatest honor.
There, it is said, the leader of the Etruscans happened at that very moment to be at the sacrifices, and the seer, looking into the entrails and crying out loudly, said that the god gives victory to whoever follows up on those sacred rites; and the Romans in the tunnels, hearing this cry, quickly broke through the floor, and with a shout and the clash of arms, emerged, while the enemy, terrified, fled; and seizing the entrails, they carried them to Camillus.
But this may seem perhaps to resemble legend. Once the city fell to the assault and Roman soldiers were hauling off and herding away immense riches, Camillus, watching from the citadel what was happening, first stood and wept, then, being called blessed by those present, raised his hands to the gods and, praying, said:
"Zeus, greatest, and gods who oversee good and wicked deeds, you yourselves surely know that the Romans, not against justice, but of necessity in self-defense, have moved against a hostile city that respects no law. Yet if," he said, "some payment is owed in exchange for our present good fortune, I pray it fall on me alone, at the smallest possible cost, rather than upon Rome's people and her army."
Having said this, and turning to the right as is the Roman custom for those who have prayed and made obeisance, he stumbled as he turned; and while those present were thrown into confusion, recovering himself from the fall, he said that this small mishap had come to him in accordance with his prayer, in exchange for the greatest good fortune.
Having sacked the city, he resolved to move the statue of Hera to Rome, just as he had vowed. And when the craftsmen had gathered for this purpose, he sacrificed and prayed to the goddess to accept their eagerness and to become a favorable co-dweller with the gods allotted to Rome; and the statue, they say, uttered in reply that it both wished this and consented to it.
Livy, however, says that Camillus prayed, laying his hand on the goddess, and made his appeal, and that some of those present answered that she both wished it and would follow, and would follow gladly. Those who insist on this and defend the marvel have as their strongest advocate the fortune of the city, which advanced from a small and despised beginning to such a height of glory and power that it is unthinkable it did so without a god present at each turn with many great manifestations,
and moreover they gather together kindred instances — statues that have often poured out sweat, and groans that have been heard, and turnings away and closings of the eyes of images, which not a few earlier writers have recorded. And we too have heard many things worthy of wonder from men of our own time, which no one should carelessly dismiss.
But in such matters both believing too readily and disbelieving too much are perilous, on account of human weakness, which has no bound and does not master itself, but is carried away, in one direction into superstition and delusion, in another into contempt and disregard of the gods; and caution, and nothing in excess, is best.
Camillus, either because of the greatness of the achievement — having in the tenth year of the siege destroyed a city that rivaled Rome — or, being puffed up by those who called him blessed into a swelling pride and a temper more oppressive than lawful and civic authority allows, celebrated his triumph with excessive pomp, and among other things, having yoked a four-horse chariot with white horses, mounted it and drove through Rome, something no commander had done before or since; for such a chariot was held sacred, set apart for the god who reigns as king and father over all the others.
As a result of this he fell into disfavor with the citizens, who were not accustomed to such indulgence; and he incurred a second charge by opposing a law that would divide the city. For the tribunes of the people proposed that the people and the senate be divided into two equal parts, and that some remain there while others, chosen by lot, move to the captured city, on the grounds that they would be better off, and that with two great and fine cities together they would guard both the territory and the rest of their prosperity.
Now the people, having already grown numerous and being poor, gladly welcomed the proposal, and there was continual uproar around the speaker's platform demanding the vote; but the senate and the strongest of the other citizens, thinking that the tribunes were proposing not a division but a destruction of Rome, and being greatly displeased, took refuge with Camillus.
And he, dreading the contest, kept casting excuses and distractions before the people, by which he continually blocked the law. For this reason he was resented. But the most open and greatest of the hostilities toward him from the people arose from the matter of the tenth part of the spoils — not unreasonable, even if not entirely just, given that the many had taken the lead in the matter,
For it seems that when he was marching against Veii he made a vow: should the city fall to him, he would set apart a tenth portion of the spoils for the god. But when the city was taken and plundered, either because he shrank from troubling the citizens or because some forgetfulness of the vow overtook him amid the pressing business at hand, he let them keep the benefit of it unpaid. Later, when some time had passed and he had already given up that command, he laid the affair before the senators, and the seers announced that signs at the sacrifices revealed the wrath of the gods, demanding propitiation and thank-offerings.
When the senate voted that the benefit itself — for it was difficult for it not to be redistributed — but that those who had received it should bring forward a tenth part under oath, many painful and violent things happened to the soldiers, men who were poor and had toiled much, being compelled to contribute so great a portion of what they had acquired and already spent,
and Camillus, troubled by them and at a loss for a better excuse, happened to take refuge in the most absurd of arguments, admitting that he had forgotten the vow; and they grew angry, that he who had vowed to tithe the possessions of the enemy was now tithing the possessions of the citizens. Nevertheless, once all had contributed as much as was required, it was resolved to have a golden bowl made and sent to Delphi.
There was a shortage of gold in the city, and while the magistrates were considering from where it might be procured, the women themselves, deliberating among themselves, gave up the gold ornaments they each wore on their bodies for the dedication, which came to eight talents' weight of gold; and to these women the senate, rendering them fitting honor, voted that after death, just as in the case of men, fitting praise should be spoken also over women — for it had not previously been the custom for a woman to be publicly eulogized upon her death.
Having chosen three men from among the best as sacred envoys, and having fitted out a warship with a well-manned crew and festal adornment, they sent it off. But it happened that both storm and calm at sea proved troublesome, so that those men, having come within a hair's breadth of perishing then, unexpectedly escaped danger again afterward. For triremes of the Liparaeans sailed against them near the islands of Aeolus, the wind having failed, taking them for pirates.
When the envoys begged and stretched out their hands in supplication, the Liparaeans held off from ramming them, but they towed the ship in and put it up for public sale as booty, both the goods and the persons, having judged them to be pirates. Only with difficulty, persuaded by the virtue and influence of one man, Timesitheus their general, did they release them. And he, having also towed their vessels alongside with his own, escorted them and joined in consecrating the offering; for which he received such honors in Rome as were fitting.
When the tribunes of the people again stirred up the law concerning the resettlement, the war against the Falisci, appearing opportunely, gave the leading men the chance to hold the election of magistrates according to their own judgment and to appoint Camillus, along with five others, as military tribune, on the ground that affairs required a leader who possessed both reputation and glory together with experience,
and when the people had voted, Camillus took command and invaded the territory of the Falisci; and he laid siege to Falerii, a well-fortified city equipped in every way for war, thinking that to take it was no small task nor one of a moment, but wishing rather to wear down the citizens and keep them occupied, so that they would not have leisure to sit at home being led astray by demagogues and falling into faction. For they continually and fittingly made use of this remedy, like physicians, turning the turbulent disorders of the state outward.
So confident were the people of Falerii in the siege, trusting that they were fortified on every side, that except for those guarding the walls, the rest went about the city in their ordinary clothes, and their children continued attending their schools and walking and exercising near the walls under the guidance of their teacher. For the Falerians, like the Greeks, made use of a single common teacher, wishing their children to be raised and to flock together with one
another from the very beginning. This teacher, then, plotting against the Falerians by means of the children, led them out each day near the wall at first, then brought them back inside again after their exercise; and from this, leading them out little by little, he accustomed them to feel confident, as though there were great safety, and finally, having gathered them all together, he threw them in among the Roman outposts and handed them over, bidding that they be led to Camillus.
Having been led and set in the midst, he said that he was a trainer and teacher, but that in place of these just duties he had chosen favor with Camillus instead, and had come delivering the city to him through the persons of its own children. The deed, on hearing it, appeared monstrous to Camillus; and turning to those present he said that war is indeed a harsh thing and is carried through by much injustice and violent deeds,
yet even in war there are certain laws for good men, and victory is not to be pursued so far that one does not shun the favors that come from wicked and impious deeds — for the great general ought to wage war relying on his own virtue, not on another's baseness — and he ordered his attendants to tear the man's garments and bind his hands behind his back, and to give the children rods and whips, so that in punishing the traitor they might drive him back into the city.
And just as the Falerians had learned of their teacher's treachery, and while the city, as was natural, was gripped by mourning over so great a calamity, with men and women alike rushing to the walls and gates without any reckoning, the children brought the teacher forward, naked and bound, abusing him, while calling Camillus their savior and father and god,
so that not only the parents of the children but the other citizens as well, seeing these things, were struck with wonder and longing for the justice of Camillus. And gathering in assembly they sent envoys to him, entrusting their own affairs to him, and Camillus sent these men on to Rome.
Standing before the senate they said that the Romans, by valuing justice more highly than conquest, had made them prefer defeat to their own liberty, not because they thought themselves so far inferior in power, but because they confessed themselves defeated in virtue. And when the senate again gave over to him the decision and arbitration of the matter, he took money from the Falerians and, having established friendship with all the Falisci, withdrew.
But the soldiers, who had expected to plunder the Falerians, when they returned to Rome empty-handed, accused Camillus before the other citizens of hating the common people and of begrudging the poor any benefit. And when the tribunes again put forward the resettlement law and called the people to vote, Camillus, sparing neither hostility nor free speech, appeared more than anyone to be pressing the majority hard, and they unwillingly voted the law down,
but they held Camillus in anger, so that even when misfortune befell him in his own household — for he lost one of his sons to illness — they did not in the least relax their anger out of pity. And yet he bore the affliction not moderately, being a man gentle and good by nature, but though the trial against him had already been posted, he kept to his house through grief, shut up with the women.
Now Lucius Apuleius brought the accusation against him, the charge being theft concerning the Tyrrhenian money, and indeed certain bronze doors were said to have appeared in his possession among the captured spoils; and the people were inflamed and it was plain that they would use any pretext whatsoever to vote against him.
So then, having gathered together his friends and those who had campaigned with him, who were not few in number, he begged them not to let him be unjustly convicted on wicked charges and made a laughingstock by his enemies. But when his friends, after deliberating and conferring among themselves, answered that they did not think they could help him regarding the verdict, but that they would help pay the fine if he were convicted, he could not bear it and resolved to depart and flee the city in anger.
So, having embraced his wife and son at his house, he went forward in silence to the gate; there he stopped, and turning around and stretching out his hands toward the Capitol, he prayed to the gods that, if he were being driven out unjustly — through the insolence and envy of the people rather than justly — the Romans would quickly repent and become manifest to all men as needing and longing for Camillus.
He, then, like Achilles, having laid curses upon his fellow citizens, went into exile and was condemned by default, at an assessment of fifteen thousand asses. Reckoned in silver, this amounts to fifteen hundred drachmas; the as, that is, being the silver coin, while the piece equal to ten of the copper coins bore the name denarius.
Every Roman is convinced that Justice swiftly took up the curses Camillus had uttered, and that the price exacted for the wrong done him proved not sweet but bitter, and famous and much talked of: so great a nemesis went round about Rome, and so great a season of ruin and danger together with disgrace appeared upon the city, whether it came about so by chance, or whether it is indeed the work of some god not to neglect virtue when it is treated with ingratitude.
First, then, it seemed that a sign had occurred of a great evil approaching, in the death of Julius the censor; for the Romans especially revere and consider sacred the office of the censors. Second, before Camillus's exile, a man not distinguished nor of the senate, but held to be decent and good, Marcus Caedicius, reported to the military tribunes a matter worthy of concern.
For he said that, walking the previous night along the street they call the New Way, he was called by someone who spoke and turned around, and though he saw no one, he heard a voice greater than human speaking these words: "Come, Marcus Caedicius, go and tell the magistrates at dawn to expect the Gauls in a short time." The military tribunes, hearing this, made it a matter for laughter and jest. And shortly after, the events concerning Camillus occurred.
The Gauls, being of the Celtic race, are said, on account of their numbers, to have left their own land, which was not sufficient to support them all, and to have set out in search of another; and having become many tens of thousands of young fighting men, and leading with them still more children and women, some crossed over toward the northern Ocean beyond the Rhipaean mountains and occupied the farthest parts of Europe,
while others, settling in the region between the Pyrenees and the Alps, close by the Senones and Celtorii, dwelt there for a long time; but late in time, tasting wine for the first time when it was brought over from Italy, they were all so amazed at the drink and so driven out of their senses by the novelty of the pleasure, that they took up arms and, gathering their families, made for the Alps and sought that land which yielded such fruit, considering all other land barren and uncivilized.
The man who first introduced wine to them and most incited them toward Italy is said to have been Arruns, a Tyrrhenian, a man of distinction and by nature not wicked, but who fell into such an unhappy affair. He served as guardian to a fatherless boy named Lucumo, foremost of the citizens in wealth and admired for his beauty. This youth from childhood lived in Arruns's household, and even as a young man did not leave the house, but pretended to enjoy his company.
And for a long time it went unnoticed that he had seduced Arruns's wife and been seduced by her in turn; but when the passion of both had already gone far and they could neither give up their desire nor conceal it any longer, the young man attempted to openly seize the woman and keep her, while the husband, going to law and being overpowered by the multitude of friends and lavish expenditure of Lucumo, abandoned his own case; and learning of the Gauls' situation, he went to them and led the way for their expedition into Italy.
And they, invading, at once took control of as much of the land as the Tyrrhenians had once possessed, stretching from the Alps to both seas, as even the name testifies in support of the account; for they call the northern sea Adria, from the Tyrrhenian city of Adria, while the sea inclining toward the south, opposite it, they call the Tyrrhenian sea,
and this whole land is planted with trees and good for pasturing cattle and well watered by rivers. And it had eighteen cities, fine and large and equipped both industriously for commerce and lavishly for daily living, which the Gauls, having driven out the Tyrrhenians, themselves took over. But these things had happened a considerable time before.
The Gauls at that time marched against the Tyrrhenian city of Clusium and laid siege to it, and the people of Clusium, taking refuge with the Romans, asked them for envoys and letters to the barbarians. Three men of the Fabian family were sent, men of good repute and holding great honors in the city.
The Gauls received these men kindly, on account of the name of Rome, and ceasing from their assault on the walls, came to talk with them. And when the envoys inquired what wrong the Clusians had done them to bring them marching upon their city, the Gallic king Brennus laughed and said: "The Clusians wrong us, being able to till only a little land, yet claiming to hold much, and not sharing it with us, who are strangers, many, and poor."
"These same wrongs, Romans, were done to you as well—formerly by the Albans and the people of Fidenae and Ardea, and today it is the Veientes, the Capenates, and no small number among the Faliscans and Volscians who do likewise. Against these you march, and if they do not share their goods with you, you enslave them and plunder and raze their cities—doing nothing terrible or unjust in this,
but rather following the oldest of laws, which gives the possessions of the weaker to the stronger, beginning with the god and ending with the beasts; for even in these it is by nature implanted to seek to have more, the stronger over the weaker. So stop pitying the Clusians under siege, lest you teach the Gauls too to become kind and compassionate toward those wronged by the Romans."
From these words the Romans recognized that Brennus was implacable, and going into Clusium they encouraged and urged the men to sally out against the barbarians together with them, wanting either to learn the strength of the enemy or to display their own. When the Clusians sallied out and a fight broke out close under the walls, a member of the Fabian house, Quintus Ambustus, mounted on horseback, rode against a tall, striking Gaul who had pressed far ahead of his own line, and was not recognized at once, since the clash happened in a flash and his flashing armor masked who he was.
When he had prevailed in the fight and, having thrown the man down, was stripping his armor, Brennus recognized him and called the gods to witness that, contrary to the customs and laws held sacred and just among all men, a man who had come as an envoy had committed an act of war. He at once broke off the battle, and letting the Clusians be, he led his army against Rome. But not wishing it to appear that this wrong had come to them as something welcome, something they had wanted as a pretext, he sent to demand the man for punishment, and meanwhile advanced slowly.
When the senate had assembled in Rome, many others accused Fabius, and among the priests those called the Fetiales pressed the matter urgently, demanding and insisting that the senate turn the pollution of what had been done onto the one man responsible, and so absolve the rest. These Fetiales had been established by Numa Pompilius, the gentlest and most just of kings, as guardians of peace and as judges and guarantors of the causes that justly bring on war.
When the case went before the senate and from there was passed on to the people, and the priests continued to bring their charge against Fabius, the populace treated the sacred business with such mockery and disdain that they went so far as to elect Fabius military tribune together with his brothers. On hearing this, the Celts were angered and pressed their advance without delay, but
pressed forward with all speed. And though those in between were terrified by their numbers and the brilliance of their equipment and their violence and fury, and thought that the whole countryside was already lost and that the cities would be destroyed at once, contrary to expectation they did no wrong and took nothing from the fields, but as they passed near the cities they shouted that they were marching on Rome and were at war only with the Romans, and that they regarded everyone else as friends.
While the barbarians came on with such an onrush, the military tribunes led the Romans out to battle—not deficient in numbers, for their heavy infantry were no fewer than forty thousand, but most of them untrained and handling weapons for the first time. Moreover the rites of the gods had been neglected by them, since they had neither made sacrifices with good omens nor consulted the seers, as one would expect before danger and battle.
No less than anything else, the plurality of commanders threw their conduct into confusion. Yet earlier, even for lesser contests, they had often chosen a single ruler, whom they call dictator, well aware how great an advantage it is in a perilous moment to act on one judgment when unaccountable power holds authority firmly in hand.
Not least did the ill treatment of Camillus damage their affairs, since the man who would have been feared, one who ruled neither to please nor to flatter, was gone. So advancing ninety stadia from the city, they camped beside the river Allia, not far from where it joins the Tiber near their camp. There, when the barbarians appeared, they fought disgracefully and, through lack of order, were routed.
The left wing the Celts at once drove into the river and destroyed; the right, swerving away from the onslaught from the plain toward the hills, was cut down less severely, and most of them from there escaped into the city, while the rest, as many as survived the slaughter after the enemy gave up the pursuit, fled by night to Veii, believing that Rome was gone and that everyone there had perished.
The battle occurred after the summer solstice, near the full moon—on the same day on which, in an earlier year, the great disaster of the Fabii had occurred: three hundred men of that house were killed by the Etruscans. And from this second defeat the day has been called Alliensis, after the river, down to the present. As for whether some days should be considered unlucky, or whether Heraclitus was right to rebuke Hesiod for treating some days as good and others as bad, on the ground that he did not know that every day has the same nature—this has been discussed elsewhere.
But it might perhaps suit the present narrative to recall a few examples. In Boeotia, on the fifth of the month Hippodromius—which the Athenians call Hecatombaeon—two most celebrated victories happened to fall, by which the Greeks were set free: the battle of Leuctra, and the earlier one at Ceressus, more than two hundred years before it, when they defeated Lattamyas and the Thessalians.
This again: the Persians were defeated by the Greeks on the sixth of the month Boedromion at Marathon, and on the third day of that month at both Plataea and Mycale, and, on the twenty-fifth day, at Arbela. It was likewise the Athenians who won the sea-fight off Naxos, under the generalship of Chabrias, around the full moon of Boedromion, and at Salamis around the twentieth, as we have shown in our work On Days.
The month Thargelion, too, has clearly brought misfortunes to the barbarians: for Alexander defeated the King's generals at the Granicus in Thargelion, and the Carthaginians were defeated in Sicily by Timoleon on the seventh from the end of the same month—around which time Troy too is thought to have fallen, in Thargelion, as Ephorus and Callisthenes and Damastes and Phylarchus have recorded.
By contrast, the month Metageitnion—called Panemus among the Boeotians—has proven no friend to the Greeks. Its seventh day saw them wiped out when Antipater crushed them at Crannon, just as, earlier, their fortunes turned against them at Chaeronea in the fight with Philip. That same day, in that same month, in that identical year, brought the destruction of Archidamus's men, who had gone across into Italy, at the hands of the natives there.
The Carthaginians keep careful watch of the ninth from the end of the month, as the day that has always brought them the most and greatest misfortunes. Nor am I unaware that around the time of the Mysteries, Thebes was likewise razed by Alexander, and afterward the Athenians received a Macedonian garrison around the very twentieth of Boedromion, the day on which they lead out the mystic Iacchus.
Likewise the Romans, on this same day, first lost the army under Caepio to the Cimbri, and later, under the generalship of Lucullus, defeated the Armenians and Tigranes. And King Attalus and Pompey the Great both died on their own birthdays. In general, one could point to many people who have experienced both fortune and misfortune returning on the same cycles.
But for the Romans this day is one of the most inauspicious of all, and because of it two other days each month are likewise regarded so, since caution and superstition, once aroused by such an event, tend to spread further, as is usual. These matters have been treated more carefully in our work On Roman Causes.
After that battle, had the Gauls pressed the pursuit of the fleeing men without delay, nothing could have kept Rome from complete ruin, with everyone remaining inside it wiped out as well: such was the panic the fugitives spread among those who took them in, and such was the disordered terror that then gripped those very people in turn,
but as it was, the barbarians, disbelieving the scale of their own victory and turning instead to enjoyment out of sheer delight, and to dividing up the goods captured in the camp, gave the crowd streaming out of the city an easy chance to flee, and gave those who remained time to hope and prepare; for abandoning the rest of the city, they fortified the Capitoline with missiles and cross-walls.
Among the first of the sacred things, some they carried up to the Capitoline, while the Vestal virgins snatched up the fire of Vesta along with the other sacred objects and fled with them. And yet some record that what is guarded by these virgins is nothing other than an undying fire, established by King Numa as an object of reverence above all else, since among natural things fire is the one possessed of the greatest activity:
for all coming-into-being is a kind of motion, or occurs together with some motion, while the other portions of matter, lying idle once heat fails them and resembling corpses, long for the power of fire as if for a soul, and once it approaches, they somehow turn to acting and being acted upon. This, then, since Numa was an extraordinary man and, through his wisdom, was said to keep company with the Muses, he consecrated and had kept ever wakeful, as an image of the eternal power that orders all things; while others say the fire itself,
as among the Greeks, burns before shrines as a purifying element, while other things within, unseen, are hidden from everyone except these virgins, whom they call the Vestals; and the prevailing account held that the famous Trojan Palladium was stored there, brought to Italy by Aeneas. But there are those who tell the Samothracian myth that it was Dardanus who carried it out to Troy and performed the rites and consecrated it when he founded the city, and that Aeneas, at its capture, stole it away and preserved it until his settlement in Italy.
Yet others, professing fuller knowledge of these matters, claim that two small jars are kept in that place, one left open with nothing inside, the other closed up and full, and that neither may be looked upon except by the most sacred of the virgins. Still others hold that all these accounts are wrong, and say that at that time the maidens put most of the sacred objects into two jars and hid them underground beneath the temple of Quirinus, so that the spot is called, to this day, the Pithisci.
Taking up the most important and greatest of the sacred objects, the Vestals made their retreat in flight along the river. There Lucius Albinius, one of the ordinary citizens, chanced to be among those fleeing, carrying off his infant children and wife along with necessary possessions on a wagon. When he saw the virgins carrying the sacred objects of the gods in their arms, walking along without any attendants and in distress, he quickly took his wife down from the wagon along with the children and the goods, and gave them a place to climb up and escape to one of the Greek cities,
and Albinius's piety and the honor he showed the divine, displayed at so dangerous a moment, ought not to go unrecorded. Meanwhile the ministers of the remaining gods, together with the older men who had served as consuls and celebrated triumphs, found they could not bear to desert the city; instead they arrayed themselves in their gleaming ceremonial vestments, and, with Fabius the pontifex at their head, offered prayers to the gods, as though dedicating themselves to the divine power on their country's behalf, then took their places, richly attired, in their ivory chairs in the forum, to await whatever fate would bring.
Brennus reached the city three days after the battle, bringing his army against it; finding its gates unshut and its walls unmanned, he at first suspected an ambush or ruse, since he could scarcely credit that the Romans had abandoned all resistance. Once he learned the truth, however, he entered through the Colline Gate and captured Rome, some three hundred sixty-odd years past its founding—assuming any exact count from that era deserves trust, given that the confusion surrounding those years has cast doubt even on the dating of events that came later—
yet it seems that some dim rumor of this disaster and capture immediately reached Greece. For Heraclides of Pontus, who lived not long after those times, says in his treatise On the Soul that a report had come from the west that an army come from the Hyperboreans from outside had taken a Greek city, Rome, settled somewhere near the great sea.
I would not be surprised, then, if Heraclides, who had a taste for fable-making, dressed up the genuine report of the city's fall with talk of Hyperboreans and a boundless sea. As for the philosopher Aristotle, he plainly had accurate word that the Celts were the ones who took the city, but says that its savior was Lucius—though it was Marcus, not Lucius, who was Camillus. But this has been said only by way of conjecture.
Having taken possession of Rome, Brennus stationed a guard around the Capitoline, and himself, going down through the forum, marveled at the sight of the men sitting in their places in order and silence, watching how they neither rose up as the enemy approached nor changed their expression or color, but leaned at ease and without fear upon the staves they carried, and gazed at one another in quiet.
It was a source of wonder to the Gauls at such strangeness, and for a long time, hesitating to touch or approach them as though they were superior beings, they were at a loss. But when one of them grew bold enough to come close to Marcus Papirius, and reaching out his hand gently touched his beard and pulled at it, for it was long and thick, Papirius struck him on the head with his staff and cracked his skull, and the barbarian, drawing his sword, killed him,
After this they fell upon and killed the rest as well, and dispatched all others they came upon, and plundered the houses for many days, carrying off and driving away goods, and then set them on fire and tore them down, being enraged at the men holding the Capitol because, though summoned, they would not yield, but even inflicted wounds on their assailants in self-defense from the barrier wall. For these reasons they ravaged the city and further destroyed those they captured, alike men and women, alike old men and children.
As the siege dragged on, the Gauls needed provisions; so they divided themselves, some remaining with the king to guard the Capitol, others going about the countryside plundering and sacking the villages by sudden assault, not all together, but different bands under their own leaders and companies, growing bold from their successes and fearing nothing as they scattered abroad.
The largest and most disciplined portion of them made for the city of the Ardeates, where Camillus was staying, idle from public affairs since his exile and living as a private citizen, entertaining hopes and calculations not of a man content merely to escape and elude the enemy, but of one watching for the moment when, should opportunity come, he might strike back.
For this reason, seeing the Ardeates sufficient in numbers but lacking boldness through the inexperience and softness of their generals, he first put an argument to the young men, that they must not think the Romans' misfortune to be the valor of the Celts, nor consider what those men suffered through their own bad judgment to be the achievement of men who contributed nothing toward victory, but rather regard it as a display of fortune.
It would be a fine thing, he said, even at risk to repel a war that was foreign and barbarian, a war whose only limit in victory, like fire's, is the destruction of the one defeated; but moreover, if they showed courage and eagerness, he would provide them victory without danger, at the right moment. When the young men had welcomed these words, Camillus went to the magistrates and elders of the Ardeates. And when he had won them over as well, he armed all of military age and kept them within the wall, wishing to remain unnoticed by the enemy, who were nearby,
since the Gauls, having ridden over the countryside and being weighed down by the great quantity of what they were driving off and carrying away, had encamped carelessly and negligently in the plain; and when night came on them drunk and silence held the camp, Camillus, learning this from his scouts, led out the Ardeates; and having crossed the intervening ground quietly, around midnight he closed upon their camp, raising a great shout and throwing them into confusion on every side with the trumpets, catching men still badly fuddled from drink and barely rousing themselves from sleep at the uproar.
A few, sobering up in their fear and arming themselves, stood their ground against Camillus's men, so that they fell fighting in self-defense; but the greater number, still overpowered by sleep and wine, were caught unarmed and killed. As for those who fled from the camp by night — not many — the cavalry rode them down the next day as they scattered in disorder about the countryside, and destroyed them.
The report of this deed, quickly spreading to the cities, called out many of military age to muster, especially those Romans who, having escaped from the battle at the Allia, were at Veii and lamented among themselves: "What a leader Fortune took from Rome and gave to adorn the Ardeates with Camillus's successes, while the city that bore and raised such a man is gone and destroyed.
We, for want of generals, sit huddled behind walls not our own, having abandoned Italy. Come, let us send to the Ardeates and demand back our own general, or ourselves take up arms and go to him; for he has left behind the status of exile, and we ourselves no longer belong to a fatherland that has ceased to exist, but rather to one now in enemy hands." This they resolved, and sending to Camillus they begged him to accept the command,
but he replied he would take no such action until those citizens remaining on the Capitol had cast their vote as required by law. For he held that those men, being preserved, were the fatherland, and if they commanded he would obey eagerly, but against their will he would meddle in nothing. They marveled at Camillus's scrupulousness and nobility of spirit. But there was difficulty in finding someone to carry this message to the Capitol — indeed it seemed altogether impossible, with the enemy holding the city, for a messenger to make his way to the citadel.
There was among the young men one Pontius Cominius, of middling birth among the citizens but a lover of glory and honor; this man undertook the task voluntarily. He took no letter to those on the Capitol, lest, if he were caught, the enemy should discover Camillus's design through it, but wearing plain clothing and carrying corks under it, he traveled the greater part of the road fearlessly by day, and coming near the city already in darkness, because the bridge was watched by the barbarians and thus closed to him as a way over the river,
he wound the clothing about his head — not much nor heavy — and, entrusting his body to the corks and helping himself along by swimming, crossed over to the city and came out. And always avoiding those who were awake, judging their locations by the glow of their lamps and the sound of their voices, he pressed on toward the Carmentine Gate, the quietest spot along the wall, and where above all the hill of the Capitol rises steeply and much rough rock surrounds it in a circle; by this he climbed up unseen and came to the men guarding the barrier wall, with difficulty and only just, at the least steep point.
Greeting the men and telling his name, he was helped up and brought to the Roman officials. Quickly a senate was convened, and coming before them he announced Camillus's victory, of which they had not yet heard, and related what the soldiers had decided; and he urged them to confirm the command for Camillus, since the citizens outside would obey no one else,
and hearing this and deliberating, they named Camillus dictator and sent Pontius homeward once more along that same path, and fortune favored him again. For he passed unnoticed by the enemy and brought word of the senate's decision to the Romans outside.
Those men having received it eagerly, Camillus, arriving, found already twenty thousand under arms, and gathered more from the allies, and prepared for the assault. Thus Camillus was chosen dictator a second time, and going to Veii he met with the soldiers and gathered more from the allies, intending to attack the enemy. Meanwhile, back in the city, a handful of the barbarians happened to pass along the very spot where Pontius had made his nighttime approach to the Capitol, and noticing in many spots the tracks of hands and feet where he had gripped and clutched, and in many spots the rubbed-off bark of plants growing on the cliffs and the slipping of the soil, reported it to the king.
And he, coming and seeing it, at that time held quiet, but in the evening, gathering together the lightest of body among the Celts, those most accustomed to mountain-climbing, said, "The enemy themselves are showing us a way to reach them that we did not know existed, proving that it is neither impassable nor unclimbable for men, and it would be shameful indeed, once we have started, to give up short of the goal and leave this place unconquered, since our foes themselves have shown us the point of access — for a climb manageable by a single man is no great trouble for a larger number ascending one after another, particularly when they undertake it with vigor and lend each other support. Gifts and honors befitting their valor will be given to each man."
When the king had spoken thus, the Gauls willingly undertook it, and around midnight, climbing the rock together in great numbers, they went up in silence, clinging to the ground where it was steep and difficult; yet, as they attempted it, it proved more yielding and accommodating than expected,
so that the first to reach the top and get themselves ready were on the point of touching the outer wall and attacking the sleeping guards; for neither man nor dog had noticed them. But there were sacred geese kept around the temple of Hera, fed abundantly at other times, but now, since their grain was already scanty and barely sufficient, being neglected they were in poor condition.
Now this creature is by nature sharp of perception and easily startled, and these, moreover, having become sleepless and clamorous from hunger, quickly perceived the approach of the Gauls, and rushing at them with running and honking woke everyone up, since the barbarians too, now that they were no longer unnoticed, no longer spared any noise and pressed the attack more violently.
So each man snatched up whatever weapon came to hand in his haste, and rushed to help as best he could on the spot. First of all was Manlius, a man of consular rank, powerful of body and conspicuous for his high spirit; meeting two of the enemy together, he got ahead of one who had raised his curved sword and cut off his right hand with his own blade, and struck the other in the face with his shield and shoved him backward off the rock,
and standing at the wall together with those who had run to join him and gathered around him, he drove back the rest, who had neither come up in great numbers nor accomplished anything worthy of their daring; and having escaped the danger in this way, at daybreak they threw the captain of the guard down onto the enemy from the rock, and to Manlius, as a reward for his victory, they voted honors more for prestige than for practical use, contributing to him as much as each man received in a day's ration — half a pound of grain (as they call it locally) and a quarter of a Greek pint of wine.
After this the Celts' spirits were more dejected. For they were short of supplies, being kept from foraging by fear of Camillus, and disease began to creep in among them, encamped as they were amid the piled-up corpses of the dead lying about among the ruins, while the depth of ash, sending up an atmosphere made foul with dryness and sharpness by winds and heat, damaged their bodies through their breathing.
But most of all the change from their accustomed way of life — from shady places with pleasant shelters in summer — into a low-lying land poorly suited for the change of season toward autumn, wore them down, and the long, idle sitting they endured at the Capitol, for they had now been keeping to their quarters in siege for the seventh month; so that there was great mortality in the camp, and the dead could no longer even be buried, so numerous had they become.
Nor, however, were things any better for the besieged. For famine grew worse, and ignorance of what was happening with Camillus's forces caused despondency, for no one came to them from outside, the city being closely guarded by the barbarians; whence, both sides being in this condition, negotiations for a settlement arose, first between the outposts meeting one another, and then, as it seemed best to the leading men,
when Sulpicius, the Roman military tribune, came to a conference with Brennus, it was agreed that the Romans should pay down a thousand pounds of gold, and the Gauls, upon receiving it, should at once withdraw from the city and the countryside. When oaths had been sworn on these terms and the gold brought out, and the Celts around the scales acted dishonestly, first secretly, then openly, dragging down and tilting the balance, the Romans grew indignant at them.
But Brennus, as if mocking and jeering, took off his sword along with his belt and added it to the weights. When Sulpicius asked, "What is this?" "What else," he said, "but grief for the conquered?" This has already become a proverbial saying. Of the Romans, some were indignant and thought they should take back the gold and depart again and endure the siege; others urged them to yield, suffering moderate wrong, and not to add shame to shame by giving more, since giving at all, though not honorable, was necessary given the circumstance and must be endured.
While this dispute was going on both with the Celts and among themselves, Camillus, leading his army, was at the gates; and learning what was happening, he ordered the rest to follow in order and at an easy pace, while he himself, hurrying on with the best men, went at once toward the Romans.
When all had made way and received him as commander-in-chief with order and silence, he took the gold off the scale and gave it to his attendants, and ordered the Celts to take the scale and weights and withdraw, saying that it was the ancestral custom of the Romans to save their fatherland with iron, not with gold. When Brennus grew indignant and said he was being wronged, the agreement being broken, Camillus replied that it had not been made lawfully nor was the compact valid,
for he had already been chosen dictator, and no other magistrate had lawful authority, so the pact had been struck with men lacking any authority to strike it. He told them, therefore, to state their wishes plainly, since he had arrived as their lawful and sovereign ruler, both to grant pardon to those who asked for it and to inflict punishment, if they did not repent, on those responsible.
At this Brennus, provoked, engaged in a skirmish, and both sides advanced as far as drawing swords and pushing each other about, mingled together as was natural, moving about in houses and narrow streets where they could not form a battle line. Brennus, quickly coming to his senses, led the Celts back to their camp, not many having fallen, and rousing them all by night he left the city, and advancing sixty stadia encamped by the Gabine road.
At daybreak Camillus was upon him, armed splendidly with the Romans' spirits now high with confidence; and following a long and hard-fought battle, he crushed them, inflicting heavy losses, and seized their camp. Among those who escaped, some were killed at once as they were pursued, but the greater part, scattered abroad, were cut down by men rushing out from the surrounding villages and towns.
Thus Rome, against all reason, was taken, and against still greater reason was saved, having been seven months in all under the barbarians; since the barbarians had entered the city only days past the Ides of Quintilis and were expelled around the Ides of February. Camillus held a triumph, a fitting honor for the man who had restored a fatherland that had been lost, and
It was as if the city were being led back into itself. For those from outside, together with their children and wives, marched in alongside him, while the people who had endured the siege atop the Capitoline, barely escaping death by starvation, came forth to greet them, clasping each other in their arms and shedding tears of happiness at that moment. Priests and temple-attendants of the gods, carrying back whatever sacred objects they had hidden there while fleeing from profane hands or had smuggled out with themselves, displayed to the citizens sights long yearned for, who received them with joy, as though the gods themselves were coming down again together into Rome.
After sacrificing to the gods and purifying the city, under the guidance of those expert in such matters, he restored what remained of the sacred rites, and he himself founded a temple to Rumor and Voice, having discovered that very spot where, by night, the voice announcing the barbarian army had fallen from a god upon Marcus Caedicius.
With difficulty and only slowly, then, were the sites of the sacred places uncovered again, through Camillus's zeal and the great labor of the priests. But when the city itself had to be rebuilt, utterly destroyed as it was, discouragement toward the task fell upon the multitude, and there was hesitation among men stripped of everything and in need, at that moment, of some ease and rest from their troubles rather than of toiling and wearing themselves out further, being strong neither in resources nor in body.
So quietly turning back again toward Veii, a city fully furnished and still standing, they gave openings to those accustomed to speaking for popular favor to begin their demagoguery, and they listened to seditious talk against Camillus, as though he, for the sake of his own ambition and glory, were depriving them of a ready-made city and forcing them to camp among ruins and to raise up so great a conflagration, so that he might be called not only leader and general of Rome, but founder too, pushing Romulus aside.
Alarmed by this outcry, the Senate refused to let Camillus resign his post before the year had run its course, even though he desired to do so — no previous dictator had ever held office beyond six months; and the Senate itself worked to soothe and reassure the populace, appealing to them and pointing to their fathers' graves and tombs, recalling the consecrated shrines and sacred sites that Romulus, Numa, or one of the other kings had dedicated and passed down to them.
Among the first of the divine signs they brought forward was the freshly-severed head that had appeared at the laying of the foundations of the Capitol, as a portent that the place was fated to become the head of Italy, and also the fire of Vesta, which, after the war, had been kindled again by the virgins — that those who abandoned the city would extinguish and put it out once more, a reproach that would fall on them whether they saw it inhabited by other newcomers and strangers, or saw it deserted and given over to grazing sheep.
Saying such things, both to individuals privately and often together in public before the people, they wore down again the resolve of the many, who lamented their present helplessness and begged not to be forced, as men saved naked and destitute from a shipwreck, to piece together the remnants of a ruined city, when another lay ready at hand.
It was resolved, then, to bring the matter before the Senate for Camillus to decide. He himself spoke at length, urging them on behalf of the fatherland, and many others too, whoever wished, spoke at length; but finally, having called up Lucius Lucretius, the one accustomed to give his opinion first, he bade him declare his view first, and then the others in order.
A silence fell, and as Lucretius was about to begin, by chance a centurion leading a company on the day watch was passing by outside, and, calling in a loud voice to the man carrying the standard at the front, he ordered him to stay right there and plant the standard, for it would be best to sit down and remain in that very spot. At this coincidence of timing, together with the anxious thought of what was to come, and the ambiguity of the words as they had fallen, Lucretius, bowing before the god, said he added his own opinion in agreement, and each of the others followed suit.
A wondrous change of impulse seized the multitude too, as they called out to one another and urged each other on to the work, not by any distribution or ordering, but each seizing whatever plot he was ready or willing to take. That is why the city, raised up again in haste and speed, came out confused in its narrow lanes and jumbled together in its dwellings; for within a single year, it is said, it rose again complete both in its walls and in its private buildings.
Those whom Camillus had assigned to recover and delineate the sacred sites, everything being in disorder, found the shrine of Mars — which they reached while making their round of the Palatine — destroyed and burned by the barbarians, like everything else. But as they were clearing and purifying the site, they came upon the divining-staff of Romulus, sunk deep beneath a great mass of ashes.
The lituus, as it is called, curves at one extremity; augurs employ it to divide the regions of the sky as they sit interpreting the flight of birds, just as Romulus himself once did, being highly skilled in the art of divination. After his disappearance from among mortals, the priesthood retrieved the staff and kept it safe and untouched, as they would any other sacred relic. Finding it now, when everything else had perished, having escaped destruction, they grew more hopeful for Rome's future, as though this sign guaranteed her salvation as everlasting.
Before they had yet finished with these concerns, war fell upon them: the Aequians, the Volscians, and the Latins together invaded their territory, while the Etruscans besieged Sutrium, a city allied with the Romans. And when the military tribunes in command, camped near Mount Marcius, found themselves surrounded by the Latin forces and at risk of forfeiting their camp entirely, they dispatched a message to Rome; in response, Camillus received his third appointment as dictator.
Concerning this war two accounts are given. I shall recount first the legendary one. They say that the Latins, whether using this as a pretext or truly wishing to mingle the two peoples again from the beginning, sent envoys demanding from the Romans free-born maidens in marriage. The Romans, at a loss what to do — for they dreaded war, not yet having settled themselves or recovered — and suspecting that this demand for women was really a demand for hostages, though dressed up as a marriage-alliance for propriety's sake — at which point a household slave girl called Tutula, or, as others tell it,
Philotis, advised the magistrates to send along with her the most attractive and free-looking of the household slave-girls, dressed to appear as noblewomen, and to leave the rest to her. The magistrates, persuaded, chose out from among the slave-girls as many as she judged fit for the purpose, and, having adorned them with fine clothing and gold, delivered them into the hands of the Latins, whose camp lay not far from the city.
By night the other girls stole away the weapons of the enemy, while she — whether Tutula or Philotis — having climbed a great wild fig tree and spread her cloak behind her, raised a torch toward Rome, as had been arranged with the magistrates, with no other citizen aware of it. Because of this the soldiers' sortie was made in tumult, as the magistrates hurried them along, calling to one another and only with difficulty falling into order; but falling upon the enemy's camp while they lay unguarded and asleep, they seized it and killed the greater part of the men within.
This, they say, happened on what are now the Julian, but then the Quintilian, Nones, and the festival celebrated commemorates that deed. First, going out together in a crowd through the gate, they shout aloud many common local names — Gaius, Marcus, Lucius, and the like — imitating the hurried calling-out to one another that occurred on that occasion.
Then the slave-girls, splendidly adorned, go about jesting and mocking those they meet, and a kind of mock battle takes place among themselves, as though they too had taken part then in the struggle against the Latins. Feasting, they sit shaded by branches of fig; and they call the day the Nones of the Goat, as they suppose, because of the wild fig tree from which the girl raised the torch — for they call the wild fig the 'goat-fig.'
Others say that most of these things are done and told concerning the fate of Romulus, for it was on this very day, they say, that he vanished outside the gate, when darkness and a sudden storm swept round him, or, as some believe, when an eclipse of the sun occurred; and the day was called the Nones of the Goat from the place, for they call the she-goat 'capra.' Romulus vanished while addressing the people near the place called the Goat's Marsh, as is written in the account concerning him.
The other account, which most historians favor, runs as follows. Camillus, having been named dictator for the third time, learned that the force under the military tribunes had been surrounded by the combined Latin and Volscian armies, and so was compelled to arm even those citizens already past military age.
Making a long circuit around Mount Marcius and eluding the enemy, he stationed his army in their rear, and by lighting many fires signaled his own presence. Those under siege, taking heart, resolved to march out and
join battle; but the Latins and Volscians, drawing themselves inside their camp, fortified it with a great many stakes and fenced it in on every side, having become caught between two enemies and having resolved to wait for another force from home, while also expecting help from the Etruscans. Perceiving this, Camillus, fearing to suffer what he himself had done to the enemy by surrounding them, hastened to seize the moment.
Since the palisade was made of wood and a strong wind was blowing down from the mountains at daybreak, he prepared fire-missiles, and leading out his force around dawn, ordered the rest to use arrows and shouting on one side, while he himself, keeping with him those who were to hurl the fire, took up a position from which the wind usually struck hardest against the enemy's camp, and waited for the right moment. When the battle was already joined and the sun was rising and the wind broke out strong, he gave the signal for the charge and scattered abundant fire-missiles over the camp.
Quickly, the flame, fed by the dense timber and the wooden stockade, rose up and spread round in a circle, and the Latins, having no remedy or means of quenching it ready at hand, when the camp was already full of fire, crowded together into a small space and were forced out against the armed and drawn-up enemy before the palisade. Of these few escaped, but all those left behind in the camp the fire destroyed, until the Romans, putting it out, plundered the goods.
When this had happened, leaving his son Lucius behind at the camp as guard over the captives and the goods, he himself invaded the enemy's territory. Taking the city of the Aequians and winning over the Volscians, he immediately led his army toward Sutrium, not yet having learned what had befallen the people of Sutrium, but hastening to help them, thinking they were still in danger and under siege by the Etruscans.
In fact they had already given up their city to the enemy, and, stripped of all their possessions, had been driven out with nothing left to them but the cloaks on their backs; and as Camillus was on the road, they met him together with their children and wives, lamenting their misfortunes. Camillus himself, moved to pity at the sight, and seeing the Romans too, as the people of Sutrium clung to them, weeping and grieving over what had happened, resolved not to delay retribution,
but to march at once against Sutrium that very day, reckoning that men who had just seized a prosperous and wealthy city, leaving none of the enemy behind in it and expecting no attack from outside, would be found utterly relaxed and unguarded — and he reckoned rightly, for he not only passed through the country unnoticed, but even came up to the gates and took possession of the walls; for no one was keeping watch, but they were scattered about the houses, given over to wine and revelry.
When they perceived that the enemy was already in control, they were in such a wretched state from gluttony and drunkenness that many could not even rouse themselves to flee, but remained in their houses to die most shamefully of all, or to surrender themselves to the enemy. Thus it came about that the city of Sutrium, captured twice in a single day, both lost its possessors and had them restored through Camillus, its former ones losing it and the dispossessed regaining it.
The triumph that came from these deeds brought him no less favor and honor than his first two. For even those citizens most given to envy, and most inclined to attribute everything to good fortune rather than to merit, were now compelled by these very achievements to give credit for the glory to the man's ability and energy.
Most conspicuous among those who contended against him and begrudged him was Marcus Manlius, the one who had first thrust the Gauls back from the citadel when they attacked the Capitol by night, and who for this was surnamed Capitolinus. This man, claiming to be first among the citizens and unable to surpass Camillus in reputation by honorable means,
adopted the common and familiar pretext for tyranny, courting the favor of the common people, especially those in debt, defending and pleading the cause of some against their creditors, and forcibly rescuing others and preventing them from being brought before the law, so that many of the poor quickly gathered around him and caused great fear among the best of the citizens, who grew bold and threw the forum into turmoil.
When Quintus Capitolinus was appointed dictator to deal with this and threw Manlius into prison, the people, once this happened, changed their dress, a thing done only on occasions of great and public calamity. The Senate, fearing the uproar, ordered Manlius released. But he, once released, was no better, but carried on his demagoguery more insolently still and threw the city into faction. So they elected Camillus military tribune again.
When the trials against Manlius were brought in, the sight of the place did great harm to his accusers. For the spot on which Manlius had stood when he fought the Gauls by night rose above the forum, in view from the Capitol, and it moved those who saw it to pity: Manlius himself, stretching out his hands toward it and weeping, called to their minds his struggles there, so that the judges were at a loss and again and again put off the trial, unwilling to let the crime go unpunished in the face of such clear evidence, yet unable to apply the law while the very scene of the deed lay before their eyes because of the place.
Camillus, perceiving this, had the court moved outside the gate to the Petelian grove; there, since the Capitol was no longer in view, the prosecutor made good his charge, and the judges' memory of what had happened was left free to take up the anger the present offenses deserved.
Manlius, then, was convicted and led away to the Capitol, and hurled down from the very rock which was at once the monument of his most fortunate deeds and of his greatest disasters. The Romans tore down his house and on that spot built a shrine to the goddess called Moneta, and from then on decreed that no patrician was to have his dwelling on the citadel.
Camillus, called to a sixth military tribunate, tried to decline, being now advanced in years and fearing perhaps some envy and resentment at such great glory and successes; but the most evident of his reasons was bodily weakness, for he happened to be ill at that time.
The people, however, would not release him from office, but crying out that they had no need of him to ride or fight hand to hand in battle, only to deliberate and give orders, compelled him to take up the command and, jointly with a fellow officer, Lucius Furius, to march the army straightaway against the foe. Those enemies were the Praenestines together with the Volscians, who were laying waste the territory of Rome's allies with a sizeable force.
Marching out and encamping beside the enemy, Camillus himself wished to wear down the war by delay, and, should a battle prove necessary, to wait until his body had recovered strength before engaging; but Lucius, his fellow commander, carried away by desire for glory, rushed uncontrollably toward the danger and stirred up the captains and company-commanders along with him. Camillus, fearing that he might seem out of some jealousy to be robbing young men of success and honor, reluctantly let Lucius draw up the army for battle, while Camillus, owing to his own frailty at the time, stayed behind in the camp with only a few men.
When Lucius rashly engaged and was defeated, Camillus, seeing that the Romans had broken into flight, was unable to hold back; he sprang up from his couch and, together with his attendants, hurried to intercept them right at the camp's entrances, forcing his way past the fleeing men toward those chasing them, so that some at once turned back and followed him, while others coming on from outside took their stand before him and locked shields, exhorting one another not to abandon their commander.
At that time, then, the enemy were thus turned back from their pursuit; but on the following day Camillus led out the army, joined battle, and won a decisive victory, capturing their camp as he burst in together with the fleeing enemy and destroying the greater part of them. Learning after this that the town of Satricum had been taken by the Tyrrhenians and that its inhabitants, who were all Romans, had been slaughtered, he sent the bulk and the heavier part of his force back to Rome, while he himself, taking those who were in the prime of their strength and most eager, fell upon the Tyrrhenians who held the town, and, prevailing, drove some of them out and killed others.
Returning to Rome with much booty, Camillus showed that those had been wisest of all who had not feared the weakness and age of a commander possessed of experience and daring, but had chosen him unwilling and ill rather than those in the prime of life who begged and were eager to command. For this reason too, when the Tusculans were said to have revolted, they bade Camillus march out against them, choosing one of the five fellow-commanders to accompany him.
Though all wished and asked to be chosen, he passed over the rest and chose Lucius Furius, whom no one would have expected — for this was the very man who, against Camillus's judgment, had lately been eager to fight and had met with misfortune in the battle. But wanting, it would seem, to cover up the man's setback and lift the disgrace from him, he promoted Lucius ahead of everyone else.
The Tusculans, craftily setting right their fault, when Camillus was already marching against them, filled the plain with people farming and pasturing as though in peace, kept their gates open and their children at their lessons in the schools; the common people could be seen at their trades in the workshops, and the better sort in the forum wearing their cloaks, while the magistrates went busily about announcing billets for the Romans, as though expecting no trouble and conscious of no wrongdoing. Seeing this done, Camillus was not led to disbelieve the treason, but, pitying their repentance for it, bade them go to the senate and beg pardon for their anger; and when they made their plea he himself joined in securing that the city be absolved of all blame and granted equal citizenship. These, then, were the most notable achievements of his sixth tribunate.
After this, when Licinius Stolo stirred up great strife in the city — the people contending against the senate and insisting that of the two consuls to be appointed, at least one ought to come from the commons rather than having both be patricians, the people’s tribunes were then elected, yet the commons kept the consular elections from taking place,
and as affairs, drifting through lack of government, were carried into still greater disorder, Camillus was appointed dictator by the senate, against the will of the people, for the fourth time — he himself not eager for it, nor wishing to oppose men who had good cause to speak freely against him from many great struggles, since he had accomplished more together with them in campaigns than with the patricians in civil affairs, and now had been chosen by the patricians out of envy of the people, so that either he might overpower and put down the people by his strength, or, failing to prevail, be himself brought down.
Still, striving to counter the situation at hand, once he found out which day the tribunes planned to introduce their bill, he called a levy of soldiers and drew the people away from the forum out to the Campus, threatening severe punishment for anyone who disobeyed.
When the tribunes in turn rose up against these threats and swore that they would fine him fifty thousand pieces of silver if he did not stop stripping the people of their law and their vote, then — whether fearing another exile and condemnation, unbecoming to a man so old and of such great achievements, or being unable, and unwilling, to overcome the people's force, which was unconquerable and hard to withstand — he then withdrew home; and on the following days, pretending illness, he resigned his office.
The senate appointed another dictator, who, having named as his master of horse Stolo himself, the leader of the sedition, allowed him to ratify the law that most vexed the patricians; it ordained that no one should possess more than five hundred iugera of land. At that time Stolo had become splendid, having prevailed by the vote; but a little later he himself was convicted of possessing more land than he had forbidden others to hold, and paid the penalty under his own law.
While the rivalry over the consular elections still remained — which was indeed the harshest part of the strife, the first to begin and the source of most of the trouble the senate had in its dealings with the people — clear reports arrived that the Gauls, having again set out from the Adriatic Sea, were advancing upon Rome in great numbers.
And along with the report came the actual doings of war, as the countryside was ravaged and its people, for whom it was not easy to take refuge in Rome, scattered into the mountains. This fear put an end to the strife, and the strongest men, coming together with the multitude, and the senate with the commons, all with one accord chose Camillus dictator for the fifth time.
He was now a very old man, wanting little of eighty years; but seeing the necessity and the danger, he neither pleaded excuse as before nor made use of any pretext, but at once undertook the command and enrolled those who were to fight. Knowing that the barbarians' strength lay chiefly in their swords, which they brought down in barbarous fashion and with no skill at all, cutting mostly at shoulders and heads,
for the greater part of his men he had iron helmets forged, smooth-surfaced along their curves, so that the swords would slip off or be shattered; and around their shields he fitted a rim of bronze plate, since the wood by itself could not withstand the blows; he also taught the soldiers themselves to use long javelins by hand and, thrusting them under the enemy's swords, to receive the blows upon them.
When the Gauls were near, holding a camp by the river Anio that was heavily laden with abundant plunder, Camillus led out his forces and stationed them along a gentle wooded valley with many hollows, so that most of them were hidden, while the part that was visible seemed, out of fear, to have huddled into steep ground.
Wishing to increase this impression of theirs, Camillus did not go to the defense of those being ravaged at his very feet, but, fortifying his camp, held still and waited, until he observed that part of the enemy had dispersed to forage while the rest, back in their camp, were stuffing themselves at all hours without restraint and falling into drunkenness.
Then, while it was still night, he sent forward his light-armed troops to hinder the barbarians as they formed up and to throw them into confusion the moment they came out, and at dawn he brought down his hoplites and drew them up on the level ground, many and eager, appearing not few and timid as the barbarians had expected. This first overturned the confidence of the Gauls, who thought themselves attacked beneath their worth. Then the light troops, falling upon them before they could take up their accustomed order and be sorted into companies, stirred them up and forced them, driven together at random, to fight in disarray.
At last, when Camillus brought up his hoplites, some of the Gauls, raising their swords, rushed to close with them, while others, meeting the javelins and taking the blows on the iron parts of their armor, turned back the enemy's iron, which was soft and thinly forged, so that their swords quickly bent and doubled over, and their shields became pinned together and weighed down by the javelins that clung to them.
For this reason, casting aside their own weapons, they tried to grapple with those of the Romans and to push the javelins aside by seizing them with their hands. But the Romans, seeing them now exposed, turned to their swords, and there was great slaughter of those in the front ranks, and flight of the rest over the whole plain; for Camillus had already occupied the hills and high ground beforehand, and the Gauls, having through overconfidence left their camp unfortified, knew it would not be hard for it to be taken.
This engagement, it is said, occurred in the thirteenth year following Rome's capture, and that from it a firm confidence against the Gauls grew up in the Romans, who had greatly feared the barbarians, believing that in the first encounter they had been overcome by them not by strength but through sickness and strange mischance. So strong, all the same, was the fear that they made a law releasing priests from military service unless the war were against the Gauls.
This was the last of Camillus's military contests; for he took the city of the Velitrani in the course of this campaign, it having surrendered to him without a fight. But the greatest of his political struggles still remained, and the harder one, against the people, who returned strong from their victory and pressed to have a consul appointed from the commons contrary to the established law, the senate resisting and not allowing Camillus to lay down his office, believing that with his strong and great authority they would fight better for the aristocracy.
When Camillus was presiding and transacting business in the forum, an officer sent out on the tribunes' orders told him to accompany him and laid a hand on him as if to drag him off; at once an outcry and commotion such as had never been heard before swept through the forum, as Camillus's supporters shoved the officer down from the platform and the multitude below calling out to drag him down; at a loss amid this turmoil, Camillus did not relinquish his office, but instead, gathering the senators about him, made his way toward the senate-house.
And before entering, he turned toward the Capitol and prayed the gods to guide the present affairs to the fairest end, promising to found a temple of Concord once the disturbance was settled. A great contest of opposing opinions took place in the senate, but the milder view prevailed, yielding to the people and granting that one of the consuls be elected from the multitude.
When the dictator announced this as the senate's decision to the people, at once, as was natural, they were reconciled, delighted with the senate, and escorted Camillus home with applause and shouting. On the next day they gathered and passed a decree to establish, just as Camillus had vowed, a shrine to Concord looking down over the forum and the assembly, in remembrance of these events,
and to add one more day to the festival called the Latin Festival, making it four days in all, and for all Romans at once to offer sacrifice and wear garlands. When the elections were conducted under Camillus's direction, Marcus Aemilius was installed as consul from the patrician order, and Lucius Sextius as the very first from the commons — and with this the deeds of Camillus came to their end.
In the following year a plague fell upon Rome and destroyed the common people beyond counting, and most of the magistrates besides. Camillus too died, in respect of age and the fullness of his life as ripe as any man's could be, but he grieved the Romans as much as all those together who died of the disease at that same time.

======== Pericles ========

Caesar once noticed that a number of rich foreigners visiting Rome went about hugging puppies and pet monkeys and lavishing affection on them, and he asked, so the story goes, whether the women of that country never had children of their own—a properly regal rebuke aimed at those who lavish on animals the fondness and tenderness that human beings deserve.
Is it not the case, then, since our soul by nature possesses a love of learning and a love of spectacle, that it makes sense to blame those who misuse this love on things heard and seen that are worth no attention at all, while neglecting the fine and beneficial? For sense-perception, which receives whatever it encounters passively through the impact of the stimulus, is perhaps compelled to observe everything that appears, whether useful or useless,
but the intellect, if a person is willing to use it, is by nature able to turn and change itself most readily toward whatever seems best; so one ought to pursue the finest things, so that the mind may not merely observe but also be nourished by observing. For just as a color suited to the eye, one that is bright and pleasant at once, revives and nourishes the sight, so the mind ought to be led toward sights that call it, through the pleasure they give, toward its own proper good. And these are found in the deeds that spring from virtue,
deeds which instill in those who study them a certain zeal and eagerness that leads to imitation—since with other things, admiration for what has been done is not immediately followed by an impulse to do it oneself. Often, indeed, the opposite happens: while delighting in the work, we despise its maker, as with perfumes and purple dyes—we take pleasure in these, yet consider the dyers and perfumers ignoble and vulgar.
For this reason Antisthenes spoke well when, hearing that Ismenias was an accomplished flute-player, he said, "But he's a worthless man—otherwise he wouldn't be so accomplished a flute-player." And Philip, when his son played the lyre charmingly and skillfully at some drinking party, said to him, "Aren't you ashamed to play so well?" A king, after all, does quite enough if he merely finds time to listen while others perform, and he pays sufficient tribute to the Muses just by watching as other men contend in such matters.
Working with one's own hands at menial things offers, against itself, the labor spent on useless matters as proof of indifference toward what is noble; and no young man of good natural gifts, upon seeing the Zeus at Pisa, ever desired to become Pheidias, or the Hera at Argos to become Polycleitus, nor did Anacreon or Philitas or Archilochus, however much he delighted in their poems, wish to become them.
For it is not necessary, if a work delights us as charming, that its maker should be worthy of our serious regard. Hence such things do not benefit those who view them, since no imitative zeal arises toward them, nor any impulse that stirs eagerness and drive toward becoming like them. But virtue, through actions, at once disposes us in such a way that we simultaneously admire the deeds and long to emulate those who did them.
For the goods that come from fortune, we love the possessing and enjoying of them; but the goods that come from virtue, we love the doing of them—and the former we wish to have from others, but the latter we wish, rather, that others should have from us. For the noble by itself moves one practically and at once implants a practical impulse, shaping the character of the viewer not through imitation but by furnishing, through the narrative of the deed, a deliberate choice.
It seemed good to us, then, to devote ourselves as well to the writing of Lives, and we have composed this book, the tenth, which sets out the life of Pericles alongside that of Fabius Maximus, the man who carried the war against Hannibal through to its conclusion—men alike in their other virtues, but especially in gentleness and justice, and in their ability to bear the ingratitude of their peoples and fellow officials, having proven most beneficial to their fatherlands. Whether we are aiming rightly at what is fitting, it is possible to judge from what is written.
Pericles belonged, by tribe, to the Acamantis, and by deme to Cholargos, and by house and family he was of the first rank on both sides. For Xanthippus, who defeated the king's generals at Mycale, married Agariste, granddaughter of Cleisthenes, who drove out the Peisistratids and nobly overthrew the tyranny, and established laws and set up a constitution most excellently blended for harmony and safety.
In a dream she saw herself bring forth a lion, and not many days afterward she bore Pericles, whose bodily form was in other respects faultless, but whose head was elongated and out of proportion. For this reason nearly all his portraits and statues show him wearing a helmet, since the artists apparently did not wish to expose him to ridicule. The Attic poets called him "squill-head," for the squill is sometimes also called a schinos.
Among the comic poets, Cratinus, in his Cheirons, says: "Faction and ancient-born Cronus, mingling with one another, beget a very great tyrant, whom the gods call the Head-Gatherer"; and elsewhere, in his play Nemesis: "Come here, Zeus who presides over guest-friendship and heads alike."
Teleclides says that at one time, at a loss over affairs, he sat in the city "heavy of head," and at another time, from that head of his—as from a couch fit for eleven—he raised up a great uproar all alone; and Eupolis, in his Demoi, inquiring about each of the demagogues who had come up from Hades, when Pericles was named last, says: "the very head of all those from below have you brought."
Most authorities hold that his music teacher was Damon—a name, they claim, whose opening syllable should be given a short vowel—though Aristotle states that Pythocleides was actually the one who instructed him in music. Damon, it seems, being a consummate sophist, took refuge under the name of music, concealing his cleverness from the many, but he associated with Pericles as a trainer and teacher of political matters, the way one attends an athlete.
Yet Damon did not escape notice for using the lyre as a screen, but was ostracized as a schemer of great designs and a friend of tyranny, and he furnished material for the comic poets. Plato, at any rate, has someone question him thus: "Tell me first, I beg you—for you, they say, like Cheiron, raised Pericles."
Pericles also studied under Zeno of Elea, who treated of nature, as Parmenides did, and had perfected a certain refutative faculty that, through cross-examination, brings one into perplexity, as Timon of Phlius also said of him in these words: "and the great, unwearied power of double-tongued Zeno, who finds fault with all things."
But the man who spent the most time with Pericles, and above all invested him with gravity and a spirit weightier than that of ordinary demagoguery, and altogether elevated and raised up the dignity of his character, was Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, called "Nous" (Mind) by the people of that era—either admiring the greatness and exceptional clarity of his understanding in natural philosophy, or because he was the first to set over the whole ordering of the universe, as its governing principle, not chance nor necessity, but Mind, pure and unmixed among all the other things that are commingled, separating out the like particles.
Pericles, marveling exceedingly at this man, and filling himself with the so-called study of celestial phenomena and lofty speculation, acquired not only, it seems, a proud disposition and elevated speech purged of vulgar and knavish buffoonery, but as well a facial gravity that resisted laughter altogether, an unhurried gait, and an arrangement of dress that was never disturbed by any passion while he spoke, an unruffled modulation of voice, and all such things that struck everyone with wonder.
Once, at any rate, when he was being reviled and abused all day long in the marketplace by one of the coarse and dissolute sort, he endured it in silence, attending meanwhile to some pressing business; and in the evening he went home composed, with the man following him and heaping every kind of abuse upon him.
As he was about to go indoors, it now being dark, he told one of his household slaves to fetch a torch and see the man safely to his own house. The poet Ion says that Pericles's manner in company was arrogant and somewhat conceited, and that much haughtiness and contempt for others was mixed in with his grandiose airs; and he praises the graceful, easy, and cultivated manner of Cimon in social dealings.
But as for Ion, let us grant him—since he demands that virtue, like a tragic production, must always have some satyric element too—his say; while as for those who called Pericles's dignity mere vainglory and pomposity, Zeno used to urge them to affect some such vainglory themselves, since the very pretense of noble things instills, unnoticed, a certain zeal and habituation to them.
Nor was this the only benefit Pericles derived from his association with Anaxagoras—he also seems to have become superior to superstition, that awe of celestial phenomena which afflicts those who are ignorant of their causes and are frenzied and troubled about divine matters through inexperience of them—an awe which rational understanding of nature dispels, replacing fearful and inflamed superstition with a secure piety accompanied by good hopes.
It is said that on one occasion a ram's head bearing a single horn was delivered to Pericles from his estate in the country, and Lampon the seer, observing how the horn rose thick and firm out of the center of the animal's brow, declared that since two rival powers then divided the city between them—the faction led by Thucydides and the faction led by Pericles—supreme control would pass to whichever of the two men the sign had been sent to; but Anaxagoras, having split open the skull, showed that the brain had not filled the base of the cranium but had shrunk together, pointed like an egg, away from the whole cavity toward that spot where the root of the horn had its origin.
And at that time it was Anaxagoras who was admired by those present, but a little later it was Lampon, once Thucydides had been overthrown and all the people's affairs had come evenly under Pericles's control. There was nothing, I think, to prevent both the natural philosopher and the seer from being correct, the one grasping well the cause, the other the outcome; for it belonged to the one to observe from what things it came about and how it was formed, and to the other to foretell to what end it came about and what it signified.
Those who say that discovering the cause is a way of doing away with the sign do not notice that, along with divine things, they are also doing away with man-made signals—the sounds of gongs, the lights of beacons, the shadows cast by sundials—each of which has been made, by some cause and construction, a sign of something. But this, perhaps, belongs to another discussion.
Pericles, when quite young, was very wary of the people. For he was thought to resemble Peisistratus the tyrant in appearance, and the very old men were struck by the resemblance—his voice being sweet, and his tongue quick and fluent in conversation. Since wealth and illustrious lineage were also his, along with friends of the greatest power, he feared being ostracized, and so took no part in political affairs, but in military campaigns he was a brave man and fond of danger.
But when Aristeides had died and Themistocles had been driven into exile, and Cimon's campaigns kept him occupied for the most part outside Greece, Pericles then gave himself over to the people, choosing the cause of the many and the poor over that of the wealthy and the few—contrary to his own nature, which was in no way inclined to popular favor. But,
it seems, fearing lest he fall under suspicion of aiming at tyranny, and seeing that Cimon was aristocratic in temper and especially beloved by the noble and good men, he won over the multitude, securing safety for himself and power against that man.
At once he also imposed a different arrangement upon his manner of living. In the city he was seen going by only one road, the one to the marketplace and the council chamber; and he gave up invitations to dinners and all such friendly familiarity and social intercourse, so that during the long years in which he was engaged in politics he went to dine with none of his friends, except that at the wedding of his cousin Euryptolemus he attended until the libations, then rose at once and left.
For sociability is apt to overcome all gravity, and dignity is hard to preserve amid familiarity; whereas of true virtue, the things that appear most plainly are the most beautiful, and nothing about good men is so admirable to outsiders as their daily life is to those who live with them. But Pericles, avoiding constant exposure to the people and their satiety with him, approached them, as it were, at intervals, not speaking on every matter nor always coming forward before the assembly, but offering himself, as Critolaus says, like the Salaminian trireme, for occasions of great need, while for the rest he managed affairs by sending forward his friends and other speakers.
One of these, they say, was Ephialtes, who overthrew the power of the Council of the Areopagus, pouring out for the citizens, in Plato's phrase, a great and unmixed draught of liberty, by which the people, growing wanton as a horse does, no longer, the comic poets say, "dared to obey the rein, but bit at Euboea and leapt upon the islands."
Yet to fit his manner of life and the greatness of his purpose, he fitted out for himself, as it were an instrument, a corresponding style of speech, and drew freely on Anaxagoras, tincturing his rhetoric, so to speak, with natural philosophy. For having acquired from natural philosophy that 'lofty-mindedness and all-accomplishing power,' as the divine Plato calls it, in addition to his natural gifts, and drawing out what was useful for the art of speaking, he far surpassed everyone.
For this reason, they say, he even got his epithet; though some think he was called 'Olympian' from the works with which he adorned the city, others from his power in politics and in his generalships; and it is not unlikely that these came together from the many qualities that belonged to the man, to produce the reputation.
The comedies of the poets of that time, however, which have let loose against him many sayings, some in earnest and some in jest, make clear that the surname arose chiefly on account of his speech, since they said that he 'thundered' and 'lightened' when he addressed the assembly, and 'carried a dread thunderbolt on his tongue.' There is also remembered a certain remark of Thucydides son of Melesias, made in jest, about the formidable power of Pericles.
For Thucydides was one of the fine and good men, and for the longest time opposed Pericles in politics; and once Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians, put a question to him — which of the two, himself or Pericles, was the better wrestler — he said, 'Whenever I throw him in wrestling, he argues that he has not fallen, and wins, and persuades the onlookers.' Yet Pericles himself was cautious about his speech, so that whenever he went up to the platform he prayed to the gods that no word unfitting to the matter at hand might fall from him unintentionally.
He has left nothing in writing except his decrees; and only a very few of his sayings are remembered: for instance, that he bade Aegina be removed as the eyesore of Piraeus, and that he said he already saw the war bearing down from the Peloponnese. And once, when Sophocles, who was serving as fellow general with him on a naval expedition, praised a beautiful boy, he said, 'Sophocles, a general must keep not only his hands clean, but his eyes as well.'
Stesimbrotus says that in praising those who had died at Samos, speaking from the platform, he said they had become immortal like the gods: for we do not see the gods themselves, but we infer them to be immortal from the honors they receive and the benefits they provide; and these same things, he said, belonged also to those who had died for their country.
Since Thucydides describes the constitution under Pericles as a kind of aristocracy — 'in name a democracy, but in fact rule by the first man' — while many others say that it was by him that the people were first led on to allotments of land, and theater-money, and distributions of pay, being badly habituated and becoming extravagant and undisciplined through the policies of that time instead of thrifty and self-sufficient, let the cause of this change be examined through the facts themselves. For at the beginning,
as has been said, in setting himself against the reputation of Cimon he courted the favor of the people; and being inferior in wealth and money, from which Cimon relieved the poor — providing a daily meal for any Athenian in need, clothing the elderly, and removing the fences of his lands so that whoever wished might gather the fruit — Pericles, being outdone by these popular measures, turned to the distribution of public funds, on the advice of Damonides of Oa, as Aristotle has recorded.
And quickly, having won over the multitude with payments for theater and jury service and other wages and public choruses, he used them against the Council of the Areopagus, of which he himself had no part, since he had been allotted neither archon, nor lawgiver, nor king, nor polemarch. For these offices had of old been filled by lot, and it was through them that those who were approved rose up into the Areopagus.
Wherefore Pericles, having grown all the stronger in the favor of the people, worked against the Council, so that most of its judicial powers were taken away through Ephialtes, and Cimon was ostracized as a friend of Sparta and hater of the people — a man inferior to none in wealth or birth, who had won splendid victories against the barbarian foe and enriched the city with plunder and treasure, as has been written in his own Life. Such was the extent of Pericles's sway over the populace.
Now ostracism had, by law, a fixed term of ten years for those banished; but in the meantime, when a large Lacedaemonian force invaded Tanagra and the Athenians at once took the field against it, Cimon came from his exile and took his place under arms among his tribesmen, wishing by his actions to clear himself of the charge of favoring Sparta, and shared the danger with his own countrymen; yet a group of Pericles's partisans joined forces and expelled him as a still-banished man.
For this reason it is thought that Pericles fought that battle with the utmost vigor and was the most conspicuous of all, sparing not his own body. And the friends of Cimon fell, all of them alike, whom Pericles had joined in accusing of favoring Sparta; and a terrible regret and longing for Cimon seized the Athenians, defeated as they were on the very borders of Attica and expecting a heavy war as the season of the year came round.
Perceiving this, Pericles did not hesitate to gratify the people, but himself wrote and proposed the decree recalling the man, and Cimon, on his return, made peace between the two cities. For the Lacedaemonians were kindly disposed toward him, just as they were hostile toward Pericles and the other popular leaders.
Some say, however, that the decree for Cimon's return was not proposed by Pericles until secret agreements had been made between them through Elpinice, Cimon's sister, whereby Cimon should sail out with two hundred ships and hold command abroad, subjugating the King's territory, while Pericles should retain power in the city.
It was thought too that Elpinice had earlier made Pericles gentler toward Cimon, back when Cimon stood trial with his very life at stake. Pericles, in fact, numbered among the accusers whom the people had put forward; and when Elpinice came to him and begged him, he smiled and said, 'Elpinice, you are an old woman, an old woman, to be managing such matters.' Nonetheless he rose to speak only once, to discharge the duty of his appointment, and did the least harm of the accusers to Cimon before withdrawing.
How then could one trust Idomeneus, who accuses Pericles of having treacherously murdered the popular leader Ephialtes, who had become his friend and shared his political purpose, out of jealousy and envy of his reputation? This charge, gathered up from I know not where, he has flung at the man like gall — a man not perhaps entirely blameless in every respect, but of noble spirit and an ambitious soul, in which no passion so savage and brutish takes root.
Ephialtes, then, being formidable to the oligarchic party, and implacable in his audits and prosecutions of those who wronged the people, his enemies plotted against him and had him secretly killed through Aristodicus of Tanagra, as Aristotle has stated. Cimon died in Cyprus while serving as general.
The aristocrats, seeing that Pericles had already become the greatest of the citizens even before this, but wishing nevertheless that there should be someone in the city to set against him and blunt his power, so that it might not be altogether a monarchy, set up in opposition to him Thucydides of Alopece, a discreet man and kinsman by marriage of Cimon, who, though less warlike than Cimon,
was more a man of the assembly and of politics, staying at home in the city and grappling with Pericles at the speaker's platform, and quickly brought the constitution into a state of rivalry. For he did not allow the men called the 'fine and good' to be scattered and mixed in among the people as before, their standing obscured by the multitude; but separating them out and bringing together in one body the strength of all of them, made it, once concentrated, tip the scale as it were.
For from the beginning there was a kind of hidden double seam, as it were in iron, indicating an underlying difference between the popular and the aristocratic policies; and the rivalry and ambition of these two men, cutting the deepest incision into the city, caused one part to be called the People and the other the Few.
For this reason Pericles at that time, above all, loosened the reins to the people and conducted his politics to please them, always contriving that there be some festival spectacle, or banquet, or procession in the city, 'schooling the city with pleasures not without art,' and sending out sixty triremes each year, in which many of the citizens sailed for eight months on pay, practicing and at the same time learning seamanship.
In addition to this he sent a thousand settlers to the Chersonese, five hundred to Naxos, half that number to Andros, a thousand to Thrace to settle among the Bisaltae, and others to Italy when Sybaris was being colonized, which they renamed Thurii. And he did this to relieve the city of an idle and, through leisure, meddlesome crowd, to remedy the poverty of the people, and to plant among the allies a fear and a garrison against their attempting any revolution.
But that which brought the greatest pleasure and adornment to Athens, and the greatest astonishment to all other people, and which alone bears witness for Greece that her fabled power and ancient wealth were no falsehood — this, the construction of the votive offerings, was above all the political measure of Pericles that his enemies begrudged and slandered in the assemblies, crying out that the people were disgraced and ill spoken of for having removed the common funds of the Greeks from Delos to themselves,
and that the most respectable of the excuses left to him against his accusers — that out of fear of the barbarians he had removed the treasure from there and was guarding the common funds in a secure place — this excuse Pericles had done away with; and that Greece seemed to be grievously and openly insulted and tyrannized over, seeing that with the funds which she was compelled to contribute for the war, we were gilding and adorning our city like some vain woman, hanging it about with costly stones and statues and thousand-talent temples.
Pericles, then, taught the people that they owed the allies no account of the money, so long as they carried on the war on their behalf and kept off the barbarians, since the allies furnished neither horse, nor ship, nor hoplite, but money only — and money, once given, ceases to belong to the giver and becomes the property of the recipient, provided the recipient furnishes what was paid for;
and that since the city was sufficiently furnished with what was necessary for the war, it was right to turn its abundance to those works which, once completed, would bring it everlasting glory, and which, while being made, would provide it with ready prosperity, since all kinds of activity and varied demands, arising and stirring every craft and moving every hand, made almost the whole city a wage-earner, at once adorning and nourishing itself from its own resources.
For to those of military age and strength the campaigns furnished the means of livelihood from the public funds; but wishing that the unorganized and manual-laboring crowd should neither be without a share of the public payments nor receive them for doing nothing and being idle, he brought forward and set before the people great projects of construction and designs of works involving many crafts and requiring long time, so that the ones remaining in the city could, on equal footing with the men who sailed, stood garrison, and served under arms, find reason to draw benefit and a share from the public funds.
Stone, bronze, ivory, gold, ebony, and cypress timber served as the materials employed, together with the trades that shaped and crafted them — carpenters, molders, bronze-workers, stonecutters, dyers, workers in gold and ivory, painters, embroiderers, engravers — and those who transported and conveyed these materials, merchants and sailors and pilots by sea,
and by land wagon-builders, teamsters, drivers, rope-makers, weavers of linen, leather-workers, road-builders, and miners; and each craft, like a general with his own army, had its own organized crowd of hired laborers and common workmen, becoming an instrument and body of service; so that the demands of these works distributed and scattered prosperity into, one might say, every age and condition.
As the works rose up, magnificent in scale, inimitable in form and grace, the craftsmen vying with one another to surpass their own artistry in beauty of workmanship, what was most astonishing of all was the speed. For things each one of which men thought would scarcely reach completion after passing through many successive generations, all of these were brought to completion within the flourishing prime of a single administration.
And yet they say that once, when Agatharchus the painter boasted of painting figures quickly and with ease, Zeuxis, hearing it, said, 'But I do it in a long time.' For readiness and speed in producing a work do not lend it lasting weight nor precision of beauty; but the time laid out beforehand in labor for its creation pays back its strength in the preservation of what has been made.
This is why Pericles' works are admired all the more, having come into being in a short time yet lasting so long. For each of them was straightaway ancient in its beauty even then, but in its vigor it is fresh even now and newly made, as though some ever-blooming freshness kept their appearance untouched by time, as if an ever-green breath and an ageless soul had been mixed into the works.
Phidias oversaw everything and was superintendent of all of it for him, although the works had great architects and craftsmen. For the hundred-foot Parthenon was built by Callicrates and Ictinus, while the hall of initiation at Eleusis was begun by Coroebus, who set up the columns on the floor and joined them to their architraves; but after his death, it was Metagenes of Xypete who added the entablature and set the columns above it.
and Xenocles of Cholargus set the lantern atop the sanctuary. As for the Long Wall, about which Socrates says he himself heard Pericles bringing forward the proposal, Callicrates undertook its construction as contractor. Cratinus mocks the work as being brought to completion slowly: 'Long since,' he says, 'Pericles pushes it forward with words, but does not so much as move it with deeds.' The Odeum, in its interior arrangement having many seats and many columns, and in its roofing sloping down on all sides from a single peak, is said to have been made as an image and imitation of the Persian King's tent, this too being under the direction of Pericles.
This is why Cratinus again, in the Thracian Women, jests at his expense: 'Here comes the squill-headed Zeus, wearing the Odeum on his skull, since now the ostracism is past.' Pericles, eager for honor, at that time first decreed that a musical contest be held at the Panathenaea, and he himself, having been chosen master of the games, laid down how the competitors should play the pipe, or sing, or play the cithara. And both then and ever afterward people watched the musical contests in the Odeum.
The Propylaea of the Acropolis was completed in five years under the architect Mnesicles, and a marvelous chance that occurred during the construction showed that the goddess was not standing apart from the work but was joining in and helping to bring it to completion.
For the most energetic and eager of the craftsmen slipped and fell from a height, and lay in a bad way, given up by the physicians. Pericles was despondent over it, until the goddess visited him in a dream and laid out a remedy, which he then used to heal the man swiftly and without difficulty. For this reason he dedicated the bronze image of Athena Hygieia atop the Acropolis, next to the altar that, so it is said, had already been standing there beforehand.
Phidias was working on the gold statue of the goddess, and he is inscribed on the stele as its maker, but almost everything was in his charge, and, as we have said, it was through being on close terms with Pericles that he came to oversee all the craftsmen. From this arose envy directed at Phidias and slanderous talk aimed at Pericles, the accusation being that Phidias, using the works as a cover, was procuring freeborn women who came to visit Pericles.
The comic poets, seizing upon this story, poured out a great deal of licentious abuse about it, dragging in even the spouse of Menippus, a man who counted as a friend of Pericles and who served beneath him as his second-in-command, and also the bird-rearing of Pyrilampes, who, being a companion of Pericles, was accused of giving peacocks to the women with whom Pericles kept company.
And why should one wonder at men who lead scurrilous lives and who pour out their slanders against their betters as offerings to the evil spirit of popular envy, seeing that even Stesimbrotus of Thasos dared to bring forth a terrible and fabulous impiety against Pericles concerning his own son's wife?
So it seems altogether difficult and hard to hunt down the truth by historical inquiry, when those born later have the passage of time standing in the way of their knowledge of events, while the record of deeds and lives contemporary with them is corrupted and twisted away from the truth, partly by envy and ill will, partly by the desire to please and flatter.
When the orators around Thucydides cried out against Pericles as squandering the money and destroying the revenues, he asked the people in the assembly whether they thought a great deal had been spent. When they said a very great deal indeed, he said, 'Then let it not have been spent by you, but by me, and I will make the inscription on the dedications my own, in my own name.'
When Pericles had said this, whether they marveled at his greatness of spirit or were rivaling him in ambition for the glory of the works, they shouted out, bidding him to spend from the public funds and to furnish everything, sparing nothing. In the end, entering into a contest with Thucydides over the ostracism and risking the danger, he cast that man out and dissolved the faction arrayed against him.
So then, once the opposition had been altogether dissolved and the city had become, as it were, level and entirely one, he drew unto himself Athens and all the affairs of the Athenians that depended on her — tribute, armies, triremes, islands, and the sea, and much power that came through the Greeks, and much also through the barbarians, and a supremacy fortified by subject nations, by friendships with kings, and by alliances with rulers —
he became a changed man, no longer as pliant toward the people as before, nor ready to yield and give way to their desires as though to the gusts of the multitude; instead, in place of that relaxed and somewhat softened style of popular leadership, like a flowery and gentle melody, he tightened it into an aristocratic and kingly form of governance, and applied it toward what was best, straight and unbending,
and for the most part he led the people, willing, by persuading and instructing them, but there were times when, tightening the reins and pressing hard on them though they were quite displeased, he brought them by force to what was expedient — in this exactly like a physician dealing with a complex and long illness, at one time bringing harmless pleasures, at another biting remedies and healing medicines, as the occasion required.
For since, as is natural, passions of every kind grow up in a mob possessing so great a power, he alone was fitted by nature to manage each of them fittingly, and above all, by pressing upon their overconfidence and relieving and consoling their despondency by means of hopes and fears as though by rudders, he showed that rhetoric is, in Plato's phrase, a guidance of souls, and that its greatest task is the method concerning characters and passions, which are like certain pitches and notes of the soul requiring a very harmonious touch and striking.
This was owed not to mere skill in speaking but, as Thucydides tells us, to the standing his life had earned and the confidence people placed in him, since he had shown himself conspicuously most incorruptible and superior to money — he who, having made the city great instead of merely large, and most wealthy, and having become in power superior to many kings and tyrants, some of whom even appointed him guardian for their own sons, did not make his own estate a single drachma greater than what his father had left him.
And yet Thucydides clearly sets forth his power, while the comic poets darkly hint at it, calling his companions the 'new Pisistratids' and bidding him himself swear an oath that he would not become a tyrant, on the ground that his preeminence was disproportionate to democracy and too heavy a weight upon it.
Telecleides says that the Athenians handed over to him the tributes of the cities and the cities themselves, some to bind, others to loose; stone walls, some to build, others afterward to tear down again; treaties, power, might, peace, wealth, and prosperity. And this was not a time of opportunity, nor the peak and grace of a state flourishing in its prime, but rather forty years during which he held first place among the likes of Ephialtes, Leocrates, Myronides, Cimon, Tolmides, and Thucydides,
and after the downfall of Thucydides and his ostracism, having acquired for not less than fifteen years a continuous and single rule and dominion in the annual generalships, he kept himself unconquered by money, although he was not altogether idle when it came to money-making; rather, to keep the wealth he had rightfully inherited from his father from slipping away through carelessness, and yet without it eating up his time and energy while other business demanded his attention, he organized it under a scheme of management he judged to be both the simplest and the most precise.
For he used to sell all the year's produce together in a lump sum, and then would buy each of his household's necessities from the market and manage his livelihood and daily needs in this way. As a result he was not agreeable to his grown sons, nor a lavish provider to the women of the household, but they found fault with this day-to-day and most exactly reckoned expenditure, in which nothing flowed abundantly, as would be fitting in a great house with plentiful resources, but every outlay and every receipt proceeded by number and measure.
The one who managed all this exactness of his was a single household servant, Evangelus, who, more than anyone else, was naturally suited, or had been trained by Pericles, for such management. Now this was out of tune with the wisdom of Anaxagoras, if indeed that man actually left his own house and let his land lie idle and given over to grazing sheep, out of his enthusiasm and greatness of soul,
yet, I think, a philosopher living in contemplation and a man engaged in public affairs do not follow the same rule; rather, the one, needing no instrument and no external material, moves his mind toward what is noble, while for the other, who mixes his virtue into the service of human needs, wealth may become a part not only of the necessities but even of the noble things, as indeed it was for Pericles, who helped many of the poor with it.
And indeed they say that Anaxagoras himself, while Pericles was occupied with affairs, lay neglected, already old, covered up, starving himself to death; and when word of it reached Pericles, he was thrown into alarm, rushed straight to Anaxagoras, and pleaded with him using every kind of appeal, lamenting not for him but for himself, if he should lose such a counselor for his statesmanship. Then Anaxagoras uncovered himself and said to him, 'Pericles, even those who have need of a lamp pour oil into it.'
When the Lacedaemonians began to be vexed at the growth of the Athenians, Pericles, urging the people on to think even more greatly of themselves and to deem themselves worthy of great undertakings, wrote a decree that all Greeks, wherever they dwelt, in Europe or in Asia, both small city and great, should be called upon to send delegates to a gathering at Athens, there to take counsel about the Hellenic shrines the barbarians had reduced to ashes, and concerning the sacrifices which were owed on behalf of Greece, vowed to the gods when they were fighting against the barbarians, and concerning the sea, so that all might sail without fear and maintain the peace.
For this purpose twenty men, each over fifty years of age, were sent out; of whom five went to summon the Ionian and Dorian communities of Asia, together with the island-dwellers out to Rhodes and Lesbos; another five traveled to the districts of the Hellespont and Thrace as far as Byzantium; and five besides these were dispatched to Boeotia, Phocis, and the Peloponnese, and from there, through the Locrians, to the neighboring mainland as far as Acarnania and Ambracia;
while the rest journeyed through Euboea to the Oetaeans, the Malian Gulf, the Achaeans of Phthiotis, and the Thessalians, urging them to attend and join the discussions on securing peace and the shared good of the Greek world. But nothing was accomplished, and the cities did not come together, the Lacedaemonians having opposed it, as is said, the attempt having first been thwarted in the Peloponnese. I have set this down, then, to show his high purpose and greatness of mind.
In his generalships he was most esteemed for his caution, neither willingly engaging in a battle involving much uncertainty and danger, nor emulating and imitating those generals who, by taking risks, had met with brilliant fortune and been admired as great; and he was always saying to the citizens that, so far as it depended on him, they would remain immortal for all time.
Seeing that Tolmides son of Tolmaeus, on account of his previous successes and the special honor he received from his military exploits, was preparing, at an inopportune moment, to invade Boeotia, and had persuaded the best and most ambitious of the men of military age to campaign as volunteers, a thousand strong apart from the rest of the force, Pericles tried to hold him back and to warn him in the assembly, saying the memorable words that, even if he would not obey Pericles, he would not go wrong in waiting for time, the wisest counselor of all.
At the time, then, this saying won him only moderate approval; but a few days later, when it was reported that Tolmides himself had been killed, defeated in battle near Coronea, and that many good citizens had died with him, this brought Pericles great glory along with goodwill, as a man of prudence and love for his fellow citizens.
Of his generalships, the one concerning the Chersonese was most beloved of all, as it proved salvation for the Greeks living there; for not only did he strengthen the cities in manpower by bringing a thousand Athenian settlers, but he also girded the neck of land with fortifications and defenses from sea to sea, walling off the incursions of the Thracians who lay all around the Chersonese,
and he brought to an end a long, grinding war in which the whole country had been embroiled the entire time, mixed in as it was with neighboring barbarians and thick with bands of raiders bordering and living among them; and he won admiration and renown among people abroad by circumnavigating the Peloponnese, launching a hundred triremes from Pegae, in Megarian territory.
For he did not merely ravage much of the coastline, just as Tolmides had once done, but also pushed a considerable distance inland from the shore with the hoplites from his ships, driving the rest into their walls in fear of his approach, and at Nemea, when the Sicyonians stood their ground and joined battle, he routed them decisively and set up a trophy.
Then, taking on soldiers from Achaea, which was friendly to him, he carried them across on his triremes to the opposite mainland, and sailing along the Achelous he overran Acarnania, and shut the Oeniadae up inside their walls, and after cutting up and ravaging their land he sailed off for home, having shown himself terrifying to the enemy but safe and effective for his own citizens — for not even by chance did any mishap befall the men on campaign.
Sailing into the Pontus with a large and splendidly equipped fleet, he arranged matters favorably for the Greek cities there in whatever they needed and treated them with kindness, while to the surrounding barbarian peoples and their kings and rulers he displayed the greatness of his power, and the freedom and boldness with which the Athenians sailed wherever they wished and had made the whole sea their own; and to the people of Sinope he left thirteen ships under Lamachus, along with soldiers, against Timesileos the tyrant.
When this man and his associates had been driven out, he moved that six hundred Athenian volunteers sail to Sinope and settle there together with the Sinopeans, dividing among themselves the houses and land which the tyrants had previously held. In everything else, though, he did not yield to the impulses of the citizens, nor did he get swept along by the strength and good fortune that had so lifted them up, when they wanted to lay hold of Egypt again and to stir up the territories of the Persian king's realm near the sea.
And many were already gripped by that ill-starred, unlucky passion for Sicily as well, which the orators around Alcibiades later fanned into flame. There were some, too, for whom Tyrrhenia and Carthage were a dream not beyond hope, given the size of the power already at their disposal and the favorable run of their affairs.
But Pericles held back this venture and cut short their meddling ambition, and he turned most of the city's power toward guarding and securing what they already had, reckoning it no small feat merely to restrain the Lacedaemonians and, in general, to stand against them — as he showed on many other occasions and especially in what was done in the so-called Sacred War.
For when the Lacedaemonians campaigned to Delphi, which the Phocians then held, and gave the sanctuary back to the Delphians, as soon as they had withdrawn Pericles marched out again and brought the Phocians back in. And whereas the Lacedaemonians had had the right of first consultation which the Delphians granted them engraved on the forehead of the bronze wolf, Pericles, having obtained the same right of first consultation for the Athenians, had it cut into the same wolf's right flank.
That he was right to keep the power of the Athenians concentrated within Greece was borne out by events. For first the Euboeans revolted, and he crossed over against them with a force. Then immediately word came that the Megarians had turned hostile and that an enemy army was on the borders of Attica, led by Plistoanax, king of the Lacedaemonians.
So Pericles again brought his forces back quickly from Euboea to face the war in Attica; and he did not dare join battle against the numerous and good hoplites who challenged him, but seeing that Plistoanax was quite young and relied most of all on Cleandridas among his advisors — a man the ephors had assigned to accompany him as overseer and counselor on account of his youth — he made a secret attempt on this man, and quickly corrupting him with money he persuaded him to lead the Peloponnesians out of Attica.
When the army had withdrawn and dispersed to their cities, the Lacedaemonians, taking it hard, fined the king a sum of money which, being unable to pay, he removed himself from Lacedaemon; and against Cleandridas, who fled, they pronounced sentence of death. This man was the father of Gylippus, who defeated the Athenians in Sicily. It seems that nature had, as it were, fastened onto him a hereditary disease of love of money, by which he too was caught disgracefully in the midst of honorable deeds and was driven out of Sparta. These matters we have set out in the Life of Lysander.
When Pericles, in his accounting for his generalship, entered an expenditure of ten talents as spent 'for necessary purposes,' the people accepted it without prying into it or examining the secret. Some have recorded — among them the philosopher Theophrastus — that every year ten talents went from Pericles to Sparta, with which he courted all the men in power there and averted war, not buying peace but time, in which he intended, once he had prepared at leisure, to wage war the better.
So he turned again against the rebels, and crossing over into Euboea with fifty ships and five thousand hoplites, he brought the cities into submission. And of the Chalcidians he expelled those called the Hippobotae, who were distinguished by wealth and reputation, and the Histiaeans he removed entirely from their territory and settled Athenians there in their place — showing this group alone no mercy, since it was they who had seized an Attic vessel and slain its crew.
After this, once a thirty-year truce had been struck between Athens and Lacedaemon, he proposed a vote for the expedition against Samos, charging the Samians with disobedience for refusing an order to end their war with Miletus. Since it is thought that he acted against the Samians as a favor to Aspasia, this would be the best moment to raise the question about this woman — what skill or power she possessed that was so great that she gained mastery over the foremost men in public life, and gave the philosophers no small or trivial occasion to discuss her. That she was Milesian by birth,
the daughter of Axiochus, is agreed. They say that she, in emulation of a certain Thargelia among the Ionian women of old, set her sights on the most powerful men. For Thargelia too, being fair in form and possessed of charm along with cleverness, lived with a great many of the Greeks, and made all who came near her partisans of the Persian king, and through them sowed in the cities, since they were the most powerful and greatest men, the seeds of pro-Persian sympathies.
As for Aspasia, some say she was courted by Pericles as a woman wise in political matters; for Socrates too would sometimes visit her with his companions, and those close to her would bring their wives to hear her, even though she presided over an occupation neither respectable nor dignified, but kept young girls who worked as courtesans.
Aeschines states that Lysicles, a dealer in sheep of lowly and unremarkable stock, rose to prominence among the Athenians by consorting with Aspasia after Pericles' death. And in Plato's Menexenus, even though the opening is written in a playful spirit, this much of historical fact is present, that the woman had a reputation for associating with many Athenians on matters of rhetoric.
It appears, nonetheless, that Pericles' attachment to Aspasia was rather of an erotic kind. For he had a wife who was related to him by birth, but who had previously been married to Hipponicus, by whom she bore the wealthy Callias; she also bore to Pericles Xanthippus and Paralus. Then, since their life together was not agreeable to them, he gave her away, with her consent, to another man, and he himself took Aspasia and cherished her exceedingly.
For indeed, as they say, going out and coming in from the marketplace he greeted her each day with a kiss. In the comedies she is addressed as the new Omphale, and Deianira, and again as Hera. Cratinus outright calls her a concubine in these lines: 'Hera-as-concubine bears him Aspasia, offspring of shameless lust, a dog-eyed mistress.' [Cratinus, Cheirones] And it is thought that he also fathered his illegitimate son by her, about whom Eupolis in his Demes has him asking: 'Is my bastard alive?' [Eupolis, Demes] And Myronides answering: 'He would long ago have been a man, if not for his dread of the whore's disgrace.' [Eupolis, Demes]
To such a pitch of fame did Aspasia rise, it is said, that even Cyrus, who made war on the king for the leadership of the Persians, gave the name Aspasia to the woman most beloved of him among his concubines, who had before been called Milto. She was Phocaean by birth, the daughter of Hermotimus; and when Cyrus fell in the battle, she was led away to the king and gained very great influence there. These things, coming to mind as I was writing, it would perhaps have been inhuman to push aside and pass over.
It is above all for Aspasia's sake, on behalf of the Milesians, that they blame Pericles for bringing the vote for war against the Samians. For the two cities were at war over Priene, and the Samians, having the upper hand, when the Athenians ordered them to stop and to submit to arbitration before them, would not obey. So Pericles sailed out and put down the existing oligarchy in Samos, and taking fifty hostages from the leading men and an equal number of children, sent them to Lemnos.
And yet it is said that each of the hostages, on his own account, offered him a talent, as did many others who did not want democracy set up in the city. Further, Pissuthnes the Persian, who had some goodwill toward the Samians, sent him ten thousand gold pieces, asking that he spare the city. Pericles, however, took none of this, but dealt with the Samians just as he had determined, and after establishing a democracy he sailed back to Athens.
But they revolted at once, since Pissuthnes had stolen their hostages away for them and made all other preparations for war. So Pericles again sailed out against them, who were neither quiet nor cowering, but had resolved quite eagerly to contest the sea. A hard-fought sea battle took place near the island called Tragia, and Pericles won brilliantly, defeating seventy ships with forty-four, of which twenty were troop transports.
Along with the victory, gaining control of the harbor as well through pursuit, he laid siege to the Samians, who still had some courage left to sally out and fight before their wall. But once a second and larger fleet had arrived from Athens, hemming the Samians in on every side, Pericles led sixty triremes out onto the wider sea beyond — as most say, wishing to meet and fight it out, as far off as possible, against Phoenician ships that were coming to help the Samians; but as Stesimbrotus says, setting out for Cyprus — which does not seem plausible.
Whichever of these purposes he was acting on, he seems to have erred. For once he had sailed off, Melissus son of Ithagenes, a philosopher then serving as general of Samos, scorning the small number of the ships or the inexperience of the generals, persuaded the citizens to attack the Athenians. A battle took place and the Samians won, capturing many of their men and destroying many ships, and they gained command of the sea and laid in supplies for the war which they had not had before.
Aristotle says that Pericles himself was earlier defeated in a sea battle by Melissus. The Samians, in return for the outrage, branded their Athenian prisoners on the forehead with an owl; for the Athenians had also branded them with the samaina. The samaina is a ship with a snub, pig-snouted prow, but hollower and more bulging in the belly, so that it can both cross the open sea and sail swiftly.
It was so named because it first appeared at Samos, built there by the tyrant Polycrates. Some say that Aristophanes' riddle refers to these brand-marks: 'The Samian people are, as it were, a people of many letters.' [Aristophanes, Babylonians]
When Pericles learned, then, of the disaster to his camp, he came quickly to its aid, and when Melissus drew up against him he defeated and routed the enemy, and at once began to wall them in, wishing to overcome and subdue the city by expense and time rather than by the wounds and dangers of his citizens.
But since it was hard to restrain the Athenians, who chafed at the delay and were eager to fight, he divided the whole force into eight parts and had them draw lots, and whichever group drew the white bean was given leave to relax and enjoy a feast while the rest continued fighting. That is why, they say, those who find themselves in some state of enjoyment call that a 'white day,' after the white bean.
Ephorus says that Pericles also made use of siege engines, marvelling at their novelty, with Artemon the engineer present — a man who, being lame and carried about on a litter to wherever the works were most pressing, was called 'Periphoretus' ('the carried-about'). This, however, Heraclides of Pontus refutes by the poems of Anacreon, in which the 'carried-about' Artemon is named many generations before the Samian war and these events.
For he says that this Artemon was a man luxurious in his way of life and timid and cowardly toward danger, who mostly sat at home, with a bronze shield held over his head by two servants so that nothing might fall on him from above, and that if he were forced to go out, he was carried along close to the ground on a hanging couch, and was for this reason called 'the carried-about.'
In the ninth month the Samians gave up the fight, and Pericles dismantled their fortifications, seized their fleet, and levied against them a heavy fine, part of which they paid at once, while for the remainder a date was fixed for payment and hostages were handed over. Duris the Samian turns the episode into a tragedy, charging the Athenians and Pericles with a savagery—a savagery that none of the three, Thucydides, Ephorus, or Aristotle, set down.
It does not even seem true that he brought the trierarchs and marines of the Samians down into the marketplace of Miletus, bound them to boards for ten days, and then, when they were already in a wretched state, ordered them killed by having their heads crushed with clubs, and then had their bodies thrown out unburied.
Duris, who is not accustomed to keep his narrative within the bounds of truth even where he has no personal stake in the matter, seems here to have exaggerated the misfortunes of his homeland in order to slander the Athenians. Pericles, after subduing Samos, returned to Athens, gave the war dead a splendid funeral, and delivered the customary oration over their graves, which won him great admiration.
As he came down from the platform, the other women greeted him and crowned him with wreaths and ribbons, as though he were a victorious athlete, but Elpinice came up close to him and said, "These are marvelous deeds, Pericles, and worthy of wreaths—you who have destroyed for us many good citizens, not fighting Phoenicians or Medes, as my brother Cimon did, but overthrowing a city that is our ally and our kin."
As Elpinice said this, Pericles is said to have smiled quietly and replied to her with the line of Archilochus: "You would not, being an old woman, anoint yourself with perfume." Ion says that Pericles thought marvelously and greatly of himself for having conquered the Samians, since Agamemnon took ten years to capture a foreign city, while he himself in nine months had taken the first and most powerful of the Ionians.
And the claim was not unjust, for the war really did involve great uncertainty and grave danger, since, as Thucydides says, the city of the Samians came within the barest margin of stripping the Athenians of their mastery of the sea.
After this, when the Peloponnesian War was already swelling up, and the Corcyraeans were being warred upon by the Corinthians, Pericles persuaded the people to send them help and to win over to their side an island possessed of a strong naval power, since war with the Peloponnesians was all but certain to break out before long.
When the people voted the assistance, he sent out only ten ships, with Lacedaemonius, the son of Cimon, in command—as though insulting him, for there was great goodwill and friendship between the house of Cimon and the Lacedaemonians. So it seems that the small squadron was assigned and Lacedaemonius was dispatched over his own objection, so that if nothing great or notable were achieved while he held command, he would be all the more open to slander for favoring Sparta.
And in general he continued to disparage the sons of Cimon, as though they were not even genuine in their names, but foreign and alien, because one of Cimon's sons was named Lacedaemonius, another Thessalus, and another Eleius; and all were said to have been born of an Arcadian mother. So Pericles, being badly spoken of on account of these ten triremes, since he had given only slight help to those who needed it and a great pretext to his accusers, sent out afterward yet more ships to Corcyra, which arrived after the battle.
While the Corinthians were angry and were denouncing the Athenians at Sparta, the Megarians joined them, charging that they were being excluded and turned away from all the markets and harbors under Athenian sway, in violation of the shared rights and the oaths the Greeks had sworn to one another. The Aeginetans too, believing themselves mistreated and suffering violence, complained secretly to the Lacedaemonians, not daring to accuse the Athenians openly. Meanwhile Potidaea also, a city subject to Athens but a colony of Corinth, revolted and was besieged, which hastened the war still further.
Nevertheless, even though delegations were sent to Athens, and Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians, worked to resolve most of the complaints and calm the allies, it does not seem likely that war would have come upon the Athenians on account of the other charges alone, had they been persuaded to rescind the Megarian decree and be reconciled with them. Therefore, since it was Pericles above all who opposed this, and who incited the people to persist in their quarrel with the Megarians, he alone bore the blame for the war.
They say that when an embassy came to Athens from Sparta about this matter, and Pericles put forward some law that forbade the taking down of the tablet on which the decree happened to be written, one of the envoys, Polyalces, said, "Well then, do not take it down, but just turn the tablet around—there is no law forbidding that." Though the remark seemed clever, Pericles yielded no more for it.
It seems, then, that he also nursed some private grievance against the Megarians; yet the charge he laid openly and officially against them was that they were trespassing on the sacred Orgas, and on this ground he put forward a motion calling for an envoy to be dispatched both to them and to the Lacedaemonians, laying the accusation against Megara.
This decree, then, shows a reasonable and humane justification on Pericles's part; but once the envoy who had been sent, Anthemocritus, was believed to have perished at Megarian hands, Charinus put forward a motion aimed at them, calling for a relentless enmity admitting no herald between the two peoples, and decreeing that death await any Megarian caught within Attic soil, and that the generals, in swearing their ancestral oath, swear also to invade Megarian land twice each year, and that Anthemocritus receive burial near the gate to Thria, the gate now known as the Dipylon.
The Megarians, denying the murder of Anthemocritus, turn the blame onto Aspasia and Pericles, using these notorious and popular verses from the Acharnians: "Some young men, drunk on cottabus, go to Megara and steal the whore Simaetha; then the Megarians, stung with pain, in turn steal away two of Aspasia's whores."
How the war began, then, is not easy to determine; but as to why the decree was not rescinded, everyone alike lays the blame on Pericles. Yet some claim he held his ground from magnanimity and sound judgment about the best policy, taking the demand as a probe of concession and reckoning that yielding would amount to admitting weakness; others hold instead that it was a certain stubbornness and combativeness, a wish to flaunt his strength, that made him treat the Lacedaemonians with disdain. But of all the accusations leveled at him, the harshest,
though it has the most witnesses, is told in something like this way. Phidias the sculptor had undertaken the contract for the statue, as has been said, and having become a friend of Pericles and gained the greatest influence with him, he acquired enemies of his own out of envy; and those testing the people, to see what sort of judge it would be in Pericles' case, persuaded a certain Menon, one of Phidias's assistants, to sit as a suppliant in the marketplace, asking for immunity in exchange for informing against and accusing Phidias.
When the people admitted the man and a prosecution took place in the assembly, no theft was proven; for Phidias, on Pericles' advice, had from the very beginning worked and fitted the gold onto the statue in such a way that it was entirely possible to remove it and weigh it, which is exactly what Pericles then ordered the accusers to do.
But the fame of his works burdened Phidias with envy, especially because in fashioning the battle against the Amazons on the shield he had worked in his own likeness as an old bald man lifting a stone with both hands, and had also set in a very beautiful image of Pericles fighting an Amazon. The pose of the hand, holding a spear up in front of Pericles' face, was cleverly made as if to conceal the resemblance, which nonetheless showed on either side.
Phidias, then, was taken off to confinement, where he perished of sickness—or, as some tell it, of poison administered by Pericles's enemies to cast blame on him. To Menon the informer, on Glycon's proposal, the people granted immunity from taxes, and ordered the generals to see to the man's safety.
About this time Aspasia was brought to trial for impiety, prosecuted by Hermippus the comic poet, who further accused her of receiving free women into her house for Pericles' sake. And Diopeithes proposed a decree that those who did not believe in the gods, or who taught doctrines about the heavens, be liable to public impeachment, directing suspicion at Pericles through Anaxagoras.
As the people received and welcomed these slanders, a decree was then passed, on the proposal of Dracontides, that the accounts of the money handled by Pericles be deposited with the Prytanes, and that the jurors cast their votes taken from the altar in the city, deciding the case there. Hagnon struck this clause from the motion and proposed in its place that the matter go to trial before a panel of fifteen hundred jurors, whatever name one gave the charge, whether theft, bribery, or malfeasance.
Aspasia, then, he begged off, shedding many tears on her behalf, as Aeschines says, quite contrary to the dignity of a trial, and entreating the jurors; but out of concern for Anaxagoras, he arranged for his departure from the city. And since he had stumbled with the people over the affair of Phidias, fearing the courts, he fanned into flame the war that was smoldering and impending, hoping to scatter the accusations and to humble the envy against him, by giving over the city, in matters of great import and danger, to himself alone because of his standing and power. These, then, are said to be the reasons why he would not let the people yield to the Lacedaemonians; but the truth is unclear.
The Lacedaemonians, knowing that if he were overthrown they would find the Athenians far more pliable in every respect, instructed the Athenians to expel the pollution stemming from Cylon, an affair in which the maternal line of Pericles's family bore a share of guilt, as Thucydides recorded. But the attempt turned out the opposite of what its senders intended: instead of suspicion and slander, Pericles gained still greater trust and honor among the citizens, since it was plain that his enemies hated and feared him most of all.
For this reason, before Archidamus had even brought the Peloponnesians into Attica, Pericles told the Athenians in advance that should Archidamus, in laying waste to everything else, leave his estate untouched on account of their bond of guest-friendship, thereby handing his enemies material for slander, he would surrender both his land and his farm buildings to the state.
So the Lacedaemonians invaded Attica with a great army along with their allies, under the command of King Archidamus. And ravaging the countryside, they advanced to Acharnae and encamped there, expecting that the Athenians would not endure it, but out of anger and pride would come out to fight them.
But to Pericles it seemed a fearful thing to join battle for the city itself against sixty thousand Peloponnesian and Boeotian hoplites (for so many were those who made the first invasion); and he calmed those who wished to fight and were chafing at what was happening, saying that trees, when cut and lopped, grow back quickly, but when men are destroyed, it is not easy to come by the like again.
He did not convene the people in assembly, fearing he would be forced against his own judgment—but just as a ship's helmsman, when a wind comes down upon them at sea, having set everything in order and drawn taut the rigging, employs his skill, disregarding the tears and pleas of seasick and frightened passengers—in the same way he, once the city gates were closed and every post made secure with garrisons, trusted his own reckoning and paid scant attention to those who cried out against him in their irritation.
And yet a great many friends besieged him with pleading, while a great many enemies assailed him with menaces and denunciations, and choruses sang songs and mockeries to his shame, insulting his generalship as unmanly and as abandoning affairs to the enemy. And Cleon too was already fastening onto him, making his way toward popular leadership through the citizens' anger against him,
as these anapests of Hermippus show: "King of satyrs, why will you not take up the spear, but instead give forth terrible speeches about the war, while the soul of Teles lurks within you? And though you gnash a dagger sharpened on a hard whetstone, you are bitten by fiery Cleon."
Yet by none of these things was Pericles moved, but bearing the disgrace and the hostility gently and in silence, and dispatching a fleet numbering one hundred vessels against the Peloponnese, he himself stayed behind rather than sail with it, keeping the city firmly under his own control until the Peloponnesians withdrew. And to reconcile the populace, who nonetheless chafed under the burdens of war, he eased their hardship with grants of money and proposed handing out parcels of land: for having driven out all the Aeginetans, he divided their island among the Athenians by lot. There was also some comfort to be had from what the enemy themselves suffered.
For those sailing around the Peloponnese ravaged much territory, villages, and small towns, and Pericles himself, invading by land into the Megarid, laid it all waste. And from this it was clear that although the Peloponnesians were doing much harm to the Athenians by land and suffering much from them by sea, the war would not have dragged on so far, and would soon have collapsed, exactly as Pericles had foretold from the outset, had some divine power not set itself against human reckoning.
But as it was, first the plague-borne destruction fell upon them and consumed the flower of their youth and strength; and being afflicted in body by it, and utterly savage in spirit, they turned against Pericles, and, like patients deranged by their disease against their physician or their father, they set about wronging him, persuaded by his enemies that the disease was produced by the crowding of the country populace into the city,
in the season of summer, when so many were forced to live crammed together in small dwellings and stifling huts, in a confined and idle mode of life instead of the pure and open one they had before — and that the one to blame for it all was the very man who, on account of the war, had funneled the country crowd inside the walls and then made no use of so many people for anything, but let them be shut up like cattle to infect one another with disease, providing them no change or relief.
Wishing to remedy these things, and also to trouble the enemy somewhat, he manned a hundred and fifty ships, and having embarked many good hoplites and cavalrymen, he was about to put to sea, having given the citizens great hope and the enemy no less fear from such a display of strength. Yet once the crews were in place and Pericles himself had boarded his personal trireme, the sun chanced to be eclipsed, darkness came over everything, and all were seized with dread, taking it for an ominous portent.
Pericles, then, seeing that his helmsman was thoroughly afraid and at a loss, held up his cloak before the man's eyes, and having covered them, asked him whether he thought this anything terrible, or a sign of anything terrible. When he said no, Pericles said, "What, then, is that different from this, except that something greater than the cloak has caused the darkening?" This story, at any rate, is told in the schools of the philosophers.
Having sailed out, then, Pericles seems to have accomplished nothing else worthy of such a preparation; and though he besieged sacred Epidaurus, giving hope that it would be captured, he failed because of the disease. For it came upon them and destroyed not only his own men but also those who in any way came into contact with the army. Because of this the Athenians, being harshly disposed toward him, he tried to console and encourage.
He did not, however, dissolve their anger, nor did he change their minds, until they had taken the ballots against him into their own hands and, becoming masters of the matter, stripped him of his generalship and fined him money — the amount of which some write as the least, fifteen talents, and others as the greatest, fifty. As prosecutor in the case was recorded, according to Idomeneus, Cleon; according to Theophrastus, Simmias; while Heraclides of Pontus has named Lacratidas.
The public anger, then, was soon to cease, the people having discharged their wrath upon him all at once, like the sting of a goad; but his personal circumstances had grown grim, for the plague had carried off a good number of his close companions, and dissension had for a long time troubled his household. His eldest lawful son, Xanthippus, a spendthrift by nature who had married an expensive young woman — she was Tisander's daughter, Tisander being the son of Epilycus — chafed under the meager, thrifty allowance his father doled out bit by bit.
So he sent to one of his father's friends and got money, claiming Pericles had ordered it. When the friend later asked for it back, Pericles actually brought suit against him over it; and the young man Xanthippus, being harshly affected by this, reviled his father, first bringing up for mockery his father's occupations at home and the discussions he used to hold with the sophists.
For instance, when a certain pentathlete had struck Epitimus of Pharsalus with a javelin unintentionally and killed him, Pericles had spent a whole day with Protagoras disputing whether, by the most correct reasoning, the javelin, or the one who threw it, or the officials in charge of the games ought to be held responsible for the mishap. In addition, Stesimbrotus says that the slander concerning his wife was spread among the people by Xanthippus, and that in general an incurable estrangement remained between the young man and his father right up to his death; for Xanthippus died of the plague.
Pericles also lost his sister at that time, and the greater part of his relatives and friends, those most useful to him in politics. Yet he did not give up nor betray the resolve and greatness of his spirit under these misfortunes; he was not even seen weeping or performing funeral rites or standing at the tomb of any of his kin — until, indeed, he lost the remaining one of his legitimate sons, Paralus.
Bent low by this blow, he tried to hold firm to his character and to preserve his greatness of soul; but as he set a wreath upon the corpse, he was overcome by his feeling at the sight, so that he broke into weeping and poured out a flood of tears — something he had never done at any other time in the rest of his life.
When the city was trying out the other generals and orators for the conduct of the war, and none appeared to have weight equal to the balance or dignity sufficient to warrant so great a command, the people longed for him and called him to the platform and to the generalship; and though he lay at home despondent and mourning, Alcibiades together with his other friends talked him into stepping forward again.
When the people had apologized to him for their thoughtlessness, he took up public affairs again, and having been chosen general, he asked that the law concerning children of mixed birth be repealed — the very law he himself had earlier introduced — so that, with no successor at all, the name and family should not disappear altogether.
The circumstances of the law were as follows. Pericles, at the height of his political power long before this, and having legitimate sons, as has been said, had proposed a law that only those born of two Athenian parents should be Athenians. Later, when the king of the Egyptians sent a gift of forty thousand measures of grain to the people to be distributed among the citizens, many lawsuits arose against those of mixed birth on the strength of that law, which until then had gone unnoticed and been overlooked, and many also fell victim to false accusations.
In the end, those who were convicted and sold as slaves numbered a little under five thousand, while those who remained in the citizen body and were judged to be Athenians were found, upon scrutiny, to number fourteen thousand and forty.
It was a strange thing, then, that the law which had prevailed against so many should now be repealed by the very man who had written it; but the present misfortune of Pericles concerning his household, as though he were paying some penalty for his former arrogance and pride, moved the Athenians to pity, and thinking that he had suffered a deserved reversal and stood in need of human sympathy, they allowed him to enroll the illegitimate son in the phratry-registers, giving him his own name. This same son, who afterward defeated the Peloponnesians in the naval battle off Arginusae, was later executed by the citizenry together with his co-commanders.
At that time the plague seems to have taken hold of Pericles not with a sharp and violent seizure, as with others, but with a sluggish disease which, dragging on through varied changes, wore down his body slowly and gradually undermined the vigor of his spirit.
Theophrastus, at any rate, in his Ethics, in discussing whether characters change with fortune and, being moved by the sufferings of the body, depart from virtue, records that Pericles, while sick, displayed to a visiting friend a charm the women of the house had tied about his neck, as if to say that he was in a very bad way indeed, if he put up with even this piece of folly.
When he was now near death, the best of the citizens who were sitting around him, and those of his friends who survived, spoke of his virtue and his power, how great it had been, and reckoned up his deeds and the number of his trophies; for there were nine which he had set up, as general and victor, on behalf of the city.
They said these things to one another as though he no longer understood, but had lost consciousness; yet he had in fact been attending to everything, and speaking out among them, he said he was surprised that they praised and remembered these things, which belong also to fortune and have already happened to many generals, while they did not mention the finest and greatest thing. "For no living Athenian," he said, "ever put on a black cloak because of me."
The man is, then, admirable not only for the fairness and gentleness which he maintained amid many affairs and great enmities, but also for the loftiness of spirit which made him consider it the best of his achievements that, from such great power, he never gratified either envy or anger, nor treated any enemy as beyond redemption.
And it seems to me that this alone made that youthful and pompous appellation free of offense and fitting — that a character so benevolent and a life so pure and undefiled amid such power should be called "Olympian," just as we hold the race of the gods to be, by nature, the cause of good things and not the cause of evils, and fit to rule and reign over what exists — not as the poets confuse us, caught in their own myth-making by the most ignorant opinions,
naming as a secure, unmoved abode the region reputed to be where the gods reside, using neither winds nor clouds, but shone upon evenly for all time by a gentle upper air and the purest light — as befitting most such a mode of life for the blessed and immortal — while representing the gods themselves as full of turmoil, hostility, and anger, and other passions unbecoming even to men of sense. But these matters, perhaps, will seem to belong to another treatise.
As for Pericles, events soon produced in the Athenians a swift and clear sense of longing for him. For even those who, while he lived, resented his power as overshadowing them, as soon as he was out of the way, tried other orators and demagogues, and confessed that there had never been a man of more moderate bearing in his dignity and more august in
his mildness of manner. That power of his, once so envied, once called monarchy and tyranny, now looked, in hindsight, like a protective rampart shielding the constitution, so vast was the corruption and the sheer glut of wickedness weighing upon public affairs, which he, by keeping it weak and low, had hidden away and prevented from becoming incurable while in power.

======== Fabius ========

Since Pericles has proved to be such a man among those worthy of remembrance, as we have set out, let us now turn our narrative to Fabius. Some say that Fabius was born of a nymph, others of a local woman, who lay with Heracles beside the river Thymbris, a man who gave Rome the great and distinguished house of the Fabii, taking its name from him,
though some record that the first members of this house who used pit-trapping in the hunt were in ancient times called Fodii, since to this day trenches are called "fossae" and "to dig" is "fodere"; and in time, the two sounds having shifted, they came to be called Fabii. This house gave rise to many distinguished men, and Rullus, foremost among them and on that account given the surname Maximus among the Romans, was the ancestor, four generations back, of the Fabius Maximus whose life we are now recounting.
He had a nickname from a bodily mark, Verrucosus, since a small wart rose just above his lip; he was also called Ovicula, meaning "little sheep," a name given for the gentleness and gravity of his character while he was still a boy. For his quietness, his silence, the great caution with which he took hold of childish pleasures, his slowness and difficulty in learning, and his easy compliance toward his companions gave outsiders the suspicion of a certain dullness and sluggishness; few were those who could see beneath this the depth of his immovability, and the lion-like greatness of soul within his nature.
But with the passage of time, once events had stirred him into action, he soon revealed to the multitude that what looked like passivity was true steadiness of mind, that his caution was in fact sound judgment, and that his refusal to be shaken or moved amounted, in every case, to firmness and constancy. Recognizing how great the state was and how numerous its wars, he trained his body for combat as a weapon nature had given him, and likewise trained his tongue as a tool for winning over the people, shaping it to suit the life he led.
For there was in it no ornamental flourish, nor the empty, market-place kind of charm, but a mind of its own, distinctive, and possessing depth and shape in its maxims, which they say most resemble those of Thucydides. There survives a speech of his which he delivered before the people, a eulogy for his own son, who died after having held the consulship.
Of the five consulships he held, the first brought him a triumph over the Ligurians; for they were defeated by him in battle and, having lost many men, were driven back into the Alps, and ceased plundering and doing harm to the neighboring parts of Italy.
But when Hannibal, having invaded Italy and first prevailed in battle at the river Trebia, was marching on and ravaging the land of Etruria, casting terrible consternation and fear into Rome — with omens, some of the sort familiar to the Romans, coming from thunderbolts, others altogether extraordinary
and of great strangeness, falling upon them: for it was said that shields had become drenched with blood of their own accord, that harvests of grain near Antium were reaped bloody, that stones red-hot and burning fell from the sky, that over Falerii the heaven seemed to burst open and many tablets fell out and were scattered, and on one of these was found written, word for word, "Ares is stirring up his own weapons,"
none of this blunted the consul Gaius Flaminius, a man who besides his naturally hot temper and ambition was lifted up by great successes, which he had earlier won beyond expectation, when, against the wishes of the Senate and against the opposition of his colleague, he had joined battle with the Gauls by force and prevailed. Fabius, though, though the omens touched many people, was less troubled by them, on account of their irrationality;
but learning of the small numbers and lack of resources of the enemy, he urged the Romans to hold back and not to fight against a man who was using, for this very purpose, an army trained through many contests, but instead to send reinforcements to their allies, to hold the cities firmly in hand, and to let the vigor of Hannibal wither away of itself, like a flame that has flared up from a small and light fuel.
He did not, however, persuade Flaminius, who declared that he would not tolerate the war approaching Rome, nor, like the old Camillus, fight it out for the city within the city itself, and ordered the tribunes to lead the army out. As he himself leapt onto his horse, for no evident cause the horse suddenly and unaccountably trembled and shied, and he was thrown and fell headlong; yet even so he changed none of his resolve, but, holding to his original purpose of confronting Hannibal, he positioned his troops beside the body of water known as Lake Thrasymene, in Etruria.
When the soldiers had joined battle, at the very moment of the engagement an earthquake occurred, by which cities were overturned, the courses of rivers were shifted from their beds, and the bases of cliffs were torn away. But although the disturbance was so violent, not one of the combatants perceived it at all,
and Flaminius himself, displaying many deeds of daring and strength, fell, and around him the bravest of his men; of the rest, once put to flight, there was great slaughter, and fifteen thousand were cut down, and as many others were taken captive. Hannibal, wishing out of respect for his valor to bury and honor the body of Flaminius, could not find it among the dead; it had utterly vanished, no one knew how.
Now as for the earlier rout at the Trebia, neither the commanding officer's dispatch nor the courier who carried news of it gave a truthful account; instead both pretended that victory had merely been hard-fought and left undecided. But concerning this later defeat, as soon as the praetor Pomponius heard of it, he gathered the people into assembly and, without evasions or roundabout phrases, said outright as he came before them, "We have been defeated, men of Rome, in a great battle, and the army has been destroyed, and Flaminius the consul is dead. But take counsel
for your own safety and security." This man, casting his words like a gust of wind into the sea of so great a populace, threw the city into turmoil, and people's reasoning could not hold steady or endure against so great a shock. Everyone converged on one conclusion: that the crisis called for an office of unchecked, sole command — what the Romans term a dictatorship — held by a man willing to exercise it boldly and without hesitation;
and that this man should be one, Fabius Maximus, who possessed a spirit and a dignity of character equal to the greatness of the office, and who had reached that time of life at which the body's strength still holds together with the deliberations of the soul, and boldness is blended with prudence.
When this was decided, Fabius, appointed dictator, and having himself appointed Marcus Minucius as master of the horse, first asked the Senate's permission to use a horse on campaign. For it was not lawful; it had been forbidden by some ancient law, whether it was because they staked most of their military strength on the infantry and consequently believed their commander should stay stationed with the massed ranks rather than ride off from them, or because, given that the office's authority is in almost every other respect so vast and despotic, they wished the dictator, in this one matter at least, to appear to be in need of the people's permission.
Nevertheless, Fabius himself, wishing at once to demonstrate the greatness and majesty of his office, so that the citizens would be more submissive and obedient to him, came forward having assembled together twenty-four rods of office; and when the other consul came to meet him, he sent his attendant and ordered him to dismiss his lictors and, laying aside the insignia of his office, to meet him as a private citizen.
After this, beginning most nobly from the gods, and teaching the people that it was through the general's neglect and contempt of the divine, not through the cowardice of those who fought, that they had been overthrown, he urged them not to fear their enemies but rather to propitiate and honor the gods, not instilling superstition, but strengthening their courage through piety and, by hopes drawn from the gods, removing and soothing away their fear of the enemy.
Many of the hidden, valuable books were then examined, the ones known as the Sibylline books; and reportedly a number of the prophecies contained there matched, in a striking way, the events and circumstances of that period. But what was learned from them could not be inquired into by anyone else; the dictator came forward before the crowd and vowed to the gods to sacrifice, at the coming year's end, all the offspring of that year of goats, pigs, sheep, and cattle that the mountains, plains, rivers, and meadows of Italy would nourish by the appointed season, and to hold musical and theatrical festivals funded by three hundred thirty-three thousand sesterces and three hundred thirty-three thousand denarii, with a third part still remaining over,
which sum amounts to eighty thousand drachmas, plus three thousand five hundred eighty-three drachmas and two obols. It is difficult to give an account of the precision and division of this sum among the multitude, unless one wished to praise the power of the number three, in that it is by nature complete and the first of the odd numbers, and is the origin of multitude in itself, having gathered up and joined together the earliest intervals and the building blocks out of which every number is composed.
Fabius, then, having turned the resolve of the many toward the divine, made them more cheerful about the future; but he himself, placing all his hopes of victory in himself, on the ground that god grants success through virtue and prudence, turned toward Hannibal — not intending to fight him decisively, but resolved to wear down and consume, over time, the height of his vigor, with money his lack of resources, and with numbers of men his fewness,
and for this reason he was always encamped aloft, keeping clear of the enemy's cavalry, hovering about them in mountainous places; when they were encamped, he kept still, but when they moved, he circled around the high ground and showed himself at a distance sufficient not to be forced by a javelin's cast into fighting, giving the enemy, through this mere hesitation, the fear that he was about to engage them. By thus drawing out the time he came to be despised by all; he was spoken ill of in his own camp, and to the enemy he seemed utterly lacking in daring, and nothing at all except in the eyes of one man, Hannibal.
He alone perceived Fabius's cleverness and the manner in which he had resolved to fight, and, understanding that the man must be moved to battle by every art and force, or else the Carthaginians' cause was ruined — since, where they had the advantage, they were unable to use their weapons, while where they fell short, in numbers of men and in resources, they were being worn down and spent to no purpose — turned to every kind of general's stratagem and wrestling-trick, and, testing him like a skilled athlete searching for a hold, kept attacking, disturbing, and shifting Fabius from place to place, wishing to dislodge him from his calculations of safety.
But Fabius's judgment, holding firm confidence in what was advantageous, stood steadfast and unshaken in itself; yet he was troubled by his master of horse, Minucius, who loved battle unseasonably, grew bold, and stirred up the army — filled as it was, thanks to him, with a mad impulse and empty hopes — men who mocked and despised Fabius, calling him Hannibal's tutor, while they considered Minucius a great man, worthy of Rome,
as their general. Minucius, given over all the more to arrogance and boldness, mocked the encampments upon the high places, saying that the dictator was always preparing fine theater-seats for them to watch Italy being ravaged and set aflame, and asked Fabius's friends whether he was lifting the army up into the sky, as one who had given up on the earth, or whether he was hiding behind clouds and mists to escape the enemy.
When his friends reported these things to Fabius and urged him to wash away the disgrace by risking battle, he said, "I should indeed become more of a coward than I am now thought to be, if, fearing jeers and abuse, I abandoned my own calculations. To fear for one's country is no shame, but to be terrified by men's opinion, their slanders and reproaches, is unworthy of a man holding so great an office — rather, it belongs to one enslaved to those whom he ought instead to master and rule, for their poor judgment."
After this a mistake occurs on Hannibal's part. Wishing to draw Fabius's army farther off and to seize plains that offered forage, he ordered his guides to lead the way, right after dinner, toward Casinum. But they, not hearing the name accurately because of his foreign accent, led his force instead into the lowlands of Campania, to a city called Casilinum, through the middle of which flows a river the Romans call the Volturnus.
The region is enclosed on other sides by mountains, but a valley opens out toward the sea, where the marshes formed by the river's overflow lie, and it has deep dunes of sand, and ends at a wave-beaten, harborless shore. As Hannibal descended into this place, Fabius, going around by his knowledge of the roads, blocked the way out by stationing four thousand hoplites there, and, having posted the rest of his army advantageously upon the other heights, sent his lightest and most ready troops to attack the rearmost of the enemy, throwing the whole army into confusion and destroying about eight hundred of them.
After this, Hannibal, wishing to lead his army away, and recognizing the mistake in the terrain and the danger, crucified the guides, and gave up hope of forcing his way past the enemy and fighting through, since they held the passes. As everyone was in a state of despondency and fear, believing themselves surrounded on every side by inescapable difficulties, he resolved to deceive the enemy by a trick, which was as follows.
He ordered about two thousand oxen taken from the captives to be collected, and to each set of horns to bind a torch, or a bundle of dry brushwood or twigs; then, at night, when the signal was raised, they were to light these and drive the oxen up toward the passes, past the narrow places and the enemy's guard posts. At the same time, those given this order made their preparations, and he himself, having roused the rest of the army, now that it was already dark, led them off at an unhurried pace.
As long as the fire was small and merely singed the wood, the oxen advanced quietly, driven toward the foothills, and it was a marvel to the herdsmen and shepherds watching from the heights — the flames blazing at the very tips of the horns — as though an army in single order were marching by the light of many torches;
but when the burning horn, down to its root, transmitted the sensation to the flesh, and the oxen, in their agony, tossing and shaking their heads, became covered all over with flame from one another, they no longer kept to the order of their march, but, terrified and in great pain, rushed at a run over the mountains, their tails and foreheads ablaze, setting fire to much of the woodland through which they fled.
It was a terrifying sight, then, for the Romans who were watching the passes: the flames looked like torches being carried about by running men, and there was great confusion and fear among them, since they supposed that other enemies were bearing down on them from different directions and encircling them on every side. For this reason they did not dare to remain, but withdrew to the larger camp, abandoning the narrow passes. Hannibal's light troops, seizing the opportunity, occupied the passes, and the rest of his force now advanced without fear, dragging along a great and heavy quantity of plunder.
Fabius happened to perceive the trick while it was still night, for some of the cattle, straying, had fallen into his men's hands; but fearing an ambush in the darkness, he kept his force quietly under arms. When day came, he pursued and fell upon the enemy's rearguard, and skirmishes broke out in the rough ground, and there was much confusion, until men sent by Hannibal from the vanguard — light and swift-footed Iberians skilled at climbing mountains — fell upon the heavily armed Romans, and after destroying not a few of them, drove Fabius back.
It was then above all that Fabius came to be spoken of badly and held in contempt. For having held back from boldness in arms, on the ground that he would defeat Hannibal by judgment and forethought, he now appeared to have been defeated and outgeneraled by these very means. Hannibal, wishing rather to inflame the Romans' anger against him, when he came to Fabius's own farmlands, ordered everything else burned and destroyed, but forbade his men to touch those alone, and stationed a guard that allowed no harm to be done there nor anything taken from it.
These things, reported at Rome, further slandered Fabius. The tribunes of the people cried out loudly against him before the crowd, chief among them Metilius, who pressed the attack — not out of hostility to Fabius, but because, sharing blood kinship with Minucius, the master of horse, and he reckoned that Fabius's disgrace would win honor and glory for his relative. The senate too had grown angry, blaming most of all the agreement made with Hannibal concerning the prisoners,
for they had agreed among themselves that man should be ransomed for man among the captives, but if one side had more, the party recovering them should pay two hundred and fifty drachmas for each. So when the man-for-man exchange had taken place, it was found that two hundred and forty Romans remained in Hannibal's hands; regarding these men, the senate resolved against dispatching the ransom money, and it further accused Fabius of improperly and unprofitably bringing back men who had become the enemy's prey through cowardice.
On hearing this, Fabius bore his fellow citizens' anger calmly; but having no money himself, and unwilling either to deceive Hannibal or to abandon his fellow citizens, he sent his son to Rome, ordering him to sell his farms and bring the silver at once to him at the camp. When the young man had sold the land and quickly returned, Fabius sent the ransom to Hannibal and recovered the captives; and though many later tried to repay him, he took nothing from anyone, but forgave the debt to all.
After this, the priests summoned him to Rome for certain sacrifices, and he handed over the army to Minucius, having declared — not only as commander but with many exhortations and entreaties besides — that Minucius must not fight or engage the enemy. Minucius, giving these words the least regard, immediately pressed the attack against the enemy.
And once, having watched for a moment when Hannibal had sent off the greater part of his army to forage for grain, he attacked the force left behind, drove it back into its camp, destroyed no small number of men, and struck fear into all as though they were about to be besieged by him. And when Hannibal's force had gathered again into the camp, Minucius withdrew safely, having filled both himself with immoderate boasting and his soldiers with overconfidence.
Quickly a report of the deed, exaggerated still further, spread to Rome. Fabius, on hearing it, said that he feared Minucius's good fortune more than his bad. But the people were elated and ran joyfully to the forum, and Metilius the tribune, mounting the rostrum, delivered a speech magnifying Minucius while accusing Fabius — not of softness nor cowardice, but now of outright treason —
charging jointly that the most powerful and foremost men had brought on the war from the start in order to overthrow popular government, and to cast the city at once into an unaccountable monarchy — a war which, by being drawn out, would establish a stronghold for Hannibal and give time for yet another army to come from Libya, as though he were already master of Italy.
When Fabius, coming forward, did not even attempt to defend himself before the tribune, but said only that the sacrifices and rites had been completed most speedily, so that he would go to the army to punish Minucius for having engaged the enemy against his orders, a great commotion ran through the people, as though Minucius were in danger. For a dictator holds authority to jail a man or execute him without a hearing, and the people feared that Fabius's anger, once stirred from such deep gentleness, would prove heavy and hard to appease.
Because of this the rest of them, fearful, kept quiet; but Metilius, having the immunity granted by his tribunate — for this office alone, once a dictator is chosen, does not lose its power, but remains while the rest are suspended — pressed hard upon the people, begging them not to abandon Minucius nor allow him to suffer what Manlius Torquatus did to his own son: after he had distinguished himself and been crowned, cutting off his neck with an axe — and to take away Fabius's tyranny and entrust affairs to one both able and willing to save them.
Moved by such words, the people did not dare to force Fabius to lay down his sole command, though he had fallen into disrepute, but they voted that Minucius, holding equal rank in generalship, should conduct the war with the same authority as the dictator — a thing that had not happened before at Rome, though it happened again a little later, after the disaster at Cannae.
For at that time too Marcus Junius was dictator in charge of the armies, and at Rome it was necessary to fill up the senate, because so great a number of senators had died in the fighting; another dictator was chosen, Fabius Buteo. But this man, once he had come forward and enrolled the men and filled up the senate, on that same day dismissed his lictors, slipped away from those escorting him, threw himself into the crowd, mingled with it, and, already managing some of his own affairs and business like a private citizen, went about in the forum.
Having appointed Minucius to the same powers as the dictator, they thought Fabius had been curbed and humbled altogether — judging the man wrongly. For he did not consider their ignorance a misfortune to himself, but, like Diogenes the sage, when someone said to him, "These men are laughing at you," replied, "But I am not being laughed at," holding that only those are laughed at who yield and are thrown into confusion by such things —
so too Fabius bore, without suffering and with ease, whatever happened to him in this matter, offering himself as proof of what the philosophers maintain: that a good and serious man can be neither insulted nor dishonored. What troubled him was the people's poor judgment concerning the common good, since they had given occasion to a man whose ambition for the war was not a healthy one.
Fearing that Minucius, driven altogether out of his senses by empty glory and conceit, might bring about some disaster before it could be stopped, Fabius set out without telling anyone, and arriving at the camp and finding Minucius no longer restrainable, but overbearing and puffed up, demanding to command in alternation, Fabius did not grant this, but instead divided the army with him, thinking it better to command a part alone than to command the whole in alternation,
and he himself took the first and fourth legions, while giving over the second and the third to Minucius, splitting the allied forces evenly between them too. Minucius, priding himself and rejoicing that the outward show of the highest and greatest office had been lowered and disgraced on his account, was reminded by Fabius that his contest was not with Fabius, but — if he had any sense — with Hannibal:
but if he wished to compete with his co-commander instead, he should consider how the one who had been honored and had won should not appear more careless of the citizens' safety and security than the one who had been defeated and disgraced among his fellow citizens.
Minucius took this as an old man's irony, and taking the force allotted to him by lot, encamped separately and apart, Hannibal being in no way ignorant of what was happening, but watching all closely. There was a hill in the middle, not difficult to seize, but, once seized, secure for a camp and sufficient for every purpose; and the plain around it appeared level from a distance, being bare and smooth, but it had within it certain ditches, not large, and other hollows.
For this reason Hannibal, though it was possible for him to seize the hill secretly with the greatest ease, was unwilling to do so, but left it as an occasion for battle in the midst. Yet once he noticed that Minucius had become detached from Fabius, under cover of darkness he distributed a number of his troops among the gullies and hollows, and at daybreak openly sent not many men to seize the hill, so as to draw Minucius into a clash over the position.
And this indeed happened: first he sent out the light-armed troops, then the cavalry, and finally, seeing Hannibal coming to the aid of the men on the hill, Minucius came down with his whole force drawn up in order, and, joining a fierce battle, defended himself against those hurling missiles from the hill, engaging closely and holding his own, until Hannibal, seeing him well and truly deceived and offering his rear bare to those lying in ambush, raised the signal.
At this, men rose up from many sides at once and charged with a shout, cutting down those at the rear; an indescribable confusion and terror seized the Romans, and Minucius's own boldness was broken, and he looked now to one commander, now to another, none daring to hold his ground, but all being pushed toward a flight that offered no safety. For the Numidians, already in control, were riding around the plain and killing those who scattered.
While the Romans were in such distress, the danger did not escape Fabius; rather, having already anticipated what was coming, as it seems, he had kept his force drawn up under arms and was taking care to know what was happening not through messengers, but by keeping watch himself in front of the camp. So when he saw the army being surrounded and thrown into confusion, and shouting fell upon his ears — not of men holding their ground, but of men already terrified and turning to flight —
striking his thigh and groaning aloud, he told the bystanders, "By Heracles, Minucius has ruined himself faster than I anticipated, even if less quickly than his own impatience demanded." And ordering the standards brought out quickly and the army to follow, he cried out: "Now, soldiers, let each man press on remembering Marcus Minucius! For he is a fine man devoted to his homeland, and should his eagerness to expel the foe have led him into some blunder, we will find fault with that another time."
First, then, appearing on the scene, he routed and scattered the Numidians who were riding around the plain; then he advanced against those fighting and positioned behind the Romans, and killed those in his path, while the rest, before they could be cut off and find themselves caught in the very trap they themselves had set for the Romans, turned and fled.
Seeing this reversal, and Fabius pressing vigorously, beyond his years, through the fighting men up toward Minucius on the hill, Hannibal broke off the battle, and, signaling recall with the trumpet, led the Carthaginians back to camp, the Romans too gladly withdrawing. It is said that as he departed he said something of this sort to his friends about Fabius, in jest: "Did I not tell you many times about that cloud sitting on the heights, that it would one day burst into a storm of wind and rain?"
After the battle, Fabius, having stripped the spoils from as many of the enemy as he had killed, withdrew, saying nothing arrogant or offensive about his co-commander; but Minucius, gathering his own army together, said, "Fellow soldiers, to make no error at all in great affairs is beyond what is human, but to use one's mistakes as lessons for the future is the mark of a good and sensible man.
For my part, then, I admit that in finding small fault with fortune I have reason to praise it for greater things. What I could not grasp across so long a span, I learned within a mere fraction of one day, having come to know that I am not capable of commanding others, but need another to command me, and I am ambitious to be defeated by those it is finer to be defeated by than to conquer. To you the dictator is commander in all else, but in gratitude toward him I myself will be the leader, presenting myself first as obedient and doing what is commanded by him."
Having said this, and ordering the eagles taken up and everyone to follow, he led them to Fabius's camp. And going inside, he walked toward the general's tent, so that everyone was amazed and at a loss. When Fabius came forward, Minucius set his standards before him, and in a loud voice hailed him as father, while his soldiers greeted Fabius's soldiers as patrons — this being the address used by freedmen toward those who freed them.
When quiet had fallen, Minucius said: "Two victories, dictator, you have won on this day: Hannibal by courage, and your co-commander by good counsel and kindness. By the one you have saved us, by the other you have taught us — we having been defeated shamefully by him, but beautifully and to our salvation by you.
I address you as a kind father, having no more honorable title, since the favor from you is greater than the favor of the one who begot me. For I was born of him alone, but I am saved by you along with so many others." With these words spoken, he threw his arms around Fabius and pressed a kiss upon him. And the same could be seen the soldiers doing to one another: they clung to each other and kissed one another, so that the camp was full of joy and the sweetest tears.
Following this episode, Fabius relinquished his post, and successive new consuls took office. Of these, the first pair preserved the form of warfare that Fabius had established, avoiding pitched battle against Hannibal, but coming to the aid of their allies and preventing their defection. But Terentius Varro, advanced to the consulship — of undistinguished family, but of a life made conspicuous through demagoguery and rashness — made it clear at once, through his inexperience and boldness, that he would cast the die for everything at stake.
For he kept shouting in the assemblies that the war would go on for as long as the city employed Fabiuses as generals, whereas he himself would, on the very same day, both see the enemy and defeat them; and while making these speeches he was at the same time assembling and enrolling a force so vast as the Romans had never before mustered against any enemy. For the army drawn up for battle came to nine myriads short of two thousand men -- a great terror to Fabius and to those Romans who had their wits about them, for they had no hope that the city could recover its strength if it were struck down while its manhood was staked at such a size.
For this reason Fabius went to Paulus Aemilius, the colleague of Terentius, a man experienced in many wars but not popular with the people and rather timid on account of a conviction that had once been brought against him before the public court, and roused and encouraged him to take hold of that man's madness, teaching him that his contest on behalf of the fatherland would be no less against Terentius than against Hannibal; for the one was eager to bring on a battle because he had no perception of Hannibal's strength, while the other, because he perceived his own weakness, was not.
"I," he said, "O Paulus, have a juster claim than Terentius to be believed when I insist, concerning Hannibal's situation, that if no one fights him this year, the man will either perish where he remains or depart in flight -- he who, even now, though he seems to be winning and prevailing, has had not a single one of the enemy come over to him, while of the force he brought from home not even a third part any longer survives in full."
In answer to this it is said that Paulus replied, "For my own part, Fabius, weighing my own situation, dying beneath the enemy's spears suits me better than once more facing the ballots cast by my countrymen; but if matters of state truly stand as you describe, I shall strive to appear a good general in your eyes rather than in the eyes of all the others who are pushing for the opposite course." With this resolve Paulus went out to the war.
But Terentius, having thrust himself into command on his day of alternation, and having encamped opposite Hannibal by the river Aufidus and the place called Cannae, at daybreak displayed the signal for battle -- this is a scarlet tunic stretched above the general's tent -- so that even the Carthaginians were thrown into confusion from the start, seeing both the general's boldness and the multitude of the army, when they themselves were not even half its number.
Hannibal, having ordered his force to arm, himself rode on horseback with a few men to the crest of a certain gentle hill and surveyed the enemy already forming into their ranks. And when one of those about him, a man of equal rank named Gisco, said that the multitude of the enemy seemed astonishing to him, Hannibal drew his face together and said, "There is another thing, Gisco, that has escaped your notice, more astonishing than this." When Gisco asked what that was, he said, "That, though these men are so many, not one among them is called Gisco."
The jest, coming unexpectedly to them, brought laughter upon them all, and once they had descended from the hillside they went on relaying the joke to everyone they encountered, so that laughter rippled far and wide through the ranks, and Hannibal's companions could scarcely compose themselves again. This, when the Carthaginians saw it, put courage into them, for they reasoned that a man who advanced so contemptuously, laughing and jesting with his general in the very presence of danger, must be doing so out of great and strong confidence.
In the battle he employed several stratagems: first, one drawn from the terrain -- he arranged to have the wind at his back, for it burst forth like a blazing whirlwind, and lifting rough dust from the sandy and open plains, he drove it over the phalanx of the Carthaginians against the Romans, striking full in the faces of men who turned away from it and were thrown into confusion,
and disordered. Second was the one concerning the arrangement of his line: he posted the toughest, most battle-ready portion of his troops along each flank of the center, while packing the center itself with his weakest men, meaning to use it as a wedge thrust out well ahead of the rest of the phalanx. It had been arranged with the best troops that, once the Romans broke through these and, pushing on toward the yielding middle as it gave way and curved inward, found themselves enclosed within the phalanx, they should wheel sharply round from both sides and strike them on the flanks, surrounding and hemming them in from behind.
This indeed seems to have produced the greatest slaughter. For when the center gave way and received the Romans as they pursued, Hannibal's phalanx changed its shape and became crescent-shaped, and the officers of the picked troops quickly wheeled some to the left, others to the right, and fell upon the exposed flanks, and all who had not escaped in time from the encirclement were destroyed and cut to pieces in the middle.
It is said that a strange mischance also befell the Roman cavalry. Paulus, it seems, was thrown when his horse was wounded, and one after another of those around him abandoned their mounts and came on foot to defend the consul. When the cavalry saw this, as if a command had passed down the ranks, every one of them dismounted and met the enemy on foot. Seeing this, Hannibal said, "I would rather have had this than if I had taken them bound."
But these are the things reported by those who wrote the detailed histories. Of the consuls, Varro rode off with a small escort to the city of Venusia, while Paulus, amid the depth and surge of that rout, riddled with the many missiles lodged in his wounds, his body and spirit crushed under so heavy a sorrow, sat down beside a certain stone, waiting for one of the enemy to finish him off; he was so covered with blood
over his head and face that he was recognizable to few, and even his friends and attendants passed him by unknowingly. Only Cornelius Lentulus, a young patrician, saw him and, taking thought, leapt down from his horse, and coming up to him urged him to make use of him and to save himself for the citizens, who at that moment had special need of a good commander.
But he rejected this entreaty, and forced the young man, in tears, to mount his horse again; then, grasping his right hand and rising with him, he said, "Report, Lentulus, to Fabius Maximus, and be yourself a witness of this, that Paulus Aemilius remained true to his reasoning to the very end and broke none of what he had agreed with him, but was defeated first by Varro, and then by Hannibal."
Having given these instructions, he sent Lentulus away, and himself, plunging into the thick of the slaughter, died. It is said that fifty thousand of the Romans fell in the fighting, that another four thousand were captured alive, and that once the fighting ended, those seized from both camps came to no fewer than ten thousand.
Although Hannibal's friends urged him, after so great a success, to press his good fortune and sweep in together with the fleeing enemy straight into the city itself -- for within five days of the victory, they said, he would be dining on the Capitol -- what reasoning held him back is not easy to state; rather it seems that his hesitation and faintheartedness in this matter were the work of some spirit or god blocking his path rather than of calculation. For this reason they say that Barca the Carthaginian said to him in anger, "You know how to win a victory, Hannibal, but you do not know how to use one."
And yet the victory brought about so great a change in his fortunes that, whereas before the battle he held no city, no market-town, no harbor of Italy, and could scarcely and with difficulty bring in supplies for his army by plunder, having no secure base from which to wage the war, but wandered and roamed about with his camp like some great band of pirates, he now made almost the whole of Italy subject to himself.
For most and the greatest of the peoples came over to him willingly, and Capua, which holds the greatest standing among the cities after Rome itself, he took when it joined him. It was not only, as it seems, the testing of friends that is, as Euripides says, no small evil, but also the testing of prudent generals; for the caution and coolness people had pinned on Fabius while the battle was still to come, once the fighting was over, no longer looked like ordinary human judgment at all, but something divine in his thinking, touched with the supernatural, foreseeing from so far off what was to come -- things which those who lived through them could scarcely believe.
For this reason Rome at once gathered her remaining hopes upon that man, and, taking refuge in his judgment as in a temple and an altar, found in his prudence the first and greatest cause of her remaining together and not dissolving, as had happened in her sufferings at the hands of the Gauls.
For he who in circumstances that seemed to hold no terror had appeared cautious and slow to hope, now, when all the rest had cast themselves into boundless mourning and useless confusion, alone went about through the city with a gentle step, a composed face, and a kindly address, putting a stop to women's lamentations and preventing the gatherings of those who, in public grief, were carrying their mourning into the streets; he also persuaded the senate to convene and encouraged the magistrates, being himself the strength and power to which every office looked.
At the gates, then, he stationed men to keep back the crowd that was rushing out and abandoning the city, and he set both a place and a time for mourning, ordering that whoever wished might lament within his own house for thirty days; after these days, all mourning was to be laid aside and the city purified of such things.
And since a festival of Demeter fell within those days, it seemed better to skip both the sacrifices and the procession altogether rather than let the scale of the disaster show through the sparse, downcast turnout of those who gathered; for indeed the divine takes pleasure in being honored by the fortunate.
Nevertheless, whatever the seers advised for propitiating the gods or averting portents was carried out. For Pictor, a kinsman of Fabius, was sent as an inquirer to Delphi, and after two of the Vestal Virgins were discovered to have been defiled, the one, following custom, was buried alive, while the other took her own life.
One might especially admire the spirit and gentleness of the city on the occasion when the consul Varro returned from his flight, coming back as one might who had done the most shameful and ill-fated of deeds, humbled and downcast; the senate and the whole populace went out to meet him at the gates and greeted him.
And the men in authority and the leading members of the senate, among whom was Fabius, when silence had fallen, praised him for not giving up on the city despite so crushing a disaster, but instead coming forward to take charge of affairs and to rely on the laws and on the citizens as still able to be saved,
When word reached them that Hannibal, once the battle was over, had veered off toward the rest of Italy, they took heart again and sent out commanders and armies, the most distinguished of whom were Fabius Maximus and Claudius Marcellus, admired in almost equal measure though for nearly opposite policies.
For the one, as has been said in what has been written concerning him, possessed a shining and exultant energy, being a man mighty of hand and by nature of the sort that Homer especially calls "lovers of war" and "haughty," and in a reckless and headlong manner he engaged in his first contests, matching daring against the daring Hannibal:
but Fabius, holding to those first calculations of his, hoped that, if no one fought or provoked him, Hannibal would work harm upon himself and wear himself down over the course of the war, just like an athlete's body that, its strength strained too far and overtaxed, most quickly loses its prime. For this reason Posidonius says that the Romans called the one a shield and the other a sword, and that Fabius's steadfastness and security, mixed with Marcellus's aggressiveness, became of great benefit to the Romans.
Hannibal, meeting the one, as it were, like a river flowing violently, was shaken and had his forces torn apart, but by the other, undermining him little by little, silently and constantly wearing away at him, he was, without noticing it, worn down and depleted; and in the end he fell into such difficulty that Marcellus grew weary of fighting him, while Fabius feared him even when he was not fighting.
For the greater part, so to speak, of the time he waged war against these two, whether appointed as generals, proconsuls, or consuls; each of the two was consul five times. But Marcellus, while consul for the fifth time, Hannibal caught in an ambush and killed, while against Fabius, though he brought every kind of deception and trial to bear on him many times, he accomplished nothing, except that once he came close to outwitting and tripping up the man,
for he composed letters as though from the powerful and leading men of Metapontum and sent them to Fabius, saying that the city would be handed over if he came, and that those who were doing this were waiting for him to arrive and show himself nearby. These letters swayed Fabius, and taking part of his army he was on the verge of setting out by night; then, when he consulted the bird omens and found them unfavorable, he turned back, and soon afterward it came to light that the letters had been fabricated by Hannibal's cunning and sent to him, and that Hannibal himself lay waiting in ambush for him near the city. But this one might credit to the goodwill of the gods.
As for the defections of cities and the movements of the allies, Fabius thought it better to check and to shame them through gentle and mild dealing rather than by testing every suspicion and being altogether harsh toward those under suspicion. For it is said that, when he perceived that a soldier, a Marsian, first among the allies in courage and birth, had been conversing with some men in the camp about defection, he did not provoke him further,
but, admitting that the man had been neglected beyond his desert, said that for the present he blamed the commanders for distributing honors according to favor rather than to merit, but that in future he would blame the man himself if he did not speak up and come to him, should he need anything. And having said this he gave him a war-horse as a gift and honored him with other prizes of valor, so that from that time the man became the most loyal and eager of all,
For he thought it a terrible thing that men who train horses and hounds remove the beasts' savagery, irritability, and bad temper through care, familiarity, and proper feeding rather than through whips and collars, while a ruler of men does not set his main effort on kindness and gentleness in correcting them, but treats them more harshly and violently than farmers treat wild fig trees, wild pears, and wild olives, taming and domesticating some into olive trees, others into pear trees, others into fig trees.
Here is another instance. The company commanders reported to him a man of Lucanian birth who kept wandering away from the camp and repeatedly leaving his post. Fabius asked what sort of man he was otherwise thought to be. When everyone testified that there was hardly another soldier like him, and told of certain notable acts of courage and deeds of his, seeking the cause of his indiscipline he found that the man was in the grip of love for a slave girl, and was risking danger each time by making long journeys from the camp to see her.
So sending certain men without the soldier's knowledge, he had the little woman seized and hidden in his own tent, and calling the Lucanian privately to himself he said, "It has not escaped me that, contrary to Roman custom and the laws, you have often spent the night away from camp — but neither had it escaped me before that you were a good man. Well then, let your offenses be redeemed by your brave deeds, but from now on
I will place you under another's watch for guard duty." While the soldier was still wondering at this, Fabius brought the woman forward and put her into his hands, saying, "She stands surety that you will remain in camp with us. You will show by your conduct whether it was for some other vice that you kept leaving — or whether love, as claimed, was truly the reason." This is what the historians report about these matters.
He took the city of the Tarentines, which had been captured through betrayal, in the following manner. There was serving under him a young Tarentine man who had a sister devoted to him with great trust and affection. A Bruttian man, one of those stationed by Hannibal to guard the city, was in love with her and held a position of command; this gave the Tarentine hope of accomplishing something. With Fabius's knowledge he was let go into the city, but the story given out was that he had deserted to his sister in Tarentum.
For the first days the Bruttian kept to himself and rested, while the sister supposed her brother knew nothing of it. Then the young man said to her, "Word has certainly gone around there that you are keeping company with a man of power and importance. Who is this? For if he is a man of good repute and distinction in valor, as they say, war that mixes everything together cares least of all for lineage; and there is nothing shameful in what necessity brings, but rather a stroke of good fortune, in a time when justice is weak, to make use of the gentlest of those who use force."
After this the woman sent for the Bruttian and made him acquainted with her brother; and he, quickly furthering the young man's desire and seeming to make his sister more devoted and compliant to the foreigner than before, won his trust so completely that it was not difficult to turn the mind of a man in love, a mercenary at that, toward hopes of the great rewards which Fabius promised to provide him.
This, then, is what most writers report about these matters. But according to another account, the woman who persuaded the Bruttian over to their side was not from Tarentum at all, but a Bruttian herself by birth, and she was one of Fabius's mistresses; that when she perceived that the commander of the Bruttians was a fellow-citizen and an acquaintance, she told Fabius, and, meeting the man in conversation beneath the wall, persuaded and worked him over.
While these things were being carried out, Fabius, contriving to draw Hannibal away, sent word to the troops stationed at Rhegium that they should invade Bruttium, set up camp, and seize Caulonia by direct assault — eight thousand men, most of them deserters, and the most useless of those disgraced men brought from Sicily by Marcellus, men who would be lost to the city with the least grief and harm.
For he hoped that by exposing these men to Hannibal and luring him with the bait, he could lure Hannibal off in another direction, away from Tarentum — and events unfolded exactly along those lines. For Hannibal at once moved off there in pursuit with his force, and on the sixth day, while Fabius was encamped around Tarentum, the young man who had already conferred with the Bruttian through his sister came to him by night, knowing exactly and having observed the spot where the Bruttian, on guard duty, was going to give way and let the attackers through.
Fabius, however, did not stake the whole action simply on the betrayal; instead he himself went there and kept quiet, while the rest of the army attacked the walls from both land and sea at once, making a great deal of shouting and uproar, until, when most of the Tarentines had rushed there to help and were engaged with those fighting at the walls, the Bruttian sentry sent his signal over to Fabius, whereupon Fabius climbed up by ladders and seized control of the city.
Here, however, he seems to have yielded to a desire for reputation; for he ordered the Bruttians killed first, so that he would not appear openly to hold the city by betrayal — yet he failed to gain this reputation, and instead incurred the charge of bad faith and cruelty besides. Many of the Tarentines also died; those sold into slavery numbered thirty thousand, and the army plundered the city; three thousand talents were brought into the public treasury,
and while everything else was being carried off and hauled away, it is said that the secretary asked Fabius what he ordered concerning the gods — referring in this way to the paintings and the statues. Fabius replied, "Let us leave the Tarentines their angry gods."
Nevertheless he had the colossal statue of Heracles brought from Tarentum and set up on the Capitoline, and near it a bronze equestrian image of himself — appearing in this matter far more inappropriate than Marcellus, or rather making that man appear altogether admirable for his gentleness and humanity, as has been written in his Life.
Hannibal, it is said, in pursuit was left behind by only forty stadia, and openly remarked, "So the Romans, it seems, have another Hannibal too — for we have lost the city of the Tarentines just as we took it." And privately, then for the first time, he is said to have stood before his friends and said that for a long time he had seen it was hard for them, but now it was impossible to prevail with the resources Italy afforded them.
This was the second triumph Fabius celebrated, more splendid than the first, like a good athlete contending against Hannibal and easily loosening himself from his holds, as if the knots and grips no longer had the same tension. For the one force had been relaxed through luxury and wealth on Hannibal's part, while the other had been blunted and worn down, as it were, by unrelenting struggles.
There was one Marcus Livius, from whom Hannibal had detached Tarentum while he was holding it under guard; nevertheless, holding the citadel, he was not driven out, and he kept it until the Tarentines came under Roman power again. This man was vexed that Fabius received the honor, and once, carried away before the senate by envy and rivalry, he said that it was not Fabius but he himself who was responsible for the capture of Tarentum. Fabius laughed and said, "You speak the truth — for if you had not lost the city, I would never have retaken it."
The Romans, for their part, treated Fabius with splendid honor in other respects, and elected his son Fabius consul. When the son had taken up the office and was managing some matter connected with the war, the father — whether because of old age and weakness, or to test his son — mounted a horse and approached through the crowd of those meeting and standing about him. The young man, catching sight of him from a distance, would not tolerate it, and sending an attendant ordered his father to dismount and come to him on foot, if indeed he had some need of the magistracy.
The order vexed the others present, and they looked toward Fabius in silence, as one suffering unworthily of his reputation; but he himself, leaping down quickly, hastened toward his son at more than a walking pace, and embracing and greeting him said, "Well done, my son — you think and act rightly, understanding whom you command and how great is the office you have taken up. This is how we and our ancestors made Rome great, always placing our country's good ahead of parents and children alike."
It is said, indeed, that Fabius's great-grandfather, when he had attained the greatest glory and power among the Romans, was consul five times himself and celebrated the most illustrious triumphs from the greatest wars, yet when his son was consul he went out to the war with him as a legate; and in the triumph, while the son rode in on the four-horse chariot, the father, mounted on horseback, followed along with the rest, exulting that, being and being called the greatest of the citizens, and master of his son, he nonetheless placed himself after the law and the magistrate. But indeed that man was admired not only for these reasons.
It happened that Fabius's son died; and the loss he bore with great moderation, as a sensible man and a good father should — but the eulogy which relatives customarily deliver at the funerals of the eminent, he delivered himself, standing in the forum, and having written the speech, published it.
When Cornelius Scipio, sent to Iberia, had driven out the Carthaginians, prevailing in many battles, and had won over for the Romans very many peoples and great cities and splendid successes, he returned home with goodwill and glory such as no other man possessed. Made consul, and perceiving that the people demanded and expected some great action from him,
he considered it far too old-fashioned and old-mannish simply to go on grappling with Hannibal there in Italy; instead he intended at once to fill Carthage itself and Libya with arms and armies, to ravage them, and to shift the war there from Italy — and toward this he stirred up the people with his whole passion. At this point Fabius, driving the city into every kind of fear, as being carried by a foolish and young man into the utmost and greatest danger,
sparing neither word nor deed that seemed likely to turn the citizens away, persuaded the senate; but to the people it seemed that out of envy he was laying hold of Scipio while he was prospering, and was afraid that, if the man accomplished something great and splendid and either ended the war altogether or drove it out of Italy, he himself would appear idle and soft for not having finished the war in so long a time.
It seems that Fabius set out at first to oppose the plan out of a great deal of caution and foresight, fearing the danger as being great; but somehow he strained himself further and was carried on farther by a certain rivalry and love of honor, in his effort to hinder Scipio's rise — he who also persuaded Crassus, Scipio's fellow consul, not to yield the command nor give way, but himself, if he thought fit, to cross over against the Carthaginians; and he did not allow money to be given for the war.
So Scipio, being forced to raise money for himself, collected it from the cities of Etruria which were privately well disposed toward him and glad to oblige. As for Crassus, his own nature, which was not contentious but gentle, kept him at home, along with the divine law, since he held the greatest priesthood.
So again, meeting Scipio by another route, Fabius kept hindering and holding back the young men who were eager to campaign with him, crying out in the senate and the assemblies that Scipio was not merely running away from Hannibal himself, but was also sailing off with the remaining force taken from Italy, leading the young men on with false hopes and persuading them to abandon parents, wives, and city, at whose very gates the undefeated enemy sat in triumph. And indeed, saying this, he frightened the Romans,
and they voted that he use only the forces in Sicily, and take with him three hundred of those who had served with him in Iberia, men he trusted. This, then, is how Fabius seems to have conducted himself in keeping with his own nature. But when Scipio had crossed into Libya, and reports at once reached Rome of wonderful deeds and achievements astonishing in their scale and splendor, and, bearing out the rumors, much booty followed,
and the king of the Numidians was taken captive, and two camps were burned at a single stroke, with the destruction of many men and, along with them, many weapons and horses consumed in the flames, and embassies were sent to Hannibal from the Carthaginians, calling and begging him to abandon those unfulfilled hopes and come home to their aid,
while in Rome everyone had Scipio's name on their lips for his successes, Fabius demanded that a successor be sent to Scipio, having no other pretext than to say what is still remembered — that it is dangerous to entrust such great affairs to the fortune of one man, for it is hard for the same man always to be fortunate. By this he already offended many, as a man difficult and malicious, or else grown altogether timid and despairing through old age, and more terrified of Hannibal than was reasonable.
For not even after Scipio had sailed off with his forces from Italy did he allow the citizens' joy and confidence to remain undisturbed and steady; instead he said that then, above all, affairs stood in perilous danger for the city as it rushed toward the utmost risk — for Hannibal, in his view, would strike at them with even greater force once in Libya before Carthage, and an army would meet Scipio still warm with the blood of many commanders-in-chief, dictators, and consuls; so that the city was thrown into turmoil again by these words, and thought that, now that the war had shifted to Libya, the danger had come nearer to Rome.
But Scipio, not long after, both defeating Hannibal himself decisively in battle and casting down his pride, and trampling upon Carthage as it fell before him, gave the citizens a joy greater than all their hopes, and truly "set upright again the leadership that had been shaken by so great a swell." Fabius Maximus, however, did not live long enough to see the end of the war, nor did he hear of Hannibal's defeat, nor did he live to see his country's great and secure good fortune; instead, around the time Hannibal departed from Italy, he fell ill and died.
Now the Thebans buried Epaminondas at public expense, because of the poverty the man left behind — for nothing, they say, was found in his house at his death except an iron spit. But the Romans did not bury Fabius at public expense; rather, each private citizen contributed the smallest of coins toward him, not because of any lack of funds to provide for it, but as burying a father of the people — and his death received an honor and glory fitting to his life.

======== Comparison Of Pericles With Fabius ========

Such, then, is the recorded history of these men's lives. Since both have left behind many fine examples of political and military virtue, let us first take this point about their military careers: Pericles, dealing with a people who were doing splendidly and were at their greatest in his own time and most flourishing in power, might seem to have come through unscathed and unstumbling on the strength of the common good fortune and might of affairs,
whereas Fabius's actions, undertaken when he took charge of the city in the most disgraceful and most ill-fated of times, did not preserve it safe amid good fortunes, but transformed it from evils into something better. And to Pericles the victories won by Cimon, the war-trophies set up by Myronides and Leocrates, together with the numerous major triumphs that Tolmides achieved, handed over a city in which he, as general, could join the celebration and share in the public rejoicing, rather than one he had to win and guard by war;
but Fabius, seeing many routs and defeats, many deaths and slaughters of supreme commanders and captains &#8212; lakes, plains, and woodlands strewn with the bodies of destroyed armies, rivers running with blood and slaughter all the way to the sea, laid hold of the city as it was rushing and plunging headlong in his own time, and by bracing himself against it did not allow it, swept along by their disasters, to be utterly poured out and destroyed.
And yet it would seem not so difficult a thing to manage a city humbled by misfortunes and, under compulsion, obedient to the man of sound judgment, as to throw a bridle of insolence and boldness upon a people puffed up and swelling with good fortune — and it is in this way above all that Pericles appears to have gotten the better of the Athenians. But the magnitude and multitude of the evils that then befell the Romans revealed a man of strong judgment and greatness, one who was neither thrown into confusion nor abandoned his own calculations.
And to Samos, captured by Pericles, one may set the capture of Tarentum, and, by Zeus, to Euboea the cities around Campania — since Capua itself was taken by the consuls Fulvius and Appius. But from a pitched battle Fabius does not appear to have won a victory, except the one from which he drove in his earlier triumph, whereas Pericles set up nine trophies over his enemies by land and by sea,
yet Pericles has no exploit set down to match what Fabius accomplished in snatching Minucius from Hannibal and saving an entire Roman army whole — a fine deed, and one that combines courage together with prudence and goodness alike; just as, again, no blunder is recorded of Pericles such as that which Fabius suffered, outgeneraled by Hannibal through the trick of the oxen, when he caught the enemy by chance and good fortune as it had entered the narrow passes, but let it slip away by night undetected, and by day was forced to yield, being forestalled by one who was about to be mastered and captured—
and mastered instead the one who thought to seize him. But if the good general must not only make use of present circumstances but also correctly divine the future, then for the Athenians the war ended just as Pericles had foreseen and foretold: for by meddling further they destroyed their power. The Romans, on the other hand, contrary to the calculations of Fabius, sent out Scipio against the Carthaginians and mastered all — not by luck, but by the wisdom and courage of a general who conquered the enemy outright by force.
So that in the one case the misfortunes of his country bore witness that he had judged rightly, while in the other his successes convicted him of having been altogether wrong. Yet it is an equal fault in a general to fall into misfortune through failure to anticipate it, and to let slip an opportunity for success through distrust. For it seems that the same inexperience both breeds rashness and takes away courage. So much for their conduct of war.
As for statesmanship, the great charge against Pericles is the war: for it is said that it was brought on by him, since he contended not to yield to the Lacedaemonians. Yet I think that not even Fabius Maximus would have yielded anything to the Carthaginians, but would nobly have stood his ground for the danger risked for supremacy. Still, the fair-mindedness and gentleness of Fabius toward Minucius convicts the factional strife of Pericles against Cimon and Thucydides, good men and of aristocratic sympathies, whom he drove into exile and ostracism.
But the power and dominance of Pericles were greater, and hence he never permitted another commander to inflict disaster on the city through poor judgment, except that Tolmides alone escaped him and, forcing his own way, came to grief against the Boeotians; all the others attached themselves to his judgment and arranged themselves entirely according to it, owing to the greatness of his power.
Fabius, on the other hand, though safe from error in what concerned himself, appears to fall short in his inability to restrain others. For the Romans would not have met with so many disasters if Fabius had had as much power among them as Pericles had at Athens. And indeed, as for greatness of soul with regard to money, the one showed it by taking nothing from those who offered it, the other by giving away much to those in need, ransoming the captives with his own funds.
Yet of these there was no great number, only about six talents; whereas of Pericles one could perhaps not even say how much he might have profited and been courted by allies and kings, since his power allowed it, and yet he kept himself the most incorruptible and the purest of men.
As for the greatness of his works, the temples and the construction of buildings with which Pericles adorned Athens, it is not worth comparing all together the ambitious monuments of Rome before the Caesars, but the grandeur and magnificence of these works held a preeminence surpassing and beyond comparison with those others.

======== Alcibiades ========

Alcibiades' family is thought to have had, on the father's side going back, Eurysaces the son of Ajax as its founder; on his mother's side he was an Alcmaeonid, since Deinomache, Megacles' daughter, was his mother. As for Cleinias, his father, he fought gloriously with a trireme he had fitted out at his own expense near Artemisium, and later died fighting the Boeotians at Coronea. Pericles and Ariphron, the sons of Xanthippus, who were relatives, became Alcibiades' guardians.
It is well said that no small part of his reputation he owed to Socrates' goodwill and affection toward him, since of Nicias, Demosthenes, Lamachus, Phormio, Thrasybulus, and Theramenes, distinguished men of his own time, not even the mother of any one of them is remembered by name, whereas of Alcibiades we know even the nurse, a Laconian by birth named Amycla, and the tutor, Zopyrus — the one recorded by Antisthenes, the other by Plato.
About Alcibiades' beauty perhaps nothing need be said, except that it flowered with him at every stage of life, as boy, as youth, and as man, and gave him charm and loveliness throughout. For it is not true, as Euripides said, that autumn is beautiful in all beautiful things — but this belonged to Alcibiades, along with a few others, thanks to the natural excellence and vigor of his body.
They say that even his lisp became him in speaking, and lent his chatter a persuasive charm. Aristophanes too mentions his lisp, in the passage where he mocks Theorus: "Then Alcibiades said to me, lisping: 'Do you see Theolus? He has the head of a flatterer.' Alcibiades lisped that quite rightly." And Archippus too, mocking the son of Alcibiades, says: "He walks affectedly, dragging his cloak, so as to look as much like his father as possible; he lets his neck droop to one side and lisps."
His character, as was natural given the great affairs and varied fortunes he later moved among, displayed many inconsistencies and changes toward itself. By nature he had many strong passions, but the strongest of all were his love of rivalry and his love of being first, as is clear from the anecdotes remembered of him as a boy.
For instance, once when he was hard pressed in wrestling, to avoid falling he raised the arms of the one gripping him to his own mouth and was on the point of biting through the hands. When his opponent let go his hold and said, "You bite, Alcibiades, like the women," he replied, "No indeed — like the lions." Again, while still small, he was playing at knucklebones in a narrow street, and just as it came his turn to throw, a loaded wagon was coming toward him.
At first he told the driver to wait, since his throw fell in the wagon's path; but when the man, being boorish, would not obey and drove on, the other boys scattered, but Alcibiades stretched himself out full length on the ground right before the team, face down, and told the man to drive on now if he wished — so that the man, frightened, backed the team away, and the onlookers were astonished and ran up to him shouting. When he came to his schooling,
he was reasonably obedient to his other teachers, but refused to learn the flute, thinking it ignoble and unbecoming a free man: playing the lyre or the harp, he said, spoiled neither the bearing nor the appearance proper to a free man, but a man blowing into flutes could hardly be recognized even by his close friends.
Moreover, the lyre, he said, joins its sound to that of the one playing and sings along with him, while the flute stops up and blocks each person's mouth, taking away both voice and speech. "Let the sons of the Thebans play the flute, then," he said, "for conversation is not something they know how to manage; but we Athenians, according to what our fathers tell us, have Athena as our founder and Apollo as our ancestral god, and the one threw away the flute, while the other even flayed the flute-player."
By such jokes, made half in earnest, Alcibiades turned both himself and the other boys away from that subject of study. For word quickly spread among the boys that Alcibiades was right to loathe flute-playing and to mock those who studied it. As a result the flute was altogether banished from the pursuits of free men and fell into complete disrepute.
In the invectives of Antiphon it is written that, while still a child, he fled his own household for the house of a certain Democrates, one of his lovers; and when Ariphron wished to have him publicly proclaimed as a runaway, Pericles would not allow it, saying: if he is dead, the proclamation will only make it known one day sooner; but if he is safe, for the rest of his life he will be ruined by it. It is also said that he killed one of his attendants with a blow of a stick in Sibyrtius' wrestling school. But perhaps these things do not deserve belief, coming as they do from a man who admits he spoke them out of hostility.
Now as many noble men were already gathering around him and paying him court, the others were all plainly overcome by the brilliance of his youthful beauty and courted him for that alone; but the love that Socrates bore him was great evidence of the virtue and natural excellence of the boy, which Socrates saw shining through his outward form, and fearing on his behalf the wealth and rank and the crowd of citizens, foreigners, and allies who tried to get hold of him first with flatteries and favors, he was determined to defend him and not stand by while, like a plant in flower, he lost and ruined his proper fruit.
For fortune has hedged and fenced no one about so completely with what are called goods that he becomes invulnerable to philosophy and inaccessible to words that carry frankness and a sting; and so Alcibiades, though from the very start he was pampered and shut off by those who courted him for pleasure's sake from listening to one who would admonish and educate him, nevertheless by his natural excellence came to recognize Socrates and drew near to him, setting apart from himself his wealthy and famous lovers.
Quickly becoming intimate with him, and hearing words not from a lover hunting unmanly pleasure, nor begging for kisses and caresses, but exposing the rottenness of his soul and pressing hard upon his empty and foolish conceit, he "crouched like a cowering cock, drooping his wing." He came to regard Socrates' attentions as truly a divinely appointed office, one devoted to watching over and rescuing the young; and holding himself in contempt,
admiring Socrates, cherishing his kindness, ashamed before his virtue, he came unawares, as Plato says, to possess a counter-love, an image of love answering love — so that everyone was amazed to see him dining, wrestling, and sharing a tent with Socrates, while toward his other lovers he was harsh and hard to master, and toward some he behaved altogether haughtily, as toward Anytus the son of Anthemion. This man happened to be in love with Alcibiades,
and, entertaining some foreign guests, invited him along to the dinner as well. Alcibiades turned the invitation down, but after getting drunk at home with his own companions, he went off in revel to Anytus' house; standing at the doors of the men's dining hall and seeing the tables loaded with gold and silver cups, he directed his servants to gather up half of these and bring them back to his own house, and he did not even deign to go in himself, but having done this, left. When the guests were indignant and said that Alcibiades had treated Anytus insolently and arrogantly, Anytus said, "On the contrary, quite reasonably and kindly — for when he could have taken it all, he has left us our share."
So he treated his other lovers too — except for one resident alien, they say, a man of no great means, who sold everything he owned and, having gathered together a hundred staters, brought them to Alcibiades and begged him to take them; Alcibiades laughed, was pleased, and invited him to dinner. Having entertained him kindly, he gave back the gold to him, and ordered him the next day to outbid the other buyers of the public tax-farming contracts and to bid against them for it.
When the man begged off, since the contract came to many talents, Alcibiades threatened to have him whipped if he did not do it — for he in fact had some private grievance against the tax-farmers. So at dawn the resident alien went forth to the marketplace and added a talent to the bid. When the tax-farmers, gathering together in anger, demanded that he name a guarantor, supposing he could find none, and the man, thrown into confusion, was backing away, Alcibiades, standing off at a distance, called out to the magistrates: "Write down my own name — this man is my friend,
I stand guarantor for him." On hearing this the tax-farmers were at a loss. For being used always to pay off the earlier contracts out of the later ones, they saw no way out of the matter. So they begged the man, offering him money; but Alcibiades would not let him accept less than a talent. When they offered the talent, he told him to take it and withdraw. In this way he helped the man.
Now Socrates' love, though it had many great rivals, in some measure prevailed over Alcibiades, since by natural gift his words took hold of Alcibiades, gripped his heart, and drew the tears out of him; yet at other times, giving himself over to the flatterers who offered him many pleasures, he would slip away from Socrates and, running off, be hunted down like a runaway, keeping toward that man alone his reverence and his fear, while looking down on all the rest.
Cleanthes used to say that his beloved was held by him by the ears, but offered his rival lovers many handles that were untouchable to him — meaning the belly, the private parts, and the throat; and Alcibiades was indeed, without question, also inclined toward pleasures — for the lawlessness in his bodily way of life that Thucydides speaks of gives grounds for such a suspicion.
Nevertheless, those who were corrupting him, taking hold rather of his love of honor and love of glory, drove him prematurely into grand ambitions, convincing him that the moment he entered public life he would not merely eclipse at once the other generals and popular leaders, but would even surpass the power and reputation Pericles held among the Greeks.
So then, just as iron softened in fire is again hardened by cold water and its parts drawn together into itself, so too Socrates, whenever he caught Alcibiades full of self-indulgence and vanity, would press him with argument and constrain him, making him humble and diffident, teaching him how much he lacked and how far short he fell of virtue.
Passing beyond boyhood, he once went up to a schoolmaster and asked for a book of Homer. When the teacher said he had nothing of Homer's, Alcibiades struck him with his fist and went on his way. When another said he had a Homer he himself had corrected, Alcibiades said, "Then why are you teaching letters, when you are capable of correcting Homer? Why are you not educating the young?"
Wishing to meet with Pericles, he went to his door. Learning that he was not at leisure, but was working out privately how he would present his accounts to the Athenians, Alcibiades, on his way out, remarked, "Should he not rather be working out some way to avoid presenting accounts to the Athenians altogether?" While still a young man he served in the campaign against Potidaea, and had Socrates as his tent-companion and comrade in the fighting.
A fierce battle took place in which both distinguished themselves; and when Alcibiades fell wounded, Socrates stood over him and defended him, and quite plainly saved him along with his arms. By the strictest justice the prize for valor belonged to Socrates; but since the generals, out of regard for his rank, seemed eager to confer the honor on Alcibiades, Socrates, wishing to foster his love of honor in noble pursuits, was the first to testify on his behalf and urged that he be crowned and given the suit of armor.
Again, in the fighting at Delium, once the Athenian ranks had broken and fled, Alcibiades, being mounted, spotted Socrates falling back on foot with a small group and did not simply ride past; instead he stayed beside him and shielded him from harm, even while the enemy pressed close and cut down many. This, however, happened later.
On Hipponicus, Callias' father, a man of high standing and influence owing to his wealth and lineage, he once dealt a blow with his fist — not out of anger or any quarrel, but for a laugh, having made a wager with his companions. When the outrageous act became notorious throughout the city and everyone, naturally, was indignant, Alcibiades at daybreak went to Hipponicus' house, knocked on the door, went in to him, and, laying aside his cloak, offered his body, telling him to whip and punish him as he wished.
Hipponicus forgave him and let go of his anger; and later he made him bridegroom to his daughter Hipparete. Some, though, say that it was Callias the son, not Hipponicus, who gave Hipparete in marriage to Alcibiades, bringing with her a marriage-portion worth ten talents; and that later, after she bore a child, Alcibiades pressed him for an additional ten talents besides, claiming this had been the arrangement should children come of the marriage. Callias, fearing a plot against himself, went before the people, giving them his money and his estate, in case it should happen to him to die without leaving children. Hipparete, being orderly and devoted to her husband,
was grieved at his consorting, during their marriage, with courtesans both foreign and native, and left the house to go to her brother's. Since Alcibiades paid no heed but continued his dissolute ways, it was necessary for the document of separation to be lodged with the archon, not through others,
but by her presenting it in person. So when she came to do this according to the law, Alcibiades came up, took hold of her, and bore her away back home straight through the marketplace, with not a soul brave enough to stand in his way or pull her free. She remained with him, in fact, until her death, which occurred not long after, when Alcibiades had sailed to Ephesus.
This act of violence was not thought altogether unlawful or inhuman; for indeed the law seems to require the woman leaving her husband to present herself in person before the public precisely so that it may be possible for the husband to meet her and win her back.
He had a dog, marvelous for its size and beauty, which he had bought for seventy minas, and he cut off its tail, which was very handsome. When his friends rebuked him and said that everyone was upset about the dog and abusing him for it, he laughed and said, "Well, that is just what I want: I want the Athenians to talk about this, so that they will say nothing worse about me."
They say his first appearance in public came with a donation of money, not by design, but because he happened to be walking by at a moment when the Athenian citizens were raising a clamor, and he inquired what the clamor was about; on learning that a subscription of money was being made, he came forward and made a donation. The people applauded and shouted out with pleasure, and in his delight he forgot about the quail he happened to be carrying in his cloak. Startled, it flew off, and the Athenians shouted out all the more, and many stood up to join in the chase; but Antiochus the helmsman recovered the bird and handed it back to him, and for this act he became very dear to Alcibiades.
Though the grandest avenues into public life stood open to him thanks to his lineage, his riches, and his courage on the battlefield, and though he could count on numerous friends and family connections, he chose to win the crowd's favor through nothing else but the persuasive charm of his speech. That he was a capable speaker both the comic poets attest, and the most capable of the orators, in his speech Against Meidias, says that Alcibiades was, among his other qualities, a most formidable speaker. But if we are to trust Theophrastus,
a man fond of learning and as well-read in history as any philosopher, Alcibiades was more capable than anyone of discovering and conceiving what needed to be said, but in seeking not only what he ought to say but how he ought to say it, in the right words and phrases, he was often at a loss, and he would often stumble, and in the middle of speaking fall silent and pause, the word having escaped him, while he collected himself and cast about for it.
His horse-breeding became famous, both for the number of his chariots — for no other private person, and no king, ever entered seven at Olympia, only he — and for winning, and coming in second, and fourth, as Thucydides says (Euripides says third); this surpasses in splendor and glory all rivalry of ambition in such matters.
Euripides says this in the ode: "But you I shall sing, son of Cleinias. A fine thing is victory; but finest of all — which no other Greek has done — to run first and second and third with the chariot, and to stand without toil, crowned with Zeus's olive, and hand it over to the herald to proclaim."
This splendor, however, was made still more conspicuous by the rivalry of the cities. The Ephesians set up for him a tent decorated with distinction, the city of Chios furnished fodder for his horses and a great number of sacrificial animals, and the Lesbians supplied wine and the rest of the entertainment lavishly for his feasting of many guests. And yet a certain slander, or malicious act, connected with that display of ambition gave rise to still more talk. For it is said that there was at Athens a certain Diomedes,
a man not without honor, a friend of Alcibiades, who desired that an Olympic victory be won for him. Learning that there was a chariot belonging to the state of Argos, and knowing that Alcibiades had great influence at Argos and many friends there, he persuaded him to buy the chariot on his behalf. But Alcibiades, once he had bought it, registered it as his own,
and simply dismissed Diomedes' claim, though the man took it badly and appealed loudly to gods and men alike. It seems a lawsuit did indeed follow from this affair, and Isocrates composed a speech concerning the team of horses on behalf of Alcibiades' son, in which the plaintiff bringing suit is named as Tisias rather than Diomedes.
When he gave himself over to public life while still a young man, he immediately humbled the other popular leaders, but he had a contest against Phaeax son of Erasistratus and Nicias son of Niceratus — the latter already advanced in years and reputed to be an excellent general, while Phaeax, like Alcibiades himself, was then just beginning to rise, being the son of well-known parents, though inferior in other respects and especially in eloquence.
For he seemed to be skilled and persuasive in private conversation, rather than able to carry contests in the assembly. He was, as Eupolis says, the best at chattering, but the most incapable of speaking. There is also in circulation a speech against Alcibiades composed by Phaeax, in which, among other things, it is written that although the city possessed many gold and silver processional vessels, Alcibiades used all of them as if they were his own, for his daily manner of life. There was at that time an individual named Hyperbolus, from the deme Perithoedae,
whom Thucydides too mentions as a worthless man, and who continually furnished occasion for mockery to nearly all the comic poets in the theaters. Being unmoved by ill report and indifferent to reputation — a quality some, mistaking shamelessness and recklessness for it, call boldness and manliness — he pleased no one, yet the citizens frequently turned to him as their tool whenever they wanted to abuse and defame men of standing.
Persuaded by him, then, the people were about to bring in ostracism, by which they always curb and drive out whichever citizen stands out in reputation and power, appeasing envy rather than fear. Since everyone could see the vote would strike down one of these three men, Alcibiades brought the rival factions together, and after conferring with Nicias, turned the ostracism against Hyperbolus. But as some say, it was not with Nicias but with Phaeax that he conferred, and by winning over that man's faction he drove out Hyperbolus, who had expected no such thing.
For no mean or undistinguished man ever before fell into this punishment, as Plato the comic poet somewhere says, mentioning Hyperbolus — though indeed his deeds deserved earlier examples, yet his own person and his brand of shame did not: "for it was not for such things that ostraca were devised." Now on these matters the reported facts have been told elsewhere at greater length.
Nicias was no less troubled that Alcibiades was admired by the enemy than that he himself was honored by his fellow citizens. For Alcibiades was proxenos of the Lacedaemonians, and he had looked after the men of theirs who were taken captive at Pylos;
but when those men, having obtained peace chiefly through Nicias and having recovered their captives, showed excessive affection for him, and when among the Greeks it was said that Pericles had begun the war for them but Nicias had ended it, and most people gave the treaty the name "Nicias' Peace," Alcibiades, deeply irritated and jealous, began scheming to undermine the settlement.
First, perceiving that the Argives, out of hatred and fear of the Spartans, were seeking a way to break with them, he quietly encouraged in them the expectation of a partnership with the Athenians, and through letters and private talks with the leaders of their people he encouraged them not to fear or yield to the Lacedaemonians, but to turn to the Athenians and wait, since the Spartans would very soon repent and abandon the peace.
Then, when the Lacedaemonians made an alliance with the Boeotians and handed Panactum over to the Athenians in a demolished state rather than whole, as they were obligated to do, he found the Athenians already angered and provoked them still further, and he stirred up trouble against Nicias and slandered him with plausible charges,
namely that although he had commanded the forces, he himself had shown no wish to seize the enemy troops trapped at Sphacteria, and once other men had taken them prisoner, he set them free and sent them home as a favor to the Lacedaemonians; and further, that though friendly with the Boeotians, he had not persuaded them not to join in alliance with the Corinthians, while he prevented the Athenians from becoming friends and allies with any of the Greeks who wished it, if the Lacedaemonians should disapprove.
At this point, while Nicias was faring badly, ambassadors arrived from Lacedaemon, as if by chance, bringing reasonable proposals from the outset and declaring that they possessed complete authority to resolve every issue in a fair and just manner. The council gave them a warm reception, and since the people were to convene an assembly the following day, Alcibiades, growing alarmed, arranged to meet the ambassadors privately and speak with them.
When they had come together he said: "What has happened to you, men of Sparta? How has it escaped you that the council always deals moderately and kindly with those who meet with it, while the people are proud and reach after great things? If you say you have come with full powers over everything, the people will think it high-handed and be resentful at your dictating and using force. Come then, set aside this simplicity, and if you wish to deal with the Athenians on moderate terms and not be forced into anything against your judgment, discuss what is fair as men who do not have full powers. We ourselves will cooperate, out of favor to the Lacedaemonians."
Having said this he gave them his oath and won them over away from Nicias, so that they trusted him completely and admired at once his cleverness and his understanding, as being no ordinary man's. The next day the people assembled and the ambassadors came in. When Alcibiades questioned them, with every appearance of politeness, about the terms on which they had arrived, they answered that they lacked full authority.
At once Alcibiades attacked them with shouting and anger, as though he were the one wronged rather than the wrongdoer, calling them faithless and shifty and saying that they had come to do and say nothing sound. The council grew indignant, the people were angry, and Nicias was struck with astonishment and shame at the men's change of position, not understanding the deceit and the trick.
So, with the Lacedaemonians thus discredited, Alcibiades, having been appointed general, immediately made the Argives, Mantineans, and Eleans allies of the Athenians. No one approved of the manner of the deed, but what he had accomplished was great — to divide and shake nearly the whole of the Peloponnese, and to array so many shields against the Lacedaemonians in a single day at Mantinea, and to arrange for the Athenians a contest and a danger so very far from Athens, in which, even in victory, they gained nothing great, whereas if they had failed, it would have been a hard task for Sparta to survive.
Immediately after the battle, the Thousand at Argos set about overthrowing the democracy and making the city subject to Sparta; and the Lacedaemonians came and put down the democracy. But when the populace again took up arms and prevailed, Alcibiades arrived and secured the victory for the people, and persuaded them to build the Long Walls and to bring the city into contact with the sea, thereby attaching it completely to the power of Athens.
He brought in carpenters and masons from Athens and showed every kind of eagerness, gaining favor and influence for himself no less than for the city. He also persuaded the Patraeans likewise to join their city to the sea with long walls. When someone said to the Patraeans, "The Athenians will swallow you up," Alcibiades said, "Perhaps — but little by little, and starting from the feet, whereas the Lacedaemonians would do it from the head, and all at once."
Nevertheless he also advised the Athenians to hold fast to their position on land, and to make good in deed the oath continually put before the young men at the shrine of Agraulos. For they swear to treat as the boundaries of Attica wheat, barley, vines, and olives, being taught to regard as their own the cultivated and fruit-bearing land.
Amid such political actions and speeches and pride and cleverness, there was, on the other hand, a great deal of luxury in his manner of living — outrageous behavior in his drinking and his love affairs, effeminacy in the purple robes he trailed through the marketplace, arrogant extravagance, and the cutting away of the decks of the triremes so that he might sleep more softly, on straps rather than boards, with bedding laid over them; and the making of a shield overlaid with gold, bearing none of the ancestral devices,
but instead a thunderbolt-bearing Eros. Seeing these things, the men of note, along with their disgust and displeasure, feared his contempt for law and his lawlessness, as being tyrannical and monstrous; and the feeling of the people toward him is not badly expressed by Aristophanes: "They long for him, and hate him too, and want to have him"; and pressing the point still further with his insinuation: "Best not to rear a lion in the city at all — but if one does rear it, one must serve its ways."
For his gifts, his choregic outlays, and his acts of public munificence toward the city, unsurpassed by anyone, together with the glory of his ancestors, the power of his speech, the comeliness and strength of his body joined with experience in warfare and valor, made the Athenians tolerant of everything else and inclined to bear with him moderately, always giving the gentlest of names to his faults, calling them youthful sport and ambition.
Such was his shutting up of Agatharchus the painter, and then, once he had painted the house, releasing him with a gift; and his slapping of Taureas, a rival choregus, out of eagerness for the victory; and his selecting a Melian woman from among the captives, living with her, and raising a child by her.
This too they called humaneness — except that he bore the greatest share of the blame for the slaughter of all the grown men of Melos, having spoken in favor of the decree. When Aristophon painted Nemea seated with Alcibiades in her arms, people went to see it and flocked to it with delight. But the older men were displeased at this too, as tyrannical and lawless. And Archestratus was thought to have spoken not unfittingly when he said that Greece could not have borne two Alcibiades.
When Timon the misanthrope saw Alcibiades faring well and being escorted from the assembly in splendor, he did not pass him by or turn aside, as he was accustomed to do with others, but came up to him and, taking his hand, said, "Good for you, growing like this, my boy—for you are growing into a great evil for all these people." Some laughed at this, others cursed, and some it made stop and think a great deal. So undecided was opinion about him, because of the unevenness of his nature.
The Athenians had desired Sicily even while Pericles was still alive, and after his death they laid hands upon it, sending what were called reinforcements and alliances, on each occasion, to those wronged by the Syracusans, treating these as stepping-stones toward the larger expedition.
But the man who fully kindled this passion of theirs, and persuaded them not to go piecemeal or in small measure, but to sail with a great armament and undertake the conquest of the island outright, was Alcibiades—he who persuaded the people to hope for great things, and who himself reached for greater things still. For he regarded the expedition, in relation to what he hoped for, as a beginning, not an end,
as the rest did, of Sicily. And while Nicias tried to turn the people away, on the ground that taking Syracuse was a difficult task, Alcibiades dreamed of Carthage and Libya, and once these were added, already embraced Italy and the Peloponnese as well, and made Sicily little more than provisions for the war. He already had the young men there lifted up by these hopes, and they listened to the older men recount many marvelous things about the expedition, so that many sat in the wrestling-grounds and the semicircular benches sketching out the shape of the island and the position of Libya and Carthage.
Socrates the philosopher and Meton the astrologer, however, are said to have hoped for nothing good for the city from that expedition—the one, it seems, because his familiar divine sign had come to him and given a warning beforehand, while Meton, whether out of fear arising from calculation of what was to come or by using some form of divination, feigned madness, and, taking a lit torch, seemed about to set fire to his own house.
Some say that Meton contrived no pretense of madness at all, but burned down his house by night, then came forward at dawn and begged and implored, on the ground of so great a misfortune, that his son be excused from the expedition. He, then, got what he asked, having deceived his fellow citizens.
Nicias was chosen general against his will, avoiding the office not least because of his co-commander; for it seemed to the Athenians that their prospects in the war would be better if they did not send off Alcibiades unmixed, but blended with his boldness the foresight of Nicias. Indeed Lamachus, the third of the generals, was well along in years, yet he too seemed no less fiery than Alcibiades
and fond of danger in battle. When they were deliberating about the size and manner of the preparation, Nicias once more tried to resist and bring the war to a halt. But when Alcibiades spoke against him and prevailed, one of the orators, Demostratus, moved and said that the generals ought to have full power over both the preparation and the whole conduct of the war. When the people voted this through and everything was made ready for the sailing, nothing favorable attended even the festival that fell at that time.
For the Adonia happened to fall in those very days, and everywhere the women had laid out images resembling corpses being carried out for burial, and imitated funerals, beating their breasts, and singing dirges. But the mutilation of the Hermae, most of them having their faces disfigured in a single night, disturbed many even of those who scorned such things. It was said that the Corinthians had done this for the sake of the Syracusans, their colonists, hoping it would cause a check through the omens, or a change of mind about the war.
Yet this account did not take hold of most people, nor did the view of those who thought the sign meant nothing terrible, but rather that it was the sort of thing unrestrained young men are apt to bring about, carried from playfulness into wanton insolence. Taking what had happened with both anger and fear, as something ventured by a conspiracy aimed at great matters, they examined every suspicion harshly, both the council meeting about these things and the assembly, often, within a few days.
Meanwhile the demagogue Androcles brought forward certain slaves and resident aliens who accused Alcibiades and his friends both of other mutilations of statues and of mocking imitations of the Mysteries over wine. They claimed one Theodorus took on the role of herald, that Poulytion played the torch-carrier, and Alcibiades acted as hierophant, while his other companions stood by and underwent initiation, hailed there as "initiates."
This is what is written in the formal indictment, laid by Thessalus son of Cimon, charging Alcibiades with impiety against the two goddesses. As the people grew harsher and more bitter toward Alcibiades, and Androcles—who was an especially bitter enemy of his—kept stirring them further, at first those around Alcibiades were thrown into confusion.
But perceiving that the sailors who were about to sail to Sicily were well disposed toward them, and the soldiery as well, and hearing that the Argives and Mantineans, a thousand hoplites, openly declared that it was for the sake of Alcibiades that they were undertaking so long a campaign across the sea, and that if anyone treated him unjustly they would withdraw at once—they took heart and stood ready to make their defense when the occasion came, so that their enemies again lost heart and feared that the people might grow more lenient toward him at the trial because of this need.
In view of this, then, they contrived to have those orators who were not thought to be enemies of Alcibiades, though hating him no less than those who openly admitted it, rise before the assembly and argue how senseless it was that, once a commander had been granted unlimited authority over so vast a force, with the army and the allies already assembled, to waste the opportunity in the meantime empaneling a jury and measuring out the water-clock: "No, let him sail now, with good fortune, and once the war is brought to its conclusion let him come and make his defense in person, under the same laws."
Now the malice behind this postponement did not escape Alcibiades, but he came forward and said that it was terrible for him to be sent off in suspense, at the head of so great a force, leaving accusations and slanders unresolved behind him: for it was fitting that he should die if he did not clear away the charges, but if he cleared them away and was shown to be innocent, that he should then turn against the enemy without fear of his accusers.
But since he could not persuade them, and they instead ordered him to sail, he set sail alongside his co-commanders, taking with them nearly a hundred and forty triremes, some five thousand one hundred hoplites, roughly thirteen hundred bowmen, slingers, and lightly equipped soldiers, plus a substantial quantity of other supplies.
Putting in at Italy and taking Rhegium, he proposed an opinion as to how the war should be conducted. And when Nicias spoke against it but Lamachus sided with him, he sailed to Sicily and won over Catana, but accomplished nothing further, being summoned back by the Athenians for trial almost at once. For, as has been said, certain cold suspicions and slanders against Alcibiades kept falling in, coming from slaves and resident aliens:
then, once he was away, his enemies attacked him more vehemently, linking the crimes against the Hermae with the profanation of the Mysteries, as if a single revolutionary plot lay behind them both; and they threw into prison, without trial, those who had been accused on any pretext whatsoever, and were vexed that they had not seized Alcibiades and put him on trial then and there for charges of such magnitude.
Whoever fell under his enemies' anger—kinsman, friend, or acquaintance—was treated all the more harshly because of it. As for those who gave information, Thucydides declined to name them, but others name Diocleides and Teucer, of whom Phrynichus the comic poet also composed these lines: "Dear Hermes, watch yourself, and take care you don't fall and trip yourself up, and hand another Diocleides, who wants to do some harm, an occasion for slander"; and: "I will be on my guard, for I have no wish to give informer's fees to Teucer, that accursed foreigner."
And yet the informers showed nothing firm or solid. One of them, when asked how he had recognized the faces of the mutilators of the Hermae, answered that it was by the light of the moon—and this proved altogether false, since it was the night of the old and new moon when the deed was done. This caused an uproar among sensible people, but it did not make the populace any gentler toward the accusations; rather, just as they had rushed forward from the start, they did not stop bringing in and throwing into prison whomever anyone denounced.
Among those who were then bound and held under guard for trial was also Andocides the orator, whom Hellanicus the historian traced back among the descendants of Odysseus. Andocides was thought to be hostile to the democracy and oligarchic in sympathy, and what made him especially suspected in the mutilation of the Hermae was the great Herm standing near his house, a dedication of the tribe Aegeis:
for among a very few of the notable ones it alone remained almost entirely unharmed—which is why even now it is called the Herm of Andocides, and everyone calls it by that name, contrary to what the inscription attests. It happened that among all those under the same charge, Andocides came to have as a close companion and friend in the prison a man not equally distinguished, but exceptional in intelligence and daring, named Timaeus.
This man persuaded Andocides to become an informer against himself and a few others: for if he confessed, there would be immunity by decree of the people, while the outcome of the trial was uncertain for everyone, and most terrifying for men of standing. Better, he said, to save himself by a lie than to die ingloriously under the same charge, and it was to his advantage, looking at the matter from the common good, to give up a few doubtful men and thereby rescue many good ones from the people's wrath.
When Timaeus said and taught this, Andocides was persuaded, and, becoming an informer against himself and others, secured for himself the immunity granted by the decree; but those he named all perished, except those who fled. And to lend credibility, Andocides added his own household slaves to the list.
The people, however, did not let go all their anger there; rather, once rid of the mutilators of the Hermae, their wrath, as though now free to turn elsewhere, poured wholly upon Alcibiades, and at last they sent the Salaminia after him, though they gave orders—not without prudence—not to use force nor to lay hold of his person, but to employ moderate language, telling the crew to bid him follow them to trial and to persuade the people themselves.
For they feared disturbances in the army in hostile territory, and factional strife, which Alcibiades could easily have brought about had he wished. The troops indeed grew despondent once he left, believing the campaign would now stretch on sluggishly and without result under Nicias, as though a goad had been taken away from their operations. For Lamachus was a warlike and manly man, but he had no dignity or weight to him, because of his poverty.
As soon as he sailed away, Alcibiades deprived the Athenians of Messene. For there were men ready to hand over the city, whom he, knowing exactly who they were, betrayed to the friends of the Syracusans, and so destroyed the plot. Arriving at Thurii and disembarking from his trireme, he hid himself and escaped those searching for him.
And when someone recognized him and said, "Do you not trust your fatherland, Alcibiades?" he replied, "In everything else, yes—but concerning my own life, not even my mother, lest through some mistake she cast the black pebble instead of the white." And afterward, when word reached him that his city had sentenced him to die, he answered, "Yet I shall prove to them that I still live."
They record the formal indictment as running thus: "Thessalus, son of Cimon, from the deme of Laciadae, brought charges against Alcibiades, son of Cleinias, from the deme of Scambonidae, for wronging against the two goddesses, Demeter and Kore, by mimicking the Mysteries and showing them to his companions within his own household, dressed in a garment like the one hierophant wears when he displays the sacred things, and calling himself hierophant, Poulytion torch-bearer, and Theodorus of Phegaea herald, and addressing his other companions as initiates and beholders, contrary to the laws and established customs set down by the Eumolpidae and the Kerykes and the priests of Eleusis."
Having condemned him in his absence and confiscated his property, they further voted that all the priests and priestesses should curse him, of whom only Theano, daughter of Menon, of the deme Agraule, is said to have spoken against the decree, declaring that she had become a priestess for prayers, not for curses.
While such judgments and condemnations were being passed against Alcibiades, he happened to be spending his time at Argos, having been conveyed there to the Peloponnese after his first flight from Thurii; and, fearing his enemies and having wholly given up on his fatherland, he sent to Sparta, asking that safe conduct be granted him and a pledge of trust, for services and benefits of greater value than the harm he had previously done them in his own defense.
When the Spartans granted this and received him, he came at once and eagerly accomplished one thing straightaway: he roused and spurred on those who had been intending and delaying to send help to the Syracusans, to send Gylippus as commander and to shatter the Athenian power there; a second thing, to stir up the war at home against the Athenians; and a third and greatest thing, to fortify Decelea—than which nothing did more to work the ruin and slow destruction of the city.
While he was winning public esteem and admiration, he was no less captivating the multitude and bewitching them privately by his way of life, adopting Spartan habits, so that people who saw him close-cropped, bathing in cold water, eating barley cake, and using black broth, could not believe it and wondered whether this man had ever kept a cook in his house, or so much as looked at a perfumer, or had endured touching a Milesian robe.
For this, they say, was the one great skill in him beyond all others, and his device for hunting men: to make himself like and to share the feelings of whatever pursuits and ways of life he found himself among, shifting more quickly than the chameleon. Except that creature, as they say, is unable to assume one color, white; but Alcibiades, moving alike through good and bad company, found nothing that he could not imitate or practice,
but in Sparta he was athletic, plain in living, grim; in Ionia, luxurious, delightful, easygoing; in Thrace, given to drink; among the Thessalians, devoted to horsemanship; and when he lived among Tissaphernes' court, he surpassed the Persians themselves in showy extravagance and lavish display — not changing himself so easily from one manner to another, nor taking on every alteration in his character, but because if he used his own nature he was bound to give offense to those he met, he always sank into and took refuge in whatever shape and form suited them best.
In Lacedaemon, at any rate, one could say of his outward bearing: 'not the son of Achilles, but the man himself, such as Lycurgus trained him.' But of his true passions and doings one might have cried out: 'It is the same old woman still.'
For during a stretch when King Agis was absent commanding his forces elsewhere, he so corrupted Timaea, his wife, that she conceived by Alcibiades and did not deny it, and when she bore a male child, he was called Leotychidas in public, but the name whispered by his mother to her friends and attendants in private was Alcibiades — so great was the passion that possessed the woman. And he, indulging himself, said he did this not out of insolence nor mastered by pleasure, but so that Spartan kings might one day be descended from him.
Since these things went on in this way, many denounced him to Agis. But what most convinced him was the timing: when an earthquake occurred, he fled in fear from the bedchamber and away from his wife, and thereafter for ten months did not come to her again, after which Leotychidas was born, and Agis denied he was his own son. And for this reason Leotychidas was later excluded from the kingship.
Once the Athenian catastrophe in Sicily had unfolded, envoys came to Sparta together from Chios, Lesbos, and Cyzicus concerning revolt. While the Boeotians were working on behalf of the Lesbians, and Pharnabazus on behalf of the Cyzicenes, the Spartans, persuaded by Alcibiades, chose to help the Chians before all others. And sailing out himself as well, he brought nearly the whole of Ionia into revolt, and being much in the company of the Spartan generals, he did great harm to the Athenians.
But Agis was already his enemy on account of his wife, having suffered wrong from him, and he was also vexed by his reputation, for it was said that most things were being accomplished and were succeeding through Alcibiades; and among the other Spartans, the most powerful and ambitious were already growing weary of Alcibiades out of envy. They therefore prevailed and managed to have the authorities at home write to Ionia, ordering that he be killed.
But he, learning of this quietly beforehand and afraid, while continuing to share in all the operations with the Spartans, altogether avoided falling into their hands, and, giving himself over to Tissaphernes, the King's satrap, for his own safety, he at once became the first and greatest man with him.
For the barbarian marveled at the versatility and extraordinary cleverness of the man, since he was not straightforward but cunning and fond of mischief; and in the daily graces of study and shared living, there was no character so unmoved nor nature so unassailable that it did not, even while fearing and envying him, still take some pleasure and delight in his company and in looking upon him.
So Tissaphernes, though otherwise as much a hater of Greeks as any Persian, gave way so far to Alcibiades' flattery that he outdid him in flattering him back. For the most beautiful of the parks he possessed, admired for its waters and healthful meadows, with its walks and retreats fashioned royally and extravagantly, he made it his practice to call 'Alcibiades'; and everyone continued to call and address it so.
Alcibiades, then, despairing of the Spartans as untrustworthy, and fearing Agis, began to work harm and slander against them before Tissaphernes, not letting him help them eagerly nor destroy the Athenians outright, but urging him to supply them grudgingly and so wear both sides down and grind them slowly, making both peoples pliable to the King and worn out by each other.
And Tissaphernes was easily persuaded and was plainly fond of him and admired him, so that Alcibiades came to be looked to from both sides by the Greeks, while the Athenians repented of what had been decided against him and suffered badly for it, and he himself was now distressed and afraid that, if the city were altogether destroyed, he might become hated even by the Spartans.
At that time nearly all Athenian power lay in Samos; and setting out from there with their naval force, they were partly recovering some of the places that had revolted, partly still holding their own at sea, remaining a match for the enemy, but fearing Tissaphernes and the Phoenician triremes said to be about to arrive, a hundred and fifty of them, whose coming would leave no hope of safety for the city.
Knowing this, Alcibiades sent secretly to the men of influence among the Athenians at Samos, holding out hope that he would win Tissaphernes over as a friend to them — not seeking to please the multitude nor trusting them, but the best men, if they would dare, becoming brave men and putting a stop to the insolence of the common people, to save their affairs and their city themselves, by their own hands.
Now the rest gave close heed to Alcibiades; yet Phrynichus of Deiradiotae, one of the generals, suspecting — rightly — that Alcibiades cared no more for oligarchy than for democracy, but was seeking by every means to return, and was courting the powerful men beforehand by slandering the people, opposed him. But being overruled in his opinion and now openly become Alcibiades' enemy, he sent secret word to Astyochus, the enemy's admiral, urging him to be on guard and to arrest Alcibiades as playing a double game.
But it happened that a traitor was unknowingly negotiating with a traitor. For Astyochus, standing in fear of Tissaphernes and noting how much influence Alcibiades held over him, betrayed Phrynichus's dealings to them. And Alcibiades lost no time sending men to Samos so as to accuse Phrynichus. When all were indignant and combining against Phrynichus, he, seeing no other way out of his present straits, tried to cure the evil with a greater evil.
For he sent again to Astyochus, reproaching him for the disclosure, but promising to deliver the ships and the camp of the Athenians into his hands. This treachery of Phrynichus did no harm to the Athenians, however, because of Astyochus's counter-betrayal, for he reported this too, to Alcibiades and his circle, against Phrynichus.
But Phrynichus, foreseeing and expecting a second accusation from Alcibiades, got ahead of him by himself telling the Athenians beforehand that the enemy was about to sail against them, and urged them to stand ready by their ships and to fortify the camp with a wall.
But while the Athenians were doing this, a letter came again from Alcibiades, telling them to guard against Phrynichus as betraying the naval station to the enemy; they disbelieved it, thinking that Alcibiades, knowing clearly the enemy's preparation and intention, was using it dishonestly to slander Phrynichus.
Later, however, when one of the patrol guards, Hermon, struck Phrynichus down with a dagger in the marketplace and killed him, the Athenians, after a trial, condemned the dead Phrynichus for treason, and crowned Hermon and those who had joined him in the deed.
At Samos, meanwhile, Alcibiades' friends, now prevailing, sent Peisander to the city to change the constitution and to encourage the powerful men to take affairs into their own hands and put down the democracy, on the understanding that Alcibiades would, on these terms, secure them Tissaphernes as friend and ally. This was the pretext and the pretense used by those establishing the oligarchy.
But when the so-called Five Thousand — who were actually four hundred — gained power and took over affairs, they paid very little heed to Alcibiades any longer and pursued the war more feebly, partly still distrusting the change on the part of citizens made strangers to it, partly thinking that the Spartans would rather make concessions to them, being always well disposed toward oligarchy.
So the people in the city, unwillingly, out of fear, kept quiet, for a considerable number of those who spoke out openly against the Four Hundred had in fact been put to death. But those at Samos, learning of this and indignant, set out at once to sail against the Piraeus, and summoning Alcibiades and appointing him general, they ordered him to lead them and put down the tyrants.
But he did not do what someone suddenly made great by the favor of the multitude might have done and been carried away by, thinking he must at once gratify them in everything and oppose nothing to men who, out of a wanderer and an exile, had made him commander and general over so many ships, so great a camp, and so great a force — but, as befitted a great leader, he stood against them as they were carried along by anger, and by preventing them from making a mistake, he then and there plainly saved the city's affairs.
For if they had raised anchor and sailed home, the enemy would immediately have had all Ionia, and the Hellespont without a fight, and the islands, while the Athenians would have brought the war upon Athenians within their own city. This above all Alcibiades alone prevented from happening, not only persuading and instructing the mass of men but also, man by man, entreating some and laying hold of others.
Thrasybulus of Steiria worked together with him in this, being present at the same time and shouting loudly — for he was, they say, the loudest-voiced of the Athenians. This was Alcibiades' first fine deed, and his second was this: having promised the Phoenician ships which the Spartans were expecting the King to send, that he would either bring them over to the Athenians or arrange that they should not even reach the Spartans, he sailed out swiftly.
And the ships, which appeared off Aspendus, Tissaphernes did not bring up, but deceived the Spartans; and the credit for turning them away was given to Alcibiades on both sides, and even more so among the Spartans, as though he were teaching the barbarian to let the Greeks be destroyed by one another. For it was not unclear that so great a force added to the one side would utterly strip the other of mastery of the sea.
After this the Four Hundred were overthrown, Alcibiades' friends eagerly joining forces with those of democratic sympathies; and though the people in the city wished for it and urged Alcibiades to come home, he himself thought he ought not to return empty-handed and having accomplished nothing, through pity and the favor of the multitude, but gloriously. Therefore he first sailed with a few ships from Samos around the sea of Cnidos and Cos,
and there, hearing that Mindarus the Spartan was sailing up to the Hellespont with his whole fleet, and that the Athenians were following him, he hurried to help the generals. And by chance he arrived at just the right moment, sailing with eighteen triremes, at the point when, with all their ships together clashing at the same place and fighting a sea battle off Abydus, both sides, one losing in part, the other winning in part, were locked in a great struggle until evening.
And his appearance gave rise to opposite impressions on both sides, so that the enemy took courage while the Athenians fell into confusion. But quickly, raising a friendly signal from his flagship, he charged straight at the Peloponnesians who were winning and pursuing. Routing them, he drove them onto the shore, and, pressing on, he battered and shattered their ships, while their men swam for it and Pharnabazus came to their aid on foot and fought beside the sea in defense of the ships. In the end they took thirty of the enemy's ships,
and, recovering their own, set up a trophy. Having enjoyed such brilliant good fortune, and eager at once to make a show of it before Tissaphernes, he prepared guest-gifts and presents and, with a retinue befitting a commander, set out to visit him.
Yet he did not get what he expected: Tissaphernes, who had long been spoken ill of by the Spartans and feared incurring blame from the King, decided that Alcibiades had arrived at just the right moment, and having seized him, imprisoned him at Sardis, thinking this act of injustice would serve as a remedy for that slander.
When thirty days had passed, Alcibiades got hold of a horse from somewhere, escaped his guards, and fled to Clazomenae. He further slandered Tissaphernes by claiming he had been released by him, while he in person made sail for the Athenian encampment; there he learned that Mindarus and Pharnabazus had joined forces at Cyzicus,
he roused the soldiers, telling them that they must fight the enemy by sea, by land, and, by Zeus, by storming walls as well; for there would be no money unless they were victorious on every front. He manned the ships, put in at Proconnesus, and ordered the small vessels to be gathered within and kept under guard, so that the enemy would get no advance warning from any quarter of his approach.
As it happened, a heavy rainstorm suddenly fell, along with thunder and darkness, and these helped conceal his preparations. He thus escaped notice not only of the enemy but even of the Athenians, who had already given up hope; he ordered them aboard and put out to sea. Shortly afterward the darkness cleared, and the Peloponnesian ships were seen riding at anchor off the harbor of Cyzicus.
Alcibiades, fearing that if the enemy caught sight of his full number they would flee to land, ordered his generals to hold back and sail quietly behind, while he himself came into view with forty ships and challenged the enemy. When they were deceived, and, holding these few in contempt, sailed out against them, Alcibiades' ships at once engaged and grappled with them; and when the rest of the fleet bore down on them already fighting, the enemy were struck with panic and fled.
Alcibiades, sailing through the enemy line with his twenty best ships, put in to shore, disembarked, and pressed hard upon those fleeing from their ships, destroying many of them; and when Mindarus and Pharnabazus came up to help, he defeated them, killing Mindarus, who fought bravely to the end,
while Pharnabazus fled. Having taken possession of many dead bodies and weapons, they captured all the ships, and having also gained control of Cyzicus—since Pharnabazus had abandoned it and the Peloponnesians there had been destroyed—they held not only the Hellespont securely but also drove the Spartans by force from the rest of the sea. A letter was also captured, reporting the disaster to the Ephors in Laconian style: 'The ropes are gone. Mindaros is done for. The men are starving. We do not know what to do.'
Those who had campaigned with Alcibiades were so elated by this, and grew so proud, that they thought it beneath them, being undefeated, to mix any longer with the other soldiers, who had often been defeated. For not long before it had happened that Thrasyllus suffered a setback near Ephesus, and the Ephesians had set up a bronze trophy to the shame of the Athenians.
So Alcibiades' men taunted those of Thrasyllus with this, boasting loudly of themselves and their commander, and would not even let them use the same drill-ground or pitch camp alongside. But when Pharnabazus, with a large force of cavalry and infantry, attacked them as they had made an incursion into the territory of Abydus, Alcibiades came to their aid, routed him, and pursued him until dark together with Thrasyllus; and then the two forces mingled, returning to camp together in good spirits and rejoicing.
On the following day he set up a trophy and plundered the territory of Pharnabazus, with no one daring to resist. He did take priests and priestesses captive, but released them without ransom. Then, eager to make war on the Chalcedonians, who had revolted and received a Spartan garrison and governor, he heard that they had gathered all the plunder from their land and were depositing it for safekeeping among the Bithynians, a people friendly to them; he therefore led his army to the frontier and, sending a herald ahead, laid a complaint against the Bithynians. They, in fear, gave back the plunder to him and agreed to friendship.
While a wall was being carried across Chalcedon from one shore to the other, Pharnabazus arrived intending to lift the siege, and Hippocrates the governor led the garrison out of the city and fell upon the Athenians. Alcibiades drew up his army against both at once, forced Pharnabazus into shameful flight, and destroyed Hippocrates along with a great number of his defeated troops.
He then sailed off into the Hellespont to collect money, and took Selymbria, risking himself recklessly beyond what the occasion called for. The men within who were betraying the city had agreed to raise a torch signal for him at midnight, but were forced to do it before the appointed time, having grown afraid that one of their fellow conspirators had suddenly changed sides. When the torch was raised while his army was not yet ready, he took about thirty men with him and hurried at a run toward the walls, ordering the rest to follow with all speed.
When the gate was opened to him and twenty peltasts had joined his thirty, he slipped inside, but at once became aware that the Selymbrians were bearing down on him in arms from the opposite direction. Since there was no safety in standing his ground, yet, having remained undefeated in all his commands up to that day, he was too proud to flee; so, having a trumpet sound for silence, he ordered one of those present to proclaim to the Selymbrians that the Athenians were not taking up arms against them.
This proclamation blunted their eagerness for battle, since they believed the enemy were already inside in full force, while others grew more hopeful of coming to terms. While they were gathering and taking counsel with one another, Alcibiades' army arrived; and, judging—correctly, as it turned out—that the Selymbrians were inclined toward peace, he grew afraid that the Thracians might sack the city.
There were many Thracians serving eagerly out of personal goodwill toward Alcibiades. He therefore sent all of them out of the city, and did the Selymbrians no harm when they made their appeal, but took money from them, installed a garrison, and departed.
Meanwhile the generals besieging Chalcedon made a truce with Pharnabazus, on the terms that they would receive money and the Chalcedonians would again become subjects of Athens, that they would do no harm to Pharnabazus' territory, and that Pharnabazus would provide safe escort for Athenian envoys to the King.
When Alcibiades returned, Pharnabazus asked that he too swear to the agreement, but Alcibiades said he would not do so until Pharnabazus himself had sworn to the Athenians. When the oaths had been made, he marched against the Byzantines, who had revolted, and began to wall off the city. When Anaxilaus, Lycurgus, and certain others agreed, on condition of their own safety, to hand over the city, he spread word that he was drawing off because new troubles had arisen around Ionia, and sailed away by day with all his ships,
but by night he turned back, disembarked with his hoplites, approached the walls, and kept quiet, while his ships sailed into the harbor and forced their way in with much shouting, uproar, and noise; this at once alarmed the Byzantines by its unexpectedness, and allowed those favoring Athens to receive Alcibiades in safety, since everyone had rushed to the harbor and the ships to help.
Yet they did not surrender without a fight: the Peloponnesians, Boeotians, and Megarians present in Byzantium routed the men from the ships and drove them back into their vessels; but when they perceived that the Athenians were already inside the city, they formed up and advanced to meet them. In the fierce battle that followed, Alcibiades was victorious, commanding the right wing, and Theramenes the left, and they took about three hundred of the surviving enemy alive.
Once the fighting ended, no Byzantine suffered death or banishment, for the men had handed over the city and made their agreement on these very terms, reserving nothing for themselves personally. For this reason, when Anaxilaus stood trial for treason at Sparta, he was found, in his defense, not to disgrace his deed by his words. For he said that he was not a Spartan but a Byzantine, and that it was not Sparta he saw in danger but Byzantium—the city walled off, with nothing being brought in,
and with the Peloponnesians and Boeotians eating what grain there was in the city while the Byzantines starved along with their children and wives—he said that he had not betrayed it to the enemy, but had freed the city from war and suffering, imitating the best of the Spartans, for whom the one simple and just good is the advantage of one's homeland. When the Spartans heard this, they were ashamed and released the men.
Alcibiades, now longing to see his homeland, and even more wishing to be seen by his fellow citizens after so many victories over the enemy, set sail: his Attic triremes were decked all around with many shields and spoils, and he towed many captured ships behind him, while carrying still more figureheads stripped from vessels he had destroyed and defeated. Together, these numbered no fewer than two hundred.
But what Duris of Samos adds to this, claiming to be a descendant of Alcibiades—that Chrysogonus, the Pythian victor, played the flute to time the oarsmen's stroke, and that Callippides, the tragic actor, called the beat, both men wearing the long robes and other costume worn in competition, and that the flagship put into harbor under a purple sail—
as though he were revelling home from a drinking bout—none of this is written by Theopompus, Ephorus, or Xenophon, nor is it likely that, returning after such an exile and so many misfortunes, he would have indulged the Athenians in such extravagance. Rather, he put in still fearful, and once he had come to shore, he did not disembark from the trireme until, standing on the deck, he had seen his cousin Euryptolemus present, along with a good many other friends and relatives, waiting to receive him and calling out to him.
When he disembarked, the crowds meeting him seemed not even to see the other generals, but ran together toward him, shouting, embracing him, escorting him, and crowning him as they approached; those who could not get near watched from a distance, and the older men pointed him out to the young. Much weeping mingled with the city's rejoicing, and there came a memory of past misfortunes set against the present good fortune, as people reckoned that they would never have failed in Sicily
nor lost any of the other things they had hoped for, had they not then let Alcibiades go when their affairs and that power of his were what they were—if now, taking hold of the city when it had nearly been driven from the sea altogether, when it barely held the outlying land, and when it was torn by faction against itself, he had raised it up from such wretched and humble remnants, and had not only restored its mastery of the sea but was showing it victorious over the enemy on land everywhere as well.
The decree for his recall had already been ratified earlier, proposed by Critias son of Callaeschrus, as he himself records in his elegies, reminding Alcibiades of the favor in these lines: 'It was I who proposed the motion that brought you home; I spoke it before the whole assembly, and by writing the decree I did this deed myself. The seal of my own tongue is set upon these words.' [Critias; Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci, ii (4), pp. 279 ff.]
Then, when the people had assembled in the Assembly, Alcibiades came forward, wept and lamented his own sufferings, made only slight and moderate accusations against the people, laid the whole blame upon some evil fortune of his own and a jealous spirit, and spoke at length, encouraging and rousing their hopes against the enemy; he was crowned with golden crowns and was elected general with full powers over both land and sea at once.
They also voted to restore his property to him, and had the Eumolpidae and the Heralds revoke the curses they had pronounced against him at the people's order. When the others performed the rite of revocation, Theodorus the hierophant said, 'For my part I laid no curse of harm on him, provided he commits no wrong against the city.'
Yet, with Alcibiades flourishing so brilliantly, some were nonetheless troubled by the timing of his return. For on the very day he sailed in, the Plynteria were being celebrated in honor of the goddess. The Praxiergidae perform these secret rites on the twenty-fifth of Thargelion, taking down the goddess's adornments and covering her image. For this reason the Athenians regard this day as one of the most inauspicious and unfit for business.
It seemed, then, that the goddess did not receive Alcibiades kindly or graciously, but veiled herself and drove him away. Nevertheless, with everything turning out according to Alcibiades' wishes, and while a hundred triremes were being manned with which he was to sail out again, a not ignoble ambition seized him and held him back until the Mysteries.
Ever since Decelea had been fortified against them and the enemy, stationed there, controlled the routes to Eleusis, the procession sent by sea had lost all its splendor, and the sacrifices, dances, and many of the sacred rites customarily performed along the road when they escort Iacchus out had, of necessity, been omitted.
It seemed to Alcibiades a fine thing, both for piety toward the gods and for reputation among men, to restore to the sacred rites their ancestral form, by escorting the procession on foot and guarding it as it passed by the enemy: for either Agis, keeping perfectly still, would be humbled and diminished, or he would have to fight a sacred and god-beloved battle over the holiest and greatest things in sight of his own country, and Alcibiades would have all the citizens as witnesses of his courage.
When he had resolved on this and announced it beforehand to the Eumolpidae and the Heralds, he stationed lookouts on the heights and sent some scouts ahead at daybreak; then, taking with him the priests, initiates, and mystagogues, and surrounding them with his troops, he led them in good order and in silence, presenting that campaign as a solemn and god-befitting spectacle, called by those free of envy toward him a hierophancy and a leading of the mysteries.
Since none of the enemy dared to attack, he brought the procession back safely into the city, and was himself lifted up in spirit, and lifted up the army too, as being unbeatable and unconquered under his generalship; and he won over the common people and the poor so completely that they conceived a wondrous longing to be ruled by him as a tyrant, and some of them even said so openly and came to him urging that, rising above envy, he should sweep away the decrees and laws and idle talk that were destroying the city, and act and manage affairs as he saw fit, without fear of the informers.
What intention he himself actually held concerning tyranny is unclear; but the most powerful of the citizens, growing afraid, were eager to have him sail out as quickly as possible, voting him everything else he wanted, including the fellow commanders of his choice. Sailing out with a hundred ships and attacking Andros, he defeated in battle both the Andrians and whatever Lacedaemonians were present there, but he did not take the city — and this became the first of the new charges his enemies brought against him. It seems that,
if anyone ever was, Alcibiades was destroyed by his own reputation. For it was so great, so full of daring and shrewdness on account of what he had already accomplished, that any shortfall in him became suspect, as though he had simply not tried, and people disbelieved that he could fail — for surely, if he had really tried, nothing would have escaped him. They expected to hear that Chios too had been captured, and the rest of Ionia besides.
Hence they grew angry that everything was not accomplished quickly and at once, as they wished, whenever they learned of some delay, without taking into account his lack of funds — because of which, waging war against men who had the Great King as their paymaster, he was often forced to sail off and leave the camp in order to raise wages and provisions. And indeed it was on this very account that the last charge against him arose.
For when Lysander had been sent out by the Lacedaemonians to the admiralty, and was giving four obols instead of three to each sailor out of the money he had received from Cyrus, Alcibiades himself, already paying out grudgingly and unable even to manage the three obols, sailed off to collect money in Caria. The man he left behind in charge of the ships, Antiochus, was a good helmsman,
but in everything else foolish and vulgar. Though he had orders from Alcibiades not to fight a sea battle even if the enemy put out against him, he grew so insolent and contemptuous that, manning his own trireme and one other, he sailed out to Ephesus, and along the prows of the enemy ships he went past doing and shouting all manner of unrestrained and scurrilous things.
At first Lysander sailed out with only a handful of ships in pursuit of him; but once the Athenians arrived to assist, Lysander sailed forth with his whole fleet, defeated him, slew Antiochus in the fighting, seized numerous vessels along with their crews, and erected a trophy of victory. When Alcibiades learned of this he returned to Samos, sailed forth to sea with the whole of his fleet, and challenged Lysander to battle. But Lysander, satisfied with the victory already won, declined to sail out and meet him.
Among those in the camp who hated Alcibiades was Thrasybulus son of Thrason, his enemy, who sailed off to Athens to bring accusations against him. There he inflamed the people, telling the assembly that Alcibiades had wrecked their cause and thrown away their fleet through his own self-indulgence in office, handing the actual command over to men who were capable, among his drinking companions and the riffraff of the fleet, of holding the greatest sway with him,
so that he himself might sail about at leisure raising money without risk, and live licentiously in drunkenness, keeping company with courtesans from Abydos and Ionia, while the enemy lay at anchor close by. They also accused him over the construction of fortifications which he had built for himself at Bisanthe in Thrace, as a refuge — either because he was unable to live in his own country, or because he did not wish to.
The Athenians, persuaded by these charges, chose other generals, showing their anger and ill-will toward him. When Alcibiades learned of this and grew afraid, he withdrew from the camp altogether, and gathering mercenaries he waged a private war on his own against the kingless Thracians, and collected much money from those he captured, while at the same time providing the Greeks who lived nearby with safety from the barbarians.
But when the generals around Tydeus, Menander, and Adeimantus, who had gathered together at Aegospotami all the ships the Athenians then possessed, made a habit of sailing out at daybreak against Lysander, who lay at anchor off Lampsacus, offering him battle, and then turning back again and spending the whole day carelessly and in disorder, in their contempt for him,
Alcibiades, being nearby, did not overlook this or neglect it, but rode up to the generals on horseback and told them they were poorly anchored, in a place with no harbor and no city nearby, but were fetching their supplies from far off, from Sestos, and were allowing their fleet, whenever it came ashore, to wander wherever it pleased and scatter about, while an enemy fleet lay opposite them accustomed to doing everything in silence at the command of a single ruler.
Though Alcibiades said this and urged that the fleet be moved to Sestos, the generals paid no attention to him. Tydeus, indeed, insolently ordered him to withdraw, saying that it was not he but others who commanded now. Alcibiades, suspecting some treachery on their part, went away, and told those of his acquaintances from the camp who escorted him that, had the generals not treated him with such contempt, in a matter of a few days' time he would have compelled the Lacedaemonians to fight a sea battle against their will, or else abandon their ships.
To some this seemed mere boasting, but to others it seemed plausible, that by bringing up many Thracian javelin-throwers and horsemen from the land he might have attacked and thrown their camp into confusion. That he had, at any rate, correctly seen the Athenians' mistakes, the event soon bore witness. For when Lysander fell upon them suddenly and unexpectedly, only eight triremes escaped with Conon, while the rest, falling little short of two hundred, were led away as captives.
Of the men, Lysander took three thousand alive and slaughtered them. Shortly after, he took Athens as well, burned its ships, and tore down the long walls. Because of this, Alcibiades, now afraid of the Lacedaemonians as masters of both land and sea, withdrew to Bithynia, taking much money with him, carrying off still more, and leaving behind even more in the fortifications he had lived in.
In Bithynia again he lost no small part of his own property, being plundered by the Thracians there, and he resolved to go up to Artaxerxes, believing that he would prove to the king, on trial, no worse than Themistocles, and that his pretext would be even better — for he would not, like Themistocles, be acting against his own countrymen, but on behalf of his homeland against its enemies, and would ask for the king's power in aid; and thinking that Pharnabazus above all would provide him a safe and easy way up, he went to him in Phrygia, and spent his time there, both courting him and being honored by him.
The Athenians took it hard to be stripped of their empire; but when Lysander, after taking away their freedom as well, handed the city over to the Thirty Men, whom they had not employed with the good sense that might have saved them though they were still able to, once their affairs were already ruined, they came to understand, lamenting and going over their errors and their ignorance, of which they judged the greatest to be their second bout of anger against Alcibiades.
For he had been cast aside though he himself had done no wrong; rather, angry at a subordinate who had shamefully lost a few ships, they had themselves, more shamefully still, taken away from the city its most capable and most warlike general. Still, even so, from their present circumstances some faint hope arose that Athens' affairs were not utterly lost while Alcibiades still lived: for neither before had he been content to live in exile idly and quietly, nor now, if his own situation were sufficient for it, would he sit by and watch the Lacedaemonians committing outrages and the Thirty behaving with drunken violence.
It was not unreasonable for the many to dream such dreams, seeing that even the Thirty themselves took care to inquire closely and pay the greatest attention to whatever he was doing and planning. In the end Critias instructed Lysander that it was not safe for the Lacedaemonians to rule Greece so long as the Athenians lived under democracy; and that the Athenians,
even if they were very mild and well disposed toward oligarchy, would not be allowed by Alcibiades, so long as he lived, to remain quiet under the present state of things. Lysander, however, was not persuaded by this until a dispatch-staff came from the authorities at home, ordering him to put Alcibiades out of the way — whether because they too feared the man's sharpness and grand ambitions, or because they wished to gratify Agis.
When Lysander sent word to Pharnabazus ordering this to be done, Pharnabazus assigned the task to his brother Magaeus and his uncle Susamithres. Alcibiades happened at that time to be living in a certain village in Phrygia, having Timandra the courtesan with him, and he had a vision
in his sleep of this kind: he dreamed that he himself was wearing the clothing of the courtesan, while she, holding his head in her arms, was adorning his face as if it were a woman's, painting and applying white lead to it. Others say they saw the men around Magaeus cutting off his head in the dream, and his body burning. But they say this vision came not long before his death. Those who were sent against him did not dare to go inside, but surrounded the house on all sides and set it on fire.
Alcibiades, perceiving this, gathered up most of his clothing and bedding and threw it onto the fire, and wrapping his cloak around his left arm, and drawing his dagger with his right, he dashed out unharmed by the flames before his clothes caught fire, and, at the sight of him, scattered the barbarians; for not one of them stood his ground or ventured to close with him hand to hand, but standing off they hurled javelins and arrows at him.
When he had fallen in this way and the barbarians had gone off, Timandra took up his body, and wrapping and covering it with her own garments, gave it as splendid and honorable a burial as her circumstances allowed. They say a daughter of hers was born who was called Lais the Corinthian, though she was in fact from Hyccara, a small town in Sicily, and had been taken captive.
Some, while agreeing with the rest of this account of Alcibiades's death, say that the cause was not Pharnabazus, nor Lysander, nor the Lacedaemonians, but that Alcibiades himself had seduced a certain young woman of a prominent family and was keeping her with him, and that her brothers, unable to bear the outrage with any moderation, set fire by night to the house in which Alcibiades happened to be staying, and struck him down, as has been said, as he leapt out through the fire.

======== Coriolanus ========

The house of the Marcii in Rome, one of the patrician families, produced many distinguished men, among them Ancus Marcius, the grandson of Numa on his daughter's side, who became king after Tullus Hostilius. Marcii too were Publius and Quintus, who brought into Rome the most abundant and finest supply of water, and Censorinus, whom the Roman people twice appointed censor, and who then, persuaded by that very office, established a law and had it voted that no one should be permitted to hold the office twice.
Gaius Marcius, the subject of this Life, was raised by a widowed mother, having lost his father, and he showed that being orphaned, though it has other disadvantages, is no obstacle to becoming a serious man and one distinguished above the many, while it does give inferior men occasion to blame and find fault, alleging that neglect ruined him. The same man also bore witness to those who hold that nature, when noble and good but lacking education, tends to produce, along with good qualities, many bad ones together, just as a fertile field, in farming, that has not received cultivation.
For the strength and firmness of his judgment toward everything brought forth great impulses and ones that carried noble deeds through to completion; but again, because he indulged unmixed passions and inflexible rivalries, he was not easy or agreeable for people to associate with. Rather, while people admired and named his imperviousness to pleasures, toils, and money as self-control, justice, and courage, in his political dealings, on the other hand, they found him oppressive, graceless, and oligarchic.
For there is nothing else that men enjoy from the goodwill of the Muses so much as the taming of their nature through reason and education, when through reason it accepts due measure and casts off excess. Now in those times, on the whole, Rome most prized that part of virtue concerned with deeds of war and soldiering, and it is evidence of this that they called virtue by the single name of manliness (andreia), and that this name for the quality is the common word by which they specifically designate courage.
Marcius, having become more passionately devoted than others to contests of war, kept weapons in hand from the time he was a boy, and thinking it no achievement for those who did not have their native and innate weapon fully equipped and prepared to rely on acquired ones, he so trained his body for every form of combat that he was both light in running and had weight in grappling holds, and was hard to force back in the wrestling-bouts of war. Those, at any rate, who were always in rivalry with him over courage and virtue, in whatever respects they fell short, would blame the strength of his body, as being unyielding and refusing to give in to any exertion.
He went on his first campaign while still a youth, at the time when Tarquin, who had reigned over Rome and then been driven out, after many battles and defeats, was casting what was like his last die: most of the Latins, and many of the other Italians besides, joined in taking him up and leading him back against Rome, not so much out of favor to him as out of fear and envy at the growing power of the Romans, which they sought to bring down.
In this battle, which underwent many reversals on both sides, Marcius, fighting vigorously in view of the dictator, saw a Roman fall nearby and did not neglect him, but stood before him and, defending him, killed the enemy who was bearing down on him. So when the general prevailed, he was among the first to be crowned by him with a crown of oak.
For this crown the law has granted to the man who has shielded a fellow citizen, whether it is that they especially honored the oak on account of the Arcadians, who were called acorn-eaters by an oracle of the god, or because there was a supply of oak quick and available everywhere for men on campaign, or because, believing the oaken crown to be sacred to Zeus Polieus, they thought it fitting that it be given for the preservation of a citizen. The oak, among wild trees, bears the finest fruit, and among cultivated ones is the strongest.
Its acorn served as food, and mead as drink, and it furnished as relish most of the creatures that graze and fly, since it bears mistletoe, an instrument of the hunt. In that battle, moreover, they say the Dioscuri appeared, and that right after the battle they were seen in the forum, their horses streaming with sweat, announcing the victory, at the place where now a temple has been established for them beside the spring; and from this they have consecrated the day of the victory, the Ides of the month of July, to the Dioscuri.
It seems that renown and honor, coming too early upon young men, extinguish their more lightly ambitious natures, and quickly satisfy their thirst and appetite, which is easily sated; but honors increase and brighten weighty and steadfast characters, rousing them as if by a wind toward what appears noble, since men of this kind do not receive honor as a wage but give it as a pledge, and are ashamed to leave their reputation behind and not surpass it by the same deeds.
Having felt this, Marcius too set before himself a rivalry with his own manly excellence, and always wishing to be new in his actions, he added feat of arms to feat of arms and brought spoils upon spoils, and always had his later commanders vying with the earlier ones over honoring him, and striving to surpass their testimonials. Indeed, though many contests and wars fell to the Romans in that time, from none of them did he come away uncrowned or without a prize.
For other men glory was the end of their virtue, but for him the end of glory was his mother's joy; for to hear her praised, to see her look on him crowned and embrace him weeping for pleasure, he considered made him the most honored and most blessed of men. This same feeling, indeed, they say Epaminondas also confessed, counting it his greatest good fortune that his father and mother were still alive to witness his generalship and victory at Leuctra.
But he enjoyed both his parents rejoicing and sharing his good fortune together, whereas Marcius, thinking that he owed his mother even the gratitude due to his father, was never satisfied in cheering and honoring Volumnia; instead, though she wished and asked him to marry, he did marry, and he continued living in the same house, even after children were born, together with his mother.
Now when his reputation and power in the city, derived from his virtue, had already grown great, the senate, in defending the wealthy against the common people, fell into strife, the people believing they were suffering many terrible things at the hands of the moneylenders. From those who possessed modest property, the lenders took away everything they had by seizures and sales, and those who were altogether without means they led off and imprisoned in person, though their bodies bore many scars from wounds and toils endured in campaigns for their country,
the last of which they had undergone against the Sabines, when the wealthiest men had promised to be more moderate and the senate had voted that Marcus Valerius, the consul, should stand surety for it. But when, even after they had fought that battle eagerly and had overcome the enemy, nothing fair came from the moneylenders,
and the senate did not even pretend to remember what had been agreed, but looked on while they were again led off and seized for debt, there arose tumults and gatherings of an ugly kind in the city; and it did not escape the enemy's notice that the people were in a state of turmoil, but they invaded and set the countryside ablaze, and when the magistrates called those of military age to arms, no one obeyed, so divided again were the opinions of those in authority,
and some thought it necessary to yield to the poor and to relax somewhat the excessive rigor of the law, while others resisted, among whom was Marcius, who did not consider the matter of the money the greatest issue, but urged that they should, if they were prudent, check and quench this as the beginning and trial-run of insolence and boldness on the part of a mob rising up against the laws.
When the senate had met about these matters many times within a short span and brought forth no resolution, the poor suddenly banded together, and, urging one another on, left the city, and, seizing a hill which is now called the Sacred Mount, encamped beside the river Anio, doing nothing violent or seditious, but crying out that they had long since been driven out of the city by the rich, and that air and water and a place for burial Italy would furnish them anywhere,
and that by living in Rome they possessed nothing more than this, except being wounded and dying on campaign for the sake of the rich. This frightened the senate, and it sent out those of the elders who were most reasonable and most favorable to the people, and Menenius Agrippa spoke on their behalf; making many appeals to the people, and speaking with much frankness on behalf of the senate, he came at the end of his speech round to the form of a fable that has been remembered ever since.
For he said that all the members of a man's body once rose up in rebellion against the belly, and accused it of being the only part that sat idle in the body, contributing nothing, while the others endured great toils and services for the sake of its appetites; but the belly laughed at their simplicity, since they did not know that it takes in all the nourishment into itself, but sends it back out again and distributes it to the others.
"So too," he said, "such is the relation of the senate to you, fellow citizens. For the plans and business that are handled there with the proper care and management bring and distribute to you all what is useful and beneficial."
From this they were reconciled, having asked of the senate, and obtained, the right to choose five men as protectors of those needing help, those now called tribunes; and they chose as the first, whom they had also used as leaders of their secession, Junius Brutus and Sicinius Bellutus. When the city had come together into one, the mass of the people were at once under arms, and offered themselves eagerly to the magistrates for use in the war.
Marcius himself was not pleased at what the people had gained now that the aristocracy had yielded, and, seeing that many of the other patricians had felt the same, still urged that they not fall short of the commons in the struggles for their country, but rather show themselves superior to them in virtue rather than in power.
Among the nation of the Volscians, against whom they were making war, the city of Corioli held the greatest standing. So when the consul Cominius had encamped around this city, the rest of the Volscians, in fear, came to help against the Romans from every side, intending to give battle at the city and to attack the Romans from two directions.
When Cominius, dividing his forces, himself went to meet the Volscians advancing from outside, and left Titus Larcius, a man among the best of the Romans, in charge of the siege, the men of Corioli, holding those remaining in contempt, sallied out, and in the first fighting prevailed and drove the Romans back to their stockade,
where Marcius, rushing out with a few men and cutting down those who had come to close quarters with him most of all, and halting the others as they pressed forward, called back the Romans with a great shout; for he was, as Cato thought a soldier ought to be, formidable and hard to withstand when encountered by an enemy, not by hand and blow alone, but also by the pitch of his voice and the look on his face. As many gathered and rallied around him, the enemy withdrew in fear.
But he was not content with this, and pursued and drove on those now fleeing headlong, all the way to the gates. There, seeing the Romans turning back from the pursuit, since many missiles were being hurled from the wall, and no one dared to entertain the thought of rushing in along with the fleeing men into a city full of armed men of war, he nevertheless stood his ground, calling on them and encouraging them, shouting that the city had been opened by fortune more for the pursuers than for the fleeing.
As not many were willing to follow him, he forced his way through the enemy and leapt to the gates and rushed in along with them, no one at first daring to resist or stand against him; but then, when they saw that those inside were altogether few, they rallied and fought back against them,
Mixed in among friends and enemies alike, he fought, they say, an incredible fight — with deeds of hand, swiftness of foot, and daring of spirit — inside the city, and overpowering everyone he rushed at, he drove some back to the farthest quarters, while others threw down their arms and gave up, granting Larcius ample freedom to bring the Romans in from outside.
With the city thus taken and most of the men occupied in plunder and the seizing of goods, Marcius was furious and shouted his outrage, thinking it monstrous that while the consul and the citizens with him were perhaps at that very moment engaged and fighting the enemy, these men should be going about making money, or using the pretext of profit to run from the danger. Since not many paid him any heed, he took those who were willing and set out along the road by which he had learned the army had advanced, again and again urging on the men with him and exhorting them not to give up, and again and again praying to the gods not to be left out of the battle, but to arrive in time to fight and share the danger alongside his fellow citizens.
It was then the custom among the Romans, when forming up in ranks and about to take up their shields and gird on their military cloaks, at the same time to make unwritten wills, naming their heir before three or four witnesses.
It was in the midst of doing this that the soldiers were caught by Marcius, already within sight of the enemy — and at first, appearing among them with only a few companions and covered in blood and sweat, he threw some into confusion; but when he ran up to the consul, overjoyed, and clasped his right hand, and reported the capture of the city, Cominius embraced him and kissed him, and courage came over those who learned what had been accomplished as well as those who merely guessed it, and with a shout they called on him to lead them into the engagement.
Marcius asked Cominius how the enemy's forces were arranged, and where their strongest fighters were posted. When Cominius said he believed the companies in the center were those of the Antiates, most warlike and second to none in spirit, Marcius said, "Then I ask this of you, and I beg it: post us against these men." The consul granted it, marveling at his eagerness.
When the spear-clashes began and Marcius charged out ahead, the Volscians facing him could not hold their ground, but the part of the line he struck was at once cut through; but as men from either side wheeled around and closed in on him with their weapons, the consul, fearing for him, sent out his best men.
A fierce fight took place around Marcius, and many fell dead in a small space, but pressing hard and bearing down on the enemy they drove them off, and turning to pursue them, they urged Marcius, heavy now with exhaustion and wounds, to withdraw to the camp. But he said that for men who were winning there was no such thing as exhaustion, and kept after the fleeing enemy. The rest of their army was likewise defeated, with many killed and many taken captive.
The next day, when Larcius arrived and the others gathered before the consul, Cominius mounted the platform, and having rendered to the gods the praise fitting for such great successes, turned to Marcius, and first spoke a wondrous eulogy of him, being himself a witness of what had happened in the battle, with Larcius bearing witness to the rest.
Then, since much money and many horses and captives had been taken, he ordered Marcius to choose ten of everything before it was distributed to the rest, and besides these gifts he presented him with a finely adorned horse as a prize of valor. When the Romans applauded, Marcius came forward and said he accepted the horse and was glad of the general's praise, but the rest he considered wages, not honor, and would let it go, and would be content, like every other man, with his share of the division.
"But one special favor I ask," he said, "and beg to receive. I had a guest-friend among the Volscians, a decent and moderate man; he has now been taken captive and has become, from rich and fortunate, a slave. Of the many misfortunes now upon him, it is enough to remove one — his being sold." At these words an even greater shout answered Marcius, and more men were struck with admiration at his not being mastered by money than at his valor in war.
Indeed, even those in whom some envy and jealousy lay hidden at his being honored so conspicuously, even they now thought him worthy of great rewards precisely because he refused to take them, and admired his virtue more — the virtue by which he scorned such great things — than the deeds for which he was thought worthy of them. For to use money well is a finer thing than to use weapons well, but not to need money at all is more honorable still than using it well.
When the crowd's shouting and uproar had died down, Cominius took up the word: "But those gifts, fellow soldiers," he said, "you cannot force on a man who will not accept them and does not wish to take them; but as for the one that it is not in his power to refuse when it is given, let us grant it to him and vote that he be called Coriolanus — unless indeed the deed itself, before us, has already given him that name." From this he received his third name, Coriolanus.
And it is especially clear from this that of the names, Gaius was his own personal name, the second, Marcius, belonged in common to his house or family, while the third was one men later took on, as an added title, from some deed or fortune or bodily appearance or virtue — just as the Greeks gave, from a deed, the name Soter and Callinicus, from appearance Physcon and Grypus, from virtue Euergetes and Philadelphus, and from good fortune Eudaimon to the second of the Battuses.
For some kings, too, such surnames became a source of mockery, as Dosōn for Antigonus and Lathyros for Ptolemy. The Romans too have made even greater use of this kind of naming, calling one of the Metelli Diadematus, because for a long time, having a sore, he went about with his forehead bound up, and another Celer, because he hastened, within a few days of his father's death, to put on funeral games of gladiators, and men marveled at the speed and sharpness of his preparation.
Some they call, even to this day, from the circumstance of their birth — Proculus, if a child is born while the father is abroad, and Postumus, if born after the father's death; and if of twins one happens to survive after the other has died, they call him Vopiscus. And as for bodily traits, they give names not only like Sulla, Niger, and Rufus, but also Caecus and Clodius, wisely accustoming themselves to consider neither blindness nor any other bodily misfortune a reproach or an insult, but to answer to such names as their own. But these matters belong to another kind of writing.
When the war had ended, the popular leaders once again stirred up faction, having no new grievance nor any just complaint, but taking as pretext the evils that had necessarily followed from their earlier quarrels and disturbances, and turning these against the patricians — for most of the countryside had been left unsown and untended, and the war had allowed no time to arrange for imported grain.
A severe shortage having thus arisen, the popular leaders, seeing that the people had neither a market nor, even if there were a market, the money to use it, spread words and slanders against the rich, saying that they were bringing on the famine out of spite. From the Velitrae there came an embassy offering to hand over their city and asking that colonists be sent, for a plague had fallen on them and wrought such destruction and ruin among the people that scarcely a tenth of the whole population was left.
It seemed to sensible men that the need of the Velitrani had come at just the right moment and in due season, both because those in need required relief from the shortage, and because they hoped it would at the same time disperse the faction, if the most turbulent element, most stirred up along with the popular leaders, were purged out of the city like some diseased and troublesome residue.
So the consuls enrolled these men and sent them off to the colony, and proclaimed an expedition against the Volscians for others, contriving occupation to keep them from civil disturbances, and thinking that once rich and poor, commoners and patricians alike, were again brought together under arms, in camp, and in common struggles, they would be disposed toward one another more gently and agreeably.
But Sicinius and Brutus and the popular leaders still opposed this, crying out that it was a most brutal act they were doing under the gentlest of names — calling it a colony while they thrust poor men as into a pit, sending them off to a city full of pestilential air and unburied corpses, to settle among an alien and vengeful spirit;
then, as though not content with destroying some citizens by famine and exposing others to plague, they were now also bringing on a war of their own choosing, so that no evil should be lacking to the city — a city which had refused to go on being enslaved to the rich. Filled with such talk, the people neither came forward for the consuls' enrollment nor would accept the colony.
While the senate was at a loss, Marcius, already full of pride and grown great in spirit and admired by the most powerful men, showed himself the foremost opponent of the popular leaders, and they sent off the colony, compelling by heavy penalties those chosen by lot to go out; but when the men altogether refused the campaign, Marcius himself gathered his personal retainers along with whatever others he could win over, then swept through the land of the Antiates, and finding much grain,
and coming upon much plunder of cattle and slaves besides, kept none of it for himself, but brought back to Rome the men who had served with him, driving much before them and carrying much on their backs, so that the others, regretting their choice and envying those who had profited, grew resentful of Marcius and burdened by his growing reputation and power, as something increasing at the people's expense.
A short time later Marcius stood for the consulship, and the majority softened, and a certain shame took hold of the people at the thought of dishonoring and rejecting a man first in both birth and virtue, after such great and numerous benefactions. For it was the custom for candidates for office to appeal to and greet the citizens wearing only a toga, without a tunic, as they came down into the forum — whether to humble themselves the more by this dress in their entreaty, or to display, to those who had them, the visible marks of their courage in their scars,
for it was certainly not out of suspicion of the distribution of money and bribery that they wished to approach the citizens ungirded and without a tunic to make their request of them; for it was only much later that buying and selling crept in, and money became mixed up with votes in the assemblies,
and from there, having touched even the courts and the armies, bribery brought the city round into monarchy, enslaving weapons to money. For he does not seem to have spoken badly who said that the first man to dissolve the people's power was the first man to feast and bribe them. It appears, though, that this evil crept in secretly and little by little, and did not at once become plainly visible in Rome,
for we do not know who was the first to bribe the people or a court in Rome; but at Athens it is said that Anytus, son of Anthemion, was the first to give money to jurors, when he was on trial for the betrayal of Pylos, already near the end of the Peloponnesian War — at a time when the golden and unspoiled age still held sway over the Roman forum.
But since Marcius displayed many scars from many contests, in which he had held first place through seventeen continuous years of campaigning, the people were overawed by his valor, and told one another they would elect him. Yet once the appointed day for casting the vote had arrived, and Marcius entered the forum in stately fashion, escorted by the senate, and all the patricians gathered around him, showing an eagerness for nothing else as they had never shown for anything before,
the majority of the people fell out of goodwill toward him once more, carried off into resentment and envy. And to this feeling was added fear as well, since a man so proud in his aristocratic bearing, wielding such influence among the patricians, might, upon gaining mastery of the office, strip the people entirely of their freedom.
Reasoning in this way, they voted Marcius down, and when others were proclaimed instead, the senate took it hard, thinking itself insulted more than Marcius; but the man himself bore what had happened with neither moderation nor equanimity, since he had made the greatest use of the spirited and contentious part of the soul, believing it to hold greatness and high spirit, but had not tempered it, through reason and education, with the gravity and gentleness that has the largest share in political virtue,
nor did he know that self-will, which as Plato said dwells together with solitude, is above all what a man attempting public affairs and dealing with other men must avoid, and that he must become a lover of that forbearance which is so much laughed at by some. But being always a plain and unbending sort of man, and holding that to conquer and master everyone in every way is the work of courage, not of weakness and softness — for anger, like a swelling, rises up out of the most afflicted and suffering part of the soul — he went away full of turmoil and bitterness against the people.
Now the young men of the patrician class, whatever in the city was most conspicuous and flourishing in noble birth, had always been remarkably devoted to the man, and now, attaching themselves to him and standing by him, fanned his anger to no good end, by joining in his indignation and his suffering. For he had been to them, in their campaigns, a kindly leader and teacher in matters of war, and had roused in those who did well a rivalry in virtue free of envy toward one another.
Meanwhile grain came to Rome, much of it bought from Italy, and no less given as a gift from Syracuse, sent by the tyrant Gelon; so that most people came to have good hopes, expecting that the city would be delivered at once from both its want and its discord. So as soon as the senate had assembled, the people poured around it from outside and waited eagerly for the outcome, hoping to enjoy a market at humane prices and to have the gifts distributed free of charge. And indeed there were men inside urging the senate to just this.
Marcius, however, stood up and attacked with great vehemence those who curried favor with the masses, calling them demagogues and betrayers of the aristocracy, men who were nourishing against themselves the wicked seeds of insolence and arrogance that had been let loose among the mob — seeds which it would have been well not to overlook as they sprang up at the start, and not to make the people so strong in so great a beginning, but which were now become fearsome, since the people wished to have everything they wanted and to be compelled in nothing against their will, and would not obey the consuls, but, having leaders of their own lawlessness, called them their magistrates.
As for subsidies and distributions, then, such as the Greek states that are most thoroughly democratic vote for themselves, he said that to sit and vote such things was simply to supply their own disobedience with fuel for the common ruin. "For surely they will not say they are receiving this as a favor, in return for the campaigns they deserted, the secessions by which they abandoned their fatherland, and the slanders they welcomed against the senate; rather, if you yield through fear and flatter them, expecting that by giving and conceding these things you will please them, they will set no limit to their disobedience, nor will they ever cease quarreling and rebelling.
So this policy is altogether madness; but if we are wise, we will take away their tribunate, which is the abolition of the consulship and the division of the city — no longer one, as before, but one that has received a cut which will never let us grow together again or think as one, or ever cease being sick and disturbed by one another."
By saying many such things Marcius had the young men extraordinarily fired up together with him, and nearly all the rich men too, shouting that he alone was a man who held the city unconquered and unflattering; but some of the older men opposed him, suspecting what the outcome would be. And the outcome was nothing good. For the tribunes, who were present, when they perceived that Marcius was carrying the day with his proposal, ran out among the crowd, shouting and urging the multitude to band together and come to their aid,
and when a tumultuous assembly had gathered, and the words Marcius had spoken were reported abroad, the people, carried along by anger, came within a little of rushing upon the senate itself. And the tribunes laid the blame on Marcius, and sent for him, summoning him to answer for himself. But when he drove off the officers sent to him with insult, they themselves came with the aediles, meaning to bring the man by force, and laid hold of his person. The patricians, banding together, drove off the tribunes, and dealt blows even to the aediles.
For that time, then, evening came on and broke up the disturbance; but at daybreak, when the consuls saw the people savage and running together from every quarter into the forum, they feared for the city, and, gathering the senate, urged it to consider how, by reasonable words and by kindly decrees, it might soothe and settle the multitude, since — if they were wise — this was no season for love of honor, nor a contest for glory, but a perilous and urgent moment, in need of a considerate and humane policy.
So when most of the senators yielded, they came forward and spoke to the people as gently as they could and tried to calm them, disposing of the slanders against them with fairness and using only a moderate measure of admonition and rebuke, and declaring that on the matter of the price of provisions and the market they would not differ from the people at all.
So as the greater part of the people yielded, and it was plain that they were being drawn along and charmed by listening in an orderly and moderate temper, the tribunes stood up, saying that they would concede to the senate, since it was being reasonable, whatever was fitting for the people to yield; but they demanded that Marcius defend himself, if he denied that he had provoked the senate with a view to confounding the constitution and destroying the power of the people, and had disobeyed when summoned by them,
and finally, by striking the aediles in the forum and abusing them, had, so far as lay in him, brought about civil war and driven the citizens to arms. They said this wishing either to show Marcius humbled, forcing him against his nature to lower his pride and court the favor of the people, or, if he acted according to his nature, to make his anger toward himself incurable — which is rather what they hoped for, judging the man correctly.
For he stood up as if to defend himself, and the people granted him silence and quiet; but when he began to address the men, who were expecting some sort of appeal, not only did he use a harsh frankness of speech, going beyond mere frankness into outright accusation, but also, by the pitch of his voice and the set of his face, displayed a fearlessness bordering on contempt and disdain,
so the people grew exasperated and were plainly indignant and offended at what was said, and the boldest of the tribunes, Sicinius, after conferring briefly with his colleagues, then proclaimed openly that the tribunes had condemned Marcius to death, and ordered the aediles to lead him up to the summit and hurl him at once down the cliff that lay below it.
But when the aediles laid hands on his person, it seemed to many even of the common people that what was happening was dreadful and arrogant; while the patricians, utterly beside themselves and overcome with grief, rushed with a shout to help, some of them thrusting away with their hands those who were laying hold of him and mingling themselves with Marcius,
and some, stretching out their hands, begged the multitude — since there was no use at all for speech or voice amid so much disorder and uproar — until the friends and kinsmen of the tribunes, coming together in agreement, reasoned that it was not possible to drag out Marcius or punish him without great slaughter of the patricians, and persuaded them to remove the strangeness and severity of the punishment, not putting him to death by force and without trial, but restoring the matter to a vote given by the people.
After this Sicinius, growing calm, asked the patricians what they meant by taking Marcius away from the people, who wished to punish him. And when they in turn asked, "What then do you intend, and what do you want, leading in this way, without trial, a man among the foremost of the Romans to so savage and unlawful a punishment?" "Well, then, this much—"
said Sicinius, "do not make this an occasion for quarrel and faction against the people; for what you ask, we grant you — the man shall be tried. But you, Marcius, we summon in advance to appear on the third market-day and to persuade the citizens, if you have done no wrong, since they will judge by vote."
At that time, then, the patricians were glad of this resolution, and took Marcius away with them gladly. In the meantime before the third market day (the Romans hold their markets every ninth day, calling them nundinae), there arose for them a hope of avoiding the matter, when a campaign against the Antiates came about, which seemed likely to have length and duration enough for the people to grow tame in the interval, their anger either withering away or falling entirely away through preoccupation and war. But then,
when they quickly came to terms with the Antiates and returned, the patricians held frequent meetings, fearful and considering how they might neither give Marcius up nor again allow the people to be stirred up by the demagogues. Appius Claudius, who had a reputation for being especially hostile to the people, protested, saying that they would be destroying the senate itself and abandoning the constitution entirely if they let the people gain control of a vote against the patricians;
but the oldest men, those most favorable to the people, held the opposite view, that the people would be made, not harsh or severe, but mild and humane by this power; for their contempt was not aimed at the senate; rather, believing themselves the ones treated with contempt, they would find the trial itself an honor and a solace, so that once the vote had been granted them they would quickly set their anger aside.
Marcius, then, seeing the senate at a loss, out of goodwill toward himself on one hand and fear of the people on the other, asked the tribunes what they accused him of and on what charge they were bringing him before the people to be tried. And when they said that the charge was tyranny, and that they would prove he intended to become a tyrant, he rose up at once and said that he was going before the people this very moment to defend himself, and that he would in no way decline the trial, nor, if convicted, the punishment: "only see to it," he said, "that this is the charge you bring, and that you do not lie to the senate." And when they agreed, the trial proceeded on these terms.
When the people had assembled, in the first place the tribunes forced the voting to be conducted not by centuries but by tribes, so making the poor, the meddlesome crowd, and those who cared nothing for what was honorable outnumber the wealthy, the well-known, and those who had served in the army.
Then, dropping the charge of tyranny as incapable of proof, they reverted again to those words which Marcius had earlier spoken in the senate, when he opposed cheapening the market and urged that the tribunate be taken from the people. And they brought against him, as a new charge, the distribution of the spoils which he had taken from the territory of the Antiates and had not turned over to the public treasury, but had divided among those who had campaigned with him;
and it is said that Marcius was most thrown into confusion by this very charge. For he had not expected it, nor did he find persuasive words ready to hand for the crowd on the spot, but while he was praising those who had served in the campaign, the greater number, who had not served, raised an uproar against him. In the end, when the vote was given by tribes, three of them condemned him. And the penalty of the sentence was perpetual exile.
After the proclamation, the people, though they had never so exulted even at defeating an enemy in battle, went away as proud and rejoicing as they were then; but grief and terrible dejection seized the senate, which repented and was distressed at not having done and suffered everything rather than allow the people, once they had used so great a power against him, to insult him thus. And there was no need then of dress or other marks to tell them apart — a man was at once plainly a commoner if he rejoiced, and a patrician if he was distressed.
But Marcius himself, undismayed and unhumbled, composed alike in bearing, gait, and countenance, alone among all those who had suffered showed no fellow-feeling with himself — not through reason and gentleness, nor by bearing what had happened with moderation, but because he was in the grip of anger and heavy resentment, which most people fail to recognize as a form of grief.
For whenever grief turns into anger, it casts off, as if kindled to flame, its lowly and sluggish quality; and so the angry man seems to be a man of action, just as one in a fever seems hot, since the soul has, so to speak, taken on a pulse, a tension, and a swelling. And Marcius showed this disposition at once, very plainly, by his deeds.
For upon entering his house, and greeting his mother and his wife, who were lamenting with weeping and cries, and bidding them bear what had happened with moderation, he at once turned and set out walking toward the gates. There, though all the patricians together were escorting him on his way, he took nothing and asked nothing of anyone, and departed with three or four clients about him.
After spending a few days by himself in certain fields, torn by many reflections of the kind that anger suggests — reflections tending toward nothing honorable or advantageous except to attack the Romans — he resolved to stir up some heavy and neighboring war against them. He set out, then, to make trial first of the Volscians, knowing that they were still at their peak in men and resources, and believing that from their recent defeats they had lost not so much of their strength as they had gained in rivalry and anger.
There was a certain man of the city of Antium who, through wealth, courage, and distinction of family, held a station like that of a king among all the Volscians, named Tullus Aufidius. Marcius knew that he was hated by this man as by no other Roman; for often, in threats and challenges made during battles, and in boasts prompted by their rivalry — such as the ambitions and jealousies of young men eager for war bring on — they had acquired, in addition to the public enmity, a private hatred toward one another.
Nevertheless, seeing that Tullus possessed a certain greatness of spirit, and that he above all the Volscians desired to find an occasion to humble the Romans in turn, he bore witness to the truth of the saying: "To fight against anger is hard, for whatever it wishes it buys at the cost of the soul." For taking on clothing and equipment in which he was least likely to be recognized for who he was, like Odysseus, he made his way down into a city of hostile men.
It was evening, and many people encountered him, but no one recognized him. He walked, then, to the house of Tullus, and slipping in unnoticed, sat down in silence by the hearth, and, covering his head, kept still. Those in the house, astonished, did not dare to make him rise — for there was a certain dignity about him, both in his bearing and in his silence — but they told Tullus, who was at dinner, of the strangeness of the matter.
He rose and came to him, and asked who he was that had come, and what he wanted. Then Marcius, uncovering his head and raising himself a little, said: "If you do not yet know me, Tullus, but disbelieve your own eyes, I must become my own accuser. I am Gaius Marcius, the man who has done the most harm to you and to the Volscians, and I carry about with me the surname that will not let me deny it — Coriolanus.
For nothing else did I gain as the reward of those many toils and dangers except this stigma of a name recalling my enmity toward you, and this alone remains to me, beyond taking away; of everything else I have been stripped by the envy and insolence of the people, and by the cowardice and betrayal of the men in office and my own equals, and I have been driven into exile, and have come as a suppliant to your hearth — not for safety and preservation, for why should I have come here fearing to die? — but wanting to obtain justice, and already obtaining it from those who cast me out, by making you master of myself.
If, then, you have the spirit to take up arms against your enemies, come, noble sir, make use of my misfortunes, and turn my calamity into a common piece of good fortune for the Volscians, since I shall fight for you so much better than I fought against you, by as much as those who know the enemy's affairs fight better than those who do not. But if you have given up, then I do not wish to live, nor is it well for you to preserve a man who was formerly your enemy and foe, and is now useless and of no service."
When Tullus heard this, he was wonderfully pleased, and clasping his right hand said, "Rise up, Marcius, and take heart. For you come bringing us a great blessing in giving us yourself, and you may hope for still greater things from the Volscians." And then he entertained Marcius at a feast with every mark of friendship, and in the days that followed they took counsel together about the war, by themselves.
As for Rome, the enmity of the patricians toward the people — who were held not least responsible for the condemnation of Marcius — kept the city in turmoil, and seers, priests, and private persons reported many portents worthy of concern. One such is said to have occurred. There was a certain Titus Latinius, a man not especially distinguished, but unambitious, otherwise moderate, and free from superstition, and still more from pretension.
This man saw in a dream that Zeus came into his sight and bade him tell the senate that they had sent him, before the procession, a wretched and most displeasing dancer. Having seen the vision, he said he did not think much of it at first; but when he saw it a second time and neglected it a third, he lost a good son to death and was suddenly rendered helpless in his own body.
Carried to the senate on a litter, he reported these things. And having made his report, he at once, as they say, felt his body growing strong again, and rising, walked away under his own power. The senators, amazed, made a thorough inquiry into the matter. It was this: a certain man had handed over one of his slaves to other slaves, and ordered them to lead him through the marketplace whipping him, and then to kill him.
While they were doing this and abusing the man, who twisted in every sort of contortion under the pain, and made other unpleasant movements from his suffering, the procession happened to be following along. Many of those present were displeased, seeing neither a cheerful sight nor fitting movements, but no one intervened; only abuse and curses were directed at the man who was punishing so harshly. For at that time people treated their household slaves with great fairness, since through working alongside them and sharing their manner of life they had a gentler and more familiar bearing toward them.
It was in fact a great punishment for a slave who had committed some fault, if he had to take up the piece of wood on which they support the pole of a cart, and carry it around through the neighborhood.
For a man who had suffered this, and been seen doing so by his fellow slaves and neighbors, no longer had any credit. He was called furcifer, for what the Greeks call a prop or support, the Romans call a furca.
When Latinius, then, reported the vision to them, and they were at a loss as to who the displeasing and wretched dancer leading the procession that day had been, some recalled, on account of the strangeness of the punishment, that slave whom they led whipping through the marketplace and then put to death. The priests being agreed, the master was made to pay the penalty, and they performed the procession and the games all over again for the god from the beginning.
Numa, it seems, was in all else the wisest expounder of sacred matters, and in this too he made an excellent law for their scrupulous observance. For whenever magistrates or priests are performing some sacred rite, the herald goes before, crying in a loud voice, "Hoc age" ("Attend to this"). The phrase means "do this," bidding them give their attention to the sacred rites and interpose no other business or occupation of any kind in the midst, since most human affairs are carried through under some kind of necessity and by force.
It is customary for the Romans to take up again sacrifices, processions, and games not only for so weighty a cause as this, but even for small ones — for instance, if one of the horses drawing the so-called chariots called "thensae" grew weak, or if the charioteer again took the reins in his left hand, they voted to perform the procession over again. And in later times they performed a single sacrifice thirty times over, since it always seemed that some omission or offense had occurred. Such was the scrupulous care of the Romans toward the divine.
Marcius and Tullus, meanwhile, were conferring secretly at Antium with the most powerful men, and urging that, while the Romans were at odds among themselves, they should bring on the war. And when some hesitated, because there was a two-year treaty and truce that had been made between them, the Romans themselves furnished the pretext, when, out of some suspicion or slander, they proclaimed at a spectacle and games that the Volscians should leave the city before sunset,
though some say this came about through a deception and stratagem of Marcius, who sent to Rome to the magistrates a false accuser of the Volscians, alleging that they intended, during the games, to attack the Romans and set the city on fire. This proclamation made all of them more hostile toward the Romans; and Tullus, magnifying the matter still further and inflaming them, at last persuaded them to send to Rome demanding back the territory and the cities which had been taken from the Volscians in war.
The Romans, hearing the envoys out, were indignant, and answered that the Volscians would be the first to take up arms, and the Romans the last to lay them down. Upon this, Tullus, having gathered a general assembly, once they had voted for war, advised that Marcius be summoned, bearing him no grudge, but trusting that as an ally he would help them as much as, in warring against them, he had failed to harm them.
When Marcius, having been summoned, addressed the assembled multitude and showed himself no less formidable and skilled in war through his words than through his arms, and outstanding in both judgment and daring, he was appointed, together with Tullus, general with full powers for the war.
Fearing the time it would take to prepare the Volscians, lest, if it grew long, it should rob the enterprise of its opportunity, he left it to the men of power and the magistrates throughout the cities to gather and provide the rest, while he himself, persuading the most eager to go out with him of their own will, without any levy, invaded the territory of the Romans suddenly and when no one expected it.
From this he gained so great an abundance of plunder that the Volscians, in driving it off, carrying it, and using it in the camp, grew weary of it; yet the abundance, and the great damage and harm done to the countryside, were the least part of what he accomplished on that campaign. The great purpose for which he did these things was to bring further discredit on the patricians in the eyes of the people. For while ravaging and destroying everything else, he guarded their estates strictly, and would not allow them to be harmed or anything taken from them,
whence they fell still further into mutual recrimination and disturbance: the patricians blaming the common people for having unjustly banished so powerful a man, and the people accusing the patricians of bringing Marcius upon them out of malice, and then sitting as mere spectators while others bore the brunt of the war, keeping the war itself outside as a guardian of their wealth and possessions. Having accomplished these things, and having done much to give the Volscians confidence and contempt for their enemies, Marcius led his forces back in safety.
When the whole force of the Volscians had been gathered swiftly and eagerly, and appeared to be great, they resolved to leave part of it behind for the safety of the cities, and to campaign against the Romans with the rest; and Marcius left it to Tullus to choose which of the two commands he wished. Tullus, saying that he saw Marcius as in no way inferior to himself in valor, but as having enjoyed better fortune in all their battles, bade him lead the force that was going out, while he himself would remain to guard the cities and supply what was needed to those on campaign,
Marcius, thus emboldened, marched first against Circaeum, a Roman colony, and since it surrendered willingly he did it no harm. After that he ravaged the territory of the Latins, expecting that the Romans would come out and fight him there on behalf of their Latin allies, who kept appealing to them,
but when the common people proved unwilling and the consuls had only a little time left in office, in which they did not wish to run any risk, and for these reasons they sent the Latins away, Marcius then led his forces against the cities themselves, and taking by storm Tolerium, Lavici, and Pedum, and also Bola, which resisted him, he made booty of the persons and plundered the property. But for those who came over to him he took great care that they should suffer no harm even against his will, encamping as far off as possible from them and keeping away from their land.
When he had also taken the city of Bola, no more than a hundred stadia from Rome, and gotten possession of much money, and destroyed nearly all who were of military age, and when not even those of the Volscians who had been assigned to remain in their cities held firm, but rushed with their weapons to join Marcius, saying that they recognized him alone as their general and sole ruler—his name had grown great throughout all Italy and his fame astonishing, since the transfer of one man's excellence had wrought so extraordinary a reversal in affairs—
the affairs of the Romans, meanwhile, were in complete disorder, since they had given up all thought of fighting and spent their days in cliques and factious talk against one another, until word came that Lavinium was being walled around by the enemy—the place where the ancestral shrines of the Romans' gods were kept, and where the origins of their race lay, since it was the first city that Aeneas had founded.
As a result of this the people underwent an astonishing and sudden change of heart, but the patricians a wholly strange and unaccountable one: for the people were eager to annul the sentence against Marcius and to summon him back to the city, while the senate, convening and deliberating over the proposal, rejected it and blocked it—whether out of sheer contentiousness, opposing everything the people were eager for,
or because it did not wish the man to return as a favor to the people, or because it had by now conceived anger even against Marcius himself, on the grounds that he was doing harm to all when he had not been wronged by all, and had shown himself an enemy to his fatherland, in which he knew that the most sovereign and strongest element sympathized with him and was suffering the same injustice along with him. And when the senate's decision was brought before the people, the people had no legal power to act by vote and by law without a preliminary decree of the senate.
Marcius, hearing of this, grew even more embittered, and abandoning the siege he was conducting he marched against the city itself in a rage, and encamped by the so-called Cloelian trenches, forty stadia distant from the city. Though his appearance struck terror and caused great tumult, still for the present he put an end to the internal strife: for no one any longer dared, whether magistrate or senator, to speak against bringing Marcius back,
but seeing in the city the running to and fro of the women, the supplications and tears at the shrines, and the entreaties of the old men, and everything utterly lacking in courage and in any plan of salvation, they rightly concluded that the populace had rightly inclined toward making peace with Marcius, while it was the senate that bore all the blame for persisting in wrath and grudge-holding past the point where yielding would have served better. So it was resolved by all to send envoys to Marcius, offering him a return to his fatherland and begging him to put an end to the war against them,
and those sent from the senate were men on friendly terms with Marcius, and expected to receive much warmth, at least at their first meeting, from a man who was their kinsman and familiar; but nothing of the kind occurred—instead, having been led through the enemy's camp, they came upon him seated with an arrogance and a harshness that were unbearable.
Keeping the chief men of the Volscians about him, he bade the envoys say what they had come to ask. And when they had spoken words that were reasonable and humane, in the manner befitting the occasion, and had finished, he answered—bitterly on his own behalf and in anger over what he had suffered, but on behalf of the Volscians as their general—demanding that the cities and the land which had been cut off from them in the war be restored, and that a vote be passed granting the Volscians equality of citizenship such as the Latins had:
for there could be no other secure end to the war than one on equal and just terms, and he gave them thirty days to deliberate; and when the envoys had departed he immediately broke camp and withdrew from the country.
This, then, was the first charge that those among the Volscians who had long been resentful of his power and envious of him now seized upon; among these was Tullus too, though privately he had suffered no wrong from Marcius, but was moved by a very human passion. For he was distressed at finding his own reputation utterly dimmed and himself overlooked by the Volscians, who now considered Marcius alone to be everything to them, and thought that the rest ought to be content with whatever share of power and authority he chose to give them,
from which the first accusations were secretly sown abroad, and men gathering together were indignant, and called the withdrawal a betrayal—not of walls nor of arms, but of opportunities, by which all other things too are naturally either preserved or again lost, since thirty days had been given over to the war, in which time nothing greater in scale can be accomplished than the changes that can occur.
And yet Marcius did not spend this time idly, but went about destroying and cutting off the allies of the enemy, and took seven great and populous cities. The Romans meanwhile did not dare go to their aid, but their spirits were filled with hesitation, and they were disposed toward the war just as bodies utterly numbed and paralyzed are disposed toward action.
But when the time had passed and Marcius was again present with his whole force, they sent out an embassy once more, to beg Marcius to relax his anger and, withdrawing the Volscians from the country, to do and say whatever he thought best for both sides: for the Romans would yield nothing out of fear, but if he thought the Volscians ought to obtain some measure of kindness, they would grant them everything once they had laid down their arms.
To this Marcius replied that he had nothing to answer as general of the Volscians, but that as still a citizen of Rome he advised and urged them, thinking more moderately, to come to him within three days with just terms, having voted what he proposed; but if they should decide otherwise, they should know that they would have no safe passage again if they came to his camp with empty words.
When the envoys had returned and the senate had heard them, as in a great storm and tossing of the city, it caught at every last resort. For as many as were priests of the gods, or celebrants or guardians of the mysteries, or possessed the ancestral art of augury handed down from of old, all these they voted should go to Marcius, adorned as the custom was for each in his sacred rites, to say the same things and to entreat him that, having ended the war, he would then discuss the matter of the Volscians with his fellow citizens.
He received the men into his camp, but gave nothing else, nor did or said anything gentler, but insisted that the terms on which he had before bidden them make peace, or else accept war, still stood. So when the priests returned it was resolved to keep quiet within the city, guarding the walls, and to beat back the enemy if they made an assault,
trusting for the most part to time and to the unforeseen turns of fortune, since through their own efforts they knew of nothing that could bring safety, but confusion and terror and evil rumor held the city, until something happened resembling what is often said by Homer, though it does not much persuade most people.
For he, when speaking and exclaiming over great and extraordinary deeds, says: 'but the goddess, gray-eyed Athena, put it into his mind,' and 'but one of the immortals turned his mind, who put the rumor into the heart of the people,' and 'either divining something, or a god so commanded'—these things are held in contempt as impossible occurrences and incredible fictions by those who make each man's own reasoning, in matters of choice, incapable of belief.
Homer, however, does not do this, but assigns to what is within our own power all that is plausible and customary and worked out by reasoning, and indeed he often says: 'but I took counsel in my great heart,' and, 'so he spoke, and grief came upon the son of Peleus, and within his shaggy breast his heart was divided in debate,' and again, 'but him he could not persuade, though he thought good things, wise-minded Bellerophon:'
but in strange and hazardous actions, and those requiring some inspired impulse and exaltation, he does not represent the god as taking away the man's own agency, but as moving his choice, not producing the impulses themselves, but images that lead to impulses; by which he does not make the action involuntary, but gives the beginning to what is voluntary, and adds confidence and hope.
For either the divine must be altogether removed from any causation or origin of what concerns us, or else what other way could there be by which the gods help and cooperate with men? Surely not by shaping our bodies, nor by moving our hands and feet themselves as they must go, but by rousing, through certain origins and images and thoughts, the practical and deliberative part of the soul—or, on the contrary, by turning it away and bringing it to a halt.
In Rome at that time, of the women, some were praying at one shrine and others at another, but the majority, and the most eminent, were making supplication at the altar of Capitoline Jupiter. Among these was Valeria, sister of that Publicola who had done the Romans great and many services both in war and in politics. Publicola had died earlier, as we have recorded in the account written about him, but Valeria had reputation and honor in the city, seeming by her life not to disgrace her lineage,
So then, as I say, seized suddenly by this feeling, and having laid hold, by no thought without some divine prompting, of what was useful, she herself rose up and, raising up all the other women with her, came to the house of Marcius's mother Volumnia. And upon entering she found Volumnia seated together with Vergilia, Marcius's children resting on her lap, whereupon Valeria gathered the women in a circle about her and spoke:
"We ourselves," she said, "O Volumnia, and you, Vergilia, have come as women to women, neither by vote of the senate nor by order of any magistrate, but our god, it seems, taking pity on our supplication, has put into us the impulse to turn hither to you and beg for safety both for ourselves and for our fellow citizens, and for you, if you are persuaded, to win a more illustrious fame than that which the daughters of the Sabines won, when they brought fathers and husbands together out of war into friendship and peace.
Come with us to Marcius, join with us in this supplication, and bear witness for your fatherland—a true and just witness—that though she has suffered much harm, she has done nothing dreadful nor plotted anything against you out of anger, but restores you to him even though she is likely to obtain none of the fair treatment she deserves."
When Valeria had said this, the rest of the women cried out in assent, and Volumnia answered: "We too, women, share equally in the common misfortunes, and we suffer privately as well, having lost the good name and worth of Marcius, and seeing his body guarded by the enemy's weapons rather than kept safe. But the greatest of our misfortunes is this, if the affairs of the fatherland have grown so weak that they must rest their hopes on us,
"I do not know, you see, whether that man will give any thought to us, seeing that he gives none even to his fatherland, which he has valued above mother, wife, and children. Nevertheless, take us and carry us to him — women who, if nothing else, are able to breathe our last in supplication on behalf of our country."
After this, raising up the children and Virgilia along with the other women, she made her way to the camp of the Volscians. The sight of them produced in the enemy both pity and a reverent silence. Marcius happened to be sitting on the tribunal with his officers,
so when he saw the women approaching, he was astonished; and recognizing his mother walking first, he wished to hold to those unbending and unyielding resolves of his — but overcome by feeling and thrown into confusion at the sight, he could not bear to remain seated and receive her, but came down faster than a walk and, meeting her, first embraced his mother, and for a very long time, then his wife and children, no longer sparing his tears nor his tenderness, but giving himself over to be carried away as by a flood of feeling.
When he had had his fill of this, and perceived that his mother now wished to begin speaking, he brought the leading men of the Volscians to stand by him and listened as Volumnia spoke as follows: "You see, my son — even if we ourselves say nothing — you can judge from the dress and condition of our wretched bodies what sort of household life your exile has procured for us.
Consider now that we have come, of all women, the most unfortunate, since fortune has made the sweetest sight the most terrible to us — for me, to see a son, for her, a husband, arrayed against the walls of their own fatherland. And that which for others is a comfort in every misfortune and hardship — to pray to the gods — has for us become the most helpless of resorts. For it is not possible to ask the gods at once for victory for our country and safety for you; rather, whatever a person might curse upon us as enemies, that is contained in our own prayers.
For it is necessary that either your wife and children be deprived of their country or of you, and I will not wait to let this fortune settle the matter for me while I live through the war; but if I cannot persuade you to set friendship and concord in place of enmity and evil, and to become a benefactor of both peoples rather than the destroyer of one, then think this over and prepare yourself for the fact that you cannot come to grips with your country until you have first stepped over the corpse of the woman who bore you. For I must not wait for that day on which I shall see my son either led in triumph by his fellow citizens or triumphing against his fatherland,
If indeed I were asking you to save your country by destroying the Volscians, the choice set before you, my son, would be a hard and difficult one to live with; for it is neither honorable to destroy your fellow citizens, nor right to betray those who have trusted you. But as it is, we ask only for release from evils — a release that is equally salutary for both sides, but more glorious and honorable for the Volscians, because by their power they will appear to be giving the greatest of goods, while receiving no less themselves: peace and friendship. Of these, if they come about, you will be the chief cause; if they do not, you alone will bear the blame before both peoples.
And though the outcome of war is uncertain, this much is certain about it: that if you are victorious, you will be doomed to be a curse upon your own country, while if you are defeated, men will think that in your anger you became, to men who were your benefactors and friends, the cause of the greatest calamities."
While Volumnia was saying these things, Marcius listened without answering a word, and when she had finished he stood in silence for a long time. Again Volumnia spoke: "Why are you silent, my son? Is it noble to yield everything to anger and resentment, but not noble to grant a favor to a mother who begs
for such things as these? Is it fitting for a great man to remember the wrongs he has suffered, but not the work of a great and good man to revere and honor the benefits by which children are benefited by their parents? And indeed it would befit no one more than you to keep gratitude in mind, seeing how bitterly you pursue ingratitude in others.
And yet you have already exacted great penalties from your country, but you have given no thanks in return to your mother. It would have been most righteous for me, without any compulsion, to obtain from you things so honorable and just; but if I do not persuade you, why should I spare my last hope?" And having said this, she falls at his feet together with his wife and children,
and Marcius, crying out, "What have you done to me, mother!" raises her up, and gripping her right hand tightly, said, "You have won — a victory fortunate for your country, but ruinous for me; for I go away defeated by you alone." Having said this, and after a brief private word with his mother and wife, he granted their request and dispatched the two women back to Rome; then, once night had passed, he led the Volscians away, though not all of them disposed in the same way or alike toward him,
for some blamed both the man and the deed, others blamed neither, being inclined toward reconciliation and peace, while some, though displeased at what was being done, nevertheless did not consider Marcius wicked, but rather to be forgiven for having been broken by such great compulsions. No one spoke against him, but all followed him, admiring his virtue more than resenting his authority.
The people of Rome, who had been in such fear and danger while the war was upon them, gave clearer proof of their feeling once it was over. For as soon as those about the walls caught sight of the Volscians breaking camp, every temple at once was thrown open, with people wearing garlands as if for a victory, and offering sacrifice. But it was above all in the affection and honor shown toward the women, by both the senate and the whole people, that the joy of the city was made evident, as they said and believed that to those women, quite plainly, belonged the credit
for the city's deliverance. When the senate decreed that whatever the women should think fit to request, for honor or as a favor, the magistrates should carry out and provide, they asked for nothing else than that a temple of Women's Fortune be founded — the expense they contributed themselves, while the rites and honors due to the gods were undertaken by the city at public cost.
But when the senate had praised their generosity and had the temple and the cult image built at public expense, the women nonetheless contributed money of their own and had a second statue made, which, the Romans say, when it was set up in the temple, spoke out something to this effect: "By a rite pleasing to the gods have you women given me."
This voice, they say in legend, was even heard twice — persuading us to believe things resembling the unbelievable and difficult to accept. That statues should appear to sweat, and to shed tears, and to give off certain blood-like moisture, is not impossible; for wood and stone often gather a mold that generates moisture, and give off many colors from themselves, and take on tints from the surrounding air, so that there is nothing to prevent the divine from signifying something by means of these.
It is also possible for statues to emit a sound resembling a groan or a moan, through a crack or a more violent separation of their parts occurring deep within; but that an articulate voice and speech so clear, refined, and distinctly enunciated should occur in something inanimate is altogether impossible, since not even the soul and God himself can be conceived to sound and to converse without a bodily instrument fitted together with rational parts.
But where history compels us with many plausible witnesses, an experience unlike ordinary perception, arising in the imaginative faculty of the soul, brings belief along with what seems to be the case — just as in sleep we seem to hear without hearing and to see without seeing. Nevertheless, for those who through goodwill and love toward the god are excessively affected, and who are unable to reject or deny any such things, the marvelous and what is beyond our measure is a great aid to faith in the power of God,
for nothing at all resembles the human, either in nature, in motion, in skill, or in strength; nor is it strange if God does something that is impossible for us and contrives something beyond our means — rather, he differs greatly in all things, and is most of all unlike and set apart from us in his works. But most divine things, as Heraclitus says, escape being known through disbelief.
As for Marcius, when he returned to Antium from the campaign, Tullus, who had long hated him and was burdened by envy, plotted to kill him at once, reckoning that if he now escaped, he would not offer another opportunity. Having gathered many men and prepared them against him, he called on Marcius to render an account to the Volscians and to give up his command.
Marcius, fearing to become a private citizen while Tullus held command and had the greatest power among his own countrymen, said that he would give up his command to the Volscians if they so ordered — for indeed he had taken it up at the bidding of all — and that even now he did not refuse to render an account and give a reckoning before any of the Antiates who wished it. So an assembly was held, and the demagogues who had been prepared rose up and incited the crowd,
but when Marcius stood up, the excessive uproar gave way out of respect and allowed him to speak without fear, and the best men, and those most glad of peace among the Antiates, showed themselves ready to listen with goodwill and to judge justly — Tullus grew afraid of the man's defense. For he was among the most formidable of speakers, and his earlier deeds carried greater gratitude than the later charge carried blame; or rather, the very accusation itself was altogether a testimony to the greatness of the gratitude owed him.
For they would not have seemed wronged in not taking Rome captive, had they not, because of Marcius, come near to taking it. So it was decided not to delay any longer nor to test the temper of the crowd, but the boldest of the conspirators cried out that the Volscians must not listen to nor tolerate a traitor holding tyrannical power and refusing to lay down his command, and falling upon him all together they killed him, and none of those present came to his defense,
though that most were not pleased at what had been done they showed at once, running together from the cities to the body and burying it with honor, adorning the tomb with arms and spoils as befitted a champion and a general. The Romans, on learning of his death, gave no sign either of honor or of anger toward him, but when the women asked, they permitted them to mourn for ten months, as was the custom for each of them to mourn a father, a son, or a brother. For this was the limit of the longest mourning, which Numa Pompilius had fixed, as has been shown in the account written concerning him.
But the Volscians missed Marcius at once; for first, quarreling with the Aequians, who were their allies and friends, over the leadership, they came to wounds and killings; then, defeated in battle by the Romans, in which Tullus was killed and the flower of their power destroyed, they were content to accept the most shameful terms, becoming subjects and agreeing to do whatever was commanded them.

======== Comparison Of Alcibiades With Coriolanus ========

Of the deeds we have set out, all that we judge worthy of note and memory, one can see that their military actions do not tip the scale heavily toward either man; for both alike, in their generalships, displayed many acts of soldierly daring and courage, and many too of skill and foresight,
except that someone might wish to declare Alcibiades the more complete general, on the ground that both by land and by sea, in many contests, he went on winning and succeeding; whereas the fact that, when present and in command, each always plainly set his own side's affairs upright, and again, still more plainly, did harm to them when he changed sides, held true of both alike.
As for their political conduct, the sober-minded loathed the excessive wantonness of Alcibiades and the impurity of his vulgarity and buffoonery in his crowd-pleasing dealings with the many; while the Roman people hated that of Marcius as altogether graceless, haughty, and oligarchic.
Neither, then, is to be praised; yet the man who plays the demagogue and courts favor is less blameworthy than those who abuse the many in order not to seem to play the demagogue. For it is shameful to flatter a people for the sake of gaining power, but to be strong through being feared, and through doing harm and oppressing, is, beyond the shame, also unjust.
That Marcius, then, is supposed to have been a man simple and straightforward in character, while Alcibiades was unscrupulous in his politics and untruthful, is not unclear. Above all they accuse him of malice and deceit, whereby, as Thucydides has recorded, he tricked the Spartan envoys and broke the peace.
But this policy, though it again threw the city into war, made it strong and formidable, since the alliance of the Mantineans and the Argives was won over through Alcibiades. Marcius, on the other hand, likewise through deceit, brought Romans and Volscians into war with each other, falsely slandering those who had come to the games, as Dionysius has recorded; and the motive makes the deed the more base,
for it was not out of rivalry, nor out of political contest or competition, as with the other, but in gratifying his own anger — from which, as Dio says, no one ever got any benefit — that he threw many parts of Italy into confusion and, in his fury against his fatherland, wasted many cities that had done no wrong. And yet Alcibiades too, through anger, became the cause of great disasters for his fellow citizens.
But when he first learned that they were repenting, he showed good will, and when again cast off, he did not gloat over the generals' mistakes, nor did he look on while they took bad counsel and ran into danger, but did the very thing for which Aristides is especially praised in his dealings with Themistocles: even though no friendship existed between himself and the men then holding command, he approached them anyway and instructed them in what the situation required.
Marcius, on the other hand, first did harm to the whole city, though he had not suffered at the hands of the whole, but only the best and most powerful part had joined in wronging him and had shared his grief; and then, though many embassies and entreaties sought to heal a single fit of anger and ignorance, he was not softened nor did he yield, but made it plain that his aim was to destroy his fatherland and cast it down, not merely to be restored and return home — having taken up a grievous and implacable war.
But someone will say that in this Alcibiades differed: for Alcibiades, being plotted against by the Spartans, changed sides to the Athenians out of both fear and hatred of them, whereas it was not honorable for Marcius to abandon the Volscians, who were doing everything justly toward him. For he had been appointed their leader and held the greatest trust, together with command,
not as that other man, whom the Spartans used rather than employed, wandering about the city and then again rolling about in the camp, until at last he gave himself over into the hands of Tissaphernes — unless indeed, by Zeus, it was out of longing that Athens should not be utterly destroyed, so that he might return, that he paid this court.
As for money, then, Alcibiades is recorded as having often taken it wrongly from bribes, and as having spent it badly on luxury and licentiousness; but Marcius, when the generals offered it to him with honor, could not be persuaded to take it. For this reason he was above all burdensome to the many in the disputes over debts against the people, since he seemed to be insulting the poor not for gain but out of arrogance and contempt.
Now in one of his letters Antipater, remarking on the passing of the philosopher Aristotle, says, "besides everything else, the man also had the gift of persuasion." But this quality, being absent from the deeds and virtues of Marcius, made them burdensome even to those who benefited by them, since men could not endure his haughtiness and that self-will which, as Plato said, dwells with solitude; whereas Alcibiades, on the contrary, knew how to deal familiarly with those he encountered, so it is no wonder that, in the matters where he was successful, his reputation flourished, blooming with good will and honor, since even some of his errors often carried charm and grace.
Hence this man, though he had done the city no small or few harms, was nevertheless repeatedly appointed leader and general, while the other, though he sought office after many feats of valor and manly deeds, fell from the office that was rightfully his. Thus the citizens could not bring themselves to hate the one even while suffering ill at his hands, while it was the other's lot, though admired, not to be loved.
And indeed Marcius achieved nothing for the city while he generaled, but only against his fatherland while with the enemy; whereas the Athenians profited from Alcibiades both when he often served as soldier and as general — for when present he mastered his enemies as much as he wished, and when absent, slanders against him prevailed —
and Marcius, while present, was condemned by the Romans, and while present, was destroyed by the Volscians — unjustly and impiously, to be sure — yet he himself furnished the plausible pretext for it, in that he did not accept the terms of settlement publicly offered, but, privately persuaded by the women, did not put an end to the enmity, but, while the war still stood, let slip the moment and destroyed it,
for having persuaded those who had trusted him, he ought to have withdrawn, if he set the greatest store by justice toward them. But if he cared nothing for the Volscians, and was leading the war on merely wishing to glut his own anger, and then let it drop, it was not honorable that he should have spared his fatherland for his mother's sake, but rather that, together with his fatherland, he should have spared his mother — for his mother too was a part, and his wife too was a part, of the fatherland he was besieging.
And that, having dealt harshly with the public supplications and the entreaties of envoys and the prayers of priests, he should then grant the withdrawal as a favor to his mother, was not an honor to his mother, but a dishonor to his fatherland, which was being saved by pity and intercession made for one woman's sake, as though it were not worthy to be saved for its own sake — for the favor was invidious and harsh and truly graceless, and had in it nothing of fair dealing toward either side: for he withdrew neither persuaded by those he was warring against, nor having persuaded those warring alongside him.
The cause of all this was the unsociable and excessively haughty and self-willed quality of his character, which in itself is burdensome to the many, but when joined to ambition becomes altogether savage and implacable. For such men do not court the many, on the ground that they have no need of honor, and then grow harsh when they do not obtain it. Since, as for not being obsequious nor courting the crowds, Metellus too had this quality, and Aristides, and Epaminondas;
but because they truly held in contempt the things of which the people are master to give or take away, when ostracized and voted out of office and repeatedly condemned, they did not grow angry at the citizens for their ingratitude, but welcomed them again when they repented, and were reconciled when called upon. For the man least given to courting favor ought least to be given to taking vengeance on the many, since being harsh at not obtaining honor springs precisely from too eager a craving for it.
Alcibiades, then, did not deny that he rejoiced when honored and chafed when overlooked, and for this reason he tried to be agreeable and pleasing to those present; but Marcius' pride would not let him court those who had power to honor him and so increase his arrogance, while at the same time his ambition gave him anger and grief whenever he was neglected.
And these are the points on which one might find fault with the man; but in all else he is brilliant, and in his self-restraint and his command over the love of money he deserves comparison with those Greeks who were finest and most upright — certainly not, by Zeus, with Alcibiades, who surpassed everyone in shamelessness on these matters and cared least of all for what was honorable.

======== Timoleon ========

For others' benefit, originally, I set out to compose these Lives; yet now I continue the task and take delight in it for my own sake too, using history as a kind of mirror in which I try, somehow, to order and adorn my own life in the likeness of the virtues of these men. For the experience is nothing other than living together and sharing a household with them, when, as though entertaining each of them in turn as a guest through history,
we receive and take them in and review “how great he was and of what sort,” gathering from their deeds what is most weighty and most beautiful to know. Ah, what greater joy could one gain than this, or one more effective toward the improvement of character? Democritus indeed maintains that our prayers ought to be for encountering well-omened images, so that beings kindred and good may come to us from the surrounding air rather than the
base and perverse ones — a doctrine that introduces into philosophy an untrue teaching leading to endless superstitions. We, however, by our devotion to history and our habit of writing prepare ourselves so as always to receive into our souls the remembrance of the best and most approved men; and if the company we are forced by necessity to keep brings any base, ill-natured, or ignoble thing into contact with us, we drive it off
and thrust it away, turning our thought, gracious and gentle, toward the noblest of examples. Among these I have now set before you, for the present, the life of Timoleon of Corinth and that of Aemilius Paulus, men who employed not only similar principles of action but also similar good fortune in their affairs, and who will furnish grounds for dispute whether it was good luck rather than wisdom that brought about the greatest of their achievements
successfully. The situation of the Syracusans before Timoleon's expedition to Sicily was as follows. When Dion had driven out the tyrant Dionysius and was straightway treacherously slain, and those who had been with Dion in liberating the Syracusans fell into faction, the city, passing continually from one tyrant to another, through the multitude of its evils came near to being left desolate; and of the rest of Sicily, part was already utterly
laid waste and stripped of cities on account of the fighting, while the greater number of towns were held by mixed barbarians and soldiers who went unpaid, and who readily welcomed changes of rulers; and Dionysius, in the tenth year, gathering mercenaries and driving out Nysaeus, who then held power over the Syracusans, took the government back again and was established as tyrant from the beginning — unaccountably having lost, through a small force, the greatest tyranny that ever was,
and still more unaccountably becoming again, from an exile and a man brought low, master of those who had cast him out. Now those who remained in the city of the Syracusans were enslaved to a tyrant who was in no other respect reasonable, and who at that time had been utterly brutalized in spirit by his misfortunes; while the best and most notable citizens turned to Hicetas, who held power among the Leontines, entrusted themselves to him, and chose him general of the war, though he was
in no way better than any of the acknowledged tyrants, having, however, no other refuge, and trusting him since he had been born a Syracusan and commanded forces capable of matching the tyrant. Meanwhile, the Carthaginians having arrived in Sicily with a great fleet and hovering threateningly over affairs, the Sicilian Greeks, in fear, resolved to dispatch envoys to Greece seeking assistance from the Corinthians, not only because of their
kinship, nor from confidence grounded in the numerous favors already received at their hands, but also because they saw that the city as a whole had ever been devoted to freedom and set against tyranny, and had fought most of its greatest wars not for supremacy or gain but for the freedom of the Greeks. But Hicetas, since he had made the tyranny itself the very purpose of his generalship, was secretly
already in negotiation with the Carthaginians, though openly he praised the Syracusans and sent envoys along with them to the Peloponnese — not wishing that aid should actually come from there, but hoping that, as was likely, the Corinthians, occupied and distracted by troubles in Greece, would decline to help, so that he might more easily turn affairs over to the Carthaginians and use them as allies and fellow-combatants against the Syracusans
rather than against the tyrant. This scheme, however, was exposed a little later. When the envoys arrived, the Corinthians, who were always accustomed to care for their colonial cities and above all for Syracuse, and who at that time happened to be troubled by none of the affairs of Greece but were living in peace and leisure, voted eagerly to send help. And when a general was sought, and the magistrates were writing up and proposing the men who were
eager to win reputation in the city, one man rose up out of the many and named Timoleon, son of Timodemus, though he no longer took part in public affairs and had neither hope nor purpose of the kind — but it was some god, it seems, who put the thought into the man's mind: so great was the graciousness of fortune that shone at once about his choice, and such favor attended his subsequent actions, gracing and adorning the virtue of the man.
He was, then, of parents distinguished in the city, Timodemus and Demariste; he loved his homeland and was remarkably mild-tempered, except in that he fiercely despised tyranny and wickedness. In warfare his nature was so well and evenly tempered that much intelligence appeared in him as a young man, and no less courage in his deeds when he grew old. He had an older brother, Timophanes, in no way
resembling him, but rash and corrupted by a passion for sole rule, always surrounded by base friends and mercenary strangers, seeming to have something impetuous and reckless about him in his campaigns. By this quality, winning the citizens over as a warlike and energetic man, he was appointed to commands. And in these matters Timoleon supported him, entirely concealing his faults or making them appear small, while whatever
attractive quality nature brought forth in him he adorned and magnified. In the engagement fought by Corinth against the Argives and Cleonaeans, Timoleon chanced to be stationed among the hoplites, while Timophanes, commanding the cavalry, was overtaken by sudden danger. For his horse, struck by a wound, threw him among the enemy, and of his companions some at once scattered in fear, while others
who remained, few against many, fought on with difficulty, barely holding out. When Timoleon saw what had happened, he ran to help, set his shield before Timophanes as he lay there, and, receiving many javelin-casts and many blows at close quarters upon his body and his armor, with difficulty drove back the enemy and saved his brother. But when the Corinthians, fearing they might suffer the fate they had
already suffered once before at the hands of their allies, in losing their city, voted to maintain four hundred mercenaries and set Timophanes in command of them, he, scorning what was noble and just, at once set about making the city his own; and having put to death many of the leading citizens without trial, he proclaimed himself tyrant. Timoleon took this hard, and, regarding his brother's wickedness as his own misfortune,
he attempted to reason with him and urge him to abandon his madness and the ill-starred nature of that desire, and to seek some means of correcting his wrongs toward the citizens; but when Timophanes rebuffed and despised him, he then took with him, of his relatives, Aeschylus, who was the brother of Timophanes' wife, and of his friends the seer whom Theopompus calls Satyrus, but Ephorus and Timaeus call Orthagoras; and after letting
a few days pass, he returned once more to his brother, and all three, gathered around him, pleaded with him even now, upon reflection, to change his course. When Timophanes at first mocked them, and then broke out in anger and grew harsh, Timoleon withdrew a little distance, covered his face, and stood weeping, while the others drew their swords and quickly killed him. When the deed became known,
the best of the Corinthians praised Timoleon's hatred of wrongdoing and his greatness of soul, in that, being kind and a lover of his family, he had nevertheless preferred his country and what was noble and just to his own advantage — having saved his brother when he fought bravely for his country, but killing him when he plotted against it and enslaved it. But those who could not live under democracy and were accustomed to look toward
men of power pretended to rejoice at the tyrant's death, but denouncing Timoleon for committing a deed both unholy and detestable, plunged him into deep dejection. And when he learned that his mother too was taking it hard, uttering terrible words and dreadful curses against him, he went to console her, but she could not bear to look upon his face, and shut her house against him; and it was then, indeed,
that, becoming utterly grief-stricken and disturbed in mind, he set out to destroy himself by abstaining from food, but his friends would not allow it, and by every entreaty and every constraint brought to bear upon him, persuaded him to resolve to live apart by himself, withdrawn from public life: he gave up all political activity, and for the first years did not even go down into the city, but wandered in distress in the most desolate of the fields,
spending his time there. So it is that our judgments, unless they gain firmness and strength from reason and philosophy as applied to action, are shaken and easily carried off course by chance praise and blame, being knocked out of their proper reasoning; for it is necessary, it seems, not only that the deed itself be noble and just, but that the opinion from which it is done be stable and unshaken, so that we may act
with settled judgment, and not, like gluttons who pursue rich foods with the keenest appetite, quickly grow disgusted once they are filled, so that we too, after our deeds are accomplished, lose heart through weakness as the vision of the noble fades away. For repentance makes shameful even a deed nobly done, whereas a choice that springs from knowledge and reasoning is not altered even if the actions miscarry. Wherefore Phocion
the Athenian, having opposed the measures of Leosthenes, when the latter seemed to be succeeding and he saw the Athenians sacrificing and boasting greatly over their victory, said that he would have wished these things to have been accomplished, but that his own counsel should still have been the one taken; and more forcefully still, Aristides the Locrian, one of Plato's companions, when the elder Dionysius sought one of his daughters as a bride, replied that he would sooner see
the girl dead than married to a tyrant; and when, a little later, Dionysius had put his own sons to death and asked him insultingly whether he still held the same opinion about the giving of his daughters, he answered that he grieved for what had happened, but did not repent of what he had said. These things, then, are perhaps the mark of a greater and more perfect virtue. But the suffering that Timoleon felt over what
he had done — whether it was pity for the dead man or reverence for his mother — so broke and crushed his spirit that, for nearly twenty years afterward, he took part in no notable or political action. When, therefore, he was proclaimed general, and the people had eagerly received and voted for him, Telecleides, who was then first in power and reputation in the city, rose up and urged Timoleon concerning
his conduct, to be a good and noble man. "For if," he said, "you fight well, we shall think you have destroyed a tyrant; but if badly, a brother." While Timoleon busied himself with departure preparations and mustering troops, a letter reached the Corinthians from Hicetas, revealing his change of allegiance and treachery. For as soon as he had sent off the envoys, he attached himself openly to the Carthaginians and acted along with them
...so that, having driven Dionysius out of Syracuse, he himself would be tyrant. And fearing that, before a force and a general arrived from Corinth, the affair might slip away from him, he sent a letter to the Corinthians saying that they had no need to bear trouble and expense sailing to Sicily and running risks, especially since the Carthaginians were forbidding it and guarding the strait with many ships — men whom he himself, compelled by their delay,
would make allies against the tyrant. When this letter was read out, even if any of the Corinthians had before felt lukewarm about the campaign, then anger against Hicetas provoked them all, so that they eagerly furnished supplies to Timoleon and helped prepare the sailing. When the ships were ready, and what was needed had been provided for the soldiers, the priestesses of Kore
seemed to see in a dream the goddesses setting out on some journey and saying that they were about to sail with Timoleon to Sicily. For this reason the Corinthians, having fitted out a trireme, named it sacred to the two goddesses. Timoleon himself, going to Delphi, sacrificed to the god, and as he was going down into the oracle a sign occurred to him: from among the offerings hanging there a ribbon slipped loose and, drifting down, bearing woven into it crowns
and figures of Nike, fell upon Timoleon's head, so that he seemed to be crowned by the god and sent forth on his undertaking. Having seven Corinthian ships, two Corcyrean, and a tenth furnished besides by the Leucadians, he put out to sea. And having set out into open water by night and enjoying a fair wind, he seemed to see the sky suddenly split open above the ship and pour out a great and
conspicuous fire. And out of this a torch, rising up, resembling those of the mysteries, ran along the same course as the ship, in the direction toward which the helmsmen were steering for Italy, and there it came down. The seers declared that the apparition confirmed the priestesses' dreams, and that the goddesses, joining in the campaign, were revealing from heaven that light; for Sicily was sacred to Kore, since indeed the
myths tell that her seizure happened there, and that as a bridal gift she received the whole island, a veil for her wedding. So then, these signs from the gods gave the expedition courage, and hastening on, they crossed the sea and made their way along the coast of Italy. But the reports coming from Sicily caused Timoleon much perplexity, and the soldiers much discouragement. For Hicetas, having defeated
Dionysius in battle and seized most of Syracuse, was besieging and walling in that man, now confined to the acropolis and the place called the Island, while he himself bade the Carthaginians see to it that Timoleon should not set foot in Sicily, so that once he had been driven off, they themselves might quietly divide the island between them. So they sent twenty triremes to Rhegium, aboard which sailed envoys from him
to Timoleon, bringing proposals matching what was being done — for these were fine-sounding covers and pretexts for base designs — asking that he himself, if he wished, come to Hicetas as an advisor and partner in everything already well accomplished, but that he should send the ships and soldiers back to Corinth, since the war was all but finished; and that the Carthaginians would prevent the crossing and fight against anyone who tried to force it,
being ready to do so. So when the Corinthians, putting in at Rhegium, encountered these envoys and saw the Phoenicians lying at anchor not far off, they were angered at being insulted, and anger against Hicetas rose in everyone, along with fear for the Sicilian Greeks, whom they clearly saw left as spoils and wages — for Hicetas the wage of treachery, for the Carthaginians the wage of tyranny — and it seemed impossible to overcome both
the barbarians' ships lying there, twice their own number, and the force there with Hicetas, which they had come to command. Nevertheless Timoleon, meeting with the envoys and the Carthaginian commanders, said reasonably that he would obey their orders — for what could he gain by disobeying? — but that he wished to hear and to speak this before departing, in front of the Rhegians, a Greek community that was friendly to both sides:
for this too, he said, worked toward his own safety, and would make them abide more firmly by what they promised concerning the Syracusans, having deposited their agreement with the people as witness. But these were pretexts he put forward, contriving a deception regarding the crossing, and the Rhegian generals joined in the scheme, all desiring that the affairs of the Sicilian Greeks fall to the Corinthians, and fearing the nearness of the barbarians. So they called the citizens into assembly and had the gates shut,
so that the citizens should not turn their attention to anything else, and coming before the crowd they spun out long speeches, one handing the same subject off to another to no purpose, simply spending the time otherwise, until the Corinthian triremes should have put out, keeping the Carthaginians at the assembly without suspicion, since Timoleon too was present and gave the impression that he was just about to
rise and address the assembly. But when someone reported to him secretly that the other triremes had already put out, and only his own remained waiting behind, he slipped away through the crowd, the Rhegians around the platform helping to conceal him, and going down to the sea he sailed out quickly. And they made landfall in Sicily at Tauromenium, welcomed and invited, as he had long eagerly wished, by Andromachus, who
held and ruled that city. This man was the father of Timaeus the historian, and by far the strongest of those then holding power in Sicily; he led his own citizens lawfully and justly, and was clearly always hostile and estranged toward tyrants. For this reason he then gave the city to Timoleon as a base, and persuaded the citizens to join the Corinthians in the struggle and
help free Sicily. But the Carthaginians at Rhegium, taking it hard that Timoleon had put out and the assembly had broken up, gave the Rhegians trouble over having been outmaneuvered, since as Phoenicians they were displeased at what had been done through deception. So they sent an envoy to Tauromenium on a trireme, who, after speaking at length with Andromachus, insolently and in barbarian fashion threatened him that unless he
expelled the Corinthians as quickly as possible, he would... finally he showed his hand palm-up, then turning it over threatened that he would make his city like that. Andromachus, laughing, gave no other answer, but holding out his hand, now palm-up as the man had done, now palm-down, told him to sail away, unless he wished his ship turned from the one into the other. And
Hicetas, learning of Timoleon's crossing and taking fright, sent for many Carthaginian triremes; and at this the Syracusans came to despair altogether of their safety, seeing the Carthaginians in control of their harbor, Hicetas holding the city, Dionysius master of the citadel, and Timoleon, as if clinging to Sicily by some slender fringe, attached to the little town of the Tauromenians, resting on a weak
and slight foundation of power: for he had no more than a thousand soldiers and just the provisions necessary for them. Nor did the cities trust him, sick through and through with troubles and grown savage toward all who led armies, especially because of the faithlessness of Callippus and Pharax, of whom the one was Athenian, the other Spartan, both claiming to have come on behalf of freedom and to put down the monarchs, but gold
had shown Sicily the miseries within tyranny, and made those who had ended their days in slavery seem more fortunate than those who had been granted independence by such men. So, expecting the Corinthian to be no better than these, but that these were once again tricks and lures come to them, meant to tame them, through good hopes and humane promises, into accepting a change to a new master, they grew suspicious and turned away the Corinthians'
invitations — except the people of Adranum, who, inhabiting a small city, but one sacred to Adranus, a god especially honored throughout all Sicily, were divided against one another, some drawing toward Hicetas and the Carthaginians, others sending to Timoleon. And somehow it happened by chance that, both sides hastening, their arrivals coincided at the very same moment. But Hicetas arrived leading five thousand troops, whereas for Timoleon
his men altogether numbered no more than twelve hundred. Taking these from Tauromenium — Adranum being three hundred and forty stadia away — on the first day he advanced not far along the road and made camp, but on the second, marching briskly and passing through difficult country, and with the daylight now waning, word came to him that Hicetas was at that very moment nearing the little town and
making camp. So the company commanders and officers halted the vanguard, meaning to use them, once they had eaten and rested, with greater eagerness; but Timoleon, passing along the ranks, urged them against any such delay, telling them rather to press on at once and engage an enemy still in disorder, as was likely, having just now stopped from their march and being occupied with tents and dinner. And saying this at the same time, taking up his shield he led the way himself,
as if toward an assured victory. And the men followed, taking courage, while still less than thirty stadia from the enemy. And when they had covered this distance too, they fell upon them in confusion and flight, the moment the enemy perceived them approaching; from this not much more than three hundred were killed, but twice that number were taken alive, and the camp was captured. And the people of Adranum, opening their gates, joined Timoleon,
reporting with awe and wonder that, as the battle was being joined, the sacred doors of the temple had opened of their own accord, and the god's spear had been seen quivering from the point of its blade, while his face streamed with heavy sweat. These signs, it seems, betokened not only that day's victory, but also the deeds that followed, to which that struggle
gave a fortunate beginning. For at once cities sent embassies and joined Timoleon, and Mamercus, tyrant of Catana, a warlike man strong in wealth, gave himself over as an ally. But greatest of all, Dionysius himself, having by now given up hope and being close to being taken by siege, scorned Hicetas, who had been shamefully defeated, and, admiring Timoleon, sent word to him, handing over himself and
the acropolis to the Corinthians. Timoleon, accepting this unhoped-for good fortune, sent Euclides and Telemachus, Corinthian men, to the acropolis, along with four hundred soldiers — not all together nor openly, for that was impossible with the enemy blockading, but secretly and in small groups slipping in. So the soldiers took over the acropolis and the tyrant's residence, along with the equipment and
the supplies useful for war — for there were no few horses there, and every kind of siege engine, and a great quantity of missiles, and seventy thousand weapons stored up from of old, while two thousand soldiers were present with Dionysius, whom he, like everything else, handed over to Timoleon. He himself, taking money and a few of his friends, escaped Hicetas' notice and sailed away. And having been brought to
Timoleon's camp, seen then for the first time as a private and humble man, he was sent off to Corinth on a single ship with a little money — a man born and raised in the most illustrious and greatest of all tyrannies, and having held it for ten years, then, for twelve more years after Dion's campaign, worn down amid struggles and wars, having in his tyranny done things surpassing what he suffered — for indeed
he saw the deaths of his grown sons and the prostitution of his daughters; and his own sister, who was also his wife, he saw violated in body by the enemy with the most licentious pleasures while she yet lived, and then put to death by force along with her children and drowned in the sea. These things are written in precise detail in the Life of Dion. But when Dionysius arrived by ship at Corinth, not a single Greek failed to
long to see him and speak to him. Some who rejoiced at his misfortunes came together gladly out of hatred, wanting, as it were, to trample on a man cast down by fortune; others, moved by the reversal and full of sympathy, contemplated the great power of hidden and divine causes at work amid weak and visible human affairs. For neither nature nor art at that time
displayed so great a work as that which fortune showed then: the man who a little before had been tyrant of Sicily now spending his time in Corinth around the fish-market, or sitting in a perfume-shop, drinking watered wine bought from the taverns, and wrangling in the open with the women who worked for hire, teaching songstresses their songs, and eagerly disputing with them over musical melodies and theatrical songs — these things
some thought Dionysius did simply because he was by nature idle and given over to dissipation; others thought that he practiced them and put on this act against his own nature in order to be despised and not seem fearsome to the Corinthians, nor suspected of chafing under the change in his life and reaching for power again — displaying much foolishness precisely by his leisure. However that may be, certain sayings of his are also remembered,
by which he seemed to bear his present circumstances not ignobly. For instance, when he had put in at Leucas, a city colonized by the Corinthians just as Syracuse was, he said that he felt the same as young men who have done wrong: for just as they associate cheerfully with their brothers but avoid their fathers out of shame, so he, feeling shame before the mother-city, would gladly live there among her colonists rather than in Corinth itself. And this too:
when some stranger in Corinth mocked him rather boorishly about his conversations with the philosophers, which he had delighted in while he was tyrant, and finally asked what benefit he had gotten from Plato's wisdom, he said, "Do you think we've gained nothing from Plato, bearing such a reversal of fortune as this?" And to the musician Aristoxenus and some others who asked him what the origin was and what complaint he had against Plato,
he said that tyranny, full as it is of many evils, has nothing so great as this: that none of those called friends will speak with frank openness — for he himself had been deprived by them of Plato's goodwill. And when one of those who wanted to appear witty mocked Dionysius by shaking out his cloak as he came in to see him, as though approaching a tyrant, Dionysius mocked him back, telling him to do this instead whenever he went out
from his presence, in case he left carrying off something of what was inside. When Philip of Macedon, over wine, brought up with some irony the songs and tragedies the elder Dionysius had left behind, and pretended to wonder at what point he had found the leisure to compose them, Dionysius answered him not badly, saying, "At the very time when you and I and all who are counted blessed
spend our time over the wine-bowl." Plato, then, did not live to see Dionysius in Corinth, but had already died. Diogenes of Sinope, however, on first meeting him said, "How unworthily you live, Dionysius." And when Dionysius stopped and said, "You do well, Diogenes, to share our grief at our misfortune," Diogenes replied, "What? Do you suppose I grieve with you, and am not rather indignant that such a slave as you,
fit, like your father, to grow old and die amid your tyranny, now spend your days here playing and living in luxury among us?" So that, when I compare these words with the sayings of Philistus, which he utters lamenting over the daughters of Leptines — how they had come down from the great goods of tyranny to a lowly way of life — his words sound like the laments of a woman longing for her alabaster jars and purple robes and gold ornaments. These things, then, we do not think
foreign to the writing of Lives, nor useless to readers who are not in a hurry or otherwise occupied. And if Dionysius's misfortune appeared paradoxical, no less remarkable was Timoleon's good fortune. For having landed in Sicily, within fifty days he had taken the acropolis of Syracuse and sent Dionysius off to the Peloponnese. Encouraged by this, the Corinthians sent him two thousand hoplites and two hundred cavalry,
who, having been brought as far as Thurii, saw that the crossing from there was impossible, since the sea was held by many Carthaginian ships; and since they were forced to wait quietly there for an opportunity, they put their leisure to the finest use. For while the people of Thurii were on campaign against the Brettians, they took over the city and guarded it faithfully and honestly as if it were their own homeland. Meanwhile Hicetas was besieging the acropolis of Syracuse and preventing
grain from sailing in to the Corinthians, and he sent two foreign men against Timoleon to assassinate him, dispatching them to Adranum, where Timoleon had no organized bodyguard around his person, and at that time especially, because of the god, was relaxed and off his guard, spending time freely among the Adranum townsfolk. Those two agents, discovering purely by chance that he was on the point of offering sacrifice, arrived at the temple carrying daggers under their cloaks, and mingling with those standing
around the altar, they gradually worked their way closer. And just as they were about to signal to each other to begin, one of them struck the other on the head with his sword, and when he fell, neither the one who struck him stayed, nor the one who had come with the man who was struck; rather, the one, sword still in hand, fled and leapt up onto a high rock, while the other took hold of the altar and begged for
immunity from Timoleon in exchange for revealing everything. And having received it, he informed against himself and against the dead man, saying that they had been sent to kill him. Meanwhile others brought down the man from the rock, who cried out that he was guilty of no crime, but had rightly slain the man to avenge his father, whom the other had earlier killed at Leontini. And he had some of those present as witnesses, who marveled at the same time at the
cleverness of fortune, how by moving one thing through another she draws everything together from far apart and weaves it in with things that seem most different and to have nothing in common with each other, always using the ends and beginnings of one another's affairs. The Corinthians crowned this man with ten minas, since he had, on behalf of the guardian spirit watching over Timoleon, discharged a just passion, and had not spent beforehand
the anger long harbored in him, but had preserved it, through his own private cause, by fortune, for that man's salvation. And this good fortune, both for the present occasion and, through the hopes it raised, for the future, lifted men's spirits, seeing that Timoleon, arriving as a sacred man and, with god's help, an avenger for Sicily, was to be revered and protected. But when Hicetas failed in this attempt, and
saw many gathering to Timoleon's side, blaming himself that, with so great a Carthaginian force present, he was, as it were ashamed before it, using it only in small measure and secretly, stealing it in and introducing the alliance piecemeal, he sent for Mago their general with the entire fleet. And Mago sailed in fearsomely with a hundred and fifty ships, taking the harbor, and disembarking sixty thousand infantry, and encamping in
the city of the Syracusans, so that everyone thought that the long-spoken-of and long-expected barbarization had come upon Sicily. For never before had it happened to the Carthaginians, in the countless wars they had fought in Sicily, to take Syracuse; but now, since Hicetas had received them and handed the city over, one could see the city had become a barbarian camp. Meanwhile those holding the acropolis for the Corinthians were faring precariously and with difficulty,
no longer having sufficient food, but going short because the harbors were guarded, and always occupied in struggles and battles around the walls and against every kind of siege engine and every form of siege-craft. Nonetheless Timoleon kept sending them help, sending grain over from Catana aboard small fishing craft and light skiffs, vessels which especially in stormy weather slipped through the barbarian triremes,
sneaking underneath while those ships were kept apart by the swell and the surge. Mago and Hicetas, observing this, wanted to take Catana, from which the provisions sailed in to the besieged, and taking the most warlike part of their force they put out to sea from Syracuse. But Neon of Corinth — for he was the commander of the besieged — seeing from the heights those
of the enemy left behind guarding carelessly and negligently, since they were scattered, suddenly fell upon them; and killing some, routing others, he took and held the district called Achradina, which was reckoned the strongest and most unassailable part of the city of Syracuse, since it was in a manner made up and fitted together out of several cities. Well provisioned with both grain and funds, he refused to give up the position, nor did he pull back again
to the citadel, but fenced off the perimeter of Achradina and, joining his fortifications to the acropolis, held it securely. Meanwhile a horseman from Syracuse overtook Mago and Hicetas, who were already near Catana, and reported the capture of Achradina. Thrown into confusion, they withdrew in haste, having neither taken the city they had set out for nor kept guard over the one they had held. These things, then,
still leave some room for foresight and virtue to contend against fortune; but what happened after this seems entirely to have come about through good luck. For the Corinthian soldiers who were passing their time at Thurii, fearing on the one hand the Carthaginian triremes, which under Hanno were watching for them, and on the other hand the sea being made savage by wind for many days, set out to march on foot through Brettian territory,
and, partly persuading and partly forcing the natives, they made their way down to Rhegium, the sea still holding a great storm. But the Carthaginian fleet-commander, not anticipating the Corinthians and supposing they were sitting idle for nothing, persuaded himself that he had thought of something clever and cunning for a deception: ordering his sailors to wear garlands and decorating his triremes with Greek shields
and purple hangings, he sailed toward Syracuse. And passing by the acropolis, amid the splash of oars, with clapping and laughter, he shouted that the Corinthians were coming, having been defeated and captured, taken at sea while trying to cross over, wanting thereby to cause some despondency to the besieged. But while he was carrying on with this nonsense and trickery, the Corinthians, having come down from Brettian territory to Rhegium, seeing that no one was on watch and that the
wind had died down unexpectedly, giving the strait a calm and smooth appearance, quickly filled the ferries and the fishing boats that were on hand, put out to sea, and crossed over to Sicily, so safely and through such a calm that their horses swam alongside the boats, towed by their reins. When all had crossed over, Timoleon received them and at once took Messene, and having formed them up
he marched against Syracuse, trusting more in the good fortune and success that attended him than in his strength; for those with him were no more than four thousand. When news of the advance was reported to Mago, he grew disturbed, and was led into still greater suspicion by an incident of the following kind. In the marshes around the city there was much drinkable water from springs, and much also from marshes and
the rivers flowing down into the sea in these parts, a great quantity of eels feeds, and abundant catch is always there for those who want it. These the men serving for pay on both sides used to hunt together whenever there was leisure and a truce. Since they were Greeks and had no private grudges against one another, in battle they risked their lives vigorously, but during truces they would visit one another and talk. And on this occasion too
having a common occupation in the fishing, they fell to talking, marveling at the natural advantages of the sea and the arrangement of the ground. And one of those serving with the Corinthians said, "So great a city in size and adorned with so many fine things, and you, being Greeks, are eager to barbarize it, settling the most wicked and murderous Carthaginians nearer to us — against whom we ought to be praying that many Sicilies
lay in front of Greece as a barrier. Or do you suppose these men gathered an army all the way from the Pillars of Heracles, from beside the Atlantic Ocean, only to come here and risk their lives for the sake of Hicetas's rule? If he had had the reasoning of a leader, he would not have driven out his fathers nor brought the enemy against his fatherland, but would have obtained both honor and power as much as was fitting, by persuading the Corinthians and Timoleon." These words the mercenaries
spread abroad through the camp, and gave Mago grounds for suspicion that he was being betrayed — he who had long wanted a pretext. Therefore, though Hicetas begged him to remain and pointed out how much better they were than the enemy, Mago, thinking rather that he was falling short of Timoleon in valor and fortune than surpassing him in the size of his forces, at once set sail and departed for Libya, shamefully, by no reckoning a man could justify, letting Sicily slip out of his hands. On the next day
Timoleon was present, drawn up for battle; but when they learned of the flight and saw the dockyards deserted, laughter overtook them at Mago's cowardice, and going about they proclaimed in the city a reward for whoever could tell where the Carthaginian fleet had run off to escape them. Nevertheless, since Hicetas still loved fighting and would not let go his hold on the city, but clung
to the strong and hard-to-attack quarters he held, Timoleon divided his forces: he himself attacked at the most difficult point, along the stream of the Anapus, while he ordered others to make their assault from Achradina, led by Isias the Corinthian, and a third group he brought against Epipolae under Deinarchus and Demaretus, who had led the later reinforcement from Corinth. At the same time,
the assault having been made from every side, and Hicetas's men overturned and put to flight, that so swift a storming brought the city into their hands, with the enemy driven out — this deserves to be credited to the fighters' courage and to the general's skill; but that no Corinthian was killed, nor even wounded, this was the particular achievement shown by Timoleon's own fortune, as though vying
with the man's valor, so that those who heard of the things praised in him might marvel still more at the blessings attending them. For the news at once gripped all of Sicily and Italy, and in a matter of days it had traveled through Greece as well, telling how great the success was, so that the city of the Corinthians, disbelieving whether the fleet had even made the crossing, heard at once that the men were both safe and victorious. So
smoothly did the actions flow, and such speed did Fortune add to the beauty of the achievements. Once the citadel had fallen into his hands, he did not repeat Dion's fate, and he refused to spare the fortress despite its beauty and the great expense of its construction, but guarding against the suspicion that had slandered and then destroyed that man, he proclaimed that any Syracusan who wished should come with an iron tool and join in tearing down
the tyrants' fortifications. And when all had gone up, making that proclamation and that day the surest foundation of liberty, they overturned and razed to the ground not only the citadel but also the houses and the tombs of the tyrants. At once he leveled the place and built there the law courts, doing a favor to the citizens and making democracy superior to tyranny. But when he had
taken the city he found it without citizens, since some had perished in the wars and the factional strife, and others had fled the tyrannies; the market-place at Syracuse, through such great and deep desolation, had grown up so thick a wood that horses grazed in it, with their grooms lying in the grass, while the other cities, except for a very few, had become full of deer and
wild boars, and in the suburbs and around the walls those with leisure often went hunting; no one obeyed who dwelt in the strongholds and forts, nor did they come down into the city, but dread and hatred possessed them all of the marketplace and of civic life and of the speaker's platform, out of which most of the tyrants had sprung up for them. So it seemed good to Timoleon and to the Syracusans
to write to the Corinthians, asking that colonists be sent from Greece to Syracuse, since the land was going to lie idle, and they were expecting a great war from Libya, learning that the Carthaginians, angered that Mago had impaled his own body after killing himself, on account of his generalship, were themselves gathering a great force to cross over to Sicily as soon as the season allowed. When this letter
was brought from Timoleon, and when at the same time envoys of the Syracusans were present begging that the city be cared for and that new founders be provided from the start, the Corinthians did not seize upon this advantage for themselves, nor did they appropriate the city, but first went around to Greece's sacred contests and its largest festival assemblies, where they had heralds make proclamation that the Corinthians, having put down the tyranny at Syracuse
and driven out the tyrant, invited the Syracusans and any of the other Sicilian Greeks who wished to inhabit the city, free and self-governing, to divide the land on equal and just terms; then, sending messengers to Asia and the islands, wherever they learned that the greatest numbers of exiles were scattered and dwelling, they urged them all to come to Corinth, since the Corinthians would provide safe escort and ships and commanders
at their own expense, to Syracuse. When these proclamations were made, the city received the most just and noble praise and emulation, freeing men from tyrants, saving them from barbarians, and restoring the land to its citizens. Those who gathered at Corinth proved too few, and so asked to add fellow colonists drawn from Corinth itself and the rest of Greece; and
having become no fewer than ten thousand, they sailed down to Syracuse. And by now many from Italy and Sicily as well had come together to join Timoleon, and when their numbers reached sixty thousand in all, as Athanis has said, he divided up the land, but sold the houses for a thousand talents, at once leaving it to the original Syracusans to buy back their own, and at the same time contriving an abundance of money for the people, so
poor as they were both otherwise and with regard to the war, that they even sold off the statues, a vote being cast on each one and an accusation being brought, as though the men themselves were being called to account, when — so they say — the Syracusans preserved the statue of Gelon, the old tyrant, though the others were condemned, out of admiration and honor for the man for the victory he won over the Carthaginians at Himera. And as the city thus
rekindled and filled up, with citizens flowing into it from every side, Timoleon, wishing also to free the other cities and to root out entirely from Sicily the tyrannies, campaigned against their territories and compelled Hicetas, having renounced the Carthaginians, to agree to demolish the acropolises and to live as a private citizen at Leontini; and Leptines, who was tyrant of Apollonia and many other small towns, once capture by force was closing in on him,
he spared once he had surrendered himself, and sent him off to Corinth, thinking it a fine thing that in the mother city the tyrants of Sicily should be gazed upon by the Greeks living as exiles and in humble circumstances. Wishing the mercenaries to profit from enemy territory and not to be idle, he himself returned to Syracuse to attend to settling the constitution together with the lawgivers sent out from Corinth, Cephalus and
Dionysius, to arrange with them the most important and finest matters, while he sent off Deinarchus and Demaretus into the territory held by the Carthaginians; and they, detaching many cities from the barbarians, not only lived themselves in abundance but also raised money for the war from what they captured. Meanwhile the Carthaginians sailed down to Lilybaeum bringing seventy thousand troops and two hundred triremes
and a thousand vessels carrying siege-engines and four-horse chariots and abundant grain and the rest of their equipment, as though they meant no longer to wage the war piecemeal, but to drive the Greeks out of the whole of Sicily at once; for their force was sufficient even without the Sicilian Greeks being sick or destroyed by one another. On learning that their territory was being ravaged, they advanced at once in anger against the Corinthians, with Hasdrubal
and Hamilcar as generals. When the news reached Syracuse swiftly, the Syracusans were so terrified at the size of the force that scarcely could three thousand men out of so many tens of thousands be persuaded to take up arms and go out together with Timoleon. The mercenaries numbered four thousand, and out of these roughly a thousand lost their nerve on the road and turned back, claiming that Timoleon had taken leave of his senses and gone mad
beyond his years, marching against seventy thousand enemy with five thousand infantry and a thousand cavalry, and stretching his forces over a march of eight days' distance from Syracuse, from which point there would be no safety for those who fled nor burial for those who fell. These men, then, Timoleon considered it a gain to have shown themselves plainly before the battle, and encouraging the rest, he led them swiftly on toward the
river Crimisus, where he heard that the Carthaginians too were converging. As he was ascending toward a hill, from which, once they crossed over, they were going to catch sight of the enemy's army and forces, mules laden with celery met them; and it occurred to the soldiers that this was an evil omen, because we are accustomed to crown the tombs of the dead fittingly with celery, and from this a proverb has arisen, that one who is dangerously ill needs
celery. Wishing then to free them from this superstition and to remove their despondency, Timoleon halted the march and, among other remarks suited to the moment, said that even before the victory the crown had come to them unbidden — the same crown that the Corinthians place on the victors at the Isthmian contests, since they hold the celery wreath sacred as an ancestral custom; for at that time still, in the Isthmian games,
as is still done today at the Nemean games, celery served as the crown, and only recently did the pine come to hold that place instead. Timoleon then, having met with the soldiers as has been said, and taking some celery, crowned himself first, and then those commanders around him and the multitude did likewise. And the seers, seeing two eagles approaching, one of which carried a serpent pierced through with its talons, while the other flew
with loud, bold screeching, showed the birds to the soldiers, and everyone turned to prayer and calling on the gods. Now the season of the year was at the height of summer, and toward the end of the month Thargelion, near the solstice, the time was coming; and since the river was giving off a great mist, at first the plain was hidden in darkness, and nothing could be seen of the enemy, only the sound
a certain confused and mingled mass moved up toward the hill, as so great an army rose from the distance. When the Corinthians had climbed the hill and taken their stand, and had set down their shields to rest a while, while the sun wheeled round and drew up the vapor, the murky air gathered upon the heights and thickened, darkening the summits with cloud, while the ground beneath their feet was clearing, and the
Crimesus came into view, and as the enemy crossed it they were seen—first the chariots, terrifyingly arrayed for battle, and behind them ten thousand hoplites with white shields. These they judged to be Carthaginians, from the brilliance of their equipment and the slowness and order of their advance. After these, as the rest of the nations poured in and made their crossing amid jostling and confusion, Timoleon, perceiving
that the river held back the enemy's numbers for them, allowing them to take on and fight only as many as they wished, and having bidden his soldiers observe that the enemy's line was broken apart by the stream, some already across and others still to cross, ordered Demaretus to take the cavalry and charge into the Carthaginians and throw their formation into disorder before their battle-order was settled. He himself, coming down into the plain,
assigned the wings to the rest of the Sicilian Greeks, mixing in a few mercenaries with each, while he himself, taking his stand in the center with the Syracusans and the most warlike of the mercenaries about him, paused a short while watching the work of the cavalry. But when he saw that they could not close the distance and grapple with the Carthaginian line, blocked as they were by chariots darting to and fro before the enemy's ranks, but instead
were being forced, in order not to be thrown into confusion, to wheel about repeatedly and make their charges again and again by circling back, he took up his shield, and shouting to the infantry to follow and take courage, seemed to use a voice more than human and greater than his usual one—whether he stretched it to that pitch through passion in the heat of battle and inspired fervor, or whether, as it seemed to many at the time, some divine power joined its voice to his. Quickly they returned his shout,
and urged him to lead on and not delay, he signaled the cavalry to ride out past the line of chariots and strike the enemy's flank from the side, while he himself, drawing the front ranks together with locked shields, and ordering the trumpet to sound, charged the Carthaginians. They withstood the first onset vigorously, and being encased in bodies covered with iron breastplates and bronze
helmets, and holding out great shields before them, they turned aside the spear-thrusts. But when the fight came to swords, and the work became a matter no less of skill than of strength, suddenly terrible thunderclaps broke from the mountains and fiery lightning flashed down with them. Then the gloom that had gathered about the hills and summits, coming down upon the battle, mingled with rain and wind and hail,
poured behind the Greeks and at their backs, but struck the barbarians in the face and flashed lightning into their eyes, as a wet squall together with continuous flame came driving from the clouds; and among these there was much that distressed them, especially those unused to it, and the thunderclaps and the clatter of weapons being struck by the driving rain and
hail seemed no less harmful, since it prevented the commanders' orders from being heard. And for the Carthaginians, being no lightly-armed force but, as already noted, laden with heavy armor, the mud proved an additional hindrance, and the folds of their tunics filling with water made them heavy and hard to use in the fight, while it made it easy for the Greeks to overturn them, and once fallen they could not get up again out of the mud with their
weapons. For indeed the Crimesus, swollen already by the rains, was churned up by those crossing it, and the plain around it, lying beneath many ravines and gullies, was filled with streams running not in their proper channels; in these the Carthaginians, rolling about, made their escape only with difficulty. At last, when the storm bore down upon them still, and the Greeks had cut down the enemy's front rank, four hundred men, the
mass turned to flight. Many were caught and destroyed on the plain, and many the river, catching them as they collided with those still crossing, swept away and destroyed, while a great many others who fled toward the hills were hunted down and slain by the light-armed troops. It is reported, in any case, that among ten thousand dead, three thousand were Carthaginians—a great grief to the city, for in birth, wealth, or reputation none were better
than these, nor do they recall so many of the Carthaginians themselves ever having died in a single battle before, but in most of their wars they used Libyans and Iberians and Numidians, and took on the defeats through others' losses. The Greeks learned the rank of the fallen from the spoils, for the tally of bronze and iron taken by the plunderers was very small—so abundant was the silver,
and abundant the gold; for they also captured the camp along with the pack animals as they crossed. Of the captives, most were stolen away by the soldiers, but five thousand in number were handed over to the common fund, and two hundred of the chariots were captured as well. A most beautiful and magnificent sight was displayed by Timoleon's tent, heaped round with spoils of every kind, among which a thousand breastplates, outstanding in workmanship and beauty,
and ten thousand shields were put on display. Few men, stripping so many and coming upon such great riches, only on the third day after the battle managed to set up a trophy. Together with the news of the victory, Timoleon sent to Corinth the finest of the captured arms, wishing his homeland to be envied by all mankind, when men saw that in that city alone among the Greek cities the most conspicuous temples were not
adorned with Greek spoils, nor did they carry the joyless memories of dedications won from kinsmen's slaughter and the killing of fellow Greeks, but bore barbarian spoils inscribed with the finest legends, declaring, along with the courage of the victors, their justice: that the Corinthians and Timoleon their general, having freed the Greeks who dwelt in Sicily from the Carthaginians, dedicated these as thank-offerings to the gods. After this, leaving behind in enemy territory the mercenaries to harry and plunder the
Carthaginian dominion, he himself came to Syracuse; and as for the thousand mercenaries who had deserted him before the battle, he drove them out of Sicily, and forced them to depart from Syracuse before sunset. These men, sailing across to Italy, perished, betrayed by the Bruttians, and this penalty divine providence laid upon them for their treachery. As for those around Mamercus, the
tyrant of Catana, and Hicetas—whether out of envy at Timoleon's successes, or out of fear of him as a man untrustworthy and implacable toward tyrants—they entered into a compact with the Carthaginians, pressing them to dispatch an army and a commander, lest they be driven out of Sicily altogether; and Gisco sailed with seventy ships, and taking on Greek mercenaries as well—something the Carthaginians had never done before, but now
marveled at them as irresistible and the most warlike of all men—these, banding together with one another in Messenia, killed four hundred of the allied mercenaries sent by Timoleon, and in Carthaginian territory, near the place called the Sacred Places, they ambushed and destroyed the mercenaries under Euthymus of Leucas. From these events especially it came about that Timoleon's good fortune became doubly renowned. For these men were
of those who had joined Philomelus the Phocian and Onomarchus in seizing Delphi and had shared in that sacrilege; and since all men hated them and shunned them as accursed, wandering about the Peloponnese, they were taken on by Timoleon, who was short of soldiers at the time. Arriving in Sicily, in all the battles they fought alongside him they were victorious, but when the greatest and most decisive struggles were over and they were sent out to other
campaigns of aid under his command, they perished and were used up, not all together, but by degrees—justice, as it were, arguing its own cause and attaching itself to Timoleon's good fortune, so that the good would be spared any harm arising from the wicked being punished. So it came about that men marveled no less at the goodwill of the gods toward Timoleon in the affairs where he stumbled than in those where he succeeded. But most of the
Syracusans were angered at being insulted by the tyrants. For Mamercus too, priding himself greatly on writing poems and tragedies, boasted after defeating the mercenaries, and dedicating the shields to the gods, inscribed an insolent verse: 'These shields, painted with oyster-shell and gold and ivory and amber, we took with cheap little shields of our own.' After this had happened, and while Timoleon was campaigning against Calauria, Hicetas, invading Syracusan territory, took much
plunder, and after ravaging and outraging much, withdrew right past Calauria itself, scorning Timoleon as having few soldiers. But Timoleon, letting him get ahead, pursued with cavalry and light troops; and Hicetas, perceiving this, after crossing the Damyrias, took his stand by the river as though ready to make a stand, since the crossing was difficult and the steep
banks on either side gave him confidence. But among Timoleon's cavalry commanders a remarkable rivalry and contentiousness broke out, delaying the battle; for no one was willing to cross after another against the enemy, but each man claimed the right to fight first, and the crossing had no order, as they pushed and ran past one another. Wishing therefore to assign the commanders by lot, Timoleon took a ring from each of them;
and throwing them all into his own cloak and mixing them, he showed the first one drawn, which by chance had, engraved on its seal, a trophy. When the young men saw this, they raised a joyful shout and, rather than waiting for the remaining lots to be drawn, each one raced across the river as fast as he could and closed with the enemy. The enemy did not withstand their onslaught, but fled;
and all alike were stripped of their weapons, and lost a thousand men, who fell. Not long after, Timoleon marched against the Leontines and took Hicetas alive, along with his son Eupolemus and the cavalry commander Euthymus, who had been bound by the soldiers and brought to him. Hicetas and his young son were put to death, punished as tyrants and traitors; but
Euthymus, a good man in battle and outstanding in daring, found no pity, on account of a certain slander against the Corinthians charged against him. For it is said that when the Corinthians had marched out against them, he, haranguing the people at Leontini, said that nothing terrible or fearsome had happened, if Corinthian women had come out of doors. So it is that the many are naturally more pained by words than by wicked deeds:
for they bear insult harder than harm. And to defend oneself by deeds is granted as necessary to those at war, but slanders seem to arise from an excess of hatred or malice. When Timoleon returned, the Syracusans, bringing the wives and daughters of Hicetas's family before the assembly for trial, put them to death. And this seems to have been the most ungracious of Timoleon's deeds:
for had he opposed it, the women would not have died in this way. It seems he overlooked it and gave it up to the anger of the citizens exacting justice on behalf of Dion, who had expelled Dionysius. For it was Hicetas who drowned Dion's wife Arete and his sister Aristomache and his son, still a child, while they were alive—matters written of in the Life of Dion. After
After this, campaigning against Mamercus at Catana, and defeating in pitched battle the force that stood against him near the stream called Abolus, and routing it, he killed more than two thousand, no small part of whom were the Phoenician mercenaries sent by Gescon. As a result of this the Carthaginians made peace with him, begging for it, on the terms that they should hold the territory this side of the Lycus, and that they would restore money and families to those who wished to move from it to the Syracusans, and they renounced their alliance with the tyrants.
Mamercus, disheartened in his hopes, sailed for Italy intending to bring the Lucanians against Timoleon and the Syracusans, but when the men with him reversed the triremes' course, made for Sicily instead, and gave Catana up into Timoleon's hands, he too was forced to flee for refuge to Messene, to Hippo, who was tyrant of that city.
When Timoleon marched upon them, blockading them from the sea as well as the land, Hippo, trying to escape by ship, was caught, and the Messenians took him, and bringing the children out of their schools to the theater as to the finest spectacle, the punishment of the tyrant, they tortured and destroyed him. Mamercus surrendered himself to Timoleon on condition that he should stand trial
before the Syracusans, provided Timoleon did not himself bring the accusation. Brought to Syracuse, he came before the assembly and attempted to deliver some speech he had composed long before, but meeting with uproar and seeing the assembly implacable, he ran and threw his cloak down in the middle of the theater, and rushing at a run toward one of the benches he dashed his head against it, meaning to die — yet he did not attain
that end, but was led away still living and paid the penalty that is given to robbers. In this way, then, Timoleon cut out the tyrannies and put an end to the wars; and taking the whole island savaged by evils and hated by its own inhabitants, he so tamed it and made it desirable to all that people sailed to settle there from the very places from which its citizens had formerly been fleeing.
For indeed Acragas and Gela, great cities the Carthaginians had devastated in the aftermath of the Attic war, were at this time resettled — the one by the men around Megellus and Pheristus sailing from Elea, the other by the men around Gorgus sailing from Ceos, gathering together the old citizens. To these he not only gave security from so great a war and calm as they settled in, but also provided everything else and
joined eagerly in their efforts, and was loved like a founder. And since all the others were disposed toward him in the same way, no ending of war, no laying down of laws, no settling of territory, no arrangement of a constitution seemed to be well done unless he took part in it and set it in order, as though he were a craftsman adding, to some work being completed, a certain grace pleasing to the gods and fitting. Indeed, though many great Greeks arose in his time and accomplished great things,
among them Timotheus and Agesilaus and Pelopidas and Epaminondas — whom Timoleon most admired and emulated — the deeds of those men brought forth their brilliance mixed with a certain violence and toil, so that blame and even regret attach to some of them; whereas of Timoleon's deeds, setting aside for the moment the necessity concerning his brother, there is nothing to which the words of Sophocles, as Timaeus says,
would not fittingly apply: 'O gods, what Cypris or what Desire laid hold of this?' Just as Antimachus's verse and the paintings of Dionysius the Colophonian, vigorous and intense though they are, come across as strained and overworked, whereas Nicomachus's paintings together with Homer's own lines, besides all their other force and grace, also carry the look of having been produced effortlessly and with ease, so
compared with the generalship of Epaminondas and of Agesilaus, which came about with much toil and difficulty, that of Timoleon, examined alongside them, having along with its nobility a great deal of ease, appears to those who reckon well and justly to be not the work of fortune but of a virtue that has fortune's favor. And yet he himself attributed everything that succeeded to fortune: for writing to his friends at home and speaking before the Syracusan assembly
he often said he was grateful to god because, wishing to save Sicily, god had inscribed Timoleon's own name upon it. And in his house he founded a shrine and sacrificed to Automatia, and consecrated the house itself to the Good Daimon. He lived in a house which the Syracusans had chosen out for him as the prize of his generalship, and in the pleasantest and finest of the country estates, where he spent most of his time, having sent for
his wife and children from home. Since he never went back to Corinth, and he did not mix himself into the turmoils of Greece, nor did he give himself over to political envy, into which most generals run aground through insatiable desire for honors and power; but he remained there, enjoying the good things he himself had contrived — the greatest of which was to look, because of himself, upon so many cities and tens of thousands of people living in happiness.
But since it was necessary, it seems, not only that every lark should grow a crest, as Simonides says, but that every democracy should breed a sycophant, two of the popular leaders, Laphystius and Demaenetus, made an attempt even against Timoleon. Of these, when Laphystius was binding him over to some lawsuit, Timoleon would not let the citizens raise an uproar or hinder it, saying that he himself had willingly undergone so many toils and dangers for the sake of this — that any Syracusan who wished might have recourse to the laws.
And when Demaenetus, in the assembly, made many accusations against his generalship, Timoleon said nothing in reply to him, but replied only that he was grateful to the gods, to whom he had prayed that the Syracusans might come to have the right of free speech. Having, then, by common agreement accomplished the greatest and finest deeds of the Greeks of his time, and being alone in achieving those actions to which the sophists were always
summoning the Greeks through their festival orations, having distinguished himself in these, and having been brought forth from the evils that had gripped ancient Greece by fortune, untainted and pure, having displayed terrible force and courage against barbarians and tyrants, and justice and gentleness toward Greeks and friends, and having set up for his fellow citizens most of his trophies of contest without tears and without grief,
and having handed Sicily over, purged in not even eight full years, to its inhabitants free of the everlasting and inbred evils and diseases — already an old man, he grew dim in his sight, and then soon after was completely blinded, neither having given himself any cause nor having been abused by fortune, but from some hereditary condition and affliction, it seems, that combined with the passage of time. For it is reported that quite a number
of those related to him by blood likewise lost their sight, worn down by age. But Athanis reports that his sight had already begun failing him while the campaign against Hippo and Mamercus was still under way, at Mylae, in camp, and the impairment became visible to all, yet he did not for this reason abandon the siege, but carried the war through to its end and took the tyrants captive; and that when
he returned to Syracuse, he at once laid down his sole rule and asked to be released by the citizens, since affairs had come to their finest conclusion. That he himself bore this misfortune without grief one might admire the less; but the honor and gratitude that the Syracusans showed toward the man once he was blind is worthy of wonder — they themselves going to his door and bringing the foreign visitors who were staying in the city
to his house and estate, so that they might behold their benefactor, exulting and taking great pride that he had chosen to live out his life among them, thus disdaining, for the sake of their good fortune, so brilliant a return to Greece as had been prepared for him. And of the many great things written and done in his honor, none was less than this: that the assembly of the Syracusan people voted
that whenever war should befall them against foreign peoples, they should employ a Corinthian as general. And a fine sight too was that which took place at the assemblies in his honor: for on lesser matters they reached decisions on their own, but for the weightier deliberations they would call him in. And he, being conveyed through the marketplace on a yoked carriage, would proceed to the theater, and as the cart was brought in, with him sitting just as he happened to be, the people
would greet him, hailing him with one voice, and he, returning the greeting and giving some time to their acclamations and praises, would then listen to the matter in question and declare his opinion. When this had been ratified by show of hands, the attendants would lead the carriage back again through the theater, and the citizens, having escorted him out with shouting and clapping, would then transact by themselves the rest of the public business. Living in such
honor, cared for in his old age with goodwill, like a common father, he died from some slight cause that joined with time. And when days had been granted to the Syracusans to prepare the funeral, and to the surrounding peoples and foreign visitors to gather, he obtained a splendid provision in all respects, and the bier, chosen by vote of the young men, they carried, adorned, through the very tyrannical strongholds of Dionysius,
which were then being demolished. Many tens of thousands of men and women escorted it, whose appearance was fitting for a festival, all crowned with garlands and wearing clean clothing, while their voices and tears, mingled with the blessing pronounced upon the dead man, showed not a discharge of honor nor a public service performed from formal decree, but a rightful longing and the gratitude of genuine goodwill. Finally, when the bier had been set upon the pyre, Demetrius, who
was the loudest-voiced of the heralds of that time, proclaimed a written proclamation to this effect: 'The people of the Syracusans bury this man, Timoleon son of Timodemus, a Corinthian, at the cost of two hundred minae, and have honored him for all time to come with contests in music, horsemanship, and athletics, because, having put down the tyrants, and having conquered the barbarians in war, and having resettled the greatest of the devastated cities, he restored their laws to the Sicilian Greeks.' They made the burial
of his body in the marketplace, and later, enclosing it with colonnades and building wrestling-schools within, they dedicated it as a gymnasium for the young men, and called it the Timoleonteum. And they themselves, living under the constitution and the laws which he had established, continued for a long time in prosperity.

======== Aemilius Paulus ========

It fell to me to take up the writing of Lives for the sake of others, but by now I persist and linger over it also for my own sake, using history as a kind of mirror in which I try, somehow, to arrange and assimilate my own life to the virtues of these men. For the effect is nothing other than a kind of shared living and companionship, when through history we receive and take in each of them in turn as a guest, as it were, and consider "how great he was, and of what sort,"
taking from their actions what is most important and finest for our understanding. Ah, what greater joy could you get than this, or one more effective toward the correction of character? For Democritus says one ought to pray that we may meet with well-fated images and that the kindred and useful things should come to us from our surroundings rather than the base
and the crooked — a doctrine that is not true and that drags philosophy down into endless superstitions. But we, by our engagement with history and our habitual practice of writing, prepare ourselves always to receive into our souls the memories of the best and most approved men, and if the necessary intercourse with those we live among casts upon us anything base or malicious or ignoble, to drive it off
and thrust it away, turning our thought, gracious and gentle, toward the finest examples. Of these I have now set before you the life of Timoleon of Corinth and that of Aemilius Paulus, men who employed not only similar principles but also similar good fortune in their affairs, and who will furnish grounds for dispute as to whether it was by good fortune rather than by wisdom that they achieved
the greatest of their successes. That the house of the Aemilii at Rome was among the patrician and ancient houses, most writers agree. But some of those who credit Pythagoras with educating King Numa claim that Mamercus, son of Pythagoras the wise, was the earliest member of the family and gave it its name, being called Aemilius because of the charm (haimylia) and grace of his speech. Now most of those who
came forth to fame from this house were fortunate on account of the virtue they pursued, but the misfortune of Lucius Paulus at Cannae showed both his wisdom and his courage at once. For when he could not persuade his fellow commander, by opposing him, not to fight, he took part in the battle against his will, yet he did not share in the flight; rather, when the man who had joined battle abandoned the field, he himself stood and fought
the enemy and died. His daughter Aemilia married Scipio the Great, and his son was Paulus Aemilius, about whom these things are written; he came to manhood at a time flourishing with the reputations and virtues of the most distinguished and greatest men, and he shone forth, not pursuing the same pursuits as the young men then in good repute, nor traveling the same road from the start. For he did not practice oratory for the courts, nor greetings
and handshakes and the friendly attentions by which most men, currying favor, won over the people, becoming attentive and eager to please — he abandoned all this entirely, being naturally unsuited to either course, but instead won for himself a reputation, superior to both, based on courage and justice and good faith, in which he was immediately distinguished among his contemporaries. At any rate, having sought the first of the notable offices, the aedileship, he was preferred over twelve men who stood for election with him, all of whom, it is said,
afterward held the consulship. Having become a priest of those called augurs, whom the Romans appoint as overseers and guardians of the divination from birds and heavenly signs, he attended so closely to the customs of his fathers and understood so well the reverence of the ancients concerning the divine that he made the priesthood, which was thought an honor pursued otherwise merely for glory, one of the highest of arts, and bore witness to the
philosophers who defined piety as the knowledge of how to serve the gods. For everything was done by him with experience and diligence, setting aside his other business whenever it was time for this, and leaving nothing out nor introducing any innovation, but constantly disputing with his fellow priests even over small matters, and teaching that even if one thinks the divine is easy-going and unmoved by neglect,
yet for the city itself indulgence and overlooking of these things is dangerous: for no one at the outset moves the state by a great transgression straightaway, but those who let go of exactness in small things dissolve the guard that protects against greater ones. In like manner he showed himself an examiner and guardian of military customs and ancestral practices as well, not courting popularity in his generalship, nor, as
most did then, courting a second command through the first by winning over and being lenient toward those he commanded; instead, acting as though he were a priest officiating over other fearsome rites, he expounded every custom concerning campaigns and dealt harshly with those who disobeyed and transgressed, so that he set his country upright, regarding the defeat of the enemy as almost secondary to the training of its citizens. When the war against
Antiochus the Great arose for the Romans, and the most capable commanders had turned toward that quarter, another war rose up from the west, in Iberia, great disturbances having occurred; against this Aemilius was sent out as praetor, not holding the six fasces which those in that office have, but taking on as many again besides, so that the dignity of the office became consular. In two pitched battles he
defeated the barbarians, killing about thirty thousand, and the success of his generalship seems to have been clearly manifest, the favorable lay of the ground and the crossing of a certain river having granted the soldiers ease toward the victory; and he brought under his power two hundred and fifty cities, which received him willingly, and leaving the province settled in peace and good faith he returned to Rome, not having become richer by a single drachma from the
campaign. He was also rather sluggish in other matters of moneymaking, but lavish and unsparing with what he had — and it was not much; indeed the dowry owed to his wife after his death he barely managed to pay in full. He married Papiria, daughter of Masso, a man of consular rank, and after living with her a long time he dissolved the marriage, though by her he had become the father of the finest children: for it was she who bore him the
most famous Scipio and Fabius Maximus. The reason given in writing for the separation has not come down to us, but there seems to be a true story told concerning a certain divorce, how a certain Roman was divorcing his spouse, and when his companions took him to task, asking, "Is she not virtuous? Is she not beautiful? Is she not fertile?" — he extended his foot, showing the shoe upon it (a calceus, as the Romans term it), and replied, "Is this not handsome? Is it not newly made?
But none of you could know where it is that my foot is pinched." For in truth, great and open faults drive some men to part from their wives, but the small, frequent frictions arising from some incompatibility and disharmony of character, unnoticed by others, produce the incurable estrangements within a shared life. Aemilius, then, having parted from Papiria, took another
wife, and when she bore him two male children he kept these in his own household, but the earlier sons he gave in adoption into the greatest houses and the most distinguished families, the elder to Fabius Maximus, the man who had been consul five times, and the younger, being nephew of Scipio Africanus, he placed as that man's son and gave him the name Scipio. As for the daughters of Aemilius, the son of Cato took one in marriage, and the
other by Aelius Tubero, a man most excellent and one who bore poverty most nobly among the Romans. For there were sixteen kinsmen, all Aelii, and a single modest dwelling along with one small plot of land was enough to support the whole group, who shared one hearth together with their many children and wives; among these women was the daughter of this Aemilius, despite his having twice held the consulship and twice celebrated a triumph — she was proud rather than ashamed of her husband's poverty, but
admired the virtue on account of which he was poor. But brothers and kinsmen nowadays, unless they mark out their common property by boundary-stones and rivers and dividing walls, and take a good wide space between one another, never cease quarreling. These things, then, history allows those who wish to save themselves to reckon and take note of. Aemilius, having been appointed consul, campaigned against the Ligurians beyond the Alps,
whom some also call Ligustines, a warlike and high-spirited people, taught to make war skillfully by the Romans through their proximity. For they dwell in the farthest reaches of Italy where it borders the Alps, including those Alpine regions bathed by the Tyrrhenian Sea and rising toward Libya, mingled together with Gallic tribes and the seaboard Iberians; and at that time, having also taken to
the sea with pirate ships, they were plundering and cutting off trade, sailing as far as the Pillars of Heracles. When Aemilius advanced against them, they stood their ground, having become forty thousand in number; but he, with eight thousand men in all, engaged them though they were five times as many, and having routed them and shut them up within their walls, he put out a message that was humane and open to settlement — for the Romans did not wish to wipe out the Ligurian people entirely, since they served
as a kind of fence or bulwark set in the way of the Gallic uprisings that were always hovering over Italy. Trusting Aemilius, then, they handed over both their ships and their cities. He did the cities no wrong except only to tear down their walls, and he gave them back; but he took away all their ships, leaving them not a single vessel larger than a three-oared boat; and those of their captives, whether taken by land or by sea,
he recovered many of, both foreigners and Romans found among them. That consulship, then, had these actions as its notable achievements. Afterward, having often made it clear that he wished to be consul again, and once even having announced his candidacy, when he failed and was passed over, he thereafter kept quiet, attending to the sacred rites and training his sons in the native and ancestral education, in which
he himself had been trained, and in the Greek education with even greater eagerness. For not only grammarians and sophists and rhetoricians, but also sculptors and painters and trainers of colts and hounds and teachers of hunting were Greeks, attending the young men, and their father, if no public business stood in the way, was always present while they practiced and exercised, having become the most devoted father among the Romans. Now the time for public affairs
was that time when, warring against Perseus king of the Macedonians, the Romans held their generals to blame, as men who through inexperience and lack of daring were conducting affairs shamefully and ridiculously, suffering ill rather than doing ill. For having just recently driven Antiochus, surnamed the Great, out of the rest of Asia beyond the Taurus and shut him up in Syria, content with a settlement of fifteen thousand
talents, and shortly before that having overwhelmed Philip in Thessaly, liberating the Greeks from Macedonian rule — kings unmatched by anyone in boldness or might — and having fought Hannibal to defeat, they thought it intolerable that they should be regarded as carried along on equal terms with Perseus, as though he were a match for Rome, though he had for a long time now been warring against them out of the remnants of his father's defeat, not knowing that by far the
Macedonian power, defeated, Philip had made stronger and more warlike. Of these matters I shall go through briefly, beginning further back. Antigonus, the most powerful of Alexander's successors and generals, secured the royal title for himself and his descendants; he fathered a son, Demetrius, whose own son was the Antigonus called Gonatas; his son was Demetrius, who himself reigned for no long time, and leaving behind a son still a child in age,
Philip, he died. And the leading men of the Macedonians, fearing anarchy, brought in Antigonus, who was a cousin of the deceased, and having married him to the mother of Philip, made him first guardian and general, then, finding him moderate and useful to the common good, they proclaimed him king. He was surnamed Doson, as one prone to promise but not to fulfill his promises. After him Philip reigned and flourished among the greatest of
kings while still a young man, and won a reputation as one who would restore Macedonia to its ancient dignity and alone would hold in check the power of the Romans, already rising against all. But having been defeated in a great battle near Scotussa by Titus Flamininus, he then cowered and entrusted all his own affairs to the Romans, and being met with a moderate rebuke, he was content. But afterward, bearing it heavily, and being resolved still to reign,
leading the Romans by their goodwill, considering it the mark of a captive who loves luxury rather than a man possessing spirit and courage, he held back his intention from war and organized himself secretly and craftily. For the cities along the roads and by the sea, which had grown weak and desolate so as to be held in contempt, he passed over, and gathered a great force further inland, and filled the inland districts, forts, and cities with arms, with abundant money, and with
men in their prime, and trained his forces for war, keeping it hidden and concealed unnoticed. For thirty thousand suits of armor lay unused in storage, and eight hundred thousand medimni of grain had been built into the walls, and such an amount of money as sufficed to maintain ten thousand mercenaries for ten years, fighting in defense of the country. But that man did not live to set these things in motion and bring them into action, having given up
his life through grief and despondency; for he learned that, on the slander of the more wicked one, he had wrongly executed Demetrius, one of his own sons. Perseus, the son left to him, inherited the kingdom along with the enmity toward the Romans, though he lacked the steadiness to carry it, given how petty and low his character was, a character in which, of all the passions and afflictions present, greed took first place. It is said, moreover, that he was not even legitimate by birth, but
the woman who lived with Philip took him as a newborn from a certain Argive seamstress named Gnathaenion who had borne him, and secretly substituted him. For this reason it seems Perseus was especially afraid and killed Demetrius, lest, if the house had a legitimate successor, he would expose his own bastardy. Nevertheless, though he was ignoble and base, borne along by the strength of circumstances toward war, he stood firm and held out for a long
time, wearing down Roman commanders of consular rank, armies, and great fleets, and even overcoming some of them. For he routed Publius Licinius, who had first invaded Macedonia, in a cavalry engagement, killing twenty-five hundred good men and taking six hundred others alive, and making an unexpected attack on the naval station anchored off Oreus, he captured twenty merchant vessels laden with their own cargo, and sank the rest, which were full of grain;
he also captured four quinqueremes, and fought a second battle, in which he repelled the consular Hostilius who was forcing his way through the region of Elimia; and when Hostilius invaded secretly through Thessaly, Perseus challenged him to battle and frightened him off. As a side venture of the war, undertaking a campaign against the Dardanians, as though scorning the Romans and having leisure to spare, he slaughtered ten thousand of the barbarian tribesmen and carried off a great haul of plunder. He also stirred up
the Gauls settled around the Ister, who are called Bastarnae, a warlike people of horsemen, and through King Gentius he urged the Illyrians to join in the war, and a report spread that the barbarians had been persuaded by him for pay to invade Italy through lower Gaul along the Adriatic. When the Romans learned of this, they thought it best to set aside the favors and petitions of those seeking commands, and to call to the leadership themselves a man of sense who knew how to handle great affairs.
This was Paulus Aemilius, already advanced in age, being about sixty years old, but still vigorous in bodily strength, fortified by sons-in-law and young sons and a multitude of friends and powerful relatives, all of whom persuaded him to obey the people who were calling him to the consulship.
He at first put on airs before the crowd and turned aside their eagerness and enthusiasm, as though he had no need to hold office; but when they kept coming daily to his door and calling him to the forum and shouting for him, he was persuaded. And as soon as he appeared among those seeking the consulship, he seemed not one about to receive an office, but one bringing victory and mastery in war and
giving it to the citizens by going down to the field. With such great hope and eagerness all received him and made him consul a second time, not allowing the provinces to be assigned by lot, as was customary, but voting at once to give him charge of the war against Macedonia. It is said that when he was proclaimed general against Perseus, and was escorted home in splendor by the whole people, he found
his little daughter Tertia, still a child, in tears, and embracing her, he asked why she was upset. She threw her arms around him and kissed him, saying, "Father, don't you know that our Perseus has died?" — for she meant a small pet dog bearing that name, which had just died. And Aemilius said, "Good fortune, daughter, and I accept the omen." This story, then, Cicero the orator
has recorded in his work on divination. Whereas it was customary for those who received the consulship to offer some sort of thanks and address the people kindly from the rostrum, Aemilius, gathering the citizens in assembly, said that he had sought his earlier consulship because he himself needed office, but that this second one he sought because they needed a general; for which reason he owed them no thanks, but rather, if they thought they would fare better in the war under someone else,
he would step aside from the command, but if they trusted him, they should not act as co-generals or spread rumors, but should silently furnish whatever the war required, since, were they to try issuing orders to their own general, they would only make themselves more ridiculous in their campaigns than they now were. By these words he produced in the citizens great respect for himself, and great expectation of what was to come,
all rejoicing that, passing over the flatterers, they had chosen a general with frankness and high spirit. So devoted to excellence and honor was the Roman people, even while seeking mastery and to be greatest of all. As for Aemilius Paulus, when he set out on campaign, I count his enjoyment of a fortunate and easy voyage, carried swiftly and safely to the camp, as a matter of divine favor;
but as for the war itself and his generalship, seeing that part of it was accomplished by sharpness of daring, part by good counsel, part by the eager service of friends, and part by his own courage amid dangers and his use of sound reasoning, I cannot attribute to the man's so-called good fortune any brilliant and conspicuous achievement such as other generals have. Unless indeed one says that Perseus's
avarice was itself a piece of good fortune for Aemilius in his affairs — an avarice which overturned and cast down the splendid and great hopes that had been raised for the Macedonian war, since Perseus turned cowardly over money. For the Bastarnae had come at his request, ten thousand horsemen and ten thousand foot soldiers, all mercenaries, men who knew neither how to farm, nor to sail, nor to live off flocks, but practiced one task
and one skill continually: to fight and to overcome those arrayed against them. When they encamped in the region of Maedica and mingled with the king's men — tall in body, astonishing in their exercises, boastful and splendid in their threats against the enemy — they instilled courage in the Macedonians and a belief that the Romans would not stand their ground but would be terrified at the very sight
and movement of these men, so foreign and hard to look upon. Having disposed the men in this way, Perseus, and having filled them with such hopes, when asked for a thousand pieces of gold for each commander, grew dizzy and lost his senses at the sheer amount of gold involved, and out of stinginess refused and let go of the alliance, as though he were managing a household rather than making war on the Romans, and meaning to render an exact account of the expense of the war to those he was fighting; and yet
he had teachers in those men, for whom, apart from all other preparation, a hundred thousand soldiers had been gathered and stood ready for their needs. But he, rising up against so great a power and a war in which so much was consumed in upkeep, measured out and stamped his gold, afraid to touch it as though it belonged to someone else. And he did this though he was no Lydian, nor born a Phoenician, but one who laid claim by kinship to the excellence of Alexander and Philip,
men who, by holding that affairs are bought with money and not money valued above all affairs, mastered everything. It was said, indeed, that it was not Philip who captured the cities of the Greeks, but Philip's gold. And Alexander, when he undertook the campaign against the Indians, seeing that the Persian wealth the Macedonians were dragging along had become heavy and unwieldy, first burned the royal wagons,
and then persuaded the rest to do the same, so that they set out light for war, as if released from a burden. But Perseus, though he poured out gold on himself, his children, and his kingdom, was unwilling to be saved by spending a little money, but instead, carried off with much of it, the rich captive, showed the Romans how much his stinginess had actually preserved for their benefit. Not only did he trick and dismiss the Gauls, but also, having roused Gentius the
Illyrian to join in the war for three hundred talents, he set out the money, counted, for his envoys and allowed it to be sealed; but when Gentius, persuaded that he had what he had asked for, committed an impious and terrible deed — for he seized and bound envoys of the Romans who had come to him — Perseus, thinking that the provocation of war no longer required him to give the money, since Gentius had already given irrevocable
pledges of hostility and had thrown himself into the war through so great a wrong, deprived the wretched man of the three hundred talents, and looked on unmoved a short time later as he was lifted, along with his children and wife, as if from a nest, out of his kingdom by Lucius Anicius the general, who had been sent against him with a force. Coming up against such an opponent, Aemilius held him in contempt, but marveled at the preparation and
power under him. For there were four thousand horsemen, and infantry not much short of forty thousand drawn up in phalanx. Positioned before the sea along the foothills of Olympus, on ground that offered no approach from any side and was everywhere blocked off by him with fortifications and wooden outworks, he felt great security, thinking he would wear down Aemilius by time and expense of money; but Aemilius was
active in mind toward every plan and turned to every experiment, but seeing his army, on account of its former security, growing restless and in speech playing at generalship over many matters not their concern, he rebuked them, and gave orders that no one should meddle or worry about anything except how each man should keep his own body and his full armor active and use his sword in the Roman manner, once the general gave the signal; and
he ordered the night watches to be kept without spears, so that the men would pay closer attention and struggle against sleep, if they were unable to fend off the enemy's approach otherwise. Since the men were troubled especially by the need for drinking water — for what seeped through and collected right by the sea itself was scanty and foul — Aemilius, seeing Olympus, a great mountain covered with trees, looming above,
and inferring from the greenness of the woodland that there were sources of springs running underground, had many air-shafts and wells dug along the foothill. These at once filled with clean streams, as the compressed water yielded by its pull and flow toward the emptied space. And yet some say that there are no ready-made hidden springs of water lying in such places from which they flow, nor is their emergence a matter of uncovering or breaking open
an outlet, but rather that the matter is generated and formed there out of moisture condensing: and that the damp exhalation condenses through density and cold, whenever, compressed at depth, it becomes fluid. Consider that a woman's breast holds no store of milk sitting ready like a filled jar; rather it converts nourishment internally and, filtering it through, produces the milk itself — and in just the same way, those cool, spring-rich places in the earth
do not contain hidden water, nor do they release from some ready and underlying source channels and depths of so many rivers, but by pressing and compressing breath and air they turn it into water. At any rate, ground that has been dug tends to well up and flow more freely under such probing, the way a nursing mother's breast responds and yields more to the infant's suckling,
moistening and softening the exhalation; but whatever parts of the earth are inert and compacted are blind to the generation of water, not having the motion that produces moisture. Those who make this argument have given grounds for the skeptics to argue that blood, too, is not present in living creatures, but is generated at wounds by the transformation of some breath or of flesh, producing a flow and a melting together. But they are refuted by the
in tunnels and mines they encounter rivers at depth, not gathered together little by little, as would be likely if they took their origin from earth that is moved at that very moment, but poured out all at once. He also saw that when a rock was split by a blow, a violent stream of water leapt out, and then stopped. So much about these matters. Aemilius kept quiet for some days, and they say that never before
had such great quietness occurred with armies so large gathered so close together. But when, by stirring everything and making trial, he learned that only one passage was still left unguarded — a single road running via Perrhaebia beside the Pythium shrine and the Rock — hoping more from the fact that the place was not guarded than fearing the roughness and difficulty of the terrain on account of which it was not guarded, he took counsel. First among those present, Nasica, surnamed Scipio,
son-in-law of Scipio Africanus, and later most powerful in the Senate, undertook to become leader of the encircling force; second, Fabius Maximus, the eldest of Aemilius' sons, still a young man, rose up eagerly. Aemilius, pleased, gave them not as many troops as Polybius says, but as many as Nasica himself says he took, having written about these actions in a short letter to one of the
kings. Those outside the regular formation were three thousand Italians in number, and the left wing came to about five thousand; to these Nasica added one hundred twenty riders plus two hundred Cretan and Thracian troops combined under Harpalus, and he marched off on the coastal route, pitching camp near the Heracleum, giving the impression that he would circle round by ship and surround the enemy's position. But when
the soldiers had dined and darkness had come, he told the commanders the truth and led them through the night in the opposite direction from the sea, and halting, gave the army rest under the Pythium. There the height of Olympus rises more than ten stadia; this is indicated by an epigram of the man who measured it, as follows: 'The sacred height of Olympus, above the Pythian peak of Apollo, has, measured straight down,'
'one full ten stadia, and beyond that a plethron, falling short by four feet in its measure. Xenagoras son of Eumelus took the measure of the route: and you, lord, hail, and grant good things.' And yet the geometers say that neither the height of a mountain nor the depth of the sea exceeds ten stadia. Xenagoras, however, seems to have taken his measurement not carelessly, but by method and with instruments. So
Nasica spent the night there. But as Perseus watched Aemilius remaining motionless in his position and did not reckon what was happening, a Cretan deserter fled from the road and came announcing the Romans' circling movement. Perseus, thrown into confusion, did not move the main camp, but put ten thousand hired foreign troops together with two thousand Macedonians under Milo's command and sent them off, urging him to hurry and seize the passes. Against these
Polybius says the Romans fell upon them while they were still asleep, but Nasica says there was a sharp struggle and danger at the heights, and that he himself struck down with his spear-shaft, through the chest, a Thracian mercenary who ran up to grapple with him, and that when the enemy were driven out, and Milo fled most shamefully, without his weapons and in only his tunic, he followed safely, at the same time bringing his
army down into the country. When these events fell upon Perseus, he quickly struck camp and led his men back, having become thoroughly afraid and confused in his hopes. Nevertheless it was necessary for him, remaining before Pydna, either to attempt battle or to receive the war with his army scattered about the cities, since once he had entered the country he could not withdraw without much slaughter and many dead. In numbers of men
he was in fact superior on the spot, and there was much eagerness present among those defending on behalf of their children and wives, with the king himself watching each thing and sharing the danger. From this his friends encouraged Perseus; and pitching camp he drew up his forces for battle, and reconnoitered the ground, and divided the commands, as one about to meet the Romans at once from the march. The place was a plain suited to the phalanx's need
of level ground and even terrain, and continuous hills, one after another, offering the light-armed and unarmed troops places of refuge and circuits, and flowing through the middle were the rivers Aeson and Leucus, shallow just then, since summer was drawing to its close, which seemed nonetheless likely to cause the Romans some difficulty. Aemilius, when he had joined together with Nasica, came down drawn up for battle against the
enemy; but when he saw their battle-line and their numbers, he was astonished and halted the march, reckoning something with himself. The young officers, eager to fight, rode up alongside urging him to waste no time, Nasica foremost among them, made bold by his success near Olympus. Aemilius, smiling, said, 'If I had your youth, the many
victories that have taught me the mistakes of the defeated would not restrain me — but they forbid me from joining battle straight from the march against a phalanx already drawn up and standing firm.' After this he ordered the front ranks, visible to the enemy, to form into cohorts and make a show of battle order, while those at the rear were turned about, in position, to pitch a rampart and encamp. Thus, as the units continuous with the rearmost were withdrawn one by one in succession, it went unnoticed
that he had dissolved the battle line and settled everyone into the camp without disturbance. When night had come and after dinner they turned to sleep and rest, suddenly the moon, though full and high, grew dark, and as its light left it, it changed through all manner of colors and vanished. The Romans, as is their custom, called back its light with the clashing of bronze and held up many fires
with torches and brands toward the sky, but the Macedonians did nothing of the sort; instead terror and amazement gripped the camp, and word quietly spread among many that the apparition signified the eclipse of a king. Aemilius was not unlearned or wholly inexperienced in the irregularities of eclipses, which throw the moon, as it revolves, into the shadow of the earth at fixed periods,
and hide it, until, having passed through the darkened region, it shines out again toward the sun. Nevertheless, since he had great regard for the divine and gave himself to sacrifice and omen-reading, so the instant the moon's light returned unobscured he offered eleven calves to it. At daybreak, sacrificing oxen to Heracles, he obtained no favorable omens through twenty victims; but at the twenty-first the signs appeared and foretold
victory to those who defended themselves. Having therefore vowed a hundred cattle to the god and a sacred contest, he ordered the commanders to draw up the army for battle, while he himself, waiting for the sun to decline and turn, so that as they fought the sun would not shine directly in their faces at dawn, passed the hours seated in his tent, its entrance facing the open plain and the enemy camp beyond. Around
the late afternoon, some say the attack arose from the enemy's side through a stratagem of Aemilius himself: that they drove out an unbridled horse and let it loose upon them, and that the Romans pursuing it provided the beginning of battle. A different account holds that Thracian troops serving under Alexander seized fodder meant for the Roman baggage animals, and that a sharp sortie of seven hundred Ligurians was made against them; and as more men came to help on each side, the battle was thus joined
on both sides. Aemilius then, like a helmsman judging by the present swell and movement of the sea the magnitude of the coming storm from the surge and agitation of the camps, came forward from his tent and went along the ranks of the heavy infantry encouraging them, while Nasica, riding out to the skirmishers, saw that all the enemy were now all but at close quarters. The Thracians advanced first, and it was these, he says,
whose appearance most struck terror: men tall in body, wearing beneath gleaming white shields and greaves, black tunics, brandishing straight, heavy iron broadswords from their right shoulders. Beside the Thracians the mercenaries took their place, of every sort of equipment, mixed in with Paeonians; and after these a third division, the picked men, the purest in valor and age of the Macedonians themselves,
flashing with gilded arms and freshly-dyed scarlet cloaks. As these were forming into line, the rising phalanxes of the bronze-shields advancing from the rampart covered the plain in glinting iron and the sheen of bronze, and with the shouting and clamor of men urging each other on, filling the hill country with the noise. So boldly and swiftly did they advance that the first dead men fell within two stadia of the Roman rampart. As the assault was taking place,
Aemilius arrived, and found that the Macedonians in the picked divisions had already fixed the tips of their sarissas against the shields of the Romans and would not let their swords come within reach; and once he noticed the remaining Macedonians had likewise swung their shields down off their shoulders and, at a single signal, had lowered their sarissas and stood their ground receiving the shield-bearers, he perceived the strength of their close-locked shields
and the roughness of their bristling defense, and fear and astonishment seized him, as one who had never before seen a more terrifying sight; and often afterward he recalled that feeling and that spectacle. But at the time, showing himself cheerful and bright to those fighting, he rode past on horseback, bareheaded and without a breastplate. The Macedonian king, according to Polybius, when the battle was beginning, lost his nerve
and rode off into the city, pretending he was going to offer sacrifice to Heracles — a god who refuses offerings brought by cowards and grants no prayer that breaks the law. For it is not lawful for one who does not throw to hit the mark, nor for one who does not stand his ground to prevail, nor at all for the inactive to fare well, nor for the wicked man to be happy. But the god was present at Aemilius' prayers, for he prayed for mastery in war and victory while holding his spear, and
fighting, he called on the god as his ally. Yet a certain Posidonius, who says he lived at that time and took part in those events, and composed a multi-volume account of Perseus' reign, states that cowardice was not his reason, nor making the sacrifice a pretext, that he departed, but that on the day before the battle he happened to have his leg kicked by a horse; and that in the battle, though he was in
difficulty and was held back by his friends, he had one of the pack-drivers' horses fetched for him, and mounting it, unarmored, joined those in the phalanx, and as missiles of every kind flew from both sides, an all-iron javelin struck him, and though it did not strike him with its point, it grazed him sideways along his left flank, and with the force of its passing cut through his tunic and reddened his flesh with a dull
bruise, which kept its mark a long time. This, then, is what Posidonius says in Perseus' defense. As for the Romans, when they stood against the phalanx and could not force it back, Salvius, commander of the Paeligni, seized the standard of those under him and hurled it among the enemy. And since it is neither lawful nor pious for Italians to abandon a standard, the Paeligni rushed toward that
spot, and terrible deeds and sufferings met both sides as they clashed together. For some tried to knock aside the sarissas with their swords and to press forward with their shields, seizing the sarissas with their bare hands and pushing them aside, while others, holding their bristling defense firm with both hands and driving their weapons through those who fell upon them, since neither shield could hold back nor breastplate the force of the sarissa, tossed up over their heads
the bodies of the Paeligni and Marrucini, with no reckoning at all, but with beastlike fury, thrusting themselves against opposing blows and obvious death. When the front fighters had thus been destroyed in this way, those posted behind them were checked; and it was not flight, but a withdrawal toward the mountain called Olocrus, so that Aemilius, seeing this, Posidonius says, tore his tunic, since these men were giving way,
while the rest of the Romans turned away from the phalanx, which offered no opening for attack, but, like a rampart, met them everywhere unassailable with its dense array of sarissas. But when, because the ground was uneven, and because of the length of the battle line the close-locked shield formation could not be kept unbroken, he saw the Macedonian phalanx taking on many breaks and gaps, as is likely to happen in large armies and
with the varied surges of the combatants, in some parts being squeezed together, in others thrusting forward, he moved quickly and, dividing the maniples, ordered the men to break off into the gaps and empty spaces in the enemy's formation and, engaging them there, to make not one battle against the whole line but many battles mixed together part by part. As Aemilius taught these tactics to his officers, and the officers taught their soldiers,
as soon as they had slipped in and made openings within the enemy's ranks, attacking some from the flank where they were exposed, and cutting others off by encircling them, at once the strength and the collective force of the phalanx was lost as it was broken apart, and in the encounters man against man and few against few, the Macedonians, thrusting with small daggers against sturdy shields that reached to the feet, and with light targes against
the swords of the Romans, which by their weight and downward stroke drove through every piece of armor to the body, could not hold out well and were routed. Around these men there was a great struggle, where indeed Marcus, whose father was Cato and whose father-in-law was Aemilius, showing every kind of valor, lost his sword; and being a young man reared amid a great many teachings and owing proofs of great excellence to a great father, he thought it not worth living
if he should abandon it as a spoil for the enemies while he himself lived, and he ran through the battle, if anywhere he might catch sight of some friend or comrade, telling him what had befallen him and begging for help. And many good men, breaking off from the rest with a single rush, gathered about him as their leader and charged into the enemy; and with a great struggle and much slaughter and many wounds, having pushed the enemy back from their ground and taking possession of a place
empty and bare, they turned to search for the sword; and when at last, with difficulty, it was found hidden among many weapons and heaps of corpses, they were overjoyed, and raising the paean they pressed still more brilliantly upon those of the enemy still standing together; and at last the three thousand picked men, remaining in their ranks and fighting, were all cut down; and of the rest, as they fled, the slaughter was great, so that
the plain and the foothills were filled with corpses, and even on the next day, when the Romans made their crossing, the river Leucus still ran discolored with gore. Reports claim over twenty-five thousand perished. Of the Romans there fell, as Posidonius says, a hundred, but as Nasica says, eighty. And this greatest of battles reached its sharpest decision most quickly; for having begun to fight at the ninth hour,
they were victorious before the tenth, and using what remained of the day for pursuit, and pursuing as far as a hundred and twenty stadia, they turned back only when evening was already deep. And the rest were met by their attendants with torches and led back with joy and shouting to their tents, which were lit up with light and decked with wreaths of ivy and bay leaves; yet the commander himself was seized by deep sorrow.
For of his two sons who were serving in the army, the younger was nowhere to be seen — the one he loved most and whom he saw as by nature far excelling his brothers in excellence. Being spirited and ambitious in soul, and still a boy in age, Aemilius supposed him utterly lost, having through inexperience been swept in among the fighting enemy. While he was in this distress and suffering, the whole army perceived it, and in the middle of
their supper men sprang up and rushed about carrying torches, a good number heading for Aemilius’ tent, others searching in front of the rampart among the earliest fallen. Dejection held the camp and shouting held the plain, as they called out for Scipio. For he had been admired by all from the very start, being tempered in character for command and public life as no other of his kinsmen was. Late
then, indeed, when he was already almost given up for lost, he returned from chasing the enemy accompanied by only a pair or so of comrades, soaked in blood and gore from the slaughter, like a noble young hound, carried away uncontrollably by pleasure at the victory. This is the Scipio who in the years that followed razed Carthage and Numantia to the ground, and became by far the foremost of the Romans of his time in valor, and attained the greatest power. To Aemilius, then,
fortune, deferring the requital of his achievement to another occasion, at that time did not render the full pleasure of the victory. Perseus, in flight from Pydna, withdrew to Pella, virtually all the cavalry having been saved from the battle. But when the infantry, overtaking the cavalry and reviling them as cowards and traitors, began to push them from their horses and strike them, Perseus, fearing the tumult,
turned his horse aside from the road, and pulling off the purple cloak so as not to be conspicuous, laid it before him, and carried the diadem in his hands. And as he walked along conversing with his companions, he dismounted and led his horse by hand. Of these companions, one pretended to fasten a loosened shoe-strap, another to water his horse, another to need a drink, and one by one, falling behind, they slipped away,
fearing not so much the enemy as his harshness. For, scarred by his misfortunes, he sought to turn the blame for the defeat from himself onto everyone else. And when at night he entered Pella, and Euctus and Eulaeus, the officers of the mint, met him, some reproaching him for what had happened, others speaking with untimely frankness and offering advice, he grew angry and killed them,
striking both of them himself with his little dagger. Only Evander of Crete, Archedamus of Aetolia, and Neon of Boeotia stayed at his side. Of the soldiers, the Cretans alone followed him, not out of goodwill but clinging to his money, like bees to honeycombs; for he had brought along a very great deal, and he had offered them from it to plunder — drinking cups and mixing-bowls and the rest of his furnishings
in silver and gold, worth about fifty talents. Coming first to Amphipolis, then from there to Galepsus, and with his fear somewhat relaxed, he relapsed again into that oldest and most inborn of his maladies, stinginess, and lamented to his friends that some of the golden vessels of Alexander the Great had been scattered among the Cretans through his own ignorance, and he begged those who held them, imploring and weeping,
to exchange them for coin. People who grasped the trick clearly were not fooled when he turned Cretan cunning against fellow Cretans; those who trusted him and handed the vessels back, however, were swindled. For he did not repay the silver, but having gained thirty talents from his friends — money which shortly afterward the enemy were to seize anyway — he sailed off with it to Samothrace, and fleeing there took refuge as a suppliant at the shrine of the Dioscuri. Now it is said that the Macedonians have always been
devoted to their kings, and at that time, as though clinging to a broken prop when everything had collapsed together, they surrendered themselves to Aemilius and within two days made him master of the whole of Macedonia; and this seems to bear witness to those who say that those achievements came about by a certain good fortune. There was also a divine coincidence connected with a sacrifice: when Aemilius was sacrificing at Amphipolis, and the offerings had already been begun, a thunderbolt struck down upon the
altar, set it ablaze, and consumed the sacred rite entirely along with it. But what happened with the report surpasses in every way anything of divine sign or fortune. For it was four days since Perseus had suffered defeat near Pydna, and in Rome, while the people were watching the horse races, suddenly a report burst into the front part of the theater that Aemilius, having won a great battle, had conquered Perseus and was subduing the whole of Macedonia. From this,
the report, spreading swiftly through the crowd, burst into joy accompanied by clapping and shouting that filled the city that entire day. Then, when the report could not be traced back to any firm origin, but seemed everywhere alike to be wandering without source, at that time it was scattered and dissolved; but a few days later, when they learned the truth clearly, they marveled at the report that had run ahead, since in
the falsehood there had been the truth. It is said also that on the very same day as the battle at the river Sagra, a report of it arose in the Peloponnese, and at Plataea a report of the battle at Mycale against the Medes. And when the Romans defeated the Tarquins together with the Latins, two men, handsome and tall, were seen bringing the news themselves from the army shortly afterward, and these were supposed to be the Dioscuri. The man who first met them
in the forum, beside the spring, giving water to their horses which were dripping with heavy sweat, marveled at their report of the victory. Then they are said to have touched his beard gently with their hands, smiling; and it at once changed from black hair to red, which gave credence to the report, and gave the man the surname Ahenobarbus, which means bronze-beard. To all these accounts
what happened in our own time lent credence. For when Antonius revolted from Domitian, and a great war from Germany was expected, while Rome was in turmoil, suddenly and spontaneously the populace produced from itself a report of victory, and a rumor ran through Rome that Antonius himself had been killed and that not a part of the defeated army traveling with him had been left. So much brilliance and force did
this belief attain that many of the men in office even offered sacrifice; and when the man who had first told it was sought out, there was found to be none, but the report, chased from one man to another, kept fleeing further away, and at last, sinking as it were into a boundless sea amid the infinite crowd, it proved to have no firm beginning at all. This report then quickly drained away out of the city; but as Domitian was marching
with his forces to the war, a message and dispatches already met him on the road on the way, announcing the victory. And it turned out that the day of the actual achievement and the day of the report were the same, though the places were more than twenty thousand stadia apart. These things no one among us is ignorant of. Gnaeus Octavius, the admiral serving under Aemilius, anchoring off Samothrace, granted Perseus his right of asylum on account of the
gods, but barred him from putting out to sea and escaping. Nevertheless Perseus somehow managed, unnoticed, to persuade a certain Oroandes, a Cretan who had a small boat, to take him aboard along with his money; but Oroandes, playing false in Cretan fashion, took the money by night, and telling Perseus to bring his children and the attendants he required to the harbor by the Demetrium on the next night, sailed away that very evening.
Perseus suffered pitifully, squeezing himself out through a narrow window along the wall, along with his children and wife, unaccustomed to hardship and wandering; and he let out the most pitiful groan when someone, seeing Oroandes already running far out at sea as Perseus wandered along the shore, told him of it. For day was already beginning to break, and, bereft of all hope, he withdrew in flight toward the wall — not unseen,
but anticipating the Romans — together with his wife; but as for his children, Ion took hold of them and handed them over — a man who had once been Perseus's beloved, but had now become a traitor and provided the chief cause that compelled the man, as though his children were being caught like wild animals, to come into their hands and surrender his own person to those who held them. He trusted most of all in Nasica, and kept calling for him,
but as he was not present, Perseus, having wept over his fortune and considered the necessity, surrendered himself into the hands of Gnaeus, making it especially clear at that moment that there was in him something more ignoble even than his love of money — his love of his own life; because of this, the one thing that fortune does not take away even from the fallen, namely pity, he stripped from himself. For when he begged to be brought before Aemilius, Aemilius
rose up, as to a great man fallen into a fall deserving of both indignation and pity, and went to meet him with his friends, in tears; but Perseus — a most shameful sight — threw himself upon his face and, clasping his knees, let out ignoble cries and entreaties, which Aemilius neither endured nor listened to, but looking at him with a face full of pain and grief, said, "Why, unhappy man, do you take away the greatest of the charges against fortune, by doing
things because of which you will seem not to be suffering misfortune undeservedly, but to have shown yourself unworthy not of your present, but of your former, good fortune? Why do you cast down my victory, and make my achievement a small thing, by displaying yourself as no noble or fitting adversary of the Romans? Valor, you know, even in men in misfortune has a great claim to reverence even among enemies; but cowardice, even when it prospers, is in every way most dishonorable to Romans." Nevertheless
Raising this man up and greeting him warmly, he handed him over to Tubero, while he himself drew his sons and sons-in-law and the youngest of his other commanders into his tent, and for a long time sat by himself in silence, so that everyone marveled. Then, beginning to speak about fortune and the affairs of men, he said, “Is it right for a man, when good fortune is present, to grow bold and”
think great things, having overthrown some nation, city, or kingdom — or does such a swing of fortune, placing before the man at war a lesson in the weakness shared by all, teach him instead to trust nothing as fixed or safe? For what occasion is there for men to feel confident, when the very fact of prevailing over others compels them most of all to fear fortune, and the reckoning of fate, revolving and settling now on one man, now on another, brings such despondency even to one who rejoices?
Or take the succession of Alexander, who rose to the greatest power and possessed the mightiest dominion — when we have set beneath our feet a fall that came in the fraction of a single hour, and we see kings who but lately were armed with as many tens of thousands of infantry and thousands of cavalry now receiving their daily food and drink from the hands of their enemies, do you suppose that our own affairs have any stability of fortune enduring against
time? Will you young men not cast down this empty bluster and this vaunting over victory, and instead go humbly cowering before the future, always watching to see upon what end the divine power will bring down, for each man, the retribution for his present good fortune?” Having discoursed at length on such things, they say, Aemilius sent the young men away with their boasting and arrogance thoroughly checked, chastened as though by a bridle by his words.
After this he turned the army to rest, and himself to viewing Greece and to a pastime both glorious and humane. For as he went about he restored the peoples and reorganized their governments, and gave gifts — grain from the royal stores to some, oil to others. So great a quantity, they say, was found stored up that those receiving and requesting it ran out before
the abundance of what was found could be used up. At Delphi, seeing a great square pillar built of white stones, upon which a golden statue of Perseus was to be set, he ordered his own statue to be placed there instead; for it was fitting, he said, that the defeated yield their place to the victors. At Olympia, they say, he uttered that much-repeated remark, that Pheidias had modeled Homer's Zeus. When the ten envoys
came from Rome, he gave the Macedonians back their land and cities, to dwell in them free and under their own laws, subject to paying a hundred talents in tribute to the Romans — more than double what they had been paying to their kings. Holding shows of contests of every kind and performing sacrifices to the gods, he set out feasts and banquets, using the abundant resources of the royal stores for the provisioning, but displaying such order and arrangement, in the seating and the receptions,
and such precise and careful attention to the honor and courtesy due to each person according to his worth, that the Greeks marveled that a man engaged in such great affairs left not even amusement without diligence, but rendered what was fitting even in small things. And he himself took delight in this too, that although many splendid preparations had been made, he himself was the most pleasing enjoyment and spectacle to those present, and to those who marveled at his attentiveness he said that it belonged to the same soul to conduct well both a battle line and a banquet — the one, so as to be most terrifying to the enemy; the other, so as to be most agreeable to those present.
No less did people praise his liberality and greatness of soul, since much silver and much gold had been gathered from the royal stores, and he did not even
wish to look at it, but handed it over to the quaestors for the public treasury. Only the king's books did he permit to be taken out, as a gift to his sons who loved learning, and when the battle-prizes were given out he presented his son-in-law Aelius Tubero with a bowl of five pounds' weight. This is the Tubero of whom we said that he lived with sixteen kinsmen, all supported from one small farm. And they say that this was the first silver ever to
enter the house of the Aelii, brought in on account of merit and honor, whereas at all other times neither the men themselves nor their wives had need of silver or gold. When all matters had been well arranged by him, he took leave of the Greeks, and having urged the Macedonians to remember the freedom given by the Romans and to preserve it through good order and concord, he set out for Epirus, having a decree of the senate that the soldiers who had fought
alongside him in the battle against Perseus should receive a benefit from the cities there. Wishing to fall upon all of them at once, with none expecting it, but suddenly, he summoned the ten foremost men of each city and directed them, on a set day, to deliver up all the silver and gold kept in their houses and temples. With each group he sent, as if for this very purpose, a garrison of soldiers and a company commander
who pretended to be seeking out and taking possession of the gold. When the day arrived, at one and the same moment they set out and turned to plundering and pillaging the cities, with the result that in the span of one hour alone, a hundred fifty thousand people were reduced to slavery and seventy cities were sacked, and from a devastation and ruin of such magnitude the portion given to each soldier came to no more than eleven drachmas, and all mankind shuddered at
the outcome of the war, seeing an entire nation's gain and profit broken down into such a small portion for each man. Now Aemilius, having done this most contrary to his own nature, which was equitable and kind, went down to Oricum; and crossing from there to Italy with his forces, he brought the royal sixteen-oared galley up the Tiber's current, adorned for splendor with captured arms and scarlet
and purple hangings, so that the Romans, as though beholding some spectacle of a triumphal procession from outside, held a kind of festival and enjoyed the sight in advance, running along the bank abreast of the ship as it moved slowly with the current. But the soldiers, having cast covetous eyes on the royal treasure, because the sum they got fell short of what they felt was owed them, nursed a hidden anger over it and ill-disposed toward Aemilius, though openly they accused him of having proved a harsh and despotic
commander, and they did not respond very eagerly to the effort on behalf of the triumph. Servius Galba, an enemy of Aemilius who had been one of his tribunes, perceiving this, grew bold enough to declare publicly that no triumph should be voted him. Spreading many slanders against the general among the common soldiers and stoking their grievance yet further, he requested from the tribunes of the people a further
day, since that one was not sufficient for his accusation, there being only four hours of it left. When the tribunes bade him say whatever he wished, he began a long speech full of every kind of abuse and spent the remainder of the day on it; and when darkness fell, the tribunes dismissed the assembly, and the soldiers ran together to Galba, having grown bolder, and having rallied themselves
around dawn they occupied the Capitol once more, since that was where the tribunes would convene the assembly. At daybreak, when the voting was given, the first tribe voted against the triumph, and news of the matter passed to the rest of the people and to the senate. And the multitude, deeply grieved that Aemilius should be insulted, gave voice to their feelings but could do nothing, while the
most eminent men of the senate, crying out that what was happening was outrageous, urged one another to check the soldiers' license and boldness, which would go on to every lawless and violent act if nothing stood in their way to strip Paulus Aemilius of the honors of his victory; and pushing through the crowd and going up together they told the tribunes to hold the voting until they had said what they wished to
the assembled people. When all had held back and silence had fallen, a man of consular rank who had slain twenty-three enemies in single combat, Marcus Servilius, went up and said that now, above all, he understood how great a commander Aemilius Paulus had been, seeing what disobedience and wickedness the army he had employed was full of, and yet he had achieved such fine and great deeds; and he marveled that the people, exulting in their triumphs over the Illyrians and Ligurians,
should grudge him the spectacle of the Macedonian king still living, and the renown of Philip and Alexander marched off as captives beneath Roman weapons. “For how is it not outrageous,” he said, “that when a rumor of an uncertain victory first fell upon the city, you sacrificed to the gods, praying to receive swiftly the confirmation of this report, but now that the general has come with the true victory,
you take away from the gods their honor and from yourselves your joy, as if you dreaded looking upon how great his accomplishments were, or were showing mercy to the enemy? And yet it would have been better for the triumph to be dissolved out of pity for him than out of envy toward the commander. But,” he said, “malice has been advanced through you to such a pitch of license that a man dares to speak about generalship and triumph who is
unwounded and gleaming in body from smoothness and a sheltered upbringing, before us who have been schooled by so many wounds to judge the virtues and vices of generals.” And at the same time, parting his garment, he displayed to the crowd scars on his chest scarcely to be believed. Then, turning around, he uncovered certain parts of his body not decently bared before a crowd, and turning to Galba he said, “You laugh
at these, but I take pride in them before my fellow citizens; for it was in winning these that I rode on horseback continuously, day and night. But — come, take them off to the vote, and I will go down and follow all of you, and I will find out who are the base and ungrateful men, and who wish to be led by demagogues rather than commanded, in wartime.” They say that the soldiery was so checked and turned about by these words
that the triumph was ratified for Aemilius by all the tribes. And they say it was celebrated in this fashion. The people, in the theaters built for horse racing, which they call circuses, and having set up stands around the forum, and having occupied the other parts of the city, wherever each afforded a view of the procession, watched, adorned in clean garments. Every temple was thrown open and was full of garlands
and incense, and many attendants and lictors kept clear and open the streets, driving back those who ran together disorderly and rushed about in the open spaces. The procession having been divided over three days, the first day was scarcely sufficient for the display of the captured statues, paintings, and colossal images, carried on two hundred and fifty wagons. On the following day
the finest and most costly of the Macedonian arms were sent in many wagons, themselves gleaming with freshly polished bronze and iron, and arranged with such art and fitting together as to seem, as much as possible, heaped up at random and by chance, helmets set against shields, breastplates upon greaves, and Cretan wicker shields and Thracian targes and quivers mingled together with cavalry bridles, and naked swords
thrust up through these, and spears fixed alongside, the arms having a fitting looseness of arrangement, so that their clashing against one another as they were carried gave out a harsh and fearful sound, and even in defeat their appearance was not without terror. After the wagons bearing the arms came men, three thousand of them, carrying silver coin in seven hundred fifty vessels each holding three talents, each vessel carried by four men; others carried silver mixing-bowls
and drinking-horns and bowls and cups, each finely arranged for display and remarkable for its size and the thickness of its embossed work. On the third day, at dawn, trumpeters marched first, playing not some ceremonial march but the very strain by which the Romans stir their own spirits for combat, spurring themselves onward. After these were led a hundred and twenty grain-fed oxen with gilded horns, decked with fillets and garlands. The
young men who led them, girded in aprons with fine borders, went along dressed for the sacrifice, and boys carrying silver and gold libation vessels; then after them came those bearing the gold coin, divided into vessels each holding three talents, just as the silver had been. The number of these vessels was eighty-three short of it. Following upon these came those who carried the sacred bowl, which Aemilius had made of ten
of talents' worth in gemstones, and vessels of Antigonid and Seleucid and Thericlean ware, and all the gold plate that Perseus had put on display for his banquets. On top of these was placed the chariot of Perseus, and his arms, and his diadem lying on the arms. Then, after a brief interval, the king's children were marched by in the guise of captives, accompanied by a throng of nurses, tutors, and household attendants, all weeping,
who stretched out their hands to the spectators and taught the little ones to beg and beseech them. There were two boys and one girl, who did not fully grasp, on account of their age, the greatness of their misfortunes—and for this very reason, given the contrast with their unawareness, they were all the more pitiable, so that Perseus himself walked by almost unnoticed: so intently did the Romans fix their eyes
on the little children in pity, and many were moved to tears, and for everyone the spectacle was a mixture of grief and pleasure until the children had passed by. Perseus himself walked behind his children and their attendants, wearing a dark gray cloak and native sandals, and by the magnitude of his misfortunes he seemed altogether dazed and deranged in
his reasoning. And following him came a company of friends and intimates, their faces heavy with grief, and by continually looking toward Perseus and weeping they made it plain to the onlookers that they were lamenting his fortune while giving least thought to their own. And yet he had sent a message to Aemilius, pleading that he not be paraded in the procession, and requesting exemption from the triumph. But Aemilius, mocking, as it seems, his cowardice and love of life,
said, "Yet this much lay within his own control then, as it still does now, should he choose it"—meaning death before disgrace, which the wretched man did not have the courage to face, but, softened by certain hopes, became instead part of his own spoils. Next after these were carried four hundred golden crowns, which the cities had sent to Aemilius as prizes of victory, along with
their embassies. Then Aemilius himself came riding upon a chariot magnificently adorned, a man worth beholding even apart from so great an authority, wrapped in a purple robe shot through with gold, holding out a branch of laurel in his right hand. And the whole army too carried laurel, following the general's chariot by companies and ranks, singing—some of them traditional songs mixed with mockery, others paeans of victory and praise
of his achievements, celebrating Aemilius, who was looked upon and envied by all, yet begrudged by no one his blessings—except insofar as some divine power, it seems, allotted to overwhelming and excessive good fortune the task of skimming off and mixing into it a measure of human life, so that no one's lot might be pure and unmixed with evil, but that, in Homer's words, those seem to fare best whose fortunes turn now one way and now the other.
For he had four sons, two of whom had been given away into other families, as has already been told—Scipio and Fabius—and two who were still boys, whom he kept in his own household, born of another wife. Of these, one died five days before Aemilius's triumph, at fourteen years of age, and the other, twelve years old, died three days after the triumph, so that
no Roman was left unmoved by the calamity, but all shuddered at the cruelty of fortune, in that she had not been ashamed to bring so great a grief into a household filled with rivalry and joy and sacrifices, blending mourning and weeping together with victory hymns and triumphal celebrations. Yet Aemilius, reasoning rightly that courage and steadfastness in men are useful not only against weapons and pikes,
but against every reversal of fortune alike, so composed and ordered the mixture of his present circumstances that the bad did not, being obscured by the good, and private losses by public gains, diminish the greatness or degrade the dignity of the victory: when the first of his sons passed away, he laid him to rest and immediately went on to hold his triumph, as already related; then, once the second boy died following the triumph, he summoned
an assembly of the Roman people and addressed them in words befitting a man who had no need of consolation himself, but who instead consoled the citizens as they grieved over what had befallen him. He said that, having never feared anything human, but always dreading fortune among divine things as the most untrustworthy and most changeable of forces—especially in this very war—since she had attended his actions like a brilliant wind at his back, he had continued to expect some reversal and
ebbing of the tide. "In just one day," he said, "I made the crossing of the Ionian sea, setting out from Brundisium and landing at Corcyra; five days after that, moving on from there, once I had offered sacrifice to the god at Delphi, within another five days I had assumed command of the army in Macedonia, and having performed the customary purification of it and immediately begun operations, in another fifteen days I brought the war to its finest conclusion; and yet distrusting
Fortune because of the smooth flow of events, since there was great security and no danger any longer from the enemy, I feared above all, on the voyage home, some change in the divine power in the midst of good fortune, bringing back so great an army victorious, with spoils and captive kings; but even so, having come safely to you and seeing the city filled with rejoicing and rivalry and sacrifices, still
I held Fortune in suspicion, knowing that she grants nothing to men purely or without some retribution attached to her great favors. And my soul, in the pains of this fear, kept scanning the future on the city's behalf, and did not release it until I had met with so great a disaster in my own household, in the burial, on consecutive days, of my best sons, whom alone I had left as my heirs. Now, then, I am
free of the greatest dangers, and I take courage, and I believe that Fortune will remain with you unharmed and secure; for she has taken sufficient vengeance for your successes out of my sorrows and those of my family, offering no less clear an example of human weakness in the one who triumphs than in the one led in triumph—except that Perseus, even defeated, still has his children, while Aemilius, victorious, has lost his own." Such, then,
were the noble and lofty words that Aemilius, they say, spoke to the people out of an unaffected and genuine spirit. As for Perseus, though Aemilius pitied his reversal of fortune and was quite eager to help him, he could obtain nothing for him except a transfer from the place they call the Carcer to a cleaner spot and more humane conditions, where, under guard, according to most writers, he starved himself to death; though some tell
a strange and different account of his end. They say that the soldiers guarding his person, angered at some grievance against him, since they could harm and vex him in no other way, kept him from sleep, watching him closely and rousing him whenever he began to drop off, keeping him awake by every device, until, worn down in this manner, he died. Two of his children also died.
The third, Alexander, they say, proved skilled at engraving and fine metalwork, and having thoroughly learned Roman letters and the Latin tongue, served as a clerk to the magistrates, showing himself clever and agreeable in this service. To the Macedonian campaigns of Aemilius they attribute a benefit most popular with the many, in that he deposited so much money into the public treasury that the people were no longer required
to pay any tax down to the times of Hirtius and Pansa, who held the consulship near the moment when Antony and Caesar first went to war with each other. It, too, was remarkable and worth remarking upon in Aemilius's case: though courted by the people and honored beyond others, he remained fixed in his aristocratic principles, and said and did nothing to curry favor with the many, but always aligned himself with the foremost and best men in matters concerning
the state. This is precisely what Appius later reproached Scipio Africanus with. For being the two greatest men in the city at that time, they were both seeking the office of censor: Appius had the senate and the aristocrats behind him, for this was the traditional political stance of the Appii; Scipio, though great in his own right, always relied greatly on the favor and enthusiasm of the common people, so that
when Scipio came pressing into the forum, Appius, seeing at his side men of low birth and former slaves, but men of the marketplace able to gather a crowd and to force through anything by ambition and shouting, cried out loudly: "O Paulus Aemilius," he said, "groan beneath the earth as you learn that your son is being brought to the censorship by Aemilius the herald and Licinius Philonicus." But Scipio, though he mostly
held the goodwill of the common people, Aemilius, though he was an aristocrat, was loved no less by the many than the man reputed most given to courting the people and speaking pleasingly to the masses. This they showed, among his other honors, by deeming him worthy of the censorship, which is the most sacred of all offices and has great power both in other matters and especially in the scrutiny of men's lives. For it is possible
for the censors to expel from the senate a man living improperly, to enroll in first place the best man, and to disgrace a dissolute young man by taking away his horse. These men also oversee the assessments and registrations of property. In his term there were registered three hundred thirty thousand men, plus seven thousand four hundred fifty-two more; and of the senate he enrolled first Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who was already enjoying
this presidency for the fourth time, and he expelled three senators, none of them men of distinction; and in the review of the knights he likewise showed moderation, both he and his colleague Marcius Philippus. When most of the great business had been settled, he fell ill with a sickness dangerous at first, though in time not life-threatening, but troublesome and slow to shake off. When he was persuaded by his doctors to sail to Elea
in Italy and spent a long time there in seaside estates that afforded great quiet, his fellow citizens missed him keenly, and in the theaters they frequently cried out as though in prayer, longing for a sight of him. And when a certain necessary religious rite came up, and his body now seemed well enough, he returned to Rome. And he performed that sacrifice along with the other priests,
the people conspicuously thronging around him and rejoicing; and on the next day he himself again offered thanksgiving sacrifices to the gods on his own behalf, and when the sacrifice was completed, as has been said, he returned home and lay down, and before anyone realized or grasped the change, falling into a state of derangement and confusion of mind, he died on the third day, lacking nothing and falling short in nothing that is reckoned toward happiness. For indeed the procession
at his funeral was a thing of wonder, and it lent an emulous admiration for the man's virtue through the finest and most blessed funeral honors. And these were not gold nor ivory nor the rest of the extravagance and ambition of preparation, but goodwill and honor and gratitude, not only from his fellow citizens but from his enemies as well. At any rate, as many of the Iberians and Ligurians
and Macedonians as happened to be present—the younger men, strong of body, took up the bier beneath their shoulders and carried it along, while the older men followed after, calling Aemilius the benefactor and savior of their homelands; for not only in the times when he held power over them did he treat them all gently and humanely as he departed, but throughout the rest of his life he continued always to do them some good and to care for them as if
for members of his own household and kin. His estate, they say, amounted to scarcely three hundred and seventy thousand drachmas, of which he himself left both his sons as heirs; but the younger, Scipio, allowed his brother to have the whole of it, since he himself had been given over into the wealthier household of Africanus. This, then, is reported to have been the character and manner of life of Paulus Aemilius.

======== Comparison Of Timoleon With Aemilius Paulus ========

Since the facts of the history stand thus, it is clear that the comparison does not admit of many differences or points of unlikeness. Both men waged war against illustrious adversaries — the one against the Macedonians, the other against the Carthaginians — and both won victories that were celebrated far and wide: the one for capturing Macedonia and ending the succession from Antigonus in its seventh king, the other for putting down all the tyrannies
in Sicily and freeing the island — unless indeed one should wish to press the objection that Aemilius fell in with Perseus at the height of his strength, when he had actually defeated the Romans, whereas Timoleon encountered Dionysius when he was utterly worn out and spent; and again, on Timoleon's behalf, that he conquered many tyrants and the great power of the Carthaginians with an army got together by chance, not, as Aemilius did, by employing men experienced in war and trained to obedience,
but with mercenaries and undisciplined soldiers, accustomed to campaign for their own pleasure. For successes achieved with unequal resources bring an unequal share of credit to the general. Since, then, both men proved themselves pure and just in their conduct of affairs, Aemilius appears to have come to his task already prepared for this by the laws and by his fatherland, whereas Timoleon made himself such by his own effort; and the proof of this is that
the Romans of that time were, without exception, uniformly well-disciplined and submissive to their customs, fearing both the laws and their fellow citizens, while among the Greeks there is no leader or general who touched Sicily in that period without being corrupted, except Dion — and even Dion many suspected of reaching for sole rule and dreaming of some Laconian-style kingship. Timaeus even records that Gylippus was banished
by the Syracusans in disgrace and dishonor, condemned for his love of money and his rapacity while in command. And what Pharax the Spartan and Callippus the Athenian did — men who hoped to rule Sicily, and who transgressed the law and broke their pledges — has been recorded by many. And yet who were these men, or how great was the power they actually held, to nurture ambitions of that sort? Of these, the one paid court to Dionysius once the tyrant had lost Syracuse and gone into exile, while Callippus was one of the mercenary captains under Dion. But Timoleon,
sent to the Syracusans with full authority at their own request and entreaty, and owing it to himself not to seek power but simply to keep what he had received when they willingly gave it, made the overthrow of the lawless rulers the very limit of his own generalship and command. Yet this too is remarkable in Aemilius, that after overturning so great a kingdom he did not increase his estate by so much as a drachma, nor did he even look upon or lay hand on the money, though he gave much of it away to others
and made gifts of it. I would not fault Timoleon for taking a handsome house and a landed estate; for it is not shameful to accept such things, but it is nobler not to accept them, and it is a superabundance of virtue when, being free to display it, one shows that one has no need of it. But since, just as a body capable of enduring both cold and heat is by nature stronger for coping with both changes alike,
so too a soul's unmixed vigor and strength, which neither good fortune softens and relaxes into arrogance nor misfortunes humble, appears more complete in Aemilius — for in harsh fortune and great suffering over his children he showed himself no smaller or less dignified than he had appeared amid his successes; whereas Timoleon, though he acted nobly regarding his brother, could not hold out with reason against
his grief, but was so humbled by remorse and sorrow that for twenty years he could not bear to look upon the speaker's platform or the marketplace. One ought indeed to flee from and be ashamed of disgraceful acts, but excessive caution against every kind of ill repute belongs to a character that is gentle and soft, but lacks greatness.

======== Pelopidas ========

Cato the Elder, when some men were praising a person who was recklessly rash and daring in warfare, said that a man's judgment that virtue is worth a great deal, while life is not worth much, is a correct one. At any rate, there was a certain bold soldier in the army of Antigonus, but his condition and body were in poor shape, and when the king asked the reason for his sickly paleness, he confessed to some
secret ailment. When the king, out of eagerness to help, ordered his physicians, if there were any remedy, to spare nothing in the utmost care of him, that noble fellow, once cured in this way, was no longer fond of danger nor headlong in his contests, so that Antigonus even reproached him and marveled at the change. The man, however, did not conceal the cause, but said, "O king, you have made me less bold, by ridding me of those evils on account of which I held life cheap."
In line with this, a certain Sybarite man is on record as remarking, of the Spartans, that dying in war cost them nothing much, since it merely let them escape such drudgery and such a manner of living. But for the Sybarites, dissolved as they were by luxury and softness, it was natural, given their impulse and ambition toward what is fine, that men who did not fear death should seem to hate life;
whereas for the Lacedaemonians, virtue made both living pleasantly and dying so, as their funeral dirge makes plain: for it says, "These men died, not accounting it noble merely to live, nor merely to die, but to accomplish both of these nobly." For flight from death is not blameworthy, if a man reaches for life without disgrace, nor is endurance noble, if it comes about with contempt for life.
Hence Homer always brings forth into battle the most courageous and warlike men well and finely armed, while the lawgivers of the Greeks punish the man who throws away his shield, not the one who casts away his sword or spear — teaching that each man ought to be concerned with not suffering harm before he is concerned with doing harm to the enemy, and above all a commander of a city or of an army.
For if, as Iphicrates used to distinguish, the light-armed troops resemble the hands, the cavalry the feet, the phalanx itself the chest and breastplate, and the general the head, then it would seem that in courting danger and acting rashly he neglects not himself alone, but all those whose safety depends upon him, and the reverse. Hence Callicratidas, though in other respects a great man, answered the seer poorly: when the seer begged him to guard against death, on the ground that the sacrifices foretold it, he said that Sparta did not depend on one man.
For Callicratidas, when fighting or sailing or soldiering, was but one man; but as a commander he had gathered together in himself the strength of all, so that he was not a single man with whose loss so much would perish together. Better was old Antigonus, who, on the point of fighting a naval engagement near Andros, was told by someone that the enemy had far more ships, and replied, "But against how many will you set me myself?" — making great, as indeed it is, the worth of command joined with experience and valor, whose first task is to preserve the man who preserves everything else. Wherefore Timotheus spoke well,
when Chares was once displaying to the Athenians certain wounds on his body and his shield pierced through by a spear: "But I," he said, "was very much ashamed that, while I was besieging Samos, a missile fell near me, since I was behaving in a more boyish manner than befits a general and commander of so great a force."
For where the danger of the general carries great weight for the whole, there one must use hand and body without sparing, bidding farewell to those who say that a good general ought to die of old age, or if not, as an old man; but where the gain from success is small, while everything is lost together if he fails, no one demands of a general the deed of a common soldier performed at his own risk.
These things occurred to me to declare in advance as I was writing the Life of Pelopidas and that of Marcellus, great men who fell unaccountably — men who, though most warlike in the use of their own hands, and though both adorned their fatherlands with the most illustrious commands, and moreover though the one, as is said, was the first to rout Hannibal when he was undefeated, and the other conquered in pitched battle the Lacedaemonians, rulers of land and sea, yet were unsparing of themselves, throwing away their lives with no reckoning at all, at the very moment when there was most need of such men being preserved and in command. For this reason we, following the resemblances, have written their lives in parallel.
Pelopidas son of Hippocles was of a family held in honor at Thebes, as was Epaminondas; and being reared in great wealth, and receiving while still young a splendid household, he set out to help those in need who deserved it, so that he might appear truly master of his money, and not its slave. For of the many, as Aristotle says, some do not use their wealth at all out of stinginess, while others misuse it through prodigality, and the latter are ever enslaved to their pleasures, the former to their business affairs.
The rest of his friends, then, being grateful to Pelopidas, made use of his generosity and kindness toward them; but of his friends only Epaminondas he could not persuade to share in his wealth. He himself, however, shared in that man's poverty, priding himself on plainness of dress, simplicity of table, and tireless devotion to hardship and honesty in campaigns —
like the Capaneus of Euripides, of whom it is said, "his means were great, but he was in no way haughty because of his wealth," being ashamed if he should appear to use more for his own body than the Theban who possessed the least. Epaminondas, then, made the poverty that was familiar to him and inherited from his father even lighter and more unencumbered still, choosing from the start a philosophic and solitary life; but Pelopidas made a splendid marriage,
and children too were born to him; yet no less did he neglect the making of money, and, devoting all his time to the city's affairs, he diminished his estate. When his friends admonished him and said that he was neglecting a necessary thing, namely the having of money, he said, "Necessary indeed, by Zeus — for this man Nicodemus," pointing to someone lame and blind.
They were also naturally inclined alike to every virtue, except that Pelopidas took more delight in physical training, Epaminondas in learning; and in their leisure hours the one spent his time at the wrestling-ground and in hunting, the other in listening to lectures and in philosophy. But though both possessed many fine qualities toward reputation, sensible men consider nothing so great as the goodwill and friendship that, through so many contests and commands and political dealings, remained unimpeached from beginning to end.
For if one, looking at the political careers of Aristides and Themistocles and Cimon and Pericles and Nicias and Alcibiades, should consider how full they were of quarrels and envy and jealousy toward one another, and then should look again at the goodwill and honor of Pelopidas toward Epaminondas, he would rightly and justly call these men rather fellow-rulers and fellow-generals than those others, who spent their time contending more against one another than against the enemy,
the true cause being their virtue, on account of which they pursued from their actions neither glory nor wealth — things in which harsh and quarrelsome envy takes root — but both, having from the beginning fallen in love with a divine love of seeing their fatherland become most illustrious and greatest in their own time, used their own successes as though they were common property directed to this end.
Nevertheless, most people think that their fervent friendship arose from the campaign at Mantinea, where they fought side by side with the Lacedaemonians — at that time still Thebes's friends and allies — when a relief force was sent out from the city. For, being stationed among the hoplites together with one another and fighting against the Arcadians, when the wing of the Lacedaemonians opposite them gave way and a rout of many had occurred, they locked shields together and defended themselves against those pressing upon them;
and Pelopidas, having received seven wounds facing the enemy, fell together with a heap of corpses, both friends and foes; but Epaminondas, though he thought him past saving, stood forward over his body and his arms and, alone, braved danger against many, resolved to die rather than to abandon Pelopidas lying there. And when he too was now in dire straits, wounded by a spear in the chest and by a sword in the arm, help arrived from the other wing in the person of Agesipolis, king of the Spartans, who against all expectation saved them both.
After this, while the Spartans called the Thebans friends and allies in name, yet in practice eyed the city's pride and growing power with suspicion, and above all hated the faction of Ismenias and Androcleidas, of which Pelopidas was a member, a faction that seemed to be at once liberty-loving and popular,
Archias and Leontidas and Philip, men of oligarchic sentiment and wealthy and moderate in nothing, persuaded Phoebidas the Laconian, who was passing through with an army, to seize suddenly the Cadmea, and, having expelled those who opposed them, to establish the constitution in the hands of a few, subject to Lacedaemonian rule.
When he had been persuaded, and had fallen upon the Thebans while they were unsuspecting, at the time of the Thesmophoria, and had taken possession of the citadel, Ismenias was seized and carried off to Lacedaemon, and not long after put to death; while Pelopidas and Pherenicus and Androcleidas, together with many others, fled and were banished by proclamation; but Epaminondas remained in the country, being held in contempt — because of his philosophy as harmless, and because of his poverty as powerless.
When the Lacedaemonians stripped Phoebidas of his command and imposed on him a fine of ten thousand drachmas, yet all the same held onto the Cadmea by garrison, all the other Greeks marveled at the strangeness of it, that they should punish the doer while approving the deed; but for the Thebans, who had lost their ancestral constitution and had been enslaved by the party of Archias and Leontidas, there remained no hope of any release from the tyranny,
which they saw was upheld by the guard of Spartan hegemony and could not be overthrown, unless someone should stop those men also from being masters of land and sea. Nevertheless, the party of Leontidas, learning that the exiles were staying at Athens, beloved by the multitude and held in honor by men of worth, plotted against them secretly; and sending unknown men, they killed Androcleidas by treachery, but failed to get the others.
A letter also came from the Lacedaemonians to the Athenians, ordering them not to receive nor to stir up the exiles, but to drive them out as common enemies, so declared by the allies. The Athenians, however,
in addition to having compassion as an ancestral and inborn trait, were repaying the Thebans, who had been especially instrumental in the people's restoration, and who had decreed that should any Athenian pass armed through Boeotia to move against the tyrants, no Boeotian was to notice or take heed of it — committed no wrong against the Thebans.
Pelopidas, although he was among the youngest, urged on each of the exiles privately, and made speeches to the multitude, saying that it was neither noble nor pious to look on while their fatherland was enslaved and garrisoned, while they themselves, content merely with being safe and getting by, hung upon the decrees of the Athenians and, cringing, courted those able to speak and persuade the crowd,
but that they must run risks for the greatest of stakes, taking as their model the daring and valor of Thrasybulus, so that, just as he set out formerly from Thebes and overthrew the tyrants at Athens, so they in turn, setting forth from Athens, might free Thebes. When he had persuaded them by saying this, they sent secretly to Thebes to the friends left behind, telling them what had been resolved.
And these approved, and Charon, who was the most prominent among them, agreed to provide his house; while Phyllidas contrived to become secretary to Archias and Philip, who were then polemarchs. Epaminondas had long since been filling the young men with the right spirit; for he used to bid them, in the gymnasia, to grapple with the Lacedaemonians and wrestle with them, and then, seeing them proud at winning and prevailing, he would rebuke them, saying that they ought rather to be ashamed, if through unmanliness they were enslaved to men over whom they had so great an advantage in strength.
When the day for the action had been fixed, it seemed best to the exiles that Pherenicus should keep the rest gathered together and waiting in the Thriasian country, while a few of the youngest ventured to go ahead into the city; and if these should suffer anything at the hands of the enemy, the others were to take care that neither their children nor their parents should be left in want of necessities.
Pelopidas was the first to undertake the venture, then Melon and Damocleidas and Theopompus, men of the leading houses, who in all other respects dealt with one another as friends and in good faith, but were always rivals with each other over reputation and courage. There were twelve of them in all; they embraced those who were being left behind, and sent a messenger ahead to Charon, then set out wearing short cloaks, carrying hunting dogs and stakes for nets, so that none of those they met along the road should suspect anything, but should think they were merely wandering idly about and hunting.
When the messenger they had sent arrived at Charon's and told him they were on the road, Charon himself did not shift his resolve one bit even though the danger was drawing near, but was a good man and offered his house; but a certain Hipposthenidas, a man not base, but patriotic and well disposed toward the exiles, yet lacking the boldness that the sharpness of the moment and the undertaking at hand demanded, grew as it were dizzy at the greatness of the contest now at hand, and
at last, coming to his senses through reasoning that in some way they were shaking the rule of the Lacedaemonians and undertaking its overthrow, trusting to hopes that were resourceless and fit only for exiles, went home quietly, withdrawing once more to Athens, but not before dispatching one of his friends to reach Melon and Pelopidas, telling them to postpone the action for now and await a more favorable moment. The man sent was named Chlidon, and hurrying home to fetch his own horse, he asked his wife for the bridle.
When his wife was at a loss, saying she did not have it but had lent it to one of her acquaintances, first there were reproaches, then curses, his wife calling down evil roads upon him and upon those who were sending him; so that Chlidon, having wasted much of the day over this in anger, and at the same time taking the incident as an omen, gave up the journey altogether and turned to something else. By so narrow a margin did the greatest and finest of undertakings come, right at the outset, to slip past its opportunity.
Pelopidas and his companions, having put on farmers' clothing and divided themselves so as to enter by different parts of the city, slipped in while it was still day. There was a wind and some snow as the weather was beginning to turn, and this helped them go unnoticed, since most people had already taken refuge in their houses because of the storm; but those whose concern it was to know what was happening kept receiving the men as they arrived and installing them at once in Charon's house. Counting the exiles, they came to forty-eight in all.
The situation regarding the tyrants was as follows. Phyllidas the secretary was, as has been said, cooperating in everything and was in on the plot with the exiles; and having long before arranged for that very day a drinking party and gathering for Archias and his circle, with married women present, he was doing everything he could to hand the men over to the attackers thoroughly loosened by pleasure and drunk with wine.
While they were not yet very far gone in drink, a report reached them that was not false, but uncertain and containing much obscurity, that the exiles were hiding in the city; and though Phyllidas tried to steer the conversation elsewhere, Archias all the same dispatched an attendant to fetch Charon, commanding that he appear without delay. Night had already fallen, and inside, Pelopidas and his companions were taking up their positions, already in armor with swords drawn.
Suddenly, when there was a knock at the door, someone ran up, and having learned from the attendant that Charon was being summoned by the polemarchs, reported this inside in great alarm; and it seemed to all at once that the plot had been discovered and that they were all going to perish, without even having done anything worthy of their courage. Nevertheless it was decided that Charon should obey and present himself to the magistrates without arousing suspicion, being otherwise a manly man and steady in the face of danger,
but at that moment thrown into terror and deep distress on their account, lest some suspicion of betrayal should fall on him once so many and such men had perished. So as he was about to leave, he took his son from the women's quarters — still a boy, but foremost in beauty and bodily strength among those of his age — and handed him over to Pelopidas and his men, bidding them, if they should find any treachery or betrayal in him, to treat the boy as an enemy and show no mercy.
Tears fell from many of them at Charon's suffering and his spirit, and all were indignant that anyone could seem so cowardly and so corrupted by the present situation as to suspect him or blame him at all; they urged him not to draw the boy into their own danger, but rather to remove him from whatever was about to happen, so that the child, spared and having eluded the tyrants, could later stand as an avenger on behalf of the city and his friends.
But Charon said he would not send his son away: for what life, or what finer safety, could he see for him than death unshamed together with his father and so many friends? Having prayed to the gods and embraced them all and encouraged them, he departed, taking care of himself and composing his expression and the tone of his voice to appear as unlike as possible to what he was doing.
When he had come to the doors, Archias himself came forward, along with Phyllidas, and said: "Charon, I have heard that some men have come in and are hiding in the city, and that certain of the citizens are cooperating with them." At first this news troubled Charon, but he then asked who these newcomers were, and who was concealing them, when he saw that Archias had nothing clear to say, he suspected that the report had not come from anyone in the know, and said, "Take care, then, that some empty rumor is not disturbing you; still, I will look into it, for perhaps one ought to despise nothing."
Phyllidas, who was present, praised these words, and leading Archias away again, plied him with a great deal of unmixed wine, and kept the drinking going with hopes concerning the women. When Charon returned home and found the men equipped, not expecting any victory or safety, but rather expecting to die gloriously and with great slaughter of the enemy, he told the truth to Pelopidas and his companions, but to the others he lied, inventing some story about other matters supposedly said by Archias.
While the first storm was still passing over, fortune brought a second upon the men. A messenger arrived out of Athens, sent by the hierophant Archias to the man who shared his name, Archias, a guest-friend and companion of his, carrying a letter that contained no empty or invented suspicion, but stated clearly, point by point, everything that was being done, as was later learned.
At that time, the letter-bearer, approaching Archias who was already drunk, handed over the letter and said, "The man who sent this ordered that it be read at once, for it concerns serious matters." And Archias, smiling, said, "Serious matters, then, until tomorrow." And with that, he tucked the letter beneath his pillow, and went back to Phyllidas to continue whatever they had been discussing. This saying has been preserved down to the present day among the Greeks, current as a kind of proverb.
Since the action now seemed to have its proper moment, they set out, dividing themselves in two: Pelopidas and Damocleidas went against Leontidas and Hypates, who lived near one another, while Charon and Melon went against Archias and Philippus, having put on women's clothing over their breastplates, and wearing thick wreaths of fir and pine drawn down to shadow their faces.
So when they first stood at the doors of the banquet, they caused clapping and uproar among men who supposed that the women they had long been expecting had come. But when they had looked around the banquet in a circle, and had carefully noted each of those reclining there, they drew their swords, and rushing through the tables toward Archias and Philippus, showed themselves for who they were.
Phyllidas persuaded a few of those reclining to keep quiet, but the rest, who tried to defend themselves along with the polemarchs and rose up together despite their drunkenness, they killed without much difficulty. But the affair proved more troublesome for Pelopidas and his men: for their target was Leontidas, a man both formidable and level-headed, and they discovered his door already barred, since he had gone to sleep, and for a long time, though they knocked, no one answered.
At last, when the servant inside noticed and came forward and removed the bar, the moment the doors gave way and opened, they burst in all together, and having knocked down the servant, rushed toward the bedroom. Leontidas, guessing what was happening from the very noise and the running,
drew his dagger and rose up, but forgot to knock down the lamps, and so failed to throw the men into confusion with one another in the darkness; instead, seen clearly in the bright light, he met them at the doors of the bedroom, and struck down Cephisodorus, the first to enter, killing him; and when this man had fallen, he grappled with Pelopidas, the second to come in, and the narrowness of the doorway, together with the body of Cephisodorus now lying dead in the way, made the fight difficult and hard-fought.
Pelopidas nevertheless prevailed, and having dispatched Leontidas, went at once against Hypates together with those who were with him. They broke into his house in the same way; but he, perceiving it quickly and fleeing to his neighbors, was pursued and caught at close quarters and put to death.
Having accomplished this, and having joined forces with Melon's group, they sent to Attica for the exiles who had been left behind there, and called upon the citizens to fight for freedom, and armed those who came forward, taking down the spoils that hung around the porticoes, and breaking open the workshops of the spear-makers and sword-makers near the house.
Epaminondas and Gorgidas came to their aid under arms, having gathered no small number of the best of the young men and the older men as well. The city was already all astir, and there was much uproar, and lights around the houses, and people running back and forth to one another, but the multitude had not yet come together in a body; rather, stunned by what was happening and knowing nothing for certain, they waited for daylight.
For this reason the Lacedaemonian commanders were thought to have erred in not attacking or engaging at once, since the garrison itself numbered about fifteen hundred, and many were running together against them from the city; but fearing the shouting and the fires and the crowd advancing from every side, they kept quiet, holding only the Cadmea itself,
and at daybreak the exiles arrived armed from Attica, and the people had assembled in the assembly. Epaminondas and Gorgidas brought in Pelopidas and his men, surrounded by the priests holding out wreaths and calling on the citizens to help their fatherland and their gods, and the assembly rose upright at the sight amid clapping and shouting, receiving the men as benefactors and saviors.
After this, Pelopidas, chosen boeotarch together with Melon and Charon, at once walled off the acropolis and made assaults from every side, eager to expel the Lacedaemonian garrison and liberate the Cadmea before any relief force could arrive out of Sparta.
And he came so close to succeeding that he had already let the men go out under truce when, while they were still at Megara, they met Cleombrotus marching against Thebes with a large force. As for the Spartans, since there had been three harmosts at Thebes, they condemned and put to death Herippidas and Arcissus, while the third, Lysanoridas, having been fined a great sum of money, removed himself from the Peloponnese.
This deed, comparable in the valor, dangers, and struggles of the men involved to that of Thrasybulus, and crowned with success by fortune in like manner, the Greeks called the sister of that other; for it is not easy to name any other men who, being fewer and weaker and more destitute than a greater and more powerful enemy, prevailed by daring and skill and became the cause of greater blessings for their fatherlands,
This deed was made yet more glorious by the change it wrought in affairs; for the war which broke Sparta's pride and terminated her dominion over land and sea took its rise from that very night in which Pelopidas, seizing neither garrison nor wall nor citadel, but coming down into a private house with eleven companions, if the truth may be told in a figure, loosed and cut through the bonds of the Lacedaemonian hegemony, which had seemed unloosable and unbreakable.
When, then, the Lacedaemonians invaded Boeotia with a great army, the Athenians, seized with fear, renounced their alliance with the Thebans, and bringing to trial those among them who favored the Boeotian cause, put some to death, banished others, and fined others in money; and the condition of the Thebans seemed wretched indeed, since no one came to their aid. Pelopidas, as it happened, was serving as boeotarch together with Gorgidas, and the two, plotting to set the Athenians once more at odds with the Lacedaemonians, contrived some such scheme as this.
Sphodrias, a Spartan, a man renowned and brilliant in war but somewhat light in judgment, full of empty hopes and of a senseless ambition, had been left behind at Thespiae with a force, to receive and assist those Thebans who might revolt. Pelopidas and his friends secretly sent to him, privately, a merchant who was one of their acquaintances, bearing money and words — and it was the words rather than the money that persuaded him that he ought to lay hold of great enterprises and seize the Piraeus, falling upon the Athenians unexpectedly while they kept no watch;
for nothing, they said, would be so welcome to the Lacedaemonians as the taking of Athens, while the Thebans, being ill-disposed toward the Athenians and reckoning them traitors, would not come to their aid. At length Sphodrias was persuaded, and taking up his soldiers he made a night march into Attica, pressing on as far as Eleusis; but there, his men losing heart, he was discovered, and having stirred up a war against the Spartans that was neither slight nor easy, he withdrew again to Thespiae.
After this the Athenians once more allied themselves most eagerly with the Thebans, and laid claim again to the sea, and traveling about, they welcomed and gained the allegiance of any Greek states minded to break away. Meanwhile the Thebans, fighting by themselves in Boeotia against the Lacedaemonians on each occasion, in battles that were not great in themselves but that involved great practice and training,
were kindled in spirit and disciplined in body, gaining at once experience through habituation and confidence from these contests. Hence it is said that Antalcidas the Spartan, when Agesilaus came back wounded from Boeotia, said to him: "A fine tuition indeed you are receiving from the Thebans, for teaching them to fight and give battle when they had no wish to do so."
But in truth the teacher was not Agesilaus, but those who, seizing the right moment and acting with calculation, launched the Thebans like young hounds against the enemy with skill, and then, once they had tasted victory and confidence, led them safely away — of whom Pelopidas had the greatest renown; for from the time they first chose him leader under arms, they never ceased electing him to office each year, but he continued, either leading the Sacred Band or serving for the most part as boeotarch, until his death.
There were defeats and routs of the Lacedaemonians near Plataea and Thespiae, where also Phoebidas, who had seized the Cadmea, was killed; and many of them were routed near Tanagra as well, and Panthoidas the harmost was slain. Yet these contests, while they raised the victors to confidence and courage, did not wholly enslave
the spirit of the defeated; for these were not set battles nor engagements with an open and regular array, but rather momentary sallies, and the Thebans, attempting flights or pursuits against them and grappling with them, gained their successes in this way.
The battle near Tegyra, which was in a sense the prelude to that of Leuctra, raised Pelopidas to great renown, leaving neither dispute over the achievement for his fellow commanders nor any excuse for defeat to the enemy. For the city of the Orchomenians, having chosen the Spartan side and received two of their regiments for its security, he was continually plotting against and watching for an opportunity,
and when he heard that the garrison had gone off on a campaign into Locris, hoping to take Orchomenus while it was undefended, he moved against the town, bringing along the Sacred Band together with a small body of cavalry. But when he came up to the city he found that a relief garrison had arrived from Sparta, and so he led his army back again through Tegyra, the only passable route around by the foot of the mountain.
For the whole of the middle way was rendered impassable by the river Melas, which, right from its source, broadens into marshes and lakes deep enough for boats. Just downstream from these marshes there stands a temple of Tegyraean Apollo and an oracle that had ceased not very long before, but had flourished down to the time of the Persian Wars, when Echecrates held the prophetic office; there they tell in myth that the god was born; and the neighboring mountain is called Delos, and against it the outpourings of the Melas come to an end,
and behind the temple two springs break forth, marvelous for the sweetness, abundance, and coldness of their water, of which we still call the one Phoenix and the other Elaea to this day — not from two plants, but from the streams by which the goddess was delivered of her travail. For the Ptoan mountain too is near, whence they say she was startled by a boar that suddenly appeared, and the tales concerning Python and Tityus likewise associate these places with the birth of the god.
I pass over most of the proofs; for the tradition of our fathers does not leave this god among those who became immortal through a change of state, born mortal, as it does Heracles and Dionysus, who through excellence cast off by transformation what was mortal and subject to suffering, but he is one of the eternal and unbegotten gods, if we are to judge of such great matters by what has been said by the wisest and most ancient men.
At Tegyra, then, the Thebans, withdrawing at this same time from the territory of Orchomenus, fell in with the Lacedaemonians, who were marching back from Locris to meet them from the opposite direction. As soon as they were seen passing through the narrows, a man rushed toward Pelopidas exclaiming, "We are trapped in the enemy's hands," and he replied, "Why more we into theirs than they into ours?"
And he at once ordered all the cavalry to ride up from the rear, as being ready to charge first, while he himself gathered together his hoplites, three hundred in number, into a compact body, hoping that by striking where he pressed hardest he would cut through the enemy, who surpassed him in numbers. There were two regiments of Lacedaemonians; and as to the size of a regiment, Ephorus says it numbered five hundred men, Callisthenes says seven hundred, and some others, among them Polybius, say nine hundred.
The Spartan polemarchs Gorgoleon and Theopompus, full of confidence, charged upon the Thebans; and since the onset happened to fall, above all, precisely upon the commanders themselves on both sides, with fury and violence, first the Lacedaemonian polemarchs, clashing with Pelopidas,
fell; and then, as those around them were being struck down and were dying, the whole army was seized with fear, and it opened a passage on both sides for the Thebans, as though wishing to let them break through and slip away in front. But when Pelopidas led his men against those still standing firm, cutting his way through with slaughter, then all fled headlong. The pursuit, however, did not extend far; for the Thebans feared the nearby Orchomenians and the relief force of the Lacedaemonians,
but so far as forcing a decisive victory and cutting their way clean through the whole of the defeated army went, this they accomplished; and setting up a trophy and stripping the dead, they withdrew home, greatly exalted in spirit. For in so many wars, it seems, Greek and barbarian alike, never before had the Lacedaemonians, though more numerous, been overcome by fewer, nor even equal numbers meeting equal numbers in set battle.
Hence their spirit had been thought irresistible, and by their reputation alone they had struck terror into those arrayed against them, who did not even think it fitting to contend on equal terms of strength with Spartans; but now they had come to close quarters, and that battle was the first to teach the rest of the Greeks that fighting, warlike men are bred neither by the Eurotas River nor by the district lying between Babyce and Cnacion, but that wherever young men grow up ashamed of what is shameful and willing to dare for what is noble, and shunning reproach in danger more than danger itself — these are the most fearsome to their enemies.
The Sacred Band, they say, was first assembled by Gorgidas from three hundred selected men, for whom the polis provided upkeep and instruction as they were quartered in the Cadmea; and for this reason they were called the City Band, for in those days people commonly called their acropolises "cities." But some say that this company was formed of lovers and beloved,
and a saying of Pammenes made half in jest is remembered: he said that Homer's Nestor was no tactician in bidding the Greeks be marshaled by tribes and clans, "that clan might help clan, and tribe help tribe," when he ought rather to have stationed lover beside beloved. For tribesmen and clansmen, he said, take little account of one another in times of danger, but a company knit together by erotic friendship is unbreakable and indissoluble, when men, some loving their beloved and others ashamed before their lovers, stand fast in danger for one another's sake.
And this is no wonder, if indeed men feel more shame before those they love even in their absence than before others present, as in the case of that man who, when an enemy was about to finish him off as he lay wounded, begged and besought him to drive the sword through his breast, "so that," he said, "my beloved may not see me lying dead wounded in the back, and be ashamed."
It is said too that Iolaus, the beloved of Heracles, shared in his labors and stood by his side in battle. And Aristotle says that even in his own day men still made their pledges of loyalty at the tomb of Iolaus, lovers and beloved together. It is likely, then, that the band too was called "sacred" for this reason, just as Plato called the lover a friend inspired by a god.
It is said to have remained unconquered until the battle at Chaeronea; and when, following that engagement, Philip went over the fallen and paused at the spot where, as it turned out, the three hundred were lying, every one of them having met his sarissas face to face and fallen mingled together with one another still in their armor, he was struck with wonder, and once told that these were the lovers-and-beloved company, he broke into tears and said, "Perish miserably those who suppose that these men did or suffered anything shameful."
In general, the custom of loving among the Thebans did not, as the poets say, take its origin from the suffering of Laius, but rather the lawgivers, wishing from childhood on to relax and soften what was by nature fierce and unmixed in their spirit, mingled much of the flute into both their serious pursuits and all their play, bringing it into honor and a place of prominence, and they fostered a splendid form of love in their wrestling-schools, tempering thereby the characters of the young.
And rightly, for this same reason, they associated with their city the goddess whom tradition holds to be the offspring of Ares and Aphrodite, on the ground that wherever the warlike and combative element consorts and dwells together with persuasiveness and grace, all things are brought, through Harmony, into the most tuneful and orderly form of civic life.
Now this Sacred Band Gorgidas distributed among the front ranks and stationed along the whole line of hoplites, so that the valor of these men was not made conspicuous, nor did he employ their strength for a single common task, since it was dispersed and mingled with a great mass of inferior troops. But Pelopidas, once their valor had shone forth clearly at Tegyra, where they had fought as a body around him alone, no longer divided or dispersed them, but using them as a single body, exposed them to danger first in the greatest contests.
For in the same way that horses gain speed once harnessed together to a chariot rather than running alone — not because they more forcibly cleave the air, which offers resistance in proportion to their bulk, but because the rivalry and contentiousness among one another kindles their spirit together — so he believed that brave men, instilling in one another emulation in noble deeds, would be most useful for a common task and most eager for it.
When the Lacedaemonians, having made peace with all the other Greeks, directed the war against the Thebans alone, and King Cleombrotus had already invaded, leading ten thousand hoplites and a thousand cavalry, and the danger was no longer over the matters that had earlier concerned the Thebans but was now an open threat and proclamation of the dissolution of their city, and a fear such as had never before gripped Boeotia — as Pelopidas was setting out from his house, and his wife, in seeing him off, wept and urged him to save himself, he said, "That, wife, is advice
one should give to private citizens; to those in command one should say, save the others." On arriving at the camp he found the Boeotarchs not of one mind, and he was the first to side with Epaminondas, who was voting to go to battle against the enemy — Pelopidas not yet having been appointed a Boeotarch, but commanding the Sacred Band, and trusted, as was just for a man who had given his country such pledges of its freedom.
So when it had been decided to risk battle, and they were encamped opposite the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra, Pelopidas saw a vision in his sleep that greatly disturbed him. For in the plain of Leuctra stand the burial mounds of Scedasus's daughters, whom they call the Leuctrides after the place; for it was there that they were buried, after having been violated by some Spartan strangers.
This deed having been done, so cruel and so lawless, their father, since he obtained no justice at Lacedaemon, called down curses upon the Spartans and took his own life at his daughters' graves; and oracles and prophecies never ceased warning the Spartans to be wary and guard themselves against the wrath of Leuctra — though most failed to grasp the meaning fully, being unsure which place was intended, since there is also a small coastal town of Laconia called Leuctron, and a place bearing the identical name lies near Megalopolis in Arcadia. This tragedy, then, long predated the battle fought at Leuctra.
Pelopidas, having lain down to sleep in the camp, dreamed that he saw the girls lamenting at their graves and invoking curses on the Spartans, while Scedasus urged him to offer a fair-haired maiden as a victim to his daughters, if he wished to prevail over the enemy. The command seemed to him terrible and lawless, and rising up he shared it with the seers and the commanders.
Of these, some said he must not neglect it, others that he must not obey it, citing among the ancients Menoeceus son of Creon and Macaria daughter of Heracles, and among later examples Pherecydes the wise man, put to death by the Lacedaemonians, whose skin was kept guarded by the kings according to a certain oracle, and Leonidas, who in a manner sacrificed himself in advance for Greece in accordance with the oracle,
and further those whom Themistocles sacrificed to Dionysus Omestes before the sea-battle at Salamis; for the success of their actions bore witness in favor of those men. But this too — how Agesilaus, when launching a campaign from the very same district as Agamemnon, against the very same foes, had his daughter demanded of him by the goddess as an offering and saw this identical vision as he slept at Aulis, yet did not give her, but weakened and abandoned the campaign, which came to nothing and won no glory.
The others, on the contrary, refused, saying that such a sacrifice, barbarous and lawless, could not be pleasing to any of the higher powers, the ones above us; for it is not the Typhons of that sort nor the Giants who rule, but the father of all, of gods and men alike; and that to believe there are spirits who delight in human blood and slaughter is perhaps foolish, but if such beings do exist, one must disregard them as powerless; for it is out of weakness and corruption of soul that such strange and cruel desires take root and persist.
While the leading men were engaged in such debate, and Pelopidas especially was at a loss, a filly broke away from a herd of horses and, running through the ranks, came to a stop just where they stood; and to the others it was simply a spectacle — the gleam of her mane, most fiery in color, her spirited bearing, and the proud, confident sound of her neighing —
but Theocritus the seer, grasping the meaning, cried out to Pelopidas, "Your victim has come, good sir; let us not wait for another maiden, but use the one the god gives." At this they took the mare, brought her to the graves of the maidens, and, offering prayers and garlands, slit her throat, rejoicing themselves and spreading word through the camp of Pelopidas's vision and the sacrifice.
In the battle, as Epaminondas drew his phalanx obliquely toward the left, so as to push the Spartan right wing to the greatest possible distance from the other Greek contingents, and to drive back Cleombrotus by falling upon him in mass on that flank and forcing him back, the enemy, perceiving what was happening, began to shift their own formation,
unfolding and extending their right wing so as to encircle and surround Epaminondas by sheer numbers. But Pelopidas at that moment darted out ahead, and, gathering his three hundred at a run, got there before Cleombrotus could either extend his wing or bring it back together again and close up the line — falling upon the Lacedaemonians while they were not yet settled but in confusion among themselves,
and yet the Spartans, though supreme craftsmen and masters of all things military, trained and practiced themselves in nothing so much as this: not to wander or fall into disorder when their formation was broken, but, using every man as his own file-leader and rank-mate, wherever the danger might gather, to rally, close ranks, and fight all the same.
But on that occasion the phalanx of Epaminondas, bearing down on those men alone and passing by the rest, together with Pelopidas, who with incredible speed and daring had thrown himself into the fighting, so confounded their pride and their skill that there occurred a rout and slaughter of Spartans such as had never happened before. And so, though Epaminondas held the office of Boeotarch and Pelopidas did not, and though the one commanded the whole force and the other only a small part of it, they carried off an equal share of the glory of that victory and of the achievement.
Both, still holding the office of Boeotarch, invaded the Peloponnese and won over the greater part of its population, prying loose from Lacedaemonian control Elis, Argos, all of Arcadia, and most of Laconia itself — even though it was the height of winter, near the solstice, and only a few days of the last month remained, after which others would have to take over command at once with the start of the new month, or else those who failed to hand it over would face death.
The other Boeotarchs, fearing this law and shunning the winter, were eager to lead the army home; but Pelopidas, the first to side with Epaminondas and to urge the citizens on together with him, led them against Sparta and brought them across the Eurotas. He captured many of their cities and ravaged the whole country as far as the sea, leading a Greek army of seventy thousand, of which the Thebans themselves made up less than a twelfth,
yet the reputation of these two men, without any common decree or vote, made all the allies follow their lead in silence. For, it seems, the first and most sovereign law grants by nature to one who can save, authority over one in need of saving; just as sailors who, in fair weather or riding at anchor by the shore, behave insolently and boldly toward their helmsmen, but the moment a storm and danger overtake them, look to those same men and place their hopes in them.
And indeed the Argives, the Eleans, and the Arcadians, who in their councils quarreled and disputed with the Thebans over the leadership, nonetheless, in the midst of the actual struggles and dangers, willingly obeyed those men as their generals.
In that campaign they organized all of Arcadia into a single power, and, cutting off from the Spartans, who were occupying it, the territory of Messenia, they called back the ancient Messenians and resettled them, founding Ithome; and as they returned home through Cenchreae, they defeated the Athenians who attempted to skirmish with them at the narrow passes and block their march.
For these deeds, while everyone else admired their valor beyond measure and marveled at their good fortune, the envy natural to kinsmen and fellow-citizens, growing along with the men's fame, prepared for them a welcome neither fair nor fitting. For both, upon their return, faced trial for their lives, because, though the law commanded that the office of Boeotarch be handed over to others in the first month, which they call Bucatius, they had held on to it four whole months beyond, during which they had settled affairs in Messenia, Arcadia, and Laconia.
Pelopidas stood trial first, and so faced the greater peril; yet both men were cleared of the charge. Epaminondas endured the false accusation and the whole ordeal calmly, counting patient endurance in political matters as a great part of courage and greatness of soul; but Pelopidas, being by nature more hot-tempered, and urged on by his friends to punish his enemies, seized upon such an occasion.
Menecleidas the orator had been one of those who joined with Pelopidas and Melon in gathering at Charon's house; but since he was not held in equal honor among the Thebans — though a most formidable speaker, he was unruly and malicious in character — he turned his nature to slandering and maligning his betters, and did not stop even after that trial.
He succeeded in driving Epaminondas out of the Boeotarchy and blocking his political career for a long time; but he was not able to turn the people against Pelopidas by slander, and so tried instead to set him against Charon; and having as a common consolation for envy this, that if men cannot show themselves better than others, they can at least make those others appear worse — he went to great lengths before the people to exalt the deeds of Charon, praising his generalship and his victories.
As to the cavalry battle near Plataea, which they had won under Charon's command before Leuctra, he attempted to have a dedication made in this manner. Androcydes of Cyzicus, having been commissioned by the city to paint a picture of a different battle, was carrying out the work at Thebes; but when the revolt occurred and war broke out, the Thebans, since the picture was not far from complete, kept it for themselves.
This, then, Menecleidas persuaded them to dedicate with an inscription bearing the name of Charon alone, meaning to dim the glory of Pelopidas and Epaminondas. It was a foolish piece of vanity, to prize so highly, amid so many and so great struggles, one action and one victory, in which, so the story goes, one Gerandas, a Spartan of no particular rank, fell along with forty of his men, and nothing else of importance was accomplished.
Against this decree Pelopidas brought an indictment for illegality, arguing that it was not the ancestral custom of the Thebans to honor any man privately, but to preserve the name of the victory in common for the fatherland. Throughout the whole trial he continued unstintingly to praise Charon, while exposing Menecleidas as malicious and wicked, and asking the Thebans whether nothing good had ever been done by them at all — so that Menecleidas was fined a sum of money, which, being unable to pay because of its size, he later tried to stir up revolution and overturn the constitution. These matters, then, offer some insight into the man's character.
When Alexander, tyrant of Pherae, was openly at war with many of the Thessalians and plotting against all of them, the cities sent embassies to Thebes asking for a general and a force. Pelopidas, seeing that Epaminondas was managing affairs in the Peloponnese, gave himself over to the task and devoted himself to the Thessalians, unwilling to let his own skill and power lie idle, and thinking that wherever Epaminondas was present, no other general was needed.
So when he had marched into Thessaly with a force, he at once took over Larissa, and when Alexander came and begged for reconciliation, he tried to make him a mild and lawful ruler for the Thessalians instead of a tyrant. But since he proved incurable and beastly, and much cruelty, much wantonness and greed were charged against him, and Pelopidas grew harsh and angry with him, he fled away secretly with his bodyguard.
Pelopidas, having left the Thessalians a great measure of security from the tyrant and concord among themselves, departed himself for Macedonia, since Ptolemy was at war with Alexander, king of the Macedonians, and both were summoning him to come as arbiter, judge, ally, and helper to whichever side seemed to be wronged.
He went and settled the disputes and restored the exiles, taking as hostage Philip, the king's brother, and thirty other boys of the noblest families, and settled them at Thebes, thereby showing the Greeks how far the power and reputation of Thebes reached, and how deeply she was trusted for her justice.
This was the Philip who later fought the Greeks for their freedom, but who was then a boy living at Thebes in the household of Pammenes. From this he seems to have become an admirer of Epaminondas, having perhaps noted his energy in wars and generalship — though this was only a small part of that man's virtue — while of the self-control, justice, magnanimity, and gentleness in which Epaminondas was truly great, Philip took no share, either by nature or by imitation.
After this, when the Thessalians again accused Alexander of Pherae of throwing their cities into disorder, Pelopidas was sent as an envoy together with Ismenias; and he arrived neither bringing an armed force from home nor expecting war, but was compelled to make use of the Thessalians themselves to meet the urgency of the situation.
Meanwhile affairs in Macedonia were again in turmoil, for Ptolemy had killed the king and seized power, and the friends of the dead man called on Pelopidas. He wished to make his presence felt in these affairs, yet since no troops of his own were at hand, he hired mercenaries on the spot and marched against Ptolemy with them at once.
But when they had come near one another, Ptolemy corrupted the mercenaries with money and persuaded them to come over to his side; yet he feared the very reputation and name of Pelopidas, and met him as a superior, and by taking his hand and pleading with him, agreed to hold the throne only as a trust for the murdered king's brothers, and to share the same friends and foes as the Thebans. As surety for this he gave his son Philoxenus as hostage, along with fifty of his companions.
Pelopidas dispatched these men to Thebes, while he himself, resenting bitterly the mercenaries' betrayal, discovered that near Pharsalus lay stored most of their wealth along with their wives and children; hoping that seizing these would exact a fitting price for the wrong done to him, he mustered a body of Thessalian troops and arrived at Pharsalus.
But he had scarcely arrived there when Alexander the tyrant appeared with his forces. Pelopidas and his companions, supposing he had come to answer for himself, went to meet him themselves — knowing him to be utterly abominable and murderous, yet expecting, because of Thebes and the respect and reputation they enjoyed, to suffer nothing.
But he, seeing them approaching unarmed and alone, at once seized them, and took possession of Pharsalus, and struck terror and fear into all his subjects, since after so great a wrong and so great a daring act he would clearly spare no one, and would deal with whatever men and affairs came his way as one who had, for the time being, utterly given up on his own life.
When the Thebans heard this they took it hard, and sent out an army at once, though because of some anger against Epaminondas they appointed other commanders. The tyrant, having carried Pelopidas off to Pherae, at first allowed those who wished to converse with him, supposing he had become pitiable and humbled by his misfortune.
But when Pelopidas, seeing the people of Pherae lamenting, urged them to take courage, since the tyrant would now above all pay the penalty, and sent word to Alexander himself saying it was absurd that he should day after day torture and murder the wretched citizens who had done no wrong, while sparing the very man he knew above all would take vengeance on him should he escape —
Alexander, astonished at his spirit and his fearlessness, said, "Why is it, then, that Pelopidas is in such a hurry to die?" And Pelopidas, on hearing this, said, "So that you may perish the sooner, having become still more hateful to the gods than you now are." From this time on Alexander forbade outsiders to have access to him. But Thebe, who was the daughter of Jason and wife of Alexander, learning from the guards of Pelopidas' boldness and nobility, desired to see the man and speak with him.
When she came to him, being a woman, she did not at once perceive the greatness of his character amid so great a misfortune, but judging by his hair, his dress, and his manner of life that he was suffering wretchedly and unbecomingly of his repute, she wept for him. At first Pelopidas, not knowing who among women she was, marveled; but when he learned who she was, he addressed her by her father's name — for he had been an intimate friend of Jason. And when she said, "I pity your wife," he replied, "And I pity you, because though unfettered you endure Alexander."
This saying somehow touched the woman; for she was burdened by the cruelty and insolence of the tyrant, who along with his other wantonness had made even the youngest of her brothers his favorite. For this reason, coming continually to Pelopidas and speaking her mind freely about what she suffered, she was gradually filled with anger and resolve and hostility toward Alexander.
When the Theban generals invaded Thessaly but accomplished nothing, and through inexperience or misfortune withdrew shamefully, the city imposed on each a fine of ten thousand drachmas, and dispatched Epaminondas at the head of a force.
At once there arose a great stirring among the Thessalians, who were roused by the general's reputation, and the tyrant's affairs needed only a slight tipping to be utterly ruined — such fear had fallen upon his commanders and friends, and such an impulse toward revolt and such joy at what was coming possessed his subjects, as though they would now see the tyrant paying the penalty.
Nevertheless Epaminondas ranked his own standing below the need to keep Pelopidas safe, and worried that a general breakdown might drive Alexander, despairing of his own position, to turn savagely against his captive, hovered over the war, and going about in a circle, by his preparations and his delay he checked and restrained the tyrant, so as neither to provoke resistance from his arrogance and boldness nor to stir up his bitterness and passionate temper.
For he had learned of his cruelty and his contempt for what was noble and just — how he buried men alive, and dressed others in the skins of wild boars and bears and set hunting dogs upon them, and they were torn apart and speared, this being his idea of sport; and how, at Meliboea and Scotussa, cities in alliance and friendship with him, while their assemblies were in session, he surrounded them with his guards and slaughtered all the young men; and how he had dedicated and garlanded the very spear that struck down his uncle Polyphron, offering it sacrifice as though it were divine and naming it Tychon.
Once, watching a tragic actor perform Euripides' Trojan Women, he got up and left the theater, and sending word to the actor bade him take heart and not perform any the worse for it — for he had not left out of contempt for him, but out of shame before his citizens, lest, having never pitied any of those he himself had murdered, he should be seen weeping over the sufferings of Hecuba and Andromache.
This man, then, terrified at the very reputation and name and mere semblance of Epaminondas' generalship, "crouched like a cock, a slave, with wing bent low," and quickly sent men to plead his case. Epaminondas would not allow the Thebans to conclude peace and friendship with such a man, but having agreed on a thirty-day truce in the war, and having received back Pelopidas and Ismenias, he withdrew.
When the Thebans learned that the Lacedaemonians and Athenians were sending envoys up to the Great King to seek an alliance, they too sent Pelopidas, having planned excellently with regard to his reputation. For in the first place, as he journeyed up through the king's provinces, he was already famous and much talked of; for the fame of his struggles against the Lacedaemonians had spread not faintly nor to any small extent through Asia, but
from the moment the first report of the battle at Leuctra ran abroad, it grew, with some new success always being added, and spreading and mounting, reached to the farthest lands; then, once he stood before the assembled satraps, generals, and officers at the King's gate, it stirred both amazement and conversation, that this was the man who had driven the Lacedaemonians from land and sea and had confined Sparta beneath Taygetus and the Eurotas — the same Sparta which but a short time before, through Agesilaus, had waged war against the Great King himself over Susa and Ecbatana.
At this Artaxerxes rejoiced, and marveled at Pelopidas for his reputation, and made him great with honors, wishing to seem to be courted and esteemed by the greatest of men. And when he had observed his bearing and listened closely to his speech — firmer than what the Athenians offered, and plainer than the Lacedaemonians' manner —
he came to like him still more, and, feeling a kingly affection, did not conceal his honor toward the man, nor did it escape the notice of the other envoys that he gave Pelopidas the largest share of his favor. And yet he is thought to have honored, above all the Greeks, Antalcidas the Lacedaemonian, in that he dipped in perfume the garland he had worn while drinking and sent it to him.
To Pelopidas he did not show such intimate favor, but he sent the most splendid and greatest of the customary gifts and confirmed his requests — that the Greeks should be autonomous, that Messene should be inhabited, and that the Thebans should be considered ancestral friends of the King. With these answers, and having accepted none of the gifts save such as were tokens of goodwill and friendliness, he set off homeward — which most of all discredited the other envoys.
Timagoras, at any rate, the Athenians condemned and put to death — and if it was for the abundance of his gifts, rightly and justly so; for he received not only gold and silver, but also a costly couch and servants to make the bed, as though the Greeks did not know how, and further, eighty cattle and cowherds, on the pretense that he needed cow's milk for some illness, and at the end he was borne down to the coast reclining in a litter, the King paying four talents to the men who carried him. But it seems it was not chiefly the bribe-taking that most provoked the Athenians.
For once, when Epicrates the shield-bearer, so far from denying that gifts from the King had come to him, went on to propose a decree that instead of the nine archons, nine envoys be chosen by lot each year from the common people and the poor to go to the King, so that by receiving gifts they might become well off, the people only laughed; but because everything had turned out well for the Thebans they took it hard in every way, not reckoning the reputation of Pelopidas, how far superior he was to all rhetoric and speeches in the eyes of a man who was always courting whoever held the mastery of arms.
This embassy, then, added no small measure of goodwill toward Pelopidas on his return, on account of the resettlement of Messene and the autonomy secured for the other Greeks. But when Alexander of Pherae reverted again to his own nature, cutting off not a few Thessalian cities, and had put the Phthiotic Achaeans entirely and the Magnesian people under garrison, the cities, learning that Pelopidas had returned, at once sent envoys to Thebes asking for a force and for him as its general.
When the Thebans voted eagerly for this, and everything was quickly made ready and the general was on the point of setting out, the sun failed and darkness held the city in the midst of day; and Pelopidas, seeing everyone thrown into confusion by the apparition, did not think he ought to force men who were fearful and despondent, nor risk seven thousand citizens,
but gave himself alone to the Thessalians, and taking along three hundred volunteer horsemen and some foreign troops, set out — though the seers did not permit it, nor did the other citizens share his eagerness, for it seemed a great sign to have come from heaven regarding so illustrious a man. But he was the hotter against Alexander because of the anger he felt at the outrage done to him, and he hoped, too, to find Alexander's household already sick and corrupted, from what Thebe had told him.
But what most called to him and invited him, since he desired it and was ambitious for it, was the nobility of the deed — for in an era when Lacedaemon was dispatching commanders and overseers to serve under Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily, while Athens retained this same Alexander on its payroll and was erecting a bronze statue of him as though he were a benefactor, then indeed it fell to the Thebans alone to show the Greeks that they took the field on behalf of those under tyranny, and were putting down among the Greeks the lawless and violent dominations.
So when he came to Pharsalus and had gathered his force, he marched at once against Alexander. Alexander, seeing the Thebans few in number around Pelopidas, while his own hoplites numbered more than double the Thessalian force, came out to meet them at the Thetideum. And when someone told Pelopidas that the tyrant was coming on with many men, he said, "So much the better — we shall conquer the more."
As hills sloping down on either side toward the middle ground rose up near the place called Cynoscephalae (Dogs' Heads), both sides set out to seize them with their infantry. Pelopidas sent his cavalry, who were numerous and good, against the enemy's cavalry, and when these prevailed and drove the fleeing enemy horse out together with them onto the plain, Alexander got there first and seized the hills,
and when the Thessalian hoplites came up afterward and pressed forward against the strong and elevated ground, he fell upon them and killed the foremost, while the rest, having taken wounds, could accomplish nothing. Seeing this, Pelopidas called back his cavalry and ordered them to ride against the enemy's massed body, while he himself, taking up his shield, joined at a run those fighting around the hills,
and pushing his way through from the rear to the front ranks, he put such strength and eagerness into all of them that even to the enemy they seemed to have become different men, changed in body and in spirit. They beat off two or three attacks, but seeing these men too pressing on vigorously, and the cavalry wheeling back from its pursuit, they gave way, making their withdrawal step by step, facing the enemy.
Pelopidas, looking down from the heights upon the whole enemy camp, saw it not yet turned to flight but already filling with confusion and disorder; he stopped and looked about, searching for Alexander himself. And spotting him stationed over on the right flank, urging on and arranging his mercenaries, he could not master his anger by reason,
but, kindled at the sight and surrendering his body and the command of the action to passion, he leapt out far ahead of the others and bore down shouting, calling out the tyrant. Alexander did not accept the charge nor stand his ground, but fled back among his bodyguards and hid himself; of the mercenaries, those who first came to close quarters were cut down by Pelopidas, and some, being struck, died on the spot,
but most of them, striking at him from a distance with their spears through his armor, wounded him again and again, until the Thessalians, stricken with grief, came running down from the hills to help, though he had already fallen; and the cavalry, riding up, routed the whole phalanx, and pursuing it a very long way filled the country with corpses, cutting down more than three thousand.
That the Thebans present should have taken heavily the death of Pelopidas, calling him father and savior and teacher of the greatest and noblest goods, was not at all surprising; but the Thessalians and their allies, though they exceeded in their decrees every honor becoming to human excellence, showed the grace they bore the man still more by their outward displays of feeling,
for they say that those who had been present at the deed neither put on breastplate, nor unbridled horse, nor bound up a wound, before, on learning of his death, they went, still hot in their arms, to the corpse, as though he could perceive it, and heaped up around his body in a circle the spoils of the enemy, and shore the manes of their horses, and cut their own hair too.
And many, going off to their tents, neither lit a fire nor took a meal, and silence and dejection lay over the whole camp, as though they had not carried off the most conspicuous and greatest of victories but had instead been vanquished by the tyrant and reduced to slavery,
and from the cities, as soon as this was reported, the magistrates came, and with them ephebes and boys and priests, to receive the body, bringing trophies, wreaths, and sets of gilded armor. And just as the body was about to be carried out, the eldest of the Thessalians came forward and asked the Thebans to allow them to bury the dead man themselves. And one of them spoke: "Allied men, we ask a favor of you, an honor that may bring us comfort in so great a misfortune.
For the Thessalians will not be escorting Pelopidas away alive, nor rendering him the honors he deserves while he can perceive them; but if we may be granted to touch the corpse and to adorn and bury the body ourselves, we shall seem to you not to distrust that a greater calamity has befallen the Thessalians than the Thebans; your loss is merely that of a fine commander, whereas ours is that man together with our very freedom in one stroke. So with what courage could we still request a further general from you, seeing that we failed to send Pelopidas back to you?" To this the Thebans agreed.
Of those funeral rites, it does not seem that any others were ever more splendid, at least to those who do not believe splendor lies in ivory and gold and purple, as Philistus does, hymning and admiring the funeral of Dionysius, which became, as it were, a theatrical finale to the great tragedy of his tyranny.
Alexander the Great, when Hephaestion died, not only shore the manes of horses and mules, but also tore down the battlements from the city walls, so that every city would appear clothed in grief, its former look traded for one shorn bare and disfigured. These, however, were commands of a master, carried out under great compulsion, amid the resentment of those who suffered them and the hatred of those forced to it, and were no mark of gratitude or honor, but a display of barbaric pomp and luxury and boastfulness, on the part of one disposing of his abundance
in ways empty and unenviable. But a man of the people, dying on foreign soil, with no wife, no children, no kinsmen present, with no one compelling or constraining it, accompanied, borne forth, and garlanded by such a multitude of peoples and cities competing with each other — he might reasonably be judged to possess the most complete happiness.
For it is not, as Aesop said, the death of the fortunate that is hardest, but rather the most blessed, since it lays up their successes in a safe place, beyond the reach of fortune's turning. Hence the Laconian did better, who, when he embraced Diagoras the Olympic victor — after Diagoras had watched his own sons take Olympic crowns, and had likewise lived on to see the sons of his sons and of his daughters — said, "Die now, Diagoras, for you will not ascend to Olympus."
But as for Olympic and Pythian victories, I do not think anyone, setting them all together, would think it worth comparing them to a single one of Pelopidas's contests — he who fought and won many such contests, and who, having lived the greater part of his life in glory and honor, died at last, in his thirteenth term as Boeotarch, achieving a feat of valor mingled with tyrannicide, on behalf of the freedom of the Thessalians.
His death grieved the allies greatly, but benefited them still more. For the Thebans, on learning of Pelopidas's death, made no delay of their vengeance, but swiftly took the field with seven thousand hoplites and seven hundred cavalry, under the command of Malcitas and Diogeiton.
Finding Alexander's power reduced and cut down, they compelled him to give back to the Thessalians the cities of theirs which he held, to release the Magnesians and the Achaeans of Phthia and withdraw his garrisons from them, and to swear that he would follow wherever the Thebans might lead and whatever they commanded. With this the Thebans were satisfied; but the penalty which he paid to the gods on Pelopidas's account a little later, I shall now relate.
Thebe, who lived with him as his wife, Pelopidas had first, as has been said, taught not to fear the outward splendor and pomp of the tyranny, seeing that it lay within reach of arms and guards; but afterward, fearing his faithlessness and hating his cruelty, she conspired with her brothers, three in number, Tisiphonus, Pytholaus, and Lycophron, and set about the deed in the following manner,
The rest of the tyrant's house was held by the guards who kept watch through the night, but the bedchamber, in which they were accustomed to sleep, was upstairs, and before it a chained dog kept guard, terrifying to everyone except those two and the one servant who fed it. At the hour, then, when Thebe intended to make her attempt, she had her brothers hidden nearby in a certain house from daybreak, and she herself went in, as was her custom,
alone to Alexander, who was already asleep, and after a little while came out again, and ordered the servant to take the dog outside, saying that her husband wished to rest in quiet; and she herself, fearing that the ladder might make a noise as the young men climbed up, spread wool over it,
then, having thus brought her brothers up armed with swords and stationed them before the doors, she herself went in, and taking down the sword hanging over his head, displayed it to them, a signal that the man lay bound fast in sleep. And when the young men, struck with terror, hesitated, she reviled them and swore in anger that she herself would wake Alexander and reveal the plot; and shamed as well as frightened, she led them in and stationed them around the bed, holding out the lamp.
Of them, one held down his feet, pressing them fast; another, seizing his head by the hair, wrenched it back; and the third, striking him with the sword, dispatched him — a death, by the swiftness of its ending, perhaps gentler than was fitting for him to suffer, but one in which he earned the distinction — unique among tyrants, or the first of them — of dying by his own wife's hand; his corpse was afterward abused, cast out and trampled underfoot by the people of Pherae, he was thought to have suffered what his crimes deserved.

======== Marcellus ========

Marcus Claudius, who held the consulship of the Romans five times, was, they say, the son of a Marcus, and was called by his household the first Marcellus, which means "little Mars," as Posidonius tells us. For he was skilled in the experience of war, robust of body, a hard striker with his hand, and by nature devoted to fighting, and in this displayed much pride and haughtiness in his contests,
but in every other way he was temperate, humane, and such a lover of Greek education and learning as to honor and admire those who excelled in it, though he himself, because of his engagements, was not able to practice and learn as much as he was eager to. For if to some other men, as Homer has said, the god gave harsh wars to wage from youth to old age, this was true also of those Romans who then held the first place,
men who while young fought the Carthaginians around Sicily, in their prime fought the Gauls on behalf of Italy itself, and now growing old were locked again in struggle with Hannibal and the Carthaginians, not having, as most men do, a release from campaigning because of old age, but being drawn on to commands in war and to leadership by their nobility and virtue.
Marcellus was idle and unpracticed in no kind of fighting, and being his own best in single combat, he shrank from no challenge, and killed all who challenged him. In Sicily he saved his brother Otacilius when he was in danger, shielding him and killing those who were attacking,
in return for which, while he was still young, crowns and prizes were given him by the generals, and when he grew more esteemed the people appointed him aedile of the more distinguished rank, and the priests made him augur. This is a kind of priesthood whose office is especially to watch and observe the divination from birds, as the law has ordained.
While serving as aedile he was forced to bring an unwelcome prosecution. He had a son of the same name, in the bloom of youth, conspicuous in appearance, and no less admired by the citizens for his self-control and education; and Capitolinus, the colleague of Marcellus, a wanton and reckless man, made advances to him with words of desire. The boy at first rebuffed the attempt on his own, but when the man tried again, he told his father, and Marcellus, taking it hard, denounced the man to the senate.
The man contrived many evasions and pleas of exception, appealing to the tribunes, but when they refused to admit his appeal, he took refuge in denial of the charge; and since no witness had come forward regarding the words spoken, it was decided to summon the boy before the senate, and when he appeared, seeing his blush and his tears mixed with an unceasing indignation and shame, they required no other proof and condemned Capitolinus, fining him money, from which Marcellus had silver libation-vessels made and consecrated to the gods.
The First Carthaginian War having reached its close after twenty-two years of fighting, fresh trouble with the Gauls once more seized Rome's attention, for the Insubres, who dwell at the foot of the Italian Alps, a great Celtic nation in their own right, mustered their forces and called in besides those hired Gallic fighters known as Gaesatae,
and it seemed a wonder and a piece of good fortune that the Celtic war had not broken out at the same time as the Libyan one, but that the Gauls, as though holding themselves in reserve, had rightly and fairly remained still while the others were fighting, and now, when the war was over, set upon the victors and challenged them while they had leisure; nevertheless the region caused great fear, because of its nearness in the coming war close at hand, and because the Gauls had long been dreaded above every other foe by the Romans, who once before had lost their own city to them,
and from that time onward a statute was passed exempting priests from soldiering, unless a fresh Gallic war should threaten them again. Their fear was also shown by their preparations, for so many tens of thousands of Romans are said never before nor since to have been under arms at once, and by the innovations made in their sacrifices;
for though in nothing else did they practice anything barbarous or foreign, but held as nearly as possible to Greek beliefs and were gentle toward matters of religion, yet when this war fell upon them they were forced to yield to certain oracles from the Sibylline books, and interred alive a pair of Greeks, one man and one woman, together with a pair of Gauls, at the site known as the Forum Boarium, for whom even now, in the month of November, they perform secret and unwitnessed rites for Greeks and Gauls.
The first of these contests, then, though they brought the Romans great victories and great reverses, came to no firm conclusion; but when the consuls Flaminius and Furius marched out against the Insubres with large forces, the river that flows through the country of Picenum was seen running with blood, and it was said that three moons appeared near the city of Ariminum,
and the priests who watched the omens at the consular elections insisted that the proclamations of the consuls had been attended by evil and inauspicious birds. At once the senate sent letters to the camp, calling and summoning the consuls to return as quickly as possible and resign their office, and to do nothing further as consuls against the enemy;
having received these letters, Flaminius did not open them until he had joined battle, routed the barbarians, and overrun their country. When he returned with much booty, the crowd withheld their welcome from him; it was rather that, since he had disregarded the summons and refused to heed the letters, showing contempt and insolence instead, they very nearly voted his triumph down, and though they finally allowed him to celebrate it, they afterward reduced him to a private citizen, forcing him and his colleague alike to give up the consulship,
so much did the Romans refer all their affairs to the god, and they would not tolerate contempt of divination and ancestral custom even amid the greatest successes, judging it more vital to the city's preservation that its leaders show reverence toward heaven than that they should conquer their enemies.
Tiberius Sempronius, then, a man beloved by the Romans as much as any for his courage and nobility of character, while consul appointed Scipio Nasica and Gaius Marcius as his successors; but when they already held their provinces and armies, he came upon certain priestly records and found that he himself had unknowingly neglected one of the ancestral rites, which was as follows:
whenever a magistrate, sitting to observe the birds outside the city, having hired a house or tent, is forced by some cause to return to the city before the signs have become certain, he must give up the house he had previously hired and take another, from which he is to begin his observation anew from the start. This had escaped Tiberius, it seems, and having used the same house twice he had declared the aforesaid men consuls. Later, learning of his error, he reported it to the senate.
The senate did not treat this small lapse with contempt, but wrote to the men; and they, abandoning their provinces, returned to Rome quickly and laid down their office. But this was done later; around that same time also two most distinguished priests were deprived of their priesthoods, Cornelius Cethegus, because he had presented the entrails of the sacrificial victim out of proper order,
and Quintus Sulpicius, because during a sacrifice he was performing, the pointed cap slipped off the head of the chief priest — the cap worn by those called flamens. And when the dictator Minucius appointed Gaius Flaminius as his master of horse, since the squeak of a mouse — the kind they call sorex — was heard, they voted them out and appointed others in their place, keeping such precision even in matters so small, without mixing in any superstition, by never changing or overstepping their ancestral customs.
So then, when Flaminius and his colleague had renounced their office, Marcellus was appointed consul through those called the interreges, and taking up office he appointed as his colleague Gnaeus Cornelius. It is said that though the Gauls made many conciliatory proposals, and the senate wished for peace, Marcellus roused
the people to war; nevertheless, even after peace had been made, the Gaesatae seem to have renewed the war, crossing the Alps and rousing the Insubres; for being thirty thousand strong they joined those who were many times their number, and full of confidence they at once marched on Acerrae, a city built above the river Po. From there their king Britomatus took a contingent of ten thousand Gaesatae and laid waste the country along the Po.
On learning of this, Marcellus stationed his colleague at Acerrae along with the entire heavy and light infantry and one third of the horsemen, while he himself, taking the remaining cavalry together with roughly six hundred of the most lightly equipped foot soldiers, pressed forward without slackening his pace by day or by night, until he came upon that same body of ten thousand Gaesatae at a spot called Clastidium, a Gallic settlement that had only recently passed under Roman control.
He had no opportunity to rest and refresh his army, for he quickly gave the barbarians notice of his arrival, and he was held in contempt, since he had with him altogether few infantry, while the Celts thought nothing of his cavalry, being themselves the strongest in fighting on horseback and thought to excel in this above all, and at that time they far outnumbered Marcellus as well. At once, therefore, they charged at him with great violence and terrible threats, as though to sweep him away, with their king riding before them,
and Marcellus, so that they might not surround and encircle him while his numbers were so few, led his squadrons of cavalry far out and rode around, thinning his line, until he had drawn a little way from the enemy. And now, as he was turning to charge, it happened that his horse, startled by the fierce bearing of the enemy, shied away and carried Marcellus back by force.
Fearing that this might cause panic among the Romans out of superstition, he quickly wrenched the horse's head around with the bit and turned it to face the enemy, and himself made obeisance to the sun, as though he had used the turning not by chance but for this very purpose; for it is the Roman custom to worship the gods by turning in this way. And now, closing with the enemy, he vowed to Jupiter Feretrius that he would consecrate to him the finest of the enemy's arms.
Meanwhile the king of the Gauls, catching sight of him and judging from his insignia that this was the commander, rode out far ahead of the others to meet him, shouting a challenge as he came and brandishing his spear, a man outstanding among the Gauls in bodily size, and conspicuous in armor bright with silver and gold and dyed colors and every kind of ornament, gleaming like lightning.
So then, when Marcellus, surveying the enemy line, judged this armor to be the finest and supposed it was against this man that he had made his vow to the god, he charged at him, and piercing his breastplate with his spear and driving it home with the impetus of his horse he overthrew him while still alive, and dealing him a second and a third blow killed him at once.
Springing down off his horse, and placing his hands on the fallen man's armor, he said, gazing upward toward the sky: "O Jupiter Feretrius, who look upon the great deeds and doings of generals and commanders in wars and battles, I call you to witness that I, the third Roman commander, ruler myself, have with my own hand slain and killed this ruler and king, and I consecrate to you the first and finest of the spoils; grant like fortune to those who press on to what remains of this war."
After this the cavalry engaged, not fighting as separate bodies of horsemen, but also charging together against the infantry who came against them at the same time, and they won a victory extraordinary and unprecedented both in kind and manner; for it is said that never before nor since have so many horsemen defeated at once so many horsemen and infantry together. Having killed the greater number and taken possession of their arms and money, he returned to his colleague, who was faring poorly in the fight against the Celts around the largest and most heavily populated of the Gallic towns.
It is called Mediolanum, and the Celts of that region regard it as their capital; hence they fought with great spirit for it and besieged Cornelius in return. But once Marcellus arrived, and once the Gaesatae, hearing that their king had been defeated and killed, pulled back, the city fell, and the remaining Celts likewise gave up their towns and placed all their affairs in Roman hands. And these, having obtained moderate terms, had peace.
When the senate voted a triumph to Marcellus alone, he rode into the city, in other respects a marvel of splendor and wealth and spoils and the huge bodies of captives among a few chosen men, but the sweetest and most novel sight of all he offered was himself, carrying to the god the full armor of the barbarian.
For cutting a tall and great trunk of a well-grown oak, and shaping it like a trophy, he bound it up and hung upon it the spoils, arranging and fitting each piece in order. When the procession went forward he himself mounted the four-horse chariot, taking up the trophy-bearing image, the fairest and most conspicuous of any that had ever been carried, and rode in triumph through the city, while the army followed, adorned with their finest arms, singing songs that had been composed for the occasion and paeans of victory to the god and to their general.
So advancing thus, he entered the shrine of Jupiter Feretrius and there dedicated and laid up the spoils, being the third and last man to accomplish this down to our own age; for first Romulus brought back spoils from Acron the Caeninensian, second Cornelius Cossus from Tolumnius the Tyrrhenian, and after them Marcellus from Britomartus, king of the Gauls, and after Marcellus no one else.
Now the god to whom the offering is made is called Jupiter Feretrius, as some say, from the trophy that is 'carried' (pheretron), since much of the Greek tongue was in that age still mixed with the Latin; but others say the surname belongs to Jupiter as the hurler of thunderbolts, for the Romans call striking 'ferire.' Others again say the name arose from the blow dealt to the enemy; for even now in battles, when the Romans pursue their foes, they call out constantly to one another 'feri,' that is, 'strike.' The spoils in general they call 'spolia,' but these particular ones, taken by a general from a general, they call 'opima.'
And yet Numa Pompilius, they say, mentions in his memoirs a first, second, and third grade of spoils opima, decreeing that the first-won should be dedicated to Jupiter Feretrius, while the second went to Mars and the third to Quirinus, and that the winner of the first should be awarded three hundred asses, the second two hundred, and the third a hundred. The more common view, however, holds that spoils only count as opima when armies stand arrayed in battle and one commander kills another commander with his own hand during the initial clash. On this matter, then, so much may be said.
The Romans took such delight in that triumph and in the war's conclusion that they even sent to Delphi a golden bowl of many pounds' weight as a thank-offering to the Pythian god, and gave liberally a share of the spoils to the allied cities, and sent much to Hiero, king of the Syracusans, who was their friend and ally.
When Hannibal invaded Italy, Marcellus was sent to Sicily leading a fleet; but when the disaster at Cannae befell, and no small number of tens of thousands of Romans perished in that battle, while few of the survivors fled together to Canusium, there was an expectation that Hannibal would at once march upon Rome, having destroyed the greatest part of her power.
First Marcellus sent from his ships a garrison of fifteen hundred men to the city; then, once the senate's decree reached him, he made his way to Canusium, and gathering up those assembled there, led them out from behind their fortifications, as one who did not mean to abandon the countryside. Of the leading and capable men among the Romans some had died in the battles, and Fabius Maximus, who had the greatest reputation for trustworthiness and good judgment, was blamed for being too exact in his calculations to avoid suffering harm, as though this made him slow to act and lacking in daring.
And thinking him sufficient for safety, but not adequate as a general for defense in arms, they looked to Marcellus, and blending and fitting his boldness and vigor together with the other's caution and foresight, they sent them out sometimes both together as consuls, sometimes in turn, the one as consul, the other as proconsul.
Posidonius says that Fabius was called 'the shield' and Marcellus 'the sword'; and Hannibal is said to have declared that Fabius was the one he dreaded as a teacher, while Marcellus was the one he dreaded as a foe in the field—since the former kept him from inflicting any injury at all, while the latter also made him actually endure it.
First then, when much slackness and boldness had come upon Hannibal's soldiers from their victories, Marcellus, falling upon those who scattered from the camp and ranged over the countryside, cut them down and wore away his strength; then, going to the aid of Neapolis and Nola, he strengthened the Neapolitans, who of themselves stood firm for Rome, but on entering Nola he found faction there, the senate being unable to manage and restrain the populace, who inclined toward Hannibal.
For there was a certain man foremost in the city for noble birth and conspicuous for courage, named Bandius. This man had distinguished himself in the fighting at Cannae, cutting down a great number of Carthaginians, but in the end was discovered lying among the fallen, his body covered with many wounds; Hannibal, admiring him, not only released him without ransom but even added gifts and made him a friend and guest-friend.
In return for this kindness, Bandius was one of those most eager for Hannibal's cause, and having great influence with the populace was leading them toward revolt. But Marcellus thought it no pious thing to destroy a man so brilliant in fortune and one who had shared in the greatest struggles of the Romans; and being naturally kindly, and persuasive in conversation besides, being able to win over an ambitious disposition, when Bandius once greeted him he asked him who among men he was, though he had long known well, seeking rather an occasion and pretext for engaging with him, as he said,
"Lucius Bandius," and Marcellus, feigning delight and astonishment, said, "Are you truly that Bandius whom the veterans of Cannae in Rome talk of so much, the single man who would not desert the commander Paulus Aemilius, but caught on his own frame the greater part of the weapons hurled at him, drawing them onto himself?"
And when Bandius admitted this and showed him some of his wounds, Marcellus said, "Then bearing such tokens of your friendship toward us, did you not come to me at once? Or do you think us so base as to repay the virtue of friends with ingratitude, we for whom honor is held even among our enemies?" Having spoken kindly and taken his hand, he gave him besides a war-horse and five hundred silver drachmas.
From this time Bandius was Marcellus's most steadfast companion and ally, and the most terrible informer and accuser of those who held the opposite view. And there were many such men, and they schemed that, each time the Romans marched out to face the enemy, they themselves would plunder the baggage-train.
For this reason Marcellus, having drawn up his forces within the city, stationed the baggage-train beside the gates, and by proclamation forbade the people of Nola to come near the walls. There was thus an emptiness of arms to be seen, which drew Hannibal on to advance rather carelessly, as though those within the city were in disorder. Meanwhile Marcellus, having ordered the gate on his own side to be thrown open, rode out with the finest of his horsemen, and falling upon the enemy's front engaged them closely.
A little after, the infantry went out by another gate at a run and with a shout; and as Hannibal again divided his forces against these, the third gate was opened, and through it the rest poured out and pressed upon the enemy from every side, who were struck with astonishment at the unexpected attack and defended themselves badly against those already at close quarters because of those coming up behind. And there, for the first time, Hannibal's men gave way before the Romans, being driven with great slaughter and many wounds back to their camp.
The report is that upward of five thousand of them lost their lives, whereas Roman losses came to no more than five hundred. Livy, however, does not affirm so confidently that so great a defeat occurred, nor that so many of the enemy fell dead, but he says that great glory came to Marcellus and the Romans, and a wondrous courage arose out of their misfortunes from that battle, since it showed the enemy not as invincible or unconquerable, but as one who, when fought hard, could also suffer harm.
Wherefore also, when one of the consuls had died, the people summoned Marcellus, though absent, to the succession, and by force overruled the magistrates to postpone the election until he came from the camp. And he was chosen consul by every vote; but when the god thundered, and the priests declared the sign not favorable, though they were reluctant to hinder him openly, fearing the people, he himself renounced the office.
Yet he did not flee from military service, but being proclaimed proconsul and returning again to Nola to the camp, he did harm to those who had chosen the cause of the Phoenician. And when Hannibal came to their aid with swift relief, he was unwilling to fight it out when challenged to a set battle, but once Hannibal had set most of his troops to plundering and no longer looked for a battle, Marcellus marched out to meet him, having distributed to his infantry the long spears used by sea-fighters, and having taught them, keeping their distance, to strike the Carthaginians, who were not javelin-throwers but used short spears at close quarters.
Wherefore it seems that then, for the first time, all those Carthaginians who engaged showed their backs to the Romans and fled outright, losing of their own number five thousand slain and six hundred taken prisoner, and of the elephants four fallen and two taken alive. And greatest of all, within three days after the fight, upward of three hundred cavalrymen, Iberians mixed with Numidians, went over to the Roman side—something that had never before happened to Hannibal, who had for the longest time held together, in a single purpose, an army of barbarians drawn from many varied and diverse nations. These men, indeed, stayed loyal from then on, both under Marcellus and under the commanders who came after him.
Marcellus, now declared consul for a third term, set sail for Sicily; for Hannibal's wartime triumphs had emboldened the Carthaginians to press their claim on the island once more, especially since affairs around Syracuse were much disturbed after the death of Hieronymus the tyrant. For this reason a Roman force had already been sent there before, with Appius as general.
As Marcellus took over this force, many Romans fell upon him who had met with such a misfortune as this: of those arrayed at Cannae against Hannibal, some had fled, others had been taken alive, so great a multitude that it seemed to the Romans hardly enough men were left even to guard the walls.
Yet such was their pride and greatness of spirit that, when Hannibal offered to return the captives for a small ransom, they refused to take them, but voted against it and looked on while some were put to death and others sold outside of Italy, and sent away to Sicily the multitude of those who had survived by flight, directing that they were not to set foot on Italian soil for as long as the war with Hannibal continued.
These men, then, when Marcellus arrived, fell upon him all together, and casting themselves down upon the ground, begged with much crying and weeping for a place in honorable military service, promising to show by their deeds that their rout had come about through some misfortune rather than through cowardice. Marcellus, moved to compassion for them, sent a letter to the senate requesting permission always to replenish his army's shortfall using these men,
but after much debate the senate resolved that the Roman state had no need of cowardly men for public affairs; yet if Marcellus wished to use them, he might, on condition that none of them should obtain any of the crowns or rewards customarily given for valor. This decree vexed Marcellus, and when he returned after the war in Sicily he blamed the senate for not granting him, in exchange for so many great services, the chance to restore so great a number of unfortunate citizens.
At that time in Sicily, first having been wronged by Hippocrates the general, who, to gratify the Carthaginians and to win a tyranny for himself, destroyed many Romans near Leontini, Marcellus took the city of the Leontines by force, and did no wrong to the Leontines themselves, but scourged and killed as many deserters as he caught.
When Hippocrates had first sent word ahead to Syracuse that Marcellus was slaughtering the Leontines to a man, and then, falling upon the Syracusans while they were in confusion, seized the city, Marcellus set out with his whole army toward Syracuse. And having encamped nearby, he sent ambassadors to explain the truth about what had happened at Leontini; but since this was of no use, the Syracusans not being persuaded—for the party of Hippocrates held the upper hand—
he made assaults by land and sea together, Appius leading the infantry force, while he himself, with sixty quinqueremes full of every kind of arms and missiles, and having raised up a siege-engine upon a great platform of eight ships bound together, sailed against the wall, trusting in the size and splendor of his preparation and in his own reputation; but of all this there was no account whatever in the face of Archimedes and the machines of Archimedes.
Yet the man himself had set no store on these as works worthy of serious effort, but most of them had come about as by-products of geometry at play, since formerly King Hiero had been eager and had persuaded Archimedes to turn some part of his art from things purely intellectual to things bodily, and by mixing his reasoning somehow through the medium of sense-perception with practical needs, to make it more evident to the many.
For this beloved and much-talked-of science of mechanics was first set in motion by the followers of Eudoxus and Archytas, who embellished geometry with elegance, and supported problems not easily proved by logical and linear demonstration through sensible and mechanical illustrations—as, for instance, the problem of finding two mean proportionals, which is a necessary element in many geometrical constructions, both of them reduced to mechanical devices, fitting certain mean-lines derived from curved lines and sections.
But when Plato grew indignant and protested to them that they were ruining and corrupting the good of geometry, which was deserting the incorporeal and intelligible for the realm of the senses, and making use once more of bodies that require a great deal of vulgar manual labor, mechanics was in this way separated off and expelled from geometry, and, long looked down upon by philosophy, became one of the military arts.
Archimedes himself, a relative and close friend of King Hiero, sent him a letter claiming that any weight whatsoever could be shifted using a given amount of force; growing bold, so the story goes, on account of how compelling his proof was, he asserted that, given another earth on which to plant his feet, he could shift this one by transferring himself over to it.
Hiero was amazed, and asked him to put the problem into actual effect and to show some great weight set in motion by a small force. So Archimedes fixed upon a merchant ship of three masts belonging to the king's fleet, which had been hauled up on land with great labor and by many hands; loading it with many men and its customary cargo, he himself sat at a distance, and without effort, but gently shaking with his hand the end of a certain compound pulley, drew the ship toward him smoothly and evenly, as though it were gliding over the sea.
The king was astonished, and, grasping the power of the art, persuaded Archimedes to construct for him machines suited both to defense and to attack, for every kind of siege warfare, machines which he himself never had occasion to use, since he lived out most of his life without war, amid festivity; but at that time the apparatus stood ready for the Syracusans in their need, and along with the apparatus, its maker.
So when the Romans attacked from two sides, there was consternation among the Syracusans and a silence born of fear, since they supposed nothing could hold out against so great a force and power. But when Archimedes released his engines, all at once there flew against the infantry missiles of every kind and stones of enormous size, descending with a rushing sound and unbelievable speed, and their weight, which nothing could withstand, threw down in heaps those who fell in their path and threw the ranks into confusion,
while against the ships, beams suddenly swung out over the walls: some ships they sank by pressing down on them from above with great weight, while others they seized at the prow with iron hands or beaks shaped like the beaks of cranes, hoisted upright onto their sterns, and plunged under; still others, spun around within by means of ropes drawn taut from the inside and turned about, were dashed against the cliffs and crags lying beneath the wall, with great destruction of the men on board,
and often a ship, lifted up out of the sea into midair, would spin round and hang there, a terrifying spectacle, until, its men having been thrown out and flung in every direction, it would come crashing down empty against the walls, or slip from the grip as the device released it. As for the engine which Marcellus brought up from the floating bridge, it was called the sambuca, because of a certain resemblance in its shape to the musical instrument,
while it was still approaching the wall from a distance, a stone weighing ten talents was shot out at it, then a second after it, and a third; some of these, striking it with a great crash and surge, shattered the base of the machine, shook loose its bolts, and tore it apart from the floating bridge, so that Marcellus, at a loss, sailed away in haste with his ships and passed the order to his infantry to withdraw.
In council they decided, if they could, to close in on the walls while it was still night; for the cables which Archimedes used, they reasoned, being under great tension, would send their missiles flying overhead, but at close quarters would be wholly ineffective, since the blow would have no distance in which to build force. But he, as it turned out, had long since prepared for this too: engines with a range adjusted to any distance whatever, and short missiles, and, since the wall had not large but many closely-set openings through it, short-range scorpions stood ready close at hand, unseen by the enemy, to strike them.
So when they closed in, thinking themselves unnoticed, once again they met with a great many missiles and blows: rocks came down on them from directly overhead as if by a plumb line, while the wall sent arrows raining down from every side, and they withdrew back.
And there again, stretched into a long formation, they suffered heavy losses and violent collisions among their ships as projectiles shot out and struck them while retreating, and they had no way to retaliate, since most of Archimedes' engines had been built to operate from below the fortification; it looked to the Romans as though they were battling divine powers, so many disasters were raining down on them from a source they could not even see.
Nevertheless Marcellus got away safely, and, joking with the engineers and craftsmen who were with him, said, "Shall we not stop making war on this geometrical Briareus, who uses our ships to ladle water from the sea, and who has beaten our sambuca with disgrace and cast it out, and who outdoes the hundred-handed giants of myth by hurling so many missiles at us at once?"
For in reality every other Syracusan amounted merely to the framework of Archimedes' machinery, whereas he alone functioned as the one animating spirit setting everything in motion and command; every other weapon they possessed sat unused, and at that time the city relied on his devices alone for both offense and protection.
At last Marcellus, seeing the Romans grown so fearful that if so much as a small rope or piece of wood were seen projecting over the wall, they would cry out, "There it is, Archimedes is setting some engine in motion against us," and turn to flee, gave up all fighting and assault, and thereafter conducted the siege by waiting it out. So great was the loftiness of spirit and depth of soul, and so vast the wealth of theorems Archimedes possessed, that though he had won a name and reputation not for human but for almost divine understanding,
he was unwilling to leave behind any treatise on these matters, but, considering the business of mechanics and every art that touches on practical use to be ignoble and vulgar, he devoted his ambition only to those studies in which the beautiful and the extraordinary are present unmixed with the necessary — studies incomparable to others, yet vying with their subject matter in demonstration, the one furnishing greatness and beauty, the other precision and a power beyond nature.
For nowhere else in geometry can one discover harder or more consequential problems handled in plainer, more unadorned language; and some attribute this to the natural gift of the man, others think that behind what seems to have been done without effort and easily lies an extraordinary amount of labor: for searching on one's own, one could not find the proof, yet as soon as one learns it, one gets the impression that one could have discovered it oneself, so smooth and swift a path does he lead one along to what is being shown.
Nor is it possible to disbelieve the things said about him, how, bewitched always by some familiar siren dwelling with him, he would forget to eat and neglect the care of his body, and, when dragged by force to be anointed and bathed, would draw geometrical figures in the ashes of the hearth, and trace lines with his finger in the oil on his own body, possessed by great pleasure and truly inspired by the Muses.
Though he produced many excellent discoveries, tradition holds that he requested of his friends and kinsmen that, once he had died, they set over his grave a cylinder with a sphere enclosed inside it, and carve upon it the proportion showing how much the enclosing figure surpasses the one it encloses.
Such, then, was Archimedes, and he kept himself and his city, as far as it lay in his power, unconquered. In the meantime, during the siege, Marcellus took Megara, one of the oldest of the Sicilian cities, and took the camp of Hippocrates near Acrillae, killing more than eight thousand men by falling upon them while they were building a palisade; he overran a large part of Sicily, brought cities over from their alliance with Carthage, and won every battle against those who dared to array themselves against him.
As time went on, he took captive as he sailed out of Syracuse a certain Damippus, a Spartan; and when the Syracusans asked to ransom the man back, in the course of many conversations and negotiations over this Marcellus reconnoitered a certain tower, guarded carelessly, but able to receive men secretly, since the wall was accessible at that point right beside it.
So then, its height having been well gauged from his frequent approaches and conversations at the tower, and ladders having been prepared, watching for the moment when the Syracusans were celebrating a festival to Artemis and given over to wine and play, he seized not only the tower unnoticed, but before day came had filled the wall all around with armed men, and had breached the Hexapyla.
When the Syracusans began to stir and grow alarmed at what was happening, he ordered the trumpets to be sounded from every side at once, and produced great flight and terror, since no part of the city seemed safe from capture; but the strongest, most beautiful, and greatest quarter, called Achradina, held out, because it was walled off from the outer city, of which one part they call Neapolis and the other Tyche.
Once he held these quarters, at dawn Marcellus made his way down by way of the Hexapyla, receiving congratulations from the commanders serving under him. He himself, however, is said to have looked down from above and, surveying the greatness and beauty of the city, to have wept a long while, in sympathy for what was about to happen, reflecting on what form and shape it would soon exchange for another, once scattered and torn apart by the army.
For none of the officers dared to oppose the soldiers, who demanded to profit by plunder, and many even urged that it be burned and razed to the ground. But Marcellus rejected that proposal outright; though compelled and acting very much against his own wishes, he permitted the troops to take gain from the money and the slaves, yet he barred them from touching any of the freeborn inhabitants, and he issued firm commands that not a single Syracusan was to be killed, abused, or made a slave.
Nevertheless, although he seemed to have shown such restraint, he considered the city to be suffering pitiable things, and even amid so great a joy his soul revealed both sympathy and grief, as he watched, in so brief a time, the vanishing of great and splendid prosperity: for it is said that the wealth carried off then was no less than that later carried off from Carthage. For not long afterward, when the rest of the city was taken through betrayal, the soldiers were permitted by force to plunder it too, except for the royal treasures, which were set aside for the public treasury.
But nothing distressed Marcellus so much as the fate of Archimedes. As it happened, he was alone at the time, occupied with solving some problem by means of a figure he had drawn, and, having devoted both his attention and his gaze entirely to examining it, he did not notice the incursion of the Romans or the capture of the city; and when a soldier suddenly stood over him and ordered him to come along to Marcellus, he refused to go until he had finished the problem and worked it through to its proof.
The soldier, enraged, drew his sword and killed him. Others say that a Roman came upon him at once, sword in hand, meaning to kill him, and that Archimedes, seeing him, begged and pleaded with him to wait a short while, so that he might not leave the thing he was investigating incomplete and unproved; but the soldier, paying no heed, dispatched him.
And there is a third account, that as he was carrying to Marcellus his mathematical instruments — sundials and spheres and quadrants by which the size of the sun is fitted to the eye — soldiers came upon him and, thinking he was carrying gold in the case, killed him. It is agreed, however, that Marcellus was grieved, and turned away from the man's slayer as from someone accursed, and, having sought out his relatives, honored them.
The Romans were regarded by peoples outside their own as formidable in the waging of war and terrible to meet in battle, but as having given no examples of fair dealing, humanity, or civic virtue in general; Marcellus, it seems, was the first at that time to show the Greeks that the Romans could be more just than that,
such indeed was the way he dealt with those who came to an agreement with him, and so numerous were the cities and individuals who benefited from his conduct, that whenever something severe befell the inhabitants of Enna, Megara, or Syracuse, blame for it seemed to rest with the sufferers themselves rather than with those responsible for it. I will recall one example out of many: Sicily has a city, Engyium, small in size yet exceedingly old, renowned for an appearance there of certain goddesses known as the Mothers.
The shrine is said to have been founded by Cretans, and they used to show certain spears and bronze helmets, some bearing the name of Meriones, others that of Ulysses, that is, Odysseus, dedicated by them to the goddesses. This city, which was most eagerly inclined toward Carthage, Nicias, a leading citizen, tried to persuade to change sides to the Romans, speaking openly and frankly in the assemblies and exposing the folly of his opponents.
They, fearing his power and reputation, plotted to seize him and hand him over to the Phoenicians. Nicias, perceiving that he was already being secretly watched, began openly making remarks unbecoming toward the Mothers, and did many things contrary to their customary honor and reputation, as though he disbelieved and despised them—to the delight of his enemies, since he himself was furnishing the strongest ground for what he was about to suffer,
and when the preparations for his arrest were ready, there was an assembly of the citizens, and Nicias, in the middle of speaking and advising the people, suddenly let his body fall to the ground, and after a brief pause, as was natural, once silence fell amid the shock, he raised his head and turned it about, and in a trembling, heavy voice, gradually straining and sharpening the sound, as he saw the theater gripped by dread and silence, he flung off his cloak and tore his tunic, and leaping up half-naked he ran toward the exit of the theater, shouting that he was being driven on by the Mothers.
No one dared to lay a hand on him or even meet him, out of superstitious fear, but instead they turned aside, so he ran on out through the gates, sparing neither voice nor movement befitting one possessed and out of his mind. His wife, who was in on the plan and had contrived it together with her husband, took their children and first fell as a suppliant before the shrines of the goddesses, and then, pretending to search for him as he wandered, she left the city safely, with no one hindering her,
and thus they escaped safely to Syracuse and Marcellus. Yet once Marcellus arrived, angered by the many outrages and offenses the people of Engyum had committed, and put every one of them in chains meaning to punish them, Nicias came forward weeping, and finally clasped their hands and knees, pleading for mercy on the citizens' behalf, starting with his own personal enemies; Marcellus was moved and softened, so he set them all free, spared the city any harm, and rewarded Nicias with much land and many gifts. Such, at least, is the account left by the philosopher Posidonius.
When the Romans recalled Marcellus to the war at home among his own people, on his way back he removed the greatest and most beautiful of the dedications at Syracuse, so that they might serve as a spectacle for his triumph and an adornment for the city. For previously Rome had nothing of the refined and elaborate, nor was this grace and elegance cherished in her,
but crowded with foreign weapons and blood-stained plunder, and ringed all around by monuments and victory trophies, she offered no comfortable or reassuring view, nor one suited to timid, pleasure-loving onlookers; instead, just as Epaminondas dubbed the plain of Boeotia the “dancing-floor of Ares,” and Xenophon dubbed Ephesus a “workshop of war,” in the same way, I think, one could then have called Rome, in Pindar’s phrase, “the precinct of deep-warring Ares.”
For this reason Marcellus won greater favor with the people, for having adorned the city with sights possessing Greek charm, grace, and persuasive appeal; but among the elders Fabius Maximus was more esteemed, for he had removed nothing of the kind, nor carried anything away from the captured city of Tarentum, but while he took away the rest of the money and wealth, he let the statues remain, adding the memorable remark, “Let us leave,” he said,
“these gods to the Tarentines, since they are angry with them.” They found fault with Marcellus, first, for making the city an object of envy, since not only men but even gods, as it were, were being led captive in it and paraded in procession; and second, because the people, who were accustomed to make war or till the soil,
and had no acquaintance with luxury and idle ease—like the Heracles of Euripides, “plain, unadorned, in the greatest things good”—he now filled with idle hours and talk of arts and craftsmen, passing much of each day amid such amusements and diversions; and yet he still took pride in doing so, even before the Greeks themselves, claiming credit for teaching the Romans, who before had not known how to esteem and marvel at the beautiful and wondrous works of Greece, to do exactly that.
When his enemies opposed Marcellus over his triumph, since certain tasks were still unfinished in Sicily and a third triumph provoked envy, he himself agreed to drive the full, great triumph out to the Alban Mount, and to bring the lesser one down into the city—the one the Greeks call the “euan” and the Romans call the “ovation.”
He conducted it not mounted on a four-horse chariot, nor wearing a crown of laurel, nor to blaring trumpets, but on foot, in slippers, accompanied by very many flute-players, and wearing a crown of myrtle, so as to appear unwarlike and pleasant rather than terrifying—which to me is the strongest proof that triumphs were distinguished in ancient times by the manner of the achievement, not by its scale.
Commanders who had triumphed through combat and the killing of the enemy were led in that grim, Ares-like procession, following, it seems, the customary rite for purifying an army, wreathing both weapons and soldiers thickly in laurel; whereas commanders who never had to draw the sword, settling every dispute instead through diplomacy, persuasion, and reasoned speech, were granted by law this milder, more festive escort, as a kind of hymn of thanks,
for the flute, indeed, belongs to peacetime, while the myrtle is Aphrodite's own plant, she being of all deities the one most opposed to bloodshed and war. This lesser triumph is not named “ovans” for the shout “euoi,” as most suppose—since that cry, along with singing, does in fact accompany even the great triumph—but the Greeks have bent the term to their own familiar usage, persuaded that Dionysus, called by us Euios and Thriambos, holds some stake in the honor. Yet that is mistaken; rather, ancestral custom required generals to sacrifice an ox for the great triumph, but a sheep for this lesser one. Since the Romans call a sheep “ovis,” it is from this that they named the triumph “ovatio.”
It is worth also observing the Spartan lawgiver, who ordained sacrifices in a manner opposite to the Roman practice. For in Sparta, of returning generals, the one who has accomplished what he wished by deceit or persuasion sacrifices an ox, but the one who has done so by battle sacrifices a rooster. For though the Spartans were most warlike, they considered an achievement won through speech and understanding to be greater and more fitting for a human being than one won through force and courage. It is possible to consider how matters truly stand in this.
While Marcellus was consul for the fourth time, his enemies persuaded the Syracusans to come to Rome and lodge accusations, crying out before the Senate that they had suffered terrible and treaty-breaking wrongs. Marcellus happened at the time to be performing a certain sacrifice on the Capitol; and while the Senate was still in session, the Syracusans fell before it, begging to obtain a hearing and justice, but his fellow consul tried to drive them off,
being indignant on Marcellus’s behalf because he was not present. But Marcellus, as soon as he heard, came at once, and first sat in the consul’s chair and conducted business as consul; then, when the other matters were finished, he stepped down from the chair and, standing like a private citizen in the place where defendants are accustomed to speak, gave the Syracusans leave to make their case against him.
They were thrown into terrible confusion by the man’s dignity and confidence, and thought that his unbearable presence under arms was even more fearsome and hard to face in the purple-bordered toga. Nevertheless, encouraged by those at odds with Marcellus, they began their accusation and went through a plea mixed with lamentation,
amounting to this: that although they stood as friends and allies of Rome, they had endured treatment that many an enemy had been spared by other generals as a favor. Marcellus answered that, given the many wrongs they had inflicted on the Romans, they had in fact suffered nothing beyond what cannot be kept from befalling men taken captive in war by force—and that this capture had come about through their own fault, since they had refused persuasion though invited to accept it many times over.
For they had not been compelled to make war by their tyrants, but rather had chosen tyrants for the sake of making war. When the speeches had been delivered and, as is customary, the senators were withdrawing to vote, Marcellus went out along with the Syracusans, having left the Senate to his colleague, and waited before the doors of the senate-house, changing nothing of his usual bearing, neither from fear on account of the trial nor from anger toward the Syracusans, but awaiting the outcome of the judgment very gently and decorously.
But once the votes had split and he was pronounced victor, the Syracusans threw themselves down before him, weeping and asking that he direct his anger only at those present, sparing the rest of the city, which recalled and remained thankful for all it had received from him before. Marcellus relented and softened toward them, made peace with them, and from then on continued to show kindness to the remaining Syracusans as well.
And the Senate confirmed the liberty he had given back to them, along with their laws and the safekeeping of whatever property remained to them; and in gratitude they voted him further extraordinary honors besides, decreeing that on any occasion when Marcellus, or any descendant of his, should set foot on Sicilian soil, the Syracusans were to don garlands and offer sacrifice to the gods.
From here he turned his attention at last to Hannibal. And whereas nearly every other consul and commander, following the catastrophe at Cannae, relied on the one tactic of steering clear of battle with the man, none daring to form up in line or engage him, Marcellus instead pursued the reverse course,
thinking that if Hannibal were allowed to appear to be wearing Italy down over time unnoticed, that would amount to destroying her, and that Fabius, by always clinging to safety, was not treating the disease of his homeland well, waiting for the war to be extinguished along with the wasting away of her strength—like those physicians who, being timid and cowardly about remedies, take the subsiding of a disease to mean the exhaustion of the patient’s vital force.
First, then, he took the major Samnite cities that had revolted, capturing large quantities of grain stored there, along with money and three thousand of Hannibal's soldiers left to garrison them; then, after Hannibal killed the proconsul Gnaeus Fulvius down in Apulia, along with eleven of his military tribunes, and slaughtered the greater part of his troops, Marcellus wrote to Rome urging the people to keep their courage, adding that he was already on his way to strip Hannibal of that joy.
According to Livy, when this letter was read aloud, it did not ease the people's grief but rather deepened their fear, since the Romans judged the coming danger to exceed what had already befallen them by exactly the margin by which Marcellus surpassed Fulvius. Marcellus, true to his word, marched at once in pursuit of Hannibal into Lucania, and on discovering him encamped on fortified hills near the city of Numistro, pitched his own camp on the plain below.
On the next day he was the first to draw up his army for battle, and when Hannibal came down, they joined battle—a fight that reached no decision, but was fierce and great; for from the third hour they were locked together until, with darkness falling, they at last barely broke apart. At daybreak he led his army forward again and drew it up through the midst of the dead, and challenged Hannibal to fight it out to a decision for the victory.
When Hannibal withdrew, Marcellus, after stripping the enemy dead and burying his own friends, pursued him once more; and though Hannibal set many ambushes, Marcellus fell into none of them, and in all the skirmishes, having the better of it, he was admired all the more. Therefore, since the elections were pressing, the Senate decided it was better to summon the other consul from Sicily than to move Marcellus while he was locked in combat with Hannibal, and ordered the one who came to name Quintus Fabius dictator.
A dictator, in fact, is chosen by neither the popular assembly nor the Senate; instead, a consul or praetor appears before the people and simply declares whichever man he has decided upon, and it is for this reason he bears the title “dictator”—since among the Romans “to name” is dicere. Others hold that he is termed dictator because he does not submit an issue to vote or election, but on his own authority commands and pronounces what has been resolved; for what the Greeks term the edicts of officials, “diatagmata,” the Romans indeed call “edicta.”
When the consul who shared office with Marcellus, having arrived from Sicily, preferred to name someone else as dictator, and, unwilling to be compelled against his own wishes, slipped away by night back to Sicily, the people then named Quintus Fabius dictator instead, and the Senate wrote instructing Marcellus to carry out the nomination. He obeyed, pronounced the name, and thereby ratified what the people had chosen, and for his own part was named proconsul once more for the year to come.
Having agreed with Fabius Maximus that Fabius should attack the Tarentines while he himself, by engaging and dragging Hannibal about, kept him from going to help them, he made his approach near Canusium, and though Hannibal kept changing his encampments and avoiding battle, Marcellus kept appearing on every side, until finally, when Hannibal had settled in one place, he pressed upon him and dislodged him with skirmishes.
When Hannibal set out ready to fight, Marcellus met him, but the engagement broke off with the coming of night; and the next day he was again seen under arms with his army drawn up, so that Hannibal, in great distress, gathered the Carthaginians and begged them to fight that battle as though on behalf of all the battles that had gone before. “For you see,” he said, “that not even after so many victories can we, though victorious, catch our breath or find any rest, unless we drive off this man.”
After this the two sides engaged and battle was joined. It seems that Marcellus, resorting to a badly timed maneuver during the fighting, brought ruin on himself. For when his right wing was in distress he ordered one of the legions to advance forward, and this shift of position, throwing the combatants into confusion, handed the victory to the enemy, twenty-seven hundred Romans having fallen,
Marcellus withdrew to his camp, and gathering the army together, said that he saw many Roman weapons and Roman bodies, but no Roman. When they begged forgiveness, he said he would not grant it to men who had been defeated, but if they should win, he would; and that they would fight again on the morrow, so that the citizens might hear of the victory before they heard of the flight.
Having said this, he ordered the defeated cohorts to be issued barley instead of wheat rations. On account of which, though many were in dangerous and wretched condition from the battle, they say there was no one whom Marcellus's words did not pain more than his wounds.
At daybreak the scarlet tunic was displayed, as was the custom, as the signal that battle would take place, and the disgraced cohorts themselves begged to take the first position, and were granted it, while the tribunes led out the rest of the army and drew it up alongside. Hearing of this, Hannibal said, "By Heracles, what is one to do with a man who knows how to bear neither the worse fortune nor the better? He alone, it seems, neither grants respite when he is winning nor takes it when he is beaten, but we shall always be fighting this man,
for whom, when fortunate, daring is always his excuse for confidence, and when defeated, shame is his excuse for renewed daring." After this the forces came together, and as the men fought on equal terms, Hannibal ordered the elephants to be brought up and led against the Roman line in the first rank. But great crowding and confusion arose at once among the front ranks, and one of the tribunes, named Flavius, snatching up a standard, went to meet the lead elephant and, striking it with the butt-spike of his spear, turned it back.
The elephant, charging into the one behind it, threw that one too, and those following, into disorder. Seeing this, Marcellus ordered the cavalry to ride at full speed toward the point of confusion and to throw the enemy into still greater disarray among themselves; and these men, charging in brilliantly, drove the Carthaginians back all the way to their camp, and the slaughter of the elephants as they were killed and fell brought about the greatest part of the enemy's losses.
For it is said that upward of eight thousand of them died; of the Romans there were three thousand dead, and nearly all the rest wounded. This gave Hannibal the chance to rise quietly in the night and withdraw as far as possible from Marcellus; for he was unable to pursue on account of the great number of his wounded, but retreated unhurriedly into the Campanian countryside, where he passed the summer months at Sinuessa letting his men recover.
When Hannibal had thus broken free of Marcellus, treating his army as though it were now unshackled, he went about setting all Italy ablaze in every direction without fear, and Marcellus fell into ill repute at Rome; and his enemies put forward Publicius Bibulus, a tribune of the plebs known for a harsh and combative style of speaking, to lodge a formal charge against him,
who, repeatedly gathering the people together, urged that the command be handed over to another general, saying, "Since Marcellus, after a little training in war, has turned, as though from the wrestling ground, to warm baths, to nurse himself." On hearing of this, Marcellus left his lieutenants in charge of the camp, and himself returned to Rome to answer the slanders.
And on returning from those slanders he found a lawsuit already prepared against him. When the day had been fixed and the people had assembled at the Flaminian racecourse, Bibulus mounted the platform and made his accusation, while Marcellus made his defense briefly and simply in his own person; but the most highly regarded and foremost of the citizens spoke at great length and boldly on his behalf, urging the assembly not to prove themselves harsher, less fair judges than the very enemy, by convicting Marcellus of cowardice—when he alone, of all their commanders, is the one Hannibal shuns, steadily avoiding combat with him even while giving battle to everyone else.
When these words had been spoken, the accuser's hope of winning the case was so utterly disappointed that not only was Marcellus acquitted of the charges, but he was even elected consul for the fifth time.
On taking up his office, first he suppressed and calmed a great uprising toward revolt in Etruria by going around to the cities; then, wishing to dedicate a temple, built by him from the Sicilian spoils, to Honor and Virtue, and being prevented by the priests, who did not think it right for one temple to contain two gods, he began again to build another adjoining it, not bearing the opposition that had arisen against him easily, but as though taking it for an omen,
for indeed many other signs disturbed him as well: certain temples had been struck by lightning, and mice had gnawed through the gold in the temple of Zeus; it was also said that an ox had uttered a human voice, and that a child had been born with the head of an elephant; and the seers, finding the sacrifices and expiatory rites unfavorable, kept him detained at Rome, chafing and burning—for no man was ever so enamored of anything as this man was of being tried in battle against Hannibal.
This was his dream by night, and by day, with his friends and fellow magistrates, it was his one resolve and his one prayer to the gods: to catch Hannibal drawn up for battle. And it seems to me nothing would have pleased him more than to see both armies penned within one common wall and left to settle it there; and had he not already been full of great renown, and given ample proof beyond any other general of being a man of weight and good sense, I would say that a youthful and overly ambitious passion had fallen upon him, unbefitting so old a man—for he was past sixty years of age when he held his fifth consulship.
Nevertheless, once the sacrifices and purification rites demanded by the seers were carried out, he took the field alongside his fellow consul, and by encamping for a long time between the cities of Bantia and Venusia, he kept provoking Hannibal. Hannibal did not come down to battle, but on learning that an army was being sent by them against the Epizephyrian Locrians, he set an ambush near the hill by Petelia and killed twenty-five hundred of them,
and this stirred Marcellus's temper toward battle, and he moved his forces closer and advanced. Between the two camps there was a hill, reasonably well fortified and covered with all kinds of woodland; it also had lookout points sloping to either side, and springs of running water could be seen trickling down from it. The Romans wondered, therefore, at Hannibal, that having been the first to seize so favorable a spot, he had not held onto it, but had left it to the enemy.
But to him the place seemed good for encamping, but far better for setting an ambush; and wishing to make use of it rather for this purpose, he filled the woodland and the hollows with many javelin-men and spearmen, convinced that the very attractiveness of the ground would draw the Romans on to it.
Nor was his expectation misplaced: at once a lively dispute broke out among the Romans in camp over whether they must seize that spot, and they argued back and forth about every advantage it would give them against the enemy, chiefly if they pitched camp there, or, failing that, if they at least fortified the hill. It seemed good to Marcellus, therefore, to ride out with a few horsemen and reconnoiter it. Taking the seer with him, he offered sacrifice; and when the first victim fell, the seer showed him the liver, which had no head.
When he sacrificed a second time, the head appeared of extraordinary size, and everything else showed remarkably bright and favorable, and the earlier fear seemed to have found its resolution. But the seers said they feared and were disturbed by this all the more: for when, after the most inauspicious and gloomy of omens, the brightest of all had followed, the very strangeness of the change was cause for suspicion. But indeed "what is fated, neither fire nor a wall of iron shall hold back," as Pindar says; he set out, taking with him his fellow consul Crispinus, and his own son, who held the rank of tribune, and all his cavalry, two hundred and twenty in number,
of whom not one was a Roman, but the rest were Etruscans, except for forty Fregellans, who had always given proof of valor and loyalty to Marcellus. The hill being wooded and thickly overgrown, a man sitting up above kept watch over the enemy, himself unseen, but able to look down on the Roman camp.
And when this man reported what was happening to those lying in ambush, they let Marcellus ride on until he had come close, and then suddenly rose up, and pouring around him from every side, hurled javelins, struck, pursued those who fled, and grappled with those who stood their ground; these last were the forty Fregellans.
The Etruscans having at once, from the very start, fled in terror, the Fregellans rallied together and defended the consuls, until Crispinus, struck by two javelins, turned his horse in flight, and someone drove a broad-bladed spear—the kind they call a lancea—through Marcellus's side. And thus the few Fregellans who survived, leaving him where he had altogether fallen, snatched up his wounded son and fled to the camp.
The dead were not much more than forty in number, but among the prisoners were five of the lictors and eighteen of the horsemen; and Crispinus too died of his wounds, having survived only a few days. And this disaster befell the Romans as one that had not happened before: that both consuls should die from a single engagement.
As for Hannibal, he had little regard for the rest, but on learning that Marcellus had fallen he himself ran out to the spot, and standing over the corpse, and studying for a long time the strength and appearance of the body, uttered no arrogant word, nor did he show any joy in his expression, as one who had killed a formidable and burdensome enemy would,
but rather, marveling at the unexpectedness of his end, he removed the ring from his finger, and having adorned the body with fitting ornament and wrapped it honorably, burned it, and gathering the remains into a silver urn, and set a wreath of gold on it, dispatched it to Marcellus's son. But a group of Numidians, encountering the men transporting it, made a grab for the urn, and when the bearers pushed back, the bones were scattered in the ensuing scuffle.
On being informed of this, Hannibal remarked to those around him, "So nothing, it seems, can happen contrary to the will of god," and imposed punishment on the Numidians, but no longer troubled himself with recovering or gathering the remains, since it seemed that by the will of some god both his end and the strangeness of his lack of burial had come upon Marcellus in this way,
This, then, is what Cornelius Nepos and Valerius Maximus have recorded; but Livy and Caesar Augustus report instead that the remains reached his son and were given a splendid burial. Besides the memorials in Rome, Marcellus was also honored elsewhere: a gymnasium in Catana, Sicily, along with statues and paintings taken from Syracuse, set up both among the Cabiri-gods at Samothrace and in the temple of Athena at Lindos,
there, on his statue, this epigram was inscribed, as Posidonius says: "This is he, stranger, the great star of Rome his fatherland, Marcellus, sprung from the famous house of Claudius, who seven times held the consular office in war, who poured out much slaughter upon his adversaries." For the proconsular command, which he held twice, the composer of the epigram counted along with the five consulships.
His illustrious family line extended down to Marcellus, the nephew of Caesar, who was the son of Octavia, sister of Caesar, by Gaius Marcellus, and who, while serving as aedile of the Romans, died a bridegroom, having lived with Caesar's daughter but a short time. To honor and remember him, his mother Octavia set up the library that bore his name, while Caesar gave his name to a theater.

======== Comparison Of Pelopidas With Marcellus ========

As for the deeds concerning Marcellus and Pelopidas that we judged worth recording, these are they. But as to the similarities in their natures and characters, which were, so to speak, evenly matched with one another—for both men were brave, hard-working, high-spirited, and great-souled—this alone would seem to make a difference: that Marcellus, in many cities that fell into his hands, carried out slaughters, whereas Epaminondas and Pelopidas, though they conquered, never killed anyone, nor enslaved any city. Indeed it is said that the Thebans would not have treated even the Orchomenians so, had those two been present.
In their actions, Marcellus's deeds against the Celts are wonderful and great: he drove back so great a multitude of horse and foot together with the few horsemen about him—a feat not recorded as having been easily accomplished by any other general—and he slew the leader of the enemy. In just this manner Pelopidas stumbled when he rushed upon the same kind of exploit, being struck down first by the tyrant and suffering before he could act.
Nevertheless, to these deeds one may compare Leuctra and Tegyra, the most illustrious and greatest of contests; but a secretly accomplished action with a small band we have nothing of Marcellus's to set against what Pelopidas did in his return from exile and the destruction of the tyrants at Thebes—rather that deed seems by far to hold first place among all things done in darkness and by deception.
Hannibal pressed upon the Romans as a fearsome and terrible thing, just as the Lacedaemonians then pressed upon the Thebans; and that these yielded to Pelopidas at Tegyra and at Leuctra is certain, but Hannibal, as Polybius and his circle say, Marcellus never defeated even once—rather the man seems to have remained undefeated until Scipio.
We, however, trust Livy, Caesar, Nepos, and, among the Greek historians, King Juba, that certain defeats and routs of Hannibal's men were brought about by Marcellus; yet these produced no great turn of the scale, but it seems there was some sham fall on the Libyan's part in those encounters.
This indeed was justly and fittingly admired, coming after so many routs of armies and slaughters of generals and the confusion of the whole Roman power together, when men were setting themselves in opposition through renewed courage: for after so long a time of great fear and consternation, he again cast into the army zeal and rivalry against the enemy,
and this very thing—not readily yielding victory, but disputing and contending for honor—was raised up and emboldened by one man, Marcellus. For men accustomed by their misfortunes to be content if in flight they escaped Hannibal, he taught to be ashamed of being saved through defeat, to feel shame at yielding even a little, and to grieve at not conquering.
Since, then, Pelopidas was never defeated in any battle he commanded, while Marcellus won the most victories of any Roman of his time, it might seem that the one who is hard to defeat is made equal to the one who is undefeated, by the sheer number of his successes. And indeed, the one took Syracuse, while the other failed to take Lacedaemon. Yet I count it a weightier achievement to have marched up to Sparta's very gates and been, of all men, the very first to ford the Eurotas amid warfare,
unless, by Zeus, someone will say that this deed belongs rather to Epaminondas than to Pelopidas, just as Leuctra does, whereas the glory of what Marcellus accomplished is shared with no one. For he alone took Syracuse, and he routed the Celts without his co-commander, and against Hannibal, when no one joined with him, but all rather tried to dissuade him, he stood arrayed against him and, changing the very shape of the war, became the first leader to establish the courage to dare.
As for the deaths of these men, I praise neither one, but I am pained and vexed at the strangeness of the mischance; and I marvel that in so many battles as one would grow weary counting, Hannibal was never even wounded, while I admire also Chrysantas in the Education of Cyrus, who, having raised his sword and being about to strike an enemy, when the trumpet sounded the recall, let the man go, very gently and orderly withdrawing.
Nevertheless, what makes Pelopidas pardonable is that his spirit, heated by the moment of battle, carried him nobly forward to vengeance: for it is best that a general survive while conquering, "but if he must die, let him end his life in virtue," as Euripides says. For thus the death of the one who dies becomes not a passive suffering but an action,
and besides Pelopidas's passion, the very consummation of victory, seen in the tyrant's fall, drew on his impulse not altogether without reason: for it is hard, when another's exploit holds so fair and brilliant a subject, to let it slip. But Marcellus, when no great necessity was pressing, nor any enthusiasm present of the sort that often drives reasoning out amid dangers, thrust himself thoughtlessly into peril and fell, not the fall of a general, but of some scout or spy,
laying down five consulships and three triumphs and spoils and trophies from kings before the Spaniards and Numidians of the Carthaginians who were about to die before him. So that they themselves might well have resented their own success, that a man who was best of the Romans in valor, greatest in power, and most brilliant in glory should have been squandered among the scouts of the Fregellans.
One must not think these things an accusation of the men, but rather a kind of indignation and free speech on behalf of those very men, addressed to them, and on behalf of their courage, into which they poured out their other virtues, sparing neither their lives nor their souls, as though these belonged to themselves rather than to their fatherlands, friends, and allies who perished with them.
After death, Pelopidas had for his burial those allies for whom he died, while Marcellus had his enemies, by whom he died. That former thing is enviable and blessed, but the latter is greater and better—hatred grieving admiration of virtue is a greater thing than goodwill returning gratitude. For in the one case the noble deed has honor alone as its reward, in the other, the useful and the advantageous are loved more than the virtue itself.

======== Aristides ========

Aristides, whose father was Lysimachus, belonged to the deme Alopece and the tribe Antiochis. Concerning his property there have been differing accounts, some saying that he lived out his life in unremitting poverty, and that after his death he left behind two daughters who for a long time went unbetrothed because of their want;
but opposing this account, which has been stated by many, Demetrius of Phalerum, in his Socrates, says that he knows a plot of land at Phalerum that belonged to Aristides, in which he is buried, and he takes as proofs of the prosperity of his household, first, the eponymous archonship, which was held by whoever was chosen by lot from among the clans possessing the greatest property assessments, whom they called the Five-Hundred-Bushel men, and second, his ostracism;
for ostracism was brought upon no poor man, but upon those from great houses and men resented for the weight of their lineage; and third and last, that he left behind, as offerings for a victory, choregic tripods in the precinct of Dionysus, which were still to be seen in our own time, preserving an inscription of this kind: 'The tribe Antiochis was victorious, Aristides was choregos, Archestratus trained the chorus.'
This last point, though it seems the strongest, is actually the weakest. For Epaminondas too, whom all men know to have been raised in great poverty and to have lived in it, and Plato the philosopher, undertook not undistinguished choregic productions, the one for men flute-players, the other for boys in the cyclic chorus, the expense for the latter being supplied by Dion the Syracusan, and for Epaminondas by those around Pelopidas.
For good men do not wage an unheralded and truceless war against gifts from friends; rather, they consider mean and low those gifts directed toward hoarding and greed, but do not repel those which involve some unprofitable ambition and splendor. Panaetius, however, concerning the tripod, points out
that Demetrius has been misled by two men sharing one name; for between the Persian Wars and the close of the war with the Peloponnesians, the records credit only two men named Aristides with a choregic victory, and neither one is the son of Lysimachus — one was Xenophilus's son, while the other lived much later, as the lettering of the inscription shows, belonging to the style current after Eucleides; Archestratus too is named there, though no source lists him as chorus-trainer during the Persian Wars, while many do so for the Peloponnesian War.
Well then, whether the point of Panaetius is the better one is a matter to be examined further. But ostracism fell upon every man who was thought, through reputation or birth or power of speech, to be above the many; wherefore even Damon, the teacher of Pericles, because he was thought to be somehow exceptional in his intelligence,
was ostracized. And moreover, that Aristides held office not by lot but by the choice of the Athenians, Idomeneus says. And if he truly held that office even after the fighting at Plataea — a claim Demetrius himself sets down in writing — then it is entirely believable that, on account of such great reputation and such mighty achievements, he was deemed worthy through excellence of that office which others obtained by lot through wealth.
But in truth Demetrius is plainly eager, not only for Aristides but for Socrates too, to rescue them from poverty as from some great evil; for he says that Socrates too possessed not only his house, but also seventy minae out on loan through Crito.
Aristides, having become a companion of Cleisthenes, who established the constitution after the tyrants, and having emulated and admired above all statesmen Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian, laid hold of an aristocratic form of government, and had ranged against him, on behalf of the people, Themistocles son of Neocles. Some indeed say that, as boys reared together from the beginning, in every matter both serious and playful, in deed and in word, they were at variance with one another,
and that their natures were laid bare at once by that rivalry, the one being facile and reckless and cunning, and carried easily and sharply toward everything, the other being founded on a steady character and set unbendingly toward what is just, and not admitting falsehood or buffoonery or deceit even in any playful manner. But Ariston of Ceos says their enmity arose from an erotic beginning and proceeded to such a pitch.
For there was Stesilaus, who was by birth a Cean, most brilliant by far in form and bodily beauty among those in their prime; both men, having fallen in love with him, bore the passion beyond measure, and did not set their competition aside even once the boy's beauty had faded; rather, having sharpened themselves through that very contest, they plunged straightaway into public affairs still inflamed and at odds with each other.
Now Themistocles, having thrown himself into a political faction, had it as a bulwark and a power not to be despised, so that even to the man who said he would rule the Athenians well, if only he were fair and impartial to all, he said, 'Never may I sit upon that throne on which my friends
shall have no more than strangers'; but Aristides walked, as it were, his own private road through politics, first because he did not wish to join in wrongdoing with his associates, or to be a source of grief by not gratifying them, and next, because he saw the power derived from friends emboldening not a few men to do wrong, and guarded against it, thinking that the good citizen ought to have confidence only in doing and saying what is honest and just.
Nevertheless, since Themistocles was stirring up much recklessly and setting himself against every policy of his and cutting it short, he too was compelled in some measure, partly defending himself, partly curbing that man's power as it grew through the favor of the multitude, to oppose what Themistocles was doing, thinking it better that the people should forgo some advantages than that that man should become strong through mastery in all things.
And finally, when on one occasion he had opposed Themistocles as he was doing something needful, and had prevailed, he could not hold himself back, and declared, on his way out of the assembly, that the Athenians' affairs would never be secure until both he and Themistocles were thrown into the pit. And again, having written some proposal to bring before the people, though there was opposition and rivalry against it, he was prevailing; but when the presiding officer was about to put it to the people for a vote, perceiving from their very words that it was inexpedient, he withdrew the decree.
And often he introduced his proposals through others, so that Themistocles might not, out of rivalry against him personally, be an obstacle to what was expedient. And a certain marvelous steadiness of his appeared amid the changes of political fortune, since he was neither elated by honors nor troubled and impatient at misfortunes, and he held alike that he ought to offer himself to his country not only in respect of money but also of reputation, serving in public life without fee and without reward.
Hence, it seems, when the iambic lines composed by Aeschylus concerning Amphiaraus were spoken in the theater — 'he does not wish to seem just, but to be so, reaping a deep furrow through his mind, from which good counsels spring' — all eyes turned upon Aristides, as though this excellence belonged to him most of all.
He was strongest in resisting, on behalf of justice, not only against goodwill and favor but also against anger and enmity. It is said, for instance, that once, prosecuting an enemy in court, when after the accusation the judges were unwilling to hear the man in danger, but were demanding the vote against him at once, he leapt up and joined in supplicating on behalf of the man being judged, that he might be heard and obtain his legal rights; and again, judging between two private citizens,
when the one said that his opponent had done much harm to Aristides, he said, 'Rather tell, good sir, what wrong he has done to you; for it is your case, not my own, that I am judging.' Having been chosen overseer of the public revenues, he showed that not only those in office in his own time, but also those who had held office before him, had embezzled much, and especially Themistocles: for he was a clever man, but not master of his hand.
Wherefore, gathering many men against Aristides in his audit of accounts, prosecuting him for theft, he wrapped him in conviction, as Idomeneus says. And when the foremost and best men in the city were indignant, he was not only released from the penalty, but was again appointed ruler over the same office. And pretending that he repented of his former conduct and giving himself over more mildly, he pleased those who were stealing the public funds, by not exposing them nor examining strictly,
so that, being glutted with public money, they extravagantly praised Aristides and courted the people on his behalf, being eager that he be chosen ruler again. But when they were about to vote, he rebuked the Athenians: 'When,' he said, 'I ruled you faithfully and honestly, I was abused; but now that I have let go much of the public funds to thieves, I seem to be a marvelous citizen.'
'I myself am ashamed at the present honor more than at the former condemnation, and I grieve for you, among whom it is more reputable to gratify rogues than to save the public funds.' Having said this, and having exposed the thefts, he silenced those who at that time had been shouting on his behalf and bearing witness, but won the true and just praise of the best men.
When Datis, sent by Darius, ostensibly to exact punishment upon the Athenians because they had burned Sardis, but in fact to subdue the Greeks, put in at Marathon with his whole fleet and was ravaging the country, among the ten generals whom the Athenians had chosen to conduct the war, Miltiades enjoyed the highest standing, with Aristides ranking second in reputation and influence.
And on that occasion, siding with Miltiades' opinion about the battle, he brought about no small turning of the scale; and though each general took the command in turn on alternating days, whenever his own turn arrived he yielded it to Miltiades, teaching his fellow commanders that to obey and follow those of good judgment is not shameful but honorable and safety-bringing. Thus, having soothed their rivalry and having persuaded them to be content in following one supreme judgment, he strengthened Miltiades, who became powerful through the undistracted exercise of authority. For each of them was now content to let his own day of command go, and attended upon Miltiades.
In the battle, since the center of the Athenian line labored most, and the barbarians resisted longest at that point, facing the tribes Leontis and Antiochis, where Themistocles and Aristides stood side by side and fought with distinction; for the one was of Leontis,
and the other of Antiochis; and when, having routed the barbarians, they had driven them into their ships, and saw them sailing not toward the islands, but forced by the wind and the sea inward toward Attica, fearing lest they should find the city empty of defenders, they hastened with nine of the tribes toward the city and reached it that same day;
but at Marathon, Aristides, having been left behind with his own tribe as guard of the captives and the spoils, lived up to his character fully — for even though gold and silver were piled everywhere in heaps, along with garments of all sorts and other wealth beyond counting scattered through the tents and the captured vessels, he neither wished to touch any of it himself nor permitted others to do so, apart from those who contrived to profit without his awareness; Callias the torchbearer was one of these.
For it seems that one of the barbarians fell at his feet, supposing him, because of his hair and headband, to be the king; and having done obeisance and taken hold of his right hand, he showed him a great quantity of gold buried in a certain pit. And Callias, who turned out to be as cruel and unprincipled as any man, seized the gold for himself, but slew the man so he could tell no one else of it. From this, they say, those from that household are called by the comic poets 'pit-rich,' mocking the place in which Callias found the gold.
Aristides straightway held the eponymous archonship. And yet Demetrius of Phalerum says that the man held office a little before his death, after the battle at Plataea. Yet in the archon lists, in the entry following Xanthippides — the year Mardonius was defeated at Plataea — no one has been able to turn up, despite an extensive search, even a namesake of Aristides; whereas after Phaenippus, in whose year they won the battle at Marathon, Aristides is straightway recorded as archon.
Of all his virtues, it was justice above all that made an impression on the many, because its usefulness is the most constant and the most common to all. Hence a poor man of the people acquired the most kingly and most divine
title, "the Just": a title none of the kings or tyrants ever coveted, but rather they delighted in being called Besiegers and Thunderbolts and Conquerors, and some Eagles and Hawks, loving, it seems, a reputation drawn from violence and power rather than one drawn from virtue. And yet the divine, with which they strive to associate and assimilate themselves, seems to differ in three things: incorruptibility, power, and virtue—of which virtue is the most solemn and the most divine.
For to be incorruptible belongs also to the void and to the elements, and great power belongs also to earthquakes and thunderbolts and rushes of wind and floods of rivers, but of justice and right nothing partakes except through thought and reason. Wherefore, of the three feelings which most people have toward the divine—emulation, fear, and honor—they seem to emulate and call the gods blessed on account of their incorruptibility and eternity, to be terrified and afraid on account of their lordship and power, but on account of their justice they cherish, honor, and hold them in reverence.
But although so disposed, they desire immortality, which our nature does not admit, and power, which for the most part lies in fortune, while virtue, which alone of divine goods is within our power, they set in the last place—thinking wrongly, since it is justice that makes a life lived in power and great fortune and rule divine, while injustice makes it bestial.
As for Aristides, it happened that though he was at first loved for his epithet, he later came to be envied, chiefly because Themistocles spread word among the many that Aristides, by judging and deciding everything himself, had done away with the courts, and had unnoticed set up for himself a monarchy without bodyguards; and already the people, grown proud over their victory and thinking themselves worthy of the greatest things, were vexed with those who had a name and reputation above the many.
And gathering into the city from every quarter, they ostracized Aristides, giving the name of fear of tyranny to their envy of his reputation. For ostracism was not a punishment for wrongdoing, but it was called, for the sake of decency, a humbling and curtailing of oppressive standing and power, though it was in fact a kindly assuaging of envy, aiming at nothing incurable, but only at a ten-year removal of the ill will felt toward the one who caused the vexation.
But when some began to bring in low and wicked men through this practice, they ceased after ostracizing Hyperbolus last of all. The story of why Hyperbolus was ostracized runs like this. Alcibiades and Nicias, who had the greatest power in the city, were at odds with each other. When the people were about to cast the ostraca and it was clear that they would inscribe one or the other of them, the two conferred with each other and, joining their two factions into one, contrived that Hyperbolus should be ostracized instead.
At this the people, indignant that the institution had been insulted and made a mockery of, abandoned it altogether and did away with it. The procedure was, to describe it in outline, of this sort. Each man took a shard, and having written on it the name of whichever citizen he wished removed, carried it to a single spot in the marketplace fenced round in a circle with barriers.
First the archons tallied up how many shards had been cast in all; and if fewer than six thousand had voted, the ostracism did not stand. Then, setting each of the names apart by itself, they proclaimed banished for ten years the one written by the most, he keeping the enjoyment of his property. So then, while the shards were being written at that time, it is said that one of the illiterate and altogether rustic men, handing his shard to Aristides as if to any chance person, asked him to write in "Aristides."
And Aristides, astonished, asked him whether Aristides had done him some wrong. "None," he said, "I don't even know the man, but everywhere I go people call him 'the Just,' and I'm sick of hearing it." Hearing this, Aristides made no reply, but wrote his own name on the shard and gave it back. Then, on his way out of the city, he raised his arms toward heaven and offered up a prayer that ran, it seems, contrary to Achilles' own: that no crisis would ever come upon the Athenians such as would force the people to think again of Aristides.
In the third year, as Xerxes advanced through Thessaly and Boeotia toward Attica, they annulled the law and voted a return for those in exile, fearing especially that Aristides might go over to the enemy and corrupt and win over many of the citizens to the side of the barbarian—wrongly gauging the man, who even before this decree had continued to urge and spur the Greeks on toward freedom, and after this decree, with Themistocles serving as general with full powers, cooperated and gave counsel in everything, making his bitterest enemy most glorious for the sake of the common safety.
For when those around Eurybiades were deliberating on abandoning Salamis, the barbarian triremes, having put out by night and encircled the strait all around, held also the islands, no one having foreknown this encirclement; and Aristides arrived from Aegina, having ventured dangerously through the enemy ships, and coming by night to Themistocles' tent and calling him out alone, said, "We
must, Themistocles," he said, "if we are wise, at last set aside our empty and boyish rivalry, and begin a salutary and noble contest with each other for the saving of Greece—you commanding and generaling, I serving and advising—since even now I learn that you alone are laying hold of the best plans, urging that we fight the sea battle in the straits as quickly as possible.
And though your allies oppose you, the enemy seem to be cooperating with you: for the sea round about and behind is already filled with enemy ships, so that necessity has overtaken even those unwilling to be brave men and to fight—for no road of flight has been left."
To this Themistocles said: "I would not have wished, Aristides, that you should get the better of me in this matter, but I will try, contending for a noble beginning, to surpass you in deeds." At the same time he told him of the deception he himself had contrived against the barbarian, and urged him to persuade Eurybiades and teach him that it was impossible to be saved without fighting a sea battle—for Eurybiades had more trust in him.
Hence, when in the assembly of generals Cleocritus the Corinthian said to Themistocles that Aristides too did not approve his plan, since he was present and yet kept silent, Aristides answered that he would not have kept silent had Themistocles not been saying what was best; but as it was, he was keeping quiet not out of goodwill toward the man, but because he approved his opinion.
So the admirals of the Greeks were doing this. But Aristides, seeing that Psyttaleia, an island not large lying in the strait before Salamis, was full of enemy men, put aboard light boats the most eager and warlike of the citizens and brought them against Psyttaleia, and joining battle with the barbarians killed them all, sparing only such notable men as were captured alive. Three of these captives were sons of the king's sister Sandauce, and Aristides sent them at once to Themistocles; and it is said, according to a certain oracle,
at the bidding of the seer Euphrantides, that they were sacrificed to Dionysus Omestes. And Aristides, having ringed the little island with arms on every side, lay in wait for those who were carried toward it, so that none of his friends should be destroyed nor any of the enemy escape. For it seems that the greatest crush of the ships and the fiercest part of the battle took place around that spot; wherefore a trophy stands on Psyttaleia.
After the battle Themistocles, testing Aristides, said that what they had accomplished was a fine deed, but that a still greater one remained to be done—to take Asia within Europe, sailing to the Hellespont as quickly as possible and cutting the bridges. But Aristides, crying out, urged him to cast this idea aside and instead to consider and seek how they might drive the Mede out of Greece as quickly as possible,
lest, shut in without means of flight and with so great a force, he be driven by necessity to turn to defense. So Themistocles again sent Arnaces the eunuch, secretly, from among the captives, bidding him tell the king that he himself, wishing the king to be saved, had turned back the Greeks, who were eager to sail against the bridges.
After this Xerxes, become thoroughly frightened, hastened at once toward the Hellespont, while Mardonius stayed behind with the army's most seasoned troops, numbering some three hundred thousand, and was formidable, since he had strong confidence in his infantry, threatening the Greeks and writing such things as these:
"You have conquered with wooden vessels of the sea men of the land who do not know how to ply an oar; but now the plain of Thessaly is broad, and the Boeotian plain is fair for good horsemen and hoplites to contend in." And to the Athenians privately he sent letters and words from the king, promising to restore their city to them and to give them much money and to establish them as masters of the Greeks, if they would withdraw from the war.
The Lacedaemonians, learning of this and afraid, sent envoys to Athens, begging the Athenians to send their children and women to Sparta, and to receive provisions for their elders from them; for the people were in dire want, having lost both their land and their city.
Nevertheless, having heard the envoys, on a motion drawn up by Aristides, they gave a remarkable answer, saying that they held the enemy excused, if they thought everything could be bought with wealth and money, of which they know nothing better; but that they were angry with the Lacedaemonians, because they looked only at the poverty and want now present among the Athenians, and were forgetful of their virtue and ambition, urging them to contend for Greece on short rations.
Having drawn up this answer, Aristides brought the envoys before the assembly and bade them tell the Lacedaemonians that there is not so great a quantity of gold, either above the earth or beneath it, as the Athenians would accept in place of the freedom of the Greeks. And to those from Mardonius, pointing to the sun, he said, "As long as this pursues its course, the Athenians will make war on the Persians on behalf of their ravaged land and their profaned and burned temples."
He further moved that the priests should lay curses on anyone who should send a herald to the Medes or abandon the alliance of the Greeks. And when Mardonius invaded Attica a second time, they crossed over again to Salamis. Aristides, sent to Lacedaemon, reproached them for their slowness and negligence, in that they had again left Athens exposed to the barbarian, and demanded that they help what still remained of Greece.
Having heard this, the ephors for the day seemed to be playing and idling in their festival—for it was the Hyacinthia; but by night, having chosen out five thousand Spartiates, each of whom had seven helots around him, they sent them off without the Athenians knowing. And when Aristides came forward again with his complaint, they said with laughter that he was talking nonsense and dreaming, since already the army was on the march at Orestheum against the strangers (for they called the Persians strangers),
Aristides said that they were not joking at the right time, deceiving their friends instead of the enemy. This is what those around Idomeneus say. But in the decree of Aristides it is not himself, but Cimon and Xanthippus and Myronides who are recorded as the envoys.
Having been elected general with full powers for the battle, and taking up eight thousand Athenian hoplites, he came to Plataea. There Pausanias also, the leader of the whole Greek force, joined him with the Spartiates, and the multitude of the other Greeks streamed in besides.
Of the barbarians, the whole encampment, stretched out along the Asopus river, had no boundary because of its size, but around their baggage and their most valuable things they fenced off a square wall, each side of which was ten stadia in length. Now Tisamenus the Elean prophesied jointly for Pausanias and the Greeks, and foretold victory for them if they stood on the defensive and did not attack first:
When Aristides sent to Delphi, the god declared that the Athenians would prevail over their foes, provided they offered prayer to Zeus and Hera of Cithaeron, to Pan, and to the Sphragitic nymphs, and made offering to the heroes Polyidus, Actaeon, Hypsion, Damocrates, Pisander, Leucon, and Androcrates, and waged their fight for their own soil in the plain of Demeter of Eleusis and Kore.
This oracle, when reported, caused Aristides great perplexity. For the heroes named for sacrifice were the men who had founded Plataea, while the grotto of the Sphragitic nymphs lies upon one summit of Cithaeron, turned toward where the sun sets in summer; there too, it is said, an oracle had once existed, and a number of the local people would fall into possession there, whom they called "nymph-taken." But the plain of Eleusinian Demeter,
together with the assurance that the Athenians would win if the fight took place on ground belonging to them, drew the war back once more into Attica and moved its location. There, the Plataean general Arimnestus dreamed that he was asked by Zeus the Savior what the Greeks had decided to do, and that he answered, "Tomorrow, master, we will lead the army back to Eleusis, and there fight the barbarians according to the Pythian oracle."
Whereupon the god said that they were altogether mistaken: for the places meant by the Pythian oracle were right there around the territory of Plataea, and if they sought they would find them. These things having appeared clearly to Arimnestus, he awoke at once and sent for the most experienced and eldest of the citizens, and conferring and puzzling it out with them, he found that near Hysiae, under Cithaeron, there stood a very ancient temple called that of Demeter of Eleusis and Kore.
At once, therefore, he brought Aristides with him and guided him to the spot, which was admirably suited for drawing up an infantry phalanx against an enemy superior in cavalry, since the foothills of Cithaeron made the ground where the plain ends and borders on the sanctuary impassable to horse. Nearby too stood the shrine of Androcrates, enclosed by a grove of thick and shady trees.
So that the oracle might lack nothing needed for the hope of victory, the Plataeans decided, on Arimnestus's proposal, to abolish the boundaries of Plataean territory on the side toward Attica, and to hand the land over to the Athenians, so that, for the sake of Greece, they might wage the contest upon ground that was their own, just as the oracle required.
This generosity of the Plataeans came to be so celebrated that even Alexander, many years later, when he already ruled Asia and was walling Plataea, had a herald announce at the Olympic festival that he, the king, was giving this back to the Plataeans in gratitude for their manly virtue and greatness of spirit, since they had given up their land to the Greeks in the Persian War and had shown themselves most eager of all.
The Tegeans quarreled with the Athenians about the order of battle, claiming that custom always gave the Lacedaemonians the right wing while the left fell to them, and extolling at length the deeds of their ancestors. When the Athenians grew angry, Aristides came forward and said: "The present occasion does not allow us to dispute with the Tegeans about noble birth and manly courage; but to you, Spartans, and to the rest of the Greeks we say this: that place neither takes away nor confers valor. Whatever position you assign us, we will try to adorn it and to guard it well, so as not to disgrace the contests we have fought before.
For it is not to squabble with our allies that we have come, but rather to make war on our enemies; not to sing the praises of our fathers, but to show Greece that we ourselves are good men. This contest will show what every city, commander, and private man is worth to the Greeks." Hearing this, the delegates and commanders approved the Athenians and granted them the other wing.
As Greece was in suspense and the Athenians' affairs stood especially precariously, men of illustrious lineage who had once possessed great riches, now reduced to poverty by the war, and who watched their whole standing and reputation in the city fade away along with their fortunes, while others gained honor and office, met in secret at a house in Plataea and swore an oath together to bring down the democracy, and, should that attempt fail, to wreck the effort and hand it over to the barbarians.
While this plot was under way within the camp, with many men already won over to it, Aristides came to learn of it and, alarmed at the danger of the moment, decided neither to let the matter go unattended nor to expose it fully, not knowing to what extent the exposure might spread if he pursued the strict bound of justice rather than what was expedient.
So out of many he arrested only eight; and of these, the two who bore the heaviest guilt and against whom the charge had first been framed — Agesias of Acharnae and Aeschines of Lamptrae — fled the camp, while he released the rest, giving them courage and the chance to change their minds if they still thought themselves undetected, suggesting that they had the war as a great tribunal in which to clear themselves of the charges by counseling rightly and justly for their country.
After this, Mardonius, who seemed to have the greatest advantage, made trial of the Greeks, sending his whole cavalry against them as they sat encamped at the foot of Cithaeron in strong, rocky ground — all except the Megarians. These, three thousand in number, were encamped rather in the level ground. For this reason they suffered badly from the cavalry, which poured against them and made attacks from every side.
They therefore sent a messenger in haste to Pausanias asking for help, saying that they could not by themselves withstand the multitude of the barbarians. Pausanias, hearing this, and already seeing the camp of the Megarians hidden under a mass of javelins and arrows and the men pressed into a small space, was himself at a loss how to defend against horsemen with the heavy-armed phalanx of the Spartans,
and so he proposed to the other generals and captains of the Greeks around him a contest of valor and ambition, to see if any would willingly undertake to go forward and help the Megarians. While the others hesitated, Aristides undertook the task on behalf of the Athenians, and sent out Olympiodorus, the most eager of the captains, with the three hundred picked men under his command and archers mixed in among them.
These men quickly got themselves ready and advanced at a run, and Masistius, the cavalry commander of the barbarians, a man of wondrous strength and outstanding in size and beauty of body, when he saw them, turned his horse to face them and rode against them. As they held their ground and closed with him, there was a fierce struggle, since in this the whole issue seemed to be tested.
But when his horse was shot and threw Masistius, and he, falling under the weight of his armor, was slow to rise and hard for the Athenians, pressing and striking upon him, to deal with — for he was fenced not only in chest and head but even in his limbs with gold and bronze and iron — one man, striking where the helmet left his eye exposed, killed him with the butt-spike of a javelin, and the rest of the Persians, abandoning the corpse, fled.
The greatness of this success was recognized by the Greeks not from the number of the dead, for few had fallen, but from the mourning of the barbarians. For they cut their hair, both themselves and their horses and mules, in grief for Masistius, and filled the plain with wailing and lamentation, since they had lost a man who was, after Mardonius himself, by far the first in valor and power.
After the cavalry battle both sides held off from fighting for a long time; for as they stood on the defensive, the seers, reading the sacrifices, foretold victory alike to Persians and Greeks if they held their ground, but defeat if they attacked. Then Mardonius, since he had provisions for only a few more days while the Greeks kept growing more numerous as reinforcements streamed in, chafing at the delay, resolved to delay no further and instead to cross the Asopus at first light and catch the Greeks off guard; and he gave the order to his commanders in the evening.
About the middle of the night a man on horseback quietly approached the camp of the Greeks; meeting the sentries, he asked that Aristides the Athenian come to him. When Aristides quickly complied, the man said: "I am Alexander of Macedon, and out of goodwill toward you I have come, undertaking the gravest of risks, so that the suddenness of the attack may not throw you into confusion and make you fight the worse. For Mardonius will give you battle tomorrow,
not out of any good hope or confidence, but from the difficulty of his present situation, since the seers too are keeping him from battle by unfavorable sacrifices and oracular sayings, and the army is gripped by great despondency and dismay. But necessity compels him to dare and try his fortune, rather than remain motionless and suffer want pushed to its final extreme."
Having said this, Alexander begged Aristides to keep the matter to himself and remember it, and not report it to anyone else. Aristides said it was not right to conceal this from Pausanias, since to him the supreme command belonged; but he agreed it should remain unspoken to the others before the battle, though if Greece won, no one would fail to learn of Alexander's zeal and valor.
When this had been said, the Macedonian king turned and rode off once more, and Aristides went to Pausanias' tent and reported what had passed between them; and they sent for the other commanders and gave orders to keep the army in order, since there would be a battle.
Meanwhile, as Herodotus records, Pausanias proposed to Aristides that the Athenians shift to the right wing and be posted opposite the Persians, arguing that they would fight better there, being already experienced with that kind of battle and emboldened by their previous victory, while he himself would take the left wing, where the medizing Greeks were expected to be posted.
Now the other Athenian generals thought Pausanias unreasonable and overbearing, if, while leaving the rest of the line in place, he moved only them up and down like helots, throwing them forward against the most warlike enemy. But Aristides said they were altogether mistaken, if — whereas lately they had vied eagerly with the Tegeans for the honor of holding the left wing, and prided themselves on winning it — now,
when the Lacedaemonians were voluntarily yielding the right wing to them and in a sense handing over the command, they did not welcome the glory nor consider it gain not to fight against their own kin and countrymen but against barbarians, enemies by nature. Because of this the Athenians very readily exchanged places with the Spartans in the
line; and much talk passed among them as they encouraged one another, saying that the enemy who now advanced had neither better weapons nor better spirits than those at Marathon, but the same bows, the same embroidered garments and gold upon soft bodies and unmanly souls; while their own arms and bodies were much the same, but their confidence was the greater for their victories, and the contest was not merely for land and city, as it had been then, but for the trophies of Marathon and Salamis, so that these might be seen to belong not to Miltiades and fortune alone, but to the Athenians.
So these men were making haste in the exchange of positions; but the Thebans, perceiving it through deserters, told Mardonius. He at once, whether out of fear of the Athenians or eagerness to engage the Lacedaemonians, led the Persians back across to the right wing, and ordered the Greeks who were with him to take position opposite the Athenians.
When this rearrangement became evident, Pausanias in turn withdrew and took his place again on the right, and Mardonius, as he had been at first, resumed the left wing opposite the Lacedaemonians, and the day passed without action. The Greeks in council decided to move their camp farther off and occupy a place with good water, since the nearby springs had been fouled and ruined by the barbarians' cavalry superiority.
As night came on and the generals were leading the men to the appointed camping ground, the mass of them were not very eager to follow and stay together, but as soon as they rose from their first entrenchments most of them streamed toward the city of the Plataeans, and there was confusion as they scattered and pitched camp in disorder. It happened that the Lacedaemonians alone were left behind against their will, for Amompharetus,
a hot-tempered man and a lover of danger, who had long been chafing for battle and resented the many delays and postponements, now called the withdrawal outright flight and desertion, and said he would not leave his post, but would remain there with his own company of men and stand his ground against Mardonius.
Pausanias approached and informed him that the Greeks had already voted on and settled this plan, whereupon Amompharetus lifted up a huge boulder in both his hands and, hurling it down at Pausanias's feet, declared that this was his own ballot regarding the battle, and told the others to hang their cowardly votes and decrees. Pausanias, uncertain what course to take given the present circumstances, sent word to the Athenians, who were already pulling back, asking them to hold their position and advance alongside him, while he himself guided the remainder of the force toward Plataea, hoping thereby to get Amompharetus up and moving.
Meanwhile day overtook them, and Mardonius (for the Greeks had not escaped notice in abandoning their camp) bore down upon the Lacedaemonians with his force drawn up in order, amid great shouting and clamor of the barbarians, as though there would be no battle at all, but as though they would simply seize and carry off the Greeks as they fled. This came very close to actually happening.
For when Pausanias saw what was happening, he halted the march and ordered each man to take up his position for battle, but whether owing to his anger at Amompharetus or because the enemy's swiftness had thrown him into disorder, he neglected to pass the watchword along to the Greeks. Hence they came to help neither at once nor in a body, but a few at a time and scattered, the battle already being at close quarters.
When his sacrifices, as he offered them, did not turn out favorable, he ordered the Lacedaemonians to set their shields down before their feet and sit quietly, attending to him, defending themselves against none of the enemy, while he himself sacrificed again. And the enemy's cavalry kept charging in upon them, and now missiles were reaching them, and one of the Spartiates had already been struck—
of the Spartiates. And meanwhile Callicrates too, who they say was the handsomest of the Greeks in appearance and the tallest in body in that whole army, was struck by an arrow and, as he was dying, said he did not lament his death — for he had come from home to die on behalf of Greece — but that he was dying without having used his hand in the fight. So the suffering was terrible, but the men's self-restraint was admirable. For they did not defend themselves against the enemy pressing upon them, but, waiting for the moment appointed by the god and by their general, they endured being struck and falling in their ranks.
Some say that while Pausanias was sacrificing and praying a little way outside the battle line, some Lydians suddenly fell upon him and snatched up and scattered the things prepared for the sacrifice, and that Pausanias and those about him, having no weapons, struck them with rods and whips; and that this is why, to this day, in imitation of that raid, the blows given at the altar in Sparta to the young men, and the subsequent procession of the Lydians, are performed.
Pausanias, then, being distressed at the situation, as the seer kept throwing down one victim after another, turned his gaze, filled with tears, toward the Heraeum, and raising his hands prayed to Cithaeronian Hera and the other gods who hold the land of Plataea, that if it were not fated for the Greeks to conquer, they might at least do something and suffer something, and show by their deed to the enemy that they had marched against men who were brave and who had learned how to fight.
As Pausanias was calling upon the gods in this way, together with his prayers the sacrificial signs appeared favorable, and the seer announced victory. And when the order was given to all to form up against the enemy, the phalanx suddenly took on the appearance of a single spirited creature turning to face danger and bristling, and the barbarians at that moment came to the realization that the contest would be against men who would fight to the death.
For this reason they set up many of their wicker shields in front and shot arrows at the Lacedaemonians. But the latter, keeping their shield-wall close together, advanced, and falling upon them thrust the wicker shields aside, and striking the faces and chests of the Persians with their spears, brought down many of them, who did not fall inactive or without spirit. For indeed, seizing the spear-shafts with their bare hands, they snapped most of them in two, and turned to drawing their swords not sluggishly, but using their cleavers and short swords, wrenching aside the shields and grappling, they held out for a long time.
The Athenians for their part remained quiet for a while, waiting for the Lacedaemonians, but when much shouting from the combatants came to them, and, as the story goes, a courier came from Pausanias to report what was going on, they hurried out at once to lend aid. And as they advanced through the plain toward the shouting, those of the Greeks who sided with the Medes bore down upon them,
and Aristides, as soon as he saw this, went far out in front and cried out, calling the gods of the Greeks to witness, urging them to abstain from battle and not to stand in their way nor hinder them from going to the aid of those who were risking their lives on behalf of Greece. But when he saw that they paid no attention to him and were drawn up for battle, he turned away from that errand of aid and engaged these men, who numbered about fifty thousand.
But most of these men immediately yielded ground and pulled back, since the barbarians had already withdrawn as well, but the fighting, it is said, took place chiefly against the Thebans, since the foremost and most powerful men among them at that time sided with the Medes most zealously, and led the mass of the people not according to its own judgment, but under an oligarchic government.
So while the struggle was thus divided in two parts, the Lacedaemonians were first to drive back the Persians; and Mardonius was killed by a Spartiate man named Arimnestus, who struck him on the head with a stone, just as the oracle at Amphiaraus had foretold to him. For Mardonius had sent a Lydian man there, and another man, a Carian, to the oracle of Trophonius; and the prophet addressed this latter man in the Carian tongue,
while the Lydian, having lain down to sleep in the shrine of Amphiaraus, dreamed that a servant of the god stood by him and bade him depart, and when he refused, hurled a large rock against his skull, so that it appeared the man had perished from that blow: and this is said to have actually happened. And the fugitives they shut up within the wooden walls. A little later the Athenians routed the Thebans, killing three hundred of their most eminent and foremost men in the very battle itself.
Now when the rout had taken place, a messenger came to them that the barbarian force was being besieged, shut up within its walls. So they let the Greeks there save themselves as they could, and went to help at the walls: and, presenting themselves before the Lacedaemonians, who had no experience or skill whatsoever in besieging fortifications, they captured the camp while inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy.
For it is said that of the three hundred thousand, forty thousand fled with Artabazus, while among those who fought for the cause of Greece, the total number of dead came to thirteen hundred and sixty. Of these the Athenians numbered fifty-two, all from the tribe of Aiantis, as Cleidemus says,
which fought best of all; wherefore the men of the Aiantis tribe offer to the Sphragitid nymphs the sacrifice enjoined by the Pythia on behalf of the victory, receiving the expense from the public treasury. The Lacedaemonians lost more than ninety-one, and the Tegeans sixteen. It is therefore astonishing what Herodotus says, that only these came to close quarters with the enemy, and none of the other Greeks. For both the number of the fallen and the monuments bear witness
that the achievement was a common one: and they would not have inscribed the altar in this way, if only three cities had fought, while the rest sat quietly by: "When the Greeks by the strength of victory, by the deed of Ares, had driven out the Persians, they set up, for free Greece, this common altar of Zeus the Liberator."
This battle they fought on the fourth day of the rising month of Boedromion according to the Athenian calendar, though by Boeotian reckoning it fell on the fourth day of the waning Panemus, and on that same day the Hellenic council continues even now to convene at Plataea, with the Plataeans offering sacrifice to Zeus the Liberator for the victory. One should not be surprised at the discrepancy of the days, since even now, though the science of astronomy has been made exact, different people still reckon the beginning and end of the month differently.
After this, when the Athenians would not yield the prize of valor to the Spartiates nor allow them to set up the trophy, the affairs of the Greeks came very close to being ruined outright at once, as they took up arms against one another, had not Aristides, by much persuading and instructing his fellow generals, especially Leocrates and Myronides, prevailed and persuaded them to refer the judgment to the Greeks.
Thereupon, as the Greeks deliberated, Theogeiton the Megarian said that the prize of valor ought to be given to some other city, if they did not wish to stir up civil war; and after him Cleocritus the Corinthian rose, giving the impression that he would ask the prize for the Corinthians (for Corinth held the highest repute after Sparta and Athens), but he delivered a speech that pleased everyone and was admirable, concerning the Plataeans, and advised them to remove the rivalry by giving the prize of valor to those men, at whose being honored neither side would be aggrieved.
When this had been said, Aristides was the first to give his assent for the Athenian side, and Pausanias then did likewise for the Lacedaemonians. Their differences thus settled, they allotted the Plataeans eighty talents, out of which they rebuilt the sanctuary of Athena, set up the statue, and adorned the shrine with paintings that remain fresh to this day, and they also set up trophies, the Lacedaemonians one on their own, and the Athenians a separate one.
When they inquired concerning sacrifice, the Pythian god answered that they should set up an altar of Zeus the Liberator, but should hold off sacrificing until every fire in the land, defiled by the barbarians, had been put out and a fresh, pure flame kindled from the shared hearth at Delphi. So the leaders of the Greeks went about at once and compelled all who kept fires to extinguish them, and from Plataea Euchidas, undertaking to bring the fire from the god as quickly as possible, came to Delphi.
Having purified his body and sprinkled himself, he wreathed his head with laurel; then, taking up the flame from the altar, he set off running back to Plataea, and returned before sunset, having covered a thousand stadia in the same day. Having greeted his fellow citizens and delivered the fire, he immediately collapsed and shortly after breathed his last. The Plataeans, admiring him, buried him in the sanctuary of Artemis Eucleia, inscribing this tetrameter verse upon his tomb: "Euchidas ran to Pytho and came back here on the same day."
As for Eucleia, most people identify and regard her as Artemis, though some claim instead that she was born of Heracles and Myrto, who was Menoetius's daughter and Patroclus's sister, and that, dying unmarried, she is honored among the Boeotians and the Locrians. For an altar and image of her stand in every marketplace, and both brides and bridegrooms offer preliminary sacrifice to her.
After this, a common assembly of the Greeks having been held, Aristides drew up a decree that delegates and sacred envoys should assemble at Plataea every year from all of Greece, and that a quinquennial contest of the Eleutheria (Games of Freedom) should be held. And that there should be a common Greek levy of ten thousand shields, one thousand horse, and one hundred ships for the war against the barbarians, and that the Plataeans should be set apart, inviolable and sacred to the god, sacrificing on behalf of Greece.
When these things had been ratified, the Plataeans undertook to offer funeral rites each year to those of the Greeks who had fallen and were interred in that ground. Even now, they carry out the custom thus: on the month Maimacterion's sixteenth day, which among the Boeotians is called Alalcomenius, they send forth a procession, led at daybreak by a trumpeter sounding the call to battle,
followed by wagons full of myrtle and wreaths, and a black bull, and free young men carrying jars of wine and milk in amphorae and vessels of oil and perfume; for no slave is permitted to take part in that service, because the men died on behalf of freedom:
and at the end of all comes the archon of the Plataeans, who at other times is not permitted to touch iron nor to put on any garment other than white, but who then, wearing a scarlet tunic and taking up a water-jar from the record-office, girded with a sword, leads the way to the graves through the middle of the city.
Then, taking water from the spring, he himself washes the stelae and anoints them with myrrh, and having slaughtered the bull at the pyre and prayed to Zeus and Hermes of the earth, he calls upon the good men who died on behalf of Greece to come to the feast and the blood-libation. Then, having mixed a bowl of wine and poured it out, he says: "This cup is raised to those who gave their lives that Greece might live free." These rites the Plataeans still preserve even to this day.
When Aristides saw that the Athenians, having withdrawn into the city, were seeking to recover their democracy, thinking both that the people deserved consideration for their manly valor, and further that compulsion could no longer readily be used against men now armed and strong, flushed with the pride of their victories, he drafted a decree that the constitution should be shared in common and that the archons should be chosen from all the Athenians.
When Themistocles told the people that he had some plan and secret proposal, useful and salutary for the city, they ordered that Aristides alone should hear it and judge it. When Themistocles explained to Aristides that he intended to burn the dockyard of the Greeks, since in this way the Athenians would become greatest and masters of all, Aristides came before the people and said that of the deed which Themistocles intended to do, there was none more profitable, but also none more unjust. Hearing this, the Athenians ordered Themistocles to stop. So devoted to justice was the people, and so trusted and steadfast in the people's eyes was the man.
Dispatched as general in company with Cimon to carry on the war, he observed that Pausanias and the other Spartan commanders treated the allies with harshness and oppression; he himself, by his own gentle and considerate manner toward them, and by making Cimon appear approachable and ready to cooperate in the campaigns, gradually and imperceptibly took the leadership away from the Lacedaemonians — not through weapons, ships, or cavalry, but through equitable conduct and political skill.
For the Athenians, already dear to the Greeks because of the justice of Aristides and the fairness of Cimon, were made still more desired because of the greed and heaviness of Pausanias. For he always dealt with the commanders of the allies in anger and roughly, and punished the common soldiers with blows, or by fastening an iron anchor upon them forced them to stand the whole day through.
It was not possible to obtain bedding or fodder, nor to approach a spring to draw water, before the Spartans, but attendants with whips drove off those who approached. When Aristides once wished to complain about this and instruct him, Pausanias, drawing his face into a scowl, said he had no leisure, and would not even listen.
After this the naval commanders and generals of the Greeks, especially the Chians, Samians, and Lesbians, kept urging Aristides to take up the leadership and to bring over to himself the allies who for a long time had wanted to break free from Spartan control and shift their loyalty toward the Athenians. He answered that in their words he saw both necessity and justice, but that trust required a deed — one which, once done, would not allow the majority to change their minds again —
and so the men around Uliades of Samos and Antagoras of Chios, having conspired together, ran their trireme in near Byzantium against that of Pausanias, catching it sailing ahead alone, boxed in between them. When Pausanias, seeing this, sprang up and angrily threatened that in a little while he would show these men that they had rammed not his ship, but their own native cities, they told him to go away and be content with the fortune that had fought beside him at Plataea; for it was still out of shame before that victory that the Greeks were not exacting from him the punishment he deserved. In the end they broke away and went over to the Athenians.
Then indeed the spirit of Sparta was shown to be admirable. For when they saw that the vast scope of their power was corrupting their commanders, they voluntarily surrendered the leadership and no longer dispatched generals to conduct the war, preferring instead citizens who behaved sensibly and held to their traditions over dominion across all of Greece.
The Greeks paid a certain contribution toward the war even while the Lacedaemonians were leading them, but wishing to be assessed city by city according to a fair measure, they asked the Athenians for Aristides, and charged him, after examining each state's territory and revenues, to determine what was fitting for each according to its worth and power.
He, having become master of so great an authority, and with Greece in a manner placing all her affairs in his hands alone, went out poor and came back poorer still, having made the assessment of the tribute not only cleanly and justly, but agreeably to all and fittingly. For just as the men of old spoke of the life under Cronus, so the allies of the Athenians, naming the tribute under Aristides a kind of good fortune for Greece, sang its praises — especially after not much time had passed and it was doubled, and then again tripled.
For the amount Aristides set came to a reckoning of four hundred and sixty talents; to this Pericles added nearly a third part more, for Thucydides says that six hundred talents came in to the Athenians from the allies at the beginning of the war; and after the death of Pericles, the popular leaders, gradually raising it, brought the total to a full thirteen hundred talents — this increase owing less to the conflict's duration and vicissitudes making it burdensome and costly, as because they led the people on into distributions, theater-money, and the construction of statues and temples.
Now Aristides, having gained a great and admirable reputation from his arrangement of the tributes, was said to be mocked by Themistocles, who claimed that the praise belonged not to a man but to a moneybag guarding gold — thus paying back in a different coin Aristides' own frankness of speech. For when Themistocles once said to him that he considered the greatest virtue of a general to be the knowing and foreseeing beforehand the plans of the enemy, Aristides said, "That indeed is necessary, Themistocles, but truly noble and generalship worthy of the name is self-control with respect to one's hands."
Aristides administered the oath to the Greeks and swore on behalf of the Athenians, casting lumps of iron into the sea to accompany the curses; but later, when affairs were pressing him, as it seems, to hold power more firmly, he urged the Athenians to turn the perjury upon himself and to manage affairs as was advantageous.
In general Theophrastus says that this man, while being supremely just in his private dealings and toward his fellow citizens, did many things in public affairs with a view to the interest of his country, which required, he thought, a good deal of injustice. For indeed he says that when they were deliberating about bringing the treasury from Delos to Athens contrary to the agreements, and the Samians proposed it, Aristides said that this was not just, but —
— that it was expedient. And in the end, having established the city in a position to rule over so many men, he himself remained in poverty, and clung no less to the reputation gained from being poor than to that gained from his trophies. This is clear from the following. Callias the torch-bearer was related to him by family. His enemies, prosecuting him on a capital charge, when they had made only a moderate case concerning the actual charges written against him, added an extraneous argument of this sort to the jurors: "Aristides,"
they said, "you know — the son of Lysimachus, admired among the Greeks — how do you suppose things stand at his home, when you see him walking around town wrapped in so worn and shabby a cloak? Surely a man so plainly cold to the eye must also go hungry at home, short of other necessities as well? Yet this man, though he is his cousin, Callias, the richest of the Athenians, allows him to go in want along with his children and wife, though he has often made use of the man and often profited from his influence among you."
Callias, seeing that the jurors were especially stirred up by this and hostile toward him, called upon Aristides, asking him to testify before the jurors that though he had often given much and begged him to accept it, Aristides had refused, replying that it was more fitting for him to take pride in his poverty than for Callias to take pride in his wealth; for in wealth one can see many men making use of it both well and badly, but it is not easy to find one who bears poverty nobly; and it is only those who are poor against their will who ought to be ashamed of poverty.
When Aristides had testified this in favor of Callias, there was no one among those who heard it who did not go away wishing rather to be poor as Aristides was than rich as Callias was. This is what Aeschines the Socratic has recorded. Plato declares that among those regarded as great and celebrated at Athens, he alone deserved to be named; for Themistocles, Cimon, and Pericles crowded the city with colonnades, wealth, and much frivolous excess, whereas Aristides directed his statesmanship toward virtue itself.
Great too are the signs of his fairness toward Themistocles. Though he had made use of him as an enemy throughout the whole of his political career, and had been ostracized because of him, when the man gave the same handle against himself by falling under accusation before the city, Aristides bore no grudge; but while Alcmaeon and Cimon and many others were driving him out and accusing him, Aristides alone neither did nor said anything base, nor did he take pleasure in an enemy's misfortune, just as he had not envied him before in his prosperity.
Regarding how Aristides met his end, some report he passed away in Pontus, having sailed there on a public mission; others hold that old age took him at Athens, where he was esteemed and honored by his countrymen. Craterus the Macedonian has said something of this sort concerning the man's death. For he says that after the exile of Themistocles, the people, as though grown insolent, produced a crowd of sycophants, who, pursuing the best and most powerful men, exposed them to the envy of the multitude, who were puffed up by good fortune and power.
Among these, he says, Aristides too was convicted of bribery, Diophantus of Amphitrope being the accuser, on the ground that when he was assessing the tributes he had taken money from the Ionians; and since he could not raise the money for the fine — fifty minas in all — he sailed off and met his death somewhere near Ionia. But of these things Craterus has furnished no written proof, neither a judgment nor a decree, although he is generally accustomed to write down such things carefully and to cite those who report them.
But all the others, so to speak, who record the wrongs the people committed against their generals — Themistocles driven into exile, Miltiades thrown into prison, Pericles struck with a fine, and Paches meeting his death in the courtroom, who killed himself upon the platform as he was being convicted, and many other such things — gather and repeat these constantly, but of Aristides they mention only the ostracism, and nowhere do they record any conviction of this sort.
And indeed there is a tomb of his shown at Phalerum, which they say the city built for him, since he left behind not even enough for a burial. And they relate that his daughters were given in marriage from the prytaneum at public expense, the city standing surety for the marriage and voting a dowry of three thousand drachmas to each; and to his son Lysimachus the people gave a hundred minas of silver and as many plethra of planted land, and assigned besides four drachmas a day,
on a motion drafted by Alcibiades. And when Lysimachus in turn left behind a daughter, Polycrite, the people, according to Callisthenes, granted her the same support given to victors at Olympia. Demetrius of Phalerum, Hieronymus of Rhodes, Aristoxenus the musician, and Aristotle (assuming the treatise On Noble Birth truly belongs among Aristotle's authentic writings) report that Myrto, a granddaughter of Aristides, lived with Socrates the philosopher, who had another wife, but took her in as a widow through poverty, in want of the necessities of life.
Against these writers Panaetius has adequately argued in his work on Socrates. Yet Demetrius of Phalerum, in the work he titled Socrates, recalls a grandson of Aristides, a very poor man named Lysimachus, who used to make his living sitting by the so-called Iaccheion with a little tablet for interpreting dreams. And having drafted a decree on behalf of the man's mother and her sister, he persuaded the people to give them a maintenance of three obols each per day. Demetrius himself, indeed, says that when he was serving as lawgiver he fixed a drachma instead of three obols for each of the women.
And it is no wonder that the people took such thought for those in the city, when, hearing that a granddaughter of Aristogeiton was faring poorly in Lemnos, unable to find a husband because of her poverty, they brought her down to Athens, and having married her to a man of good family, gave the estate at Potamos as her dowry. Of this humanity and goodness the city, even down to our own day, brings forth many proofs, and is admired and rightly emulated for it.

======== Marcus Cato ========

They say that Marcus Cato's family came from Tusculum, but that before his military campaigns and his career in public life he lived and worked on ancestral land among the Sabines. Though his ancestors seem to have been altogether unknown, Cato himself praises his father Marcus as a good man and a good soldier, and says that his great-grandfather Cato won prizes for valor many times and, having lost five war-horses in battle, was reimbursed for them out of the public treasury on account of his manly courage.
Since the Romans were accustomed to call "new men" those who had no distinction from birth but were beginning to become known through their own efforts—as indeed they called Cato—he himself said that he was new with respect to office and reputation, but, through the deeds and virtues of his ancestors, very old indeed. He was not originally called Cato as his third name, but Priscus; it was later that he got the name Cato from his ability, for the Romans call a shrewd, experienced man "catus."
In appearance he was reddish and gray-eyed, as the man who wrote the little epigram indicates none too kindly: "Fiery-red, sharp-toothed, gray-eyed—not even in death does Persephone receive Porcius into Hades." His bodily condition, having been trained from the start by manual labor, disciplined diet, and military campaigns, was very serviceable, evenly composed for both strength and health.
As for speech—which is, as it were, a second body, and an instrument not only of the necessities of life but of the noble things too, for a man who does not intend to live meanly or inactively—he trained and equipped himself in it by pleading, on each occasion, for those in need in the surrounding villages and small towns; and first he was thought an eager pleader of cases, then also a capable orator, and from this those who dealt with him increasingly perceived in him a certain weight and seriousness of character requiring great affairs and a leading role in politics,
for, it seems, he did not merely keep himself clean of taking payment for his lawsuits and pleadings, but he did not even appear to prize very highly the reputation that came from such contests; rather he wished far more to win distinction in battles against the enemy and in campaigns, and while still a young man he had a body full of wounds received facing the foe.
For he himself says that he made his first campaign at seventeen years of age, at the time when Hannibal, in the flush of success, was setting Italy ablaze. In battle he showed himself quick with his hand, steady and firm on his feet, and bold in expression; toward the enemy he used threatening speech and a harsh tone of voice, rightly judging and teaching that such things often terrify opponents more than the sword does,
On the march he himself walked carrying his own arms, and a single attendant followed bearing the things needed for his daily fare; it is said that he never once grew irritable with this man or found fault when he set out breakfast or dinner, but himself took part in most of the preparing and helped get things ready, coming as he did from soldierly labors. He drank water on campaign, except that sometimes, burning with thirst, he would request a sour vinegar-drink, or, if his energy was flagging, would take a small amount of wine instead.
Near his fields lay the farmstead that had belonged to Manius Curius, who had celebrated three triumphs. Walking there continually and observing the smallness of the place and the plainness of the dwelling, he would form a notion of the man—that although he had risen to be Rome's foremost man, had conquered the fiercest of nations in war, and had driven Pyrrhus out of Italy, he himself dug this little plot and dwelt in this farmstead after three triumphs.
There the envoys of the Samnites found him sitting by the hearth boiling turnips, and offered him a great sum of gold; but he sent them away, saying that a man for whom such a dinner was enough had no need of gold, and that for himself it was finer to conquer those who had gold than to have it. Pondering these things, Cato would go away, and looking again at his own house, lands, servants, and manner of living, would redouble his own manual labor and cut back his extravagance.
When Fabius Maximus took the city of the Tarentines, Cato happened to be serving under him, being quite a young man still, and having made the acquaintance of a certain Nearchus, a guest-friend among the Pythagoreans, he was eager to take up his teachings. Hearing the man discourse on those doctrines which Plato too used—calling pleasure the greatest bait to evil, the body the soul's first misfortune, and holding that release and purification come especially by those reasonings which separate and remove the soul furthest from the affections of the body—he came to love still more the plain and simple life and self-control.
Otherwise he is said to have come late to Greek learning, and, having advanced quite far in years, to have taken Greek books into his hands and profited a little from Thucydides, but more from Demosthenes, for his rhetoric. Yet his own writings are fairly well adorned with Greek doctrines and histories, and many sayings translated word for word are set among his apophthegms and maxims.
There was a certain man, a patrician among the foremost of the Romans and powerful, one clever at perceiving virtue as it was sprouting and kindly disposed to nurture it and bring it forward into repute—Valerius Flaccus. This man had lands bordering those of Cato, and learning from his servants of Cato's manual labor and manner of living, and marveling as they related it—how early in the morning he went to the marketplace and stood by those in need of help, and how, returning to his farm,
if it was winter, he would put on a rough sleeveless tunic, and in summer would work stripped, sitting and eating the same bread together with his servants and drinking the same wine—and as they related many other instances of his fairness and moderation, and certain pointed sayings of his as well, Valerius had him invited to dinner.
After this, coming to know and observe his gentle and refined character—as of a plant needing cultivation and a more conspicuous place to grow—he urged him on and persuaded him to take up a public career at Rome. So Cato, coming down to the city, at once won for himself admirers and friends through his advocacy in the courts, and with Valerius adding him much honor and influence, he obtained first a military tribuneship, then served as quaestor.
After this, being now brilliant and conspicuous, he ran alongside Valerius himself for the greatest offices, becoming consul with him and afterward also censor. Among the older citizens he attached himself to Fabius Maximus, a man of the greatest fame and the greatest power, setting before himself above all the man's character and manner of life as the finest examples.
For this reason too, when Scipio the Great, then still young, was rising up against Fabius's power and seemed to be an object of his envy, Cato thought it no great matter to become his opponent; rather, being sent along with him as quaestor for the war in Africa, when he saw the man indulging in his customary extravagance and lavishing money on the armies without restraint, he spoke frankly to him,
saying that the expense itself was not the greatest issue, but that he was corrupting the soldiers' traditional frugality by turning what was left over from necessity toward pleasures and luxury. When Scipio replied that he had no need of so exacting a quaestor while sailing full-sail toward the war, for he owed the city an account of deeds, not of money,
Cato departed from Sicily, and joining with Fabius in outcry in the senate against the destruction of untold sums of money by Scipio and his youthful pastimes in wrestling-grounds and theaters, as though he were not commanding an army but holding festival, he brought it about that tribunes were dispatched to summon Scipio home to Rome, should the charges be confirmed.
Scipio, however, having shown in the preparation for the war that this was the road to victory, and having appeared pleasant to be with among friends in his leisure, yet nowhere lax through the affability of his manner of living when it came to serious and great matters, sailed off to the war.
Cato's power from his oratory had grown great, and many likened him to a Roman Demosthenes; yet it was his way of living that drew even greater talk and praise. For skill in speaking was already set before the young men as a common and eagerly pursued object of rivalry, but a man who held to the ancestral manual labor, embraced a plain dinner and a breakfast without cooked food, simple clothing, and a common man's dwelling, and admired not having superfluous things more than possessing them, was rare,
since by now the state, on account of its size, no longer kept its purity, but through mastering many affairs and mingling with many peoples was receiving customs and patterns of life of every kind. Naturally, then, people admired Cato, seeing others broken by hardships and softened by pleasures, while he was unconquered by both,
not merely in the years when he was youthful and eager for advancement, but even later, when gray-haired and old, after his consulship and triumph, persevering in his set course of training, like a victorious athlete, and keeping it even to the end. For he says his garments never cost above a hundred drachmas, and that even while serving as praetor and consul he drank the same wine his workmen did, and that he bought the relish for his dinner from the market at thirty asses—and this for the city's sake, so that his body might be strong for campaigns.
Having inherited a Babylonian cloak of embroidered work, he sold it at once; none of his farmhouses was plastered; he never bought a slave for more than fifteen hundred drachmas, since he preferred not delicate, good-looking slaves but tough, rugged laborers fit for work as stable-hands and cattle-tenders; and once these grew old as well, he thought they ought to be sold off rather than kept and fed with no return. In general he thought nothing superfluous was cheap, but that whatever a man has no need of, even if it sells for a penny, should be reckoned dear; and he thought it better to acquire things that are sown and grazed than things that are watered and swept.
These things some set down as pettiness in the man, while others accepted them as the restraint of one who drew himself in tightly for the correction and discipline of others. But that he dealt with his household slaves as though they were beasts of burden, casting them out and putting them up for sale once age had worn them down, I myself set down to an altogether harsh disposition, one that supposes there is no further bond between man and man than usefulness.
And yet we see that kindness occupies a broader territory than justice. For law and justice we are by nature fitted to exercise only toward human beings, but as regards acts of kindness and grace, sometimes it flows even down to dumb animals, as if from a rich spring of gentleness. Even the feeding of horses worn out by age, and the tending not merely of dogs as puppies but their care in old age, belong to a kindly character.
The Athenian people, when building the Hecatompedon, released to graze free and unyoked as many mules as they observed had borne the labors most steadfastly; and they say one of these came down of her own accord to the works and ran alongside and led the pack animals bringing up the wagons to the acropolis, as if urging them on and spurring them together—and this one they voted to feed at public expense until her death.
The graves of Cimon's mares, with which he won at Olympia three times, are near his own tomb; and dogs that became companions and familiars, many people have honored, and among them Xanthippus of old, who buried on the headland the dog that swam alongside his trireme to Salamis when the people abandoned the city—a place they call to this day the Dog's Mound.
For we ought not to treat living things as we do sandals or tools, throwing them away once broken and worn out by our use; but, if for no other reason, then for the sake of practicing kindness, we ought to accustom ourselves beforehand to be gentle and mild in these matters. I myself would not sell even a working ox on account of old age, much less an older man, removing him as if from his native land, from the region and manner of life he was bred to, for a few small coins—a man who would be as useless to those buying him as to those selling him.
Cato, as if boasting of these very practices, says that he left in Spain the horse he used on campaign while he was consul, so that the city would not be charged for its transport. Whether one ought to attribute such conduct to nobility of spirit or to small-mindedness, each may adopt whichever argument he finds convincing.
In his other self-restraint the man is astonishingly admirable: for instance, that as general he took for himself and those around him no more than three Attic medimni of wheat a month, and for the pack animals, less than three half-medimni of barley a day.
When he received Sardinia as his province, where the praetors before him had been in the habit of using public tents, beds, and clothing, and burdening the province with a large retinue and crowd of friends and with expenses and preparations for banquets, he made the difference in his frugality unbelievable. For he asked for no public expense whatsoever, but went about the cities himself on foot without a carriage, while a single public attendant followed him carrying his robe and a libation-cup for sacrifice.
Yet though in these matters he showed himself so easy and unassuming to those under his authority, he in turn maintained his dignity and weight, being inflexible in matters of justice and upright and straightforward in his commands concerning the imperial power, so that the rule of the Romans never became to them either more feared or more beloved.
Such, it appears, was also the character of the man's speech: it was at once graceful and formidable, pleasant and awe-inspiring, fond of jest yet severe, given to maxims yet combative — just as Plato says of Socrates, that he appeared to those who met him on the outside a simple, mocking, and insolent fellow, but within was full of earnestness and matters that could move to tears
those who listened, and could wring the heart. Hence I do not know what has come over those who say that Cato's speech most resembles that of Lysias. However, these matters those more capable of discerning the character of Roman speeches will judge; as for us, we shall write down a few of the things remembered of him, since we hold that the character of men is far more revealed by speech than by the face, as some suppose.
Once, when he intended to turn the Roman people away from an untimely impulse toward grain-distributions and doles, he began his speech thus: "It is a hard thing, citizens, to speak to a belly that has no ears." And denouncing extravagance, he said it was hard for a city to be safe when a single fish fetches a higher price than an ox does.
He said the Romans resembled sheep: for just as sheep will not obey one by one, but all together follow their leaders when herded, "so you too," he said, "whom individually you would not think worth consulting, once gathered together into one body are led by these men." And discoursing on the rule of women, he said, "All men rule their women, we rule all men, and our women rule us."
This saying, indeed, is borrowed from the maxims of Themistocles. For he, when his son through his mother kept giving him many orders, said, "Wife, the Athenians rule the Greeks, I rule the Athenians, you rule me, and our son rules you; so let him spare his power, by which, foolish as he is, he has the greatest power of all the Greeks."
Cato said that the Roman people set value not only by their purple dyes but also by their pursuits. "For just as dyers," he said, "dye most that color which they see men delighting in, so the young learn and pursue eagerly whatever it is for which they see praise from you following."
He urged them, if it was by virtue and self-control that they had become great, to change nothing for the worse; but if by lack of self-control and by vice, to change for the better, for they had already become great enough from those causes. And of those who were eager to hold office again and again he said that, as if ignorant of the way, they always sought to travel with lictors, lest they go astray.
He rebuked the citizens for choosing the same men as magistrates repeatedly. "For you will seem," he said, "either to think that holding office is worth little, or that few are worthy of holding it." Of one of his enemies who seemed to live shamefully and without repute, he said, "His mother considers it a curse, not a prayer, to leave this man behind on the earth."
Gesturing toward a man who had disposed of the fields his forefathers had left him, land that ran along the coast, he pretended to marvel at him as stronger than the sea: "for what the sea," he said, "could scarcely wash away, this man has easily swallowed down." And when King Eumenes visited Rome and the Senate received him extravagantly and there was rivalry and eagerness among the leading men over him, Cato was clearly suspicious of him and on his guard against him,
and when someone said, "But surely he is a good man and a friend of Rome," he replied, "Granted, but by nature this creature, a king, is a flesh-eater." And he said that none of the kings accounted fortunate was worthy to stand beside such men as Epaminondas, Pericles, Themistocles, Manius Curius, or Hamilcar known as Barca.
He said his enemies envied him because he rose each day before dawn and, neglecting his own affairs, gave his time to the public business; and he said he would rather, having done well, be deprived of gratitude than fail, having done ill, to receive punishment; and he said he granted pardon to all who erred, except himself.
When the Romans chose three envoys out to Bithynia, one of them gout-ridden, another left with a hollowed-out skull after undergoing trepanation and excision, and the third seemed to be a fool, Cato mocked, saying that an embassy was being sent out by the Romans that had neither feet nor a head nor a heart.
When he was approached by Scipio on behalf of the exiles from Achaea, through Polybius, and there was much debate in the Senate, some granting them their return and others opposing it, Cato stood up and said, "As if we had nothing to do, we sit here the whole day debating about some little old Greek men — whether they should be carried to their graves by our undertakers or by those in Achaea."
When the return had been voted for the men, a few days later Polybius and his circle again attempted to enter the Senate, so that the exiles might recover the honors they had formerly held in Achaea, and they tried to sound out Cato's opinion; but he, smiling, said that Polybius, like Odysseus, wished to go back again into the Cyclops' cave, having forgotten there his cap and his belt.
He said that the prudent are helped by the foolish more than the foolish by the prudent: for the former guard against the errors of the latter, while the latter fail to imitate the successes of the former. He said that of the young he preferred those who blush to those who turn pale, and that he wanted no soldier who moved his hands while marching and his feet while fighting, or who snored louder than he shouted in the charge.
Rebuking a very fat man, he said, "How could such a body ever be useful to the city, when the whole space from throat down to groin is occupied by nothing but the stomach?" And when a certain pleasure-seeker wished to become his companion, he turned him away, remarking that sharing a life with someone whose tongue felt more than his heart did was impossible for him, and he added that a man in love lives with his soul in another's body.
He said he himself had repented three times in his whole life: once for having entrusted a secret to his wife, once for having gone by sea where he could have gone by land, and a third time for having remained a single day without having made his will. To an old man behaving wickedly he said, "Man, when old age already has many shameful things of its own, do not add to it the shame that comes from vice."
To a tribune who was under suspicion of poisoning and was introducing and forcing through a base law, he said, "Young man, I do not know which is worse — what you mix to drink, or what you write to enact." And to a man of dissolute and wicked life who heaped abuse on him, he replied, "The contest between you and me is unequal: for you hear abuse easily and speak it readily, whereas for me it is unpleasant to speak it and unaccustomed to hear it." Such, then, is the character of his recorded sayings.
Having been appointed consul together with his friend and intimate Valerius Flaccus, the province allotted to him was the one Romans term Hither Spain. There, as he brought some tribes to heel by force and drew others over through diplomacy, a large force of barbarians fell upon him, and there was danger that he might be shamefully driven out. He therefore called upon the neighboring Celtiberians for an alliance.
When they asked two hundred talents as pay for their aid, everyone else found it unbearable that Romans would consent to pay foreign tribesmen for their help, yet Cato replied that nothing about it was so dreadful: for if victory came, they would pay from the enemy's resources, not their own, while if they lost, there would be neither those who demanded payment nor those from whom it was demanded. He won this battle decisively, and everything else proceeded brilliantly for him as well.
Polybius indeed says that by his order the walls of the cities within the river Baetis were torn down in a single day, and these were very many and full of fighting men. Cato himself says he took more cities than the days he spent in Iberia — and this is no boast, if indeed they numbered four hundred in all.
To the soldiers, who had already profited much during the campaign, he further distributed a pound of silver apiece, saying it was better that many Romans should return home with silver than a few with gold. As for himself, he says that of the plunder nothing came to him beyond what he had drunk or eaten. "And I do not blame," he says, "those who seek to profit from these things, but as for myself, I would sooner rival the finest men in excellence than rival the wealthiest in riches, or the greediest in love of gain."
Not only did he keep himself, but also those about him, clean of all such gain. There were five servants with him on campaign. One of these, named Paccius, bought three boys from among the captives; and when Cato learned of it, before coming into his sight, the man hanged himself. Cato sold the boys and brought their price into the public treasury.
While he was still engaged in Iberia, Scipio the Great, an enemy of his eager to curb his run of success, and to take over the conduct of Iberian affairs, contrived to be appointed successor to that province. Hastening as quickly as he could, he put an end to Cato's command; but Cato, taking five cohorts of infantry and five hundred cavalry as an escort, subdued the nation of the Lacetani, and having recovered six hundred deserters, put them to death.
When Scipio was indignant at this, Cato, mocking him, said that Rome would thus become greatest, when the illustrious and great did not yield the first prizes of virtue to the more obscure, and men of the people, such as he himself was, competed in virtue against those who excelled in birth and reputation. Nevertheless, when the Senate voted to alter or disturb nothing of what Cato had administered, Scipio's own governorship, which took away more from his own reputation than from Cato's, passed
in idleness and leisure to no purpose, while Cato, having celebrated his triumph, did not — as most of those who compete not for virtue but for reputation do, once they attain the highest honors and obtain the consulship and triumphs, thereafter arranging their lives for pleasure and leisure and withdrawing from public affairs — relax and abandon his virtue in this way; instead, like those first laying hold of a political career and thirsting for honor and reputation, he strained himself anew from another starting point and offered himself in the midst both to his friends and his fellow citizens, refusing neither advocacy in the courts nor military service.
He served as legate under Tiberius Sempronius when the latter was consul in charge of affairs around Thrace and the Ister, and helped him accomplish his task; and as military tribune under Manius Acilius he went out with him to Greece against Antiochus the Great, who had frightened the Romans as no one had since Hannibal. For having recovered nearly the whole of Asia which Seleucus Nicator had held, and having made subject many warlike barbarian nations, he was elated to engage the Romans as the only people still a match for him.
Having made a plausible pretext for the war — that he was liberating the Greeks, who needed no such thing, but were already free and autonomous by the favor of the Romans, having only recently been freed from Philip and the Macedonians — he crossed over with his forces, and at once Greece was in commotion and was aloft with hopes, being corrupted by royal agents through the demagogues,
So Manius sent envoys to the cities. Titus Flamininus kept most of the disaffected in check without disturbance and calmed them down, as is written in his own Life, but Cato won over the Corinthians and the people of Patrae, and also the Aegians.
He spent the longest time at Athens. There is a speech said to be his, which he delivered to the people in Greek, as though he admired the virtue of the ancient Athenians and had gladly come to view the city for its beauty and greatness; but this is not true — rather, he addressed the Athenians through an interpreter, though he was capable of speaking himself, because he held fast to his native customs and laughed at those who marveled at everything Greek.
At any rate, when Postumius Albinus wrote a history in Greek and asked for indulgence, Cato mocked him, saying that indulgence should be granted only if he had been compelled by a vote of the Amphictyons to undertake the task; and he says the Athenians marveled at the speed of his delivery and the sharpness of his phrasing — for what he himself (Cato) uttered briefly, the interpreter would report at length and through many words; and in general he thought that words came to the Greeks from the lips, but to the Romans from the heart.
When Antiochus had blocked the pass at Thermopylae with his camp, and, adding stockades and cross-walls to the natural defenses of the place, sat there thinking he had shut out the war, the Romans altogether despaired of forcing their way through frontally; but Cato, calling to mind that famous Persian circuit and encirclement, set out by night,
taking a portion of the army with him. When they had advanced upward, the guide, a captive, lost the way and wandered in trackless and precipitous places, working terrible discouragement and fear into the soldiers; seeing the danger, Cato ordered all the rest to stay still and wait,
while he himself, taking with him a certain Lucius Manlius, a man skilled at mountain-climbing, went forward with great toil and hazard in a moonless and deep night, among wild olives and crags whose jagged shapes caused many breaks and much obscurity of vision, until they came upon a path which, they thought, led down to the enemy's camp, and set up signals by certain conspicuous spear-shafts rising above Callidromus.
So turning back again they went and fetched the army, and advancing toward the signals they took hold of that path and set their course by it; but after going forward a little way it failed them, a ravine intervening. And again there was perplexity and fear, since they did not know or perceive that they had actually come close to the enemy. But day was already breaking, and someone seemed to hear a sound, and perhaps even to make out a Greek stockade and outpost beneath the cliff,
So Cato, halting the army there, ordered the men of Firmum to come to him apart from the others, men whom he always found trustworthy and eager. When they had run together and gathered closely about him, he said, "I need to take one of the enemy alive and learn from him who these outposts are, how many they number, what is the arrangement and order of the rest, and what preparation they have made to await us.
This deed must be done with the swiftness and boldness of a seizure — the same boldness with which lions, unarmed, confidently go after the more timid of beasts." When Cato had said this, the men of Firmum rushed forward at once, just as they were, ran down the hills upon the outposts, and falling upon them by surprise, threw the whole group into disorder and drove them apart in flight, and, seizing one man together with his arms, delivered him into Cato's hands.
Learning from this man that the rest of the force was posted in the pass with the king himself, while these guarding the passes were six hundred picked Aetolians, Cato, despising both their small number and their carelessness, at once led his men against them with trumpets and battle-cry, himself the first to draw his sword. When they saw the attackers bearing down from the cliffs, they fled to the great camp and filled everyone there with confusion.
Meanwhile Manius too was pressing from below against the cross-walls and attacking the pass with his whole force in a body; Antiochus, struck in the mouth by a stone that knocked out his teeth, in great pain turned his horse back, and no part of his army held its ground against the Romans,
but though the routes of flight were difficult and impassable, full of wandering paths, with deep marshes and sheer rocks awaiting those who fell or slipped, they poured out through the narrow pass into these very dangers, pushing one another in fear of the enemy's blows and steel, and so destroyed themselves. Cato, it seems, was always rather unsparing in his own praise, and did not shrink from outright boasting as the natural accompaniment of great deeds; he heaped a great deal of pomp upon these actions,
and says that those who saw him then pursuing and striking down the enemy came away thinking that Cato owed the people less than the people owed Cato, and that Manius the consul himself, still hot from the victory, embraced him, hot as he was, and for a long time greeted him and shouted for joy, saying that neither he himself nor the whole people could ever equal the repayment owed to Cato's services.
Immediately following the battle, Cato himself was dispatched to Rome to carry word of the action: he made a swift crossing to Brundisium, then covered the distance to Tarentum in a single day's driving, and after four further days on the road reached Rome from the coast on the fifth, being the very first to bring word of the victory. His arrival brought the city joy and public thanksgiving, and left the people convinced they could master every land and sea,
These, then, are pretty much the most notable of Cato's military actions; but in his political life it appears that he considered the business of prosecuting and exposing wrongdoers a matter deserving no small effort. He himself prosecuted many, assisted others who were prosecuting, and altogether arranged for men to bring prosecutions, as in the case against Scipio brought by Petillius and his associates.
This man, coming from a great house and possessing a genuine pride of spirit, trampled the accusations underfoot; and Cato, unable to have him condemned, let him go; but he joined with the accusers against Lucius, Scipio's brother, and had him condemned to pay a great sum of money to the public treasury, which, being unable to pay it and in danger of imprisonment, he barely escaped through the intervention of the tribunes.
It is said also that when a certain young man, whose father had died, had disgraced an enemy of his father and was walking through the marketplace after the trial, Cato met him, took his hand, and said that this is what one ought to offer as an offering to one's parents — not lambs or kids, but the tears and condemnations of their enemies. Yet Cato himself did not go through his political life unscathed, but wherever he gave his enemies any handle, he was constantly being brought to trial and endangered.
For it is said that he escaped conviction in nearly fifty trials, the final one coming at the age of eighty-six, on which occasion he also uttered the famous remark, that it is a hard thing for a man who has lived among one generation of men to have to defend himself before another. And this was not the end of his contests, for four more years passed and, at ninety years of age, he brought an accusation against Servius Galba.
For he ran the risk, like Nestor, of coming down to a third generation in his life and his activities. For having contended much in political life with Scipio the Great, as has been said, he carried the contest on into the time of the younger Scipio, who was Scipio's grandson by adoption, and son of Paulus, the conqueror of Perseus and the Macedonians.
A decade after holding the consulship, Cato became a candidate for the censorship. Now this office is in a manner the crown of all honors and, in a way, the completion of a public career, possessing great authority in other respects and also the power of examining conduct and manner of life. For they thought that neither marriage nor the raising of children nor daily habits nor banquets should be left unjudged and unexamined, each man free to follow his own desire and choice,
but believed far more that a man's character was to be discerned in these matters than in his public and political conduct; so they chose, as guardian, corrector, and chastiser to prevent anyone from turning aside for pleasure and departing from the ancestral and customary way of life, one man from among the so-called patricians together with one from the plebeians. Such officials were called censors, having the power to take away a man's horse and to expel from the senate one who lived licentiously and disorderly,
and these men also took the assessments of property and by their registers distinguished families and citizenships; the office holds other great powers besides. For this reason nearly all the most eminent and foremost of the senators came forward in opposition to Cato's candidacy. For envy vexed the nobles, who thought their high birth was being altogether insulted by men of originally undistinguished origin being raised to the highest honor and power,
while others, conscious in themselves of base practices and a departure from ancestral customs, feared the man's severity, which in office would be relentless and harsh. For this reason, joining together and preparing themselves, they brought forward seven rivals against Cato for the office, courting the multitude with pleasant hopes, as though it wanted to be governed gently and agreeably.
Cato, on the contrary, granting no leniency at all, but openly threatening the wicked from the rostrum and crying out that the city needed a great purging, urged the people, if they were wise, to choose not the most pleasant but the most vigorous of physicians — and that this man was himself, along with one of the patricians, Valerius Flaccus: for with him alone, he thought, could he do something worthwhile in cutting and cauterizing away luxury and softness as if it were a Hydra, whereas he saw each of the others governing badly on purpose, because they feared those who would govern well.
So truly great was the Roman people, in fact, and worthy of great popular leaders, that they were not frightened by the man's severity and weight, but, casting aside those agreeable candidates who seemed likely to do everything to win favor, chose Flaccus together with Cato — as if it were not a man asking for office, but one already ruling and giving orders, to whom they were listening.
So Cato placed at the head of the senate list his colleague and friend Lucius Valerius Flaccus, but expelled from the senate many others, and among them Lucius Quinctius, a man who had held the consulship seven years earlier — and, a distinction that mattered even more to his standing than that office, was brother to Titus Flamininus, conqueror of Philip.
The reason for his expulsion was this. Lucius had taken up a boy in the flower of youth as his favorite and always kept him close and took him along when he commanded, showing him honor and influence such as none of his foremost friends and intimates enjoyed. Now he happened to be governing a consular province; and at a certain banquet the boy, reclining beside him as usual, was working other flattery upon a man easily led when in wine, and said that he loved him so much that "even though gladiators were putting on a show back home that I had never seen before, I rushed away to be with you, though I longed to watch a man fall."
Lucius, returning the affection, said, "Well, for that reason at least, do not lie there grieving on my account, for I will cure it." And ordering one of the men condemned to death to be brought into the banquet, and the attendant with an axe to stand by, he again asked his beloved whether he wished to watch him being struck. When the boy said he wished it, he ordered the man's neck cut off.
Most writers give this version, and Cicero in fact has Cato himself tell it in his essay On Old Age; Livy, however, states that the man killed was a Gallic deserter, and that Lucius killed the man not through an attendant, but with his own hand, and that this too is written in a speech of Cato's.
So when Lucius had been expelled from the senate by Cato, his brother, taking it hard, appealed to the people and demanded that Cato state the reason for the expulsion. When Cato had spoken and related the story of the banquet, Lucius tried to deny it, but once Cato dared him to stake a formal bet on the truth of it, he retreated from the challenge.
At that time, then, he was judged deserving of what he suffered. But when there was a spectacle in the theater and he passed by the seats reserved for ex-consuls and sat himself down somewhere very far off, he stirred pity among the people, and they shouted and forced him to move back, correcting and remedying, as far as was possible, what had been done.
He also expelled from the senate another man, Manilius, who was expected to become consul, because he had kissed his own wife in broad daylight with his daughter looking on. Cato said that he himself never embraced his wife except when there was a great clap of thunder, and added jokingly that he counted himself blessed whenever Zeus thundered.
Lucius, the brother of Scipio, also brought upon Cato a certain charge that provoked ill will, being a man who had celebrated a triumph and had his horse taken from him; for it seemed that Cato had done this as if insulting Africanus Scipio, now dead. But most people were vexed above all by his cutting back of extravagance, which — since the majority were already sickened and corrupted by it — it was impossible to abolish outright; instead he went about it obliquely, compelling, in the matter of clothing,
carriages, women's ornaments, and household furnishings, whenever the value of any single item exceeded fifteen hundred drachmas, that its worth be assessed at ten times that amount, wishing that from the greater assessments their taxes too should be greater; and he added a surcharge of three bronze coins on top of the thousand, so that, weighed down by the added burdens and seeing the plain and frugal paying less into the public treasury for the same wealth, they might give up such extravagance.
So there were those who found him harsh — those who accepted the tax burden in order to keep their luxuries — and equally harsh, by contrast, were those who abandoned their luxuries rather than pay the tax; most people, after all, reckon it a loss of wealth simply to be kept from showing it off, since ostentation lies in superfluous things, not in necessary ones. This is indeed the very thing the philosopher Ariston is said to have marveled at most — that people consider those who possess superfluous things happier than those who have an abundance of what is necessary and useful.
It was Scopas of Thessaly who, when a friend of his requested something of this sort — something not particularly useful to him — and the man explained that his request concerned none of the necessary and useful things, replied, "And yet it is in these very things — the useless and superfluous — that I am prosperous and rich." Thus the zeal for wealth, being bound to no natural passion, is an intrusion arising from the vulgar opinion of outsiders.
Nevertheless, caring least of all for those who found fault with him, Cato pressed on even more, cutting off the channels by which people had been diverting water meant for public use into their own homes and gardens, overturning and tearing down whatever private buildings encroached on public ground, driving down the wages paid for public contracts, and forcing the tax-farms up to the highest prices at auction — from all of which much hatred gathered against him,
and the men around Titus, banding together against him, annulled in the senate the leases and contracts for sacred and public works that had been made, on the grounds that they had been made unprofitably, and they stirred up the most daring among the tribunes to haul Cato before the assembly and impose on him a fine of two talents. They also opposed strenuously the construction of the basilica which he built with public funds beneath the senate-house, next to the forum, and which was named the Basilica Porcia.
Yet it appears that the people received his censorship with wonder, for when a statue of him was erected inside the temple of Health, they inscribed on it — not his generalships nor his triumph — but, as one might paraphrase the inscription, "that when the Roman commonwealth was leaning and inclining toward the worse, he, becoming censor, restored it again to uprightness through good guidance, sound discipline, and instruction."
And yet he himself had earlier mocked those who were fond of such things, saying they did not realize they were priding themselves on the works of bronzesmiths and painters, while the citizens carried about the finest images of him in their own souls. And to those who marveled that, though many undistinguished men had statues, he had none, he said, "I would rather people ask why there is no statue of me than why there is one."
In sum, he did not think the good citizen ought to submit even to being praised, unless it proved useful to the common good. And yet of all men he praised himself the most — he who says that those who err in some matter of life and are then refuted say that they do not deserve blame, for they are no Catos; and that those who attempt, clumsily, to imitate some of his practices are called left-handed Catos.
He says that in the most perilous moments the senate turned to him as to a helmsman on a voyage, and that quite often, in his absence, they would put off matters most deserving of urgency — facts that are attested of him by others as well; for he held great standing in the city, both through his manner of life and through his eloquence and through his old age.
He proved himself a good father too, and a good husband to his wife, and a financier not to be despised, one who treated the management of his household as no small or trivial side matter. Hence I think it right to go through, as far as is fitting, these matters too: he married a wife of nobler birth rather than of greater wealth, holding that while both kinds of women alike have a certain weight and pride, the well-born, being more ashamed of disgrace, are more obedient to their husbands in what is honorable.
He was fond of saying that whoever strikes his wife or child lays hands on the most sacred of things, and he set it down as a greater praise to be a good husband than to be a great senator; indeed he said there was nothing else he admired in Socrates of old except that, though he had a difficult wife and dull-witted children, he bore them with equanimity and gentleness throughout his life. As for himself, once his son was born, there was no task so urgent — unless it were some public business — as to keep him from being present while his wife bathed and swaddled the infant.
For she herself nursed him with her own milk, and often too she put to her breast the little children of the slaves, thereby cultivating in them, through being raised together, goodwill toward her son. And when the boy began to understand things, Cato himself took him in hand and taught him his letters, even though he owned a cultivated slave, a schoolmaster named Chilon, who taught many boys.
He did not think it fitting, as he himself says, that his son ought to be rebuked by a slave, or have an ear yanked for being slow to learn, nor that he should owe gratitude to a slave for so great a thing as education; instead he himself was the boy's grammar teacher, he himself his teacher of law, he himself his trainer in gymnastics — not only teaching his son to throw the javelin, to fight in arms, and to ride, but also to box with his fists, to endure heat and cold, and to force his way, swimming, through the swirling and rough parts of the river.
And he says he wrote out the histories himself, with his own hand, in large letters, so that his son might have at home the means to gain benefit toward acquaintance with the deeds of the ancients and of his fathers; and that he was no less careful to guard against shameful words in his son's presence than in the presence of the sacred virgins whom they call the Vestals, and that he never bathed together with him. And this seems to be a custom common among the Romans; for fathers-in-law took care not to bathe together with sons-in-law, being ashamed of exposure and nakedness.
Then, however, having learned from the Greeks the practice of stripping naked, the Romans in turn filled the Greeks with the reproach of doing this even in the company of women. So fine a work of virtue was Cato molding and fashioning in his son that, since the boy's eagerness was beyond reproach and his soul, thanks to his good nature, was obedient, but his body appeared too soft for hard labor, Cato relaxed a little the excessive strictness and severity of his regimen; and the boy,
even so constituted, proved himself a brave man in his campaigns, and fought brilliantly in the battle against Perseus, under the command of Paulus. Then, when his sword was knocked from his hand by a blow, or slipped from it because his hand was wet, he was distressed and turned to some of his companions, and taking them with him charged again into the enemy. After a great struggle and with great force he cleared the ground and, with much difficulty, found the sword lying among a mass of arms and the bodies of the dead, friend and enemy heaped together.
For this, Paulus the general admired the young man, and a letter of Cato's own is preserved, written to his son, extravagantly praising his zeal and eagerness concerning the sword. Later the young man also married Tertia, daughter of Paulus and sister of Scipio, mingling now with so great a family no less on his own account than his father's. So Cato's care for his son reached a fitting end.
He acquired many household slaves, buying above all the young among the captives, who were still able to be raised and trained like puppies or colts. None of these ever entered another household, unless sent there by Cato himself or by his wife. And whoever was asked what Cato was doing would answer nothing except that he did not know.
A slave had to be either doing some necessary task about the house or sleeping, and Cato was very fond of those who slept, holding that sleepers were gentler than those awake, and that men who had had their fill of sleep were better suited for any task than those still in need of it. And believing that slaves committed their worst misdeeds for the sake of sexual desire, he arranged that they might consort with the female slaves for a fixed sum of money, but that none should go near any other woman.
In the beginning, then, while he was still poor and on campaign, he was hard to please in nothing concerning his diet, but declared it most shameful to quarrel with a servant over one's belly. Later, however, as his fortunes increased and he gave dinners for friends and fellow magistrates, he would punish immediately after dinner, with a strap, those who had served or prepared anything carelessly.
He always contrived to keep some strife and disagreement among his slaves, suspecting and fearing their unity. Those who seemed to have done something deserving death he had judged before all the household slaves, and put to death if condemned.
Applying himself with greater intensity to money-making, he considered farming rather a pastime than a source of income, and instead put his capital into secure and stable ventures, acquiring fishponds, hot springs, land given over to fullers, pitch-works, and land with natural pastures and woods — from which much money came to him, of a kind that, as he himself says, could not even be harmed by Zeus.
He also engaged in the most maligned kind of lending, maritime loans, in this manner: he ordered the borrowers to gather many partners together, and once there were fifty of them and as many ships, he himself held one share through his freedman Quintio, who did business with the borrowers and sailed along with them. Thus the risk was not spread over the whole, but only over a small portion, for great profits.
He also gave money to any of his slaves who desired it, so that they might purchase boys, then, after training and teaching them at Cato's expense, sell them again after a year. Cato kept back many of them too, reckoning against the price the highest bidder offered.
In urging his son toward such pursuits he says it is the mark not of a man but of a widowed woman to diminish one's estate. But this remark of Cato's goes further still in its vehemence — that he dared to call admirable and godlike, as high praise, the man who leaves behind, in his accounts, more than he received.
Now when he was already an old man, ambassadors came to Rome from Athens — among them Carneades of the Academy and Diogenes, the Stoic philosopher — to beg release from a certain judgment against the Athenian people, which had been rendered against them in their absence, the Oropians having brought suit and the Sicyonians having voted the fine, amounting to five hundred talents.
At once the most bookish of the young men rushed to these men and kept company with them, listening and marveling at them, and above all at the charm of Carneades, whose power was greatest and whose reputation, not falling short of that power, took hold of large and cultivated audiences, filling the city, as though with a torrent, with its resounding fame.
And a report spread that a Greek man, wondrous to the point of astonishment, was charming and mastering everything, and had cast a terrible passion into the young men, under whose influence they abandoned their other pleasures and pastimes and grew enthusiastic about philosophy. This pleased the rest of the Romans, who were glad to see their young men taking a share of Greek education and associating with admired men,
Cato, however, was from the very start displeased at this zeal for such speeches flowing into the city, fearing that the young men, turning their love of honor in that direction, would come to prize a reputation for speaking more than one won through deeds and campaigns. And when the fame of the philosophers advanced in the city, and a distinguished man, Gaius Acilius, eagerly took it upon himself, at their request, to interpret their first speeches before the senate, Cato resolved, under a decent pretext, to banish all the philosophers from the city,
and coming before the senate he found fault with the magistrates for allowing an embassy of men to sit idle for so long a time — men who could easily persuade anyone of anything they wished. He said they ought as quickly as possible to reach some decision and vote concerning the embassy, so that these men might turn back to their schools and converse with the children of the Greeks, while the young men of Rome would go back to listening to the laws and the magistrates as before.
He did this not, as some suppose, out of resentment toward Carneades in particular, but because he was altogether hostile to philosophy, and out of rivalry disparaged the whole Greek Muse and culture — he who even said that Socrates was a chatterer and a violent man, who, insofar as he was able, attempted in his own way to play the tyrant over his fatherland, dissolving its customs and dragging and shifting the citizens toward opinions contrary to the laws.
Mocking the school of Isocrates, he says that his students grow old there, as though they were going to practice their arts and plead cases before Minos in Hades. And in trying to turn his son against Greek things, he used a voice bolder than his age warranted, as though prophesying and foretelling like an oracle that the Romans would ruin their state once they were filled up with Greek letters.
But time has shown this ill-omened saying of his to be empty, for during the very period in which the city rose to its greatest power, it also took to Greek learning and every kind of culture as its own. Cato was not only hostile to the Greeks who practiced philosophy, but also held the doctors practicing in Rome in suspicion. And he had heard, it seems, the saying of Hippocrates — which he uttered when the Great King summoned him with the offer of many talents — that he would never hire himself out to foreigners hostile to the Greek nation; Cato used to say that this was a common oath among all doctors,
and he urged his son to be on guard against all of them, saying that he himself had a written memorandum, and that in accordance with it he treated and dieted the sick in his own household, never keeping anyone fasting, but feeding them on vegetables or bits of the flesh of duck or pigeon or hare — for this, he said, was light and suitable for the weak, except that those who ate it were apt to have many dreams. By using such treatment and diet he himself kept in good health, and kept his household in good health as well.
And in this regard he does not appear to have escaped without penalty, since death deprived him of both his wife and his son. He himself, being firmly built in body for vigor and strength, held out for a very long time, so that even in extreme old age he consorted with a woman and made a marriage unsuited to his years, for the following reason. After the loss of his wife, he gave his son in marriage to the daughter of Paulus, sister of Scipio, while he himself, being a widower, made use of a slave girl who came to him in secret;
now the household was small and the young bride was aware of the matter, and once, when the girl seemed to slip past the bedchamber rather too boldly, the young man said nothing, but looked at her somewhat more bitterly and, disconcerted, did not escape the notice of the old man. When Cato learned that the matter displeased them, he brought no accusation and made no complaint, but went down, as was his custom, to the forum with his friends, and calling out in a loud voice to a certain Salonius, one of his former clerks who was present and escorting him, asked whether he had already joined his little daughter to a husband.
When the man replied that he had made no such arrangement and would take no step in the matter without seeking his advice beforehand, Cato said, "Well, I have found you a suitable son-in-law, unless indeed his age is objected to — for in other respects he is beyond reproach, but he is quite an old man." When Salonius told him to attend to it and give the girl to whomever he preferred, since he was Cato's client and needed his patronage, Cato, without any delay, said that he himself was asking for the girl for himself.
At first, as one might expect, the proposal astonished the man, who considered Cato far removed from marriage, and himself far removed from a household of consular rank and triumphal connections; but once he saw that Cato meant the proposal seriously, he welcomed it with pleasure, and the two went down to the forum at once and settled the betrothal. While the marriage was being arranged, Cato's son gathered his intimate friends and asked his father whether he was bringing in a stepmother because he found some fault with him or felt aggrieved by him.
Cato cried out, "Hush, my boy," he said; "everything about you is admirable to me, and nothing to be blamed. I desire to leave behind more children like you for myself, and more citizens like you for the fatherland." They say Peisistratus, the tyrant of the Athenians, had made this same reply earlier, when he married, in his sons' adulthood, the Argive woman Timonassa, by whom they say he had Iophon and Thessalus. To Cato, once married, a son was born,
to whom he gave the surname Salonius, after his mother. The elder son died while serving as praetor, and Cato often mentions him in his books as a man who had turned out good; he is said to have borne the misfortune calmly and philosophically, and to have become no less keen because of it in public affairs. For he was not,
as Lucius Lucullus later was, and Metellus Pius, worn out by old age with regard to public life, considering political office a burden; nor did he, as Scipio Africanus had earlier done, turn away from the people because of the envy that had opposed his glory, and make inactivity, through a change of course, the goal of the rest of his life; but,
just as someone persuaded Dionysius to consider tyranny the finest shroud to be buried in, so Cato made political life the finest way to grow old in, and when he had leisure he took his rest and amusement in composing books and in farming.
He composed, then, speeches of every kind and histories; and he devoted himself to farming even while still young, out of necessity — for he says he made use of only two sources of income, farming and thrift — but in his later years the things done on his estate provided him with recreation and a subject for study, and he has even composed a book on agriculture, in which he wrote about the preparation of cakes and the preservation of fruit as well, striving in everything to be exceptional and distinctive.
His dinner in the country was also more generous, for he would each time invite his neighbors and acquaintances from round about and pass the time cheerfully with them, being pleasant and sought-after company not only for those of his own age, but for the young as well, since he had experience of many affairs and had met with many writings and speeches worth hearing.
He considered the table one of the chief means of making friends, and much favorable talk of good and noble citizens was brought in there, and much silence maintained about the worthless and wicked, since Cato allowed neither blame nor praise of them any admission to his gathering.
The last of his political actions is thought to have been the destruction of Carthage — though it was the younger Scipio who in deed brought it to completion, it was above all through Cato's counsel and judgment that the war was taken up, for the following reason. Cato was dispatched to the Carthaginians and to Massinissa the Numidian, since the two peoples were at odds, in order to examine what lay behind their quarrel — Massinissa, for his part, had stood as an ally of Rome ever since early days, while the Carthaginians had only entered a treaty of alliance after being defeated by Scipio, diminished alike in strength and by a crushing tribute of money.
Finding the city not, as the Romans supposed, brought low and reduced to a poor condition, but on the contrary flourishing with a great population of fighting age, teeming with great wealth, full of arms of every kind and of preparation for war, and thinking small of none of this, he judged that the affairs of the Numidians and Massinissa were not the right season for the Romans to concern themselves with and manage, but that unless they seized in advance a city that had grown hostile and sullen with distrust in the past, they would once again be in equal danger.
Returning quickly, then, he taught the senate that the earlier defeats and misfortunes of the Carthaginians had drained off not so much their power as their folly, and that they were likely to make them not weaker but more experienced in war, and that already their contests with the Numidians were serving to stir up in advance their struggles against the Romans, while peace and treaty were, in name only, laid over the war by their delay, which was merely waiting for its opportunity.
In addition to this, they say that Cato deliberately let fall some Libyan figs in the senate, having gathered up his toga to do so; and then, when the senators marveled at their size and beauty, he said that the country which bore such fruit was only three days' sail from Rome. And this next thing was already more forceful still: on every matter whatsoever about which he was declaring his opinion, he would add these words: "And it is also my opinion that Carthage must not exist." Publius Scipio, called Nasica, on the contrary, always continued to say and declare, "It is my opinion that Carthage must exist."
For, it seems, seeing the people already committing many offenses out of insolence, and hard for the senate to restrain because of their good fortune and pride, and the whole city being dragged by force wherever its impulses tended under the sway of its power, he wanted this fear to serve, at the very least, as a curb restraining the recklessness of the crowd, a check upon it, believing that the Carthaginians had too little strength to overcome the Romans, but too much to be safely despised.
To Cato, on the other hand, this very thing seemed dangerous — that a city always great, and now moreover sobered and chastened by misfortunes, should hang threateningly over a people reveling in excess and often stumbling because of the license it enjoyed, and that the fears from outside should not be entirely removed from their empire, leaving them no reference points against their own faults at home.
In this way, it is said, Cato brought about the third and final war against the Carthaginians; but he died once they had begun to fight, having prophesied concerning the man who was destined to bring an end to the war — a man who was then a young man, serving as military tribune, and was already displaying works of judgment and daring in the contests. When these reports were brought to Rome and Cato heard of them, they say he said, "He alone has understanding; the rest flit about as shadows."
This pronouncement Scipio soon confirmed through his deeds. Cato left behind as his line one son by the wife he married later, to whom, as we said, the surname Salonius was given, and one grandson by the son who had died. Salonius died while serving as praetor, and his son Marcus attained the consulship. This man was the grandfather of Cato the philosopher, a man most distinguished among his contemporaries for virtue and reputation.

======== Comparison Of Aristides With Marcus Cato ========

Since things worthy of memory have been written about these two men as well, the whole life of the one, set alongside the whole of the other, does not present an easily discernible difference, so obscured is it by many great similarities. But if we must take up the comparison point by point, treating each life like a poem or a painting, it is common to both that they advanced, from resources that did not exist, to a political career and reputation through virtue and ability.
Aristides appears to have become distinguished while attaching himself to popular leaders and generals at a time when Athens was not yet great and estates were still modest and level with one another; for the highest property class then was five hundred measures, the second three hundred, and the last, the third, two hundred.
Cato, by contrast, brought himself from a small town and a manner of living that seemed rustic, and let himself go, as it were, into the vast open sea of political life at Rome — no longer the business of leaders like the Curii, the Fabricii, and the Atilii, nor one that admitted to the speaker's platform, as rulers and popular leaders, poor men who worked with their own hands and came up from the plow and the spade, but one now accustomed to look toward great families, wealth, land-grants, and canvassing for office, and one that, through its own bulk and power, now looked down with contempt on those who aspired to rule.
Facing a Themistocles as one's rival was a very different matter from, a man neither brilliant by birth nor possessed of great means — they say his estate came to five talents, or even three, when he first took up politics — as to contend for first place against Scipios Africani, Servii Galbae, and Quintii Flaminini, with no base of support at all except a voice that spoke frankly on behalf of what was just.
Further, Aristides was tenth in command at Marathon, and again at Plataea, whereas Cato was elected consul as the second of many rivals, and elected censor as the second of seven, surpassing the most distinguished and foremost of the candidates who contended with him. And indeed Aristides was never first in any of his successes: Miltiades holds the credit for Marathon, Themistocles for Salamis, while at Plataea, according to Herodotus, the noblest triumph belongs to Pausanias,
while even for second place at Aristides' side stand rivals — Sophanes, Ameinias, Callimachus, and Cynegeirus, men who distinguished themselves brilliantly in those contests. Cato, on the other hand, not only held first place himself as consul, both in action and in counsel, in the war in Spain, but also, while serving as military tribune at Thermopylae under another man's consulship, won the glory of that victory, having thrown open great gates for the Romans against Antiochus and, while the king looked only ahead, placed the war at his back.
For that victory, plainly the work of Cato, drove Asia out of Greece and afterward provided Scipio a landing-place. Both men, then, proved unconquered in war; but in politics Aristides stumbled, being ostracized and brought down by factional opposition from Themistocles, whereas Cato, though the most powerful and greatest men in Rome were, one might almost say, all arrayed against him, and though he contended like an athlete right up to old age, kept himself standing throughout,
and though he was defendant in very many public trials and prosecutor in many others, he won most of the cases he brought and was acquitted in every case brought against him, having as the safeguard of his life and the effective instrument of it his eloquence — by which one might more justly credit the man's freedom from undeserved suffering than by ascribing it to fortune or to a guardian spirit. To this very quality great witness was borne also in the case of the philosopher Aristotle by Antipater, who wrote of him after his death that, besides his other qualities, the man possessed persuasiveness as well.
That a man acquires no more perfect virtue than the political is agreed; and most people reckon household management no small part of it — for a city, being a kind of aggregate and sum of households, grows strong in its public affairs when the private lives of its citizens flourish. This is why even Lycurgus, having banished silver,
and banished gold from Sparta, and set up for the Spartans, in place of coinage, iron ruined by fire, did not thereby release the citizens from household management, but rather, by stripping away the luxurious, festering, inflamed elements of wealth so that all might have abundance of what was necessary and useful — a thing no other lawgiver had provided for — feared having as a fellow-citizen, sharing in the community, the man without means, without hearth, and poor, more than he feared the rich and overgrown man.
Cato, then, appears to have been no worse a manager of a household than of a city: he himself increased his own estate and became a teacher of household management and farming to others, having composed much useful writing on these subjects. Aristides, by contrast, brought even his justice into disrepute through his poverty, as something that ruined households and made men beggars, and was of benefit to anyone sooner than to those who possessed anything.
And yet Hesiod has said much urging us toward justice together with household management, and has reviled idleness as the beginning of injustice; and Homer too has put it well: "Work was never dear to me, nor household-keeping, which rears splendid children; but oared ships were always dear to me, and wars, and polished spears and arrows" — speaking of men who alike neglect their households and provide for themselves out of injustice, since indeed,
just as the doctors say that oil is most beneficial to the body applied from outside, but most harmful taken in, so the just man is useful to others but careless of himself and his own; and it seems that Aristides' political character was maimed in just this way, if, as most say, he made no provision even for his little daughters' dowries or for his own burial.
Hence Cato's house, down to the fourth generation, furnished Rome with praetors and consuls, since his grandsons, and their children after them, held the highest offices; whereas of Aristides, the foremost man among the Greeks, the great and helpless poverty of his line cast some of his descendants down to the beggar's platter, and forced others, through want, to hold out their hands for the public dole, and afforded none of them anything splendid, or anything worthy of that man's own way of thinking.
Or is this the very first point in dispute? For poverty is nowhere shameful in itself, but only where it is a sign of idleness, intemperance, extravagance, or thoughtlessness; whereas attending a man who is prudent, hardworking, just, brave, and devoted to the public good along with every other virtue, it is a mark of greatness and loftiness of soul.
For it is not possible to do great things while fretting over small ones, nor to help many who are in need while being oneself in need of many things. The great resource for a political career is not wealth but self-sufficiency, which, because it requires nothing superfluous for itself privately, leads to no distraction away from public business — for god alone is simply without need, but of human virtue, that which reduces its needs to the least is the most perfect and most divine.
For just as a body well-tempered for good health needs neither excess clothing nor excess food, so too a life and a household in good health are managed with whatever comes to hand. One's possessions must be proportioned to one's need: the man who gathers much but uses little is not self-sufficient, but is either, if he has no need of it, foolish, laying up things he has no craving for, or else, supposing he does crave them, a wretch, curtailing his own enjoyment through stinginess. Indeed I would gladly ask Cato himself this: if wealth is meant to be enjoyed,
why do you take pride, though you possess much, in being satisfied with little? But if it is a splendid thing, as indeed it is, to eat whatever bread comes to hand and to drink the wine that laborers and servants drink, and to have no need of purple or of a plastered house, then Aristides, Epaminondas, Manius Curius, and Gaius Fabricius were none of them wanting in what was fitting, in letting go the acquisition of things whose use they themselves rejected.
For it was not necessary for a man who had made turnips his most pleasant relish and boiled them himself, while his wife kneaded the barley-meal beside him, to prattle and write so much about a penny, or about the quickest trade by which a man might become rich — for frugality and self-sufficiency are a great thing, because they free one at once from desire and from anxious care over what is superfluous,
and this is why they say Aristides said, at the trial of Callias, that poverty is fitting to be ashamed of for those who are poor against their will, but that for those who, like himself, are poor by choice, it is fitting to take pride in it. For it is absurd to think Aristides' poverty a mark of idleness, when it lay open to him, though he had done nothing shameful, to grow wealthy simply by plundering one foreign soldier or looting one tent. So much, then, for these matters.
As for their commands: Cato's added nothing great even to great affairs, whereas among Aristides' commands are found the finest, most brilliant, and foremost of Greek achievements — Marathon, Salamis, Plataea. And surely it is not fitting to set Antiochus beside Xerxes, nor the walls stripped from the Spanish towns beside the tens of thousands who fell, so many on land and so many at sea;
in these Aristides was inferior to none in deed, but of glory and crowns, just as of wealth and money, he yielded to those who needed them more, because he surpassed them in all these things as well. I do not blame Cato for always magnifying himself and setting himself first of all — although he says, in one of his speeches, that praising oneself is as absurd as reviling oneself — but the man who needs not even others to do this for him seems to me more complete in virtue than the one who often praises himself.
For freedom from ambition is no small resource toward gentleness in political life, whereas ambition, on the contrary, is a harsh thing and most productive of envy; of this Aristides was entirely free, while Cato had a very full share of it. Aristides, at any rate, cooperating with Themistocles in the greatest matters and in a certain sense standing guard over his generalship, set Athens upright,
whereas Cato, working against Scipio, very nearly overturned and ruined his campaign against the Carthaginians, in which Scipio brought down the unconquered Hannibal, and in the end, ever contriving fresh suspicions and slanders, drove the man himself out of the city and wrapped his brother in a most shameful conviction for theft.
That self-restraint, then, which Cato has adorned with very many and very fine praises, Aristides kept truly untouched and pure, whereas Cato's own marriage, unworthy of his standing and unfitting for his years alike, cast no small or trivial reproach upon this very virtue. For an old man of such an age to marry, while his own son was already grown and his son's wife a young bride, taking the daughter of an attendant, a man who served the state for pay, as his father-in-law, was nowhere an honorable thing; and whether he did it for pleasure, or in anger, striking back at his son on account of his mistress, both the deed and the excuse carry shame. And the argument
which he himself used in mockingly answering the young man was not true; for if he wished to father good children in the same way, he ought to have made a noble marriage from the start, after due consideration, rather than being content, so long as it went unnoticed, to share a bed secretly with a woman not his wife, and then, once he was found out, to make his father-in-law the man he could most easily persuade, not the man to whom he would be allied to best advantage.

======== Philopoemen ========

Cleander was a man of Mantinea, of the leading family and among the most powerful of the citizens, but having met with misfortune and fled his own city, he came to Megalopolis, in large part on account of his close personal bond with Craugis, father of Philopoemen and a man esteemed in every respect,
So while Craugis lived, Cleander enjoyed everything at his hands, and when he died, repaying the debt of that hospitality, he raised his son, who was left an orphan, just as Homer says Achilles was raised by Phoenix — the boy's character taking from the very start a noble and kingly shape and growth. But when Philopoemen was already past childhood, Ecdemus and Megalophanes of Megalopolis took over his upbringing, men who had been companions of Arcesilaus in the Academy and who, more than any of their contemporaries, had carried philosophy over into public life and action.
These men had also freed their own homeland from tyranny, secretly arranging the assassins who killed Aristodemus, and together with Aratus had driven out Nicocles, the tyrant of the Sicyonians, and when the people of Cyrene asked for their help, their city being in turmoil and sick, they sailed there, established good order, and set the city in the finest arrangement.
These same men, along with their other undertakings, also made it their business to educate Philopoemen, meaning through philosophy to fashion this man into a common benefit for Greece. And indeed, as though Greece, late in her old age, had brought forth this man to crown the virtues of her ancient leaders, she loved him exceedingly and made his power grow along with his reputation. And a certain Roman spoke highly of him and dubbed him Greece's final great figure, implying that after him Greece produced no one of comparable stature, no one who measured up to her own standard.
In appearance he was not ugly, as some suppose — for we still see a statue of him standing at Delphi. As for the mistake made by his Megarian hostess, they say it came about through a certain easy-going simplicity of his: hearing word that the Achaean commander-in-chief would be lodging with them, she scrambled anxiously to get dinner ready, the man himself happening not to be present,
and meanwhile Philopoemen came in wearing a shabby little cloak, and she, thinking him one of the servants, a man come ahead of the rest, asked him to lend a hand with the chores. And he at once threw off his cloak and began splitting the firewood, and the host, coming in and seeing this, said, "What is this, Philopoemen?" And he answered, in his Doric speech, "What else, but that I am paying the penalty for my bad looks?"
Making fun of the rest of his body, Titus said, "Philopoemen, what fine hands and legs you have — but you have no belly!" for he was narrower than average through the middle. Yet this jest was really aimed at his resources rather than his body, for though he had good hoplites and cavalry, he was often short of funds. These things, then, are told about Philopoemen in leisure conversation.
In his character, his love of honor was not entirely free of contentiousness, nor rid of anger; but although he wished above all to be an emulator of Epaminondas, he imitated strongly the man's vigor, intelligence, and indifference to money, but was unable to hold fast to his gentleness, depth, and humanity amid political disputes; through anger and contentiousness he seemed to belong more to a soldier's virtue than to a statesman's,
for indeed from childhood he was a lover of soldiering, and he eagerly took to the studies useful for this — fighting in arms and horsemanship. And since he also showed a natural gift for wrestling, and some of his friends and guardians urged him toward athletic competition, he asked them whether wrestling would in any way harm his training for soldiering.
And when they said — which was true — that an athlete's body and way of life differ from a soldier's in every respect, and especially that the diet and training are different, the one kind building and preserving their condition through much sleep, constant feeding, fixed periods of exercise and rest, liable to be thrown off by any deviation or departure from the customary regimen, while the other kind must be practiced in every sort of irregularity and every kind of unevenness, and above all must be accustomed to bear scarcity easily,
and easily bear sleeplessness — hearing this, Philopoemen not only himself avoided the pursuit and laughed at it, but later, when he was general, insofar as it lay in his power, he drove out all athletic training with penalties and public humiliation, on the grounds that it rendered the most useful bodies useless for the necessary contests.
Once free of teachers and tutors, in the political campaigns which they used to conduct — raids and plundering expeditions into Laconian territory — he accustomed himself to march first among those setting out, and last among those returning. And when there was leisure, he trained his body by hunting, making it at once light and strong,
or by farming, for he had a fine field about twenty stades from the city; he would walk out to it every day after lunch or after dinner, and throwing himself down on whatever pallet was at hand, he would rest just like any of the laborers. Rising at dawn, he would join in the work with the vine-dressers or the ox-drivers, and then go back into the city and busy himself with public affairs among his friends and the magistrates.
The proceeds from his military campaigns he spent on horses, arms, and ransoms for captives, but he tried to increase his household estate through farming, the most just of all ways of making money, and he did not treat this as a mere sideline, but thought it altogether fitting that a man who meant to keep his hands off what belonged to others should possess what was properly his own. He also attended lectures and studied philosophical texts — not every one of them, only those he judged would help cultivate virtue.
And of the Homeric poems, he attended to whatever he thought stirred and sharpened images conducive to courage. Of his other reading, he was most absorbed in the tactical writings of Evangelus, and he had mastered the histories about Alexander, believing that arguments ought to issue in action, unless they were carried on merely for leisure and unfruitful talk.
For indeed, setting aside the diagrams of tactical theory drawn on tablets, he would put them to the test on actual ground and make his study there — the slopes of terrain, the cutting-off of plains, and whatever configurations and behaviors a phalanx undergoes when being torn apart and again drawn back together near streams, ditches, or narrow passes — examining these for himself on his travels and putting them as problems to those with him,
for this man seems to have devoted himself to military matters beyond what necessity required, and to have embraced war as the most varied subject-matter for virtue, and altogether to have looked down on those left out of it as men of no action.
When he was now thirty years old, Cleomenes, king of the Lacedaemonians, suddenly fell upon Megalopolis by night, forced the guards, got inside, and seized the marketplace. Philopoemen rushed out to defend the city, and though he could not overpower the enemy and drive them out, despite fighting vigorously and recklessly, he managed in a way to steal the citizens out of the city, fighting off the pursuers and drawing Cleomenes' attention onto himself, so that he was the very last to get away, and only with difficulty, having lost his horse and been wounded,
and when Cleomenes sent word to the citizens, who had gone off to Messene, offering to restore to them their city along with their property and their land, Philopoemen, seeing that the citizens were gladly receiving the offer and eager to go back, stood in their way and stopped them by argument, teaching them that Cleomenes was not giving back their city, but rather winning over the citizens, so as to hold the city more securely — for he would not be able simply to sit and guard empty houses and walls, but would be driven out even from these by their emptiness. By saying this he turned the citizens away, but he gave Cleomenes the pretext to ravage and tear down most of the city and, after gathering a great deal of money, to depart.
When King Antigonus, coming to the aid of the Achaeans against Cleomenes, marched out with them, and Cleomenes was holding the heights and passes around Sellasia, Antigonus drew up his forces intending to attack and force his way through nearby. Philopoemen was posted among the cavalry with his own fellow citizens, and he had as comrades-in-arms the Illyrians, to whom the closing end of the battle line had been entrusted, they being numerous and warlike.
They had been ordered, while holding this reserve position, to remain quiet until a purple flag stretched over a sarissa should be raised by the king from the other wing. But while the commanders were trying to force the Lacedaemonians back with the Illyrians, and the Achaeans, as they had been instructed, kept their reserve position in formation, Eucleidas, the brother of Cleomenes, noticing the gap forming around the enemy, quickly sent around the lightest of his light-armed troops, ordering them to fall upon the Illyrians from behind and encircle them, left as they were without cavalry support.
As this was happening, and the light-armed troops were encircling and throwing the Illyrians into confusion, Philopoemen judged that striking the light-armed troops would cost little effort and that this exact moment demanded it, so he first brought the idea to the king's officers; but when he could not win them over — instead he was treated with scorn, as if he were out of his mind, since he had not yet earned enough credit or trust for such a daring maneuver — he himself charged in, drawing his fellow citizens along with him.
When confusion first arose, then flight and great slaughter among the light-armed troops, wishing still further to embolden the king's men and to close quickly with the enemy while they were in disorder, he let his horse go and himself, on foot, in cavalry breastplate and heavier gear, struggled painfully and laboriously through ground that was broken and full of streams and ravines, and was pierced clean through both thighs at once by a single javelin — the wound not being fatal, but severe, so that the point was driven out on the other side.
At first, held fast as if in bonds, he was utterly helpless, for the binding of the thong made it hard to draw the javelin back out through the wounds; and as those present hesitated to touch it, and the battle still held its sharp intensity, he, quivering with rage and eagerness for the contest, by shifting and crossing his legs broke the javelin shaft in the middle and ordered the two broken pieces to be pulled out separately, one from each side.
Freed in this way, and drawing his sword, he pressed forward through the front-fighters against the enemy, so as to inspire great eagerness and rivalry of valor in those fighting alongside him. Antigonus, having won the victory, tested the Macedonians, asking why they had moved their cavalry without his order,
and when, in their own defense, they claimed they had been compelled, contrary to their better judgment, to engage the enemy after a young man from Megalopolis rushed in ahead of them, Antigonus laughed and said, "Well, that young man has done the work of a great general."
As a result of this Philopoemen won renown, as was natural, and although Antigonus was eager that he should serve as a soldier under him, and offered him a command and money, he declined, having come to know above all that his own nature was ill-suited and difficult under being ruled by another; but not wishing to remain idle and at leisure, to gain experience and hone his skill in warfare he sailed to Crete on a campaign.
And there, after training for a considerable time among men who were warlike and skilled in many kinds of warfare, and moreover disciplined and restrained in their way of living, he returned so distinguished to the Achaeans that he was immediately appointed cavalry commander.
He had taken over cavalrymen who made use, whenever a campaign came round, of whatever wretched little horses came to hand, who themselves deserted from most of the expeditions and sent others in their place, whose inexperience combined with cowardice was formidable in every man of them, and whose commanders always overlooked all this because the cavalry had the greatest power among the Achaeans and were most in control of honors and punishments. Philopoemen did not give way to this nor relax his effort,
but went around the cities and, taking each of the young men individually, roused him to a love of honor, and punished those who needed compulsion, and by using drills, parades, and mutual contests wherever the largest crowds were likely to watch, in a short time he instilled in all of them a wonderful vigor and eagerness, and,
what was most important in matters of tactics, he made them nimble and quick both at wheeling and turning by squadron and at wheeling and inclining on horseback, and he trained the whole formation to resemble a single body moving by its own voluntary impulse, so easily did it shift in its changes of maneuver.
When a hard-fought battle took place between them and the Aetolians and Eleans near the river Larisus, Damophantus, the cavalry commander of the Eleans, charged out ahead and rode at Philopoemen. Philopoemen received his charge, struck first with his spear, and brought Damophantus down.
As soon as Damophantus fell, the enemy fled, and Philopoemen was brilliant, falling behind none of the young men in strength of arm nor any of the elders in judgment, but most capable both of fighting and of commanding.
Aratus was the first to raise the Achaean League to standing and power, gathering it up out of a lowly and scattered condition, city by city, and establishing a Greek and humane constitution; then, just as in the case of waters, when a few small bodies first begin to form and settle, the streams flowing in afterward, clinging to the first and gathering around them, produce through one another a strong and solid mass,
so it was that, while Greece at that time was carried along weak and easily dissolved city by city, the Achaeans first banded together, and of the surrounding cities they took some over by helping to free them from their tyrants, and others they blended into themselves through concord and shared citizenship, intending to construct out of the Peloponnese one body and one power.
But while Aratus still lived, the Achaeans submitted for the most part to the arms of the Macedonians, courting first Ptolemy, then again Antigonus and Philip, who kept intervening in the midst of Greek affairs; but once Philopoemen advanced to the first place, being already able on their own to match those most powerful, they stopped employing imported champions,
for Aratus, who was thought rather sluggish in warlike contests, accomplished most of his business through conversation, gentleness, and royal friendships, as has been written in his Life, whereas Philopoemen, being a good warrior and vigorous through arms, and moreover fortunate and successful straightaway in his first battles, together with increasing their power raised the spirit of the Achaeans, who grew accustomed under him to winning and to good fortune in most of their contests.
First, then, he reformed the arrangements the Achaeans had regarding formations and equipment, which were in poor condition. For they used light shields, easy to carry because of their thinness but too narrow to cover the body, and spears much shorter than the sarissa, and because of this they were quick strikers and fought well from a distance owing to their lightness, but once they closed with the enemy they came off worse:
and they had no customary formation or shape drawn up into a compact body, but used a phalanx that had neither the forward defense nor the interlocking of shields that the Macedonian phalanx had, and so they were easily pressed back and torn apart. Having taught them this, Philopoemen persuaded them to take up the shield and the sarissa instead of the light shield and spear, and, protected with helmets, breastplates, and greaves, to practice a steady, standing fight instead of a running, skirmishing one.
By winning over the men of fighting age so that they would take up full armor, he first gave them confidence in their own invincibility, and then he most excellently transformed their luxury and extravagance. For it was not possible to remove all at once, from men long sick with it, their empty and vain rivalry, their love of extravagant clothing, their dyeing of bedding purple, and their competitive spending on dinners
and tables; but he, beginning to divert their love of adornment away from the unnecessary toward the useful and the beautiful, quickly persuaded and urged them all, once they had curtailed their daily expenditures on the body, to be seen distinguished and adorned instead in their military and warlike equipment,
and so one could see the workshops full of cups and Thericlean bowls being cut down, and breastplates being gilded and shields and bridles being plated with silver, and the training-grounds full of colts being broken in and young men practicing arms, and in the hands of the women, helmets and plumes being adorned with dyes, and cavalry tunics and military cloaks embroidered with many colors:
and this spectacle, increasing their boldness and stirring their impulse, made them eager to take risks and ready for dangers,
for extravagance in other spectacles brings on softness and induces effeminacy in those who indulge in it, as if the perception, through pricks and ticklings as it were, twisted the mind along with it toward weakness, but extravagance directed toward such ends as these strengthens and magnifies the spirit, just as Homer made Achilles, when the new armor was set out before him, seem to burn and rage, as it were, at the sight of it, eager for the deed to be done through it. In this way Philopoemen, having adorned the young men, trained and worked them hard, and they submitted to the exercises eagerly and with love of honor,
for the formation itself was wonderfully cherished, seeming to take on an unbreakable compactness, and their arms became handy and light to their bodies, handled and worn with pleasure because of their brightness and beauty, and they wished to fight and be put swiftly to the test against the enemy.
At that time the Lacedaemonian tyrant Machanidas was waging war against the Achaeans, who, relying on a large and powerful force, was plotting against all the Peloponnesians. When word came that he had invaded Mantinea, Philopoemen quickly led the army out against him, and near the city both sides drew up in battle order, each with many mercenaries and with nearly all their citizen forces together.
When the battle came to close quarters, Machanidas routed with his mercenaries the javelin-throwers and Tarentines whom the Achaeans had stationed in front, but instead of turning at once against those still fighting and breaking up their formation, he rushed off in pursuit and passed by the flank of the Achaean phalanx, which remained standing in order,
and Philopoemen, though so great a reverse had occurred at the very outset and their affairs seemed altogether ruined and destroyed, nevertheless pretended to disregard it and to think nothing terrible had happened; but seeing how greatly the enemy were erring in their pursuit, breaking away from their phalanx and leaving an empty space, he did not go to meet them nor stand against them as they bore down upon the fleeing men,
but let them pass by and create a great gap toward his own heavy infantry, and then led his men at once against the Lacedaemonians, seeing their phalanx left bare and undefended, and, running around their flank, fell upon them, since they had no commander present and were not expecting to fight at all: for they believed they were winning and altogether victorious, seeing Machanidas in pursuit.
Having routed them with great slaughter—for it is said that more than four thousand died—he rushed from the pursuit upon Machanidas, who was returning with his mercenaries; and since a great and deep ditch lay between them, they rode along either side of it opposite one another, the one seeking to cross and flee,
the other wishing to prevent this—and the sight was not like that of generals fighting but rather like a wild beast, driven by necessity to make a stand, confronted by a formidable hunter in Philopoemen—there where the tyrant's horse, being strong and spirited and bloodied on both flanks by the spurs, dared the crossing, and, throwing its chest against the ditch, strained to plant its forelegs on the far side.
Meanwhile Simias and Polyaenus, who were always at Philopoemen's side in battle and fought shield to shield with him, rode up together with their spear-points leveled against the tyrant, but Philopoemen forestalled them by meeting Machanidas himself, and seeing his horse raising its head in front of its body, he inclined his own horse slightly, and, grasping his spear with both hands, thrust it home and, pressing forward together with the blow, overturned the man.
In this very posture a bronze statue of him stands at Delphi, set up by the Achaeans, who admired above all both this deed of his and that generalship.
It is said that when the festival of the Nemean games was being held, Philopoemen, then general for the second time and not long before victorious in the battle at Mantinea, being at that time at leisure because of the festival, first displayed to the Greeks the phalanx arrayed and moving through its tactical rhythms with speed and strength, just as it was accustomed to do:
then, while singers to the cithara were competing, he came into the theater with the young men in their military cloaks and crimson tunics, all in the prime of their bodies and matched in age, showing much respect toward their commander and a youthful spirit shining through from many fine contests; and just as they had entered, it happened that Pylades the singer to the cithara, singing Timotheus's Persians, was beginning the words, 'forging for Greece a great and glorious ornament of freedom'—
and at the same moment as the brightness of his voice, matched by the grandeur of the poetry, the whole theater turned its gaze from every side upon Philopoemen, and applause broke out with joy, the Greeks recovering in their hopes the ancient dignity, and coming nearest, in the spirit of that moment, to genuine confidence.
In battles and dangers, just as colts that long for their accustomed riders grow skittish and behave like strangers to themselves if another mounts them, so the army of the Achaeans, when someone else was in command, grew disheartened and kept looking toward Philopoemen, and the moment he was seen it was at once upright and vigorous through confidence — since they perceived that even their enemies could not look this one general in the face, but feared his reputation and his very name, as was plain from what they did.
For Philip, king of the Macedonians, supposing that if Philopoemen were removed the Achaeans would again cower before him, sent men to Argos secretly to kill him; but when the plot was discovered he was utterly hated and discredited among the Greeks.
The Boeotians, besieging Megara and hoping to take it quickly, when a report suddenly reached them — which was not true — that Philopoemen was near, coming to help the besieged, abandoned their ladders, already set against the walls, and fled.
When Nabis, who ruled the Lacedaemonians as tyrant after Machanidas, suddenly seized Messene, Philopoemen happened at that time to be a private citizen holding no command; and since he could not persuade Lysippus, the general of the Achaeans, to help the Messenians — who claimed the city was utterly lost since the enemy was already inside — he himself went to its aid, taking up his own fellow citizens, who waited for neither law nor formal vote, but followed him as though he were by nature always their commander, being the better man.
When Nabis heard he was already near, he did not stand his ground, even though he was encamped within the city, but slipped out through other gates and led his force away in haste, thinking he would count it good fortune if he escaped; and escape he did, and Messene was freed.
These, then, were fine deeds of Philopoemen. But his second journey to Crete, when the Gortynians asked for him to serve as their general in their war, brought him criticism, on the grounds that while his own homeland was being warred upon by Nabis he was absent, avoiding the fight, or courting honor untimely among others — and yet the Megalopolitans were being warred upon so relentlessly at that time that they were living within their walls, sowing crops in the lanes between houses, their countryside cut off and the enemy encamped almost at their gates.
He, meanwhile, waging war against the Cretans and commanding overseas, gave his enemies grounds for accusation against him, as though he were fleeing the war at home. And there were some who said that, since others had been chosen as leaders of the Achaeans, Philopoemen, being a private citizen, had lent his own leisure to command for the Gortynians when they asked.
For he was a stranger to leisure, wishing, like any other possession, to keep his skill in generalship and warfare always in use and in practice, as he made clear once concerning something said about King Ptolemy. For when some were praising that king because he trained his army daily and exercised and toughened his own body diligently under arms, Philopoemen said, "And who would admire a king at that age for practicing rather than for actually commanding?"
The Megalopolitans, taking this hard and thinking themselves betrayed, tried to banish him; but the Achaeans prevented it, sending Aristaenus as general to Megalopolis, who, although he differed with Philopoemen in political matters, would not allow the sentence to be carried out.
After this, being slighted by his fellow citizens, Philopoemen caused many of the surrounding villages to revolt, teaching them to say that they had never paid tribute to Megalopolis nor belonged to it from the beginning; and when they said this publicly he supported them and helped them rise together against the city on the side of the Achaeans — but this happened later.
In Crete he fought alongside the Gortynians, not waging, as a man of the Peloponnese and an Arcadian would, some simple and noble war, but putting on the Cretan character and using their own cunning tricks, deceptions, thefts, and ambushes against them, he quickly showed them to be children, practicing foolish and empty schemes against true experience.
Admired and celebrated for these things, he returned in glory from his exploits there to the Peloponnese, and found Philip already defeated by Titus, and Nabis being warred upon by the Achaeans and the Romans. Chosen at once as commander against Nabis, he risked a sea battle and seemed to suffer the fate of Epaminondas, fighting far worse at sea than his own virtue and reputation warranted.
Except that some say Epaminondas was reluctant to let his citizens taste the advantages of the sea, lest, following Plato, they should be corrupted from steady hoplites into sailors, and so he willingly returned from Asia and the islands without accomplishing anything there;
whereas Philopoemen, convinced that his skill on land would be enough to let him fight well at sea too, learned how great a part of excellence practice is, and how much strength it adds in everything to those who are trained in it. For not only did he come off worse in the sea battle through inexperience, but he also launched and manned some ship, old but famous, after forty years, so that because it did not hold together those sailing in it were in danger.
Knowing that his enemies, because of this, held him in contempt, thinking he had entirely fled the sea, and were besieging Gythium arrogantly, he sailed against them at once, when they were not expecting it, but were relaxed because of their victory. Landing his soldiers by night and bringing them up, he set fire to their tents and burned their camp and destroyed many of them.
A few days later, when Nabis suddenly appeared to him on the road in some difficult terrain and frightened the Achaeans, who thought their safety hopeless, coming from such rough ground and now in the power of the enemy, Philopoemen, halting for a short time and taking in the nature of the place with his eyes, showed that tactics are the highest art of warfare: by shifting his phalanx only slightly and adapting it to the circumstances, he calmly and easily dispelled their difficulty, and attacking the enemy he put them to a strong rout.
When he saw that they were not fleeing toward the city but scattering, one this way and another that way over the countryside — which was wooded, full of hills, and difficult for cavalry because of streams and ravines — he held back the pursuit and made camp while it was still light; and judging that the enemy, from their flight, would make their way toward the city by ones and twos in the dark, he set ambushes in the streambeds and hills around the town, stationing many of the Achaeans there armed with daggers,
and there it happened that very many of Nabis's men died; for since they were not making their retreat in a body, but each as his own flight brought him, they were caught around the city like birds falling into the hands of the enemy.
Being loved and honored conspicuously for these deeds by the Greeks in their theaters, he quietly vexed Titus, who was jealous of honor. For Titus thought it right, as a Roman consul, to be admired by the Achaeans more than an Arcadian man, and considered it no small matter that he surpassed him in benefactions, having freed all of Greece — as much as had been enslaved to Philip and the Macedonians — by a single proclamation.
After this, Titus ended the war with Nabis, and Nabis died, treacherously murdered by the Aetolians; and with Sparta in confusion, Philopoemen seized the opportunity and fell upon it with an army, and bringing over some against their will and persuading others, he attached the city to the Achaeans and transferred it into their league.
When this had happened he won marvelous esteem among the Achaeans, having gained for them the dignity and power of so great a city — for it was no small thing for Sparta to become part of Achaea — and he also took in the best of the Lacedaemonians, who hoped to have him as guardian of their freedom.
Therefore they voted to give him, as a gift, the house and property of Nabis, which had been turned into cash and came to one hundred twenty talents in all, and they sent envoys to him about it. And here that man was shown clearly not merely to seem but truly to be the best of men. For in the first place none of the Spartans was willing to speak to such a man about a bribe, but fearing and shrinking back they put forward his own guest-friend Timolaus.
Then Timolaus himself, when he came to Megalopolis and was entertained at Philopoemen's table, and observed up close the dignity of his conversation, the plainness of his way of life, and his character — nowhere approachable nor open to capture by money — said nothing about the gift, but making some other pretext for his journey to him, went away again. And being sent a second time, he suffered the same thing,
and on his third visit, meeting him at last, he disclosed the city's eagerness. Philopoemen, hearing it gladly, came himself to Lacedaemon, and advised them not to bribe their friends and good men, who could enjoy their virtue free of charge, but rather to buy and corrupt the wicked men who were stirring up faction against the city in the council, so that, being silenced by taking the money, they might trouble them less — for it was better to take away the freedom of speech of one's enemies than of one's friends. Thus splendid was he in the matter of money.
When Diophanes, general of the Achaeans, heard again that the Lacedaemonians were making trouble and wished to punish them, while those bent on war were throwing the Peloponnese into confusion, Philopoemen tried to soothe and calm Diophanes' anger, teaching him that, with King Antiochus and the Romans hovering over Greece with such great armies, the ruler ought to keep his attention there, and not stir up matters at home, but rather overlook and pretend not to hear some of the wrongs being committed.
But since Diophanes paid no heed, and invaded Laconia together with Titus, and they marched at once against the city, Philopoemen, indignant, dared a deed neither lawful nor strictly justified, but great and done with great spirit: though a private citizen, he went into Lacedaemon and shut out both the general of the Achaeans and the Roman consul, and put an end to the disturbances in the city, and restored the Lacedaemonians again to the league, just as they had been from the beginning.
Some time later, having some complaint against the Lacedaemonians while he was general, Philopoemen brought the exiles back into the city, and, as Polybius reports, killed eighty men of Sparta there — though according
to Aristocrates, three hundred and fifty; and he tore down the walls, and cutting off much of their territory assigned it to the Megalopolitans, and all those whom the tyrants had enrolled as citizens of Sparta he uprooted entirely, carrying them off into Achaea, with the exception of three thousand; and these, since they refused and were unwilling to leave Lacedaemon, he sold, and then, as though to mock them, built a colonnade in Megalopolis with the proceeds of this money.
Growing full of himself against the Lacedaemonians and pressing his advantage over their misfortunes beyond what was fitting, he carried out the harshest and most lawless act touching their constitution. For he abolished and destroyed the Lycurgan discipline, compelling their boys and young men to exchange the Achaean upbringing for their ancestral training, on the ground that they would never think small thoughts so long as they lived under the laws of Lycurgus.
At that time, then, weighed down by great calamities, they let Philopoemen carve away what amounted to the very tendons holding their city together, and they grew docile and yielding; but afterward, as time passed, they petitioned the Romans and abandoned the Achaean constitution, resuming and re-establishing their ancestral one, so far as that was possible after such ruin and corruption.
When war between Rome and Antiochus flared up on Greek soil, Philopoemen held no public office at the time; but seeing Antiochus himself sitting in Chalcis, occupied with marriages and love affairs with young girls quite out of season, and the Syrians wandering about the cities in great disorder and without commanders, indulging themselves, he was vexed that he did not hold the Achaean generalship just then, and said that he envied the Romans their victory. "For I," he said, "had I been general, would have cut down all these men in their taverns."
But when the Romans, having defeated Antiochus, were now taking a firmer grip on Greek affairs, and were drawing the Achaeans into their power as the popular leaders bowed before them, and their strength was advancing greatly over everything together with fortune, and the end was near to which fortune, in her revolutions, was bound to arrive, Philopoemen, like a good helmsman braced against the wave, was forced in some respects to yield and give way to circumstances, but on most points he held out, and tried to draw those who were powerful in speech and action back toward freedom.
Aristaenus of Megalopolis, who had the greatest influence among the Achaeans, was always courting the Romans and thought the Achaeans ought not to oppose them or show themselves ungrateful; and it is said that in the council, while listening to him, Philopoemen kept silent and bore it heavily, until at last, overcome by anger, he said to Aristaenus, "Man, why do you hurry to see the fate of Greece fulfilled?"
When Manius, the Roman consul, who had defeated Antiochus, asked the Achaeans to allow the Lacedaemonian exiles to return, and Titus made the same request as Manius concerning the exiles, Philopoemen blocked it — not because he was hostile to the exiles, but because he wished this to be accomplished through himself and the Achaeans, and not as a favor granted by Titus or the Romans; and when he himself became general in the following year, he restored the exiles himself. So contentious and quarrelsome was his spirit even toward those in power.
Now in his seventieth year, and elected general of the Achaeans for the eighth time, he hoped not only to get through that term of office without war, but also that conditions would let him live out his remaining days undisturbed. For just as diseases seem to fade away along with the strength of the body, so in the Greek cities, as their power failed, the spirit of contention was likewise dying down.
Nevertheless some Nemesis, as it were, struck down this athlete just as he was running well toward the finish line of his life. For it is said that in some gathering, when those present were praising a man reputed to be formidable in generalship, Philopoemen said, "And how is it worth taking account of that man's words, who was taken alive by the enemy?"
A few days later Deinocrates of Messene, a man who had a private grudge against Philopoemen and was in any case burdensome to others because of his wickedness and lack of restraint, brought about the revolt of Messene from the Achaeans, and it was reported that he was about to seize a village called Colonis. Philopoemen happened to be at Argos, in a fever; but on learning of this he hastened to Megalopolis, covering more than four hundred stades in a single day.
And from there he immediately set out to help, taking with him the cavalry, who were the most distinguished of the citizens but quite young, and who campaigned as volunteers out of goodwill and admiration for Philopoemen. Riding toward Messene and near the hill of Evander,
meeting Deinocrates as he came against them, they routed him; but when the five hundred troops stationed to defend the Messenian countryside suddenly fell upon them, and the men already beaten rallied at the sight, these latter regrouped again on the hills. Philopoemen, fearing to be surrounded and sparing his cavalry, withdrew through difficult ground, himself bringing up the rear and often riding out against the enemy and altogether drawing their attention onto himself, while they did not dare to close with him but used shouts and encircling movements from a distance.
So, often falling back for the sake of the young men and sending them through one by one, he found himself, without noticing, cut off and isolated among many enemies. And no one ventured to engage him hand to hand, but pelted from afar and pushed onto steep, rock-strewn terrain, he struggled to hold his position and his horse grew exhausted.
As for himself, his old age, thanks to much training, was light and no hindrance at all to his safety; but on that occasion, sapped both by his bodily illness and by the exhausting march, his movements grown heavy and sluggish, he was pitched to the earth when his horse stumbled. The fall was hard and his head was injured, and he lay a long time without speech, so that the enemy, thinking him dead, set about turning over his body to strip it.
But when he raised his head and looked about, they closed in on him, wrenched his arms back, bound them, and marched him off, heaping insult and abuse on a man who could never even in a dream have expected to suffer such things at the hands of Deinocrates.
The townspeople, stirred to great excitement by the news, thronged toward the entrances; but when they beheld Philopoemen hauled along in a fashion beneath his renown and his past achievements and trophies, most of them were moved to pity and shared his grief, so much so that they wept and denounced the sway of human fortune as fickle and worth nothing at all.
And so, little by little, a spirit of compassion spread among many, as they recalled his former services, and the freedom he had restored to them when he drove out the tyrant Nabis. Yet a handful of men, seeking favor with Deinocrates, insisted that he ought to be put under torture and executed, branding him a savage and merciless enemy — and Deinocrates himself dreaded all the more that his captive might slip away after suffering such outrage and imprisonment at his hands.
Nevertheless, bringing him to the place called the Treasury, an underground chamber that received neither air nor light from outside nor had any doors, but was closed by a great stone rolled across it, there they placed him, and after they had rolled the stone into place they stationed armed men in a circle around it.
The Achaean cavalry, pulling themselves together after their flight, and finding no trace of Philopoemen — believing him dead — stopped for a long while, calling his name and telling one another that they were saving their own skins in a shameful and unjust way, having left behind to the enemy the general who had risked his life without stint for their sake,
then, advancing further and inquiring closely, they learned of his capture and reported it to the cities of the Achaeans, who, regarding it as a great disaster, resolved to demand the man back, sending an embassy to the Messenians, while they themselves prepared to take the field.
These, then, were their actions. But Deinocrates, fearing above all that time would prove Philopoemen's salvation, and wishing to forestall the Achaeans' demands, when night came and the crowd of Messenians had withdrawn, had the prison unlocked and dispatched a public slave bearing poison, with orders to offer it to him and remain there until it was drunk.
Philopoemen happened to be lying in his cloak, not asleep but held fast by grief and turmoil; and seeing a light and the man standing near him holding the cup of poison, he gathered himself with difficulty, weak as he was, and sat up. Taking the cup, he asked whether anything had been learned about the cavalry, and especially about Lycortas,
whether he had escaped; and when the man said that most of them had gotten away safely, he nodded his head, and looking gently at the man said, "You bring good news, if we have not fared entirely badly." And saying nothing else, uttering not a word more, he drank it off and lay back again, giving the poison little trouble, but quickly extinguished on account of his weakness.
When news of his death came to the Achaeans, a shared gloom and mourning gripped their cities; and the men of fighting age, assembling with the council of elders at Megalopolis, wasted no time whatsoever in seeking retribution, but with Lycortas chosen as general they marched into Messenian territory and laid it waste, until the Messenians collectively recovered their senses and took the Achaeans back in,
and Deinocrates, forestalling them, took his own life, while of the others, as many as had voted to kill Philopoemen died by their own hand, and as many as had voted also to torture him were seized by Lycortas to perish under torment. They burned his body and, gathering the remains into an urn, set out on the march back — not in disorder or as it happened, but blending a kind of triumphal procession together with the funeral rites.
For one could see men wearing garlands, and the same men weeping; one could see the enemy led along in bonds; and the urn itself, scarcely visible for the mass of ribbons and garlands upon it, was carried by Polybius, son of the Achaean general, with the foremost men of the Achaeans about him. The soldiers, themselves armed, with their horses adorned, followed along, neither downcast, as one might expect at so great a mourning, nor exulting in victory.
As they met people from the towns and villages along the way, who came out as if welcoming him home returning from a campaign, they touched the urn, and escorted it onward to Megalopolis. And when the elders, together with the women and children, mingled with them, a lamentation now spread through the whole army as it entered the city, which longed for the man and bore his loss heavily, thinking that it had lost along with him its primacy among the Achaeans.
So he was buried, as was fitting, with honor, and around his tomb the Messenian prisoners were stoned to death. And though there were many images of him and great honors which the cities had voted, a Roman, amid the disasters of Greece around Corinth, undertook to destroy them all and to prosecute him, as though he were still alive, on the charge of having been an enemy and ill-disposed toward the Romans,
but when arguments were made and Polybius spoke in answer to the accuser, neither Mummius nor the commissioners would consent to have the honors of a renowned man abolished, even though he had opposed Titus and Manius' circle in no small matters; but they, as it seems, distinguished virtue and honor from mere expediency, rightly and fittingly holding that reward and gratitude are owed by the benefited to those who help them, but honor is owed forever by good men to good men. So much concerning Philopoemen.

======== Flamininus ========

The man we compare with him, Titus Quinctius Flamininus, may be seen in likeness by anyone who wishes, from the bronze statue in Rome that stands beside the great Apollo brought from Carthage, opposite the Circus, inscribed in Greek letters; and in character he is said to have been quick both to anger and to favor.
Not, however, in the same way in both: for he was light and unrelenting in punishing, but thorough in doing favors, and to those he had benefited he was ever well-disposed as though they were his own benefactors, and eager, as if they were the finest of possessions, always to look after and preserve those who had received good from him. Being most ambitious and most fond of honor, he wished to be the doer himself of the best and greatest deeds, and he took more delight in those who needed to be well treated than in those able to do the treating, regarding the former as material for his virtue, the latter as rivals, so to speak, in the pursuit of glory.
Having been trained in the discipline that comes through military habits, at a time when Rome was contending in many great struggles and young men were being taught to command straightaway from the very outset of their soldiering, his first post was as military tribune during the Hannibalic war, serving under the consul Marcellus.
And when Marcellus fell into an ambush and died, Titus, appointed governor of the district around Tarentum and of Tarentum itself, which had been captured a second time, earned a reputation that owed as much to his fairness as to his skill in command. For this reason, when colonists were sent out to two cities, Narnia and Cosa, he was chosen as their leader and founder.
This most of all encouraged him to leap over the intervening offices customary for young men — the tribunate of the people, the praetorship, the aedileship — and to put himself forward at once for the consulship, and he came down to the elections with the support of the colonists, who were eager for him. But when the tribunes of the people around Fulvius and Manius opposed him, saying it was monstrous for someone so young to push past the laws into the highest office, when he had not yet, so to speak, been initiated even into the earliest rites and mysteries of civic life,
the senate handed the vote over to the people, and the people voted him consul alongside Sextus Aelius, even though he had not yet reached his thirtieth year. By lot he obtained the war against Philip and the Macedonians, having drawn, by a certain good fortune of the Romans, affairs and men who did not need a commander who used force and war in everything, but who were more readily won by persuasion and by association.
For Philip's Macedonian kingdom furnished a hardened edge sufficient for battle, but the strength for a protracted war, the supply-source, the refuge, and altogether the instrument of the phalanx, was the power of the Greeks; and unless these were separated from Philip, the war against him could not be settled by a single battle.
And Greece, not yet much drawn together with Rome, but then for the first time mingling in her affairs, would not so readily have exchanged its familiar rule for a foreign one, had the commander not been by nature upright and one who employed speech rather than war, possessing a persuasiveness toward those he met and a gentleness toward those who met with him, and the greatest earnestness on behalf of justice. This much is shown by his actions.
Titus, learning that the generals before him — first Sulpicius, then Publius — had invaded Macedonia late in the season and had taken up the war slowly, and had worn themselves out fighting over positions and skirmishing with javelins over roads and grain-foraging against Philip, did not think it right
that he, like those men who had used up the year at home in honors and political office and only afterward set out on campaign, should likewise gain for himself a year added onto his term of command, one part spent as consul, the other as general at war; rather, being eager at once to make his office effective for the war, he gave up the honors and precedences in the city,
and having asked the senate that his brother Lucius be given command of the ships to campaign alongside him, and taking up, as a hardened edge, three thousand men still in their prime and eager — those who had fought under Scipio against Hasdrubal in Iberia and against Hannibal himself in Africa — he crossed over safely into Epirus.
And finding Publius encamped opposite Philip with his forces, guarding for a long time now the passes around the river Aous and the Narrows, but accomplishing nothing on account of the strength of the ground, he took over the army, and having sent Publius away, he reconnoitered the places. They are no less strong than the region around Tempe, but they lack the beauty of trees, as that place has, and the greenness of woodland, and pleasant resorts and meadows.
For great and lofty mountains coming together on both sides into one very great and deep ravine, the Aous rushes through, resembling the Peneus both in shape and in swiftness, hiding all the rest of the foothills, and leaving beside its stream only a narrow, precipitous cutting for a path — not easy for an army to pass through even otherwise, and altogether impassable if it is guarded.
There were some who tried to lead Titus around by a circuit through Dassaretis by way of the Lycus, an easy and passable road. But he, fearing that if he threw himself into places far from the sea, poor in soil and badly sown, while Philip avoided battle, he would run short of provisions and, accomplishing nothing, be forced to withdraw to the sea again, as the general before him had done, decided instead to attack with all his strength and force a passage through the heights.
But since Philip held the mountains with his phalanx, and javelins and arrows were coming at the Romans from every side out of the flanks, there were wounds and sharp struggles, and dead fell on both sides, and no end to the fighting appeared, until men from among the local herdsmen came to him, telling of a certain encircling route neglected by the enemy, by which they promised to lead the army and set it upon the heights within three days at most,
and as guarantor and surety of their good faith they put forward Charops, son of Machatas, a prominent figure among the Epirotes, well-disposed to the Romans and secretly cooperating with them out of fear of Philip. Trusting him, Titus sent out one military tribune with four thousand infantry and three hundred cavalry, and those herdsmen led the way, bound. By day they rested, hiding in hollow and wooded places, and they marched by night by moonlight, for it was the full moon.
Titus, having sent these men off, rested his army on the other days, so as not to draw off the enemy with skirmishing, except on the day when those going around were to appear above the heights; then at daybreak he set in motion every heavy-armed troop and every light-armed one. Dividing his force into three parts, he himself led his companies up through the narrowest place beside the stream, straight ahead, being struck by the Macedonians and grappling with those who met him in the rough ground,
while the others on either side at the same time tried to compete and eagerly clung to the rough slopes, and the sun rose, and smoke — not steady, but like a mountain mist rising from afar and showing faintly through — escaped the notice of the enemy, since it was behind their backs, the heights already being held; but the Romans held a doubtful opinion, taking their hope in the struggle and toil according to what they wished,
but when, growing greater and darkening the air and rising up high, it was shown to be a friendly signal-fire, they let out a shout and pushed forward with vigor, forcing the enemy back into the harshest terrain, while the men holding the heights behind them answered with shouts of their own.
There was at once a swift flight of all of them, and no more than two thousand fell, for the roughness of the ground took away the pursuit. The Romans, plundering money, tents, and servants, held the Narrows, and marched through Epirus so orderly and with such self-restraint that, though they were far from their ships and the sea and had not been measured out their monthly grain nor had easy market-supply, they refrained from the country, though it offered abundant plunder.
For Titus, learning that Philip, as he passed through Thessaly like a fugitive, was making the people rise up out of the cities into the mountains, burning the cities, and giving over to plunder whatever goods were left behind because of their bulk or weight, in a sense already withdrawing from the country in favor of the Romans, made it a point of honor and urged his soldiers to march as though caring for a land that was their own and had already been handed over to them.
And indeed he gave them immediate perception of this good order in its effects: for the cities came over to him as soon as he touched Thessaly, and the Greeks within the Gates longed for him and were thrown into excitement by their impulses toward Titus, while the Achaeans renounced their alliance with Philip and voted to make war together with the Romans against him.
The Opuntians, although the Aetolians, who were then fighting most eagerly alongside the Romans, claimed the right to take over and guard their city, would not consent to this, but instead sent for Titus and entrusted and handed themselves over to him. Now they say that Pyrrhus, when he first looked down from a lookout post and saw the Roman army drawn up in order, said that the battle-line of these barbarians did not look barbarian to him; and those who first met Titus were compelled to utter similar words.
For hearing from the Macedonians that a man commanding a barbarian army was advancing, subduing and enslaving everything by force of arms, they then met a man young in age, humane in appearance, Greek in voice and speech, and a genuine lover of honor, and they were wonderfully charmed, and as they went away from the cities they filled them with goodwill toward him, as toward one who held the leadership of their freedom,
and when, after meeting with Philip, who seemed disposed to come to terms, he offered peace and friendship on condition that the Greeks be left autonomous and the garrisons withdrawn, and Philip did not accept, then at last it became entirely clear, even to the servants of Philip's cause, that Rome's war was directed not against the Greeks at all, but against the Macedonians, and waged for the Greeks' sake.
Everything else, then, came over to him peaceably, but as he advanced through Boeotia without fighting, the leading men of Thebes met him, favoring Macedon's cause on account of Brachylles, yet greeting and honoring Titus as well, on the ground that friendship existed toward both sides.
He, meeting them kindly and receiving them warmly, went forward quietly along the road, now asking and inquiring, now recounting things himself, and purposely drawing it out until the soldiers could recover
Advancing in this way, he entered the city together with the Thebans, who took no pleasure whatsoever in the matter yet hesitated to bar his way, since the soldiers who followed him were modest in number. And indeed Titus, coming forward as though he did not yet hold the city, tried to persuade them to choose the side of the Romans, with King Attalus speaking in his support and urging the Thebans on as well; but Attalus, it seems, in his eagerness to present himself as a more vigorous advocate for Titus than his age allowed, was suddenly seized in the midst of his speech by some dizziness or rush of blood, lost consciousness, and fell; and not long after, having been carried by ship to Asia, he died. The Boeotians went over to the Romans.
When Philip sent envoys to Rome, Titus for his part also sent men of his own to see to it that the senate should vote him more time for the war, or failing that, that the peace be concluded through him; for being intensely ambitious, he was afraid that if another general were sent out to the war, he would be robbed of the glory.
When his friends managed to arrange that Philip should not obtain what he asked, and that the command of the war should be kept for Titus, he accepted the decree, and lifted by his hopes he set out at once for Thessaly against Philip, having more than twenty-six thousand soldiers; of these the Aetolian contingent numbered six thousand infantry along with four hundred cavalry. Philip's army too was nearly equal in number.
When, marching against each other, they came to be near Scotussa and were about to risk battle there, the armies did not, as one might expect, take fright at each other's nearness, but were filled all the more with eagerness and rivalry — the Romans hoping, if they conquered the Macedonians, whose name through Alexander carried the greatest reputation for strength and power among them, and the Macedonians, thinking the Romans superior to the Persians, hoping, if they prevailed, to show Philip more illustrious than Alexander.
Titus, then, exhorted his soldiers to be brave men and eager, since they were about to contend, as on the finest stage, before Greece, against the best of adversaries. But Philip, whether by chance or through carelessness at an inopportune moment — for there was a lofty burial mound outside the camp — advanced upon it and began, as is customary before battle, to address and encourage his men, but when a terrible dejection fell upon him at the omen, he was thrown into confusion and held back that day.
On the following day around dawn, as a mild and moist night turned into cloudy mist, the whole plain was filled with deep gloom, and a dense mist rolled down off the high ground into the gap separating the two camps, hiding the ground as soon as day began. Those sent out by both sides for outpost duty and reconnaissance, running into each other in a very confined space, fought a skirmish near the place called Cynoscephalae, which are the narrow summits of close-set, parallel hills, so named for their resemblance in shape to dogs' heads.
As shifts of fortune naturally occurred in such rough terrain amid pursuits and retreats, each side kept sending reinforcements from the camps to those hard pressed and giving ground, and now, as the air cleared and they could see what was happening, they joined battle with their whole forces. On the right wing Philip had the advantage, pressing the phalanx down from higher ground upon the Romans, who found themselves unable to bear up under the crush of the locked shields and the jarring impact of the sarissa-thrusts.
But as his left wing was becoming scattered and broken up among the hills, Titus, giving up as lost the part that was being beaten, rode swiftly to the other wing and attacked the Macedonians there, who were prevented by the unevenness and roughness of the ground from forming into phalanx and closing their ranks in depth — which was the strength of their formation — and who, in hand-to-hand combat, were burdened by heavy and unwieldy arms.
For the phalanx resembles a creature whose strength is unconquerable so long as it is one body and keeps its shield-wall in a single formation; but once broken apart, each of the fighters loses his individual force, both because of the manner of their arming and because each draws his strength from the whole rather than from himself. When these men were routed, some pursued the fleeing, while others ran along the flanks of the still-fighting Macedonians and struck them from the side, so that quickly even the victorious wing was thrown into disorder and fled, casting down their weapons.
No fewer than eight thousand fell, and about five thousand were taken prisoner. The blame for Philip's escaping safely fell upon the Aetolians, who occupied themselves with plunder and the sacking of the camp while the Romans were still in pursuit, so that upon their return the Romans found nothing left.
First there arose reproaches and quarrels between them; and from these the Aetolians vexed Titus all the more by claiming the victory for themselves and getting ahead of the news among the Greeks, so that poets and ordinary people writing and singing hymns to the deed put them first,
of which the epigram most on people's lips was this: "Unwept and unburied, traveler, here on this ridge of Thessaly we lie, thirty thousand strong, subdued by the war-god of the Aetolians and the Latins, whom Titus led from broad Italy, a great calamity for Emathia. And that bold spirit of Philip went off swifter than fleet-footed deer."
This was composed by Alcaeus, mocking Philip and falsifying the number of the dead; but though it was repeated in many places and by many people, it irritated Titus more than it did Philip. For Philip, mocking Alcaeus in turn, matched the elegy with this: "Barkless and leafless, traveler, on this ridge here for Alcaeus a towering stake is fixed:"
and things of this sort provoked Titus, who was ambitious for the good opinion of the Greeks, more than moderately; and so he handled the remaining business on his own, paying very little regard to the Aetolians. They were offended, and when he received proposals and an embassy from the Macedonian concerning a settlement, they went around to the other cities crying out that peace was being sold to Philip, when it was possible to cut off the war entirely and root out from the start the power by which the Greek nation had first been enslaved.
While the Aetolians were saying these things and stirring up the allies, Philip himself came to the negotiations and removed the suspicion, submitting his own affairs to Titus and the Romans; and so Titus brought the war to an end. He restored to Philip the kingdom of Macedon, but ordered him to withdraw from Greece, imposed on him a fine of a thousand talents, stripped him of every ship save ten, and, having taken one of his sons, Demetrius, as a hostage, dispatched him to Rome — making the best use of the moment and anticipating what was to come,
for Hannibal the Carthaginian, a man most hostile to the Romans and an exile, had already at that time come to King Antiochus and was urging him to press forward, while fortune favored his power, since Antiochus, already great through his own great achievements — for which he had been named the Great — was looking toward supremacy over all and rising up above all against the Romans,
and if Titus had not foreseen this and wisely yielded toward a settlement, but the Antiochene war had instead overtaken the Philippic war still going on in Greece, the two greatest and most powerful kings of that time would have combined against Rome under common grievances, and Rome would have faced struggles and dangers from the beginning no less than those against Hannibal.
But as it was, Titus, casting peace opportunely between the two wars, and cutting off the coming one before it began even as he ended the present one, took away from the one his last hope and from the other his first.
When the ten envoys whom the senate sent to Titus advised that the rest of the Greeks be set free, but that Corinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias be kept under garrison for the sake of security against Antiochus, then indeed the Aetolians, brilliant in their accusations, tore the cities open with their charges, calling on Titus to strike off the fetters of Greece — for so Philip had been accustomed to call the aforesaid cities —
and inquiring of the Greeks whether they took satisfaction in wearing a yoke that was smoother than the former one, though no less heavy, now placed upon them, and whether they looked on Titus as a benefactor merely for the reason that, once he had loosed Greece's foot, he then fettered her neck. Titus, troubled and taking this hard, and pleading with the council, finally persuaded them to release these cities too from garrison, so that the favor granted by him to the Greeks might be complete and unqualified.
When the Isthmian games were being held, a great crowd of people sat in the stadium watching the athletic contest, since Greece, after so long a time freed from wars and celebrating in hope of freedom and in the certainty of peace, was holding festival; and when silence had been passed by trumpet to everyone,
the herald came forward into the midst and proclaimed that the senate of the Romans and Titus Quinctius, general and consul, having conquered King Philip and the Macedonians, set free, released from garrisons, and exempt from tribute, to live under their own ancestral laws — namely the people of Corinth, Locris, Phocis, Euboea, the Achaeans of Phthiotis, the Magnesians, Thessalians, and Perrhaebians. At first not everyone heard clearly or at all, but there was an uneven and tumultuous stir in the stadium, of people wondering and asking each other
and calling for it to be proclaimed again; and when silence had been made once more, the herald, raising his voice, cried out more forcefully to all and repeated the proclamation, and a shout of disbelief at its magnitude went up through joy all the way to the sea, and the whole theater rose to its feet, and no thought was given any longer to the contestants, but everyone hurried to leap up and greet and address as savior and champion the man who had saved Greece.
What is often said in exaggeration about the greatness and force of a shout was seen then. For crows flying overhead by chance fell into the stadium. The cause was the rending of the air: when a voice travels great and loud, the air, torn apart by it, no longer offers resistance to flying things, but gives way beneath them as though they were stepping into empty space, so that they fall and die — unless, by Zeus, they are struck as though pierced by a missile; and it is also possible that there is a whirling of the air, like an eddy in the sea and a backward swell of the surge, arising from its great disturbance.
Titus, then, had the spectacle broken up so quickly that, had he not noticed the surge of the crowd and turned aside from its rush, he would not have seemed likely to survive so many people pressing upon him at once from every side. When they had worn themselves out shouting around his tent, night now having come, they turned again, embracing and greeting whomever they saw, whether friends or fellow citizens, to dinners and drinking parties with one another, in the course of which, as one might expect, they were all the more inclined,
in their pleasure, to reckon up and discuss Greece — how many wars she had fought for the sake of freedom, and had never yet obtained it more securely nor more happily than now, when others had struggled on her behalf and she herself, almost without bloodshed or mourning, carried off the fairest and most contested of prizes. Rare indeed among men are courage and wisdom, but rarest of all other good things is the just man.
For the Agesilauses and Lysanders and the Nicias-es and the Alcibiades-es knew how to conduct wars well and win battles by land and sea when in command, but they did not know how to use for noble favor and honor the successes they achieved; rather, if one were to set aside the deed at Marathon, the sea-battle at Salamis, Plataea and Thermopylae, and the achievements at the Eurymedon and Cimon's exploits around Cyprus, Greece has fought all her battles for her own enslavement, and every trophy of hers stands as a disaster and a reproach against herself, overturned for the most part by the wickedness and contentiousness of her leaders.
But men of a foreign race, who seemed to hold only small and meager sparks of kinship with that ancient stock — so slight that it was a marvel any word or thought of use to Greece should come from them at all — these were the ones who, at the greatest of dangers and toils, delivered Greece and freed her from harsh masters and tyrants.
This, then, is what came over the Greeks; and their deeds agreed with their proclamations. For at the same time Titus sent out Lentulus to Asia to free the people of Bargylia, and Stertinius to Thrace to rid the cities and islands there of Philip's garrisons; while Publius Villius sailed off to negotiate with Antiochus about liberating the Greeks who lived under his dominion.
Titus himself went to Chalcis, and from there sailed on to Magnesia, withdrawing the garrisons and restoring their constitutions to the peoples. Appointed president of the Nemean Games at Argos, he conducted the festival most excellently, and there too proclaimed by herald once more the freedom of the Greeks.
Visiting the cities, he brought them at once good order and abundant justice, and concord and goodwill toward one another, putting an end to factions, restoring exiles, and taking pride no less in persuading and reconciling the Greeks than in having conquered the Macedonians, so that already their freedom seemed the smallest of the benefits they owed him.
Now Xenocrates the philosopher — when the orator Lycurgus rescued him from the tax-collectors who were dragging him off to pay the resident-alien's tax, and imposed a penalty on those who had seized him for their insolence — is said to have met Lycurgus's sons and remarked, "A fine favor indeed, children, I am repaying your father, for everyone praises him for what he did." But to Titus and the Romans, for the benefits they conferred on the Greeks, gratitude came due justly not merely in praise, but in trust and power among all men,
for people did not merely receive their leaders, but summoned and invited them and put themselves into their hands — not only peoples and cities, but kings who had suffered wrongs at the hands of other kings ran to them seeking sanctuary — so that in a short time, with god's help too perhaps, all things became subject to them; and Titus himself took the greatest pride in the liberation of Greece,
for dedicating silver shields at Delphi, along with his own shield, he inscribed upon it: "Sons of Zeus, who rejoice in the swift horsemanship, hail, kings of Sparta, Tyndareus's sons, Titus, of the line of Aeneas, has given you this supreme gift: he wrought freedom for the children of Greece."
He also dedicated a golden crown to Apollo, with this inscription: "This gleaming golden crown, fit to rest upon your immortal locks, O son of Leto, was given by the great commander of the sons of Aeneas. But grant, far-shooting one, the glory of your might to divine Titus."
This same thing, then, has already happened twice between the city of the Corinthians and the Greeks: for Titus at Corinth then, and Nero again in our own time at Corinth, when the Isthmian Games were similarly being held, set the Greeks free and self-governing — the one by herald, as has been said, Nero himself in person, from a platform in the marketplace, addressing the crowd. But this belongs to a later time.
Titus, having then begun the most noble and just of wars against Nabis, the utterly abominable and lawless tyrant of the Lacedaemonians, in its outcome disappointed the hopes of Greece, for although it was in his power to capture him, he was unwilling, but made a truce and abandoned Sparta to unworthy slavery — whether because he feared that, should the war drag on, another general coming from Rome might seize the glory, or out of rivalry and jealousy of the honors paid to Philopoemen,
whom, since he was in all else the most formidable of the Greeks and had displayed in that very war astonishing deeds of daring and skill, the Achaeans honored and glorified equally with Titus in their theaters — which vexed Titus, who did not think it right that an Arcadian man, general of small border wars, should be admired by them on the same level as a Roman consul waging war on Greece's behalf.
Nevertheless, Titus himself defended his conduct in these matters, saying that he called off the war because he recognized that wiping out the tyrant would exact a heavy toll on the rest of the Spartans. And though the Achaeans voted him many honors, none seemed to him to match his services except a single gift, which he cherished above all the rest. It was as follows.
Of the Romans who had met misfortune in the war against Hannibal, many, sold in various places and scattered abroad, lived as slaves; and in Greece there were twelve hundred of them in number, always pitiable in their reversal of fortune, but then even more so, as was natural, when they met, some their sons, others their brothers, others their acquaintances — free men now slaves, conquerors now captives,
these men Titus did not take away from their owners, though he was distressed on their account; but the Achaeans, ransoming each man for five minas and gathering them all together, handed them over to Titus right as he was preparing to set sail, so that he departed rejoicing, having gained for his noble actions a return that was noble and fitting, the sort owed to a great man devoted to his own people —
a thing which indeed seems to have been the most splendid element of all in his triumph. For these men, as is the custom for household slaves when they are freed, shaved their heads and wore felt caps, and having done this, they followed along behind Titus as he celebrated his triumph.
The spoils carried in procession made for an even finer spectacle — Greek helmets and Macedonian shields and sarissas. And the quantity of money was not small, as the writers around Tuditanus record was carried in the triumph: of refined gold, a total of thirty-seven hundred and thirteen pounds' weight, and of silver, forty-three thousand two hundred and seventy,
and of Philip's gold coins, fourteen thousand five hundred and fourteen; apart from these, Philip still owed the thousand talents. But these the Romans were later persuaded, chiefly through Titus's efforts, to remit to Philip, and they voted him an ally, and released his son from being a hostage.
Now when Antiochus crossed over into Greece with many ships and an army, and set the cities at odds and stirred up faction, with the Aetolians assisting him — who had long been hostile and warlike toward the Roman people — giving as the pretext and ground for war the freeing of the Greeks, who needed no such thing, for they were already free,
but for lack of a more plausible cause they taught him to use that fairest of names as a pretext. And the Romans, greatly fearing his uprising and the reputation of his power, sent down Manius Acilius as consul in command of the war, and Titus as envoy on account of the Greeks — of whom some, seeing him at once, he made firmer in their loyalty, while for others, who were already beginning to sicken with disaffection, he administered, as it were, a timely remedy, steadying their goodwill toward Rome and preventing them from erring,
and only a few escaped him, having already been forestalled and utterly corrupted by the Aetolians — whom, though angered and provoked, he nevertheless preserved after the battle. For Antiochus, defeated at Thermopylae, fled and sailed at once to Asia, and Manius the consul himself proceeded to besiege some of the Aetolians, while he permitted King Philip to reduce others.
While the Macedonian was being led about and carrying off, in one place the Dolopians and Magnesians, in another the Athamanians and Aperantians, and while Manius himself had sacked Heraclea and was besieging Naupactus, which the Aetolians held, Titus, pitying the Greeks, sailed across from the Peloponnese to the consul. And first he took him to task: having won the victory, was he going to let Philip walk off with the war's rewards, while he himself squandered time in anger over one city, even as the Macedonians were laying hold of no small number of nations and kingdoms?
Then, when those under siege, seeing him, called out from the wall and stretched out their hands and made supplication, at that time he said nothing, but turned away and departed in tears; later, however, conferring with Manius and calming his temper, he brought it about that a truce was granted to the Aetolians, and a period of time in which, sending envoys to Rome, they might seek to obtain some moderate terms.
The greatest struggle and toil of all were caused him by the entreaties of the Chalcidians before Manius, who had become angered on account of the marriage which Antiochus had made with them, already while the war was underway — not in due season nor at a fitting time, but as an older man smitten with love for a young girl, who was the daughter of Cleoptolemus, said to have been the fairest of maidens,
and this made the Chalcidians most eager to side with the king and to furnish their city to him as a base of operations for the war. He, then, as soon as possible after the battle, fled and made his way to Chalcis, and taking up the girl and his money and his friends, sailed off to Asia; but Titus, following close upon Manius as he marched against the Chalcidians in anger, softened him and pleaded on their behalf, and at last persuaded and appeased him, entreating both him and the Roman officials in authority.
Thus preserved, the Chalcidians consecrated to Titus the fairest and greatest of the dedications among them, whose inscriptions may still be seen to this day: "The people, to Titus and Heracles, the gymnasium," and elsewhere again, "The people, to Titus and Apollo, the Delphinium."
And still, even in our own time, a priest is elected and appointed for Titus, and after sacrifice and libations to him they sing a hymn composed for the purpose, whose other verses, for the sake of brevity, we have omitted, but we have recorded what they sing at the close of the ode: "We revere the faith of the Romans, which we guard by our most solemn oaths: sing, maidens, of great Zeus and Rome and Titus together, and the faith of the Romans; Hail Paean, O Titus our savior."
There were also fitting honors from the other Greeks, and what made these honors genuine was the wondrous goodwill arising from the fairness of his character; for even though he clashed with certain men out of political rivalry or personal ambition — Philopoemen being one instance, and likewise Diophanes during his term as general of the Achaeans — his anger never grew heavy nor carried through into action, but dissolved in words marked by a kind of blunt political frankness.
He was bitter toward no one, but to many he seemed sharp and light-hearted by nature, though otherwise the most agreeable of company and a man of graceful, pointed speech. When the Achaeans were seizing for themselves the island of Zacynthus, he turned them from it by saying that they would be running a risk, if, like tortoises, they stretched their heads too far beyond the Peloponnese. And when Philip, at the time they first came together to discuss a truce and peace, remarked that Titus arrived accompanied by a large retinue whereas he himself had come without any companion, Titus retorted, "Yes, you have made yourself alone by killing your friends and kinsmen."
When Deinocrates the Messenian, having gotten drunk over wine in Rome, danced wearing a woman's garment, and on the next day asked Titus to help him in his plan to detach Messene from the Achaeans, Titus replied that he would think it over, adding that he marveled that a man who had undertaken such great enterprises could dance and sing over his wine.
To the Achaeans, when the envoys from Antiochus were listing a great number of the king's forces and reciting many names of troop-types, Titus said — recalling that once, dining with a host of his and complaining of the abundance of meats and wondering where he had procured so varied a market, the host had told him that it was all pork, prepared differently and varied only in its seasonings — "So you too, men of Achaea, should not be amazed at the power of Antiochus when you hear of spearmen and pikemen and 'foot-companions': all of these are simply Syrians, differing only in their equipment."
"So then," he said, "you Achaeans should not marvel at the power of Antiochus when you hear of lancers and pike-bearers and foot-companions — for all these men are Syrians, differing from one another only in their light armor."
After his exploits in Greece and the war against Antiochus, he was appointed censor, which is the highest office and in a sense the crowning completion of a political career. His colleague in office was the son of Marcellus, who had been consul five times. They expelled from the senate four men of no great distinction, and they enrolled as citizens all who had free-born parents and registered themselves, being compelled to this by the tribune Terentius Culleo, who, out of spite against the aristocratic party, persuaded the people to vote this measure.
Of the most eminent men of his time, the greatest in the city and at odds with one another, Africanus Scipio and Marcus Cato, he placed the former at the head of the senate's roll as the best man and foremost citizen; but with Cato he came into enmity through the following misfortune. Titus had a brother, Lucius Flamininus, who did not resemble him in other respects, being in his pleasures shamefully ungenerous and utterly careless of what was fitting.
This man kept the company of a young favorite, whom he took with him even when commanding an army, and kept always about him while administering provinces. Once at a certain drinking-party, this youth, being coy with Lucius, said that he loved him so much that he had left a gladiatorial show without having yet, in his whole life, watched a man being killed — valuing the pleasure of being with Lucius above his own. Lucius, delighted, said, "That's no trouble at all — I will cure you of that longing."
And ordering one of the condemned men to be brought out from the prison, and summoning the executioner, he commanded him, in the midst of the banquet, to cut off the man's head. But Valerius Antias claims Lucius granted this favor not to a male favorite but to a mistress. Livy, meanwhile, records that Cato's own speech states that when a Gallic deserter arrived at Lucius's door together with his wife and children, Lucius admitted him to the feast and struck him dead with his own hand, purely to please the one he loved.
This, indeed, is likely to have been said by Cato to intensify the charge in his prosecution; but that the man killed was not a deserter but a prisoner and one of the condemned, many others have stated, and among them Cicero the orator, in his essay On Old Age, where he attributes the account to Cato himself.
On this account, Cato, having become censor and purging the senate, expelled Lucius from it, though he held the rank of a former consul, on the ground that he himself would be dishonored along with his brother if he did not. Both brothers therefore went before the people, humbled and in tears, and seemed to make a modest request of the citizens: that Cato should state the charge and the reasoning by which he had wrapped so illustrious a house in such disgrace.
Cato, holding nothing back, came forward and, standing with his colleague, asked Titus whether he knew of the banquet. When Titus denied it, Cato related the story and challenged Lucius to a formal reckoning, to say if any part of what had been told was untrue. When Lucius kept silent, the people judged that the disgrace had been justly imposed, and they escorted Cato in splendor from the rostra.
But Titus, stung by his brother's disgrace, allied himself with the men who had for a long while borne Cato ill will, and having won the senate over he annulled and undid all the leases, contracts, and purchases of public property that Cato had made, and he set in motion against him many great lawsuits — I do not know how well or how becomingly for a lawful magistrate and an excellent citizen, undertaking on behalf of a kinsman, unworthy and having suffered only what was fitting, an implacable enmity.
Nevertheless, once, when the Roman people were watching a spectacle in the theater and the senate, as is customary, sat in state in front, Lucius was seen sitting somewhere at the very back, in disgrace and humiliation, and the sight moved the crowd to pity; the people would not endure the spectacle but cried out for him to move up, until he did move, and the former consuls received him among themselves.
Now Titus's natural love of honor, so long as it had sufficient material to occupy itself with in the wars I have described, won him good repute; for indeed he served again as military tribune after his consulship, though no one compelled him to it. But once he had been relieved of holding office, and being now older, he was more clearly exposed, unable to restrain himself, seething as he was for glory and behaving like a young man, in the rest of a life that no longer afforded him occasions for action.
By some such impulse he seemed, in the matter concerning Hannibal, to have acted in a way that made him odious to most people. For Hannibal, having secretly fled from Carthage, was living with Antiochus; and after Antiochus, following the battle in Phrygia, had gladly obtained peace, Hannibal fled again, and after wandering much, finally settled in Bithynia, attending upon Prusias, with no Roman unaware of it, but all overlooking it because of his weakness and old age, as one already cast aside by fortune.
But Titus, arriving as an envoy sent by the senate on certain other business to Prusias, and seeing Hannibal living there, was indignant that he still lived, and though Prusias begged and pleaded at length on behalf of a man who was his suppliant and his intimate, Titus would not relent. There was, it seems, an old oracle concerning Hannibal's death, which ran: "Libyssan earth shall hide the body of Hannibal" — and Hannibal supposed this meant Libya and burial at Carthage, thinking he would live out his life there and be buried there.
But in Bithynia there is a sandy place by the sea, and near it a large village called Libyssa; around this place Hannibal happened to be living, ever distrustful of Prusias's softness and fearing the Romans, keeping his house already fitted, from his own design, with seven underground passages leading out, each one different from the others, all emerging far off and undetected.
So when he then heard of Titus's order, he set out to flee through the underground passages, but meeting with royal guards, he resolved to end his own life. Some say that he wrapped a garment about his neck and ordered a servant to brace his knee against his hip from behind, and pulling and twisting violently until his breath was choked out, so destroyed himself; others say that, imitating Themistocles
and Midas, he drank bull's blood. But Livy says that he had poison ready and, mixing it, and taking up the cup, said, "Let us at last relieve the Romans of their great anxiety, since they have thought it a burdensome delay waiting for a detested old man to die at last. Still, Titus will win no triumph worth envying, nor one worthy of his ancestors, who, when Pyrrhus was warring against them and winning, sent word ahead and revealed to him the poison plot against him."
In this way, they say, Hannibal died. When these events were reported to the senate, Titus seemed to not a few to be odious, altogether excessive, and cruel, in that he had killed Hannibal — a bird, as it were, already unable to fly and clipped by old age, and let live tame — with no need pressing him, but merely for glory, so that he might become known by name as the cause of his death.
And setting forth, by contrast, the gentleness and magnanimity of Scipio Africanus, they admired him all the more, in that though he had conquered in Libya a Hannibal who was undefeated and formidable, he neither drove him out nor demanded him from his fellow citizens, but even before the battle came to a conference and greeted him kindly, and after the battle, when making the treaty, ventured nothing against him nor took advantage of the man's fortune.
It is said that the two met again, later, at Ephesus, and that first, as they walked together, Africanus allowed Hannibal to take the precedence due to his rank and walked along unassumingly; then, when talk fell upon generals, and Hannibal declared that the greatest of all generals had been Alexander, then Pyrrhus, and third himself, Africanus smiled quietly and said, "What would you say, if I had not defeated you?" And Hannibal replied,
"I would not, Scipio, have placed myself third, but first among generals." This answer of Scipio's most people admired greatly, and they reproached Titus for having laid hands on a corpse that was not his own to claim. But there were some who praised what had been done, and who considered Hannibal, so long as he lived, to be a fire that needed only someone to fan it into flame:
for it was not, they said, his body at its peak, nor his hand, that the Romans had found so daunting, but rather his shrewdness and experience, joined with his innate bitterness and ill-will — none of which old age takes away, but rather his nature persists in his character, while fortune does not remain the same but, shifting, calls forth, through fresh hopes of success, those who are forever at war out of hatred.
And later events bore witness to this even more strongly on Titus's behalf: on the one hand, Aristonicus, son of the lyre-player, out of devotion to the memory of Eumenes, filled the whole of Asia with revolts and wars; and on the other, Mithridates, after Sulla and Fimbria and so great a destruction of armies and generals, rose up again, as great as ever, against Lucullus, from both land and sea.
Nor indeed did Hannibal lie in a lower state than Gaius Marius; for the former had a king as his friend, and an intimate manner of living, along with diversions involving ships, horses, and the training of troops. The Romans, however, once mocked the plight of Marius when he wandered as a beggar in Libya, a short while after found themselves in Rome being slaughtered and scourged and doing obeisance to him. So true is it that nothing, small or great, in present circumstances has any bearing upon the future, but there is one single end to change and to being.
For this reason some claim it was not Titus's own doing, but rather that he was dispatched as an envoy together with Lucius Scipio, the embassy having no other business than the death of Hannibal. Since after these events we have found no further political or military act of Titus to record, but he even met with a peaceful end, it is time to turn to the comparison.

======== Comparison Of Philopoemen With Flamininus ========

In the magnitude of their benefactions to the Greeks, it is not fair to compare Philopoemen with Titus, nor indeed very many men better than Philopoemen. For the Greeks' wars were fought against Greeks, whereas his, though he was not a Greek, were fought on behalf of the Greeks; and at the very time when Philopoemen, unable to defend his own countrymen who were under attack, sailed away to Crete, Titus, having conquered Philip in the heart of Greece, was setting free both the nations and all the cities. And if one were to examine the battles of each,
Philopoemen killed more Greeks while general of the Achaeans than Titus killed Macedonians while helping the Greeks. Their faults, moreover, arose from different sources: the one from love of honor, the other from love of contention; and toward anger the one was quick to move, the other hard to appease. For Titus preserved for Philip the dignity of his kingship and dealt reasonably with the Aetolians, whereas Philopoemen, out of anger, deprived his own homeland of the tribute-paying towns around it.
Further, the one was always steadfast toward those he had benefited, while the other was ready to dissolve a favor out of temper. For though he had earlier been a benefactor of the Lacedaemonians, he later tore down their walls, cut away their territory, and in the end overturned and destroyed their constitution. He seems, too, to have thrown away his very life to anger and contentiousness, pressing on toward Messene not at the right moment but more hastily than was proper — not, like Titus, conducting every campaign by calculation and with a view to safety.
But in the multitude of wars and trophies, Philopoemen's experience is more solidly established: for Titus's affair with Philip was decided in two contests, while Philopoemen, having succeeded in countless battles, left no room for fortune to dispute with skill. Further, the one made use of Rome's power while it was still at its peak, while the other rose to eminence when Greece was already in decline, so that he gained the reputation that his achievement was his own, while the other's success was shared with his people: the one commanded good men already made, while the other, in commanding, made men good.
And indeed, that his struggles were against Greeks was, for this man, not a fortunate circumstance, yet it furnished strong proof of his valor; for among men otherwise alike, victory goes to the one who excels in valor. And in truth, warring against the most warlike of the Greeks, the Cretans and the Lacedaemonians, he overcame the craftiest by cunning and the bravest by daring.
Beyond this, Titus won using resources already established, employing the arms and formations he inherited; but Philopoemen himself introduced and transformed the order of things in this regard, so that the most decisive means of victory, which had not existed before him, came into being through him and served him. In deeds by his own hand, then, Philopoemen accomplished many great things, the other none at all; indeed one of the Aetolians, Archedemus, mocked him, saying that while he himself, sword drawn, ran at a charge against the combatants and the massed Macedonians, Titus stood still with his hands raised palm-upward to the sky, praying.
And further, it fell to Titus, both as commander and as ambassador, to accomplish everything honorable, but Philopoemen showed himself no less capable, nor less active, as a private citizen than as a general, in the service of the Achaeans. For as a private citizen he drove Nabis out of Messene and freed the Messenians; and as a private citizen he shut Diophanes the general and Titus himself out of Sparta when they were advancing, and saved the Lacedaemonians.
Having by nature such a gift for leadership, he knew how to govern not merely according to the laws, but even to rule over the laws themselves for the common advantage, not needing to receive command as a gift from those he ruled, but making use of them, whenever occasion called, considering as their general the man who thought on their behalf rather than the one they themselves had chosen.
Noble, then, were Titus's dealings with the Greeks, gentle and humane; but nobler still were Philopoemen's dealings with the Romans, firm and devoted to liberty; for it is easier to grant favors to those in need than to give pain by resisting the more powerful. Since, then, when examined this way the difference is hard to discern, consider whether, awarding to the Greek the crown of skill in war and generalship, and to the Roman that of justice and kindness, we shall not seem to judge amiss.

======== Pyrrhus ========

Among the Thesprotians and Molossians it is recorded that after the flood Phaethon was the first to rule, being one of those who accompanied Pelasgus into Epirus; others, however, claim it was Deucalion and Pyrrha who, having founded the sanctuary at Dodona, took up residence there among the Molossians.
Later, Neoptolemus the son of Achilles brought a people there, took possession of the country himself, and left behind him a succession of kings, called the Pyrrhidae; for Pyrrhus was in fact his own boyhood nickname. And of the legitimate children born to him by Lanassa, daughter of Cleodaeus son of Hyllus, he named one Pyrrhus. From this Achilles also came to receive honors equal to a god's in Epirus, being called in the local tongue Aspetos.
After the first kings, those in between grew barbarized and became dimmer both in power and in their manner of life; but they say that Tharrhypas was the first to become renowned for arranging the cities with Greek customs, letters, and humane laws. Tharrhypas' son was Alcetas, Alcetas' son was Aryba, and of Aryba and Troas was born Aeacides.
This man married Phthia, daughter of Menon the Thessalian, a man distinguished in the Lamian War who won the greatest standing among the allies after Leosthenes. From Phthia were born to Aeacides daughters, Deidameia and Troas, and a son, Pyrrhus.
But when the Molossians rose in faction, drove out Aeacides, and installed the sons of Neoptolemus in his place, those loyal to Aeacides who fell into enemy hands were put to death; Pyrrhus, still an infant and hunted by his foes, was spirited away by Androcleides and Angelus and their companions, who fled, forced by necessity to bring along a handful of attendants and women to look after the boy.
And because their flight was thereby made difficult and slow, being overtaken they placed the child in the hands of Androcleon, Hippias, and Neander, young men who were loyal and strong, ordering them to flee with all their strength and make for Megara, a place in Macedonian territory, while they, for their own part, using persuasion in some cases and combat in others, held the pursuers back until late in the evening.
When the pursuers had at last with difficulty turned back, they hastened after those carrying Pyrrhus; but with the sun already set, just as they came near to their hope, they were suddenly cut off, coming upon the river that flows past the city, hard and wild to look at, and altogether impassable to try to cross. For a great current was pouring out, turbid from rains that had come on, and the darkness made everything more terrifying.
On their own, then, they gave up trying, carrying as they were the child and the women nursing him; but perceiving some of the local people standing on the far side, they begged them to help with the crossing, and held up Pyrrhus, shouting and entreating. But the others could not hear on account of the roughness and roar of the current,
and there was delay, the ones shouting, the others not understanding, until someone conceived the idea of peeling bark off an oak tree and scratching onto it, with the pin of a brooch, words describing the child's plight and circumstances; then, folding the bark around a stone to give the throw some weight, he flung it over to the other bank—though some say instead that they lashed the bark to a spear and hurled that across.
When those on the far side read the writing and understood the urgency of the moment, they cut timber, bound the pieces together, and crossed over. And by chance the first of them to cross, a man named Achilles, received Pyrrhus; the others were carried across as each man happened to take them.
Having thus been saved and having outrun the pursuit, they came into Illyria to King Glaucias; and discovering him at home together with his wife, they placed the child on the floor before the pair of them. Weighing the matter, and afraid of Cassander—an enemy to Aeacides—he remained wrapped in thought for a long while without speaking.
Meanwhile Pyrrhus, of his own accord, crept forward, took hold of Glaucias' cloak with his hands, and pulling himself up to his knees provoked first laughter, then pity, clinging like a suppliant and weeping. But some say he did not fall at Glaucias' feet at all, but stood grasping an altar of the gods with his hands thrown around it, and that the matter appeared divine to Glaucias.
For this reason Glaucias at once handed Pyrrhus over to his wife, bidding that he be raised together with their own children; and a little later, when the enemy demanded him and Cassander even offered two hundred talents, he did not give him up, but when the boy had reached twelve years, brought him down into Epirus with an armed force and established him as king.
Pyrrhus, in the look of his face, had something more fearsome than majestic in its kingliness; he did not have many teeth, but a single continuous bone above, marked as though with faint scratches showing where the gaps between teeth would be. He was believed able to cure those afflicted in the spleen: he would offer a white rooster in sacrifice, then, as the sufferer lay flat on his back, press lightly on the diseased organ using his right foot. No one was so poor or so obscure that he could not obtain this treatment if he asked.
He also received a fee upon sacrificing the cock, and of all gifts, none delighted him more than this one. It is said that the big toe of that foot had a divine power, so that after his death, when the rest of his body was burned, it was found unharmed and untouched by the fire. But this belongs to a later time.
When he was about seventeen and thought to hold his rule securely, a journey happened to take place—one of Glaucias's sons, a companion of his upbringing, was setting off to marry. So once more the Molossians revolted, expelled his supporters, seized his belongings for plunder, and delivered themselves up to Neoptolemus.
Pyrrhus, thus having lost his rule and left destitute of everything, attached himself to Demetrius son of Antigonus, who had his sister Deidameia—whom, while she was still a girl, they used to call the wife of Alexander son of Roxane, but after the misfortunes that befell those men, being now of marriageable age, Demetrius married her.
In the massive engagement at Ipsus where every king took part, Pyrrhus, present with Demetrius's forces, took part while still a young man, routed those opposing him, and showed himself brilliant among the fighters. And when Demetrius stumbled, he did not abandon him, but, being entrusted with the cities in Greece, kept them safe, and when a settlement was made between Demetrius and Ptolemy, he sailed to Egypt as a hostage.
To Ptolemy he gave displays of strength and endurance in hunts and gymnasium exercises, but seeing that Berenice had the greatest power and stood first in virtue and good sense among Ptolemy's wives, he courted her above all; and being clever at winning over the more powerful for his advantage, while seeming to disdain the humbler, and being orderly and temperate in his way of life, he was chosen out of many young men of royal standing to take Antigone, one of Berenice's daughters, as wife—whom she had had by Philip before she lived with Ptolemy,
and after this marriage, being held in still greater esteem, and Antigone being a good wife to him, he arranged to receive money and a force to be sent to Epirus for the kingship. And he arrived not against the wishes of the many, on account of their hatred for Neoptolemus, who ruled harshly and violently; nonetheless, fearing that Neoptolemus might turn to one of the other kings, he made a settlement and friendship with him on the basis of sharing the rule.
As time went on there were those who secretly incited them and bred suspicions against each other; but the cause said to have most stirred Pyrrhus is said to have had the following origin. The kings were accustomed at Passaron, a place in Molossia, to sacrifice to Zeus Areius and to swear oaths to the Epirotes, and to have oaths sworn to them, that they themselves would rule according to the laws, and that the people would preserve the kingship according to the laws,
This was done with both kings present, and they were together with their friends, giving many gifts and receiving others; there Gelon, a man loyal to Neoptolemus, having greeted Pyrrhus warmly, presented him with two yoke of plow-oxen. Myrtilus, the man in charge of the wine who was present, asked Pyrrhus for these; but when Pyrrhus did not give them to him, giving them to another instead, Myrtilus, taking it hard, did not escape Gelon's notice.
So calling him to dinner, and, as some say, even making use of him at the wine, being he in the bloom of youth, Gelon brought forward words urging him to side with Neoptolemus's cause and do away with Pyrrhus through poisoning. Myrtilus accepted the approach as though praising it and persuaded, but revealed it to Pyrrhus; and at Pyrrhus's command he introduced the chief cupbearer Alexicrates to Gelon, as one who would share in the deed with them, for Pyrrhus wished the proof of the wrongdoing to come through more witnesses.
So while Gelon was thus being deceived, Neoptolemus was deceived along with him, and thinking the plot was proceeding on its way, could not contain himself, but out of joy let it out to his friends; and once, reveling at his sister Cadmeia's house, he spoke freely of these matters, thinking no one else was listening, since the only person anywhere close was Phaenarete, wife of Samon, the man who oversaw Neoptolemus's flocks and herds, and she lay with her face turned toward the wall,
seemed to be sleeping on a couch. But having heard all of it without being noticed, she came by day to Antigone, Pyrrhus's wife, and told her everything Neoptolemus had said to his sister. Pyrrhus, on hearing this, held his peace for the moment, but later, at a sacrifice, he invited Neoptolemus to a meal and there killed him,
having perceived that the strongest of the Epirotes were devoted to him and were urging him to be rid of Neoptolemus, and not to be content with a small portion of the kingship, but to use his nature to lay hold of greater affairs; and with a certain suspicion arising at the same time, he moved first to destroy Neoptolemus.
Remembering Berenice and Ptolemy, he named the son born to him by Antigone Ptolemy, and having founded a city on the peninsula of Epirus he called it Berenicis. From this point, turning over in his mind many great designs, and reaching out with his hopes especially and first toward his neighbors, he found occasion to insert himself into the affairs of the Macedonians from some such pretext as this.
Of the sons of Cassander, the elder, Antipater, killed his mother Thessalonice and drove out his brother Alexander. In response Alexander appealed to Demetrius for aid and summoned Pyrrhus to his side. When Demetrius was slow because of other business, Pyrrhus came and asked as the price of his alliance Stymphaea and Parauaea of Macedonia, and, of the acquired territories, Ambracia, Acarnania, and Amphilochia.
When the young man had given these up, Pyrrhus himself took possession of them, seizing them with garrisons, and while acquiring the rest for him, cut Antipater down. King Lysimachus, being himself occupied and eager to help Antipater, but knowing that Pyrrhus was unwilling to be ungrateful to or to refuse Ptolemy anything, sent him forged letters as though from Ptolemy, bidding him withdraw from the campaign upon receiving three hundred talents from Antipater.
Opening the letter, Pyrrhus at once saw through Lysimachus's trick; for the customary greeting was not written, "the father to the son, greeting," but, "King Ptolemy to King Pyrrhus, greeting." And though he rebuked Lysimachus, he nonetheless made the peace, and they came together to swear oaths over sacrificial victims.
But when a bull, a boar, and a ram were led up for the sacrifice, and the ram dropped dead on its own, the others were moved to laugh, but the seer Theodotus stopped Pyrrhus from swearing, saying that the divine power was foretelling death for one of the three kings. So Pyrrhus in this way withdrew from the peace.
Though Alexander's affairs were already settled, Demetrius nonetheless arrived; and it was clear at once that he had come to one who did not need him, and this caused fear; after a few days together, distrusting each other, both plotted against one another, and Demetrius, seizing his moment and acting first, killed the young man, and was proclaimed king of Macedonia,
Even before this he had had grievances against Pyrrhus, and there had been raids into Thessaly by him, and greed, that malady bred into royal power, rendered their nearness to one another suspect and dangerous—a condition only worsened once Deidameia had died. And when both, holding parts of Macedonia, came into collision over the same territory and their quarrel took on greater occasions,
Demetrius, having campaigned against the Aetolians and defeated them, left Pantauchus there with a large force and himself marched against Pyrrhus, and Pyrrhus against him, as soon as he learned of it. But since they missed each other on the road, they passed by one another, and Demetrius, invading Epirus, ravaged it, while Pyrrhus, falling upon Pantauchus, engaged him in battle,
and when the soldiers clashed there was a fierce and mighty struggle, especially between the commanders, for Pantauchus, admittedly the best in courage, hand, and bodily strength among Demetrius's generals, and possessed of boldness and high spirit, challenged Pyrrhus to single combat, and Pyrrhus, yielding to no king in strength and daring, and wishing to attach to himself the glory of Achilles by valor rather than by descent, advanced through the front ranks to meet Pantauchus.
At first there was a throwing of spears, then, coming to close quarters, they used their swords with both skill and force at once. Pyrrhus, receiving one wound and giving two — one in the thigh, the other by the neck — turned and struck down Pantauchus; he did not kill him, however, for he was snatched away by his friends. The Epirotes, elated by the king's victory and marveling at his valor, pressed on and cut through the phalanx of the Macedonians, and pursuing them as they fled, killed many and took five thousand alive.
This battle did not fill the Macedonians with as much anger over what they had suffered, nor with hatred, toward Pyrrhus as it filled them with admiration and wonder at his valor, and talk of it, among those who had seen his deeds and been engaged with him in the fight. For they thought his look and his swiftness and his movement resembled Alexander's, and that in him they were seeing certain shadows and likenesses of that man's onrush and force in battle, while the other kings displayed Alexander merely in their purple robes and bodyguards and the tilt of their necks and their more grandiose way of speaking, but Pyrrhus alone displayed him through his arms and his hands.
Of his knowledge and skill in tactics and generalship one can take proofs from the writings he left behind on these matters. There is also a story that Antigonus, on being asked which general he judged finest, answered, "Pyrrhus — once age has caught up with him," thereby limiting his verdict to commanders of his own day. But Hannibal declared that of all generals together, Pyrrhus was first in experience and skill, Scipio second, and himself third, as is written in the account of Scipio.
And altogether Pyrrhus seems to have practiced this and to have devoted himself constantly to it as if it were philosophy — regarding it as the most kingly of studies, and holding all other refinements in no account. For it is said that when he was asked at a certain drinking-party whether Python the flute-player or Caphisias seemed to him the better, he said that Polyperchon was the better general, on the ground that it was fitting for a king to inquire into and know only such things.
He was also fair and mild in temper toward his familiars, but eager and vehement in his acts of kindness. When Aeropus died, for instance, he did not bear it with moderation, saying that the man had suffered what is common to humankind, but blaming and reproaching himself because, always delaying and putting it off, he had not repaid him for a kindness. For debts can be repaid even to the heirs of those who lent them, but when the repayment of kindnesses does not come to those who are aware of it, it grieves a good and just man,
and in Ambracia, when some thought it necessary to banish a man who spoke ill of him and was abusive, Pyrrhus said, "Let him rather stay here and speak ill of us before a few, than go about speaking ill of us before all mankind." And when some young men, having reviled him over wine, were afterward confronted with it, he asked them whether they had said these things; and when one of the young men answered, "Yes, O king — and we would have said still worse, had our cups been fuller," he laughed and let them go.
Once Antigone had died, he pursued power and influence through additional marriages. He wedded a daughter of the Paeonian king Autoleon, along with Bircenna, daughter of Bardyllis the Illyrian, and Lanassa, whose father was Agathocles of Syracuse; her dowry to the union was the city of Corcyra, which her father had previously captured. Antigone had already given him a son, Ptolemy; Lanassa bore him Alexander; and Bircenna produced the youngest, Helenus.
And he raised all his sons to be good and fiery in arms, sharpened for this from birth by himself. It is said that once, when a boy among them put the question of which one would inherit his throne, Pyrrhus answered, "Whichever of you keeps the sharpest sword." This is no different from that tragic curse: that the brothers should divide the household "with whetted iron" — so unsociable and beastlike is the principle of greed.
After this battle Pyrrhus returned home rejoicing in his glory and high spirit; and being addressed by the Epirotes as "Eagle," he said, "Because of you I am an eagle; for how could I not be, borne up by your arms as if by swift wings?" A little later, learning that Demetrius was dangerously ill, he suddenly invaded Macedonia, intending only to make some raid and plunder,
but he came close to seizing the whole kingdom at once and taking it without a fight, advancing as far as Edessa with no one resisting him, and many even joining him and marching with him. The danger roused Demetrius himself beyond his strength, and his friends and officers, quickly gathering many men, set out vigorously and eagerly against Pyrrhus. But Pyrrhus, who had come more in the manner of a raider, did not stand his ground, but fled, losing part of his army along the way as the Macedonians attacked.
Yet Demetrius did not, because he had so easily and quickly driven Pyrrhus from the country, neglect the matter; but having resolved to undertake great affairs and to recover his father's empire, mustering an army of a hundred thousand men along with five hundred vessels, he had no desire for a clash with Pyrrhus, nor to leave behind him a Macedonia troubled by a difficult neighbor; and since war against him was not something he had time for, he arranged terms and settled peace with him, so as to turn against the other kings.
When the agreement had been made for these reasons, and the scale of Demetrius's preparation, together with his intention, had become clear, the kings, taking fright, sent messengers and letters to Pyrrhus, saying they marveled that he, having let slip his own opportunity, was waiting to fight Demetrius only when the man had leisure and had grown great, and that though the chance had been his to push Demetrius out of Macedonia while he was distracted with many affairs and thrown into confusion, he was instead waiting to contest with him, once he had leisure and had grown powerful, over the shrines and tombs of Molossia — and this though Demetrius had recently taken Corcyra from him, together with his wife.
For Lanassa, having reproached Pyrrhus for paying more attention to his barbarian wives, had withdrawn to Corcyra, and, desiring a royal marriage, summoned Demetrius, knowing well that of all the kings he was the most disposed toward marrying women. He sailed there, took Lanassa as wife, and stationed a body of troops to hold the town.
By writing these things to Pyrrhus, the kings, together with their own actions, stirred him against Demetrius, who was still delaying and making his preparations. For Ptolemy, sailing out with a great fleet, was causing the Greek cities to revolt, while Lysimachus, invading upper Macedonia from Thrace, was ravaging it. Pyrrhus, rising up together with them, marched on Beroea, expecting — as indeed happened — that Demetrius, going to meet Lysimachus, would leave the lower country undefended.
That very night he had a vision in which Alexander the Great summoned him, and, having come before him, he found the great man lying ill on a couch, but received kind words and promises of goodwill, that he would readily help him. When Pyrrhus ventured to say, "And how, O king, being ill, could you be able to help me?" Alexander replied that he would lend him his very name, and, mounting a Nisaean horse, led the way.
Having seen this vision, he was heartened; and using great speed, running through the country between, he seized Beroea, and, stationing the greater part of his army there, brought over the rest of the region through his officers. When Demetrius heard of this and perceived a dangerous disturbance among the Macedonians in his camp, he grew fearful of pressing on any farther, worried that drawing close to a Macedonian king of such high repute would make his own troops desert to him.
For this reason he turned back against Pyrrhus, leading his men against him as against a foreigner hated by the Macedonians. But when he had encamped near him, many who came from Beroea praised Pyrrhus, saying that he was an invincible and splendid man in arms, and that he treated captives gently and humanely. There were also some whom Pyrrhus himself planted, pretending to be Macedonians, saying that now was the time to be rid of Demetrius's harshness by going over to a man who was a friend of the people and fond of his soldiers, namely Pyrrhus.
By this talk the bulk of the army was set astir, and the soldiers went about searching for Pyrrhus. It happened that he had taken off his helmet, until, realizing this and putting it on again, he was recognized by his conspicuous crest and its tragic-style horns, so that the Macedonians ran up to ask for the password, and others crowned themselves with oak branches, seeing that those around him wore such crowns;
and by now some even dared to tell Demetrius outright that the wiser course, in their judgment, would be for him to withdraw and abandon his cause. Seeing that the movement of the camp resembled these words, and afraid, he slipped away secretly, wrapping himself in a common cap and a plain cloak; and Pyrrhus, coming up, took over the camp without a fight and was proclaimed king of the Macedonians.
When Lysimachus appeared and made the overthrow of Demetrius a joint enterprise of the two of them, claiming a share in the kingdom, Pyrrhus, not yet fully trusting the Macedonians, but being uncertain of them, accepted Lysimachus's proposal, and they divided the cities and the country between themselves.
This was for the moment beneficial and put an end to the war between them, but a little later they realized that they had made, not a release from enmity, but the beginning of accusations and dispute, by their division. For men to whom no sea, no mountain, no uninhabited wilderness sets a limit to their greed, nor do the boundaries that divide Europe from Asia bound their desires,
how they could, touching and bordering upon one another, remain quiet in their present possessions without doing wrong, it is impossible to say; rather, they are always at war, having implanted in them the will to plot and to envy, and they make use of the two names, like two currencies — war and peace — as suits their advantage, not as suits justice; since indeed those who openly admit to making war are better than those who dignify the idle and inactive part of their injustice with the names of justice and friendship.
Pyrrhus showed this: for, standing again in the way of Demetrius as he grew strong, and hindering his power as it recovered as if from a great illness, he came to the aid of the Greeks and entered Athens, and going up to the Acropolis and sacrificing to the goddess and coming down the same day, he said he was glad of the goodwill and trust of the people toward him, but that, if they had any wisdom, they would henceforth bar every one of the kings from their city and keep their gates closed against them;
after this he also made peace with Demetrius, and not long after, once Demetrius had departed for Asia, he was again persuaded by Lysimachus to cause Thessaly to revolt and to make war on the Greek garrisons, finding the Macedonians better soldiers when campaigning than at leisure, and being himself altogether not made for quiet. At last, when Demetrius had been utterly defeated in Syria, Lysimachus, now free from danger and at leisure, immediately set out against Pyrrhus.
And falling upon him while he was encamped near Edessa and waiting for supplies being brought to him, and gaining the advantage, he first reduced him to difficulty, then by letters and speeches corrupted the leading Macedonians, reproaching them for choosing as master a foreign man, whose ancestors had always been slaves to Macedonians, and thrusting out the friends and companions of Alexander from Macedonia,
and when many were won over, Pyrrhus, taking fright, withdrew with his Epirote and allied force, losing Macedonia in the same way he had taken it. Hence the kings cannot blame the common people for changing sides for their own advantage; for in doing this they merely imitate the kings themselves, who are teachers of faithlessness and betrayal, and who consider that the man who makes least use of justice profits most.
At that time, then, Pyrrhus, having been driven out into Epirus and having let go of Macedonia, had it in his fortune to make use of what he had without trouble and to live at peace, ruling over his own people; but he, thinking that not to cause trouble to others nor to suffer it from others was a kind of sickening idleness, and like Achilles could not endure leisure, but "wasted away his heart, remaining there," and "longed for the war-cry and battle" — being in want, then, he found such an occasion for new undertakings.
The Romans were making war on the Tarentines. The Tarentines, unable either to sustain the war or to end it, through the recklessness and wickedness of their popular leaders, were deliberating about making Pyrrhus their commander and calling him to the war, since he had the most leisure of the kings and was the ablest general. Of the older and more sensible citizens, some who openly opposed this opinion were driven out by the shouting and violence of the war-makers, while others, seeing this, left the assemblies.
But one reasonable man, named Meton, on the very day the decree was set to become binding, once the people had taken their seats, took a wreath of withered flowers and a small torch, like men who are drunk, and, led by a flute-girl, came reveling toward the assembly. As happens in a crowd in a democracy that has no order, some clapped when they saw him, others laughed, and no one stopped him; instead they urged the woman to play and him to sing, coming forward into the middle — and he seemed about to do just that.
When silence fell, he said, "Men of Tarentum, you do well to play and revel while it is still permitted, not begrudging it to those who wish it. But if you are wise, all of you will still enjoy this freedom, since once Pyrrhus enters within these walls, other business, another kind of life, and a different manner of living altogether will be yours." This speech won over most of the Tarentines, and a murmur ran through the assembly as though he had spoken well,
but those who feared the Romans, lest, once peace was made, they should be handed over, reviled the people for tolerating so shamelessly this drunken revelry, and, banding together, drove Meton out. So, the decree having thus become law, they sent envoys to Epirus — not only their own, but also those of the Italiot Greeks — bringing gifts to Pyrrhus and telling him that they needed a wise commander
they need, and he already has one — and great forces will be available to him at once from the Lucanians, the Messapians, the Samnites, and the Tarentines: twenty thousand cavalry, and infantry together three hundred and fifty thousand. These things not only excited Pyrrhus himself, but also cast into the Epirotes eagerness and impulse for the campaign.
There was a certain Cineas, a Thessalian man, who seemed to be sufficiently intelligent, and who, having heard the orator Demosthenes, seemed alone among the speakers of that time to remind his hearers, as in an image, of that man's power and skill. Being with Pyrrhus and sent to the cities, he confirmed the line of Euripides, that speech accomplishes everything that the enemy's iron could do.
Pyrrhus, in any case, liked to remark that Cineas's eloquence had gained him more cities than his own weapons had won; and so he kept the man in the highest honor and made continual use of his services. This man, then, seeing Pyrrhus at that time set upon Italy, when he saw him at leisure, drew him into conversation of this sort: "The Romans, Pyrrhus, are said to be warlike, and rulers of many warlike nations; but if a god should grant us to overcome these men, what use shall we make of the victory?" And Pyrrhus said,
"You ask, Cineas," he said, "a thing that is obvious: once the Romans are defeated, there will be no barbarian city there, nor any Greek one, able to match us, but we shall have at once the whole of Italy — whose size and excellence and power it befits no one to be ignorant of more than you." Then Cineas, pausing a little, said, "But having taken Italy, O King, what
shall we do?" And Pyrrhus, not yet seeing his intent, said, "Sicily is near and stretches out her hands to us, a rich and populous island, and very easy to capture: for everything there, Cineas, is now faction and civil disorder in the cities and the sharp rivalry of demagogues, now that Agathocles is gone." "What you say is likely," said Cineas: "but will this be the end for us of the campaign, to take Sicily?" "God,"
said Pyrrhus, "may grant us to conquer and succeed; and these things will we use as a stepping-stone toward great affairs. For who would hold back from Libya and Carthage, once they came within reach — which Agathocles, slipping away secretly from Syracuse and crossing with a few ships, came within a hair's breadth of taking? And when we have mastered these, that none of our enemies now insulting us will be able to withstand us — who could say otherwise?"
"Nothing," said Cineas: "for it is clear that to recover Macedonia too, and to rule Greece securely, will be within our power, once we have so great a force. But once all this has come under our sway, what shall we do?" And Pyrrhus, laughing, said, "We shall have great leisure, my good man, and daily drinking, and we shall entertain one another with conversation."
Having brought Pyrrhus to this point in the conversation, Cineas said, "Then what now stands in our way, if we wish to enjoy our drinking and have leisure with one another, since we already have these things and they are at hand without trouble — the very things toward which we intend to make our way through blood and great toils and dangers, once we have first inflicted great injury on others and endured no less ourselves?"
With these words Cineas troubled Pyrrhus more than he changed his mind, for Pyrrhus, understanding how much happiness he was leaving behind, was nevertheless unable to let go of the hopes he desired.
First, then, he sent Cineas ahead to the Tarentines with three thousand soldiers; then, when many horse-transports and decked ships and ferries of all sorts had been brought from Tarentum, he embarked twenty elephants, three thousand cavalry, twenty-two thousand infantry, two thousand archers, and five hundred slingers; and when all was ready he put out to sea and sailed. And while in the middle of the Ionian sea he was caught by a north wind that broke out untimely.
And being driven by it, he himself, by the excellence and eagerness of his sailors and helmsmen, managed to bring the ship up and press toward land, though only after severe strain and peril; the remainder of the fleet, however, fell into disorder and its vessels were scattered — some, missing Italy, were driven out into the Libyan and Sicilian seas, and others, unable to round Cape Iapygia, were caught by night, and a great and violent sea, dashing them against places hard to anchor and unseen, destroyed all of them except the royal ship,
which, while the wave was still coming from the side, defended itself and, by its size and strength, escaped the assaults of the sea; but when the wind, coming round from the land, met it head on, and the ship, standing bow-on against a great swell, was in danger of being broken apart, while letting it run before the now-savage sea and a wind veering every way seemed more terrifying than the dangers already present, Pyrrhus rose and threw himself into the sea,
and at once there was a rivalry and eagerness among his friends and bodyguards around him. The night and the wave, with great noise and rough buffeting, made rescue difficult, so that it was only with difficulty, as the wind was already dying down with the coming of day, that he threw himself onto the land, altogether powerless in body, but with the boldness and strength of soul rising up against his helplessness.
At the same time the Messapians, on whose coast he had been cast up, ran together eagerly to help with what they had at hand; and some of the ships that had survived came in as well, in which there were altogether very few cavalry, fewer than two thousand infantry, and two elephants.
Taking these up, Pyrrhus marched to Tarentum. And when Cineas, on learning of this, brought the soldiers out to meet him, Pyrrhus, upon entering, did nothing against the will of the Tarentines nor by force, until his fleet had been recovered from the water and the bulk of his troops had assembled.
At that time, seeing that the multitude, without great compulsion, could neither be saved nor save others, but sat at home amid baths and social gatherings as if it were he alone who fought their war for them, he closed the gymnasiums and the walks, in which, idling, they used to conduct their strategy in words about affairs, and he abolished drinking-parties and revels and untimely feasting; he called them to arms, and in the matter of the enrollment lists of those to serve he was unyielding and harsh, so that many left the city, calling the unaccustomed rule that did not allow them to live for pleasure slavery.
But when it was reported that Laevinus, the Roman consul, was advancing against him with a large army, ravaging Lucania as he went, his allies not yet having arrived, Pyrrhus, thinking it a grave thing to send a herald to the Romans asking, as a favor, that they wait and allow the enemy to come closer, went out with his forces, having first sent word that he was willing to obtain justice for the Italiots from the Romans before war, by acting as judge and arbiter himself,
but when Laevinus answered that the Romans would neither choose Pyrrhus as arbiter nor fear him as an enemy, Pyrrhus moved his army forward and set camp on the plain lying between Pandosia and Heraclea. Learning that the Romans were near and encamped on the opposite bank of the river Siris, he rode down to the water's edge to observe them; and seeing their order, their guards, their arrangement, and the shape of their camp, he was amazed,
and addressing the nearest of his friends, he said, "This order of the barbarians, Megacles, is not barbarous — but the work we shall find out." And already turning his mind to what was to come, he decided to wait for his allies, and set a guard over the river to hinder the Romans, should they attempt to cross first.
But they, eager to forestall the very thing he had decided to wait for, attempted the crossing — the infantry by the ford, the cavalry riding across the river at many points — so that the Greeks, fearing encirclement, began to withdraw; and Pyrrhus, perceiving this and thrown into confusion, ordered the infantry commanders to form their line at once and wait under arms, while he himself rode out with the cavalry, three thousand strong, hoping to catch the Romans still crossing and scattered, in disorder.
But when he saw many shields appearing above the river and the cavalry riding up in formation, he closed ranks and charged first, being at once conspicuous by the beauty and brightness of his arms, adorned beyond measure, and showing by his deeds a reputation not falling short of his valor: and especially because, though he exposed his hands and body to the fight and warded off vigorously those before him, he was not confused in his reasoning nor did he lose his presence of mind,
but, as though watching from outside, he steered the battle, himself running to each point and bringing help to those who seemed hard-pressed. There Leonnatus the Macedonian, catching sight of an Italian man watching Pyrrhus and wheeling his horse to keep pace with him, always shifting and moving together with him, said, "Do you see, O King, that barbarian, whom the black horse with white feet carries? He seems to be intent on some great and terrible design.
For he keeps his eye on you and is bent toward you, full of spirit and rage, and lets the others be. But guard yourself against the man." And Pyrrhus answered, "What is fated, Leonnatus, is impossible to escape: but neither he nor any other Italian will come to close quarters with us gladly." While they were still speaking of this, the Italian, gripping his spear and wheeling his horse, charged at Pyrrhus.
Then at once he struck the king's horse with his spear, while Leonnatus, riding alongside, struck his. Both horses fell, and Pyrrhus's friends, surrounding him, snatched him up, while they killed the Italian as he fought. He was by birth a Frentanian, commander of a squadron, named Oplacus.
This taught Pyrrhus to keep a sharper watch over himself; and seeing his cavalry giving way, he sent for the phalanx and drew it up in order, while he himself, transferring his cloak and armor to a companion named Megacles and concealing his own identity beneath that man's gear, led the attack on the Romans. They received him and joined battle, and for a long time the fortunes of the battle stood undecided; indeed it is reported that flight and pursuit reversed direction seven times on both sides,
for the exchange of arms, made in time for the king's own safety, very nearly overturned the whole affair and destroyed the victory. For as many were making for Megacles, the one who first struck him down, named Dexous, snatched up his helmet and cloak, galloped over to Laevinus to show them off, shouting all the while that he had killed Pyrrhus.
So it was that, once the spoils had been paraded down the line of ranks for all to see, shouts of joy rose among the Romans, while despondency and consternation spread among the Greeks, until Pyrrhus, learning what was happening, rode along with his face bare, stretching out his right hand to those fighting and signaling by his voice who he was; and at last, when the beasts pressed the Romans hardest, and the horses, before even coming near, were becoming unmanageable and throwing off their riders, he brought up the Thessalian cavalry against them in their confusion and routed them with great slaughter.
Dionysius, then, records that a little fewer than fifteen thousand Romans fell, though Hieronymus puts the number at merely seven thousand; of Pyrrhus's men Dionysius says thirteen thousand, Hieronymus fewer than four thousand — and these were the best of them; and Pyrrhus lost friends and generals whom he had continued to use and trust most.
Nevertheless he also took the Roman camp when they abandoned it, and brought over cities allied to them, and ravaged much territory, and advanced to within no more than three hundred stadia of Rome. Many of the Lucanians and Samnites came to him after the battle, whom he reproached for being late, but he was clearly pleased and proud that with only his own men and the Tarentines he had overcome the great power of the Romans.
The Romans did not remove Laevinus from his command, though it is said that Gaius Fabricius remarked that it was not the Epirotes who had defeated the Romans, but Pyrrhus who had defeated Laevinus — meaning that the defeat had come about not through the army's weakness but through generalship; and by filling up their ranks eagerly and forming others, and by speaking fearless and haughty words about the war, they filled Pyrrhus with astonishment.
It seemed good to him, then, first to send and make trial of the men, to see whether they were inclined to come to terms, thinking that to take the city and master it entirely was no small task, nor one for his present force, but that friendship and reconciliation would look best for his reputation after a victory. So Cineas was sent and met with the men of influence, and sent gifts from the king to their children and wives, but no one accepted them,
but all the men and women answered that once a public treaty had been made, what came from them too would be given freely and gladly to the king. And when Cineas addressed the Senate with many winning and kindly words, they received them with no pleasure and no readiness, although Pyrrhus was releasing without ransom the men taken captive in the battle, and promising to help them subdue Italy,
asking in return only friendship for himself and immunity for the Tarentines, and nothing else. Yet it was plain that the majority were inclining toward peace, having been beaten in a great battle and expecting another from a greater force, now that the Italian peoples had joined Pyrrhus.
It was then that Appius Claudius, a distinguished man who through old age and blindness together had given up active politics and had ceased attending, could not restrain himself when word came of the king's proposals and a report was going around that the senate was about to vote for a settlement. He had his servants lift him up and carried him to the senate house in a litter through the marketplace.
When he had arrived at the doors, it was his sons and sons-in-law who lifted and supported him, surrounding him on every side as they escorted him inside, and the senate, out of respect, kept a reverent silence for the man.
Rising from where he stood, he said: "Before now, Romans, I bore the misfortune of my eyes with distress, but now I am grieved not only to be blind but also not to be deaf as well, since I hear the shameful proposals and decrees you are making, which overturn the glory of Rome. For where now is that boast of yours, forever repeated to all mankind, that if the great Alexander himself had come to Italy and clashed with us when we were young and our fathers stood at the height of their powers, he would not today enjoy fame as unconquered, but would instead either have fled or died on this very ground, leaving Rome all the more renowned?
Yet by these actions you show that this was empty boasting and bluster — you who fear the Chaonians and Molossians, the perpetual prey of the Macedonians, and tremble before Pyrrhus, who has never done anything but attend upon and court one of Alexander's own bodyguards, and who now wanders about Italy not so much helping the Greeks here as fleeing his enemies there, promising us dominion with a force that was not even enough for him to keep hold of a small part of Macedonia.
Do not think that by making him your friend you will be rid of him — rather you will be drawing on those others, who will despise you as men easily overcome by anyone, if Pyrrhus departs without paying the penalty for his insolence, and even receives a reward for having let the Tarentines and Samnites laugh at the Romans." When Appius had spoken in this way, an eagerness for war seized them, and they sent Cineas away with the answer that if Pyrrhus left Italy, then, if he wished,
he might take up talk of friendship and an alliance; but for as long as he stayed armed on Italian soil, the Romans would press war against him with every resource, even should he defeat ten thousand more men like Laevinus in battle. Cineas, so the story goes, made use of the time he spent handling this business to also observe their manner of life closely and to examine what was excellent in their political arrangements,
and having spoken with the leading men, he reported to Pyrrhus everything else, and told him that the senate had struck him as a gathering made up of many kings, and that where the common people were concerned, he feared they might end up battling something resembling a Lernaean Hydra — for already twice as many men had been gathered for the consul as had been arrayed before, and there were still that many more Romans capable of bearing arms.
After this, envoys arrived concerning the prisoners, led by Gaius Fabricius, a man whom Cineas said the Romans held in the highest regard as a good and warlike man, though extremely poor. Pyrrhus, treating him with special kindness in private, tried to persuade him to take gold, not for anything shameful, but calling it a token of friendship and hospitality.
When Fabricius refused it, Pyrrhus let the matter rest for the time; but the next day, wanting to give him a shock, seeing that Fabricius had never laid eyes on an elephant before, Pyrrhus had the largest of his beasts placed behind them as they talked, hidden by a curtain hung in front of it. The plan went forward, and on a given cue the curtain was pulled aside, whereupon the beast abruptly lifted its trunk above Fabricius' head and released a harsh, terrifying bellow.
Fabricius turned around calmly, and smiling at Pyrrhus said: "Neither did your gold move me yesterday, nor does your beast today." At dinner, when talk of all sorts arose, most of it about Greece and its philosophers, Cineas happened to mention Epicurus, and went through what they say about the gods and the constitution and the end of life — placing the end in pleasure, avoiding political life as harmful and disruptive of happiness, and removing the divine as far as possible from favor and anger and any concern for us, banishing it to a life free of trouble and full of enjoyment.
While he was still speaking, Fabricius cried out, "By Heracles," he said, "may Pyrrhus and his Samnites cling to that philosophy for as long as their war against us continues!" Pyrrhus, so struck with admiration for the man's spirit and character, desired all the more to have friendship with the city instead of war, and privately urged Fabricius, once the settlement was made, to come and live with him, first among all his companions and generals. But Fabricius, it is said, quietly replied to him, "But this, O king, would not even be to your advantage; for those who now honor and admire you, if they should have experience of me, will wish to be ruled by me rather than by you." Such a man was Fabricius.
Pyrrhus received this speech neither with anger nor tyrannically, but reported Fabricius' magnanimity to his friends, and entrusted the prisoners to him alone, so that, if the senate should not vote for peace, they might greet their relatives, keep the festival of the Cronia, and then be sent back again to him; and once the festival had ended they were duly returned to him, the senate having decreed death as the penalty for anyone left behind.
After this, when Fabricius had taken up the command, a man came to the camp bringing him a letter, which the king's physician had written, offering to kill Pyrrhus with poison, if he should be granted a reward by the Romans, thereby ending the war without risk. Fabricius, disgusted at the man's injustice, and having disposed his fellow-commander likewise, sent a letter in haste to Pyrrhus, warning him that he should watch out for the conspiracy.
The letter ran as follows: "From Gaius Fabricius and Quintus Aemilius, consuls representing Rome, to King Pyrrhus, greetings. You seem to be an unfortunate judge of both friends and enemies; once you have read what we have written to you, you will understand that the men you fight are good and just, while those you trust are wicked and unjust.
We reveal this not for your favor, but so that your misfortune may not bring reproach upon us, and so that we may not seem to have accomplished the war by treachery, as though unable to do it by valor." When Pyrrhus had read this letter and exposed the plot, he punished the physician, and as a return gift to Fabricius and the Romans he handed over the prisoners without ransom, and again sent Cineas to negotiate peace for him.
But the Romans, deeming it right to take the men without ransom neither as a favor from an enemy nor as payment for not being wronged, released to him an equal number of Tarentine and Samnite prisoners, and would allow no discussion at all of friendship and peace until he had taken up his arms and army and sailed back to Epirus in the same ships in which he had come.
After this, since circumstances called for another battle, he took up his army and advanced, and joining battle with the Romans near the city of Asculum, forcing his way through ground unsuited to cavalry and a wooded, rough river, where the elephants could not make their charge so as to engage the phalanx, many wounds were inflicted and many fell dead, and the fighting was undecided until it was broken off by nightfall.
The next day, intending to wage the engagement on open, level ground while driving the elephants forward against the enemy lines, he first seized the difficult terrain with a guard, and after mixing in a great many javelins and arrows among the beasts, brought forward his force, dense and well ordered, with strength and force. The Romans, not having the room to sidestep and maneuver as before, met him head-on on level ground: and hastening to push back the heavy infantry before the beasts could engage, they fought terrible battles of swords against the long spears, sparing themselves nothing, intent only on wounding and cutting down, counting suffering as nothing,
and after a long time it is said that the beginning of the rout occurred at the point where Pyrrhus himself pressed upon those arrayed against him, but the greater part of the victory was achieved by the strength and force of the elephants, since the Romans were unable to make use of their valor against them, but thought they must give way, as before the onrush of a wave or a collapsing earthquake, rather than stand their ground and die uselessly, suffering the worst while accomplishing nothing.
The flight was not long before reaching the camp; Hieronymus says that six thousand of the Romans died, while in Pyrrhus' own royal memoranda it is recorded that three thousand five hundred and five of his men were killed.
Dionysius, however, records neither two battles at Asculum nor an acknowledged Roman defeat, but says that they fought once until sunset and barely managed to separate, Pyrrhus having taken a javelin wound to his arm while, meanwhile, the Daunians plundered his baggage train, and that more than fifteen thousand men died on both sides, of Pyrrhus' and the Romans' alike. Both sides then withdrew: and it is said that Pyrrhus said to one of those who congratulated him, "If we win one more battle against the Romans, we shall be utterly destroyed."
For a great part of the force he had brought with him had perished, and all his friends and generals save a few were gone, and there were no others he could summon, while he saw that his allies there had grown less eager, whereas the Romans, as though from a spring flowing from home, had their camp easily and quickly refilled, and did not lose heart at their defeats, but even gained strength and rivalry from their anger for the war.
While he was in such straits, he again fell into new hopes, and into affairs that divided his judgment. For at the same time men came from Sicily offering him Agrigentum, Syracuse, and Leontini, and asking him to help drive out the Carthaginians and free the island from its tyrants; while from Greece came messengers announcing that Ptolemy Ceraunus had perished, having clashed with the Gauls along with his forces, and that now, if ever, would be the moment for a king to come to the Macedonians, who most needed one.
He complained much of fortune for bringing him the opportunities for great enterprises all at one time, and thinking that, if he had both, he would lose one of them, he wavered long in his reasoning. Then, since the Sicilian affairs seemed to promise greater undertakings, and Libya seemed close at hand,
he turned to these, and at once sent Cineas ahead to negotiate beforehand with the cities, as was his custom, while he himself, when the Tarentines grew resentful, threw a garrison into their city, and when they demanded either that he should fulfill the purpose for which he had come by fighting alongside them against the Romans, or else leave their country and their city as he had received it, he gave them no fair answer, but ordered them to keep quiet and wait for his own convenience, and sailed off.
When he set foot in Sicily, the things he had hoped for at once proved secure, and the cities gave themselves over eagerly; but where struggle and force were needed, at first nothing resisted him, but with thirty thousand infantry, two thousand five hundred cavalry, and two hundred ships he advanced and drove out the Phoenicians and overthrew their dominion; and since Eryx was the strongest of their strongholds and had many defenders, he resolved to force the walls,
and once his forces stood ready, he donned his complete suit of armor, and coming forward he vowed to Heracles that he would hold games and offer a sacrifice of first-fruits, if he should show himself a worthy champion, worthy of his lineage and his position, before the Greeks who dwelt in Sicily; and giving the signal with the trumpet and scattering the barbarians with missiles and bringing up the ladders, he was the first to mount the wall,
and when many stood against him, defending himself he thrust some off the wall on either side and cast them down, and using his sword he heaped up the greatest number of corpses around himself, while he himself suffered nothing, but even appeared terrible to look upon to his enemies, and showed that Homer was right and spoke from experience in declaring that of all the virtues, courage alone is often carried away in fits of divine frenzy and madness. When the city was captured, he made a magnificent sacrifice to the god and provided spectacles of every kind of contest.
As for the barbarians around Messene, called the Mamertines, who were troubling the Greeks greatly, having made some of them tributary payers of tribute, and being numerous and warlike (which is why they were called Arei in the Latin tongue), he seized and killed their tax collectors, and defeating them in battle he destroyed many of their strongholds.
When the Carthaginians, being inclined to come to terms and willing to pay money if there could be friendship, and to send ships, he answered — reaching for more — that there could be one settlement and friendship with them, if they would abandon all Sicily and take the Libyan sea as their boundary with the Greeks,
and lifted up by good fortune and the strength of his present position, and pursuing the hopes for which he had originally sailed, aiming first at Libya, and having many ships lacking crews, he raised rowers, dealing with the cities not with fairness or gentleness but despotically, forcing and punishing in anger — not being such from the very beginning, but rather more than others winning men over by pleasant dealing and trusting everyone and troubling no one, and then, turning from a popular leader into a tyrant, he acquired a reputation for harshness in ingratitude and for faithlessness.
Nevertheless they conceded these things as necessary, though bearing them with difficulty; but when he came to suspect Thoenon and Sosistratus, leading men in Syracuse, who had been the first to persuade him to come to Sicily, and who upon his arrival had at once put the city into his hands and had cooperated most in his Sicilian achievements, being unwilling either to take them with him or to leave them behind, he held them in suspicion, and Sosistratus withdrew out of fear,
while he killed Thoenon, charging him with holding the same views. Not by small degrees, nor in one respect only, did his position shift, but once a terrible hatred had arisen among the cities toward him, some went over to the Carthaginians, others brought in the Mamertines. Seeing everywhere revolts and uprisings and a strong combination against himself, letters reached him from the Samnites and Tarentines, who could scarcely maintain themselves any longer in their own cities amid the war, cut off from all their land and pleading for assistance.
This was a respectable pretext, so that his sailing away would not seem to be flight or despair over the state of affairs there; but the truth was that, unable to master Sicily—tossed about like a storm-battered ship—but seeking a way out, he flung himself once more into Italy. It is said that as he was already departing, looking back at the island, he said to those around him, "What a wrestling-ground, my friends, we are leaving behind for Carthaginians and Romans." And this, just as it was conjectured, came to pass not long afterward.
When the barbarians combined against him as he sailed away, he fought a sea-battle against the Carthaginians in the narrow channel; several of his ships were destroyed, but with the rest he took refuge on the coast of Italy. The Mamertines, no fewer than ten thousand, had crossed over ahead of him; though afraid to meet him in open battle, they attacked in difficult terrain, fell upon him, and threw his whole army into confusion. Two of his beasts fell, and many of his rearguard were killed.
He himself, then, rode up from the vanguard and fought back, risking danger against men trained for war and high-spirited. Struck on the head with a sword, and drawing back a little from the fighters, he only spurred the enemy on the more. One man, running out far ahead of the others, great in body and splendid in arms, spoke with a bolder voice and called on him to come forward, if he was alive.
Pyrrhus, provoked, turned back by force through his shield-bearers, and in his anger, smeared with blood and terrible to look upon in the face, thrust his way through them and, reaching the barbarian first, struck him on the head with his sword a blow that, through the strength of his arm together with the excellence of the steel's temper, ran clean down to the lower parts, so that in a single stroke the two halves of the body, cut in two, fell apart to either side.
This checked the barbarians from advancing further, as though they were marveling at and struck with awe of Pyrrhus as one of the mightier beings. He himself passed through the rest of the way without fear, arriving at Tarentum with a force of twenty thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry. Taking up the best of the Tarentines, he immediately led his army against the Romans, who were encamped in Samnite territory.
As for the Samnites, their affairs had been ruined, and their spirit had given way, having been beaten in many battles by the Romans. There was also some resentment toward Pyrrhus on account of his voyage to Sicily; hence not many of them joined him. Dividing all his forces in two, he sent some into Lucania to engage one of the consuls, so that he would not come to the aid of the other,
while he himself led the rest against Manius Curius, who was encamped in a secure position near the city of Beneventum, waiting for the reinforcement from Lucania. There were times, too, when he held back because the seers, by omens of birds and sacrifices, were dissuading him. So Pyrrhus, eager to attack these forces before the others arrived, took his best men and the most warlike of the beasts and set out by night against the camp.
But as he went around by a long road, thick with woodland, his torches did not last, and his soldiers went astray; and while time was spent over this the night ran out, and he was seen at daybreak by the enemy coming on from the heights, so that great confusion and commotion resulted. Nevertheless, since the sacrifices had turned out favorable for Manius, and the occasion compelled him to give aid, he went out and fell upon the foremost of the enemy and, routing them, put them all to flight, so that not a few fell and some of the elephants, left behind, were captured.
This victory brought Manius down to fight in the plain; and joining battle in the open he routed one part of the enemy, but in one place, forced back by the beasts and driven in toward his own camp, he called upon the guards, who stood numerous by the palisade with their arms and were fresh.
These, appearing from their fortified positions and hurling missiles at the beasts, forced them to turn back, and as they fled backward through their own allies they caused confusion and disorder, which handed the victory over to the Romans, and with it also the mastery of leadership; for indeed, having gained in spirit and power and reputation as being unconquerable from that display of valor and those struggles, they at once held Italy, and a little later Sicily as well.
Thus Pyrrhus fell from his Italian and Sicilian hopes, having spent six years on the wars there, and though worsted in his affairs, he preserved his courage unconquered amid his defeats; and he was judged, in warlike experience and in hand and in daring, to be by far the foremost of the kings of his time, but what he acquired by his actions he lost through his hopes, since through desire for what was absent he never managed, for what was needed, to secure what he already had.
For this reason Antigonus likened him to a dice-player who throws many fine casts but does not know how to make use of what has fallen. Having brought back into Epirus a force of eight thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry, with no money on hand, he went looking for a war that could support his army, and when some of the Gauls joined him, he invaded Macedonia, then ruled by Antigonus son of Demetrius, intending to use it for plunder and pillage,
but when he also took many cities and two thousand soldiers went over to him, hoping for something more he set out against Antigonus, and falling upon him near the Narrows he threw the whole enemy force into disarray. The Gaulish troops stationed in Antigonus's rearguard, numerous in number, held their ground stoutly; and after a hard-fought battle most of these were cut down, while the commanders of the elephants, being cut off, surrendered themselves and all the beasts,
Pyrrhus, having gained such an addition to his forces, and trusting more to fortune than to calculation, led his phalanx against the Macedonians, who were full of confusion and fear on account of their defeat. So they held back from any charge or fight against him, and as he stretched out his right hand and called out to the generals and captains, he drew off all the infantry of Antigonus over to himself in a body.
Antigonus himself, fleeing with a few horsemen, held on to some of the coastal cities, but Pyrrhus, amid such great good fortune, thinking that his affair with the Gauls had contributed most to his glory, set apart the finest and most magnificent among the spoils as an offering in Athena Itonis's temple, inscribing upon the shields this elegiac verse: "These shields, taken from the bold Gauls, Pyrrhus the Molossian hung as a gift to Itonian Athena, having destroyed the whole army of Antigonus—no great wonder: spearmen are the sons of Aeacus, both now and of old."
After the battle he at once recovered the cities, and having mastered the Aegae he dealt harshly with the people in other respects, and left a Gallic garrison in the city drawn from those serving with him; and the Gauls, being a race most insatiable for money, set about digging up the tombs of the kings buried there, plundering the money and scattering the bones in outrage.
Pyrrhus seemed to take this lightly and carelessly, either putting off the punishment of the barbarians on account of certain pressing business, or altogether letting it go through fear; hence he was ill spoken of by the Macedonians. But since his affairs did not yet have firmness and stable footing, his mind was again swaying toward other hopes, and, mocking Antigonus, he called him shameless for not putting on the common cloak but still wearing the purple. And when Cleonymus the Spartan arrived and invited him to Lacedaemon, he eagerly complied.
Cleonymus was of royal stock, but being thought violent and disposed to tyranny, he had neither goodwill nor trust; instead Areus was king. This was one grievance held against him by the citizens, and an older one; and Cleonymus, though already elderly, had married a beautiful woman of royal descent, Chilonis, daughter of Leotychidas. She, having become infatuated with Acrotatus son of Areus, a youth in the bloom of his prime, made the marriage painful and disgraceful for Cleonymus, who loved her, for it was no secret to any Spartan that he was scorned by his wife,
So, when these domestic vexations were added to his political grievances, in anger and heavy resentment he brought Pyrrhus against Sparta, leading a force of twenty-five thousand infantry, two thousand cavalry, and two dozen elephants, so that by the sheer size of the preparation it was at once clear that he was acquiring not Sparta for Cleonymus, but the Peloponnese for himself, since in word, even to the Lacedaemonians who came as envoys to him at Megalopolis, he denied it.
For he said he had come to free the cities under Antigonus, and, by Zeus, that he would send the younger boys to Sparta, if nothing prevented it, to be raised in the Laconian customs, so that in this respect Cleonymus would have more than all kings put together—fashioning these things and misleading those who met him along the way; but as soon as he touched Laconian soil he began plundering and pillaging.
When the envoys complained that he had brought war upon them without declaring it, he said, "But neither do you Spartans give warning of what you intend to do to others." One of those present, named Mandrocleidas, said in the Laconian dialect: "If indeed you are a god, we shall suffer no harm, for we do no wrong; but if you are a man, there will be another stronger than you."
From there he went down against Lacedaemon; and though Cleonymus urged him to attack straight from the march, Pyrrhus, as is said, worried his men would sack the city should they strike it under cover of darkness, held back, saying they could accomplish the same thing in daylight. For they themselves were few and unprepared because of the suddenness of it, and Areus happened not to be present, but was in Crete helping the Gortynians, who were at war; and this above all saved the city, being held in contempt on account of its desolation and weakness.
For Pyrrhus, thinking no one would fight, encamped for the night, while the friends and helots of Cleonymus adorned and prepared his house as though Pyrrhus were to dine there. When night came, the Lacedaemonians first resolved to send the women away to Crete, but they resisted. Archidamia, sword in hand, went to the council chamber and reproached the men on behalf of the women, if they thought it right for the women to live while Sparta perished.
Then they decided to dig a trench parallel to the enemy's camp, and on either side of it to plant the wagons, burying them up to the middle of the wheels, so that, having a firm and hard-to-dislodge footing, they might stand in the way of the beasts. As they began this work, some of the maidens and women came to them, some in cloaks, with their tunics girt up, others in a single tunic, to work alongside the elders.
They ordered those who were to fight to rest, and taking the measurements themselves they completed a third part of the trench by themselves. Its width came to six cubits, its depth to four, and it ran eight plethra in length, as Phylarchus records; according to Hieronymus, it was less.
At daybreak, as the enemy were stirring, they handed the arms to the young men, giving over to them the trench to defend and guard, telling them it was sweet to win victory before their homeland's own eyes, and a glorious thing to perish held in the embrace of mothers and wives, dying a death worthy of Sparta. Chilonis, off by herself, kept a noose ready, determined that Cleonymus should never get hold of her should the city fall.
Pyrrhus himself pressed forward face to face with his hoplites against the many shields of the Spartans drawn up against him, and against a trench that, owing to its looseness, gave neither passage nor secure footing to the combatants. His son Ptolemy, leading two thousand Gauls together with select Chaonian troops, circled around the trench and attempted a crossing by way of the wagons. But these, because of their depth and closeness, made not only his advance but also the Lacedaemonians' relief difficult to accomplish.
As the Gauls tore off the wheels and dragged the wagons down into the river, the young Acrotatus, seeing the danger, ran through the city with three hundred men and came around behind Ptolemy, unseen by him because of certain hollows in the ground, until he fell upon the rear ranks and forced them to turn and fight against him, being thrust upon each other into the trench and falling around the wagons, until with much slaughter they were at last beaten back.
The elders and the multitude of women watched Acrotatus perform this feat of valor. As he made his way back through the city to his own post, blood-covered and jubilant, elated by his victory, he seemed to the Laconian women to have grown taller and more handsome, and they envied Chilonis her love. Some of the elders followed him crying out: "Go, Acrotatus, and lie with Chilonis; only give Sparta good children."
Around Pyrrhus himself, as a fierce battle was joined, others also fought brilliantly, and Phyllius, holding out longest and killing the most of those pressing him, when he perceived himself failing from a multitude of wounds, gave way to one of those stationed near, and fell within his own line of arms, ensuring that his corpse would never fall into enemy hands.
The battle was broken off by night, and Pyrrhus, sleeping, had a vision of this sort. He dreamed that he was hurling thunderbolts at Lacedaemon and setting it all ablaze, and that he himself rejoiced. Waking from joy, he ordered his commanders to hold the army ready, and told his friends the dream, as one who would take the city by storm.
The others were wonderfully persuaded, but Lysimachus did not like the vision; rather he said he feared that, just as places struck by thunderbolts remain untrodden, the divine sign might be portending to Pyrrhus that the city would be inaccessible to him. But Pyrrhus, saying that these are the sort of things that stir up crowds at the gates and contain much folly, and that one ought instead, holding weapons in one's hands, to trust to oneself—the best omen being to defend oneself concerning Pyrrhus—rose up and led his army forward at daybreak.
The Lacedaemonians defended themselves with eagerness and valor beyond their strength; and the women were present, handing out missiles, bringing food and drink to those in need, and carrying off the wounded. For their part, the Macedonians tried to level the ditch by heaping into it vast loads of timber, and beneath this pile weapons and corpses lay concealed as it grew.
and while the Lacedaemonians were rushing to meet this attack, Pyrrhus himself was seen forcing his horse past the trench and the wagons into the city. A shout rose from those posted there, and the women fell to running about and wailing; and even as Pyrrhus rode forward, forcing back the men before him, his horse leapt up, struck under the belly by a Cretan arrow, and in its death agony threw Pyrrhus into a place that was slippery and
sloping downward. While his companions were in confusion about him, the Spartans ran up and, using their missiles, drove them all back. From this Pyrrhus also broke off the rest of the fighting, thinking that the Lacedaemonians would give way somewhat, since nearly all of them were covered with wounds and many had fallen. But the good fortune of the city — whether it was testing the men's courage, or giving proof of what power it itself possesses in desperate circumstances —
when the Lacedaemonians' hopes were already in a wretched state, brought in Ameinias the Phocian, one of Antigonus's generals, coming to their aid from Corinth with mercenaries; and hardly had they welcomed him when King Areus arrived from Crete bringing two thousand soldiers. The women at once scattered to their homes, no longer thinking it necessary to concern themselves with the fighting, and released the men who, beyond their age, had been forced under arms, and set them in order for battle.
As for Pyrrhus, some vigor and rivalry still possessed him, more from those who had newly joined him, to take the city; but when he accomplished nothing, he took blows and withdrew, and ravaged the countryside, intending to winter there. But what was fated proved inescapable. For at Argos there was factional strife between Aristeas and Aristippus. And since Aristippus seemed to be using Antigonus as a friend, Aristeas got ahead of him and called Pyrrhus into Argos,
while Pyrrhus, ever rolling hope out of hope, using his successes as starting points for other ventures, and wishing to make good with fresh undertakings whatever failures he suffered, made neither defeat nor victory the limit of his being troubled and troubling others. He immediately then marched for Argos; but Areus, laying many ambushes and seizing the most difficult parts of the road, cut off the Gauls and Molossians who were serving as his rearguard.
Now it had been foretold to Pyrrhus, from sacrifices whose livers were found without lobes, by the seer, that he would lose one of those closest to him; but at that critical moment, driven from his reasoning by the tumult and the commotion, he ordered his son Ptolemy to take the companions and go help, while he himself hurried the army out of the narrow pass more quickly.
A sharp battle broke out around Ptolemy, and the picked Lacedaemonians, led by Eualcus, closed with those fighting in front of him. A man skilled at striking and swift to run, named Oryssus, a Cretan of Aptera, ran up from the side and struck the young man as he was fighting eagerly, and brought him down.
When he had fallen and those around him had turned to flight, the Lacedaemonians, pursuing and gaining ground, unwittingly rushed as one body onto the level ground, where they found themselves boxed in by the heavy infantry; against these Pyrrhus, who had just heard of his son's death and was overcome with grief, turned the Molossian cavalry, and riding in first, glutted himself with the slaughter of the Lacedaemonians — he who always appeared invincible and terrible in arms, but then surpassed his earlier contests in daring and violence.
When he set his horse upon Eualcus, the latter, standing to the side, with his sword came close to cutting off the hand that held Pyrrhus's rein, but only struck and cut off the rein itself. Pyrrhus, at the same moment, drove his spear through him, and he slipped from his horse; and Pyrrhus, now on foot, killed all the picked men who were fighting around Eualcus. This great and needless expenditure the ambition of the commanders caused Sparta, even though the war was already at its end.
Pyrrhus, having performed something like a funeral rite for his son and having contended in a splendid funeral combat, and having vented much of his grief in his rage against the enemy, advanced on Argos, and learning that Antigonus was now encamped upon the heights above the plain, pitched his camp near Nauplia. On the next day he dispatched a herald who addressed Antigonus as a pestilence and dared him to descend to level ground and settle the kingdom's fate by combat,
and he replied that his own generalship depended more on timing than on arms, and that Pyrrhus had many roads open to death, if he was not content to live. But envoys came from Argos to both of them, asking that they withdraw and leave the city belonging to neither, since it was well-disposed to both. Antigonus was persuaded, and handed his own son over to the Argives as surety; Pyrrhus likewise agreed to pull back, yet because he offered no such pledge, he was viewed with the greater distrust.
A great sign appeared to Pyrrhus himself: for when oxen had been sacrificed, the heads, lying apart already, were seen putting out their tongues and licking up their own blood; and in the city of the Argives the prophetess of Lycean Apollo dashed out, shrieking that she beheld the city choked with corpses and carnage, and an eagle bearing down upon the fight, only to fade from sight.
Pyrrhus, approaching the walls in the thick darkness, and finding a gate which they call Diamperes opened to him by Aristeas, went unnoticed until his Gauls had slipped in and seized the marketplace. But since the gate would not admit the elephants, and because of this their towers had to be taken off them and then put on again in the dark and confusion, a delay resulted, and the Argives, becoming aware of what was happening, ran to the Aspis and the fortified places and sent to summon Antigonus.
He himself drew near and lay in wait, but sent in his generals and his son bringing substantial help. Areus too arrived with a thousand Cretans and the lightest-armed of the Spartans, and all together, falling upon the Gauls, threw them into great confusion. Pyrrhus, entering with shouting and clamor near the Cylarabis, when the Gauls answered his men's cries not boldly or confidently, guessed from their voices that they were in disorder and distress.
He therefore pressed forward more quickly, pushing on the horsemen ahead of him who were struggling and in danger amid the drainage channels with which the city is filled. There was much confusion about what was being done and ordered in the night battle, and wandering and scattering about the narrow streets, and no work of generalship was possible amid the darkness and the confused shouting and the narrowness of the passages, but both sides simply spent the time waiting for daylight.
When it was already growing light, the sight of the Aspis full of enemy arms threw Pyrrhus into confusion; and observing among the many dedications in the marketplace a bronze wolf and a bull as if coming together to fight, he was struck with alarm, recalling to himself an old oracle which had marked his death as destined for whatever hour he might witness a wolf locked in battle with a bull.
The Argives say that these figures were memorials of an ancient event that occurred among them. For when Danaus first set foot in the country, at the Pyramia of the Thyreatis, on his way to Argos, a wolf appeared fighting a bull; and Danaus, supposing that the wolf represented himself — since, being a stranger, he was attacking the natives just as the wolf was — watched the fight, and when the wolf prevailed, he prayed to Lycean Apollo and made his attempt and prevailed, Gelanor, who then was king of the Argives, being driven out by faction. This, then, was the story behind the dedication.
At this sight Pyrrhus, together with his discouragement at nothing turning out as he had hoped, thought of turning back; and fearing that the gates were too narrow, he dispatched a message to his son Helenus — stationed beyond the walls with most of the army — instructing him to breach the wall and take in those emerging, should the enemy press hard upon them,
but since the messenger, in his haste and confusion, reported nothing clearly, and moreover a mistake occurred, the young man took the rest of the beasts and the best of the soldiers and made his way in through the gates to help his father, just as Pyrrhus happened to be already turning back. As long as the marketplace afforded room for him to retreat and to fight, he defended himself against his attackers by turning about;
but when he was forced out of the marketplace onto the cramped lane that led toward the gate, he collided with those coming to his aid, advancing from the opposite direction. Some would not obey him when he shouted to them to give way, and even those who were quite eager to do so were blocked by the men pouring in behind them from the gate.
For indeed the largest elephant, fallen sideways in the gate and bellowing, lay as an obstacle to those trying to turn back; and another of those who had already gotten inside, whose name was Nicon, searching to recover his mahout who had slipped off from his wounds, and being carried against those trying to withdraw, mingled friends and enemies together, thrusting them along before him;
and they fell upon one another, until, finding his master dead, he lifted him up with his trunk, and taking him up with both tusks turned back again as though maddened, overturning and destroying all he met. So crushed and packed together against one another were they that no one man could do anything for himself, but the whole mass, like a single body bolted together, was carried in many swayings and shiftings back and forth,
and there was little actual fighting against the enemy who were from time to time caught among them or pressing from behind, but they did the greatest harm to themselves. For once a man had drawn his sword or lowered his spear he could not take it back or put it down again, but it went wherever it happened to go among all that mass, and men, falling upon one another, died.
Pyrrhus, watching the storm and surge closing around him, removed the crest that marked out his helmet and handed it to one of his companions, then, putting his trust in his horse, drove into the enemies pressing upon him; and although a spear pierced his breastplate — a wound neither fatal nor severe — he wheeled about against the one who had dealt it, an Argive, not one of the notable men, but the son of a poor and
elderly woman. She at that moment was watching the battle, like the rest of the women, from a rooftop, and when she recognized that her son was locked in combat with Pyrrhus, overcome with terror for the danger, she lifted a roof-tile with both hands and hurled it down upon Pyrrhus. It struck his head just beneath the helmet, crushing the bones joining neck to skull; his sight grew dim and the reins slipped from his hands, and he was carried down and fell near the shrine of Licymnius, unrecognized by the crowd.
But a certain Zopyrus, a soldier in the ranks of Antigonus, along with two or three companions, hurried over, recognized him, and hauled him into a doorway right as he was starting to stir back to consciousness after the blow. When Zopyrus drew an Illyrian dagger meaning to cut off his head, he gave him such a terrible look that Zopyrus, thrown into a panic, with his hands trembling yet attempting the task, full of confusion and disorder, cut not straight through but through the mouth and chin, slowly
and with difficulty tore off the head. By now the event had become known to more people, and Alcyoneus, running up, asked for the head, as if to examine it; and taking it, he rode off to his father, and cast it before him as he sat with his friends. But Antigonus, on seeing and recognizing it, drove his son away, striking him with his staff and calling him accursed and barbarous; and he himself held his cloak before his eyes and wept, remembering his grandfather Antigonus and his father Demetrius, examples close to home of the reversal of fortune.
He then had the head and body of Pyrrhus arrayed with honor and cremated. And when Alcyoneus came upon Helenus, humbled and wearing a plain little cloak, he met him kindly and brought him to his father. Antigonus, seeing him, said, "This, my son, is better than what came before; but even now it is not right, in that you have not removed this garment, which shames us more, who are thought to be the victors,"
and thereupon, treating Helenus kindly and arraying him properly, he sent him off to Epirus, and dealt gently with the friends of Pyrrhus, having become master of his camp and of his entire force.

======== Caius Marius ========

We cannot give a third name for Gaius Marius, any more than we can for Quintus Sertorius, who held Iberia, or for Lucius Mummius, who took Corinth — for that man's achievement gave him the surname Achaicus, just as Africanus was given to Scipio and Macedonicus to Metellus.
It is on this basis that Posidonius thinks he can refute those who believe the third name to be the proper one for Romans, such as Camillus, Marcellus, and Cato — for men called by only two names would, on this reasoning, be nameless. But he fails to notice that by the same argument he himself makes women nameless: for no woman is given the first of the names, which Posidonius supposes to be the proper name for Romans.
Of the other names, one is the shared clan-name, from kinship — as with the Pompeii, the Manlii, and the Cornelii, just as one might say Heraclidae or Pelopidae — while the other is a nickname given from some quality attached to a person's nature or deeds or bodily form or condition, as with Macrinus, Torquatus, and Sulla, or such names as Mnemon, Grypus, and Callinicus. On this last point the irregularity of custom offers many grounds for inquiry.
We have seen a stone likeness of the face of Marius set up in Ravenna in Gaul, thoroughly in keeping with the harshness and bitterness of character attributed to him. For being by nature manly and warlike, and having had more of a soldier's than a statesman's education, he kept his temper unchecked whenever he held power.
It is said that he neither learned Greek letters nor made use of the Greek tongue for any serious purpose, holding it ridiculous to learn a language whose teachers were slaves to others; and that after his second triumph, when providing Greek games in dedication of a certain temple, he came into the theater, sat down only for a moment, and left at once.
Just as Plato often used to say to the philosopher Xenocrates, whose character seemed rather too austere, "My dear Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces," so too, had anyone talked Marius into offering worship to the Muses and Graces of Greece, he would not have crowned his most brilliant generalships and public services with so hideous a finishing-stroke, running aground, under the force of temper and untimely love of power and insatiable greed, into the harshest and most savage old age. But let these matters be judged straightaway from the actions themselves.
Born of parents altogether without distinction — laborers and poor — his father bearing the same name, his mother named Fulcinia, he came to see a city only late in life and got his first taste of city pursuits then; the rest of the time he spent living in the village of Cirrhaeaton in the territory of Arpinum, a life rougher than the refined and polished sort, but temperate, and resembling the old nurture of the Romans.
In his first military service, fighting the Celtiberians during Scipio Africanus's siege of Numantia, he did not escape the general's notice, standing out among the other young men for courage and readily accepting the change in regimen which Scipio was imposing on troops corrupted by luxury and extravagance. It is also said that he engaged an enemy man in single combat and struck him down in the general's sight,
For which reason he was advanced by Scipio with various honors; and once, when a conversation arose after dinner about generals, and one of those present, whether in genuine perplexity or to please, asked Scipio what sort of leader and champion the Roman people would have after him, Scipio, as Marius reclined nearby, gently struck his shoulder with his hand and said, "Perhaps this one." So gifted was the one to appear great while still a youth, the other to perceive the end from the beginning.
It is said that Marius, most of all stirred by this utterance, as by a divine omen, was lifted up in his hopes and set out for a political career, and obtained the tribunate of the people through the eager support of Caecilius Metellus, whose household he had cultivated from the outset, following his father's example.
In his tribunate, when he proposed a certain law concerning voting that seemed to take away from the powerful their influence over trials, Cotta the consul opposed it and persuaded the senate to fight against the law and to summon Marius to give an account of himself. When this decree had been drafted and he came in, he did not behave as a young man might who had not yet come forward into public life with any distinction; rather, already crediting himself with as much confidence as his later actions would justify, he threatened to have Cotta led off to prison unless he rescinded the decree,
And when Cotta turned to Metellus and asked his opinion, Metellus rose and supported the consul; whereupon Marius summoned his officer from outside and ordered him to lead Metellus himself off to prison. When Metellus called on the other tribunes for help, no one came to his aid, and the senate, yielding, gave up the decree; and Marius, marching out in triumph to the people, got the law ratified, and won a reputation for being unbending before fear, unmoved by shame, and formidable in standing up against the senate for the favor of the popular leaders,
Nevertheless he quickly changed this reputation by another political act. For when a law was brought in concerning grain handouts to the populace, he fought it with great vigor and carried the day, thereby setting himself on an equal footing of esteem with both parties, as showing favor to neither side against the common good.
After his tribunate he was a candidate for the greater aedileship — since the office comes in two ranks, one named for the curved-legged curule chairs, on which the officeholders sit to transact business, the lower grade being called the plebeian aedileship. Once men have chosen the more honored office, they may then again seek a vote for the other.
So when Marius was plainly seen to be falling behind in that election, he quickly shifted and asked instead for the other. Being thought bold and presumptuous, he failed in that too; and though he suffered two defeats in a single day, a thing no one else had experienced, he did not lower his spirit even a little; and not long afterward, seeking the praetorship, he came close to losing that too, being declared elected last of all the candidates, and afterward faced a charge of bribery.
The greatest suspicion arose from a slave of Cassius Sabaco, who was seen inside the barriers mixed in among those carrying the ballots; for Sabaco was among Marius's closest friends. When summoned by the judges, he said that, being thirsty from the heat, he had asked for cold water, and that his slave, holding a cup, had come in to him, and then had left again at once after he drank.
This man was afterward expelled from the senate by the censors, being judged deserving of that fate either for perjury or for his lack of self-control. And a witness was brought in against Marius too, one Gaius Herennius, who said it was not ancestral custom to testify against one's clients — for so the Romans call their patrons — and that the men of the house of Herennius had, from the beginning, had Marius's parents and Marius himself as clients.
When the judges accepted this refusal to testify, Marius himself spoke against Herennius, saying that once he was declared a magistrate, his status as a client had ended — a claim not wholly accurate, since it is not every office that releases a man and his household from owing themselves a patron, but rather only that particular office for which the law reserves a curule seat of honor. Nevertheless, though he fared badly in the early days of the trial and found the judges hostile, on the last day he was unexpectedly acquitted, the votes coming out equal.
In his praetorship, then, he showed himself only moderately praised; but after his praetorship, having obtained by lot Further Iberia, he is said to have cleared the province of brigandage, it being still savage and beastlike in its customs, and brigandage not yet then considered by the Iberians as anything but honorable. On entering public life, he had neither wealth nor eloquence, the very things by which those most honored at that time led the people.
But by the very intensity of his spirit, his tirelessness in labor, and the plainness of his way of life, since these things were held in some regard by the citizens, he grew in honor toward power, so much so that he even made a splendid marriage into the illustrious house of the Caesars, marrying Julia, whose nephew was the Caesar who in later times became the greatest of the Romans, and who, out of family closeness, was in some measure an admirer of Marius, as is written in his own Life.
To Marius they attribute also self-control and endurance, of which the episode concerning the surgery is proof: for having both legs, it seems, filled with large varicose swellings, and being troubled by the disfigurement, he resolved to submit himself to the physician; and he offered one leg without being bound, without flinching or groaning, but with a steady face and in silence enduring extremes of pain during the incisions; but when the physician moved on to the other leg, he no longer offered it, saying that he saw the correction was not worth the pain.
When Caecilius Metellus, having been appointed consul-general for the war against Jugurtha, brought Marius with him to Libya as his lieutenant, there, having laid hold of great deeds and brilliant contests, Marius left off — unlike the rest — advancing Metellus's reputation and playing politics on his behalf; and, thinking that he had not been called as lieutenant by Metellus but had been brought by Fortune into the most favorable and greatest theater of action at once, he displayed every kind of manly excellence.
And although that war imposed many burdens, he shirked none of the heaviest tasks and looked down on none of the lightest, but outdid men of his own rank in sound judgment and a grasp of what would prove useful, all while matching the ordinary soldiers in plain living and hardiness, and by this he earned deep goodwill from them.
For in general it seems that for each man suffering hardship, the greatest comfort is a companion sharing the hardship willingly — for this seems to remove the sense of compulsion; and the most pleasing sight to a Roman soldier is a general eating common bread in his view, or lying on a cheap pallet, or lending a hand in some digging of a trench or building of a rampart. For they do not so much admire commanders who share honor and money as those who take a share of toil and danger, but love more those willing to labor alongside them than those who allow idleness.
By doing all this, and by winning over the soldiers through it, Marius quickly filled Libya, and quickly filled Rome, with his name and reputation, as those writing home from the camp said there was no end nor release from the war against the barbarian unless the people chose Gaius Marius as consul.
At this Metellus was plainly vexed. But what most distressed him was the affair concerning Turpillius. This man was a hereditary guest-friend of Metellus's family, and at that time, holding the post over the engineers, was serving with the army; and while garrisoning Vaga, a large city, and trusting, because he did no wrong to its inhabitants but treated them mildly and humanely, he was unaware that he had fallen into the hands of the enemy — for they had admitted Jugurtha, but did Turpillius no harm, and, having begged for his safety, let him go unharmed. He was therefore charged with treason:
and Marius, being present at the trial as an advisor, was himself harsh toward him and incited most of the others as well, so that Metellus was forced against his will to condemn the man to death. Shortly afterward, when the charge was shown to be false, the others grieved along with Metellus, who took it hard, but Marius, delighted and taking credit for the deed as though it were his own, felt no shame in telling people around that he had personally saddled Metellus with the avenging spirit of a slain guest-friend.
From this point on they were openly at odds; and it is said that once, in Marius's presence, Metellus said, as if mocking him, "So you, noble sir, mean to leave us and sail home to canvass for the consulship? Surely you would not be content to hold the consulship together with this son of mine?" — the son of Metellus being at that time altogether a mere boy.
Nevertheless, when Marius pressed to be released, Metellus, after making many delays, finally let him go, with only twelve days still remaining before the election of the consuls. He covered the long stretch from camp to the seaside at Utica within a single night and the two days framing it, then, before embarking, performed a sacrifice. And it is said that the seer told him that the god was foreshowing for him successes so great in magnitude, and beyond all expectation, as to be scarcely credible,
And lifted up by these words, he put out to sea. Crossing the strait in four days with a favorable wind, he was at once a longed-for sight to the people, and being brought forward by one of the tribunes before the assembly, amid many accusations against Metellus, he sought the office, promising either to kill Jugurtha or to take him alive,
Having been proclaimed consul with great splendor, he at once began levying troops, enrolling, contrary to law and custom, a great number of the poor and the base-born, though earlier commanders had not admitted such men, but, as though arms were some other kind of honor, bestowed them with distinction only on those judged worthy, each man's property standing as a kind of pledge.
Yet it was not chiefly this that brought Marius into disrepute, but his speeches, which, being bold, offended the leading men through their arrogance and insolence, as he shouted that he carried off the consulship as spoil taken from the softness of the well-born and the rich, and boasted to the people of wounds on his own body, not of monuments to dead men nor of other men's portraits.
Often, too, naming the generals who had failed in Libya — now Bestia, now Albinus — men of illustrious houses but who themselves had stumbled through misfortune and had failed through inexperience, he would ask his listeners whether, in their judgment, the forefathers of those very men would not have preferred praying for descendants such as himself, given that those forefathers themselves had won renown not from noble lineage but from virtue and noble deeds.
He said these things neither idly nor boastfully, nor because he wished vainly to make enemies of the powerful, but because the people, delighted that the Senate was being insulted and always measuring the greatness of a man's spirit by the boldness of his speech, kept lifting him up and urging him on not to spare the men of distinction, so as to gratify the many.
When he had crossed over into Libya, Metellus, overcome by envy and deeply grieved that, when he himself had brought the war to its conclusion and there remained nothing but to seize the person of Jugurtha, Marius should come to claim the crown and the triumph, grown great through his own ingratitude toward him, could not bear to meet him face to face, but withdrew himself, while Rutilius, having become Metellus's lieutenant, handed over the army to Marius.
And a kind of nemesis went round at the end of these affairs and overtook Marius; for the glory of his success was taken from him by Sulla, just as Metellus's had been taken from him by Marius. In what manner, I shall relate briefly, since the particulars are set down more fully in the Life of Sulla. Bocchus, king of the upper barbarians, was Jugurtha's father-in-law, and while Jugurtha was at war Bocchus did not seem at all inclined to assist him, alleging his untrustworthiness, and fearing his growing power;
but when Jugurtha, fleeing and wandering, was forced by necessity to make Bocchus his last hope and came to him, Bocchus received him more out of shame, as a suppliant, than out of goodwill, and kept him under his hand, openly interceding for him with Marius and writing that he would not surrender him, and speaking frankly on his behalf, but secretly plotting betrayal against him, and sending for Lucius Sulla, who was Marius's quaestor but had proved useful to Bocchus during the campaign.
When Sulla, trusting him, went up to him, some turn of mind and change of heart came over the barbarian, and for many days he wavered in his reckoning, deliberating whether to hand over Jugurtha or not to release Sulla; but in the end he confirmed his first act of betrayal and delivered Jugurtha alive into Sulla's hands.
And this was the first seed for them of that incurable and bitter discord which came within a little of overturning Rome. For many wished the deed to be Sulla's, out of envy of Marius, and Sulla himself, having had a seal made, wore it engraved with a device of Jugurtha being handed over to him by Bocchus.
And by continually using this seal he kept goading Marius, a man ambitious for honor and ungenerous about sharing glory and quarrelsome, especially since Marius's enemies were egging Sulla on, attributing the first and greatest part of the war to Metellus, and its last part and its conclusion to Sulla, so that the people might cease to admire and to attend upon Marius above all others.
Quickly, however, that envy and those hatreds and slanders were scattered and turned away from Marius by the danger that seized Italy from the west, at the very moment when the city, for the first time, found itself requiring a great commander and cast about to discover what helmsman at the tiller might steer it clear of so great a storm of war — no one of the great and wealthy houses venturing to come forward at the consular elections, but the people proclaiming Marius consul in his absence.
For scarcely had news of the capture of Jugurtha been announced to them when reports concerning the Teutones and the Cimbri came falling upon them, at first met with disbelief regarding how numerous and powerful the invading hosts were, but later proved to understate the truth. For the fighting men numbered thirty myriads marching under arms, and crowds of children and women, said to be far more numerous still, were reported to be moving along with them, in need of land to support so great a multitude, and of cities in which, once settled, they might live, just as they had learned that the Celts before them had seized the fairest part of Italy, taking it from the Etruscans.
For these people themselves, through their lack of contact with others and through the length of the country they traversed, were unknown — who they were among men, or from where they had set out, falling upon Gaul and Italy like a cloud. And they were guessed, above all, to be Germanic peoples of those dwelling by the northern ocean, judging by the great size of their bodies and the blue-grey brightness of their eyes, and because the Germans call brigands Cimbri.
There are some who say that Celtic territory, because of the depth and extent of the land, reaches from the outer sea and the northern regions round to the rising sun as far as the Maeotic lake, touching there upon Pontic Scythia, and that from there the races became mixed; and that these peoples, rising up not in a single rush nor continuously, but each year at a certain season advancing ever forward in war, over many periods of time overran the continent.
For this reason, though they bore many separate names in their several parts, the army as a whole was called Celtoscythian. Others say that the portion of the Cimmerians first known to the Greeks of old was not a great part of the whole, but that a flight or some faction, driven by force by the Scythians, crossed the Maeotic lake and passed into Asia, led by Lygdamis, while the greatest and most warlike part of them, dwelling at the farthest edge along the outer sea, occupied a land shaded and wooded and everywhere dim with sunlight because of the depth and thickness of its forests,
and that these people extend inward as far as the Hercynian forest, and that they have been allotted such a portion of the sky that, because of the inclination of the parallels, the pole seems to make a great rise, falling little short of the point standing directly overhead for their dwelling place, and that their days and nights, being of nearly equal brief and long duration, apportion the time between them equally; for which reason Homer, they say, drew his fund of myth for the Nekyia.
From there, then, came the inroad of these barbarians upon Italy, called at first Cimmerians, and then, not without reason, Cimbri. But these things are said more by conjecture than according to firm historical record.
But as to their numbers, it has been reported by many that they were not less, but more, than what has been said. In spirit and daring they were irresistible, and in the work of their hands in battle they came on resembling fire in swiftness and violence, no one being able to withstand their onset, but all whom they overran being led off and carried away reckoned as plunder, and many great Roman armies and generals, all those who were posted in Gaul beyond the Alps, being swept away ingloriously;
and it was above all those who had fought badly against their onrush who drew that onrush down upon Rome. For having conquered all whom they met, and having become masters of great wealth, they resolved to settle themselves nowhere on earth until they had overturned Rome and utterly sacked Italy.
When the Romans learned of this from many quarters, they summoned Marius to the generalship. And he was declared consul a second time, though the law forbade choosing again, in his absence, one who had not let the fixed interval of time elapse; but the people cast out those who spoke against it. For they believed that it was not now for the first time that the law would yield to expediency, nor was the present cause less reasonable than that for which they had once declared Scipio consul contrary to the laws, not fearing to lose their own city, but desiring to destroy that of the Carthaginians.
This was decided; and Marius, conveyed over from Libya together with his army, on the very Kalends of January, which the Romans reckon as the beginning of the year, took up the consulship and rode in his triumph, displaying to the Romans an unbelievable spectacle, Jugurtha a captive — a man while he lived not one of his enemies would have hoped to overcome, so versatile was he in dealing with fortune and had a spirit so passionate mixed with so much cunning.
But he lost his senses, they say, once he was paraded in the procession; and after the triumph, when he was thrown into the prison, some tore off his tunic by force, while others, hastening to snatch away his golden earring, tore off the earlobe along with it, and, thrust naked into the pit, bewildered and grinning, he said, "Heracles, how cold your bath is!"
But he, having struggled against hunger for six days and clung to the desire of life until the very last hour, received a punishment worthy of his crimes. In the triumph, it is said, seven thousand three hundred pounds of gold were carried, along with five thousand seven hundred seventy-five pounds of silver bullion, and two hundred eighty-seven thousand drachmas in minted coin.
After the procession Marius assembled the Senate in the Capitol; and he came in, whether forgetting himself or through a more rustic use of his fortune, still in his triumphal attire; but perceiving quickly that the Senate was displeased, he rose and went out, and, having changed into the purple-bordered toga, came in again.
While on campaign he built up the army's stamina during the march, drilling the men through every variety of running exercise and extended treks, forcing each soldier to bear his own pack and handle his own daily chores, so that later on, those who worked hard and carried out orders quietly, without grumbling, earned the nickname Marius's mules. Some, however, think there is a different reason for this saying.
For when Scipio, during the siege of Numantia, set out to review not merely the weapons and mounts but the pack-animals and wagons as well, so that everything might be found properly drilled and ready, Marius brought forward a horse reared most beautifully by himself, and a mule far surpassing all the others in good condition, gentleness, and strength; the general, delighted with Marius's animals and mentioning them often afterward, thus led those who jested to call, in praise, the persevering, patient, and hard-working man a "Marian mule."
It seems to have been a great stroke of fortune for Marius that, the barbarians having taken as it were a countercurrent of their onward drive and having flowed first toward Iberia, he had time both to train the bodies of his men and to strengthen their spirits toward confidence, and, what was greatest of all, to be understood for what sort of man he himself was.
For his grimness at the outset and his harshness in punishments, once the men had become accustomed neither to do wrong nor to disobey, appeared, together with his justice, to be for their preservation, and the vehemence of his temper and the roughness of his voice and the fierce look of his face, growing familiar over time little by little, they came to think were fearsome not to themselves, but to the enemy.
But it was above all the uprightness of his judgments that pleased the soldiers, of which the following instance is told. Gaius Lusius, his nephew, appointed to a command, was serving in the army — a man not, perhaps, thought to be wicked, but weaker than he should have been for handsome young men. He was in love with a young soldier serving under him named Trebonius, and having often made attempts upon him without success,
at last, sending a servant by night, he summoned Trebonius. The young man came, for he could not refuse when summoned, but on being brought into the tent, when Lusius attempted to force him, he drew his sword and killed him. This happened while Marius was away; once he came back, he had Trebonius brought before a tribunal,
Since many were accusing him and no one was speaking in his defense, Trebonius himself stood up boldly and told what had happened, and produced witnesses that he had many times refused Lusius when he made his advances, and that even though great sums were offered him he had not given up his body for any price. Marius, admiring this and delighted by it, ordered the ancestral crown for valor to be brought, and taking it himself he crowned Trebonius, declaring that he had performed the finest deed at a time that needed such fine examples.
When this was reported at Rome, it did no small service in securing Marius his third consulship; and at the same time, since the barbarians were expected in that season of the year, the people wanted to face the danger with no other general than him. Yet they did not come as quickly as expected, and again the term of Marius's consulship passed.
When the elections for the new magistrates were approaching and his fellow consul had died, Marius left Manius Aquillius in command of the forces and himself came to Rome. Though many good men were seeking the consulship, Lucius Saturninus, who most of all the tribunes led the populace and had been cultivated by Marius, made a speech urging that Marius be chosen consul. When Marius put on an act of reluctance and said he was declining the office, claiming he had no need of it, Saturninus denounced him as betraying his homeland by recoiling from leadership at so perilous a moment.
It was plain to everyone that Marius was acting his pretended reluctance unconvincingly with Saturninus, but the people, seeing that the crisis demanded both his skill and his good fortune, voted him his fourth consulship, and appointed Lutatius Catulus as his colleague, a man honored by the aristocracy and not burdensome to the common people.
Learning that the enemy was near, Marius crossed the Alps in haste; and having fortified a camp by the river Rhone, he gathered into it an abundant supply, so that he would never be forced by lack of necessities to give battle against his own better judgment.
The transport of supplies needed by the army, which had previously been long and costly as far as the sea, he himself made easy and quick. For the mouths of the Rhone, where they met the resistance of the sea, took in much silt and formed a bar packed together with deep mud by the surf, which made the entrance difficult, laborious, and slow for the grain-ships.
So he turned his idle army to this task and dug a great trench, and by diverting a large part of the river through it he brought it around to a suitable shore, deep enough to carry large ships, and giving a smooth, calm mouth to the sea. This channel still keeps its name from him to this day.
The barbarians divided themselves into two: the Cimbri were to go by way of Noricum, from higher ground, against Catulus and force that passage, while the Teutones and Ambrones were to go by way of the Ligurians, along the coast, against Marius.
The Cimbri were slower and delayed longer, whereas the Teutones and Ambrones departed without delay and, crossing the intervening land, appeared in numbers beyond counting, hideous in appearance, and unlike others in voice and clamor. Occupying a great part of the plain and encamping there, they challenged Marius to battle.
But he paid no attention to this, and kept his soldiers confined within the rampart, and rebuked bitterly those who grew bold, calling those who rushed forward in anger, eager to fight, traitors to their country; for, he said, the object of his ambition was not triumphs and trophies, but to push back so great a cloud and thunderbolt of war and so save Italy.
This is what he said privately to the officers and men of rank; but the soldiers he stationed in turn along the rampart and bade them watch, so that he might accustom them to endure the appearance of the enemy and bear their voice, which was altogether strange and beastlike, and to study their equipment and movements, so that in time what seemed terrifying might, through the eye, become familiar to the mind. For he believed that novelty adds much false terror to what is feared, but that with familiarity even things naturally dreadful lose their power to shock.
Not only did the daily sight of them take away something of the soldiers' awe, but also, faced with the barbarians' threats and their unbearable boasting, anger rose in them and heated and inflamed their spirits, for the enemy were not only carrying off and plundering everything around, but were also making assaults on the camp itself with much insolence and boldness, so that shouts and complaints of the soldiers were raised against Marius.
"What cowardice has Marius found in us, that he shuts us away from battle like women behind bolts and doorkeepers? Come, having suffered the treatment of free men, let us ask whether he is waiting for others to fight for Italy, and means to use us always as laborers, whenever he needs trenches dug and mud cleared out and rivers diverted.
For it is to this, it seems, that he has trained us through so many hardships, and it is this that he will show as the achievements of his consulships when he returns to the citizens. Or is he afraid of what happened to Carbo and Caepio, whom the enemy defeated, men far inferior to Marius in reputation and valor, and leading a far worse army? But it is better to suffer something while acting, as they did, than to sit as spectators while our allies are plundered."
Marius was pleased to hear this, and calmed them, saying it was not that he distrusted them, but that from certain oracles he was waiting for the right time and place of victory. For indeed he kept close by him a Syrian woman called Martha, borne about ceremonially on a litter, who was reputed to have powers of prophecy, and he offered sacrifices at her bidding. The Senate had earlier turned her away when she wished to appear before them on these matters and foretell the future,
but when she gained access to the women and, sitting especially at the feet of Marius's wife beside the gladiators, successfully foretold which one would win, she was sent on to Marius and came to be admired by him. And for the most part she was carried about in a litter, but when she went down to the sacrifices she wore a double purple robe fastened with a brooch and carried a spear wound with ribbons and garlands,
Now this performance gave many occasion for dispute, whether Marius, truly convinced, or feigning and playing along, was putting the woman on display. As for the vultures, Alexander of Myndus has recorded a marvel. Two of them always appeared before successes, following about the armies, recognizable by bronze collars; for the soldiers had once caught and collared them, then released them; and ever after, recognizing them, the soldiers would greet them, and when they appeared before a march they rejoiced, expecting some good outcome.
Of the many signs that appeared beforehand, most had a common character, yet word came from Ameria and Tuder, two Italian towns, that at night there were seen in the sky fiery spears and shields moving apart at first, then colliding with one another and taking on shapes and motions like men in battle, and finally, some giving way and others pressing on, all streamed away toward the west.
About this same time there also arrived Bataces, priest of the Great Mother from Pessinus, announcing that the goddess had spoken to him from her shrine that victory and mastery in the war belonged to the Romans. When the Senate accepted this and voted to establish a temple of victory to the goddess, Bataces, coming forward to address the people to say the same, was prevented by Aulus Pompeius, a tribune, who called him a charlatan and drove him from the platform with insult.
And indeed it was this above all that gave credence to the man's word. For no sooner had Aulus returned home after the assembly was dissolved than such a fever broke out in him that, becoming known and talked about by all, he died within the seventh day.
The Teutones attempted to besiege the camp while Marius kept quiet, but meeting with many missiles hurled from the rampart and losing some six of their own men, they decided to move on ahead so as to cross the Alps unopposed; and packing up, they filed past the Roman camp, appearing then most of all in their countless numbers by the length and duration of their passing, for they are said to have taken six days marching continuously to pass Marius's camp.
They marched close by, asking the Romans with laughter whether they had any messages for their wives, since they themselves would join their wives before long. Once the barbarians had gone past and moved further on, Marius himself broke camp and followed them at a leisurely pace, always keeping close and settling right beside them, using strongly fortified camping places and putting strong positions before him, so as to spend the nights in safety.
Advancing in this way, they reached the spot known as Aquae Sextiae, beyond which, after a short further march, they would be in the Alps. It was there that Marius prepared to give battle, and he occupied for his camp a strong position, but one that did not have abundant water, wishing, it is said, to provoke his soldiers by this as well.
When many complained and said they would suffer thirst, he pointed with his hand to a certain river flowing near the barbarians' camp, and told them that there was drink to be had from there, for a price paid in blood. "Why then," they said, "do you not lead us against them at once, while we still have moisture for blood?" And he said calmly, "First we must fortify our camp."
The soldiers, though chafing, obeyed; but the mass of camp servants, having no drink themselves or for the pack animals, went down to the river in a crowd, some carrying axes, some hatchets, some even swords and spears along with their water jars, as if they meant to draw water by fighting for it. At first only a few of the enemy fought against them, for most of them happened to be dining after their bath, while others were still bathing.
For that place breaks out in springs of hot water, and the Romans came upon a part of the barbarians there enjoying themselves and reveling in the pleasure and wonder of the place. At the outcry, as more came running together, it was difficult for Marius to hold back his soldiers, who feared for their servants, and the most warlike part of the enemy, by whom the Romans had earlier been defeated under Manlius and Caepio, formerly called Ambrones, numbering more than thirty thousand on their own, sprang up and rushed for their weapons.
Their bodies were heavy with overeating, their spirits were high and loosened with wine, and they came on not with disordered or frenzied rushing nor with inarticulate howling, but beating their weapons in rhythm and leaping together, all at once repeatedly shouting out their own name, Ambrones, whether calling to one another or trying beforehand to frighten the enemy by this announcement.
Of the Italians the Ligurians were the first to go down against them, and when they heard the shouting and understood it, they answered back, shouting that this was their own ancestral name as well, for the Ligurians so call themselves by descent. So the cry echoed thick and parallel back and forth before they came to close quarters; and as the armies on both sides took up the shout in turn, each side eager to outdo the other first in the loudness of the cry, the shouting provoked and further inflamed their anger.
The Ambrones were thrown into disorder by the stream, for they did not manage to form up in order after crossing, but as the foremost of the Ligurians fell upon them at once at a run, the fighting was hand to hand; and once the Romans rushed to help the Ligurians and pressed down upon the barbarians from higher ground, they were overpowered and turned to flight.
And most of them, jostled together there around the stream, struck one another down and filled the river with slaughter and corpses, while the Romans, crossing over, killed those who did not dare to turn and fight, all the way to their camp and their wagons as they fled,
There the women met them with swords and axes, shrieking terribly and in a passion of fury, and defended themselves against fugitive and pursuer alike, treating the former as deserters and the latter as foes, throwing themselves into the melee, and with bare hands tearing away the shields of the Romans and grasping at their swords, enduring wounds and the hacking of their bodies, unconquered in spirit even to the last. So they say that the battle by the river came about more by chance than by the general's design.
But when the Romans, having destroyed many of the Ambrones, withdrew again and darkness came on, the army was not received, as after so great a success, with paeans of victory and drinking in the tents and friendly cheer over dinner and, sweetest of all things to men who have fought successfully, gentle sleep; rather they passed that night above all as one fearful and full of turmoil.
For their camp lacked any rampart or stockade, and many tens of thousands of the barbarians still remained unbeaten, and mixed in among them were all of the Ambrones who had escaped; and there was wailing throughout the night, not like the weeping or groaning of human beings, but a kind of howling mixed with the roaring of beasts, blended with threats and lamentations, sent up from so great a multitude that it echoed round the surrounding mountains and the hollow places of the river.
And a dreadful sound held the plain, and fear held the Romans, and astonishment held Marius himself, who expected some disorderly and confused night-battle. Yet they did not attack, neither in the night nor on the following day, but spent their time drawing themselves up in order and making preparations.
Meanwhile Marius — for at the head of the barbarians there were sloping glens and valleys overshadowed by thickets — sent out Claudius Marcellus there with three thousand hoplites, ordering him to lie in ambush secretly and to appear behind them once the fighting had begun. The rest, having dined in good time and having slept, he drew up at daybreak and led out before the rampart, and sent the cavalry ahead onto the plain,
and when the Teutones saw them coming down to fight them on equal terms, they would not endure it, but arming themselves quickly and in anger charged up against the hill. But Marius, sending his officers everywhere, urged them to stand fast and hold their ground, and when the enemy came within range to hurl their javelins, then to use their swords and, bracing with their shields, to force them back;
for since the ground was treacherous for them, their blows would have neither force nor would their shield-wall have strength, their bodies being thrown into disorder and unsteadiness on account of the uneven terrain. This he urged upon them, and at the same time he was seen to be first in doing it himself; for his body was trained no worse than any man's, and he far surpassed them all in daring.
So when the Romans stood against them and, closing, checked them as they came surging upward, they were gradually pressed back and gave ground into the plain, and as the foremost were already forming into ranks on the level ground, there arose shouting and confusion around those in the rear; for the moment did not escape Marcellus, but as the outcry rose above the hills, he raised those with him and fell upon their rear at a run with a war-cry, killing those at the back,
and these, dragging along those in front of them, quickly filled the whole army with confusion, and they did not long endure being struck from both sides, but broke their ranks and fled. The Romans, pursuing, took alive or cut down more than a hundred thousand of them, and having taken possession of the tents, wagons, and money — as much as had not been stolen away — voted to give them to Marius. And though he received this most splendid of gifts, it was thought that nothing was adequate reward for the greatness of the danger he had generalled through.
Others do not agree about the gift of the spoils, nor about the number of the fallen. They say, however, that the Massaliots fenced their vineyards round with the bones, and that the earth, the corpses having been consumed in it and winter rains having fallen upon it, was so enriched and became so deeply saturated with the putrefaction that had sunk into it, that it bore an overwhelming abundance of fruit in due season, bearing witness to Archilochus, who says that fields are fattened by such means.
They say that, fittingly, after great battles extraordinary rains break out, whether because some divine power purifies the earth and washes it clean with pure waters falling from heaven, or because the slaughter and the putrefaction give off a moist and heavy vapor, which condenses the air, which is by nature changeable and easily altered from the smallest beginning into the greatest extent.
After the battle Marius chose out from the barbarian arms and spoils those that were conspicuous and whole and could furnish a fine processional show for his triumph, and the rest, having heaped the great mass of them upon a huge pyre, he offered as a magnificent sacrifice,
and with the army standing by under arms and crowned, he himself, girded as is the custom, having thrown back his purple-bordered robe and taken a burning torch and raised it with both hands toward the sky, was about to set it to the pyre, when friends were seen riding up swiftly toward him, so that a great silence and expectation fell upon everyone; and when they were near,
they leapt down and greeted Marius, bringing the good news that he had been chosen consul for the fifth time, and delivered letters concerning this. So great joy being added to the celebration of victory, the army for pleasure shouted together with a certain clash and clatter of arms, and while the officers once more set laurel wreaths on Marius, he touched a torch to the pyre and brought the offering to its close.
But she who allows none of the great strokes of good fortune to be unmixed and pure for delight, but variegates human life with a blending of evils and goods — whether it be some Fortune, or Nemesis, or the necessary nature of things — not many days later brought to Marius news concerning Catulus his colleague, like a cloud in fair weather and calm, once more setting fear and storm about Rome.
For Catulus, standing opposed to the Cimbri, had given up guarding the passes of the Alps, lest he be forced to divide his force into many parts and so become weak, but coming down at once into Italy, and taking the river Atiso before him, and having fenced the crossings on either side with strong palisades, he bridged the river, so that he might be able to send help to those on the far side, if the barbarians should force their way against the forts through the narrow passages,
but the barbarians had such an excess of contempt and boldness against the enemy that, displaying strength and daring rather than doing anything necessary, they endured being snowed upon while naked, and climbed to the peaks through frost and deep snow, and up above they set their broad shields beneath their bodies, then let themselves go and were carried down over cliffs having slippery slopes and vast smooth rock-faces,
and when they had encamped nearby and reconnoitred the crossing, they began to fill it in, tearing up the surrounding hills like the Giants, carrying trees roots and all, and fragments of cliffs, and mounds of earth into the river, squeezing the current, and letting great weights be dragged down along the stream against the piers supporting the bridge-structure, shaking the bridge with their blows, so that most of the soldiers, losing heart, abandoned the great camp and withdrew.
Then indeed Catulus showed himself to be, as a good and perfect commander must, one who puts his own reputation second to that of his fellow citizens. For when he could not persuade the soldiers to remain, but saw them breaking camp in fear, he ordered the eagle taken up, rushed at a run to the front of those departing, and led the way himself, wishing that the disgrace be his own and not his country's, and that it should seem the retreat was made not by men fleeing, but by men following their general.
The barbarians, having come upon the fort across the Atiso, took it, and admiring the Romans there, who had proved themselves the bravest of men and had risked their lives in a manner worthy of their country, let them go under truce, after they had sworn upon the bronze bull, which, they say, was later captured after the battle and carried to the house of Catulus as a kind of first-fruits of the victory; and pouring over the land, now bare of any defense, they ravaged it.
On account of these things Marius was called to Rome, and on his arrival, though everyone supposed he would celebrate a triumph and the senate voted for it eagerly, he did not think it fitting, whether because he was unwilling to strip his fellow-soldiers and comrades of any portion of the glory, or because he sought to rally the people toward what still remained to be done, as if he were entrusting to the fortune of the city the glory of his first successes, so that a more splendid renown might be rendered him for the second.
Having said what was fitting to the occasion, and having set out to join Catulus, he encouraged him and sent for his own soldiers from Gaul; and when they arrived, he crossed the Eridanus, working to bar the barbarians from entering Italy itself, but they, saying that they were waiting for the Teutones and were astonished that they were so slow, kept putting off the battle, either genuinely ignorant of their destruction, or wishing to seem not to believe it.
And indeed they treated cruelly those who brought them the news, and sent to Marius asking for land and cities enough for themselves and their brothers to dwell in. When Marius asked the ambassadors about these brothers, and they named the Teutones, all the rest burst out laughing, but Marius mocked them, saying, "Leave your brothers alone, then; for they already have land, and will hold it forever, having received it from us."
The ambassadors, understanding the irony, reviled him, saying that he would pay the penalty — from the Cimbri at once, and from the Teutones whenever they should arrive. "And indeed they are here," said Marius, "and you shall not depart until you have embraced your brothers." With these words he had the captive kings of the Teutones led out in chains before them; for the Sequani had seized them in the Alps as they fled.
When this was reported to the Cimbri, they again marched afresh against Marius, who remained still and stood watch over his camp. It is said that it was in that battle that the modification concerning the javelins was first introduced by Marius. For the fitting of the wood into the iron head had formerly been held fast by two iron pins; but Marius then left the one as it was, and, taking out the other, put in its place a wooden peg that would easily break,
contriving that when the javelin struck the enemy's shield it would not remain upright, but the wooden peg being broken, a bend would occur around the iron point, and the spear would be dragged along, catching by the crookedness of the point. And Boeorix, king of the Cimbri, riding up to the camp with a few companions, called on Marius to appoint a day and location and meet him there to settle the matter of the land by combat.
Marius replied that the Romans had never been accustomed to take counsel with their enemies about giving battle, but nevertheless he would grant the Cimbri this favor; so they set the day as the third from that one, and the place as the plain around Vercellae, suitable for the Romans to ride their cavalry over, and giving room for the enemy's numbers to spread out.
So, having kept to the appointed time, they drew up opposite one another, Catulus commanding twenty thousand three hundred men, while Marius's force numbered thirty-two thousand, and they surrounded Catulus in the middle, being distributed onto each wing, as Sulla, who fought in that battle, has written.
And he says that Marius, hoping that the phalanxes would meet chiefly at the extremities and on the wings, so that the victory might belong to his own soldiers alone, and that Catulus might have no share in the struggle nor even come to close quarters with the enemy, so arranged the forces that the center — as commonly happens across broad fronts — formed a hollow curve, thus separating the two armies' contact.
They record that Catulus himself gave a similar account of these matters, charging Marius with great malice toward him in this. As for the Cimbri, their infantry advanced quietly out of their fortifications, making the depth equal to the front; for each side of their formation extended thirty stadia:
The cavalry, fifteen thousand in number, rode out in splendor, wearing helmets fashioned like the gaping jaws of fearsome beasts and strange-shaped masks, which, raised up with feathered crests, made them appear taller still, adorned with iron breastplates and gleaming with white shields. Each man carried a pair of javelins, and when they closed in they used great heavy swords.
At that time they did not attack the Romans head-on, but veering to the right they gradually drew themselves off, driving into the space between themselves and their own infantry, which was drawn up on the left. The Roman generals perceived the trick, but were not quick enough to hold back the soldiers; rather, when one man shouted that the enemy were fleeing, all rushed to pursue.
During this the barbarian foot-soldiers surged forward like an endless sea heaving in motion. There Marius, washing his hands and raising them toward heaven, vowed to the gods a hecatomb; and Catulus likewise, raising his hands, vowed to consecrate the fortune of that day. Marius, it is said, when after sacrificing the omens were shown to him, cried out in a loud voice, "The victory is mine."
When the assault took place, Sulla and his circle report that Marius suffered a thing worthy of divine resentment. For when the dust rose up, boundless as one would expect, and the armies were hidden from one another, Marius, once he had set out first in pursuit, drew his forces on but missed the enemy, and being carried past the enemy line wandered about the plain for a long time; while by chance the barbarians collided with Catulus, and the battle was fought against him and mostly against his soldiers, among whom Sulla himself says he was stationed,
and he says that the heat, and the sun shining back into the eyes of the Cimbri, fought on the side of the Romans. For the Cimbri, being formidable in enduring cold, and reared, as has been said, in shady and cold regions, were overthrown by the heat, streaming with much sweat and gasping for breath, and holding their shields before their faces, since the battle took place after the turning of summer, on that day which the Romans count as three days short of the new moon in the month now known as August, though at that time it bore the name Sextilis.
It also helped toward their confidence that the dust hid the enemy from view, for they did not see the great numbers from a distance, but each group ran and closed with those directly opposite, and so came to grips without being terrified beforehand by the sight of the whole host. So toughened and hardened in body were they that not a single Roman was seen sweating or panting, despite such stifling heat and though the clash came after a run — so that Catulus himself, they say, related this in praise of his soldiers.
The greatest and most warlike part of the enemy was cut down there; for to prevent their line from being torn apart, the front fighters were bound to one another by long chains fastened through their belts. Those who fled were driven back to their palisade of wagons, where they met with the most tragic sufferings.
For the women, standing upon the wagons dressed in black, slew those who fled — some their husbands, some their brothers, some their fathers — and strangling their infant children with their own hands, they cast the bodies down beneath the wagon wheels and the hooves of the draft animals, and then took their own lives. It is said that one woman hung from the end of a wagon-pole with her children fastened by nooses to her ankles on either side.
The men, for lack of trees, bound their necks, some to the horns of oxen, others to their legs, and then, goading the oxen so that they leapt up, were dragged along and trampled to death. Yet even with so many destroyed in this way, more than sixty thousand were taken prisoner; and the number of the fallen was said to be twice that.
The plunder of money was seized by Marius's soldiers, but the spoils, the standards, and the trumpets, they say, were carried off to Catulus's camp; and Catulus used this above all as evidence that the victory was won under his command. And indeed, since a dispute had also arisen among the soldiers, as it seems, there were chosen as arbiters some envoys of the Parmensians who happened to be present; these men Catulus's soldiers led among the enemy dead and showed them pierced through by their own javelins, recognizable by the letters, since Catulus had had his name engraved upon the wood of his weapons.
Nevertheless the whole achievement was credited to Marius, both because of his earlier victory and the prestige of his office, and above all the multitude proclaimed him a third founder of Rome, on the grounds that he had averted a danger no less than that from the Celts, and rejoicing with their children and wives, each household at home offered the first portion of dinner and libation to the gods together with Marius, and they thought it fitting that he alone should celebrate both triumphs.
He did not, however, celebrate the triumph in this way alone, but together with Catulus, wishing to show himself moderate amid such great good fortune; and it was in part also because he feared the soldiers, who were arrayed and ready, if Catulus were kept from the honor, not to allow Marius himself to triumph either.
He was thus administering his fifth consulship; and he sought a sixth as no one had ever sought even a first, courting the people with favors and yielding to the multitude for the sake of popularity, not only beyond the dignity and common standing of his office, but also against his own nature, wishing to appear supple and a man of the people, though by nature he was anything but such.
But he was, as they say, most timid in political life and amid the tumults of the crowd, out of love of glory, and the fearlessness and steadiness he showed in battles deserted him in the assemblies, where he was thrown off balance by ordinary praise and blame. And yet it is said that when he granted citizenship to a thousand men of Camerinum together, who had fought with distinction in the war, and this was thought unlawful and some brought charges against him, he said that because of the din of arms he had not been able to hear the law clearly.
Yet in truth he seems rather to have been struck with fear and to have dreaded the shouting in the assemblies. In arms he had dignity and power through the need for him; but in political life, stripped of his primacy, he took refuge in the goodwill and favor of the multitude, sacrificing being the best in order to become the greatest.
He thus gave offense to all the aristocratic party, and above all, dreading Metellus, who had been made ungrateful toward him and who by nature, on account of true virtue, warred against those who did not court the masses in the best way but courted their favor for pleasure's sake, he plotted to drive the man out of the city, and to this end he attached to himself Glaucia and Saturninus,
men most brazen, who had under them a helpless and turbulent mob; through them he introduced laws, and raising up the soldiery he mixed it into the assemblies and stirred up faction against Metellus. As Rutilius records — a man in other respects truthful and honest, but privately at odds with Marius — Marius obtained his sixth consulship by paying out much money to the tribes and buying the means to drive Metellus from office, and by taking Valerius Flaccus as more a subordinate than a colleague in the consulship.
Indeed, the people gave so many consulships to no one before him except Valerius Corvinus alone; but they say that in his case forty-five years passed from his first to his last, whereas Marius ran through his five after the first in a single rush of fortune.
And it was especially over this last one that he incurred envy, joining in many wrongdoings along with Saturninus and his circle. Among these was Nonius's murder, killed by Saturninus for being a competing candidate for that same tribunate. Then, as tribune, Saturninus brought in the law about the land, to which was attached a clause that the senate must come forward and swear to abide by whatever the people should vote, and to oppose nothing.
Marius, pretending in the senate to oppose this part of the law, said he would not take the oath, nor did he suppose that anyone with good judgment would; for even granting the law was not a bad one, it was still an outrage for such things to be forced upon the senate rather than accepted by its own persuasion and willingness. But he did not say this out of his true opinion, but in order to lay an inescapable trap for Metellus.
For he himself, counting falsehood among the resources of virtue and cleverness, was going to hold himself bound by no word he had given before the senate; but knowing Metellus to be a steadfast man, one who held, in Pindar's words, that "truth is the foundation of great virtue," he wished, by his own refusal before the senate, to draw Metellus in first, and, once Metellus had refused to take the oath, to plunge him into irreconcilable hostility with the people. And this indeed came to pass.
For when Metellus declared he would not swear, the senate then broke up; but a few days later, when Saturninus was calling the senators up to the platform and compelling them to swear the oath, Marius came forward, and when silence fell and all eyes hung upon him, he bid a long farewell to what he had spoken so boldly in the senate, and said that his neck was not so broad that he should commit himself once for all in so great a matter beforehand, but that he would swear and obey the law — if indeed it was a law; and he added this clever phrase as a kind of veil for his shame,
and so the people, delighted that he had sworn, applauded and cheered him; but the best men were seized with deep dejection and hatred of Marius for his reversal. All swore thereafter in order, fearing the people, down to Metellus; but Metellus, though his friends begged and implored him to swear and not bring upon himself irrevocable penalties, which Saturninus was introducing against those who did not swear, did not lower his resolve nor take the oath,
but, remaining true to his character and prepared to suffer anything terrible rather than do anything shameful, he departed from the forum, saying to those around him that to do wrong was a base thing, and to do right without danger was common to all, but it was the mark of a good man to do what is noble even amid dangers.
After this Saturninus had it decreed that the consuls should proclaim Metellus barred from fire, water, and shelter; and the vilest part of the crowd was ready to kill the man, but the best citizens, in deep distress, ran together to Metellus and would not let him raise faction on his own account; instead he departed from the city, employing sound reasoning.
"For either," he said, "if things turn out better and the people repent, I shall return when called back; or if they remain the same, it is best to be rid of them." But the extent of the goodwill and honor Metellus enjoyed while in exile, and how he occupied himself with philosophical study at Rhodes, is a matter better told in his own written biography.
Marius, being compelled, in return for this service, to overlook Saturninus advancing to every extreme of boldness and power, unwittingly produced an intolerable evil, as the man moved openly by arms and slaughter toward tyranny and the overthrow of the constitution. Marius, out of respect for the foremost men yet courting the multitude, endured a most servile and shifting course of conduct.
For when the leading men came to him by night and urged him against Saturninus, he received Saturninus by another door without their knowledge. Then, pleading to both sides an attack of diarrhea as excuse, running now to the one, now to the other side of the house in turn, he set them against one another and inflamed them.
Nevertheless, when the senate and the knights united and grew indignant, he brought out arms into the forum, and pursuing them into the Capitol, he overcame them by thirst; for he cut off the water channels, and they, giving up, called upon him and surrendered themselves under the so-called public pledge of good faith.
But when, after doing everything in his power to save the men, it availed nothing — for as they were coming down into the forum they were killed — from that time on, having given offense both to the powerful and to the people alike, though a censorship fell open and he was expected to seek it, he did not stand for it, but let others of lesser standing be chosen, fearing to fail; and otherwise he made it a point of pride that he did not wish to make many enemies by scrutinizing harshly the lives and characters of others.
When a bill was brought forward to recall Metellus from exile, Marius opposed it strenuously both by word and by deed, but in vain, and in the end he gave up; and when the people took up the measure eagerly, unwilling to be present to see Metellus return, he sailed off to Cappadocia and Galatia, ostensibly to fulfill a vow of sacrifice owed to the Mother of the Gods, yet in truth pursuing a further aim for the trip that most people failed to notice.
For being ill-suited to peace and unpracticed in politics, and having grown great through wars, and then thinking that little by little his power and his reputation were withering again through idleness and quiet, he sought new occasions for action. For he hoped that by stirring up the kings and by rousing and provoking Mithridates, who seemed likely to make war, he would at once be picked as commander to oppose him, thereby filling Rome with fresh triumphal processions and stocking his own household with plunder from Pontus and royal riches.
Precisely because of this, even as Mithridates showered every courtesy and honor upon him, Marius would not bend or give way, but said, "Either try, O king, to be stronger than the Romans, or do in silence what you are ordered," and he astonished him, since Mithridates, though he had often heard a Roman voice, then for the first time heard Roman frankness.
When he had returned to Rome he had a house built close to the forum — by his own account so that those who came to pay him respect would not be worn out by a long walk, or, as he supposed, because more people did not throng other men's doors than his own. But this was not the true reason; rather, since others surpassed him in social charm and in serviceableness for civic life, he found himself laid aside, much as a weapon is put away once peace has come.
And with the rest he was less vexed at being outshone, but he was greatly annoyed by Sulla, whose rise came from the envy of the powerful against Marius himself, and who made his differences with Marius the starting point of his political career. And when Bocchus the Numidian, enrolled as an ally of the Romans, set up in the Capitol trophy-bearing Victories, and beside them, in gilded images, Jugurtha being handed over by himself to Sulla, this drove Marius out of his senses with anger and rivalry, since he thought Sulla was drawing off to himself the credit for his own achievements, and he made ready to tear down the offerings by force.
Sulla contended against him in turn, and the quarrel, which was just about to break out into the open, was checked by the Social War, which suddenly broke out against the city. For the most warlike and most populous of the Italian peoples banded together against Rome and came close to overturning her supremacy, being strong not only in arms and in men, but employing also the daring and the wonderful and rival skill of their generals.
This war, being varied in its sufferings and most changeable in its fortunes, added as much glory and power to Sulla as it took away from Marius. For he showed himself slow in his undertakings, and exceeded all bounds in hesitation and delay about everything, whether it was that old age was quenching in him that vigor and heat, or whether, as he himself said, being afflicted about the sinews and sickly and ill-suited in body for exertion, he endured the campaigns beyond his strength out of shame; for he had already passed his sixty-fifth year.
Nevertheless even then, winning a great battle, he destroyed six thousand of the enemy, and gave them no opening anywhere against him, but even when surrounded by a trench he endured it, and though mocked and called out to, he was not provoked. It is said that when Publius Silo, who held the greatest rank and power among the enemy, said to him, "Marius, if you're really such a great general, come down and settle this in battle," he answered, "No, you, if you are a great general, compel me to fight it out against my will."
Again, on another occasion, when the enemy offered an opportunity for attack but the Romans grew fearful, and both sides withdrew, he gathered the soldiers into an assembly and said, "I am at a loss whether to call the enemy more unmanly, or you: for neither could they bear to look upon your backs, nor you upon the back of their necks." Eventually he relinquished his command, pleading that sickness had left his body unfit for duty.
When the Italians had already been subdued and many in Rome were courting the command in the Mithridatic war through the demagogues, beyond all expectation Sulpicius, a tribune of the people, a most bold man, brought Marius forward and had him appointed proconsul-general against Mithridates. And the people were split, some choosing the side of Marius, others calling for Sulla and urging Marius to go to the hot springs at Baiae and attend to his body, worn out as it was by old age and rheumatic ailments, as he himself said,
for indeed Marius had there, near Misenum, a costly house, furnished with luxuries and softer modes of living than befitted a man who had been the very doer of so many wars and campaigns. This house is said to have been bought by Cornelia for seven and a half myriads of drachmas, and not very long afterward Lucius Lucullus bought it for two hundred fifty myriads; so quickly did extravagance run its course, and so great an increase did affairs take toward luxury.
Nevertheless Marius, very ambitiously and in a boyish manner shaking off old age and infirmity, went down to the Campus Martius day after day, and exercising with the young men, showed his body light in armor and steady on horseback, although he had not remained trim in old age as to bulk, but had given way to a full and heavy fleshiness.
Now some were pleased at his doing this, and going down would watch his ambition and his contests, but the best men, on seeing it, felt pity at his greed and love of glory, that having become richest from poorest and greatest from smallest, he did not know a limit to good fortune, nor, admired as he was, was he content, nor did he enjoy in quiet what he had,
but as if in want of everything, though an old man out of triumphs and glory, he set out for Cappadocia and the Euxine Pontus, to do battle with Archelaus and Neoptolemus, Mithridates' satraps. And the reasons Marius gave for this move struck everyone as thoroughly absurd: for he said he wished to train his son by being present himself on campaign.
These things tore open the city, which had for a long time been festering and sick underneath, Marius having found the boldness of Sulpicius a most fitting instrument for the common destruction—Sulpicius, who, admiring and emulating Saturninus in everything else, accused himself of cowardice and hesitation in his political conduct.
He himself, however, without hesitating, kept about six hundred of the knights around him as a sort of bodyguard, and called them his "anti-senate"; and bearing arms he descended on the consuls while they conducted a public assembly; one consul escaped by running from the forum, but Marius's men seized his son and put him to death, while Sulla, pursued past the house of Marius, rushed in where no one would have expected—and though he escaped his pursuers by running past unnoticed, it is said that he was sent out safely by Marius himself through another door and got through to the camp.
In his own memoirs Sulla claims he had not run to Marius seeking shelter, but had gone there on purpose to discuss the measures which Sulpicius was forcing him unwillingly to vote for, being surrounded in a circle by naked swords and driven to Marius's house, until he came forth from there into the forum and, as they demanded, put an end to the suspension of business.
When these things had come to pass, Sulpicius, now in power, had Marius elected to the command, and Marius was already making preparations for his departure, and dispatched a pair of military tribunes with orders to assume command of Sulla's army. But Sulla, having roused his soldiers—they were no fewer than thirty-five thousand hoplites—led them against Rome. And the soldiers, falling upon the tribunes whom Marius had sent, killed them.
Marius too had put to death many of Sulla's friends in Rome, and proclaimed freedom to slaves in return for military service; but it is said that only three came over to him. He made a small stand against Sulla as he drove in, but was quickly overpowered and fled. Of those about him, when he first was cast out of the city, scattered as they were in the darkness, he found shelter on one of his own country properties, Solonium,
and he sent his son from the estates of Mucius, his father-in-law, which were not far off, to get provisions, while he himself went down to Ostia, where a friend, Numerius, had prepared a ship for him; and not waiting for his son, but having with him Granius, his stepson, he sailed away. The young man, when he came to the estates of Mucius, taking what he needed and getting things ready, was overtaken by daybreak and did not altogether escape the notice of the enemy, but horsemen came riding up on suspicion toward
that place; but the overseer of the fields, seeing them beforehand, hid Marius in a wagon carrying beans, and yoking the oxen, drove the wagon toward the town to meet the horsemen. So Marius, carried in this way to the house of his wife, and taking what he needed, came by night to the sea, and boarding a ship bound for Libya, crossed over.
The elderly Marius, when he had put out to sea, being carried along the coast of Italy by a favoring wind, grew afraid of a certain Geminius, one of the powerful men at Tarracina, an enemy of his, and told the sailors beforehand to keep away from Tarracina. They wished to grant him this favor, but as the wind shifted toward the open sea and brought down a heavy swell, the ferry-boat did not seem able to hold out being swamped, and Marius being in distress and in a bad way from seasickness, they barely made land at the shores near Circeii,
and as the storm increased and provisions ran out, they disembarked and wandered aimlessly, doing as happens in great distress, always fleeing the present as most grievous and placing their hopes in the uncertain. For the land was hostile to them and the sea was hostile, and it was fearful to fall in with men, and fearful not to fall in with them for lack of necessities.
Still, as the day was drawing to a close, they chanced upon a handful of herdsmen, who had nothing to offer them despite being asked, but recognizing Marius bade him get away as fast as possible; for a little while before, many horsemen had been seen there riding about in search of him.
Being at every kind of loss, and especially with those about him fainting from hunger, he then turned aside from the road and, throwing himself into a deep wood, passed the night there in hardship. On the next day, worn down by want, wishing to make use of his body before it gave out entirely, he made his way along the shore, encouraging those who followed and begging them not to give out before their last hope, on which he kept himself, trusting in old prophecies.
For back when he was but a boy, dwelling out in the countryside, he had once caught, as it tumbled down into his cloak, an eagle's nest holding seven eaglets; and his parents, seeing this and marveling, inquired of the seers, who said that he would become the most illustrious of men, and that it was fated for him to attain the greatest command and office seven times.
Some say that this truly happened to Marius; others say that those who heard it from him at the time, and during his flight afterward, and believed it, wrote down a thing that is altogether fabulous. For no eagle produces a clutch larger than two eggs, and they say that even Musaeus was mistaken in saying of the eagle that it lays three, hatches two, and cares for one. This much, however, is agreed upon: that often in his flight and in his extreme distress Marius said that he would go on as far as a seventh consulship.
By now, being about twenty stadia from Minturnae, an Italian city, they saw a troop of horsemen riding toward them from a distance, and by chance two merchant ships passing by. So each man, according to what strength and speed of foot he had, ran down to the sea and, throwing themselves in, swam out to the ships. And Granius and his companions, taking hold of one of them, crossed over to the island opposite, called Aenaria;
but Marius himself, being heavy of body and hard to manage, was with difficulty and hardship lifted over the sea by two servants and placed on the other ship, the horsemen already standing by and shouting to the sailors from the shore either to bring the boat in, or to throw Marius overboard and sail wherever they wished. Marius begging and weeping, the masters of the merchant ship, after in a short time turning their judgment many times in both directions, nevertheless answered the horsemen that they would not give up Marius.
But when the horsemen rode off in anger, the sailors, changing their minds once more, steered for the coast; close by where the Liris river empties out and spreads into marshland, they dropped anchor and urged him to disembark and take food on land and tend to his body, worn out as it was, until there should be a favorable wind: for it was the usual hour for the sea breeze to die down and the marsh breezes to rise, fairly steadily.
Persuaded by this, Marius did as they said. The sailors lifted him onto the shore, and once he had lain down in some grass, far from what was about to happen, he had his mind occupied. But they immediately boarded the ship, weighed anchor, and fled, reckoning that it was neither honorable to hand Marius over nor safe to save him. Left thus deserted by everyone, for a long time he lay voiceless on the beach, but with difficulty somehow recovering himself he made his way along, wretchedly, over pathless ground.
Making his way through deep marshes, mud, and water-logged ditches, he stumbled upon a hut where an old man who worked the lagoon lived; falling before him he begged him to become the savior and helper of a man who, if he escaped his present troubles, would repay him with rewards beyond his hopes. The man, whether he recognized him from before or was struck with wonder at his bearing as being of a higher sort, said that his little hut was sufficient for him to rest in if he needed it, but if he were fleeing from some pursuers he would hide him in a place with more quiet.
When Marius begged him to do this, the man led him into the marsh and, bidding him crouch down in a hollow spot beside the river, threw over him many reeds and other light material that could cover him without harm.
Not much time had passed when a noise and commotion fell upon him from the hut. For Geminius had sent many men from Tarracina in pursuit, and some of these, coming there by chance, frightened and shouted down the old man, saying that he had taken in and was hiding an enemy of the Romans.
So Marius got up, stripped off his clothes, and let himself down into the lagoon, which had thick, muddy water. From this he did not escape the notice of his searchers, but was dragged out covered in mud, naked, and brought up to Minturnae, where he was handed over to the magistrates. For a proclamation had already been sent out to every city concerning Marius, that those who caught him should publicly hunt him down and kill him.
Still, the magistrates thought it best to deliberate first, and they lodged Marius under the roof of a woman called Fannia, who was not thought to be well disposed toward him because of an old grievance. For Fannia's husband had been Titinius; separating from him, she had demanded back her dowry, which was considerable, but he charged her with adultery. And it happened that Marius, in his sixth consulship, was the judge,
and when the case was tried it appeared both that Fannia had been unchaste and that her husband, knowing this, had married her and lived with her for a long time; displeased with both, he ordered the husband to return the dowry, but as a mark of the wife's disgrace he added a fine of four bronze coins to the judgment against her.
Yet Fannia at that time did not behave as a wronged woman would, but rather, when she saw Marius, being far from bearing any grudge, took care of him as best she could under the circumstances and encouraged him; and he in turn praised her and told her to take courage, for a good sign had appeared to him. It was this: as he was being led up to Fannia's house, when the doors opened a donkey ran out at a run to drink from a spring flowing nearby.
Looking at Marius with a bright and joyful expression, it first stood still facing him, then let out a loud bray and pranced up beside him in high spirits. From this Marius drew the conclusion and said that the divine power was showing him safety by sea rather than by land, since the donkey, disregarding its dry fodder, had turned toward the water instead. Having said this to Fannia, he retired by himself, bidding the door of the room be shut.
When the magistrates and councilors of Minturnae deliberated, it was decided not to delay but to put the man to death. None of the citizens undertook the task, but a horseman, Gallic or Cimbrian by race (both accounts are given), took a sword and came in against him.
The part of the house where he happened to be lying did not have very bright light but was shadowy, and it is said that Marius's eyes appeared to the soldier to shoot out a great flame, and a loud voice came out of the darkness: "Do you dare, man, to kill Gaius Marius?" At once the barbarian fled outside, and throwing down his sword in the middle of the room, went out through the doors, shouting only this: "I cannot kill Gaius Marius."
Amazement then seized everyone, and then pity, and a change of mind, and self-reproach for having formed a lawless and ungrateful resolve against the man who had saved Italy, whom it was terrible not to help. "Let him go, then, wherever he wishes, to bear elsewhere what fate has allotted him. As for us, let us pray that the gods do not take vengeance on us for casting Marius out of the city destitute and naked." Moved by such reasoning, they rushed in together, surrounded him, and led him out toward the sea,
with one man eagerly attending to one thing and another to another, and everyone hurrying, so that time was consumed. For the grove of the goddess called Marica, which they revere and guard so that nothing brought into it may be carried out from it, blocked the road to the sea, and going around it in a circle would have caused delay, until one of the older men cried out that no road was forbidden or impassable by which Marius might be saved, and he himself, taking up one of the things being carried to the ship, was the first to pass through the place.
With such eagerness everything was quickly provided, and one Belaeus supplied Marius with a vessel (this same man afterward commissioned a painted scene of these events and set it up as a temple offering, at the very spot where Marius went aboard and set sail). A favorable wind carried him, as fortune would have it, to the island of Aenaria, where he came upon Granius and the rest of his companions and sailed on with them in the direction of Libya,
but when their water ran out they were forced to put in at Sicily near Eryx. It happened that the Roman quaestor was keeping watch around those parts, and he nearly caught Marius himself as he was disembarking, and killed about sixteen of those who had gone for water. Marius, putting out to sea in haste and crossing the open water to the island of Meninx, there first learned that his son had escaped safely with Cethegus and that they were journeying to Iampsas, king of the Numidians, to beg for help.
At this news he took a little heart and was emboldened to sail from the island toward Carthaginian territory. Sextilius, a Roman, was then governing Libya as praetor, a man who had received neither harm nor benefit from Marius, but expected to gain something from an act of pity. But just as Marius had disembarked with a few companions, an officer met him, stood before him, and said: "Sextilius the praetor forbids you, Marius, to set foot on Libyan soil; if you do, he says he will enforce the decrees of the senate, treating you as an enemy of Rome."
Hearing this, Marius, from grief and heavy-heartedness, was at a loss for words, and for a long time kept silence, gazing terribly at the officer. When the man asked what message and what answer he was to bring back to the praetor, Marius, with a great groan, answered: "Tell him, then, that you have seen Gaius Marius sitting as an exile among the ruins of Carthage," not badly setting side by side, as an example, the fortune of that city and the change in his own.
Meanwhile Iampsas, king of the Numidians, wavering in his calculations, treated young Marius and his companions with honor, but whenever they wished to leave he kept detaining them on one pretext or another, and it was clear he was making the delay for no good purpose. Nevertheless something of what might be expected came about for their safety. For the young Marius, being handsome in appearance, distressed one of the king's concubines by his conduct, contrary to what was fitting, and this pity became the beginning and pretext of love,
and at first he rebuffed the woman; but when he saw no other way to escape and her attentions grew more earnest than merely pleasurable indulgence, he accepted her friendliness, and being sent off by her together with his friends, he escaped and fled to Marius. When they had embraced one another, walking along the sea they came upon scorpions fighting, and this sign appeared to Marius to be evil.
Straightaway they climbed into a fisherman's skiff and made the crossing to Cercina, an island lying near the mainland, escaping by the narrowest of margins, since just as they pushed off, riders dispatched by the king were spotted arriving at the shore they had just left. Marius thought he had escaped a danger no less than any other.
In Rome, meanwhile, it was reported that Sulla was fighting Mithridates's generals around Boeotia, while the consuls, having fallen into factional strife, took up arms against each other. In the battle that followed Octavius was victorious and expelled Cinna, who was attempting to rule in too tyrannical a fashion, and set up Cornelius Merula as consul in his place; but Cinna, gathering a force from the rest of Italy, waged war again
against them. When Marius learned of this, it seemed best to sail as quickly as possible; taking from Libya some Mauretanian horsemen and some of those coming down from Italy, amounting together to no more than a thousand men, he put out to sea. Landing at Telamon in Etruria and disembarking, he proclaimed freedom for slaves, and as the free men working the land and pasturing flocks in that region ran together to the sea because of his reputation, persuading the most vigorous of them, within a few days he gathered a large force and manned forty ships.
Knowing that Octavius was an excellent man who wished to govern in the most just manner, but that Cinna was suspected by Sulla and was warring against the established government, he decided to attach himself, with his forces, to Cinna. He therefore sent word promising that he would do everything ordered of him as if to a consul. Cinna accepted and addressed him as proconsul, and sent him the rods and other insignia of office, but Marius did not
say that such adornment befitted his present fortunes; instead, wearing shabby clothing and with his hair grown long from the day he had fled, being over seventy years old, he approached on foot, wishing to appear pitiable, but mixed with the pity was something more of his own natural appearance that was fearsome, and his dejection revealed a spirit not humbled but rather made savage by the change of fortune.
Having greeted Cinna and met with the soldiers, he set to work at once and brought about a great change in affairs. First, by cutting off the grain ships and plundering the merchants, he gained control of the market, then he sailed along and captured the coastal cities. Finally, taking Ostia itself by treachery, he plundered its money and killed most of its people, and by bridging the river he completely cut off his enemies' supplies coming from the sea,
then, moving with his army toward the city, he seized the hill called Janiculum, the situation being damaged not so much by Octavius's inexperience as by his strict adherence to what was just, letting go of what was expedient for the sake of principle — a man who, though many urged him to call the household slaves to freedom, refused to grant citizens' rights to slaves, defending by the laws the very country from which he was excluding Gaius Marius.
But when Metellus, the son of that Metellus who once held command in Libya and was forced out on Marius's account, arrived in Rome and appeared far more capable a general than Octavius, the soldiers abandoned Octavius and went over to him, begging him to take command and save the city, since they had gained an experienced and energetic leader who would fight well and win. When Metellus, indignant, ordered them to go back to the consul, they went over to the enemy instead, and Metellus too withdrew, despairing of the city.
Octavius was kept in Rome by Chaldean astrologers and certain diviners and Sibylline interpreters, who persuaded him that things would turn out well. For this man, who in all other respects was reckoned the most upright of the Romans, and who above all preserved the dignity of the consulship unflattered, maintaining the ancestral customs and laws as if they were unalterable ordinances, is thought to have shown a single weakness on this score, devoting more of his time to astrologers and soothsayers than to those experienced in politics and warfare.
Before Marius had even entered the city, this man was pulled down off the speaker's platform by those sent in advance and put to death, and it is said that a Chaldean horoscope was found in the bosom of the murdered man. And the matter contained much absurdity, that of the two most eminent leaders, Marius was proved right in not despising divination, while Octavius was destroyed by it.
Matters standing thus, the senate convened and dispatched envoys to Cinna and Marius, entreating the two men to come into the city and show mercy to its people. Cinna, taking his seat as consul in his chair of office, transacted business and gave kindly answers to the envoys, but Marius stood beside the chair, saying nothing, but through the grim set of his face and the harshness in his eyes, he made it plain that the city would soon be drenched in bloodshed.
When they rose up and began to walk, Cinna went in with his armed escort around him, yet Marius stopped short at the entrance, putting on a show of restraint against his anger, saying that he was an exile and barred from his fatherland by law, and that if anyone had need of him while he was present, the vote that had banished him must first be repealed by a second vote—playing the part, as it were, of a law-abiding man returning into a free city.
So he called the people together into the forum, and before three or four tribes had cast their vote, he threw off the pretense and that exile's plea of legality, and came down into the city with a chosen bodyguard drawn from the slaves who had flocked to him, whom he called Bardyaeans. These men killed many at a word from him, and many at a mere nod, when he gave the order; and finally, when Ancharius—a man who had held both senatorial office and the praetorship—came upon Marius and got no greeting in return, they struck him down in front of him with their swords.
From this point on, all the others too whom he greeted without a return greeting when they saluted him—this very thing was the signal to cut them down at once in the streets, so that each of his friends felt dread and a shudder of horror on approaching to give Marius his greeting. And though many were being killed, Cinna grew dulled and already sated with slaughter, but Marius, his anger mounting fresh each day and thirsting on, went after all who had in any way fallen under suspicion, and every road,
and every city was full of men hunting down and tracking those who fled and hid. The trust owed to hospitality and friendship was put to the test and found to hold nothing firm against fortune's reversals; for very few indeed were those who did not betray to them the men who had taken refuge with them.
It is worth admiring and marveling, then, at the servants of Cornutus, who hid their master at home, but hung up the body of one of the many dead by the neck, and putting a gold ring on it, showed it to Marius's bodyguard, and after dressing it up as though it were their master, buried it as him. No one suspected anything, and so Cornutus, thus escaping notice thanks to his household slaves, was conveyed safely to Gaul.
Marcus Antonius the orator, too, though he had a good friend, met with misfortune through him. The man was poor and of the common people, but having taken in the foremost man of Rome as his guest and treating him kindly with what he had, he sent a slave to one of the wine-merchants nearby to fetch wine. The slave, tasting it with unusual care and asking for a better measure, was asked by the merchant what had come over him that he was not buying the cheap, common wine as usual, but was asking for the choice and expensive kind,
and the slave, speaking simply enough, as to a familiar acquaintance, said that his master was entertaining Marcus Antonius at his house, who was hiding there. At this the merchant, an impious and vile man, as soon as the slave had left, hurried off himself to Marius, who was already at dinner, and being brought before him, agreed to hand Antonius over to him.
When Marius heard this, he is said to have cried out loudly and to have clapped his hands together for joy; and he very nearly rose up and went himself to the place, but his friends held him back, and he sent Annius, with soldiers along with him, with instructions to bring him Antonius's head as quickly as possible. Upon reaching the house, Annius remained outside at the entrance, while the soldiers went up by ladders into the room, and on seeing Antonius, each urged the other forward to do the killing in his place,
each pushing it onto the next. Such, it seems, was the man's charm and the spell of his words that when he began to speak and to plead against death, not one of them dared touch him or so much as meet his gaze, and instead they all lowered their heads and wept; and as the delay went on, Annius came up and saw Antonius still talking and the soldiers struck with amazement and held spellbound by him. So he rebuked them, and running up himself, cut off the head.
Catulus Lutatius, who had been consul with Marius and shared his triumph over the Cimbri, when those pleading and begging on his behalf received from Marius only this one answer, “He must die,” shut himself into a room, kindled a great quantity of charcoal, and suffocated himself.
As headless bodies were thrown out and trampled underfoot in the streets, there was no pity, but only horror and trembling in everyone at the sight. But what most vexed the people was the insolence of the men called Bardyaeans; for after slaughtering masters in their own houses, they violated their children and forced themselves on their mistresses, and were uncontrollable in their plundering and bloodlust, until Cinna and Sertorius, joining together in agreement, fell upon them as they slept in their camp and speared every one of them to death.
Meanwhile, as if some turn of fortune's wheel were coming round again, messengers kept arriving from every side that Sulla had finished the Mithridatic war, recovered the provinces, and was sailing back with a great force; and this brought a brief check and a short pause in their unspeakable evils, since they thought the war was all but upon them already. Marius was then proclaimed consul for a seventh time, and when he appeared publicly on the Kalends of January itself, the year's opening day, he ordered a man named Sextus Lucinus flung from the rock, which seemed to both the victims and the city itself to be the greatest omen of evils yet to come.
Marius himself, already worn out by his labors and, as it were, waterlogged and exhausted by his anxieties, could not bear to bring his soul, trembling from experience of terrors and from weariness, to face again so vast a design of a new war and fresh struggles and fears, reasoning that the danger before him would not be against Octavius or Merula, generals of a motley mob and a factious rabble, but that Sulla was coming against him—the very man who had long ago driven him from his fatherland, and who had now brought Mithridates to bay on the shores of the Euxine Sea.
Broken by such reasonings, and picturing to himself his own long years of wandering, of flight and peril, chased across both land and water, he sank into dreadful perplexities and nighttime terrors and troubled dreams, always seeming to hear someone speaking the words, ‘Terrible are the lion's lairs, even when he is away.’ And fearing sleeplessness above all else, he threw himself into drinking and untimely bouts of drunkenness unsuited to his age, contriving sleep as a kind of escape from his anxieties.
At last, when someone came bringing a report from the sea, new fears fell upon him, partly from dread of what was to come, partly, as it were, from the burden and surfeit of his present state, and after a slight tipping of the scale he was brought down into an illness, pleurisy, as Posidonius the philosopher records—for he himself, he says, went in and conversed with him about the matters on which he was serving as an envoy, while Marius was already
ill, as he tells it. And a certain Gaius Piso, a historian, records that Marius, walking about after dinner with his friends, fell into conversation about his own affairs, beginning from far back; and after recounting the many reversals of fortune on both sides that he had experienced, he remarked that no man of sound judgment ought to keep placing his confidence in fortune; and after this, having greeted those present and having lain down, he died after seven continuous days.
Some say that his ambition, laid utterly bare in his illness, ran off into a strange derangement, as he pictured himself in command of the Mithridatic campaign, and then, exactly as he had once done amid the real battles, ran through every posture and bodily movement, along with strained shouting and repeated battle-cries.
So terrible and inconsolable was the passion for those exploits that had melted into him, born of love of power and jealous rivalry. Therefore, though he had lived seventy years, and had been the first man ever proclaimed consul seven times, and had acquired a house and wealth sufficient for many kingdoms together, he lamented his own fortune as though he were dying poor and unfulfilled in what he had longed for.
Plato, then, when he was already near death, praised his own guardian spirit and his fortune, because, first, he had been born a human being, and not an irrational beast; and next, a Greek, and not a barbarian; and besides these things, because his birth had coincided with the times of Socrates.
And, by Zeus, they say that Antipater of Tarsus likewise, near his death, reckoned up the blessings that had fallen to his lot, and did not forget even his favorable voyage from home to Athens, treating every gift of fortune, as though she were kindly disposed, as a matter of great gratitude, and preserving it in memory to the end—of which nothing is a more secure storehouse of good things for a man.
But things slip away, with the passage of time, from the forgetful and the thoughtless; and so, holding nothing and retaining nothing, they are always empty of good things, but full of hopes, looking toward the future and letting go of the present. And yet the one fortune could prevent, while the other is unable to be taken away
but nevertheless, casting this aside as though it were no concern of fortune's, they dream instead of that uncertain thing, and suffer what is to be expected; for before laying down, through reason and education, a foundation and base for external goods, in gathering and heaping them up they cannot fill the insatiable hunger of the soul.
At any rate, Marius died having held only seventeen days of his seventh consulship. And at once Rome felt great joy and confidence, as though rid of a harsh tyranny; but within a few days people perceived that they had exchanged, in place of an old master, a new and vigorous one, so great was the cruelty and bitterness that his son Marius displayed, putting to death the best and most respected men.
Thought at first to be bold and fond of danger against the enemy, he was at first called a son of Ares; but soon, refuted by his deeds, he came instead to be called a son of Aphrodite. In the end, besieged and confined within Praeneste by Sulla's forces, and after grasping at survival in every futile way he could, when the city's capture became inescapable, he killed himself with his own hand.

======== Sylla ========

Lucius Cornelius Sulla was by birth a patrician, of the class one might call the well-born; and among his ancestors, they say, was a certain Rufinus who had been consul, though his disgrace became more famous than his honor. For he was found to possess more than ten pounds' weight of wrought silver, which the law forbade, and on this account he was expelled from the senate. Those who came after him lived on in reduced circumstances, and Sulla himself was raised on no great abundance of his father's property.
As a young man he lodged with others, paying no great rent, a fact which was later thrown in his face as undeserved good fortune; for when, after his campaign in Libya, he was giving himself airs and speaking grandly, one of the noble and good men is said to have remarked to him, "How can you be an honest man, when your father left you nothing and yet you have come to possess so much?"
For indeed, since men's lives no longer kept to a straight and pure standard of conduct but had declined and taken up a taste for luxury and extravagance, it was held an equal reproach both to those who had squandered an existing fortune and to those who had failed to preserve their inherited poverty.
Later, when Sulla was already in power and putting many men to death, a freedman, thought to be hiding one of the proscribed and about to be hurled from the rock for it, reproached Sulla, saying that for a long time they had lodged in the same tenement house, he himself paying two thousand sesterces for the upper rooms and Sulla three thousand for those below, so that the difference between their fortunes came to a thousand sesterces, which amount to two hundred and fifty Attic drachmas. Such, then, are the stories told about Sulla's early fortune.
As for his bodily appearance, the rest is visible in his statues, but the fierce, cold blue-grey of his eyes was made more terrible to look upon by the color of his face. For a rough redness broke out over it, scattered here and there among the white; and from this, they say, came the nickname given him for his complexion, and one of the jesters at Athens made a joke on it in verse: "Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled over with barley-meal."
It is not out of place to use such evidence concerning a man who is said to have been by nature so fond of jesting that, when young and still without reputation, he lived and caroused among mimes and buffoons, and later, once he had become master of all things, he would gather the most impudent performers from the stage and theater and spend his days drinking and trading wisecracks with them, conduct thought unbecoming his age and, besides disgracing the dignity of his office, one that let slip many matters requiring his attention.
For Sulla, while at dinner, could never be brought to anything serious; though at other times he was active and rather grim, he underwent a sudden transformation the moment he gave himself over to company and drink, becoming tame toward mimic actors and dancers and pliable and easily approached by anyone. From this relaxation there seems to have grown, as a kind of disease, his readiness for love affairs and the free flow of his pleasure-seeking, which he did not give up even in old age.
He continued, while still young, to be in love with a certain Metrobius, one of the stage performers. And this is what happened to him: having begun an affair with a common but wealthy woman named Nicopolis, through familiarity and the charm he had from his youth, he came to occupy the position of her beloved, and when she died he was left her heir. He also inherited from his stepmother, having been loved by her as a son; and from these sources he came into moderate wealth.
Having been appointed quaestor under Marius in his first consulship, he sailed with him to Libya to make war on Jugurtha. Once at the camp he made himself distinguished in various ways, and when the occasion offered, he used it well and won the friendship of Bocchus, king of the Numidians. For when Bocchus's envoys, having escaped a Numidian band of robbers, were received by Sulla with kindness, he gave them gifts and a safe escort and sent them back.
Bocchus, who had for a long time hated and feared Jugurtha, his son-in-law, and who now, since Jugurtha had been defeated and fled to him, was plotting against him, summoned Sulla, wishing the capture and surrender of Jugurtha to be effected through him rather than through himself. Having conferred with Marius and taken a few soldiers, Sulla undertook the greatest of dangers, since, trusting a barbarian faithless even to his closest kin, he placed himself in another's hands in order to take that other captive.
Nevertheless Bocchus, once he had both men in his power, and having put himself under the necessity of betraying one or the other, and after much wavering of mind, at last confirmed his first act of treachery and handed Jugurtha over to Sulla. So it was Marius who celebrated the triumph over this; but the glory of the success, which Marius's jealousy attributed to Sulla, quietly vexed Marius.
For Sulla himself, being by nature boastful, and now for the first time, having risen from a humble and obscure life, held in some regard among the citizens and tasting the sweetness of honor, carried his love of distinction so far that he had a signet ring engraved with a depiction of the deed, and wore it, using it continually ever after. The design showed Bocchus handing over Jugurtha and Sulla receiving him.
These things vexed Marius; and yet, still reckoning Sulla too small a man to be jealous of, he continued to employ him in his campaigns, in his second consulship as legate, in his third as tribune, and through him many useful things were accomplished. For as legate he captured Copillus, the chieftain of the Tectosages, and as tribune he persuaded the Marsi, a large and thickly settled people, to enter into friendship and alliance with the Romans,
and from this, perceiving that Marius was displeased with him and no longer gladly offering him opportunities for action but rather obstructing his advancement, he attached himself to Catulus, Marius's colleague in office, a decent man but rather sluggish in warfare; and being trusted by him with the first and greatest matters, he advanced at once in power and reputation.
In war he captured a great part of the barbarians in the Alps, and when the army's supply of grain ran short, he took charge of the matter and produced such abundance that, while Catulus's soldiers lived in plenty, he was able to supply Marius's men as well besides. He says himself that this vexed Marius exceedingly.
Thus the enmity between them, taking so slight and boyish a beginning, and then proceeding through civil bloodshed and irremediable factions to tyranny and the confounding of all affairs, proved Euripides a wise man and one skilled in the diseases of states, when he counseled that ambition be guarded against as the most deadly and worst of spirits for those who cultivate it.
Sulla, thinking that the reputation he had won from his military exploits would suffice for a political career, gave himself over, straight from the campaign, to seeking the favor of the people, and stood for the office of city praetor, and was defeated; the blame for this he lays upon the mob. For he says that they, knowing his friendship with Bocchus, and expecting that if he held the office of aedile before the praetorship he would put on splendid hunting shows and contests of Libyan beasts, elected others as praetors so as to force him into the aedileship.
But it appears that Sulla, in not admitting the true cause of his failure, is refuted by the facts themselves. For in the following year he did obtain the praetorship, having won over the people partly by flattery and partly by money. Hence, when he was praetor and had spoken angrily to Caesar, saying he would use his own official authority against him, Caesar laughed and said, "You are right to call the office your own, for you have bought it."
After his praetorship he was sent to Cappadocia, with the ostensible purpose of the expedition being to restore Ariobarzanes, but the true reason being to check Mithridates, who was meddling and gathering to himself a power and dominion no less than what he already had. He set out with no sizable army under his personal command, relying instead on the eager help supplied by the allies, and having killed many Cappadocians and even more Armenians who came to their aid, he drove out Gordius and established Ariobarzanes as king.
While he was staying by the Euphrates, there came to meet him Orobazus the Parthian, an envoy of King Arsaces, the two nations never before having had any dealings with one another; and this too is thought to have been a mark of Sulla's great good fortune, that he should be the first Roman with whom the Parthians, in need of alliance and friendship, entered into negotiation. It is said that on that occasion he set out three seats, one for Ariobarzanes, one for Orobazus, and one for himself, and sat between the two of them to conduct the business.
For this the king of the Parthians afterward put Orobazus to death, while some praised Sulla for having lorded it over the barbarians, others blamed him as vulgar and out of season in his self-importance. It is recorded that one of the men who had come down with Orobazus, a Chaldean, gazing intently upon Sulla's face and studying carefully the movements of both his mind and his body,
and examining his nature according to the principles of his art, said that it was inevitable this man should become supremely great, and that he wondered even now how he could bear not to be first of all men. On his return, Censorinus brought against him an indictment for bribery, on the ground that he had collected great sums of money contrary to law from a friendly and allied kingdom; but Censorinus did not appear at the trial, and dropped the accusation.
Yet the strife between him and Marius was fanned anew, taking as fresh occasion the vanity of Bocchus, who, currying favor with the people at Rome and at the same time gratifying Sulla, set up on the Capitol statues bearing trophies, and beside them a golden figure of Jugurtha being handed over by himself to Sulla.
At this Marius was deeply angered and tried to have the statues torn down, while others rallied to defend Sulla, and the city was on the very point of being set ablaze by the two of them, when the Social War, long smoldering, flared up against Rome and for the time checked their quarrel. In this war, which proved the greatest and most varied and brought the Romans the most numerous and gravest dangers, Marius, unable to accomplish anything great, showed that the skill of war requires the vigor and strength of youth, while Sulla, by his many notable deeds, won the reputation of a great commander among the citizens, of the greatest among his friends, and of the most fortunate even among his enemies.
But he did not suffer the same fate as Timotheus, son of Conon, who, when his enemies attributed his successes to Fortune and had paintings made showing him asleep while Fortune cast her net over the cities, took it ill and grew angry at those who did this, as though they were robbing him of the glory of his achievements, and once said to the Athenian people, on returning from a campaign that seemed to have gone well, "In this campaign at least, men of Athens, Fortune has no share."
Against Timotheus, then, for showing himself so jealous of his honor, the divine power is said to have retaliated so childishly that he accomplished nothing brilliant thereafter, but failed utterly in his undertakings and, coming into collision with the people, was at last driven from the city. Sulla, on the other hand, not only gladly welcomed such congratulation and enthusiasm for his good fortune, but even magnified it and joined in deifying his own successes, attaching them to Fortune, whether out of boastfulness or because he was truly so disposed toward the divine,
for indeed he has written in his memoirs that of the actions he thought he had planned well, those undertaken not according to calculation but on the spur of the moment turned out for the better. And further, from the things he says about being better suited to fortune than to war, he seems to assign more to fortune than to his own valor, and to make himself altogether the creature of the divine power; for he even attributes to a kind of divine good luck his harmony with Metellus, a man of equal rank and his kinsman by marriage, since Metellus, who was expected to cause him much trouble, proved instead the gentlest of partners in his command,
and further, in the memoirs which he dedicated in writing to Lucullus, he advises him to consider nothing so certain as whatever the divine power enjoins upon him by night; and he records that when he himself was being sent out with an army against the Social War, a great chasm opened in the earth near Laverna, out of which much fire burst forth and a bright flame shot up toward the sky.
The diviners, he says, declared that a good man, distinguished and extraordinary in appearance, would take command and free the city from the troubles then afflicting it; and Sulla says that he himself was this man, for it was peculiar to his appearance that his hair had a golden gleam, and he was not ashamed to bear witness to his own valor after such fine and great deeds. So much, then, for his claims to divine favor. In other respects he seems to have been an uneven man and inconsistent with himself — taking away much, granting still more, honoring beyond reason, insulting beyond reason, courting those he needed, playing the coquette toward suppliants, so that it was hard to know whether he was by nature more disdainful or more obsequious.
As for the inconsistency of his punishments — flogging some men to death for the slightest causes, and again bearing the greatest wrongs with mildness, and reconciling himself to irreparable injuries with easy good humor, while pursuing small and trivial offenses with executions and confiscations of property — one might explain it by saying that he was by nature harsh in anger and vindictive, but that he would relax his severity when calculation showed it to be to his advantage,
In this very Social War, when his soldiers had used clubs and stones on a man of generalship, a legate named Albinus, he let so great a wrong pass and did not pursue it, but even boasted and spread the story that they would be more eager for the war on this account, healing their fault through manly courage. He gave no thought to those who accused him of this, for he was already intent on overthrowing Marius, and since the war against the allies seemed to be reaching its end, he was courting the army under his own command with a view to being appointed general against Mithridates.
And on returning to the city he was elected consul together with Quintus Pompeius, being fifty years of age, and he made a most illustrious marriage with Caecilia, daughter of Metellus the high priest. At this many songs were sung against him by the common people, and many of the foremost men resented it, thinking that a man they had judged worthy of the consulship was not worthy of the woman,
as Titus says. Nor was she the only wife he married, but first, while still a young man, he had Ilia, who bore him a little daughter; then after her, Aelia; and third, Cloelia, whom he put away as barren, honorably and with kind words, adding gifts besides; yet a few days later, when he took Metella to wife, he seemed for this reason not to have accused Cloelia fairly.
Metella, however, he continued in all things to court, so that even the Roman people, when they desired to bring back the exiles of Marius' party and Sulla refused, begged Metella to intercede in supplication. It seemed too that even toward the Athenians, once he had taken their city, he behaved more harshly because they had mocked and reviled Metella from the wall with taunting verses. But these things belong to a later time.
At that time, however, he considered the consulship a small thing compared to what was to come, and his mind was aflutter over the Mithridatic war. Opposed to him rose Marius, driven by mad ambition and love of honor, passions that never grow old, a man heavy now in body and lately worn out from his campaigns by old age, yet yearning for wars abroad and across the sea.
And when Sulla had set out to the camp to attend to the unfinished business, Marius himself, staying at home, was fashioning that most ruinous sedition — one that all the wars together had not done such harm to Rome as it did — even as the divine power foreshowed it to them. For fire flared up of its own accord from the standard-poles that bore the military emblems and was with difficulty put out, and three ravens brought their young out into the road and devoured them, then carried the remains back again into the nest.
And when mice gnawed at gold dedicated in a temple, the temple-keepers caught one female in a trap, and she, giving birth right there in the trap, consumed three of her own five young. And greatest of all, out of a cloudless and clear sky there sounded the voice of a trumpet, drawing out a shrill and mournful note, so that all were struck out of their senses and cowered at its immensity. The learned men of the Etruscans declared that the portent signified a change to another race and a recasting of the world,
for there are, they say, eight races in all, differing from one another in their ways of life and character, and to each a number of years has been allotted by god, determined by the revolution of a Great Year. And whenever this comes to its end, and another begins, some marvelous sign moves from earth or heaven, so that it becomes clear to those who have studied such matters and learned them at once that men have come to be using different manners and different modes of life, and are cared for by the gods either less or more than those before them.
For in other respects too, they say, great innovations occur at the changing of the races, and divination at one time increases in honor and hits the mark in its predictions, sending forth clear and manifest signs from the divine, while at another time, in a different race, it fares humbly, being for the most part improvised and grasping at the future through dim and obscure instruments. Such were the tales told by the most learned of the Etruscans, those who were thought to know more of these things than the rest.
While the Senate was occupied with the seers over these matters and sitting in the temple of Enyo, a sparrow flew in, in full view of all, carrying a cicada in its beak, and dropping part of it, left it behind, while carrying off the rest as it departed. The diviners of prodigies suspected sedition and a quarrel between the landed men and the urban and marketplace crowd — for the latter was vocal like the cicada, while the countryfolk were like creatures of the fields.
Marius then took on as an ally Sulpicius, who was tribune of the people, a man second to none in extremity of vice, so that one need not ask whom else he surpassed in wickedness, but only in what respect he surpassed himself — for cruelty and boldness and greed were in him unchecked by any shame or any evil whatsoever, he who openly sold Roman citizenship to freedmen and resident aliens, counting out the price at a table set up in the marketplace,
and he maintained three thousand sword-bearers, and kept about him a multitude of young horsemen ready for anything, whom he called his 'counter-senate.' Though he had passed a law that no senator should owe more than two thousand drachmas, he himself left behind at his death a debt of three million. This man, let loose upon the people by Marius, and having thrown all affairs into confusion by violence and the sword, drafted laws — other wicked ones, and also one granting Marius the command of the Mithridatic war.
And when the consuls, because of these things, decreed a suspension of public business, Sulpicius brought a mob against them as they were holding assembly near the temple of the Dioscuri, and among many others he killed the young son of Pompeius the consul, right there in the forum; Pompeius himself escaped unnoticed. Sulla, driven and pursued into the house of Marius, was compelled to come forth and rescind the suspension of business.
And for this reason, though Sulpicius removed Pompeius from his command, he did not take the consulship away from Sulla, but transferred only the campaign against Mithridates to Marius; and he sent tribunes at once to Nola to take over the army and lead it to Marius.
But Sulla got there first and escaped to the camp, and when the soldiers learned of these things they stoned the tribunes to death; Marius' party in turn began killing Sulla's friends in the city and plundering their property, and there were removals and flights, some fleeing from the camp into the city, others from the city out to the camp,
and the Senate was no longer its own master, but was governed by the decrees of Marius and Sulpicius. Learning that Sulla was marching on the city, it sent two praetors, Brutus and Servilius, to forbid him to advance. These men addressed Sulla with too much boldness, and the soldiers rushed to kill them; instead they broke their rods of office and stripped them of their purple-bordered robes, and after much abuse sent them off, so that they returned in dire humiliation, seen bereft of the marks of their command, reporting that the sedition was no longer containable but had become incurable.
Marius' party, then, were making their preparations; but Sulla, leading six full legions together with his colleague, set out from Nola, seeing that his army was eager to march at once upon the city, though he himself was hesitating in his own mind and fearing the danger. The seer Postumius, having examined the signs after Sulla's sacrifice, stretched out both hands to him and asked to be bound and kept under guard until the battle, being willing, if all things were not swiftly and well accomplished, to suffer the ultimate penalty.
It is said too that in his sleep a goddess appeared to Sulla, one whom the Romans worship, having learned her from the Cappadocians — whether she is Selene, or Athena, or Enyo. This goddess, Sulla thought, stood over him and placed a thunderbolt in his hand, and naming each of his enemies in turn bade him hurl it against them, and that they fell as they were struck and vanished. Emboldened by this vision, and having told his colleague, he led his army toward Rome at daybreak.
And when an embassy met him near Picta and begged him not to march straight in upon the city — for all just demands, they said, would be granted once the Senate had voted — he agreed to encamp there and gave orders, as was his custom, for his officers to measure out the ground for the camp, so that the envoys departed trusting him. But once they had gone, he immediately sent out Lucius Basillus and Gaius Mummius, and through them seized the gate and the walls around the Esquiline hill; then
he himself pressed on with all haste to join them. But when Basillus' men had burst into the city and were prevailing, the great unarmed populace, hurling tiles and stones from the rooftops, checked their advance and drove them back to the wall. At this point Sulla himself arrived, and seeing what was happening, cried out for the houses to be set afire, and taking a burning torch he himself went forward first, and ordered the archers to use fire-arrows, aiming them up over the rooftops, with no regard for consequence,
but carried away by passion and having surrendered command of his actions to anger, seeing only his enemies, taking no account whatever of friends, kinsmen, or household, and with no pity, he advanced through fire, which made no distinction between the guilty and the innocent. While this was happening, Marius, driven out to the temple of Earth, called by proclamation on the household slaves, offering them freedom; but when the enemy came on he was overpowered and driven from the city.
Sulla, having assembled the Senate, had it vote the death sentence against Marius himself and a few others, among whom was Sulpicius the tribune. Sulpicius was slaughtered, betrayed by a slave whom Sulla had freed and then had thrown down from the rock; on Marius he set a price, ungraciously and unstatesmanlike, on the very man who a little before, when Marius had him helpless in his own house, had let him go unharmed.
And yet at that time, when Marius did not let Sulla go but let him off at Sulpicius' urging, it was in his power to master everything; still he spared him, and a few days later, when given the same opportunity, he did not receive the same treatment. For this Sulla secretly vexed the Senate, while the people's hostility and resentment toward him were made plain by their deeds.
For when Nonius, his nephew, and Servius stood for office, the people voted them down and heaped insult on them, setting up other men as magistrates instead, thinking that by honoring these especially they would most vex Sulla; but he pretended to be pleased at this, as though the people, by doing as they wished, were enjoying their freedom through his doing, and to court the hatred of the multitude he had Lucius Cinna, of the opposing faction, made consul, having bound him beforehand by curses and oaths to be well-disposed toward his own interests.
Cinna went up onto the Capitol holding a stone, and there he swore an oath, invoking a curse on his own head — that he be driven from the city just as he now flung this stone from his hand — should he fail to keep faith and goodwill toward Sulla; and so, before many witnesses, he hurled the stone down to the ground. But once he had taken office he at once set about disturbing the established order, and prepared a lawsuit against Sulla, and set up Verginius, one of the tribunes, to prosecute him — a man whom Sulla, dismissing along with his court, left behind as he set out for Mithridates.
It is said that in those very days when Sulla was setting his fleet in motion from Italy, many other divine signs befell Mithridates as he was lingering about Pergamum; among them, a Victory bearing a crown, being lowered down upon him by the Pergamenes by means of certain machinery from above, when it was on the very point of touching his head, broke apart, and the crown, falling out, went tumbling down over the theater, shattering as it fell — so that it caused a shudder in the people, and great despondency in Mithridates, even though his affairs at that time were progressing beyond his hopes.
For he himself, having taken from the Romans Asia and from the kings Bithynia and Cappadocia, sat at Pergamum, distributing riches and dominions and tyrannies to his friends, while of his sons one held the ancient realm in Pontus and the Bosporus as far as the uninhabited lands beyond the Maeotis, with none to trouble him, and Ariarathes was advancing upon Thrace and Macedonia with a great army,
while his other generals, with forces of their own, were seizing other places, the greatest of them Archelaus, who with his fleet held mastery of nearly the whole sea, was enslaving the Cyclades islands and all the others within Cape Malea, and held Euboea itself, and setting out from Athens was detaching the peoples of Greece as far as Thessaly, meeting only a slight check near Chaeronea.
For there Bruttius Sura confronted him, a legate of Sentius, the praetor of Macedonia, a man distinguished for both boldness and good sense; he, standing firm for the longest time against Archelaus, who was sweeping through Boeotia like a torrent, and fighting three battles near Chaeronea, drove him back and forced him again to the sea.
But when Lucius Lucullus ordered him to withdraw before the advancing Sulla and to leave to him the war that had been voted to him, he at once abandoned Boeotia and marched back to Sentius, even though his affairs were progressing beyond hope and Greece was well disposed toward changing sides because of his own honorable conduct. But these things were the most brilliant of Bruttius' achievements.
Sylla found the other cities immediately sending embassies to him and inviting him in, but Athens, forced under the tyranny of Aristion, he had to invest in full force, encircling the Piraeus and laying siege to it, bringing every kind of engine to bear and fighting battles of every sort.
And yet, had he waited only a little while, he could have taken the upper city without danger, since it was already reduced by famine to the last extremity of need for necessities; but pressing on toward Rome and fearing the revolution brewing there, he hastened the war at the cost of many dangers, many battles, and great expense, for which, apart from the rest of his preparations, the work on siege-engines alone was supplied by ten thousand yoke of mules, kept working every day in this service.
When timber ran short because much of the machinery, breaking under its own weight, kept being smashed to pieces and set on fire by the continual missiles of the enemy, he laid hands on the sacred groves, and stripped the Academy, the most thickly wooded of the suburbs, and the Lyceum as well. And since he also needed great sums of money for the war, he plundered the inviolable sanctuaries of Greece, sending for the finest and costliest of the dedicated offerings, some from Epidaurus, some from Olympia.
He also wrote to the Amphictyons at Delphi that it would be better for the god's treasures to be brought to him, since he would either guard them more safely, or, if he made use of them, would repay no less an amount; and he sent one of his friends, Caphis the Phocian, instructing him to take delivery of every object after it was weighed. Once at Delphi, however, Caphis could not bring himself to lay hands on the sacred objects, and in front of many of the Amphictyons he wept openly at what the task demanded of him.
When some claimed to have heard the lyre in the inner sanctuary sounding of itself, whether he believed it or wished to instill superstitious fear in Sylla, he wrote to report it; but Sylla wrote back mockingly that he was amazed Caphis did not understand that singing was the sign of a joyful, not an angry god — so that he should take courage and receive the treasures, since the god was glad and giving them freely.
Now the rest of what was sent out escaped the notice of most of the Greeks, but the silver jar, which was still left over from the royal offerings, proved too heavy and bulky for the pack animals, so the Amphictyons had no choice but to break it apart into sections, a task that brought to mind Titus Flamininus and Manius Acilius, and Aemilius Paullus as well — of whom the first drove Antiochus out of Greece, while the others defeated the kings of Macedon, and yet not only kept their hands off the sanctuaries of the Greeks, but even added gifts, honor, and great reverence toward them.
But those men, being of sound mind and trained to submit their hands in silence to their commanders as the law required, were themselves kingly in spirit but modest in expenditure, keeping to moderate and fixed outlays, thinking it more shameful to flatter their soldiers than to fear their enemies.
But the generals of that later time, gaining the foremost place by force rather than by merit, and needing arms more against one another than against the enemy, were compelled to court popular favor even while commanding, and then, having to pay for the labor of their soldiers with what they spent on their soldiers' pleasures, without noticing it they made their whole homeland something bought and sold, and made themselves slaves to the worst men for the sake of ruling over the better. This is what drove out Marius, and then in turn brought back Sylla against him; this is what made the associates of Octavius do murder for Cinna's sake, and the associates of Flaccus for Fimbria's.
And it was Sylla, not least of all, who gave openings to these things, by lavishing money to corrupt and win over men enlisted under other commanders, bringing them over to his own and spending freely on them, so that, corrupting others toward betrayal and his own men toward extravagance at the same time, he needed great sums of money, especially for that siege.
For some terrible and inexorable passion possessed him to take Athens — whether out of a kind of rivalry with the city's ancient renown, now fighting only shadows of itself, or out of anger at the jeers and buffooneries with which the tyrant Aristion, mocking him and his wife Metella from the walls with obscene gestures and dances, kept goading him — a man whose soul was compounded equally of wantonness and cruelty,
who had gathered into himself the worst of the diseases and afflictions that had flowed together from the Mithridatic cause, and now, laying upon the city — which had escaped countless wars, many tyrannies and factions before — as it were a fatal disease in its last extremity: under him, when a medimnus of wheat was selling in the city for a thousand drachmas, and people were eating the parthenium that grew around the Acropolis,
boiling down their shoes and oil-flasks to eat, while he himself continually gave himself over to daytime drinking bouts and revels, dancing the pyrrhic and playing the clown before the enemy, let the sacred lamp of the goddess go out for want of oil, and when the high priestess begged him for half a measure of wheat, sent her pepper instead; and when the councillors and priests came as suppliants, begging him to pity the city and come to terms with Sylla, he scattered them by shooting arrows at them.
Only very late, and reluctantly even then, did he send out two or three of his drinking companions to negotiate for peace; and when these men, offering nothing of any saving worth, began solemnly invoking Theseus and Eumolpus and the Persian Wars, Sylla said, "Be off, you blessed men, and take these speeches of yours with you; for I was not sent to Athens by the Romans to study, but to subdue rebels."
Meanwhile, it is said that some of the old men in the Ceramicus were overheard talking among themselves and reproaching the tyrant for failing to guard the approach and point of assault by the Heptachalcum, the only place where it was possible, and easy, for the enemy to get over the wall — and that this was reported to Sylla.
He did not disregard it, but went and looked at the place by night, and finding it assailable, set to the work at once. Sylla himself says in his memoirs that the first man to mount the wall, Marcus Ateius, when an enemy soldier opposed him, struck him a downward blow on the helmet that broke his own sword, but did not give ground for that, but stood his ground and held the position. It was from there, then, that the city was taken, as the oldest Athenians used to relate.
Sylla himself, after leveling and razing the space between the Piraic gate and the sacred gate, marched in about midnight, a terrifying sight amid trumpets and many horns, with the shouting and clamor of the army let loose by him for plunder and slaughter, sweeping through the narrow streets with drawn swords, so that no count could be made of the slain, but even now the multitude is reckoned by the extent of ground over which the blood flowed.
For apart from those killed elsewhere in the city, the slaughter around the marketplace covered the whole of the Ceramicus within the Dipylon; and many say the flood of blood even passed through the gates and drenched the suburb. But of those who died in this way, however many there were, no fewer were those who destroyed themselves out of pity and longing for their homeland, believing it was about to be annihilated. For it was this that led the best of them to despair and give up hope of safety, expecting nothing merciful or moderate from Sylla.
But then, partly at the pleading and prostration of the exiles Meidias and Calliphon before him, partly because the senators serving with him interceded for the city, and Sylla himself now being sated with vengeance, he made some complimentary remark about the ancient Athenians and said that he was extending mercy toward the majority on account of a handful, and toward the living on account of the dead.
In his own memoirs he states that Athens fell to him on the Kalends of March, a day which corresponds most closely to the new moon of the month Anthesterion, in which, by coincidence, many rites are performed commemorating the destruction and ruin caused by the great deluge, as if that catastrophe had fallen most nearly at that same time of year,
and once the city was taken, the tyrant fled to the Acropolis and was besieged there, Curio being assigned to this task; and after holding out a long while, he surrendered himself, overcome by thirst, and the divine power immediately gave a sign of it — for on that very day and hour that Curio brought him down, clouds gathered out of a clear sky and a great downpour of rain broke and filled the Acropolis with water. Sylla also took the Piraeus not long after, and burned most of it, including the arsenal of Philo, a work greatly admired.
Meanwhile Taxiles, Mithridates' general, had come down from Thrace and Macedonia with a hundred thousand infantry, ten thousand cavalry, and ninety scythed four-horse chariots, and was summoning Archelaus, who was still riding at anchor off Munychia, unwilling either to give up the sea or eager to engage the Romans, but preferring to drag out the war and deprive them of supplies.
Sylla, seeing this far more clearly than Archelaus did, withdrew into Boeotia from a region too meager and unable to sustain an army even in peacetime, and to most people it seemed a miscalculation that, abandoning Attica, which was rugged and unsuited to cavalry, he should throw himself into the flat, open country around Boeotia, when he could see that the barbarian strength lay in chariots and horses.
But, as has been said, fleeing famine and want, he was forced to court the danger of battle. He was further alarmed by Hortensius, a skilled and combative commander, whom the barbarians were watching for in the narrow passes as he led a force from Thessaly to join Sylla. For these reasons Sylla withdrew into Boeotia; and as for Hortensius, Caphis, one of our own countrymen, deceived the barbarians by other routes and led him down through Parnassus to a point just beneath Tithora, not yet as great a city as it now is,
but a stronghold cut off by a sheer cliff, into which long ago the Phocians, fleeing before the advance of Xerxes, had gathered their belongings and been saved. Encamping there, Hortensius beat off the enemy by day, and by night, descending by the rough paths to Patronis, joined forces with Sylla, who had come to meet him with his army.
Having joined forces, they together seized a hill standing in the middle of the plains of Elatea, rich in soil, well-shaded, and with water at its foot; it is called Philoboeotus, and Sylla praises admiringly both its nature and its position. When they had encamped, they appeared to the enemy to be altogether few, for their cavalry numbered no more than fifteen hundred, and their infantry fewer than fifteen thousand.
Whereupon the other generals forced Archelaus's hand and drew up their forces, filling the plain with horses, chariots, shields, and long shields. The shouting and clamor of so many nations forming into rank at once was more than the air could hold; and along with it, the boastfulness and ostentation of their splendor was neither idle nor useless for striking terror, for the gleam of their weapons, adorned splendidly with gold and silver,
and the dyed colors of their Median and Scythian tunics, mingled with gleaming bronze and iron, presented a fiery and fearsome sight as they surged and shifted about, so that the Romans drew themselves in under their rampart; and Sylla, unable by any argument to remove their dread of them, and unwilling to force men who wanted to flee, chose to remain quiet, though bearing it hard as he watched the barbarians insulting them with boasting and laughter — yet this, more than anything, worked to his advantage,
for the enemy, out of contempt, fell into great disorder, being in any case ill-disciplined toward their generals owing to the multitude of commanders; so that only a few held their position steadily within the camp, while the greater mass, lured on by plunder and pillage, scattered over a journey of many days' distance from the camp. And they are said to have wiped out the city of the Panopeans, sacked that of the Lebadeans, and plundered the oracle there, with no general having given any such order.
Sylla, distressed and grieved to see cities being destroyed before his very eyes, would not let his soldiers stand idle, but brought them forward and made them divert the Cephisus from its channel and dig trenches, giving no one any rest, and standing over those who slackened as an inexorable enforcer, so that, worn out by the labor of the work, they might come to welcome the danger of battle.
And this is just what happened; for on the third day of their labor, as Sylla was passing by, they begged him with shouting to lead them against the enemy. He replied that this was the talk not of men willing to fight, but of men unwilling to work; but if they truly had the spirit for battle, he ordered them to go there at once under arms, pointing out to them the former acropolis of the Parapotamians,
But by then the city had been destroyed, and there was left only a rocky and precipitous hill, separated from Mount Hedylium by the space over which the Assus runs, then meeting the Cephisus at its very base and, roughened along with it, making the height a strong place to camp on. For this reason Sylla, seeing the bronze-shielded troops of the enemy pushing toward it, wanted to seize the spot first, and he did seize it, using the eagerness of his soldiers.
But when Archelaus was driven back from there and set out for Chaeronea, the men of Chaeronea who were serving with Sylla begged him not to abandon their city, so he sent out one of his tribunes, Gabinius, with a single legion, and let the Chaeroneans go too — though they were willing, they were not able to outrun Gabinius. So good and eager was he to save people beyond what those needing saving asked for. Juba, however, says it was not Gabinius who was sent but Ericius. So our city escaped that danger by so narrow a margin.
From Lebadea and the shrine of Trophonius favorable reports and victory-prophesying oracles were sent to the Romans. About these the locals tell more, but as Sylla himself relates in Memoirs book ten, a certain Quintus Titius, not lacking standing among the Greek business community, approached him after he had already won the battle at Chaeronea, reporting that Trophonius foretold a second battle and victory on that same spot within a short time,
and after him a man serving in the ranks named Salvenius brought back from the god a prediction of what outcome the affairs in Italy were going to have. Both men gave the same report about the divine voice, for they said that in beauty and in size it resembled Olympian Zeus.
When Sylla had crossed the Assus, he passed below Hedylium and camped alongside Archelaus, who had thrown up a strong palisade between Mount Acontium and Hedylium, near the place called Assia. The spot where Archelaus pitched his camp is still called after him to this day. After letting one day pass, Sylla left Murena with a legion and two cohorts to harass the enemy as they were drawing up in battle order,
while he himself performed sacrifice by the Cephisus, and when the rites were done he advanced toward Chaeronea, both to take up the army stationed there and to look over the place called Thurium, which had been seized beforehand by the enemy. It is a rugged, cone-shaped peak, which we call Orthopagus, and below it, where the stream of the Molus and the Thurius meet, stands a temple of Apollo. The god is named after Thuro, the mother of Chaeron, who is recorded to have been the founder of Chaeronea.
Others say that the cow given by the Pythian god as guide to Cadmus appeared there, and that the place was named after her — for the Phoenicians call a cow "thor." As Sylla approached Chaeronea, the tribune stationed in the city, leading out his armed soldiers, met him bringing a crown of laurel,
and when Sylla had received it, he greeted the soldiers and roused them for the coming danger. Then two men of Chaeronea, Homoloichus and Anaxidamus, came to him, undertaking to dislodge the men holding Thurium if he would give them a few soldiers — for there was a path unknown to the barbarians leading from the place called Petrachus past the Museum to Thurium along the ridge, by which, if they went, they would easily fall upon the enemy from above and either stone them down or drive them together into the plain,
and when Gabinius vouched for the men's courage and loyalty, Sylla ordered the attempt made. He himself drew up the phalanx and divided the cavalry between the two wings, keeping the right for himself and giving the left to Murena. Galba and Hortensius, his legates, took the reserve cohorts and posted themselves last, at the heights, as guards against encircling movements — for the enemy could be seen preparing, with their many horsemen and swift light-armed troops, to swing their easily-bent and mobile wing far around so as to encircle the Romans.
Meanwhile the men of Chaeronea, having taken Ericius as their leader from Sylla and having made their way unseen around to Thurium, then showed themselves, and there was great confusion and flight among the barbarians, and most of the slaughter came from their own hands upon one another — for they did not stand their ground but, rushing headlong down the slope, fell upon their own spears and hurled each other over the cliffs as they pushed one another, while the enemy pressed upon them from above and struck at their exposed bodies, so that three thousand fell around Thurium.
Of those fleeing, some Murena, who had already formed up his line, cut off and destroyed by meeting them head-on, while others, pushing toward their own camp and falling in disorder upon the phalanx, filled most of it with fear and confusion, and caused a delay for the generals which did them no small harm. For Sylla, moving quickly against the men who were in disarray and closing the gap between the lines with speed, took away the scythed chariots' capacity to work.
For it is above all the length of the run that gives such chariots their force and momentum in the charge, while short bursts are ineffective and blunted, like arrows shot without being drawn taut. And this is what happened to the barbarians then too: the first of the chariots, driven out sluggishly and colliding feebly, the Romans knocked aside with clapping and laughter and called for more, as spectators are accustomed to do at the theatrical horse-races.
From there the infantry forces clashed, with the barbarians thrusting forward their long sarissas and trying, by locking their shields together, to keep the phalanx in order, while the Romans threw down their javelins on the spot, drew their swords, and knocked aside the sarissas, eager to close with the enemy as quickly as possible out of rage.
For they saw drawn up in front of the enemy line fifteen thousand slaves, whom the king's generals had freed by proclamations from the cities and enrolled into companies among the hoplites. And a certain Roman centurion is said to have remarked that only at the Cronia had he ever known slaves to share in free speech.
These men, then, being pushed back slowly on account of their depth and density and daring to hold their ground against nature itself, were turned back and thrown into confusion by the slingers and javelin-throwers, whom the Romans in the rear used without stint.
As Archelaus was bringing his right wing around to encircle them, Hortensius sent his cohorts forward at a run so as to strike them on the flank. But Archelaus quickly wheeled his own two thousand horsemen about, and Hortensius, crushed by their numbers, was forced back toward the hills, being gradually torn away from the phalanx and surrounded by the enemy,
and when Sylla learned of this from the right wing, which had not yet come to grips with the enemy, he set out to help him. But Archelaus, judging by the dust cloud of the advance what it was, let Hortensius go and, wheeling about himself, rushed toward the place Sylla had left for the right wing, intending to seize it now that it was without its commander, while at the same time Taxiles brought the bronze-shields against Murena, so that with the shouting carried from two directions and the mountains echoing it back, Sylla halted, at a loss as to which side he ought to go to help.
Deciding that he should resume his own position, he sent Hortensius with four cohorts to aid Murena, and ordering the fifth cohort to follow, he himself hurried to the right, where his line was already holding its own against Archelaus even by itself, and when he appeared they drove the enemy back completely, and, gaining the upper hand, pursued them as they fled headlong toward the river and Mount Acontium,
Sylla, however, did not neglect Murena, who was in danger, but hurried to help those there; but seeing that they were winning, he then joined the pursuit instead. Many of the barbarians were cut down on the plain, and the greatest number were slaughtered as they pressed against the palisade, so that out of so many tens of thousands only ten thousand made their way through to Chalcis, while Sylla says he lost only fourteen of his own soldiers, of whom, moreover, two turned up again by evening,
and for this reason he inscribed on his trophies the names of Ares, Nike, and Aphrodite, as one who had achieved success in the war no less through good fortune than through skill and force. This trophy stands where the battle in the plain occurred, at the point where Archelaus's men first gave way, by the stream of the Molus; there is another one standing on the summit of Thurium, at the spot of the encirclement of the barbarians, marked in Greek letters as honoring Homoloichus and Anaxidamus for their valor.
For this victory he held games at Thebes, having built a stage around the spring of Oedipus. Those who judged were Greeks summoned from the other cities, since toward the Thebans themselves he was implacable; he cut off half their territory and consecrated it to Pythian Apollo and to Olympian Zeus, ordering that from its revenues the money he himself had taken be repaid to the gods.
After this, learning that Flaccus, chosen consul by the opposing faction, had set his army on a course over the Ionian sea, nominally to face Mithridates yet actually aimed at Sylla, he set out for Thessaly to meet him. But while he was near the city of Melitea, reports arrived from many quarters that the country behind him was again being ravaged by a royal army no smaller than the previous one.
For Dorylaus had put in at Chalcis with a large fleet, bringing eighty thousand men, trained and organized as the finest of Mithridates's forces, and without delay pushed into Boeotia, seizing hold of the land, keen to draw Sylla into battle, paying no heed to Archelaus's warnings against it, and spreading a story about the previous battle, that so great a host could not have been destroyed without treachery.
But Sylla, quickly turning back, showed Dorylaus that Archelaus was a sensible man and the one most experienced in Roman valor, so that after a small skirmish with Sylla near Tilphossium, he became the first to concede that they ought not to decide the matter by battle, but wear down the war through expense and time. All the same, the place near Orchomenus, where they encamped, gave Archelaus some confidence, being extremely well suited for a force strong in cavalry to fight in.
For the finest and largest of the Boeotian plains, that which stretches out from the city of Orchomenus, lies level and treeless as far as the marshes in which the river Melas is consumed — a river which rises abundant and navigable at its very springs beneath the city of Orchomenus, alone among Greek rivers, and which swells at the summer solstice, like the Nile, and bears growths similar to those there, except that they bear no fruit and do not grow tall.
It does not flow far, but for the most part disappears at once into blind, marshy lakes, while a small part joins the Cephisus, near which spot the lake seems especially to produce the reed used for pipes.
When they had encamped close to one another, Archelaus kept quiet, while Sylla dug ditches on both sides, so that, if he could, by cutting the enemy off from the firm, horse-friendly ground he might force them into the marshes. But they would not endure this; instead, once let loose by their generals, they drove forward vigorously and in full force, and not only were Sylla's men at the earthworks scattered, but most of the drawn-up line was thrown into confusion as it fled.
At that moment Sylla himself leapt down from his horse, snatched up a standard, and pushed his way through the fleeing men toward the enemy, shouting: "For me, Romans, it is a fine thing to die right here; but as for you, when men ask where you betrayed your commander, remember to say: at Orchomenus." These words turned the men back, and two cohorts from the right wing came up to help; bringing these forward, he routed the enemy.
Having withdrawn a little way back and given his men their meal, he again began digging a trench around the enemy's camp, and they again attacked, this time in better order than before. And Diogenes, the son of Archelaus's wife, fighting bravely on the right, fell in full view of all; and the archers, being pressed hard by the Romans, having no room to turn, kept striking at them with their arrows in bunches, hand to hand as if with swords, and beat them back; but at last, shut up within their palisade, they spent a wretched night amid wounds and slaughter. When day came, Sylla again brought his soldiers up to the palisade and dug his trench.
When the greater part of the enemy came out as if for battle, he engaged and routed them, and since none of them, in their fear, stood their ground, he took the camp by storm. And the dying filled the marshes with blood and the lake with corpses, so that even now, after nearly two hundred years have passed since that battle, many barbarian bows and helmets and torn fragments of iron breastplates and swords are still found soaked in the swamp. Such, then, is what is said to have happened around Chaeronea and near Orchomenus.
While Cinna and Carbo in Rome were treating the most distinguished men lawlessly and violently, many, fleeing their tyranny, came streaming down to Sulla's camp as if to a harbor, and in a short time there had come to be around him something like the shape of a senate. And Metella, having barely managed to steal herself and her children away, arrived with news that his house and country estates had been burned by his enemies, and begging him to help those at home.
While he was at a loss, unwilling either to neglect his fatherland while it suffered such wrongs or to leave unfinished so great a task, the war against Mithridates, and was pondering what to do, there arrived a merchant of Delos, Archelaus, bringing certain hopes and proposals secretly from the king's own Archelaus. Sulla was so pleased with the matter that he himself hastened to a conference with Archelaus.
And they came together by the sea near Delium, where the temple of Apollo is. When Archelaus began to speak, urging Sulla to give up Asia and Pontus and sail for the war in Rome, taking money and triremes and as large a force as he wished from the king, Sulla took him up and told him to stop worrying about Mithridates, and instead to become king himself in his place, becoming an ally of the Romans and handing over the ships.
When Archelaus recoiled at the idea of such treachery, Sulla said, "So then, Archelaus, you, a Cappadocian and slave — or if you prefer, friend — of a barbarian king, will not stoop to shame for such great advantages, yet you dare to speak of treachery to me, a Roman commander and Sulla, as if you were not that same Archelaus who fled from Chaeronea with a scant remnant out of a hundred and twenty thousand, who hid for two days in the marshes of Orchomenus, and who left Boeotia impassable for the multitude of corpses?"
At this Archelaus changed his tone, and doing obeisance he begged Sulla to end the war and be reconciled with Mithridates. Sulla accepted the proposal, and terms were agreed: Mithridates was to give up Asia and Paphlagonia, withdraw from Bithynia in favor of Nicomedes and from Cappadocia in favor of Ariobarzanes, hand over two thousand talents to the Roman treasury, and supply seventy ships fitted with bronze beaks along with their tackle; Sulla, for his part, was to confirm Mithridates in the rest of his rule and have him voted an ally of Rome.
These terms agreed, Sulla turned back and marched through Thessaly and Macedonia toward the Hellespont, keeping Archelaus with him in honor. When Archelaus fell dangerously ill near Larissa, Sulla halted the march and cared for him as one of his own commanders and generals.
This, together with other things, gave rise to slander about the affair at Chaeronea, as though it had not been fought fairly, and because Sulla, after returning the other friends of Mithridates whom he held captive, put to death only the tyrant Aristion by poison — a man at odds with Archelaus; but above all it was the land given to the Cappadocian, ten thousand plethra in Euboea, and his being enrolled by Sulla as friend and ally of the Romans. Concerning these matters Sulla himself defends himself in his memoirs.
At that time envoys arrived from Mithridates saying that he accepted the other terms but asked that Paphlagonia not be taken from him, and that he would not agree at all about the ships. Angered, Sulla said, "What is this you say? Mithridates lays claim to Paphlagonia and denies the matter of the ships — the man I expected would prostrate himself before me, if I only left him the right hand with which he killed so many Romans?
He will soon sing a different tune, though, once I have crossed into Asia — but for now, sitting in Pergamum, he is directing a war he has never seen." The envoys, frightened, kept quiet, but Archelaus begged Sulla and soothed his anger, taking hold of his right hand and weeping. In the end he persuaded Sulla to let him be sent himself to Mithridates, for he would arrange the peace on the terms Sulla wanted, and if he could not persuade him, he would kill him himself.
On these terms Sulla sent him off, and himself invaded Maedica, and after ravaging much of it he turned back again to Macedonia, where he received Archelaus near Philippi bringing word that everything was going well — but that Mithridates was altogether eager to come to a personal meeting with him.
The chief cause of this was Fimbria, who had killed Flaccus, the commander of the opposing faction, and after defeating Mithridates' generals was marching against Mithridates himself. Fearing this, Mithridates preferred rather to become Sulla's friend.
So they met in the Troad, at Dardanus. Mithridates had there two hundred decked ships and, of infantry, twenty thousand hoplites, six thousand cavalry, and a good number of scythed chariots; Sulla had four cohorts and two hundred cavalry. When Mithridates came forward and held out his right hand, Sulla asked him whether he would bring the war to a close on the conditions that Archelaus had settled; and when the king said nothing, Sulla said, "But surely it is for those in need to speak first, while it is enough for the victors to keep silent."
When Mithridates, beginning his defense, tried to blame some of the war on the gods and some on the Romans themselves, Sulla took him up and said that he had long heard from others, and now himself had come to know, that Mithridates was a most formidable speaker, since even for deeds so wicked and lawless he had not lacked for words to make them seem respectable.
Having bitterly exposed and denounced what Mithridates had done, he again asked whether he would carry out the terms arranged through Archelaus. When Mithridates said he would, Sulla greeted him warmly, and embracing him kissed him, and then, bringing forward the kings Ariobarzanes and Nicomedes in turn, reconciled them with him. Mithridates, having handed over seventy ships and five hundred archers, sailed off to Pontus.
Sulla, perceiving that his soldiers were angered at the settlement — for they thought it a terrible thing to see the most hateful of kings, the man who had arranged for a hundred and fifty thousand Romans in Asia to be slaughtered in a single day, sailing away with wealth and spoils, after plundering and taxing Asia for four years without pause — defended himself to them, saying that he could not have made war on Fimbria and Mithridates at the same time, had the two joined forces against him.
Setting out from there against Fimbria, who was encamped near Thyateira, Sulla pitched camp nearby and drew a trench around it. Fimbria's soldiers, in their bare tunics, came out from their camp and greeted Sulla's men and eagerly helped them with their work. Fimbria, seeing this change of heart, and fearing Sulla as implacable, took his own life in the camp.
Sulla fined Asia as a whole twenty thousand talents, and privately ruined individual households through the insolence and oppression of the billeted soldiers. For it had been ordained that each host give his guest, every day, four tetradrachms and provide him dinner along with as many friends as he wished to invite, and that a company commander receive fifty drachmas a day, and have one set of clothes for staying at home and another for going out into the marketplace.
Putting out with all his ships from Ephesus, on the third day he came to anchor at Piraeus, and having been initiated into the Mysteries, he took for himself the library of Apellicon of Teos, in which were most of the books of Aristotle and Theophrastus, not yet at that time clearly known to the many. It is said that when it was brought to Rome, Tyrannio the grammarian arranged most of it, and that from him Andronicus of Rhodes, having obtained copies, published them and drew up the catalogues now current.
The older Peripatetics appear to have been in themselves cultivated and fond of learning, but they had not come upon the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus in any number or with any accuracy, because the estate of Neleus of Scepsis, to whom Theophrastus left the books, passed into the hands of men without ambition or learning.
While Sulla was spending time near Athens, a numbing pain with heaviness fell upon his feet, which Strabo says is a stammering form of gout. So he sailed across to Aedepsus and made use of the hot springs there, taking his ease and spending his days with the theatrical performers devoted to Dionysus. As he was walking by the sea, some fishermen brought him some very fine fish. Pleased with the gift, and learning that they were from Halae, he said, "So some Halaeans are still alive?"
For it had happened that, when he was pursuing the enemy after his victory in the battle near Orchomenus, he had also laid waste to a trio of Boeotian towns — Anthedon, Larymna, and Halae. The people there, struck dumb with fear, he told with a smile to go away rejoicing, since they had come not to petty men nor men deserving to be disregarded as suppliants. From this the people of Halae say that, taking heart, they came together again into their city.
Sulla, going down through Thessaly and Macedonia to the sea, prepared to cross from Dyrrachium to Brundisium with twelve hundred ships. Close by lies Apollonia, and beside it the Nymphaeum, a hallowed spot where flames continually break out here and there from a lush glade and meadows.
There, it is said, a satyr was caught sleeping, such as sculptors and painters imagine, and being brought before Sulla was asked through many interpreters who he was; but when he uttered something barely intelligible, a rough voice mixed mostly of a horse's neighing and a goat's bleating, Sulla was terrified and drove him away with rites of aversion.
When he was about to ferry his soldiers across, and was afraid that once they laid hold of Italy they would scatter each to his own city, they first swore of their own accord to stay with him and to do no willing harm to Italy; then, seeing that he needed much money, they made a contribution, each giving from his own means as he was able. Sulla did not, however, accept the offering, but after praising and encouraging them he made the crossing, as he himself says, against fifteen enemy generals with four hundred and fifty cohorts, the god most plainly foreshowing his good fortune to him.
For when he sacrificed immediately upon landing at Tarentum, the liver was seen to bear the shape of a laurel crown, with two garlands hanging from it; and a little before the crossing, in Campania near Mount Tifata, two great he-goats were seen by day clashing together and doing and suffering all that happens to men fighting. It was in fact an apparition, and little by little, rising from the ground, it dispersed in many directions through the air, like dim phantoms, and then vanished.
Not long after, in that very place, when the younger Marius and the consul Norbanus brought up great forces, Sulla, without even forming his own army into ranks or companies, but relying on the strength of their common eagerness and the sweep of their daring, routed the enemy and shut Norbanus up in the city of Capua, killing seven thousand.
This, he says, was the reason his soldiers were not scattered to their several cities, but stayed together and grew contemptuous of the enemy though many times more numerous; and at Silvium, he says, a slave of Pontius, possessed by a god, met him and said he brought word from Bellona of mastery in war and victory — but that if he did not make haste, the Capitol would be burned down. And this indeed came to pass on the very day the man had foretold, which was the day before the Nones of Quintilis, which we now call July.
Furthermore Marcus Lucullus, one of Sulla's commanders, drawn up near Fidentia with sixteen cohorts against fifty of the enemy, trusted in the eagerness of his soldiers but hesitated because most of them were unarmed. While he was deliberating and delaying, a gentle breeze, blowing from a meadow in the nearby plain, cast and scattered many flowers over the army, which settled of their own accord and lodged upon their shields and helmets, so that they appeared to the enemy to be wearing garlands.
Made more eager by this, they joined battle and, winning, killed eighteen thousand and took the enemy camp. This Lucullus was the brother of the Lucullus who later warred down Mithridates and Tigranes.
Sulla, seeing that the enemy still surrounded him on all sides with many camps and great forces, made his attack everywhere both by force and by deception, calling upon Scipio, one of the two consuls, to come to terms.
When he had received him, meetings were held and conversations took place more than once, but Sulla, always introducing some delay and pretext, was corrupting Scipio's men with his own soldiers, who were trained in every kind of deception and trickery just like their commander. For entering the enemy's camp and mingling with them, they won some over at once with money, others with promises, others by flattering and
cajoling and persuading them. Finally, when Sulla approached with twenty cohorts, some greeted Scipio's men, others returned the greeting and went over to them; and Scipio, left alone in his tent, was seized but released, while Sulla, having enticed forty of the enemy's cohorts with his twenty as though they were decoy birds, led them all away to his camp — at which they say Carbo remarked that in fighting against Sulla he was warring against both a fox and a lion, and it was the fox that troubled him more.
After this, near Signium, Marius, having eighty-five cohorts, kept challenging Sulla. And Sulla was quite eager to fight it out on that very day, for he had happened to see the following vision in his sleep. It seemed that old Marius, long dead, was advising his son Marius to be on his guard against the coming day, since it would bring him great misfortune. For this reason Sulla was eager to fight, and he sent for Dolabella, who was encamped
some distance away. But since the enemy had taken position on the roads and were blocking them, Sulla's men, fighting as they advanced and clearing the way, grew exhausted, and a heavy rain that came on along with their labors wore them down still more; so the company commanders came to Sulla and begged him to put off the battle, pointing out at the same time the soldiers lying flung down from weariness and resting on the ground with their shields propped beneath them.
When he had reluctantly agreed and given the order to make camp, and as they were beginning to throw up a palisade and dig a trench in front of the encampment, Marius rode up boldly, advancing on horseback ahead of his men, as if to scatter them in their disorder and confusion. Then the divine voice from Sulla's dream fulfilled itself: for anger seized his soldiers, and abandoning their work they planted their javelins by the trench, drew their swords, and with a shout closed hand to hand with the enemy.
These did not hold out for long, but a great slaughter of them followed as they turned to flight. Marius, fleeing to Praeneste, found the gates already shut; but a rope being let down from above, he fastened it about himself and was drawn up to the wall. Some, however — among them Fenestella — say that Marius was not even aware of the battle, but, worn out from sleeplessness and toil, had lain down on the ground in some shade, and when the signal was given had fallen into sleep, and only with difficulty was roused once the rout had begun,
In this battle Sulla says he lost only twenty-three men, while he killed twenty thousand of the enemy and took eight thousand alive. And in other respects, too, things prospered equally well through his generals — Pompey, Crassus, Metellus, Servilius. For these, meeting little or no resistance, crushed great forces of the enemy, so that Carbo, who held together the opposing faction more than anyone, fled by night with his own army and sailed off to Libya.
Yet in the final contest, like a fresh challenger thrown against an exhausted athlete, the Samnite Telesinus came close to tripping and throwing Sulla down at the very gates of Rome. For he hastened, together with Lamponius the Lucanian, having gathered a great force, toward Praeneste, meaning to snatch
Marius from the siege; but when he perceived that Sulla was hurrying against him from the front and Pompey from the rear, being a warrior experienced in great struggles and now shut off from advance and retreat alike, he set off by night with his whole army against Rome itself. And he very nearly succeeded in falling upon it unguarded; but stopping ten stadia short of the Colline Gate, he encamped before the city, exulting in high spirits and lifted up in hope at having outmaneuvered so many and such great commanders.
At daybreak, when the most brilliant of the young nobles rode out against him, he cut down many others and among them Claudius Appius, a man of noble birth and good character. As confusion, naturally, arose in the city, with the shrieking of women and people running about as though it were already being taken by storm, the first to be seen was Balbus, riding at full speed from Sulla with seven hundred horsemen. Pausing only long enough to let the horses' sweat cool, he then bridled them again and quickly fell upon the enemy.
Meanwhile Sulla himself appeared, and ordering the foremost men to breakfast at once, he drew them up in battle order. Though Dolabella and Torquatus begged him strongly to hold back and not risk everything with men who were exhausted — for it was not Carbo and Marius but the Samnites and Lucanians, the tribes most hostile to Rome and most warlike, that they would be engaging — he pushed them aside and ordered the trumpets to sound the advance, though the day was already turning toward its tenth hour.
A battle followed such as no other; on the right wing, where Crassus was stationed, victory was brilliant, but on the left, which was struggling and faring badly, Sulla came to the rescue, riding a white horse of great spirit and swiftest speed — by which two of the enemy, recognizing him, aimed their spears to strike him down. He himself did not notice it in time, but his groom, striking the horse, carried him forward just enough that the spears, converging where the horse's tail had been, struck fast into the ground.
It is said that he always carried into battle, in his bosom, a small golden statue of Apollo from Delphi, and that on this occasion too he kissed it and said: "O Pythian Apollo, having lifted the fortunate Cornelius Sulla so bright and great through so many contests, will you now cast him down here at the gates of his homeland, to perish most shamefully together with his own fellow citizens?"
They say that as Sulla was thus invoking the god, he entreated some men, threatened others, and physically seized still others; but finally, when his left wing was shattered, he mingled with the fleeing men and took refuge in the camp, having lost many of his companions and acquaintances. Not a few of those who had come out from the city to watch the spectacle also perished and were trampled underfoot,
so that the city believed itself already destroyed, and the siege of Marius came very close to being lifted, since many of the routed men pushed on there and urged Ofella Lucretius, who had been posted to conduct the siege, to break camp at once, on the ground that Sulla was lost and Rome was in the hands of the enemy.
It was already deep in the night when men came to Sulla's camp from Crassus asking for dinner for him and his soldiers: for after defeating the enemy, they had pursued them to Antemnae and made camp there. On learning this, and that most of the enemy had perished, Sulla came to Antemnae at daybreak, and when three thousand of them sent heralds to him, he promised to grant them safety if they would first do some harm to the rest of the enemy and then come over to him,
and they, trusting him, attacked the rest, and many were cut down by one another. Nonetheless, Sulla, having gathered these together with the survivors of the others — some six thousand in all — near the Circus, summoned the senate to the temple of Bellona. And even as he himself began to speak, the men appointed for the task were cutting down the six thousand.
As, naturally, the shouting of so many being slaughtered in a small space carried through, and the senators were terrified, Sulla, exactly as he happened to be speaking, with unchanged and composed countenance, told them to attend to his words and not to concern themselves with what was happening outside — for, he said, some of the wicked were being disciplined at his order.
This made even the slowest of the Romans to understand that what had happened was a change of tyranny, not a release from it. For Marius, harsh from the start, only intensified in the exercise of power, never changing his nature; but Sulla, who at first behaved moderately and in a statesmanlike way toward his fortune and won a reputation as an aristocratic and public-spirited leader,
and who had, moreover, from his youth been fond of laughter and inclined to pity, so that he easily wept — such a man, not surprisingly, brought upon great power the slander that it does not allow characters to remain in their original disposition, but makes them frenzied, vain, and inhuman. Whether this is a movement and change of nature caused by fortune, or rather the uncovering, under power, of an underlying vice, is a matter some other treatise might determine.
When Sulla had turned to slaughter, and was filling the city with killings that had neither number nor limit — many being put to death even over private feuds that had nothing to do with Sulla, since he permitted it and indulged those around him — one of the younger men, Gaius Metellus, dared to ask Sulla in the senate what end there would be to these evils, and how far he must go before people could expect the present state of things to stop.
"For we do not beg," he said, "on behalf of those whom you have resolved to destroy, from your vengeance, but for those whom you have resolved to spare, from this uncertainty." When Sulla answered that he did not yet know whom he would release, Metellus took him up and said, "Then declare whom you intend to punish." And Sulla said he would do this.
Some say it was not Metellus but a certain Fufidius, one of those who curried favor with Sulla, who said this last thing. In any case, Sulla immediately posted the names of eighty men, having consulted none of the magistrates. And when everyone was indignant, after letting one day pass he posted another two hundred and twenty, and then on the third day again no fewer.
Addressing the people about these matters, he said that he was proscribing as many as he happened to remember, and that those who now escaped his notice he would proscribe later. He decreed that for anyone who received and preserved a proscribed man, the penalty for such kindness would be death — making no exception for brother, son, or parents — while for the one who killed him, the reward for the murder would be two talents, even in cases where a slave had slain his own master, or a son had struck down his own father. Most unjust of all, however, was his stripping the sons and grandsons of the proscribed of their citizen rights, and seizing the property belonging to every one of them.
The proscriptions took place not only in Rome but in every city of Italy; and amid the killings there was no temple of a god left undefiled, no hearth sacred to hospitality, no ancestral home — men were slaughtered before their own wedded wives, and children before their mothers. Those who perished from anger or personal enmity were no part at all of those slaughtered for their money; indeed, it became common for those carrying out the punishments to say that this man was killed by his great house, that one by his garden, another by his hot springs.
Quintus Aurelius, a man who had no part in public affairs and thought he shared in the general troubles only to the extent of sympathizing with others' misfortunes, went to the forum and read through the list of the proscribed; and finding his own name there, he said, "Woe is me, my estate at Alba is hunting me down." And going a little further, he was cut down by someone who had pursued him.
Meanwhile Marius, when about to be captured, killed himself, and Sulla, coming to Praeneste, at first judged and punished men individually; but then, since there was no time for this, he gathered them all together at once, twelve thousand in number, and ordered them slaughtered, granting immunity only to his host. But this man declared nobly that he would never owe his safety to the murderer of his country, and willingly mingling with the citizens was cut down together with them.
What happened concerning Lucius Catiline was thought to be the strangest thing of all. For this man, before matters had even been decided, having killed his brother, asked Sulla to proscribe the man as though he were still alive — and he was so proscribed. In repayment for this favor to Sulla, Catiline killed a certain Marcus Marius, of the opposing faction, and brought his head to Sulla as he sat in the forum; then, going to the purification basin of Apollo nearby, he washed his hands.
Apart from the killings, other things too distressed the people. For he proclaimed himself dictator, reviving after a hundred and twenty years this kind of office. Immunity was voted him for everything he had done, and for the future, authority over life and death, confiscation, allotment of land, founding of colonies, destruction of cities, the power to take away kingdoms and to bestow them on whomever he wished.
He conducted the sales of confiscated properties so arrogantly and despotically, sitting on the tribunal, that his gifts were more oppressive than his seizures — bestowing on beautiful women, on lyre-singers, on mimes, and on the vilest of freedmen the revenues of nations, lands, and cities, and in some cases forcing unwilling women into marriage.
Wishing to attach Pompey the Great to himself, Sylla ordered him to put away the wife he had, and, tearing Aemilia, the daughter of Scaurus and of Metella his own wife, away from Manius Glabrio while she was pregnant, joined her in marriage to him; but the girl died at Pompey's house while giving birth.
When Lucretius Ofella, who had besieged and captured Marius, asked for and sought the consulship, Sylla at first tried to prevent him; but when the man, courted eagerly by many, pushed his way into the forum, Sylla sent one of the centurions about him and had the man cut down, while he himself sat upon a tribunal in the temple of the Dioscuri and watched the killing from above. When the crowd seized the centurion and brought him to the tribunal, Sylla ordered those who were making an uproar to be silent, and said that he himself had ordered this to be done, and commanded that the centurion be released.
His triumph, however, made splendid by the extravagance and novelty of the royal spoils, found a greater ornament and a finer spectacle still in the exiles: for the most illustrious and powerful of the citizens, wearing garlands, walked along in the procession, calling Sylla their savior and father, since it was through him that they were returning to their fatherland and bringing back their children and wives.
Now that everything had been gathered together, he made before the assembly an accounting of his deeds, reckoning up his good fortunes with no less eagerness than his acts of valor, and at the end he ordered that he himself be called, on the strength of these, Fortunate (Eutyches); for this is chiefly what Felix wishes to signify. He himself, however, when composing letters and conducting negotiations addressed to the Greeks, styled himself Epaphroditus, and among us too, on the trophies, he is thus inscribed: Lucius Cornelius Sulla Epaphroditus.
Furthermore, when Metella bore him twin children, to the boy he gave the name Faustus, and to the girl, Fausta: for what is fortunate and cheerful the Romans call "faustum." So much indeed did he trust in his good fortunes rather than in his deeds, that, although vast numbers had been slain by him, and so great an innovation and change had taken place in the city, he laid down his office and made the people master of the consular elections, while he himself did not come forward as a candidate, but went about in the forum offering his person, accountable like a private citizen, to any who wished.
And a certain bold man, contrary to his judgment and one hostile to him, was expected to be elected consul—Marcus Lepidus—not through his own efforts, but because Pompey was eagerly canvassing and pleading with the people, who were glad to gratify him.
For this reason, when Sylla saw Pompey rejoicing in the victory and departing, he called him to himself and said, "How fine a piece of statesmanship of yours, young man, to have proclaimed Lepidus—the most reckless of all men—ahead of Catulus, the best of them! It is time indeed for you not to sleep, since you have made your rival stronger against yourself." Now this Sylla spoke, as it were, prophetically: for Lepidus, quickly growing insolent, soon set himself at war against Pompey's party.
Sacrificing a tenth of his whole property to Heracles, Sylla gave lavish feasts to the people; and the provisioning was so far in excess of what was needed that a vast quantity of delicacies was thrown into the river every day, and wine forty years old and older was drunk.
In the midst of this feasting, which lasted for many days, Metella died of illness. And since the priests would not allow Sylla to approach her nor his house to be defiled by the mourning, he wrote out a bill of divorce from her while she was still living and ordered her to be carried to another house. This point of religious observance he kept exactly, out of superstition; but the law he himself had introduced fixing the expense of burials he himself transgressed, sparing no expenditure.
He also transgressed the regulations he had set concerning the frugality of dinners, consoling his grief with drinking-bouts and banquets full of extravagance and buffoonery. When a few months had passed, there was a gladiatorial show, and since the seating was not yet separated but the theater was still mixed with men and women together, it happened that a woman of handsome appearance and of illustrious family sat near Sylla:
For she was the daughter of Messalla and sister of Hortensius the orator, and her name was Valeria; it had recently happened that she was separated from her husband. She, passing behind Sylla, leaned her hand upon him and, pulling away a small tuft of wool from his garment, continued on to her own seat; and when Sylla looked at her in surprise, she said, "Nothing terrible, Imperator, but I too wish to have some small share in your good fortune."
Sylla heard this not unpleasantly, and indeed was at once clearly a little smitten; for he sent secretly to ask her name, and learned her family and manner of life. From this there came exchanges of glances between them, and continual turnings of faces toward one another, and interchanges of smiles, and at last agreements and compacts about marriage—blameless, perhaps, on her part, but Sylla, even though he married a woman most temperate and noble, did not begin from a temperate and honorable beginning, but was drawn on, like a young man, by looks and wanton allure, by the sort of things that naturally stir up the basest and most shameless passions.
Nevertheless, even while he had her in his house, he kept company with actress mimes and lyre-girls and stage performers, drinking with them from morning onward on couches. For those who had the greatest power with him at that time were Roscius the comic actor, Sorex the chief mime, and Metrobius the female-role singer, whom, although he had passed his prime, Sylla continued to the end to love, not denying it.
From this he nourished a disease that began from a slight cause, and for a long time did not know that his internal organs had become filled with corruption, from which his very flesh, being corrupted, turned entirely into lice, so that although many people removed them day and night, what was cleared away was no part of what kept coming on, but all his clothing and bathwater and washing-basin and food became infected with that discharge and corruption—so much did it break out.
For this reason he often got into water many times a day, washing and cleansing his body. But it was of no use: for the transformation overcame him in swiftness, and the multitude of the vermin got the better of every purification. It is said that among the very ancient, Acastus the son of Pelias died of lice-disease; and among later men, Alcman the lyric poet, and Pherecydes the theologian, and Callisthenes of Olynthus while under guard in prison, and further Mucius the jurist.
And if one should also mention those of no worth but otherwise well known, it is said that the man who began the servile war in Sicily, a runaway slave named Eunus, after his capture, while being led to Rome, died of the lice-disease.
Sylla not only foreknew his own death, but has in a way even written about it: for he stopped writing the twenty-second book of his memoirs two days before he died, and he says that the Chaldeans foretold to him that, having lived well, he must end his life at the height of his good fortunes.
He also says that his son, who had died a little before Metella, appeared to him in his sleep standing beside him in shabby clothing and begging his father to cease from his cares, and to come with him to his mother Metella and live with her quietly and free from trouble; nevertheless he did not cease from conducting public affairs,
for ten days before his death he reconciled those at war among themselves at Puteoli and wrote a law for them by which they were to be governed; and one day before, learning that the magistrate Granius, being in debt to the public treasury, was not paying it back but was waiting for his death, sent for the man to his chamber, and having his attendants stand around him, ordered him to be strangled; and by his shouting and struggling he burst an abscess and discharged a great quantity of blood.
After this, his strength failing, he passed the night in wretched condition and died, leaving behind two young children by Metella. For Valeria, after his death, gave birth to a little daughter, whom they called Postuma; for the Romans thus name those who are born after the death of their fathers.
Many indeed set out and banded together with Lepidus, intending to prevent the body from receiving the customary burial rites; but Pompey, although he had a grievance against Sylla—for he alone among his friends had been left out of his will—turned some aside by favor and entreaty, others by threat, and escorted the body to Rome, and provided both security and honor for the burial,
and it is said that the women brought so great a quantity of spices for him that, apart from the amount borne along on some two hundred ten separate litters, a large image of Sylla himself was fashioned, and a lictor too was fashioned, out of costly frankincense and cinnamon. Since the day was overcast from early morning, and rain from heaven was expected, they scarcely managed to lift the corpse before the ninth hour.
But when a bright wind swept down upon the pyre and roused a great flame, the body, having already been consumed just as the pyre was dying down and the fire departing, a great downpour poured out and continued until night, so that his fortune seemed to remain by him and to help bury the body along with it.
Now his tomb is in the Campus Martius, and the epitaph, which they say he himself composed and left behind, has as its main point that none of his friends surpassed him in doing good, nor any of his enemies in doing harm.

======== Comparison Of Lysander With Sylla ========

Now that we have gone through this man's life as well, let us proceed to the comparison. It was common to both of them that they rose to greatness beginning from themselves; but it was peculiar to Lysander that he received all the offices he held with the consent and while the citizens were of sound mind, and that he used no force against unwilling men nor exerted power contrary to the laws.
"But in a time of civil strife even the utter scoundrel gains his share of honor," as when at Rome then, the people being corrupted and their commonwealth diseased, one potentate after another rose up from one quarter or another. And it was nothing to wonder at that Sylla should rule, when Glaucias and Saturninus were driving Metelluses from the city, when the sons of consuls were being butchered in the assemblies, when men were buying up soldiers for arms with silver and gold, and by fire and sword were forcing through laws over those who opposed them.
I do not blame the man who managed to gain the greatest power amid such conditions, but I do not take it as a sign of being the best man that one became first when the city was faring so wickedly; whereas the other, sent out from Sparta at a time when she was most law-abiding and most sound of mind, to the greatest commands and enterprises, was judged, one might almost say, best of the best and first of the first.
Hence the one man often gave back his authority to the citizens and often took it up again — for the honor due to his virtue continued to hold the first place — while the other, once chosen leader of an army, for ten continuous years, now making himself consul, now dictator, but always being a tyrant, remained under arms.
Lysander, then, undertook, as has been said, to change the constitution more gently and more lawfully than Sylla did: by persuasion, not by arms, nor by sweeping everything away all at once as that man did, but by correcting the very arrangement concerning the kings — a thing which seemed by nature somehow just, that the best of the best should rule in a city that leads Greece through virtue, not through noble birth.
For just as the huntsman does not seek what comes from a dog, but a dog, and the horseman a horse, not what comes from a horse (for what, if from a horse a mule should be born?), so the statesman will miss the whole point if he does not seek who the ruler is, but from what stock he comes. Indeed the Spartans themselves took away rule from certain kings, as being not kingly but base and worth nothing; and if baseness, even together with noble birth, is dishonorable, neither is virtue honorable through noble birth, but honorable of itself.
As for the acts of injustice, the one did his on behalf of friends, the other only so far as friends were concerned. For Lysander is agreed to have committed most of his wrongdoings for the sake of his companions, and to have carried out most of his killings on behalf of establishing their power and tyranny,
whereas Sylla, out of envy, cut down Pompey's soldiery, and having given Dolabella the command of the fleet, attempted to take it away from him again, and ordered Lucretius Ofella, who was seeking the consulship instead of many great services, to be slaughtered before his eyes, instilling terror and fear of himself in all men through the destruction of his dearest friends.
Still more does the eagerness concerning pleasures and money show that the one man's purpose was that of a leader, the other's that of a tyrant. For Lysander appears to have done nothing licentious or boyish amid so great a scope of power and authority, but, if any man ever did, escaped that proverb turned about, "lions at home, but foxes abroad" — so temperate and Laconic and disciplined did he show his manner of living to be everywhere.
But the other man neither, when young, was moderate in his desires on account of poverty, nor, when he grew old, on account of his age, but introduced laws to the citizens concerning marriage and moderation while himself carrying on love affairs and adulteries, as Sallust says. Hence he made the city so poor and empty of money that it sold freedom and self-governance to allied and friendly cities for silver, even though he himself was daily confiscating and putting up for sale the wealthiest and greatest households.
But there was no measure at all to what was flung about and lavished upon his flatterers. For what reckoning or thrift is one to expect regarding his drinking-companions and the favors granted at them, seeing that once, when he was publicly selling off a great estate before the people standing around, at whatever price it might fetch, he ordered it knocked down to one of his friends; and when another bid a higher price and the herald called out the increase, he grew indignant, saying, "Terrible and tyrannical things I suffer, my fellow citizens, if I am not permitted to dispose of my own spoils as I wish."
Lysander, on the other hand, sent back even the gifts given to him, along with the rest, to his fellow citizens. And I do not praise the deed; for perhaps he harmed Sparta by the acquisition of money as much as that man harmed Rome by taking it away. But I set this down as evidence of the man's freedom from love of wealth.
Each felt something peculiar toward his own city. For Sylla, being licentious and extravagant, made his citizens temperate, while Lysander filled the city with the passions from which he himself abstained; so that the one erred by being himself worse than his own laws, the other by making the citizens worse than himself — for he taught Sparta to need what he himself had learned not to need in addition. So much, then, for their political conduct.
In the contests of war, in generalship, in the number of trophies and the greatness of the dangers, Sylla is beyond comparison. Lysander, it is true, won two victories in two sea-battles; I will add to his credit also the siege of Athens, a thing not great in itself, but most brilliant in reputation.
The affairs in Boeotia and at Haliartus were perhaps carried out by some misfortune, but they resemble bad judgment, in that he did not wait for the king's great force, which was all but already arriving from Plataea, but out of anger and ambition pushed forward against the wall at the wrong time, so that ordinary men, sallying out, cut him down without his being of any account — for he did not fall, as Cleombrotus did at Leuctra, holding firm against enemies pressing upon him, nor as Cyrus did, nor as Epaminondas did, holding back men who had already given way and confirming the victory, meeting his death by a mortal blow at the critical moment;
but these men died the death of kings and generals, whereas Lysander, having thrown away his life ingloriously in the fashion of a peltast or skirmisher, bore witness for the ancient Spartans that they had done well in guarding against assaults on walls, in which not only by any chance man but even by a child or a woman it might happen that the strongest man, if struck, should die — just as they say Achilles was slain by Paris at the gates.
As for Sylla, the victories he won in pitched battles and the tens of thousands of enemies he cast down are not even easy to number; and Rome itself he took twice, and the Piraeus of Athens he seized not by famine, as Lysander did, but through many great struggles, having driven Archelaus from the land to the sea. Great too is the matter of the opposing generals: for it was, I think, mere luxury and child's play to fight a sea-battle against Antiochus, the helmsman of Alcibiades, and to deceive Philocles, the demagogue of the Athenians, a man of no repute, with nothing but a sharpened tongue — men whom neither would Mithridates have thought fit to match against his own groom, nor Marius against his own lictor,
whereas of the potentates who rose up against Sylla — consuls, generals, demagogues, to say nothing of the others — who among the Romans was more fearsome than Marius, or among kings more powerful than Mithridates, or, among the peoples of Italy, more given to fighting than Lamponius and Telesinus? Of these he drove out the one, subdued the other, and killed the rest.
But the greatest of all the things said, as I judge, is this: that Lysander achieved all his successes with the aid of forces from home fighting alongside him, while Sylla, an exile and overpowered by the faction of his enemies, at a time when his wife was being driven out, his house was being torn down, and his friends were being killed, himself in Boeotia, drawn up against countless tens of thousands and facing danger on behalf of his country,
set up a trophy of victory, and though Mithridates offered him alliance and force against his enemies, he yielded nothing soft or accommodating whatsoever, nor did he even address him or clasp his right hand until he learned, in his presence, that he was giving up Asia, surrendering his ships, withdrawing from the kingdoms, and yielding Bithynia and Cappadocia,
than which nothing at all seems to have been a finer deed of Sylla's, nor one carried out from a greater spirit of mind — that he put the common good before his own, and, like noble dogs that do not release their grip and hold before the adversary gives up, only then did he set out toward the defense of his own affairs.
Above all, the matter concerning Athens has some weight for comparing their characters, in that Sylla, though the city had waged war against him on behalf of Mithridates' power and dominion, took it and yet released it free and self-governing, while Lysander, when so great a leadership and empire had fallen, did not pity it, but even took away its democracy and set over it the most savage and lawless of tyrants.
It is time, then, to consider whether we do not stray far from the truth in declaring that Sylla achieved more successes and Lysander committed fewer wrongs, and in assigning to the one the first place for self-control and moderation, to the other for generalship and courage.

======== Cimon ========

Peripoltas the seer led Opheltas the king and the people under him down from Thessaly into Boeotia, and left behind him a family that was held in honor for many generations, the greater part of which settled in Chaeronea, the first city they took after driving out the barbarians. Now most of those descended from that stock, being by nature warlike and manly men, were used up and spent in the Persian invasions and the struggles against the Gauls, sparing themselves not at all; but there was left an orphan boy, bereft of both parents,
named Damon, with the surname Peripoltas, a young man who far surpassed his contemporaries both in bodily beauty and in loftiness of spirit, but was otherwise uneducated and harsh in character. A Roman officer of a cohort then wintering in Chaeronea fell in love with him, just as he was passing beyond boyhood, and when he could not persuade him by attempts and gifts, it was clear he would not refrain from violence, since our fatherland was at that time faring wretchedly and was disregarded because of its smallness and poverty. Fearing this, Damon,
and having made the very attempt itself a matter for anger, plotted against the man and gathered together some of his own age against him — not many, for the sake of secrecy, but all together sixteen in number; they smeared their faces with soot by night, and having drunk unmixed wine at daybreak, set upon the Roman while he offered sacrifice in the marketplace, and struck him down along with not a few of those attending him, then cleared them out of the city.
When a disturbance arose, the council of the Chaeroneans, coming together, condemned them to death; and this was the city's defense before the Romans. But that evening, when the magistrates had gathered for their customary common meal, Damon and his band forced their way into the hall, slit their throats, and once more fled the city.
It happened that around those very days Lucius Lucullus was passing by with a force on some errand. Halting his march and making inquiry into what had happened, which was still fresh, he found the city guilty of nothing, but rather itself wronged along with the rest; and taking up his soldiers, he led them away with him.
As for Damon, who was ravaging the countryside with robberies and raids and pressing upon the city, the citizens won him over with embassies and kindly decrees, and upon his return appointed him gymnasiarch; then, as he was anointing himself in the sweating-room, they destroyed him. And for a long time afterward, phantoms appearing in that place and groans being heard, as our fathers tell us, they walled up the doors of the sweating-room; and to this day those who live near the place believe that certain troubling sights and voices are carried from it.
Those descended from his family (for some still survive, especially around Stiris in Phocis, speaking with the Aeolic dialect) are called the 'Sooty Ones,' because Damon went out to the murder smeared with soot.
When the Orchomenians, being neighbors and rivals of the Chaeroneans, hired a Roman informer, who, bringing down the name of the city as though it were a single man, prosecuted for the murder of those slain by Damon, and the trial was before the governor of Macedonia (for the Romans did not yet send governors into Greece),
those speaking on behalf of the city called upon the testimony of Lucullus; and when the governor wrote to Lucullus, he testified to the truth, and so the city escaped the trial, though it had been in danger of the gravest consequences. Those, then, who were saved at that time set up a stone statue of Lucullus in the marketplace, beside the statue of Dionysus; and we, though separated from him by many generations, believe that the debt of gratitude extends even to us who now live,
and thinking a likeness far nobler than one that reproduces the body and the face to be one that displays the character and manner of a man, we shall take up, in this composition of Parallel Lives, the deeds of the man, setting forth the truth. For the gratitude of remembrance suffices; as for true testimony, not even he himself would have thought it fit to receive as payment a false and fabricated account composed on his behalf.
For just as we require those who paint beautiful likenesses full of much charm, if some small blemish attaches to them, neither to leave it out entirely nor to render it with excessive precision — for the one produces an ugly image, the other an unlike one — so, since it is difficult, or rather perhaps impossible, to display the life of a man as blameless and pure, we must fill out the likeness with the good points, as truth fills out a resemblance.
But the errors and calamities that run alongside men's actions, arising from some passion or from political necessity, we ought to regard rather as deficiencies of some virtue than as the wicked deeds of vice, and we must not be too eager or too elaborate in marking them down in our history, but should, as it were, feel shame on behalf of human nature, that it produces no character noble and unquestionable in its virtue with nothing pure about it.
Lucullus, then, as we consider the matter, seemed to us to be fit to be compared with Cimon. For both were warlike men, and brilliant against the barbarians, but mild in their political dealings, and above all gave their fatherlands respite from civil factions, each of them having set up trophies and won victories much celebrated.
For neither before Cimon among the Greeks nor before Lucullus among the Romans did anyone advance so far in war, setting aside the tales of Heracles and Dionysus, and whatever deed of Perseus against the Ethiopians, or of the Medes and Armenians, or of Jason, worthy of credence, has come down in memory from those times to the present.
It is common, too, in a way, that their generalship was in each case incomplete: each of them crushed his adversary, but neither destroyed him utterly. Most of all, the softness and lavishness in their receptions and acts of kindness, and the youthful, relaxed quality in their manner of living, may be seen alike in both. We pass over, perhaps, certain other similarities as well, which it is not difficult to gather from the narrative itself.
Cimon was the son of Miltiades, and his mother was Hegesipyle, by race a Thracian, daughter of Olorus the king, as is recorded in the poems of Archelaus and Melanthius written to Cimon himself. Wherefore also Thucydides the historian, being related by birth to the family of Cimon, had a father named Olorus, who traced the identity of name back to that ancestor, and possessed gold-mines in the region of Thrace.
And it is said that he [Olorus? — Thucydides' ancestor] died in Scapte Hyle (this is a place in Thrace), being murdered there, and his monument, his remains having been brought to Attica, is shown among the Cimonian tombs, beside the grave of Elpinice, the sister of Cimon. But Thucydides was of the deme Halimus, whereas the family of Miltiades belonged to Laciadae.
Miltiades, then, having been condemned to a fine of fifty talents and imprisoned for failure to pay it, died in the prison; and Cimon, left an utter youth together with his sister, who was still an unmarried girl, was at first held in low repute in the city and spoken of ill, as disorderly and a heavy drinker, and as resembling in nature his grandfather Cimon, who they say was called Coalemus [the Simpleton] for his foolishness.
Stesimbrotus of Thasos, who lived at about the same time as Cimon, says that he was taught neither music nor any other of the liberal accomplishments customary among the Greeks, that he was wholly without Attic cleverness and glibness of speech, and that there was in his character much that was noble and true, and that the shape of the man's soul was more Peloponnesian — plain, unadorned, good in the greatest matters, after the manner of the Euripidean Heracles; for this may fairly be added to what has been written by Stesimbrotus.
While still young he incurred the charge of being intimate with his sister. And indeed they say that Elpinice was not otherwise a woman of orderly conduct, but also went wrong with Polygnotus the painter; and for this reason, they say, in the portico then called the Peisianacteum, but now the Painted Stoa, while depicting the Trojan Women there, he gave Laodice the features of Elpinice.
Polygnotus was not one of the vulgar craftsmen, nor did he paint the stoa for hire, but for nothing, out of eagerness to honor the city, as the historians record and as Melanthius the poet says in this manner: 'at his own expense he adorned the temples of the gods and the Cecropian marketplace with the virtues of demigods.'
There are those who say that Elpinice lived with Cimon not secretly but openly as his wedded wife, since she lacked, because of poverty, a bridegroom worthy of her noble birth; but when Callias, one of the wealthy men at Athens, having fallen in love with her, came forward ready to pay off, on behalf of her father, the fine owed to the public treasury, she herself was persuaded, and Cimon gave Elpinice in marriage to Callias.
Nonetheless, Cimon appears altogether to have been susceptible to erotic entanglements with women. For Melanthius the poet mentions, in jesting elegiac verses addressed to Cimon, both an Asteria of Salaminian family and again a certain Mnestra, as women eagerly pursued by him.
It is clear too that Cimon was affected more passionately, and bore it ill when she died, in the case of Isodice, daughter of Euryptolemus, son of Megacles, who lived with him according to the laws as his lawful wife — if one must draw any inference from the elegiac verses written to him for the consolation of his grief, of which Panaetius the philosopher thinks Archelaus the natural philosopher was the author, conjecturing not unreasonably from the dates.
But in all other respects the character of Cimon was admirable and noble. For being inferior to Miltiades in neither daring nor to Themistocles in intelligence, he is agreed to have been more just than either, and while falling not the least short of their virtues in matters of war, he surpassed them by an immeasurable degree in the arts of politics, though he was still young and inexperienced in war.
For when, as the Medes were advancing, Themistocles was persuading the people to abandon the city and leave the countryside, and to place their arms in their ships before Salamis and fight the issue out by sea, while most men were struck with terror at the boldness of it, Cimon was seen first, going up through the Cerameicus to the acropolis with his companions in cheerful spirits, carrying in his hands a horse's bridle to dedicate to the goddess, as though the city at present needed nothing of cavalry strength, but rather of men to fight at sea.
And having dedicated the bridle, and taken one of the shields hanging about the temple, and having prayed to the goddess, he went down to the sea, becoming for not a few the beginning of courage. In appearance he was not to be found fault with, as Ion the poet says, but was tall, with thick and curling hair upon his head. Having shown himself brilliant and manly in the very struggle itself, he quickly gained repute in the city together with good will, many gathering about him and urging him now to think and act in a manner worthy of Marathon.
And when he set out upon a political career, the people gladly received him, and, being full of Themistocles, advanced him to the greatest honors and offices in the city, since he was well suited to and beloved by the many because of his mildness and simplicity. Not least did Aristides, son of Lysimachus, help him to grow, discerning the natural excellence in his character, and making of him, as it were, a rival set against the cleverness and boldness of Themistocles.
When, after the Medes had fled Greece, he was sent out as general -- the Athenians not yet holding command of the sea, but still following Pausanias and the Lacedaemonians -- he first of all, in his campaigns, always presented his fellow citizens as admirable in discipline and far surpassing everyone in eagerness.
Then, while Pausanias was secretly plotting betrayal with the foreigners and sending dispatches to the King, and was dealing harshly and arrogantly with the allies and committing many acts of foolish insolence through his power and pride, Cimon, by receiving the wronged parties gently and treating them with kindness, without anyone noticing took away the leadership of Greece from him -- not by arms, but by speech and character.
For most of the allies attached themselves to him and to Aristides, unable to bear the harshness and arrogance of Pausanias. And these men also brought the rest over to their side, and sent word to the ephors saying that, since Sparta was losing repute and Greece was being thrown into confusion, they should recall Pausanias.
It is said that a certain Byzantine maiden of distinguished parents, named Cleonice, was summoned by Pausanias for his own dishonor's sake; that her parents, under compulsion and fear, gave up the girl; and that she, having asked those before the chamber to take away the light, approaching the bed through darkness and silence while Pausanias was already asleep, stumbled and knocked over
the lamp-stand unintentionally; and that he, startled by the noise and drawing the dagger that lay beside him, as though some enemy were coming upon him, struck and cast down the maiden -- and that she, dying from the blow, would not let Pausanias rest, but a phantom of her, visiting him in his sleep at night, said in anger this heroic verse: 'Go forth to justice; insolence, indeed, is a great evil for men.' At this the allies, bearing it especially hard, together with Cimon besieged and drove him out.
And he, driven out of Byzantium and disturbed by the apparition, as is said, fled for refuge to Heraclea's oracle where the dead were consulted, and calling up the soul of Cleonice tried to beg off her anger. And she, appearing before him, told him his hardships would end soon after he reached Sparta -- hinting, it seems, at the death that awaited him there. This, then, is what has been recorded by many.
Cimon, now that the allies had already come over to him, sailed as general to Thrace, having learned that certain Persians of high rank and kinsmen of the King, holding the city of Eion on the river Strymon, were harassing the Greeks in that region.
First, then, he beat the Persians in open battle and penned them inside the city walls; then, by laying waste the Thracians above the Strymon, from whom their grain supply came, and guarding the whole country closely, he reduced those under siege to such want that Butes, the King's general, giving up all hope, set fire to the city and destroyed himself along with his friends and his treasure.
Having taken the city in this way, he gained nothing else of note, since most things were burned up along with the barbarians, but he handed over the territory, which was extremely fertile and beautiful, to the Athenians to settle. And the people allowed stone Herms to be set up in his honor, on the first of which is inscribed:
'Stouthearted indeed were those men too, who once against the sons of the Medes, by the streams of Strymon near Eion, bringing on burning hunger and chill war, were the first to find their enemies helpless.' On the second: 'To their leaders the Athenians gave this as reward, in return for good service and great benefits. Seeing this, anyone -- even in later times -- will be more willing to strive over the common good.'
On the third: 'Once from this city, together with the sons of Atreus, Menestheus led the way into the sacred Trojan plain -- he whom Homer once said came forth as the finest marshal of battle among the well-armored Danaans. Thus it is nothing unfitting for Athenians to be called marshals of war and manly valor.'
These verses, although nowhere do they reveal Cimon's name, seemed to the people of that time to hold an excess of honor. For neither Themistocles nor Miltiades obtained anything of the kind; but when Cimon himself once asked for a crown of wild olive, Sophanes of Decelea rose up in the middle of the assembly and spoke against it -- an ungracious remark, but one that pleased the people at the time: 'For,' he said, 'when you, Miltiades, have fought alone and defeated the barbarians, then you may claim to be honored alone too.'
Why then did they so warmly welcome Cimon's achievement? Perhaps because, while the other generals in their commands defended against the enemy so as to avoid suffering harm, this man was able also to do harm to them, by himself marching against their territory, and they gained additional land by taking Eion itself and settling Amphipolis?
They also settled Scyros after Cimon took it, for the following reason. The Dolopians inhabited the island, poor farmers of the land; and having plundered the sea from ancient times, they ended by not even sparing the foreign traders who sailed in and dealt with them, but seized and imprisoned some Thessalian merchants who had put in at Ctesium.
When these men escaped from their bonds and won a judgment against the city before the Amphictyonic council, the majority of the people were unwilling to pay the damages jointly, but demanded that those who held and had plundered the goods should give them back. Fearing this, those men sent word to Cimon, pressing him to sail over with his fleet and seize the city, which they themselves were prepared to hand over to him.
Having thus taken possession of the island, Cimon drove out the Dolopians and freed the Aegean; and learning that Theseus, son of Aegeus, of old, having fled from Athens to Scyros, had died there through treachery, out of fear, at the hands of King Lycomedes,
he was eager to find his tomb. For there was an oracle telling the Athenians to bring back the remains of Theseus to the city and to honor him fittingly as a hero, but they did not know where he lay, since the Scyrians would not admit it nor allow a search. Then, with much rivalry, the shrine was at last discovered, and Cimon, placing the bones aboard his own trireme and adorning everything else magnificently, brought them back to his own land after nearly four hundred years. For this the people held him in especially warm regard.
They also, in memory of him, set up as famous the judging of the tragedies that took place. For when Sophocles, still young, put on his first production, Apsephion the archon, since there was rivalry and partisanship among the spectators, did not have judges chosen by lot for the contest; but when Cimon, together with his fellow generals, came forward into the theater and made the customary libations to the god, he did not let them depart, but put them under oath and compelled them to sit and judge, being ten in number, one from each tribe.
The contest, then, because of the standing of the judges, exceeded even the rivalry itself. And when Sophocles won, it is said that Aeschylus, deeply distressed and bearing it heavily, spent not much time longer at Athens, and then, in anger, departed for Sicily, where he also died and is buried near Gela.
Ion says that he dined with Cimon, having come to Athens from Chios while still quite a youth, staying with Laomedon; and when the libations had been made, Cimon, being asked to sing, sang -- and when he had sung, those present praised him, not unpleasantly, as more accomplished than Themistocles; for they said that Themistocles used to claim he had not learned to sing nor to play the lyre, but did know how to make a city great and wealthy. From there,
as is natural at a drinking party, when the conversation turned to Cimon's own achievements and his greatest deeds were being recalled, Cimon himself related one stratagem of his own as the cleverest. When the allies, after taking many barbarian prisoners at Sestos and Byzantium, ordered Cimon to divide them up, he set the men apart on one side and their personal ornaments apart on the other, and they complained that the division was unequal.
So he told them to choose one of the two shares, and whichever they left behind, the Athenians would be content with. When Herophytus of Samos advised them to choose the Persians' goods rather than the Persians themselves, they themselves took the ornaments, and left the prisoners to the Athenians. And at the time Cimon went away seeming a ridiculous divider, since the allies were carrying off golden bracelets and collars and torques and robes and purple, while the Athenians got naked bodies, poorly trained for labor.
But a little later the friends and relatives of the captives, coming down from Phrygia and Lydia, ransomed each man for large sums, so that Cimon had provisions for four months for his ships, and besides that no small amount of gold accrued to the city from the ransoms.
Cimon, now well provided with resources for his generalship, which he seemed to have gained honorably from the enemy, spent it even more honorably on his fellow citizens. For he took down the fences of his fields, so that both foreigners and any citizens in need might take of the fruit without fear, and he provided at his own house each day a plain meal, ample enough for a great many, and any poor man who so desired could come in and take his sustenance without difficulty,
devoting himself only to public affairs. But as Aristotle says, it was not for all Athenians, but for his fellow demesmen, the men of Laciadae, that the meal was prepared for anyone who wished. Young men accompanied him, well dressed, familiar companions of his, each of whom, if any older citizen met Cimon poorly clothed, would exchange his own garment with him; and what took place appeared dignified.
The same young men, also carrying an abundance of coin, would come up to the respectable poor in the marketplace and silently drop small change into their hands. Of this Cratinus the comic poet seems to make mention in his Archilochi, in these lines:
'For I too used to hope, Metrobius the scribe, that with that godlike man, most hospitable and best of all the Panhellenes -- with Cimon, enjoying a rich old age, I would spend my whole life. But he has gone and left first.'
Further, Gorgias of Leontini says that Cimon acquired wealth in order to use it, and used it in order to be honored; and Critias, who was one of the Thirty, in his elegies prays: 'the wealth of the Scopadae, the magnanimity of Cimon, and the victories of Arcesilaus the Lacedaemonian.' And yet we know Lichas the Spartan to have become famous among the Greeks for nothing else than that he used to feast the strangers at the Gymnopaediae; yet Cimon's open-handedness went beyond even the time-honored Athenian tradition of hospitality and kindness.
For those men on whose account the city justly prides itself gave the seed of nourishment to the Greeks and taught men who needed it the kindling of fountain-waters and fire, while he, having declared his own house a common prytaneum for the citizens, and in the countryside providing the first-fruits of the ripe crops and all the fair things the seasons bring for strangers to use and take, in a manner brought back into life again that fellowship storied of the age of Cronus.
But those who slandered these acts as flattery of the mob and demagoguery were refuted by the rest of the man's policy, which was aristocratic and Laconian in character, seeing that he even opposed Themistocles together with Aristides when the latter was exalting democracy beyond what was fitting, and later he quarreled with Ephialtes when he was dissolving the council of the Areopagus to gratify the people,
and seeing that all the others except Aristides and Ephialtes were becoming tainted with public gains, he kept himself throughout his political life incorruptible and untouched by bribery, and acting and speaking in everything freely and purely to the end. It is said, at any rate, that a certain Rhoesaces, a barbarian who had revolted from the King, came to Athens with much money, and being harassed by the informers, fled for refuge to Cimon, and set beside his courtyard-gate two bowls, the one filled with silver darics, the other with gold; and Cimon, seeing them and smiling, asked the man
whether he preferred to have Cimon as a hireling or as a friend. And when the man said a friend, "Then," said Cimon, "take these away with you and go; for I shall make use of them whenever I need them, once I have become your friend."
But when the allies paid their tribute money but no longer furnished men and ships as had been assigned, having by now grown weary of the campaigns, and desiring no war at all but rather to farm their land and live in quiet, since the barbarians had withdrawn and were no longer troubling them, and so neither manned their ships nor sent out men, the other Athenian generals compelled them to do these things, and by bringing those who fell short to trial and punishing them made the Athenian rule burdensome and grievous;
but Cimon, taking the opposite course in his generalship, applied force to none of the Greeks, but took money from those unwilling to serve in the field, and empty ships, and let them, lured on by their leisure, waste their time about their own affairs, becoming farmers and men of business, unwarlike instead of warlike out of softness and folly, while he embarked many of the Athenians in turn and trained them by the campaigns, and in a short time, through the pay and money furnished by the allies, made them masters of the very men who supplied it.
For the allies, sailing continuously and always handling weapons and being maintained and trained, through their own abstention from service grew accustomed to fear and flatter, and before they knew it had become, instead of allies, tributary subjects and slaves.
And indeed it was Cimon above every other man who humbled and shrank the pride of the Great King. Once the barbarian had retreated from Greece, Cimon would not release him from his grasp, but, as though treading on his very heels, gave the enemy no chance to draw breath and rally, ravaging and subduing some places, detaching others and winning them to the Greek side, so that he stripped Persian power entirely from the coast of Asia, from Ionia clear to Pamphylia.
Learning that the King's generals, backed by a large army and a numerous fleet, were watching for him near Pamphylia, and wanting to strike such fear into them that they would not dare sail within the Chelidonian islands, he put out from Cnidus and Triopium leading two hundred triremes — vessels that Themistocles had originally equipped superbly for speed and quick handling, but which Cimon at that time widened further and fitted with a gangway across the decks, so that, bearing a larger complement of hoplites, they could close with the enemy in better fighting trim.
Sailing against the city of the Phaselites, who were Greeks but would not receive the fleet nor were willing to revolt from the King, he ravaged their land and assaulted their walls. But the Chians, sailing with him, being of old on friendly terms with the Phaselites, at once soothed Cimon and at the same time, shooting little letters attached to arrows over the walls, sent word to the Phaselites.
In the end he reconciled them, so that by giving ten talents they should follow along and join in the campaign against the barbarians. Ephorus says that Tithraustes commanded the King's ships and Pherendates the infantry, but Callisthenes says that Ariomandes son of Gobryas, being supreme commander of the force, lay at anchor with the ships by the Eurymedon, not eager to fight the Greeks, but awaiting eighty Phoenician ships sailing up from Cyprus.
Wishing to forestall these, Cimon put to sea, prepared to force battle if they should not willingly fight at sea. They at first, so as not to be forced, anchored within the river, but when the Athenians bore down upon them they sailed out against them, as Phanodemus records, with six hundred ships, or as Ephorus says, three hundred and fifty. In any case no deed worthy of such a force was performed by them upon the sea,
but at once the foremost turned toward the land and ran their ships ashore and fled for refuge to the infantry drawn up nearby, while those who were overtaken perished together with their ships. By this it is clear how very many were the ships manned by the barbarians, since, though many, as is likely, escaped and many were shattered, the Athenians nevertheless took two hundred captive.
When the infantry had come down to the sea, it seemed to Cimon a great task to force the landing and to lead the Greeks, weary as they were, against fresh troops many times their number; yet seeing them, by the strength and pride of their victory, elated and eager to close with the barbarians, he disembarked the hoplites, still hot from the struggle of the sea-battle, charging on with shouting and at a run.
When the Persians stood their ground and met them not ignobly, a fierce battle was joined, and men of the Athenians who were good and foremost and distinguished in rank fell. But after a long struggle they routed the barbarians and cut them down, then took both the men themselves and tents full of goods of every kind.
Cimon, like some formidable athlete who has won two bouts in a single day, having outdone the Salamis trophy with a land battle and the Plataea trophy with a battle at sea, piled a further triumph onto these: on learning that eighty Phoenician triremes, absent from the main engagement, had made harbor at Hydrus, he hurried his ships there at once, while the enemy commanders still had no clear word whatsoever of the larger defeat and remained uncertain and
in suspense; wherefore, being the more panic-stricken, they lost all their ships, and most of the men perished together with them. This deed so humbled the King's resolve that he agreed to that famous peace, by which he was always to keep a horse's course distant from the Greek sea, and not to sail within the Cyanean and Chelidonian islands with a warship of bronze beak.
And yet Callisthenes says the barbarian did not agree to these terms, but did so in fact out of fear of that defeat, and kept so far away from Greece that Pericles sailed with fifty ships and Ephialtes with only thirty beyond the Chelidonian islands, and no naval force of the barbarians met them at all.
But in the decrees which Craterus collected, copies of the treaty are set down as though it had actually been made. They say too that the Athenians for this reason set up an altar of Peace, and honored Callias, who had gone as envoy, in extraordinary fashion. When the captured spoils were sold, the people were strengthened in money along with other things, and from that campaign, having become prosperous, built the southern wall of the Acropolis.
It is said also that of the long walls, which they call the Legs, the building was completed later, but the first foundation, since the works fell upon marshy and waterlogged ground, was laid securely by means of Cimon, the marshes being pressed down with much gravel and heavy stones, he providing and giving the money for it.
He was the first to grace the city with what came to be called its refined and pleasant gathering-places, spots that not long after were held in remarkable affection: he set plane trees through the marketplace, and turned the Academy from a dry, parched tract into a well-irrigated grove, furnishing it with clean racecourses and shaded paths.
When some of the Persians refused to give up the Chersonese, and were even summoning Thracians from the interior to help, despising Cimon because he had put out from Athens with so few triremes, he attacked them with only four ships, captured thirteen of theirs, drove out the Persian garrison, subdued the Thracians, and brought the entire Chersonese under Athenian control.
After this, when the Thasians broke away from Athens, he beat them at sea, captured thirty-three ships, laid siege to and took their city, and won for the Athenians the mainland gold mines opposite together with the territory the Thasians had held. And though from that position it appeared a simple matter to push into Macedonia and seize a broad stretch of land, his refusal to do so brought him the accusation that King Alexander's gifts had bribed and won him over, and his enemies joined forces to bring him to trial.
Defending himself before the judges, he said that he acted as proxenos not of the Ionians nor of the Thessalians, wealthy as they were, as others did, in order to be courted and to receive gifts, but of the Lacedaemonians, imitating and loving their frugality and self-control, valuing no wealth above it, but taking pride in enriching the city from the enemy.
Stesimbrotus, recalling that trial, says that Elpinice, pleading on behalf of Cimon, came to the door of Pericles (for he was the most vehement of the accusers), and that he, smiling, said, "You are an old woman, Elpinice, an old woman, to be managing such great affairs"; yet that at the trial he was most gentle toward Cimon and rose to speak against the accusation only once, as if merely performing a formality.
So then he escaped that trial; but for the rest of his political career, whenever he was present he held the mastery and restrained the people from encroaching upon the best men and drawing all rule and power to itself; but when he had again sailed out on campaign, the many, being altogether let loose and confounding the established order of the constitution and the ancestral customs which they had formerly observed,
under the leadership of Ephialtes took away from the council of the Areopagus all its judgments except a few, and making themselves masters of the courts, plunged the city into unmixed democracy, Pericles too by now having power and holding the views of the many. Wherefore, when Cimon returned and was indignant at the dignity of the council being insulted, and tried again to recall the cases to it from above and to raise up the aristocracy that had existed under Cleisthenes, they cried out against him, banding together, and stirred up the people,
renewing those old charges against him concerning his sister and calling him a lover of Sparta. Hence the oft-quoted lines Eupolis wrote of Cimon, that he was not a bad man, yet fond of wine and idle, prone to nod off in Lacedaemon while Elpinice sat here quite alone. Yet if, idle and devoted to drink though he was, he still captured so many cities and carried off so many victories, then plainly, had he kept sober and applied himself, not a single Greek before him or since could have matched what he accomplished.
From the beginning he was a lover of Sparta: indeed, of his twin sons by his Cleitorian wife he gave one the name Lacedaemonius and called the other Eleius, as Stesimbrotus records; for which reason Pericles often reproached them over their mother's origins. Diodorus the Topographer, however, states that this pair, along with Thessalus, the third of Cimon's sons, were instead born of Isodice, daughter of Euryptolemus son of Megacles.
His influence grew because the Lacedaemonians, already at war with Themistocles, wished this young man to prevail and hold power at Athens instead. The Athenians at first were glad to enjoy no small benefit from the goodwill the Spartans bore him; for in the early years of their growing power and their meddling in the affairs of the alliance, they were not troubled by the honor and favor shown to Cimon.
For most of Greek affairs were managed through him, since he dealt gently with the allies but agreeably with the Lacedaemonians. But afterward, having become more powerful, and seeing that Cimon leaned toward the Spartans not lightly, they grew displeased. For he himself, in praising Lacedaemon on every occasion before the Athenians, and especially whenever he had occasion to find fault with them or provoke them, used to say, as Stesimbrotus reports, "But the Lacedaemonians are not like that."
From this he drew upon himself envy and a certain ill-will from the citizens. Now the accusation that prevailed most strongly against him arose in this way. During the fourth year that Archidamus son of Zeuxidamus held the Spartan throne, an earthquake struck greater than any remembered before it: the land of the Lacedaemonians was riven with many chasms, and certain peaks of Taygetus were shaken loose and broken off, and the city itself was entirely thrown down except for five houses—the earthquake leveled all the rest.
It is said that the ephebes and young men were exercising as a group inside the colonnade when, just before the earthquake struck, a hare came into view, and the young men, oiled as they were, ran out after it in sport and gave chase, while the ephebes who were left behind had the gymnasium collapse upon them and all died together. Their tomb they still call to this day the Seismatias.
Archidamus, quickly perceiving from the present danger the one still to come, and seeing the citizens trying to save their most valued possessions from their houses, ordered the trumpet sounded as though enemies were approaching, so that they might gather to him as quickly as possible under arms. This alone, in that moment, saved Sparta. For the helots came running together from the fields on every side, intending to seize those Spartans who had survived.
But finding them armed and drawn up in order, they withdrew to their cities and openly made war, persuading not a few of the perioikoi to join them, and the Messenians joining the Spartans in the attack together. So the Lacedaemonians sent Pericleidas to Athens to beg for aid—the man whom Aristophanes, mocking him in comedy, says sat pale at the altars in his scarlet cloak, begging for an army.
But when Ephialtes opposed it and protested that they should not help nor raise up a rival city against Athens, but should let Sparta's pride lie fallen and trampled, Critias says that Cimon, setting the advantage of Sparta above even the growth of his own country, persuaded the people to send out a large force of hoplites to Sparta's assistance. Ion, too, preserves the very speech with which he most moved the Athenians, urging them not to allow Greece to be made lame, nor their city to go yoked unevenly.
When, after helping the Lacedaemonians, he was withdrawing his army through Corinth, Lachartus brought a charge against him for leading his troops in before consulting with the citizens; for, he said, men who knock on another's door do not enter until the master bids them. And Cimon replied, "But you, Lachartus, did not knock on the gates of the Cleonaeans or the Megarians—you broke them down and forced your way in with arms, holding that all things must stand open to those with greater power." Thus he answered the Corinthian boldly, as the occasion demanded, and passed through with his army.
The Lacedaemonians once more summoned the Athenians to help against the Messenians and helots holding Ithome, yet once the Athenians arrived, Spartan fear of their daring and energy led them to send this one contingent of allies away, branding them agitators. The Athenians, departing in anger, now openly showed hostility toward those who favored Sparta, and, seizing upon a slight pretext, ostracized Cimon for ten years—for that was the fixed term appointed for all who were ostracized.
Meanwhile, as the Lacedaemonians were returning from freeing Delphi from the Phocians and encamped at Tanagra, the Athenians went out to give battle, and Cimon came under arms to his own tribe, the Oeneis, eager to fight alongside his fellow citizens against the Lacedaemonians.
But the Council of Five Hundred, hearing of this and afraid—since his enemies cried out that he wished to throw the phalanx into confusion and bring the Lacedaemonians against the city—forbade the generals to receive the man. And he went away, having begged Euthippus of Anaphlystus and his other companions, those most accused of favoring Sparta, to fight vigorously against the enemy and by their deeds clear themselves of the charge before the citizens.
They took his suit of armor and set it in their company; and standing together, fighting with all their hearts, a hundred strong, they fell, leaving the Athenians much longing for them and regret for the injustice with which they had been accused. From this the Athenians did not long remain angry at Cimon—partly, as was natural, remembering the good he had done them, and partly because circumstance itself lent a hand.
For, having been defeated in the great battle at Tanagra, and expecting an invasion by the Peloponnesians in the coming season, they recalled Cimon from exile; and he returned once the decree had been drafted for him by Pericles. So moderate were political differences then, and so temperate men's passions, ever recallable to the common good, that ambition, though it prevailed over all other feelings, yielded to the needs of the fatherland.
As soon as Cimon came back he brought the fighting to a close and restored harmony among the cities; and with peace now established, seeing that the Athenians could not remain still but wished to be active and to grow through military campaigns, and wishing that they should not vex the Greeks, nor, roaming about the islands or the Peloponnese with many ships, draw upon the city the beginnings of civil wars and complaints from the allies,
he manned two hundred triremes as though he were about to campaign again against Egypt and Cyprus—wishing at once to keep the Athenians in practice for their contests against the barbarians, and also that they might justly profit by bringing back to Greece the wealth of those who were their natural enemies. Now when all was prepared and the army was already at the ships, Cimon saw a dream.
He dreamed that an angry dog was barking at him, and that mixed in with the barking, it uttered, in a human voice: "Go on; for you shall be a friend to me and to my pups." Since the vision was hard to interpret, Astyphilus of Poseidonia, a man skilled in divination and a companion of Cimon, declared that the vision foretold his death, interpreting it thus: a dog is hostile to the man at whom it barks; and no one could become a greater friend to an enemy than by dying; and the mixture in the voice signified the Mede as the enemy.
For the Median host is made up jointly of Greeks and foreigners together. After this vision, when Cimon was sacrificing to Dionysus, the seer cut the victim open, and many ants, taking up the blood that was already clotting, carried it little by little to Cimon and plastered it around his big toe, going unnoticed for a long time. At the same moment Cimon happened to notice what was happening, and the sacrificer came up to show him the lobe of the liver, which had no head. But since there was no drawing back from the campaign, he sailed out, and of the ships he sent sixty to Egypt, while he sailed on with the rest.
And having defeated in a sea-battle the royal fleet of Phoenician and Cilician ships, he won back the cities round about and kept watch over the region of Egypt, planning nothing small, but the overthrow of the King's entire dominion—especially because he learned that Themistocles had great reputation and power among the barbarians, having promised the King that he would command the war against Greece whenever it should be stirred up.
Themistocles, indeed, is said to have died by his own choice, not least because he had given up hope of Greek affairs, seeing that he could not surpass Cimon's good fortune and valor. Cimon, meanwhile, elated by the great beginnings of his struggles, and keeping his fleet gathered near Cyprus, he dispatched envoys to the oracle of Ammon so they might question the god about some undisclosed affair; for no one knows the purpose for which they were sent,
nor did the god deliver any oracle to them, but as soon as they approached, he told the sacred envoys to go away again, for Cimon, he said, was already in his presence. Hearing this, the envoys went down to the sea; and arriving at the camp of the Greeks, which was then near Egypt, they learned that Cimon had died: and reckoning back the days to the oracle, they realized that the god's riddle had foretold the man's death, as one already among the gods.
He died while besieging Citium, as most say, of sickness; but some say from a wound he received while fighting against the barbarians. As he lay dying he instructed his companions to put to sea immediately and keep his death hidden; and so it happened that, with neither enemy nor allies aware of it, the fleet was brought home safe, seemingly still led by Cimon, according to Phanodemus, even though he had already been dead for thirty days.
After his death nothing further of note was accomplished against the barbarians by any general of the Greeks; instead, turned by demagogues and warmongers against one another, with no one standing between to restrain their hands, they crashed together into war, giving the King's affairs a breathing space while working unspeakable ruin upon the power of Greece.
Late, indeed, Agesilaus and his men, carrying their arms into Asia, engaged in a brief war against the King's generals along the coast; but they accomplished nothing brilliant or great, and were again drawn back, from a fresh source, into the factions and disturbances of Greece, and departed, leaving the King's tax-collectors stationed right among cities that were friendly allies—cities where, back when Cimon held command, not even a courier came down, nor was a horse seen within four hundred stadia of the sea.
That his remains were brought back to Attica is attested by the monuments still called to this day the Cimonian tombs; and the people of Citium likewise venerate a tomb they hold to be Cimon's, according to the orator Nausicrates, since during a season of plague and famine their god instructed them not to disregard Cimon, but rather to revere him with worship as though he were more than mortal. Such, then, was the man who led the Greeks.

======== Lucullus ========

Lucullus's grandfather had been consul, and his mother's brother was Metellus, called Numidicus. Of his parents, his father was convicted of embezzlement, and his mother Caecilia had a bad reputation for not having lived a chaste life. Lucullus himself, while still a young man, before entering upon any office or engaging in public life, made it his first business to bring to trial the man who had prosecuted his father, the augur Servilius, catching him committing a public wrong,
and the deed struck the Romans as splendid, and they kept that trial on their lips as if it had been an act of valor. It also seemed to them that, quite apart from any particular grievance, the work of prosecution was not ignoble, but rather that they wished to see the young, like well-bred hounds, fastening upon wrongdoers as upon wild beasts. Even so, great partisan strife arose over that trial, so that some were wounded and some fell, and Servilius was acquitted.
Lucullus had trained himself to speak both languages competently, so that even Sulla, in composing his memoirs, chose to inscribe them to Lucullus, judging him more capable of arranging and shaping the narrative. For his speech was not merely adequate for practical use and ready to hand, like that of others, whose eloquence churns up the marketplace like a school of tunny driven onto the shore by a squall, but once outside the marketplace goes dry, dead for want of culture,
but he had cultivated this graceful and so-called liberal learning for its own beauty even while still a young man. And once he had grown older, he let his mind rest and take its ease in philosophy altogether, as if after many contests, rousing its contemplative side, and in due season dissolving and curbing his ambition after his quarrel with Pompey,
Concerning his love of learning, besides what has been said, this too is told: that when young, in a rivalry begun in jest with the orator Hortensius and the historian Sisenna that turned serious, he agreed, when they had proposed a poem and a speech, one Greek and one Roman, to compose on the Marsic War whichever of these fell to him by lot. And it seems the lot fell to him for the Greek speech, for a certain Greek history of the Marsic War is preserved.
Of the many proofs of his goodwill toward his brother Marcus, the Romans especially remember this first one: though older than he, Lucullus alone refused to take office ahead of him, but waited for his brother's proper time, and so won over the people that, even in his absence, he was elected aedile together with him.
While still a young man, during the war against the Marsi, he demonstrated repeatedly both courage and sound judgment, but Sulla was drawn to him still more by his steadiness and gentleness, and, employing him from the start in matters most worthy of serious attention, continued to do so; among these was the business of the coinage,
for through him most of the coin struck in the Peloponnese during the Mithridatic War was minted, and from him it was called "Lucullean," and it remained in use for a very long time, providing quick reimbursement for military needs during the war. After this, while Sulla was master of the land around Athens but was being cut off from provisions by sea by the enemy who controlled the waters, he sent Lucullus to Egypt and Libya to bring ships from there — it was then the very dead of winter,
and he sailed out with three small Greek galleys and an equal number of Rhodian biremes, venturing onto a great sea full of enemy ships that ranged everywhere in the confidence of mastery. Nevertheless, he touched at Crete and won it over, and, coming upon the people of Cyrene, distracted by continual tyrannies and wars, he restored order among them and settled their constitution, reminding the city of a certain saying of Plato which he had once uttered to them as prophecy.
For when they asked him, it seems, to write them laws and bring the people themselves into some fixed pattern of a sober constitution, he said it was hard to legislate for Cyrenaeans who were so fortunate. For nothing is harder to govern than a man who seems to be doing well, nor again anything more receptive of guidance than one humbled by fortune — which was indeed what then made the Cyrenaeans docile toward Lucullus as their lawgiver.
Putting out from there for Egypt, he lost most of his vessels when pirates appeared, but he himself came through safely and put in at Alexandria in splendid style. For the whole fleet came out to meet him, as was their custom when a king sailed in, magnificently arrayed; and the young Ptolemy showed him other marvelous marks of friendliness, and gave him lodging and quarters in the palace, though no foreign commander had ever before been housed there.
And he provided him with an allowance and provisions not such as he gave to others, but fourfold, though Lucullus would accept nothing beyond what was necessary, nor take any gift, even though gifts worth eighty talents were sent to him. It is reported that he never traveled up to Memphis, nor stopped to see any of Egypt's other wonders and celebrated attractions, saying that such things were for a leisured sightseer and one given to luxury, not for one who, like himself, had left the commander-in-chief camped in the open beside the enemy's ramparts.
But when Ptolemy, having lost his nerve, abandoned the alliance for the war, though he did furnish him with ships as an escort as far as Cyprus, and at his departure, embracing and courting him, gave him a gold-set emerald of great value, Lucullus at first declined it; but when the king showed him the engraving on it, which was his own likeness, he was afraid to refuse it, lest, being thought an enemy as he sailed away, he should be plotted against at sea.
And when, coasting along, he had gathered a number of ships from the seaboard cities — except for those implicated in acts of piracy — and crossed over to Cyprus, where he found out that enemy forces were lurking off the promontories, on watch for his arrival, he hauled all his vessels up on shore, and wrote to the cities about winter quarters and provisions, as if he meant to wait out the season there,
then, when a chance for sailing suddenly appeared, he ran his ships down and put out, and sailing by day with sails lowered and low-set, but by night with them raised, he reached Rhodes safely. When the Rhodians furnished him further ships, he persuaded the Coans and Cnidians, after they had freed themselves from the king's forces, to join in the campaign against Samos. From Chios he himself drove out the king's men, and he freed the Colophonians, seizing their tyrant Epigonus.
At that time it happened that Mithridates had already abandoned Pergamum and withdrawn into Pitane. There, being blockaded by Fimbria on the land side and besieged, he looked toward the sea and kept gathering and sending for the fleets from every quarter to come to him, having given up on engaging and fighting the bold and victorious Fimbria.
Fimbria, seeing this, and lacking a navy, sent to Lucullus, begging him to come with his fleet and help destroy the most hateful and hostile of kings, so that the great prize pursued through so many contests and toils might not escape the Romans — Mithridates now come within their grasp and caught within the net, since if he were taken, no one would win more glory than the man who had stood in the way of his flight
and, laying hold of him as he tried to escape, driven from the land by Fimbria himself and shut off from the sea by Lucullus, would render the achievement to them both jointly, while the exploits so celebrated of Sulla at Orchomenus and around Chaeronea the Romans would then reckon as nothing. And nothing in what he said was off the mark; indeed it was plain to everyone that if Lucullus, then not far off, had been persuaded by Fimbria and had brought his ships around there and sealed the harbor mouth with his ships, the conflict would have reached its close and every man freed from a host of miseries.
But whether it was because he held the claims of justice toward Sulla above every private and public advantage, or because he shunned Fimbria as a polluted man who had lately become the murderer, out of lust for command, of a friend and general, or because by some divine fortune he was sparing Mithridates himself and keeping him in reserve as an adversary, he did not comply, but let Mithridates sail out and mock the strength of Fimbria,
while he himself, first, beat the king's ships in a sea-fight as they showed themselves near Lectum in the Troad, and then, spotting Neoptolemus stationed with a stronger squadron off Tenedos to ambush him, pressed ahead of the rest to meet him, riding a Rhodian quinquereme under the command of Damagoras, a man friendly to Rome and highly skilled in naval combat,
and when Neoptolemus rushed forward at full speed and told his steersman to aim for the ram, Damagoras, wary of how massive the royal vessel was and how heavy its bronze sheathing, would not risk a head-on collision; instead he spun his ship around at once and had his crew row hard astern, so that when the impact came it struck harmlessly along the ship's lower hull near the water.
Meanwhile his friends came up in support, and Lucullus, giving the order to turn about and performing many deeds worthy of note, routs the enemy and pursues Neoptolemus,
From there, meeting Sulla near the Chersonese, who was now about to cross over, he made the passage safe and helped ferry the army across; and once the treaty was concluded and Mithridates departed by sea for the Euxine, and Sulla fined Asia twenty thousand talents, Lucullus, charged with both exacting this money and striking coin, seemed to bring the cities some relief from Sulla's harshness, by showing himself not merely honest and just but even gentle in so heavy and grim a task,
As for the Mytilenaeans, who had openly revolted, he wished them to come to their senses and pay a moderate penalty for their offenses against Marius, but when he saw they were bent on their own ruin, he moved against them, beat them on the field, and forced them back behind their walls; and having set a siege in place, he sailed away by day, openly, to Elaea, but returned secretly and, setting an ambush around the city, kept quiet.
And when the Mytilenaeans came out in disorder and with reckless confidence, as if to plunder an abandoned camp, he fell upon them and took a great many alive, and killed five hundred of those who resisted, and drove off six thousand slaves and countless other plunder besides.
Of the evils that afflicted Italy at that time, which Sulla and Marius inflicted upon men in abundance and of every kind, he had, by some divine fortune, little part, being delayed by his affairs in Asia. Yet he was in no way less in Sulla's favor than his other friends, but, as has been said, out of goodwill he dedicated to him the writing of his memoirs, and at his death he named him guardian of his son, passing over Pompey. This, it appears, marked the start of the rivalry and envy that grew between the two, both still young and eager for renown.
A little after Sulla's death he became consul with Marcus Cotta, in the hundred and seventy-sixth Olympiad. When many were again stirring up talk of the Mithridatic War, Marcus said it had not ceased, only paused. And so, when Lucullus drew by lot the province of Cisalpine Gaul, he was vexed, since it offered no scope for great achievements.
What most spurred him on was Pompey, who was gaining glory in Iberia, since it seemed that if the Iberian war should happen to end, no one else was so likely to be chosen at once as general against Mithridates. For this reason, when Pompey asked for money, warning in a letter that failure to send it would make him give up the Iberian campaign against Sertorius and march his troops home to Italy, Lucullus most eagerly saw to it that the money was sent, and that Pompey should have no pretext whatsoever
to come back while he himself was consul; for if Pompey were present with so great an army, everything concerning the city would fall under his control. And indeed the man then dominant in politics, who said and did everything for popular favor, Cethegus, bore a certain hostility toward Lucullus, loathing his way of life as full of shameful passions and insolence and wrongdoing. Him, then, Lucullus openly opposed;
but Lucius Quintius, another demagogue, who had risen up against Sulla's political arrangements and was trying to disturb the established order, he turned aside from his attempt, partly by much private persuasion and partly by public admonition, and so quelled his ambition, handling as statesmanlike and safe a course as possible the beginning of a great sickness.
Meanwhile it was announced that Octavius, who held Cilicia, had died. Many were eager for the province and courting Cethegus as the man most able to secure it for them; Lucullus himself cared little about Cilicia itself, but, thinking that if he obtained it, since Cappadocia lay near, no one else would be sent to make war on Mithridates, he turned every device to prevent the province from being given to another.
And in the end he submitted, though it was neither dignified nor praiseworthy, but otherwise effective toward his purpose, to a course against his own nature, driven by necessity. There was a woman named Praecia, notorious in the city for her beauty and wit, who in other respects was no better than any woman who freely sells her company, but who, by making use of those who met and conversed with her for the sake of their friends' interests and their political concerns, added to her other charms the appearance of being a devoted and effective partisan, and so gained the greatest influence.
And when he had further won over Cethegus, who at that period stood at the peak of his renown and was effectively running the city, and had become intimate with him as his lover, the whole power of the city came round entirely to Praecia's side; for nothing was done in public affairs unless Cethegus took it up, nor did Cethegus take up anything unless Praecia bade him. So Lucullus, working on her with gifts and flatteries -- and it was no small prize for a haughty, ostentatious woman to be seen sharing in his ambition too -- straightway had Cethegus as his advocate, pressing his claim to Cilicia.
Once he had obtained it, there was no further need to court Praecia or Cethegus; all men brought the matter round to him alike, and handed over to him the Mithridatic war, on the ground that no other man could conduct it better -- Pompey being still occupied fighting Sertorius, and Metellus already worn out by old age, these being the only two who could have been set up as rivals to Lucullus in a contest for the command.
Nonetheless Cotta, his colleague in office, after much entreaty of the senate, was sent out with ships to guard the Propontis and to fight on behalf of Bithynia.
Lucullus, having a legion already levied and organized under his own hand, crossed over into Asia; there he took over the rest of the force, all of it long since corrupted by luxury and rapacity, and in particular the troops called the Fimbrians, who through long habituation to lack of discipline had become hard to manage,
for these were the men who, together with Fimbria, had killed Flaccus the consul and praetor, and had betrayed Fimbria himself to Sulla -- headstrong, lawless men, but warlike and enduring, seasoned in war. Nevertheless in a short time Lucullus cut down even their insolence and brought the rest into line, since then, it seems, for the first time they were experiencing a true commander and leader; before, they had simply been courted for the sake of pleasure, and had grown accustomed to campaigning on those terms.
The affairs of the enemy stood thus. Mithridates, like most sophists, had at first been boastful and blustering when he rose up against the Romans with an empty show of force, splendid and showy to the eye; but then, having been driven out in disgraceful fashion and taught a lesson, when he was about to fight the second war he reduced his forces to a genuine and practical preparation.
For, doing away with the motley multitudes and the polyglot threats of the barbarians, and the arms adorned with gold and jewels -- which were spoils for the victors, not any strength for those who possessed them -- he had Roman swords forged and heavy shields fitted, and gathered horses trained rather than decorated, and assembled a hundred and twenty thousand infantry equipped in the Roman manner of phalanx, and cavalry to the number of sixteen thousand besides the scythe-bearing four-horse chariots, which numbered a hundred;
and further, having fitted out ships not adorned with gilded pavilions nor baths for concubines nor luxurious women's quarters, but laden full with arms and missiles and money, he launched into Bithynia, the cities once again gladly receiving him -- not these alone, but the whole of Asia too was gripped by a relapse of its former sicknesses, suffering unbearably at the hands of Roman moneylenders and tax-farmers,
whom later, like Harpies snatching away their sustenance, Lucullus drove out; but for the time being he sought instead to curb them through warnings and bring them to greater restraint, and he brought an end to the uprisings among the peoples, none of whom, so to speak, was quiet.
While Lucullus was occupied with these matters, Cotta, thinking this his own opportunity, prepared to give battle to Mithridates. And when many reported that Lucullus was already encamped in Phrygia and advancing, Cotta, thinking he all but held the triumph in his own hands, hastened to engage lest Lucullus should share in it with him,
and being struck both by land and by sea, he lost sixty ships with their crews and four thousand infantry, and he himself, shut up in Chalcedon and besieged, looked to the hands of Lucullus for rescue.
There were some who urged Lucullus to disregard Cotta and press forward, on the ground that he would take the kingdom of Mithridates undefended, and this was above all the talk of the soldiers, who were indignant that Cotta, having taken bad counsel, should not only be the ruin of himself and those with him, but should also stand in the way of their winning a victory that could be had without a fight.
But Lucullus answered them by declaring that rescuing a single Roman citizen from the enemy mattered more to him than seizing everything the enemy owned; and when Archelaus, who had once led Mithridates' forces in Boeotia but had since defected and was now serving with the Romans, assured him that his mere appearance in Pontus would deliver total mastery into his hands, Lucullus replied that he was too bold a hunter to leave the quarry itself untouched while chasing after its abandoned den.
Having said this, he advanced against Mithridates with thirty thousand infantry and twenty-five hundred cavalry; and coming within sight of the enemy and marveling at their numbers, he wished to hold off from battle and let time wear them down. But when Marius, whom Sertorius had sent from Iberia to Mithridates as commander with a force, came to meet him and offered challenge, he drew up in battle order as though about to fight it out; and just as the two sides were on the point of engaging,
with no visible cause of change, but suddenly, the sky being rent asunder, a great fiery body was seen falling into the space between the two camps, in shape most like a wine-jar, in color resembling molten silver, so that both sides, terrified at the apparition, drew apart.
This portent, they say, occurred in Phrygia near the place called Otryae. Lucullus, holding that no human provisioning nor wealth could feed for long so many tens of thousands of enemies encamped opposite as Mithridates had, ordered one of the prisoners to be brought to him; and he first asked him with how many tent-companions he messed, and then how much grain he had left in his tent.
Once the man had given his answer, Lucullus had him taken away and put the same questions to a second captive, then a third. Then, weighing how much cooked provision existed against how many mouths it had to feed, he concluded that the enemy's grain would give out in three or four days, and he held all the more firmly to this reckoning of time, and gathered into his own camp a vast quantity of grain, so that, living himself amid abundance, he might lie in wait for their want.
Meanwhile Mithridates was plotting against the people of Cyzicus, who had been struck hard in the battle near Chalcedon; for they had lost three thousand men and ten ships. Wishing then to elude Lucullus, straight from dinner, on a night dark and wet, he set his forces in motion, and got ahead of the city, at daybreak establishing his army opposite it around the mountain of Adrasteia.
Lucullus, perceiving this and giving pursuit, was content not to fall upon the enemy in disorder, but positioned his forces close to the village named Thracia, a spot admirably placed relative to the routes and territories through which Mithridates' army would be compelled to draw its provisions. And having worked out in advance what the outcome would be, he made no secret of it to his troops; rather, as soon as the camp was pitched and the entrenchments finished, he gathered them together and declared boldly that within a few days he would hand them victory without bloodshed.
Mithridates, meanwhile, ringed Cyzicus with ten separate encampments on land, while his fleet sealed off by sea the channel dividing the city from the mainland, so that it was besieged from both directions; in every other respect the Cyzicenes faced the danger courageously, determined to suffer whatever they must on Rome's behalf, yet they were troubled by not knowing where Lucullus was, having heard nothing of him.
And yet his camp was in plain and open view, but they were deceived by the Mithridatic forces. For, pointing out to them the Romans encamped on the heights above, they said, "Do you see these? That is an army of Armenians and Medes, sent down by Tigranes as reinforcement to Mithridates." And the Cyzicenes were dismayed, seeing so great a war poured about them, and had no hope that even if Lucullus should come there would still be room left for help.
Nevertheless, the first man sent in to them by Archelaus, Demonax, reported Lucullus' presence. When those present disbelieved him and thought he was inventing tales to comfort them, there came a captive boy who had escaped from the enemy. When they asked where he said Lucullus was, he laughed, thinking they were joking with him; but when he saw they were in earnest, he pointed with his hand toward the Roman camp, and they took heart.
The lake of Dascylitis being navigable with rather large boats, Lucullus hauled up the largest of these, had it carried by wagon to the sea, and put aboard it as many soldiers as it could hold. They crossed over by night unobserved and slipped into the city.
It seems that the divine power too encouraged the Cyzicenes, admiring their valor, by other clear signs as well as this: as the festival of the Pherephattia was at hand, they were at a loss for a black cow for the sacrifice, and having molded one of dough, set it beside the altar; but the sacred cow kept and reared for the goddess had its pasture, like the rest of the Cyzicenes' cattle, on the mainland opposite; on that very day, however, separating itself from the herd, it alone swam across to the city and presented itself for the sacrifice,
and the goddess appeared to Aristagoras, the people's secretary, in a dream and said, "Behold, I myself have come, bringing the Libyan flute-player against the Pontic trumpeter. Tell the citizens, then, to take heart." While the Cyzicenes were marveling at this report, at daybreak the sea grew rough as a fierce wind bore down, and the king's siege-engines, standing by the walls -- marvelous works of Niconides the Thessalian -- with a shrieking roar
and a crash first gave sign of what was to come; then a south wind burst forth, incredible in its violence, and in a brief space of an hour smashed the rest of the engines to pieces, and shook down the wooden tower, a hundred cubits in height. It is recorded that many of the people at Ilium saw in their sleep Athena, streaming with much sweat and showing part of her robe torn, saying that she had just now come from helping the Cyzicenes; and the people of Ilium showed a certain pillar bearing decrees and writings concerning these things.
As for Mithridates, so long as he was deceived by his own generals he did not know of the famine in his camp, and was vexed that the Cyzicenes were escaping the siege. But soon his ambition and love of contention drained away as he came to perceive the want that gripped his soldiers, and the cannibalism among them, since Lucullus was not making war in a theatrical or showy manner, but, as the saying goes, was striking at the belly, and contriving every means to cut off their food supply.
Wherefore, while besieging a certain fort, Mithridates, eager to make use of the occasion, sent off into Bithynia nearly all his cavalry together with the baggage animals, and the useless part of his infantry. Lucullus, learning of this, reached the camp before dawn broke, and in the early hours of that winter morning he took ten cohorts along with the cavalry and set off in pursuit through the snow, enduring great hardship, so that many of his soldiers gave out from the cold and were left behind; but with the rest, near the river Rhyndacus,
overtaking the enemy, he put them to so complete a rout that the women coming out from Apollonia snatched up the baggage and stripped the slain. Many, as one would expect, having perished, there were taken six thousand horses and a countless multitude of pack animals, and fifteen thousand men; and leading all these along, he marched past the enemy's very camp.
I am amazed that Sallust claims this was the first occasion on which camels were seen by Roman eyes, as though he imagined that neither the men who had defeated Antiochus alongside Scipio, nor those who had recently fought Archelaus near Orchomenus and Chaeronea, had known the camel.
But Mithridates had resolved to flee with all speed; and, contriving diversions and delays to hold Lucullus back, he dispatched his admiral Aristonicus toward the Aegean waters. But just as Aristonicus was setting sail, Lucullus, aided by an act of betrayal, captured him and, along with him, ten thousand gold coins he had been carrying, meant to bribe a portion of the Roman troops. As a result of this Mithridates fled by sea, while his generals led the army away by land.
Lucullus fell upon them near the river Granicus, and took very many prisoners and killed twenty thousand. It is said that of the whole crowd of camp-followers and fighting men together, not much short of thirty myriads perished.
Lucullus, arriving first at Cyzicus, enjoyed a pleasure and welcome fitting the place; then he fitted out a fleet as he made his way along the Hellespont. Putting in at the Troad, he pitched his camp in the sanctuary of Aphrodite, and as he slept there in the night he seemed to see the goddess standing over him and saying: \u201cWhy do you slumber, great-hearted lion? The fawns are near you.\u201d
Rising up and calling his friends, he related the vision while it was still night. And there arrived from Ilium men reporting that thirteen of the king's quinqueremes had been sighted sailing toward Lemnos near the harbor of the Achaeans. He put to sea at once, took these ships, and killed their commander Isidorus, then sailed on, prows forward, against the rest.
These happened to be lying at anchor, and hauling all their vessels up toward the land they fought from the decks and dealt blows to Lucullus's men, since the ground allowed no circling round, nor could ships riding at open sea force those of the enemy which were braced against the land and standing firmly,
yet nevertheless, wherever the island offered some landing, he put ashore the best of his soldiers, who, falling upon the enemy from behind, destroyed some of them, and forced others, cutting the stern-cables of their ships and fleeing from the land, to collide with one another's vessels and to fall beneath the ramming-strokes of Lucullus's men.
Many were destroyed, and among those captured was brought up also Marius, the general sent by Sertorius; for he was one-eyed, and it had been given as an order to the soldiers, as soon as they set sail under Lucullus, to kill no one-eyed man, so that he might die after being disgraced and abused.
Having accomplished this, he pressed on toward the pursuit of Mithridates himself. For he hoped still to find him near Bithynia, guarded by Voconius, whom he himself had sent with ships to Nicomedia to intercept him in his flight.
But Voconius, being initiated into the mysteries at Samothrace and taking part in the festival, was delayed; and Mithridates, having put to sea with his fleet, hastening to sail into the Pontus before Lucullus could turn back, was overtaken by a great storm, by which some of his vessels were swept away and others sunk, and the whole coastline, as the wreckage was cast up by the surge, was full of debris for many days.
As for Mithridates himself, since the merchant vessel on which he was sailing could neither be brought easily to land, being too large in a heavy swell and blind surf that overwhelmed the helmsmen, nor withstand the sea, which had already grown heavy and was shipping water, he transferred to a small pirate-craft and, entrusting his person unexpectedly and recklessly to pirates, was brought safely to Heraclea in Pontus.
For Lucullus, his rivalry with the senate proved not without justification; for when it voted to fit out a fleet for the war at a cost of three thousand talents, he prevented this by sending letters and boasting that, without expense and so great a preparation, he would drive Mithridates from the sea with the ships of the allies alone. And this was granted him, with the god fighting on his side; for it is said that the storm fell upon the men of Pontus through the wrath of Artemis of Priapus, whose sanctuary they had plundered and whose wooden image they had torn out.
Though many advised Lucullus to put off the war, he paid no heed and invaded through Bithynia and Galatia into the king's territory, at first lacking necessities, so that thirty thousand Galatians trailed after him, a bushel of grain loaded on each man's back; but advancing and mastering everything, he came into such abundance that an ox in the camp sold for a drachma, and a slave for four, while the rest of the plunder they left behind in no regard, some abandoning it, others consuming it. For there was no distinction made by anyone toward anyone else, since all were in plenty.
But since they had done no more than ravage and damage the land, riding through and overrunning it as far as Themiscyra and the plains around the Thermodon, they blamed Lucullus, saying that he was winning over all the cities by persuasion but had not taken a single one by force, nor allowed them the benefit of plundering it.
\u201cAnd even now,\u201d they said, \u201cAmisus, a prosperous and wealthy city, which it would be no great task to take if one pressed the siege, he leads us away from and off to war against Mithridates in the desolate land of the Tibareni and Chaldaeans.\u201d But Lucullus, not having expected that he would lead the soldiers into so great a state of madness as they afterward revealed, overlooked this and gave it no thought, but defended himself rather to those others
who accused him of slowness for lingering there so long about villages and towns of no great worth, while allowing Mithridates to grow strong. \u201cThis,\u201d he said, \u201cis exactly what I wish and what I sit here contriving \u2014 that the man become great again and gather together a force worthy to fight, so that he may remain and not flee as we approach.
Or do you not see how much trackless desolation lies behind him? Near at hand is the Caucasus, and many deep mountains, sufficient to hide and shelter countless kings unwilling to fight; and Cabira lies merely a handful of days' march from Armenia, and beyond Armenia sits Tigranes, king of kings, possessing a power by which he cuts off the Parthians from Asia, transplants Greek cities into Media, holds sway over Syria and Palestine, and puts to death the kings descended from Seleucus, carrying off their daughters and wives into captivity,
this man is a kinsman of Mithridates and his son-in-law, and will not overlook him when he comes as a suppliant, but will make war upon us; and while hastening to drive out Mithridates we shall risk drawing upon ourselves Tigranes, who has long wanted a pretext against us, and could find none more fitting than being compelled to render aid on behalf of a kinsman and a king. Why then must we bring this about ourselves and teach Mithridates, who does not know it, with whom he must make war against us, and, though unwilling, drive him in dishonor into the hands of Tigranes \u2014 rather than give him time to prepare and take courage again from his own resources, and to fight the Colchians, Tibareni, and Cappadocians, whom we have often conquered, rather than the Medes and Armenians?\u201d
Having reasoned in this way, Lucullus lingered around Amisus, pressing the siege but gently, and after the winter, leaving Murena in charge of the siege, marched against Mithridates, who was encamped at Cabira and intending to make a stand against the Romans, having gathered a force of forty thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry, in whom he placed his chief confidence,
and, crossing the river Lycus into the plain, challenged the Romans to battle. A cavalry engagement occurred, and the Romans fled; Pomponius, a man of no small repute, was captured wounded and brought up to Mithridates in a bad state from his injuries. When the king asked whether, if healed by him, he would become his friend, he said, \u201cYes indeed, if you are reconciled with the Romans; but if not, an enemy.\u201d Mithridates, admiring him, did him no harm.
Lucullus, fearing the plains since the enemy held mastery there in cavalry, and hesitant to advance into the mountainous country, which was long, wooded, and hard to traverse, some Greeks were by chance captured after taking refuge in a certain cave; the elder of them, Artemidorus, promised to lead Lucullus and establish him in a safe position for his camp, one which also possessed a fort overlooking Cabira.
Trusting him, Lucullus, with the coming of night, lit fires and moved out, and passing the narrow places safely, took possession of the place; and by day he was seen looming above the enemy, positioning his army in places which, if he wished to fight, gave him ready approach, and, if he preferred to remain quiet, kept him from being forced.
Neither side, then, had any intention for the present of risking a decisive battle; but it is said that a deer, being chased by some of the king's men who were cutting it off, met the Romans, and from this, coming into contact, they fell to fighting, ever more men joining in on each side. In the end the king's men prevailed; and the Romans, seeing the rout from their camp, were distressed and ran together to Lucullus, begging him to lead them out and asking for the watchword for battle.
But he, wishing them to learn how great a thing in the struggle and danger of war is the presence and sight of a prudent commander, ordered them to remain quiet, while he himself went down into the plain, and, meeting the foremost of those fleeing, commanded them to halt and turn back with him,
and when these were persuaded, the rest too changed course, and forming up together, with little effort routed the enemy and pursued them into their camp. Returning, Lucullus inflicted upon the fugitives a certain customary disgrace, ordering them, ungirded and in their tunics only, to dig a trench twelve feet long, with all the other troops watching nearby as spectators.
There was in Mithridates's camp a certain Olthacus, a chieftain of the Dandarii (the Dandarii being by race barbarians dwelling around Lake Maeotis), a man distinguished in all the deeds of hand and daring in war, and also of sufficient judgment in the greatest matters, and moreover skilled and pleasing in conversation and attentive in service. This man, being always in rivalry with one of his fellow tribal chieftains over primacy and consumed with jealousy, promised Mithridates a great deed: to kill Lucullus.
The king praised him, and, deliberately inflicting on him certain marks of dishonor to give the appearance of anger, he rode off to Lucullus, who received him gladly; for the camp buzzed with reports of the man's reputation, and quickly, on testing him, he came to admire his shrewdness and his zeal, so that he even made him at times a companion of his table and his council.
But when the Dandarian thought he had his opportunity, he told his attendants to take his horse beyond the camp's edge, while he himself, at midday, when the soldiers were resting indoors and taking their ease, walked toward the general's tent, as though no one would prevent a familiar man, one claiming to bring the general some matters worthy of his attention, from entering; and indeed he would have entered without fear,
had not sleep, which has destroyed many generals, saved Lucullus. For it happened that he was sleeping, and Menedemus, one of his chamber attendants, standing by the doors, said that Olthacus had not come at a good time, since Lucullus had only just given himself over to rest after long wakefulness and toils
of such magnitude; and since he did not go away when told, but said that he wished, even against opposition, to come in and discuss a matter necessary and important, Menedemus, now angry, said that nothing mattered more than Lucullus's safety, and shoved the man back with both his hands.
He, taking fright, slipped out of the camp, and, taking his horse, rode off unaccomplished to the camp of Mithridates \u2014 so true is it that in affairs, as in medicines, opportunity supplies the tipping-point that either saves or destroys.
After this, ten cohorts under Sornatius were dispatched to gather grain, and, pursued by Menander, one of Mithridates's generals, he stood his ground, and joining battle inflicted much slaughter and a rout upon the enemy; and again, when Hadrianus was sent with a force, so that the soldiers might have grain in abundance, Mithridates did not overlook it, but sent out Menemachus and Myron, leading many cavalry and many infantry.
All of these, it is said, except for two, were cut down by the Romans. And Mithridates concealed the disaster as though it were not so great but small, since his generals had come to grief through inexperience; but Hadrianus passed splendidly by the camp bringing down many wagons laden with grain and spoils, so that despondency seized him, along with turmoil and a paralyzing dread among his troops.
It had already been decided to remain no longer; but when the king's men were sending off their own possessions quietly ahead of time while preventing the others from doing so, then, already thrust and driven with anger toward the gates, the men seized the goods and slaughtered their owners. There even the general Dorylaus, having nothing else on him but his purple robe, perished on account of it, and Hermaeus the sacrificial priest was trampled underfoot at the gates.
Mithridates himself, with neither attendant nor groom remaining at his side, was swept out from the camp mingled among the crowd, and none of the royal mounts had been kept ready for him; only when Ptolemy the eunuch, who had a horse, caught sight of him being carried along in the current of that rout, he himself leapt down and gave it to him.
For by now the Romans had him surrounded and were pressing hard upon him; and in speed they came very near to catching him, missing it by very little, but the army's love of plunder and petty greed robbed the Romans of the quarry they had pursued through so many struggles and great dangers over so long a time, and deprived Lucullus, though victorious, of his prize.
For the horse that was carrying the king off was within reach of the pursuit, but a mule carrying his gold happened to fall in between the king and his pursuers, whether by chance or because the king had deliberately sent it in among his pursuers, and the soldiers, seizing and gathering up the gold and fighting one another over it, fell behind.
And this was not the only advantage Lucullus gained from their greed: he also ordered that Callistratus, the man in charge of the king's secret papers, be brought to him alive, but those bringing him, discovering that he had five hundred gold pieces girded beneath his clothes, killed him. Nevertheless, he allowed them to plunder the camp.
Once Cabira and most of the other strongholds had fallen to him, he came upon vast treasure hoards and prison-houses, in which many Greeks and many relatives of the king had been confined; to these, who had long seemed as good as dead, the kindness of Lucullus granted not merely safety but a kind of second life, a new birth.
There was also captured, in a capture that proved saving, Nyssa, the sister of Mithridates; but the sisters and wives who seemed to be farthest from danger and living in quiet retirement near Pharnaceia perished pitiably, Mithridates having sent the eunuch Bacchides against them from his flight. Among the many victims were a pair of the king's own sisters, Roxane and Statira, who had remained unmarried for about forty years, and two wives, both of Ionian stock, Berenice from Chios and Monime from Miletus.
Of this last there was the greatest talk among the Greeks, because when the king tried to win her and sent her fifteen thousand gold pieces, she held out until a marriage contract was made and he sent her a diadem and proclaimed her queen. Yet even after that she remained in distress the rest of the time, and lamented her own bodily beauty, saying that it had won her a jailer rather than a spouse, a foreign guard in place of marriage and a home, and that, settled far away from Greece, she lived with the good things she had hoped for only as in a dream, while deprived of the true goods that were really hers.
And when Bacchides arrived and ordered them to die, each in whatever way she thought easiest and least painful, she tore the diadem from her head, wound it about her neck, and hanged herself. But it quickly snapped, and she said, "O accursed rag, will you not even be of use to me in this?" and she flung it away with a spit of contempt, and offered her throat to Bacchides for the cutting.
Berenice, taking a cup of poison while her mother was present and begged to share it, gave her some. Both drank it together, but the strength of the poison sufficed to overpower the weaker body; Berenice, however, had not drunk enough to be released by it, but, dying with difficulty, was strangled at Bacchides's urging.
It is said that of those unmarried sisters, one drank the poison with many curses and reproaches, but Stateira uttered nothing ill-omened or base, but instead praised her brother, because, even while his own life was at risk, he had still remembered them and made sure they would die free and untouched by disgrace. These things, being naturally good and humane, grieved Lucullus.
Marching as far as Talaura, from where Mithridates had already fled to Tigranes in Armenia four days before, he turned back, and having subdued the Chaldaeans and Tibareni and taken over Lesser Armenia, and having made safe its towns and fortresses, he dispatched Appius to Tigranes with a demand for Mithridates's surrender, while he himself proceeded to Amisus, which was still being besieged.
The one responsible was the general Callimachus, a man skilled in the engineering of siege-works and clever in every kind of trickery a siege admits of, who had caused the Romans great harm; for which he later paid the penalty. But at that time, outgeneraled by Lucullus, who attacked suddenly at the very hour when it was Callimachus's custom to withdraw and rest his soldiers, and having seized no small part of the wall, Callimachus himself abandoned the city and set it on fire, whether grudging the Romans any benefit from it or contriving an easier escape for himself.
For no one gave a thought to those sailing away, but as the flame leapt up high and seized the walls, the soldiers made ready for plunder, while Lucullus, pitying the city as it perished, brought help from outside against the fire and called on the men to put it out, though no one paid him any heed, but instead demanded money and clashed their weapons with shouting, until, overborne, he gave way, meaning at least to save the city itself from the fire.
But they did the opposite: searching everywhere by torchlight and carrying fire everywhere, they themselves tore down most of the buildings, so that Lucullus, entering the city by day and weeping, told his friends that on many past occasions he had judged Sulla a fortunate man, yet it was on this very day that he most admired that man's good luck, in that, wishing to save Athens, he had been able to do so.
"But as for me," he said, "having set out to rival him, some divinity has thrust me instead into the reputation of Mummius." Nevertheless he tried, out of what was left, to restore the city. The fire, by some divine chance, was put out by rains that fell just at the time of its capture, and most of what had been destroyed he himself, while still present, rebuilt; he received those of the Amiseans who had fled, and settled there such other Greeks as wished it, marking out for them a territory of one hundred twenty stadia.
The city had been a colony of the Athenians, founded in those times when their power was at its height and they controlled the sea. For this reason many of those wishing to flee the tyranny of Aristion had sailed there and settled and taken part in its citizenship, and it fell to them, in fleeing their own troubles, to suffer those of a foreign land; but Lucullus, having clothed handsomely those of them who survived and given each two hundred drachmas, sent them off.
At that time also Tyrannion the grammarian was taken captive; Murena asked for him and, receiving him, freed him — using the gift in an ungenerous way. For Lucullus considered it wrong that someone esteemed for his scholarship be made a slave first and only afterward set free as a freedman; for the giving of what seemed to be freedom was in fact the taking away of freedom already his. But Murena was seen to fall far short of the general's honorable character not only in this.
Lucullus then turned to the cities of Asia, so that, while he had leisure from the business of war, he might also take part in the dispensation of justice and law; for the province, long deprived of these, had for a great while been afflicted by unspeakable and unbelievable miseries, plundered and enslaved by tax-farmers and moneylenders, who forced men to sell privately their comely sons and virgin daughters, and publicly their votive offerings, paintings, and sacred statues.
The end for these people, once made additional security, was to become slaves outright; but what came before that was harsher still — ropes, cages, standing horses, and being made to stand in the open air, exposed to the sun's heat or, in the cold, driven into mud or ice — so that slavery itself seemed by comparison a debt-relief and a peace.
Finding such evils in the cities, Lucullus in a short time freed all the wronged from every one of them. First, he ordered that interest be reckoned at no more than one percent a month; second, he cut off interest that had run longer than the principal itself; and third, and most important, he decreed that the lender should enjoy only a quarter of the debtor's income — and whoever had joined interest to the principal was thereby deprived of the whole.
As a result, in less than four years all the debts were paid off and the properties restored free to their owners. This debt had arisen from the common loan of twenty thousand talents with which Sulla had fined Asia, and it had been repaid twice over to the lenders, yet through their charging of interest it had already risen, in their reckoning, to one hundred twenty thousand talents.
The lenders, then, as though they had suffered terrible wrongs, cried out against Lucullus in Rome, and with money set some of the popular leaders against him, men of great influence who had made many of the politicians beholden to them; but Lucullus, far from merely winning the affection of those he had helped, became an object of longing for the other provinces as well, which counted happy those who had gotten so good a governor.
Appius Clodius — for Clodius, the man sent to Tigranes, was the brother of the woman then living with Lucullus as his wife — was at first led by the king's guides on a circuitous and needlessly roundabout route of many days through the upper country; but a freedman of Syrian birth revealed to him the direct road, and he turned aside from that long and sophistical route, bidding the barbarian guides a firm farewell, and within a few days, crossing the Euphrates, arrived at Antioch near Daphne.
Then, being bidden to await Tigranes there — for the king was still away, subduing some of the cities of Phoenicia that remained — he won over to himself many of the princes who secretly chafed under the rule of the Armenian, among them Zarbienus, king of Gordyene, and to many cities held in secret bondage that sent envoys to him privately he promised the help of Lucullus, bidding them for the present to remain quiet.
For the rule of the Armenians had become unbearable to the Greeks, and harsh, especially since the king's own temper had grown theatrical and swollen in the midst of his great successes, for he thought that all the things most men strive for and admire not only belonged to him but had come to be through him.
For starting from a small and despised hope, he had subdued many nations, and had humbled the power of the Parthians as no one else had done; he had filled Mesopotamia with Greeks, transplanting many from Cilicia and many from Cappadocia and settling them there. He had also stirred the tent-dwelling Arabs from their homes, moving and settling them nearby, so that he might use them for his trade caravans.
Many kings paid him court, but four he always kept about him like attendants or bodyguards: when he rode on horseback, they ran alongside on foot in short tunics; when he sat giving audience, they stood about him with hands crossed one over the other — a posture that seemed above all the very confession of slavery, as of men who had sold away their freedom and offered their bodies to their master, ready to suffer whatever he willed rather than to act on their own.
Yet Appius, not shrinking before this theatrical display nor struck with awe, as soon as he got the chance to speak said plainly that he had come either to take away Mithridates, owed to the triumphs of Lucullus, or to declare war on Tigranes; so that Tigranes, although he tried to listen with a spreading of his face and a forced smile, could not conceal from those present how disturbed he was by the young man's plain speech, hearing, after twenty-five years — for so long he had reigned, or rather played the tyrant — something close to the voice of a free man.
He answered Appius that he would not give up Mithridates, and that if the Romans began the war, the Armenians would defend themselves; but he was angry at Lucullus because, in his letter, he had addressed him only as king, not king of kings, and in his own reply he did not address Lucullus as commander. Lavish presents were sent to Appius, and when he declined them, even more were sent; from all this Appius, not wishing to seem to reject them out of any hostility, accepted one cup and sent back the rest, and quickly rode off to the commander.
Tigranes had before this not thought it worth even seeing or speaking to Mithridates, a kinsman fallen from so great a kingdom, but had looked on him from a distance with dishonor and disdain, keeping him in a manner under guard in marshy and unhealthy places; but now he sent for him with honor and friendliness to come to the palace,
and after private conversation between them, they eased their mutual suspicions of each other to the harm of their friends, turning the blame onto them. Among these was Metrodorus of Scepsis, a man not unpleasant in speech and widely learned, who had enjoyed such closeness of friendship with Mithridates that he was called the king's father.
This man, it seems, having been sent by Mithridates as an envoy to Tigranes to beg his help against the Romans, was asked by Tigranes: "And you yourself, Metrodorus, what do you advise me about this?" And he, whether looking to Tigranes's own advantage or not wishing Mithridates to be saved, said that as envoy he urged it, but as counselor he advised against it. Tigranes reported these words to Mithridates and told him that Metrodorus would do him no fatal harm; but Mithridates had him put to death at once.
And repentance took hold of Tigranes, who was not entirely responsible for Metrodorus's misfortune, but had added some weight to Mithridates's hatred of him. For Mithridates had long harbored an underhand grudge against the man, and this was discovered when his secret papers were seized, in which it was ordered that Metrodorus be put to death. Tigranes then buried the body splendidly, sparing no expense on the corpse of a man he had betrayed while alive.
Amphicrates the rhetorician also died at Tigranes' court, if it is worth recalling him too, on account of Athens. He is said to have fled to Seleuceia on the Tigris, and when the people there asked him to teach rhetoric, to have scorned them, boasting that not even a basin could hold a dolphin. He then moved to live with Cleopatra, Mithridates' daughter, who was married to Tigranes, but he quickly fell under suspicion, and being barred from association with Greeks, he starved himself to death. He too was buried honorably by Cleopatra, and his grave lies near a place there called Saphae.
Lucullus, having filled Asia with much good order and much peace, did not neglect what conduces to pleasure and favor either, but sitting at Ephesus amid processions, victory festivals, and contests of athletes and gladiators, he won over the cities, and they in turn held "Lucullea" in his honor, and gave him something sweeter than the honor itself—their genuine goodwill.
But when Appius arrived and it appeared that war against Tigranes was necessary, Lucullus passed again into Pontus, took up his soldiers, and laid siege to Sinope—or rather to the royal Cilicians holding it, who, after killing many of the Sinopeans and setting the city on fire, fled by night.
Lucullus, perceiving this, entered the city and put to death the eight thousand of them who had been left behind, restored to the rest of the citizens their property, and took especially great care of the city because of a certain vision. He seemed in his sleep to hear someone standing by him say, "Go forward a little, Lucullus, for Autolycus has come, wishing to meet you."
Once awake he had no idea what the dream signified, yet that same day the city fell to him; and while chasing after the fleeing Cilician ships, he spotted on the shore a statue the Cilicians, in their hurry to carry it off, had failed to get loaded in time; it was a work of Sthenis, among his finest. He was informed that this was the image of Autolycus, Sinope's founder.
Tradition holds that Autolycus numbered among the men who marched from Thessaly with Heracles against the Amazons, being a son of Deimachus; on the voyage home in company with Demoleon and Phlogius, his ship was wrecked off the Chersonese near the spot called Pedalium, though he came through unharmed together with his arms and comrades, and made his way to Sinope, taking it
from the Syrians, who held the city—Syrians descended from Syrus, son of Apollo, as it is said, and of Sinope, daughter of Asopus. Hearing this, Lucullus recalled Sulla's advice; for Sulla used to advise in his Memoirs that nothing should be considered so trustworthy and sure as whatever is signified through dreams.
Learning that Mithridates and Tigranes were about to march an army into Lycaonia and Cilicia, meaning to strike into Asia before Lucullus could, he marveled at the Armenian, that having formed the intention of attacking the Romans, he had not made use of Mithridates when he was at his prime for the war, nor joined his own forces to Mithridates' while they were still vigorous, but having allowed him to be destroyed and crushed, was now beginning a war on cold hopes, throwing in his own lot with a man no longer able to rise again.
When Machares, Mithridates' son and ruler of the Bosporus, sent a crown worth a thousand gold pieces to Lucullus, asking to be registered as a friend and ally of the Romans—Lucullus now believing the earlier war to have reached its end—he left Sornatius behind as guardian of the Pontic region with six thousand soldiers,
and himself, leading twelve thousand infantry and fewer than three thousand cavalry, advanced to the second war, seeming by a certain reckless impulse, with no calculation of safety, to be throwing himself among warlike nations and many tens of thousands of horsemen and a vast country, hemmed in by deep rivers and mountains always covered with snow,
so that his soldiers, who were not even otherwise well-disciplined, followed unwillingly and in constant discord, while at Rome the popular leaders cried out and protested that Lucullus was pursuing war upon war though the city had no need of it, but in order that he as general might never lay down arms nor cease profiting from the public dangers,
these men, then, in time accomplished their purpose; but Lucullus, marching swiftly to the Euphrates and finding it coming down full and turbid from a storm, was vexed, expecting that he would have delay and trouble in gathering ferry-boats and constructing rafts—but the current, beginning to recede from evening and diminishing through the night, by daybreak allowed the river to be seen as shallow.
The local inhabitants, seeing small islets appearing in the channel and the current shoaling around them, did obeisance to Lucullus, since this had rarely happened before, the river of its own accord yielding itself tame and gentle to him and offering an easy and swift crossing.
Making use of the occasion, then, he brought the army across; and a favorable sign occurred for him at the very time of the crossing: sacred cattle of the Persian Artemis, whom above all gods the barbarians beyond the Euphrates honor, graze there—they use the cattle only for sacrifice, and otherwise they wander loose about the country, bearing brands of the goddess's torch, and it is not at all easy or a small task to catch one of them when needed.
Once the army had made its way over the Euphrates, one of these animals approached a rock consecrated to the goddess, took its stand upon it, and bowed its head as creatures do when held by a tether, offering itself for Lucullus to sacrifice; in addition, he offered a bull to the river Euphrates in thanks for the crossing.
That day he camped there, and on the next and the following days he advanced through Sophene, doing no wrong to the people who came over to him and gladly received his army; and when his soldiers wished to take a certain fort thought to hold much wealth, he said, "That fort over there is rather the one we must cut down for ourselves"—pointing to the Taurus range in the distance—"these things are reserved for the victors." Pressing on his march, he crossed the Tigris and invaded Armenia.
As for Tigranes, the first man to bring word that Lucullus had come did not rejoice—rather, he had his head cut off—and no one else told him; so, ignorant, he sat there, already engulfed in the fire of war, listening to flattering talk, that Lucullus was indeed a great general if he would stand his ground against Tigranes near Ephesus and not flee at once out of Asia upon seeing such vast myriads of men.
So it is that no body can bear much unmixed wine, nor can any ordinary mind, amid great good fortune, remain unshaken in its reasoning. Mithrobarzanes was the first among his friends bold enough to speak plainly to him, and his candor earned him nothing good in return. Straightaway he was dispatched to face Lucullus, leading three thousand horsemen and a large body of foot soldiers, under orders to capture the Roman commander alive and crush everyone else.
Part of Lucullus's army had already pitched camp while part was still on the march. Once his scouts reported that the enemy was advancing toward them, he grew concerned that, being spread out and not yet in formation, an attack might throw them into confusion. He himself set about establishing the camp, and sent Sextilius the legate with sixteen hundred cavalry and not many more hoplites and light-armed troops,
ordering him to approach near the enemy and hold his position until he learned that those with Lucullus had encamped. Sextilius indeed wished to do this, but was forced by Mithrobarzanes' bold advance to come to blows. In the battle that followed Mithrobarzanes fell fighting, and all the rest, except a few, perished in flight.
After this Tigranes abandoned Tigranocerta, the great city he had founded, and withdrew toward the Taurus, gathering his forces there from every side; but Lucullus, allowing him no leisure for these preparations, dispatched Murena to harry and intercept the troops assembling to reinforce Tigranes, while Sextilius was sent once more to stop a sizable Arab contingent marching toward the king;
and at the same time Sextilius, falling upon the Arabs as they were making camp, destroyed most of them, while Murena, following Tigranes, attacked him when the opportunity arose as he was leading his long column through a rough and narrow ravine, and Tigranes himself fled, abandoning all his baggage, while many of the Armenians died and still more were captured.
With affairs thus proceeding, Lucullus set out and marched against Tigranocerta, and surrounding it with his camp, laid siege to the city. Within it lived a great number of Greeks uprooted from Cilicia, along with many non-Greek peoples who had shared the Greeks' misfortune—Adiabenians, Assyrians, Gordyenians, and Cappadocians—men whose home cities Tigranes had destroyed, compelling them to be transplanted there and settled.
The city likewise overflowed with riches and offerings, for every private citizen and every ruler had competed with the king himself in helping it grow and adorning it; therefore Lucullus pressed the siege vigorously, believing—rightly, as it turned out—that Tigranes would not endure it, but would come down even against his better judgment, driven by anger, to fight it out.
Mithridates repeatedly forbade it, sending messengers and letters urging him not to join battle, but to use his cavalry to cut off the enemy's supplies; and Taxiles, who had come from him and was campaigning alongside, repeatedly begged the king to be on guard and to flee, since Roman arms were an irresistible thing.
And at first he listened to these words calmly; but when the Armenians and Gordyenians came to join him in full force, and the kings arrived leading the Medes and Adiabenians in full force, and many Arabs came from the sea near Babylon, and many Albanians came from the Caspian, and Iberians who neighbor the Albanians, and not a few of the kingless peoples grazing about the Araxes, won over by favor and gifts, came to meet him—then the king's banquets were full of hopes and boldness and barbarian threats, and so were his councils. Taxiles ran the risk of dying for opposing the idea of battle, and Mithridates too, it seemed, out of envy was trying to turn him away from a great success.
It was for this reason that Tigranes refused to wait for Mithridates, unwilling to let him share the credit, and instead marched forward with his entire army, being, as it is said, greatly vexed with his friends that the contest would be against him alone with Lucullus, not against all the Roman generals united together. And his boldness was not altogether mad or unreasonable, considering the peoples and kings following him and the phalanxes of hoplites and the tens of thousands of cavalry before his eyes,
for he was leading twenty thousand archers and slingers, and fifty-five thousand cavalry, of whom seventeen thousand were mailed cataphracts, as Lucullus wrote to the Senate, and one hundred fifty thousand hoplites, arrayed some in cohorts, some in phalanxes, and thirty-five thousand road-builders, bridge-builders, river-clearers, woodcutters, and servants for other needs, who, stationed behind the combatants, gave an impression of both numbers and strength.
When, having crossed the Taurus, he appeared in a body and saw the Roman army encamped before Tigranocerta, the barbarian crowd within the city received the sight with shouting and clapping, and from the walls they pointed out the Armenians to the Romans, making threats:
As Lucullus deliberated about the battle, some advised him to lead his forces against Tigranes, abandoning the siege, others not to leave so many enemies behind him nor to relax the siege. He said that neither party alone advised rightly, but both together advised well, and divided his army. He left Murena with six thousand infantry to continue the siege, and himself, taking twenty-four cohorts, in which there were not more than ten thousand hoplites, along with all the cavalry and about a thousand slingers and archers, advanced.
Camping in a great plain by the river, he appeared altogether small to Tigranes, and gave occasion for those flattering him to pass the time in mockery. Some jeered, others in jest cast lots over the spoils; and each of the generals and kings, approaching, asked that the task be his alone, and that Tigranes sit as spectator.
Tigranes himself, wishing to seem witty and mocking, spoke the now-famous words: "If they come as ambassadors, they are many; if as soldiers, few." So they whiled away that time in banter and irony, yet when day broke Lucullus marched his troops out under arms. The barbarian army was to the east of the river; but where the current bent toward the west, being most fordable there, he led his force across in that direction, hastening, and seemed to Tigranes to be retreating.
And calling Taxiles to him with a laugh, he said, “Do you not see the invincible heavy-armed troops of the Romans in flight?” And Taxiles said, “I could wish, O king, that something of your daimon's good fortune might come true in this beyond all expectation, but men on the march do not put on bright clothing, nor do they use polished shields and bare helmets, as these men have just done, stripping off the leather coverings of their arms—no, this brightness belongs to men about to fight and already advancing against the enemy.”
While Taxiles was still saying this, the first eagle standard was seen turning as Lucullus wheeled it about, and the cohorts were taking up formation by companies for the crossing; and Tigranes, scarcely recovering as if from some drunkenness, cried out two or three times, “Are these men coming against us?” so that the multitude fell into formation with great confusion, the king himself holding the center, and as for the wings, command of the left went to the Adiabenian contingent while the Mede held the right, on which side was also the greater part of the mailed cavalry drawn up in front.
Just as Lucullus was preparing to bring his men across the river, several officers cautioned him against that particular date, since it counted among the unlucky ones they call “black”—it was on such a day that Caepio's army had been wiped out fighting the Cimbri. But his memorable answer was that he himself would turn this into a fortunate day for Rome. The date was one day short of the Nones of October.
Having said this and bidden his men take courage, he was himself the first to ford the river and press the advance on the enemy, wearing a gleaming iron cuirass of scale armor and a fringed cloak, his sword already showing bare, as if he must come at once to close quarters with men who fought from a distance and cover with speed of advance the ground over which their arrows could reach.
When he saw the mailed cavalry, of which there was so much talk, drawn up beneath a certain hill that had level and broad ground on top, with an ascent of four stadia not altogether difficult or steep, he ordered the Thracian and Galatian horsemen he had to attack them from the flank and knock aside their lances with their swords,
for the lance is the one strength of the mailed cavalry; nothing else can they use, either against themselves or against the enemy, because of the weight and stiffness of their equipment—they look like men built into a wall. He himself, taking two cohorts, raced for the hill, his soldiers following him vigorously because they saw him too, among the arms, first enduring hardship on foot and pressing the advance. Having reached the top and standing in full view of the place, he shouted loudly, “We have won,” he said, “we have won, fellow soldiers.”
And having said this he led the attack against the mailed cavalry, ordering his men no longer to use their javelins at all, but each man to grip his sword and strike at the enemy's shins and thighs—the only parts of the mailed cavalry left bare. Yet there was no need at all of this fighting, for they did not receive the Romans, but howling and fleeing most shamefully of all, they threw themselves and their horses, heavy as they were, into the ranks of their own infantry before those men had even begun any fighting at all, so that without a wound being dealt or blood being seen, so many tens of thousands were defeated.
The great slaughter now came upon them as they fled, or rather as they wished to flee, for they could not, being hemmed in by the density and depth of their own ranks. Tigranes, riding out at the very beginning with a few men, fled; and seeing his son sharing the same fortune, he tore the diadem from his own head and, weeping, handed it over to him, telling him to seek safety however he might by different routes.
The young man did not dare to bind it on his own head, but gave it to the most trustworthy of his attendants to keep. This man, being captured by chance, was brought up to Lucullus, so that along with the other captives the diadem of Tigranes itself became a prize of war. More than a hundred thousand foot soldiers are said to have been killed, and that of the cavalry very few indeed escaped. On the Roman side, only a hundred men were injured and five lost their lives.
Antiochus the philosopher, mentioning this battle in his treatise On the Gods, says he has never seen the sun look down upon another like it. Strabo, another philosopher, says in his historical memoirs that the Romans themselves were ashamed and mocked themselves for having needed arms against such slaves. Livy has said that never did the Romans take the field against an enemy so much greater in number, for the victors were scarcely even a twentieth part, but less, of the number of the vanquished.
Of the Romans, the ablest generals and those most experienced in wars praised above all in Lucullus this: that he had outgeneraled two of the most illustrious and greatest kings by two most opposite means, speed and slowness. For he wore down Mithridates, who was at the height of his power, by time and delay, but crushed Tigranes by haste, being among the few commanders ever who used deliberation as a weapon and daring for the sake of safety.
For this reason Mithridates did not press on to the battle, thinking that Lucullus would make war with his customary caution and delay, but advanced quietly toward Tigranes. At first, meeting a few Armenians on the road who were terrified and fleeing in panic, he guessed at the disaster; then, when still more, stripped and wounded, met him, he learned of the defeat and sought out Tigranes.
Finding him deserted by all and humbled, he did not exult over him insolently, but coming down from his horse and weeping together with him over their common misfortunes, he gave him the royal retinue that followed himself and encouraged him for what was to come; and so the two of them began again to gather other forces. In the city of Tigranocerta, since the Greeks had risen up in faction against the barbarians and were handing the city over to Lucullus, he attacked and took it.
And he took possession of the treasures in the city, but handed the city itself over to his soldiers to plunder, it having, besides the other wealth, eight thousand talents of coined money. Apart from these he distributed eight hundred drachmas per man from the spoils.
Learning that many of the artists devoted to Dionysus had been caught in the city—whom Tigranes had gathered from everywhere, intending to inaugurate the theater he had built—he employed them in staging the games and shows for his victory festival. The Greeks he sent back to their own homelands, adding travel money, and likewise the barbarians who had been forced to settle there, so that it came about that when one city was dissolved, many were founded anew, as their former inhabitants were brought back to them—people by whom Lucullus was loved as a benefactor and founder.
And in other respects too things went forward as befitted a man who sought praise from justice and humane conduct more than from success in war. For of the latter the army had no small share, and fortune had the greatest, but the former was a display of a gentle and cultivated soul, by which Lucullus was then subduing the barbarians without arms—for indeed kings of the Arabs came to him putting their affairs into his hands, and the nation of the Sophenians came over to him.
The Gordyenians he treated in such a way that they wished, abandoning their cities, to follow him with their children and wives as willing companions, for the following reason. Zarbienus, ruler of the Gordyenians—as already recounted—had privately entered into talks with Lucullus through Appius about an alliance, being weighed down by the tyranny of Tigranes; but being informed against, he was slaughtered, and his children and wife perished along with him before the Romans invaded Armenia.
Of these things Lucullus was not unmindful, but on entering the country of the Gordyenians he held funeral rites for Zarbienus, and decking the pyre with kingly garments, gold, and plunder captured from Tigranes, he himself was present and lit it, and poured libations along with the friends and household of the man, calling on him as his own comrade and ally of the Romans.
He also ordered that a monument be made for him from a considerable sum of money, for very great quantities of both gold and silver were found in the palace of Zarbienus, and three million medimni of grain were stored there, so that the soldiers profited and Lucullus was admired, because, without drawing even one drachma out of the public funds, he conducted the war entirely at his own expense.
At this point an embassy also came to him from the king of the Parthians, inviting him into friendship and alliance. This was welcome to Lucullus, and he sent back in turn an embassy of his own to the Parthian, and his men detected him wavering in his intentions and secretly demanding payment for allying with Tigranes to gain Mesopotamia.
When Lucullus perceived this, he decided to pass over both Tigranes and Mithridates as antagonists already worn out, and instead to test the strength of the Parthians and march against them, thinking it a fine thing, in one single onrush of war, to throw down three kings in succession like an athlete, and to pass through the three greatest empires under the sun undefeated and victorious.
He therefore sent to Pontus, writing to the officers under Sornatius to bring the army there to him, since he intended to advance from Gordyene. But they, who had already before been dealing with soldiers difficult and disobedient, at that time fully exposed their insubordination, finding no way, neither by persuasion nor by compulsion, to bring them to obey, as the men protested and shouted that they would not even remain there, but would go off and leave Pontus deserted.
When this was reported to Lucullus, it also corrupted the soldiers with him there, men who had already grown heavy with wealth and luxury for campaigning and desired leisure; and when they learned of the outspokenness of those others, they called them real men and said they ought to be imitated, for they had accomplished much that deserved safety and rest.
Perceiving talk of this kind, and worse still, Lucullus gave up the campaign against the Parthians, and turned back again against Tigranes at the height of summer, and crossing the Taurus he lost heart when he saw the plains still green—so much do the seasons there lag behind because of the coldness of the air.
Nevertheless, going down and routing the Armenians, who twice or thrice ventured against him, he ravaged the villages without fear, and by seizing the grain that had been prepared for Tigranes he brought upon the enemy the very want he had feared for himself. And when, by challenging them to battle, digging a trench around his camp, and ravaging the country in full view, he could not move them though they had been struck many times, he set out and marched against Artaxata, the royal seat of Tigranes, where his infant children and his wedded wives also were, not believing that Tigranes would give these up without a fight.
It is said that Hannibal the Carthaginian, when Antiochus had been defeated by the Romans, went over to Artaxas the Armenian and became for him, among many other useful things, an adviser and teacher, and that, having observed a place in the country most naturally suited and most pleasant, lying idle and overlooked, he first sketched out there the plan of a city, and then, bringing Artaxas to it, showed it to him and urged him on to the founding.
The king was delighted and asked that Hannibal himself oversee the work, and a great and altogether beautiful thing of a city arose, and being named after the king it was appointed the metropolis of Armenia. Tigranes could not bear it when Lucullus advanced upon this city, but taking up his forces he encamped opposite the Romans on the fourth day, placing between them the river Arsanias, which the Romans of necessity had to cross on their march toward
Artaxata. Lucullus, having sacrificed to the gods, as though victory were already in his hands, brought his army across in twelve cohorts drawn up in front, with the rest posted behind to guard against the enemy's encircling movements. For there were many cavalry and picked troops drawn up against them, and in front of these mounted archers, Mardians, and Iberian lancers, in whom, of all his foreign troops, Tigranes placed the greatest trust as the most warlike.
Yet nothing brilliant was accomplished by them; after a small skirmish with the Roman cavalry they did not stand their ground when the infantry came on, but splitting off in flight to either side they drew the cavalry along with them in pursuit. And just as these were being scattered, Lucullus, seeing the brilliance and the numbers of the horsemen riding out around Tigranes, took fright.
And he called back the cavalry from the pursuit, and himself first stood against the Atropatenians, who were directly opposite him with their best men, and before coming to close quarters he put them to flight by striking fear into them. Of the three kings drawn up together in that battle, it was Mithridates of Pontus who apparently ran in the most disgraceful manner of the three, not even enduring the shout of the Romans.
The pursuit went on long and through the whole night, and the Romans grew weary not only of killing them but also of taking them captive and of carrying and driving off money and plunder. Livy says that in the earlier battle more of the enemy fell, but in this one those who fell and were captured were of greater note.
After this Lucullus, elated and confident, intended to press on further and subdue the barbarian country; but at the time of the autumn equinox, when he did not expect it, heavy storms fell upon them, for the most part burying everything in snow, and in the clear spells bringing frost and ice, because of which the rivers became difficult for the horses to drink from, owing to the extreme cold, and difficult to cross as well, since the ice broke apart and cut the sinews of the horses with its roughness.
Most of the country, being thickly wooded, narrow-passaged, and marshy, kept them constantly wet, since they got soaked with snow on their marches and had to camp badly in damp places. So, only a few days after they had followed Lucullus after the battle, they turned against him -- first by making requests and sending their captains to him, then by gathering more tumultuously and shouting through the night around their tents, which seems to be a sign of an army on the verge of mutiny.
And yet Lucullus urged them repeatedly and at length, asking them to put patience into their hearts until they should take the Carthage of the Armenians -- so he called it, meaning the work of that most hateful man Hannibal -- and overthrow it. Failing to win them over, he turned the army around, and, taking a different route across the Taurus range, descended into the region known as Mygdonia, a land rich in every produce and warm, containing within it a great and populous city, which the barbarians called Nisibis, but the Greeks called Antioch of Mygdonia.
This city was held, in rank, by Gouras, brother of Tigranes, but in experience and skill in siegecraft by Callimachus, the same man who had given Lucullus the greatest trouble at Amisus. Lucullus, setting his camp against it and bringing every form of siege-works to bear, took the city by storm in a short time.
Toward Gouras, who surrendered himself, he behaved with humanity; but toward Callimachus, who offered to disclose hidden caches of vast riches, he showed no such regard, but ordered him brought in chains, to pay the penalty for the fire with which he had ravaged the city of the Amisenes and had thereby robbed Lucullus of his display of generosity and kindness toward the Greeks.
Down to this juncture, it could be said that Fortune had served as a co-commander alongside Lucullus. But from this point on, as though the wind had failed him, though he forced everything and met resistance in every direction, and though he displayed the valor and patience of a good commander, his actions won neither glory nor gratitude, but he came close to losing even the reputation he already had, through misfortune and pointless quarrels.
Of the causes of this, he himself furnished no small part, not being one to court the favor of the soldiery, and considering every concession made to please the ruled to be a dishonor and dissolution of authority; and, what is most important, he was by nature unable to get along even with the powerful and his equals in rank, but looked down on everyone and considered no one worthy in comparison with himself.
These, they say, were faults that belonged to Lucullus along with all his other good qualities: for indeed he was great and handsome and a powerful speaker, and seemed equally wise both in the marketplace and in the camp. Sallust, then, says that the soldiers were harshly disposed toward him from the very beginning of the war, both at Cyzicus and again at Amisus, having been forced to spend two winters in succession in camp.
The remaining winters vexed them as well, for they wintered either in enemy territory or camped in the open among the allies, and Lucullus never once entered a friendly Greek city with his army. Being so disposed, the demagogues at Rome gave them the greatest pretexts, out of envy of Lucullus, accusing him of prolonging the war out of love of power and love of wealth, and of holding in his own hand at once Cilicia, Asia, Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Pontus, Armenia, as far as the Phasis, and now even the palaces of Tigranes, which he had plundered -- as if he had been sent to strip kings bare, not to conquer them.
For this, they say, was what one of the generals, Lucius Quintius, said, and it was chiefly through his persuasion that they voted to send successors to Lucullus in his province, and voted also that many of those serving under him should be discharged from service.
To these grave matters was added the man who did the most to undermine Lucullus's achievements, Publius Clodius, a man full of insolence and utter contempt and recklessness. He was the brother of Lucullus's wife, whom he was also accused, most shamelessly, of corrupting.
At that time, serving under Lucullus, he was not receiving the honor he thought himself worthy of, for he wished to be first, and being passed over by many because of his character, he secretly worked upon the Fimbrian army and stirred them up against Lucullus, spreading among them agreeable words to men not unwilling nor unaccustomed to being courted by demagogues. For these were the very men Fimbria had once talked into murdering the consul Flaccus and naming him commander in his place.
For this reason they received Clodius gladly and called him a friend of the soldiers, since he pretended to be indignant on their behalf that there would be no end of so many wars and hardships, but that, fighting every nation and wandering over every land, they would wear out their lives gaining nothing worthy from so great a campaign, but merely escorting Lucullus's wagons and camels loaded with golden and jeweled drinking-cups,
while Pompey's soldiers, being already citizens, sat now with their wives and children, holding a prosperous land and cities, not because they had driven Mithridates and Tigranes into uninhabited wastes, nor because they had razed the royal palaces of Asia, but because they had fought against exiles in Iberia and runaway slaves in Italy. "What then," he said, "if we must never cease from campaigning, should we not preserve what remains of our bodies and souls for such a general as this, to whom the wealth of his soldiers seems the finest ornament?"
Through such charges Lucullus's troops grew mutinous, refusing to march with him either against Tigranes or against Mithridates when the latter, invading Pontus once more out of Armenia, reclaimed his throne; but, making the winter their pretext, they lingered around Gordyene, expecting that Pompey or some other commander would soon arrive as Lucullus's successor.
But once news arrived that Mithridates had beaten Fabius and was advancing on Sornatius and Triarius, shame drove them to follow Lucullus after all. Triarius, eager to seize the win for himself before Lucullus, who was already nearby, could arrive, let his ambition lead him into a crushing defeat; for it is said that more than seven thousand Romans died, among them one hundred fifty centurions and twenty-four military tribunes; and Mithridates took the camp.
Lucullus arrived a few days later and rescued Triarius, who was being sought out in anger by the soldiers; and since Mithridates did not wish to give battle but was waiting for Tigranes, who was already coming down with a great force, he decided to go and meet Tigranes and fight it out with him before the two could join forces.
But as he was marching along the road, the Fimbrians mutinied and abandoned the ranks, claiming that they had been discharged from service by decree and that it was no longer proper for Lucullus to command them, since other provinces had been assigned to others. There was nothing, then, unworthy of him that Lucullus did not endure, entreating them one by one and going around among the tents, humble and in tears, and in some cases even taking hold of their hands.
But they pushed away his hand and threw back at him empty purses, telling him he alone should face the enemy, since he alone had a knack for profiting from it. Nevertheless, at the urging of the other soldiers, the Fimbrians were pressured into agreeing to remain through the summer, on condition that if no one came down to them in that time to give battle, they should be released. Lucullus had no choice but to accept these terms, or else abandon the country to the barbarians and be left behind.
So he kept them together, no longer forcing them or leading them toward battle, but content if they would only stay, and looking on while Cappadocia was plundered by Tigranes and Mithridates again grew insolent -- the very man he himself had written to the senate to say had been utterly defeated in war. And ambassadors were present with him to settle the affairs of Pontus, as though they were now securely held.
And indeed, being present, they saw that he was not even master of himself, but was being insulted and abused by his own soldiers, whose insolence toward their commander had grown so great that, as the summer was ending, they put on their arms, drew their swords, and challenged an enemy who was nowhere present but had long since withdrawn; then, having shouted their war-cry and fought a mock battle in the air, they departed from the camp, declaring that the time they had agreed to remain with Lucullus was now fulfilled.
Pompey wrote and called the rest to himself, since he had by now been named commander of the campaign against Mithridates and Tigranes, by favor of the people and the flattery of the demagogues, since to the senate and the best men it seemed that Lucullus was being treated unjustly -- being deprived not of the war, but of the triumph, and not being relieved of his generalship, but stripped of the rewards of his generalship and forced to yield them to others.
What was happening seemed all the more outrageous to those who were present there. For Lucullus no longer had authority to honor or punish anyone in the war, nor would Pompey allow anyone to go to him or to pay attention to what he wrote and distributed through the ten commissioners, but he forbade it, posting edicts and appearing formidable with his greater force.
Nevertheless it seemed good to their friends to bring the two men together, and the two convened in a small Galatian village, exchanging warm greetings, and congratulated each other on their successes -- Lucullus being the elder, but Pompey's rank being greater from his more numerous commands and two triumphs. The rods of both went before them wreathed with laurel for their victories.
And since Pompey had marched a long road through waterless and parched regions, his lictors' laurels, which crowned their rods, were seen to be withered; but Lucullus's lictors, as a friendly gesture, gave them a share of theirs, still green and blossoming, having more than enough to spare, and Pompey's friends took the thing as a favorable omen -- for indeed Lucullus's achievements did in fact adorn Pompey's own command.
But from their conversation they came to no fair agreement; rather, they parted even more estranged from one another than before, and Pompey annulled the arrangements Lucullus had made, and taking away his other soldiers, left him only sixteen hundred to share in his triumph -- and even these did not follow him very willingly.
So ill-suited or unlucky was Lucullus in that one thing which is first and greatest in a command, that if this had been his along with his other qualities -- being as great and as many as they were, together with courage, diligence, judgment, and justice -- Rome's dominion would never have stopped at the Euphrates as its eastern limit,
but rather the farthest reaches and the Hyrcanian Sea, since the other nations had already been subdued beforehand by Tigranes, and the power of the Parthians, in Lucullus's time, was not as great as it later appeared under Crassus, nor as united, but weakened by civil and neighboring wars, not even strong enough to defend itself against the insolence of the Armenians. As it is now, it seems to me that Lucullus, through others, damaged his country more than he benefited it through his own efforts:
for the monuments raised in Armenia close to Parthian territory, and Tigranocerta and Nisibis, along with the vast riches carried from them back to Rome, and the captured diadem of Tigranes carried in triumph, lifted up Crassus's ambitions toward Asia, as though the barbarians were nothing but spoil and plunder, nothing else. Yet he quickly met the arrows of the Parthians, and thereby showed that Lucullus's success came not from the folly and softness of the enemy, but from his own boldness and skill. But this belongs to a later time.
Lucullus, on going up to Rome, found first that his brother Marcus had been accused by Gaius Memmius for acts committed while serving as quaestor under Sulla's orders. When Marcus was acquitted, Memmius turned against Lucullus himself and stirred up the people, and, persuading them that he had embezzled much and had prolonged the war, convinced them not to grant him a triumph.
When Lucullus entered into a great struggle over this, the foremost and most powerful men, mingling themselves among the tribes with much entreaty and effort, managed only with difficulty to win the people's consent for him to hold his triumph -- not, as some manage, one swollen and crammed with a long parade and countless items borne along, but instead he decked out the Flaminian racecourse with the enemy's arms, of which there were a great many, and with the king's own siege engines; and this in itself was a sight not to be despised.
In the procession there passed a few armored cavalrymen and ten of the scythe-bearing chariots, and sixty friends and generals of the king's court, and a hundred and ten long bronze-beaked ships were carried along together, along with a six-foot golden image of Mithridates himself, and a jeweled shield, and litters bearing twenty vessels of silver and thirty-two of golden cups, weapons, and coin.
These, then, men carried; but mules carried eight golden couches, and fifty-six of coined silver, and others a hundred and seven of coined silver, lacking a little of two hundred seventy myriads; and in tablets were recorded the amounts he had already handed over to Pompey toward the campaign against the pirates, as well as to the officers of the public treasury, and besides this, that each soldier received nine hundred fifty drachmas. After this he feasted the city splendidly, and the surrounding villages as well, which they call vici.
Having separated from Clodia, who was licentious and wicked, he married Servilia, the sister of Cato — nor did this marriage turn out fortunate either. It had one advantage over the evils of Clodia only — namely, that there was no scandal about her brothers — but in every other respect she was found equally repulsive and unrestrained, and he was compelled to bear with her out of reverence for Cato, until at last he divorced her.
Though he had furnished the Senate with wonderful hopes, since in this man it held someone able to stand against Pompey's dominance and to champion the aristocratic cause, setting out from great reputation and power, he abandoned and let slip his political career — whether because he saw the state already sick and difficult to steady, or, as some claim, because he had had his fill of glory and was settling back into the easiest, most comfortable stretch of life, after many contests and toils that had not ended as happily as he wished.
Some indeed praise him for so great a change, saying that he did not suffer the fate of Marius, who, though he had won those splendid, great triumphs over the Cimbri, would not retire while his honor was still the envy of all, but, unable to get enough of glory and power, kept on in his old age battling young rivals in politics, and was wrecked upon terrible deeds and sufferings worse still than the deeds themselves. It would have been better, they say, for Cicero too to have grown old withdrawing from politics after Catiline, and for Scipio to have added Numantia to Carthage,
and then to have stopped; for there is, they say, a certain closing-down proper to a political career, since political contests, no less than athletic ones, are exposed as failing once vigor and prime have run out. But Crassus and Pompey mocked Lucullus for having given himself over to pleasure and extravagance, as though it were not more unbefitting his years to indulge in luxury than to continue engaging in politics and generalship.
It is possible, at any rate, to read the life of Lucullus, like an old comedy, in two parts: the first showing politics and generalship, the latter drinking-parties and dinners, and — one might almost say — revels and torch-processions and every kind of amusement,
for I myself count as amusement his lavish buildings, his construction of walks and bathhouses, and even more so his statues and paintings, along with the zeal he showed for these arts, which he gathered together at great expense, spending his wealth on these things without restraint — wealth which he had amassed abundant and splendid from his campaigns; wealth which, even now, luxury having advanced to such a pitch, the Lucullan gardens are numbered among the most costly of the royal ones,
and as for his works along the coast and around Naples, where he suspended hills over huge excavations, and wound wheels of sea-water and fish-breeding channels around his dwellings, and built retreats out over the sea — when the Stoic Tubero saw these he called him 'Xerxes in a toga.'
He also had country retreats around Tusculum, with lookout points for viewing the surroundings and open banqueting-halls and walks constructed, in which Pompey once, when he visited, found fault with Lucullus, because, having arranged the estate excellently for summer, he had made it uninhabitable in winter. Lucullus laughed and said, 'Do you suppose, then, that cranes and storks are wiser than I am, that I alone should not shift my dwelling as the seasons change?'
Once, when a praetor was eager to make a show at the games and asked him to lend purple cloaks to adorn a chorus, he replied that he would look and see if he had any to give; then the next day he asked him how many he needed. When the man said a hundred would suffice, he told him to take twice that many — on which the poet Flaccus remarked that he did not consider a man wealthy unless what lay hidden and unnoticed of his goods was more than what was visible.
Lucullus's daily dinners had the air of new wealth — not only in purple couch-coverings and jeweled cups and interludes of choruses and musical performances, but he made himself an object of envy even to the illiberal by the preparation of all kinds of dishes and elaborately wrought pastries. Pompey, at least, won a good reputation while ill;
for when his physician ordered him to eat a thrush, and his servants said that no thrush could be found anywhere else in summertime except one being fattened at Lucullus's house, he would not allow one to be taken from there, but said to the physician, 'So then, if Lucullus did not live luxuriously, Pompey would not have lived?' and ordered something else, more easily obtainable, to be prepared.
Cato was his friend and relation by marriage, yet he so disliked his manner of life and daily habits that, when a certain young man in the Senate delivered a tedious and inopportunely long speech in praise of frugality and self-control, Cato rose up and said, 'Will you not stop being rich as Crassus, living as Lucullus, and talking as Cato?' Though some say this was indeed said, but not by Cato.
Lucullus, however, was evidently not merely delighted with but even took pride in this way of life, as is clear from the things remembered of him. For it is said that a party of Greek visitors, having arrived in Rome, were his guests for many days running, and that these men, having some genuine feeling of Greek modesty, were ashamed and tried to decline the invitation, seeing that so much was being spent on their account each day;
whereupon Lucullus, smiling, said to them: 'Some of this, gentlemen of Greece, is indeed on your account — but most of it is on account of Lucullus.' Once, when he was dining alone, only a single table and a modest dinner had been prepared, and he grew angry and called the servant appointed over this matter. When the man said he had not supposed that, with no guest invited, he would need anything costly, Lucullus said, 'What do you mean? Did you not know that today Lucullus dines with Lucullus?'
Since there was, as one might expect, much talk in the city about this, Cicero and Pompey approached him one day in the forum, as he was strolling at leisure — the one being among his closest and most intimate friends, while with Pompey there was some estrangement dating from his generalship, though they were accustomed to associate and converse with one another quite civilly.
So Cicero greeted him and asked how he stood as regards receiving visitors; and when he said, most favorably, and urged them to call on him, Cicero said, 'We should like to dine at your house today, just as things are prepared for you.' When Lucullus demurred and tried to put it off to another day, they would not hear of it, and would not even permit him a word with his servants, for fear he might arrange for something beyond his ordinary fare;
except that, on his asking for this much only, they allowed him to say to one of the servants in their presence that today he would dine 'in the Apollo' — for this was the name one of his costly dining-rooms bore. And in this he had, unbeknownst to them, played a clever trick; for each dining-room, it seems, had a fixed cost of dinner assigned to it, and each had its own equipment and preparation, so that the slaves, on hearing in which room he wished to dine, knew what expense and what kind of arrangement and adornment the dinner should have. And he was accustomed to dine in the Apollo room at a cost of fifty thousand drachmas;
and on that occasion, with so great a sum expended, what astonished Pompey's party, beyond the magnitude of the expense, was the speed of the preparation. In these matters, then, he used his wealth insolently, as though it were truly a captive and barbarian thing.
Worthy of note and mention is his provision concerning books; for he gathered together many, and well written, and the use he made of them showed more ambition than the mere possession, since he threw the libraries open to everyone without exception, and the walks and reading-rooms around them welcomed Greek visitors freely, as though into some lodging-place of the Muses, who resorted there and spent their days together with one another, gladly hurrying away from their other occupations.
Often, too, he himself shared in their leisure, joining the scholars in the walks, and he cooperated with the statesmen in whatever they needed; and altogether his house was a hearth and a Greek prytaneum for those arriving in Rome. He embraced philosophy of every kind and was well-disposed and friendly toward all of it, but from the beginning he had a particular
passion and zeal for the Academy — not the so-called New Academy, though it was then flourishing through the arguments of Carneades as presented by Philo, but the Old Academy, which then had as its champion Antiochus of Ascalon, a persuasive man and a powerful speaker; Lucullus, having made him with all zeal his friend and companion, set him up against the hearers of Philo, among whom was Cicero also.
And Antiochus even composed a very beautiful treatise on the doctrine, in which he attributed the argument for the possibility of comprehension to Lucullus, and the opposing argument to himself. The book is entitled 'Lucullus.' They were, as has been said, very close friends and partners in their political choices — for Lucullus had not, after all, entirely withdrawn himself from politics,
but the rivalry and contest to be foremost and to hold the greatest power, as being neither free from danger nor from insult, he at once gave up to Crassus and Cato; for these were the men whom those who eyed Pompey's power with suspicion put forward from the Senate, since Lucullus declined the first place. He would go down to the forum for the sake of his friends, and to the Senate if there was need to thwart some ambition or zeal of Pompey's.
And he struck down the arrangements which Pompey had made after subduing the kings, and, with Cato's cooperation, prevented a certain distribution being given to Pompey's soldiers when he proposed it — so that Pompey took refuge in friendship, or rather conspiracy, with Crassus and Caesar, and, filling the city with arms and soldiers, ratified his decrees by force, driving Cato and Lucullus's party out of the forum.
While the best citizens were indignant at what was happening, Pompey's partisans brought forward a certain Vettius, saying they had arrested him plotting against Pompey. And he, when examined, accused certain others before the Senate, but before the people he named Lucullus, claiming he had been prepared by him to kill Pompey.
No one paid attention to this charge, and it was immediately clear that the man had been put forward by them for the purposes of false accusation and slander; and the matter was exposed all the more a few days later, when his corpse was thrown out of the prison, said to have died of itself, yet bearing marks of strangling and blows — for it seemed that he had been done away with by the very men who had prepared him.
These events drew Lucullus even further away from political life. And when Cicero was driven from the city and Cato sent off to Cyprus, he gave up entirely. And it is said that his mind, too, had already begun to fail and waste away well before he died. But Cornelius Nepos says that Lucullus was affected not by old age nor by disease, but was destroyed by drugs given by one of his freedmen, Callisthenes;
the drugs having been given so that Callisthenes might be more loved by him, as they were supposed to have such a power, but instead they deranged and overwhelmed his reasoning, so that even while he still lived his brother managed his estate. Nevertheless, when he died, as though he had died at the height of his generalship and political career, the people were grieved and ran together, and his body, carried into the forum by the noblest young men, was insisted upon being buried in the Campus Martius, where they had also buried Sulla.
Since no one had expected this, and the preparation was not easy, his brother, by pleading and begging, persuaded them to allow the funeral already prepared at his estate near Tusculum for the corpse to take place there instead; and he himself did not long survive him, but was left behind only a little in age and reputation, and in the time of his death as well, having been the most devoted of brothers.

======== Comparison Of Lucullus With Cimon ========

One might especially call Lucullus fortunate in the manner of his end, because before the change of fate which was already being fashioned against the constitution by the civil wars, he died first and laid down his life while his country was sick, yet still free. And this at least is the point of closest kinship between him and Cimon.
For Cimon too died before Greek affairs had yet fallen into confusion, while they were still at their height — and he died on campaign, in command, not worn out nor wandering aimlessly, nor treating arms and generalships and trophies as a prize to be spent on feasting and drinking, the way Plato mocks the followers of Orpheus for claiming that an eternal drunkenness in Hades is stored up as a reward for those who have lived well.
Now leisure and quiet and the spending of time on discourse that affords a certain pleasure and contemplation is a most fitting consolation for an old man who has ceased from wars and public life; but to turn to pleasure as one's final end, and having concluded one's noble deeds, thereafter to spend the rest of one's life keeping festivals of Aphrodite in place of wars and generalships, playing and living softly — this is unworthy of the fair Academy, and does not befit one who emulates Xenocrates, but one who has inclined toward Epicurus.
And this is remarkable indeed: for in a manner quite the reverse, the youth of the one seems to have been blameworthy and unrestrained, while that of the other was disciplined and self-controlled. He, then, is the better man in whom the change is toward the better; for that nature is the more excellent in which the worse part grows old while the better flourishes still more. And indeed, though they became wealthy in similar fashion, they did not dispose of their wealth in similar fashion.
For it is not fitting to compare the chambers in Naples and the sea-girt vistas which Lucullus built up from barbarian spoils to the Acropolis's south wall, whose completion was funded by money Cimon had brought home; nor to set beside Cimon's table that of Lucullus — the one democratic and generous, the other extravagant and satrapal.
For the one, at small expense, fed many every day, while the other, from great wealth, provided for a few who lived luxuriously — unless indeed, by Zeus, time itself made the difference in these matters; for it is unclear whether Cimon too, had he let himself go from deeds and generalships into a warless and politically inactive old age, would not have made even greater use of an ostentatious mode of life given over to pleasure. For he was indeed fond of drink and of festive gatherings, and, as has been said before, was slandered in regard to women.
But successes in deeds and contests, holding pleasures of another kind than the baser desires, produce in natures inclined to public life and to honor a preoccupation and forgetfulness of those desires. If, then, Lucullus too had died while still contending and commanding, I do not think even the most censorious and fault-finding critic could have found grounds for slander against him. So much, then, concerning their manner of life.
In matters of war, it is clear that both men proved themselves good contenders on both land and sea. But just as among athletes those who are crowned in wrestling and the pancratium on one and the same day are called, by a certain custom, paradoxonikai — extraordinary victors — so Cimon, having crowned Greece in a single day with a trophy of both an infantry battle and a sea battle at once, deserves to hold a certain precedence among generals.
Moreover, it was his country that conferred hegemony upon Lucullus, whereas it was Cimon who conferred hegemony upon his country. And the one, while his country already ruled, added further to it the possessions of the enemy; the other, taking his country as one that followed others, brought it about that it should both rule over its allies and prevail over its enemies at the same time — forcing the Persians, once defeated, to withdraw from the sea, and persuading the Lacedaemonians to yield willingly.
Now if the greatest achievement of a leader is to produce ready obedience through goodwill, then Lucullus was held in contempt by his soldiers, while Cimon was admired by his allies: from the one men revolted, while to the other men transferred their allegiance. And the one, having gone out in command of certain forces, returned abandoned by them; the other, having been sent out along with allies to carry out what others commanded, sailed back home himself giving the commands to those very allies — having accomplished, all at once for his city, the three most difficult things of all: peace with the enemy, hegemony from the allies, and concord with the Lacedaemonians.
Both, then, having undertaken to overthrow great empires and to subdue the whole of Asia, fell short in the completion of their undertakings — the one utterly, through fortune, for he died while still commanding and in the midst of success; but from the other one could not entirely remove blame attaching to himself, whether he failed to perceive, or failed to attend to, the disputes and grievances within the army, from which he came to such great enmities.
Or rather, this too is common ground with Cimon: for the citizens brought him too to trial, and in the end ostracized him, so that, as Plato puts it, a whole decade went by in which his voice went unheard by them. Natures inclined toward aristocracy rarely suit the crowd or give it much delight; but by forcing much upon them in the course of setting them straight, they cause distress to those being twisted back into shape, just as the bandages of physicians, though they bring dislocations back into their natural state, are painful. Each of the two, then, should perhaps be acquitted of this charge.
Yet Lucullus went far beyond in the war — the first to cross the Taurus with a Roman army, and to cross the Tigris, and, in full view of the kings themselves, to take and burn the royal seats of Asia: Tigranocerta, Cabira, Sinope, and Nisibis,
and to subdue under his rule every region northward up to the Phasis, eastward up to Media, and southward, by way of the Arabian kings, all the way to the Red Sea — shattering the forces of the kings, and falling short only of capturing their persons, since they fled like wild beasts into deserts and pathless, untrodden woods.
A great proof of this: the Persians, as though they had suffered nothing serious at the hands of Cimon, immediately drew up again against the Greeks, and even lost most of their own troops despite winning in Egypt; whereas once Lucullus had finished with them, neither Tigranes nor Mithridates managed anything further — the one, already weakened and shattered by the earlier contests, did not even once dare to show his forces to Pompey outside his entrenchments, but fled down into the Bosporus and there met his end;
Tigranes himself, carrying himself naked and unarmed, flung himself down before Pompey, and taking the diadem from his head set it before his feet — flattering not Pompey's own achievements but those celebrated in Lucullus's triumph. At any rate he was content to receive back the symbols of kingship, as one who had previously been deprived of them. The greater general, then, like the greater athlete, is the one who hands over his opponent weaker to the one who comes after him.
Furthermore, Cimon found the king's power already shattered and the pride of the Persians already brought low by heavy losses and a string of defeats dealt by Themistocles, Pausanias, and Leotychidas, and fell upon men whose bodies were easily overcome because their spirits had already given way and been defeated beforehand; whereas Tigranes, undefeated through many contests and greatly proud, met Lucullus in full strength.
In numbers, indeed, those overcome by Cimon are not even worthy of comparison with those who gathered against Lucullus. So that, taking everything into account, the judgment is difficult to render, since the divine power too seems to have been favorable to both alike, forewarning the one what he must accomplish and the other what he must guard against, so that the vote of the gods too stands in favor of both, as men good and divine in nature.

======== Nicias ========

Since it seems that I am not out of place in comparing Crassus to Nicias, and the Parthian disasters to the Sicilian ones, it is time for me to ask and beg on my own behalf that those who take up this writing not suppose that I have suffered anything like what happened to Timaeus, in relation to the narratives which Thucydides—himself the most moving, the most vivid, the most varied he ever became on these matters—has set forth inimitably.
Timaeus hoped to surpass Thucydides in skill, and to show Philistus to be altogether vulgar and amateurish, and so he pushes his history straight through the middle of those contests and sea-battles and public speeches which those two authors had handled best of all—not, by Zeus, going on foot beside the Lydian chariot, as Pindar says, but appearing altogether a late learner and a callow youth in these matters, and, as Diphilus says, thick, larded with Sicilian fat—and in many places he slides down into the manner of Xenarchus,
as, for instance, when he says that the Athenians took it as an omen that the general who spoke against undertaking the generalship bore the name derived from victory (Nicias/nike), and that the mutilation of the Herms was a sign sent to them by the divine power, showing that they would suffer most in the war at the hands of Hermocrates son of Hermon; and further, that it was likely that Heracles would help the Syracusans for the sake of Kore, from whom he had received Cerberus, but would be angry at the Athenians because they were trying to save the Egestans, who were descendants of the Trojans, since he himself had been wronged by Laomedon and had laid that city waste.
But perhaps it was from this same misplaced elegance that it occurred to him to write such things, and also to correct Philistus's diction, and to abuse the circle of Plato and Aristotle. For my part, rivalry and jealousy over style directed against others seems to me altogether petty and sophistic; but if one competes against things inimitable,
it is wholly senseless. As for the deeds that Thucydides and Philistus have set forth—since it is not possible to pass over them, containing as they do, above all, the man's character and disposition, veiled though it is under many great passions—I have run over these briefly and only so far as necessary, so as not to seem entirely careless and idle; but the details that escape most people, or that have been mentioned by others only in scattered fashion, or that are found on old dedications or decrees, these I have tried to gather together, not amassing useless history, but handing down what serves to understand character and disposition.
It is fitting, then, to say first about Nicias what Aristotle has written: that there were three men who were the best of the citizens and held an inherited goodwill and friendship toward the people—Nicias son of Niceratus, Thucydides son of Melesias, and Theramenes son of Hagnon—though the last less than the other two; for he has been reproached for low birth, as a foreigner from Ceos, and because he was not steady but always wavering in his political choices, he was nicknamed Buskin (Cothurnus).
Of those men Thucydides was the elder, and often, standing at the head of the honorable men, he opposed Pericles's popular leadership in politics; Nicias, being younger, was already held in some regard even while Pericles lived, so that he served as fellow general with him and also held command on his own many times. When Pericles died, Nicias was at once advanced to the first place, chiefly by the rich and notable men, who set him up as a counterweight against Cleon's shamelessness and boldness; yet he also had the people's goodwill and their eager support.
For Cleon had great power "leading the elders and giving them pay," but nonetheless, seeing his greed and impudence and boldness—even those for whose favor he acted saw it—the majority were drawn to Nicias. For his dignity was not harsh nor excessively burdensome, but mixed with a certain caution, since he seemed to be afraid of the people even while leading them.
Being by nature timid and prone to despair, in matters of war he concealed his cowardice by good fortune: for he succeeded evenly as a general; but his nervousness in politics and his readiness to be alarmed by sycophants seemed like a sign of being a man of the people, and it gave him no small power from the people's goodwill, since the people feared those who looked down on them but exalted those who feared them. For to the many the greatest honor from their betters is not to be despised.
Pericles, then, leading the city by true excellence and power of speech, needed no pretense toward the crowd, nor persuasiveness through flattery; but Nicias, falling short in these, yet superior in wealth,
used this to win over the people. And being unable to match Cleon's facile buffoonery, with which he handled the Athenians for their pleasure, by similar means, Nicias won over the people instead with choregic productions and gymnasiarchies and other such acts of public generosity, surpassing in expense and grace all who had gone before him and all his contemporaries.
There stood, even in our own time, among his dedications the Palladium on the Acropolis, which had lost its gilding, and the one that supports the choregic tripods in the temple of Dionysus; for he won victory many times as choregus, and was never once defeated. It is said that at one choregic performance a slave of his came forward adorned in the costume of Dionysus, most beautiful to look at and very tall, not yet bearded; and when this pleased the Athenian crowd, who kept up their applause for quite some time, Nicias stood up and said that he did not think it right for a body that had been consecrated to a god to be enslaved, and he freed the young man.
It is also remembered how splendid and god-befitting were his acts of generosity at Delos. For the choruses that the cities used to send to sing hymns to the god would sail in without order, and as soon as a crowd met the ship they would be bidden to sing with no proper arrangement at all, but in haste disembarking in disarray, at the same time putting on their crowns and changing their clothes,
but he, when he led the sacred mission, himself landed at Rheneia with the chorus and the sacrificial animals and the rest of the equipment, bringing along a bridge that had been constructed at Athens to the right measurements and decorated splendidly with gilding and dyes and garlands and hangings, and under cover of night he threw a bridge across the narrow channel separating Rheneia from Delos; then at daybreak he led the procession to the god and the chorus, adorned magnificently and singing, across the bridge and disembarked them.
After the sacrifice and the contest and the feasting, he set up the bronze palm tree as a dedication to the god, and having bought a plot of land for ten thousand drachmas he consecrated it, so that its revenues might be used by the Delians to make sacrifice and feast, praying for many good things for Nicias from the gods; for he had this inscribed on the stele, which he left in Delos like a guardian of the gift. But that palm tree was broken off by the winds and fell upon the great statue of the Naxians and overturned it.
That there is much in these acts aimed at reputation and ambition, meant for public show and the marketplace, is not unclear; but from the rest of the man's character and manner one might trust that such generosity and popular leadership followed from genuine piety, for he was greatly struck with awe at divine things, and "devoted to divination," as Thucydides says.
In one of Pasiphon's dialogues it is written that he sacrificed to the gods every day, and kept a diviner in his house, pretending always to be inquiring about public matters, but mostly asking about his own personal business, and above all about the profits from his silver mines; for he owned many in the Laurium district, bringing in great revenue but with work that was not without danger, and he kept a great multitude of slaves there, and had the greater part of his estate in silver.
For this reason there were no few people around him asking for and receiving money. For he gave no less to those able to do him harm than to those deserving of good treatment, and altogether his cowardice provided income for the wicked and his kindness for the good. One can get testimony about this even from the comic poets.
Telecleides has written this against one of the sycophants: "Charicles gave a mina, so that he would not say he was born to his mother tumbling out of a purse; and Nicias son of Niceratus gave four minas; for what reason he gave it, though I know well, I will not say, for the man is a friend, and he seems to me to be prudent."
And the man mocked by Eupolis in the Maricas, bringing on stage one of the idle poor men, says: A. "How long a time have you spent with Nicias?" B. "I never even saw him, except recently standing in the marketplace." A. "The man admits he has seen Nicias. And yet how would he have seen him, if he weren't betraying him?" C. "Did you hear, fellow citizens? Nicias caught in the very act!" B. "Why, you fools, would you catch the best of men in some wrongdoing?"
And Aristophanes's Cleon, threatening, says: "I will out-shout the orators and throw Nicias into confusion." And Phrynichus too hints at his timidity and terror in these lines: "For he was a good citizen, as I know well, and he did not walk about cowering, as Nicias did."
Being so cautiously disposed toward the sycophants, he neither dined with any of the citizens nor threw himself into conversations or shared pastimes, nor did he take leisure at all for such occupations, but when holding office he remained continually at the generals' headquarters until night, and he was the last to leave the council chamber and the first to arrive. If he had no public business to attend to, he was hard to approach and hard to meet, keeping to his house and shut in.
His friends would meet those who came to his door and would ask them to excuse him, saying that Nicias was even then occupied with certain public duties and business. And the one who most joined in this play-acting, adding weight and reputation to him, was Hiero, a man raised in Nicias's household, trained by him in letters and music, but claiming to be a son of Dionysius called the Bronze, whose poems are still preserved, and who became leader of the colony to Italy and founded Thurii.
This Hiero, then, conducted Nicias's secret dealings with the diviners, and spread reports to the people that Nicias led a laborious and wretched life for the city's sake: "even while at his bath and at his dinner some public business is always falling upon him; neglecting his own affairs through his concern for the common good, he barely begins to sleep at the first watch of the night."
"For this reason his body too is in bad condition, and he is not pleasant or agreeable to his friends, but has even lost them besides because of the money he spends in politics. The rest of the men, on the other hand, gaining friends and enriching themselves from the speaker's platform, live pleasantly and treat public life as a game." And in truth such was Nicias's life that he could say of himself the words of Agamemnon: "We hold public standing as the guardian of our life, and we are slaves to the crowd."
Seeing that the people made use of those able in speech or outstanding in intelligence for certain purposes as their skill required, but always watched them suspiciously and guarded against their cleverness, cutting down their pride and reputation—as was clear from Pericles's conviction, and Damon's ostracism, and the people's distrust of Antiphon of Rhamnus, and above all in the case of Paches, the man who took Lesbos,
who, while giving an account of his generalship, drew a sword in the very courtroom and killed himself—Nicias tried to avoid the very laborious and long commands, and wherever he himself did serve as general, he held to safety and, succeeding for the most part, as was likely, he did not attribute his successes to any wisdom or power or excellence of his own, but yielded the credit to fortune and took refuge in the divine, giving way before the envy attached to glory.
And the facts themselves bore witness to this: for though many great reverses befell the city at that time, he had absolutely no part in any of them; instead, they were defeated in Thrace by the Chalcidians, when Calliades and Xenophon were generals, and the Aetolian disaster occurred under Demosthenes's command, and at Delium they lost a thousand men under Hippocrates's leadership, while the plague was blamed most of all on Pericles, because it was he who, owing to the war, had crowded the rural population inside the city walls, and the shift in surroundings and unaccustomed way of living caused the disease.
Of all these Nicias remained blameless; and as general he took Cythera, an island well situated against Laconia and having Lacedaemonian inhabitants, and he also took many of the places in revolt on the Thracian coast and brought them over; and shutting up the Megarians within their city, he immediately took the island of Minoa, and shortly afterward, setting out from there, he gained control of Nisaea, and landing in Corinthian territory he won a battle and destroyed many of the Corinthians, along with Lycophron their general.
There it happened that two of his own men were left behind, unnoticed, in the recovery of the dead. When he learned of this, he immediately stopped the fleet's advance and dispatched a herald to the enemy to arrange for retrieving the bodies. And yet by a certain law and custom, those who received back their dead under truce were held to have given up the victory, and it was not lawful for those who obtained this to set up a trophy; for it belongs to those who prevail to win, not to those who ask for their dead as a favor, since they show themselves unable to take them by force.
Nevertheless he chose rather to give up the victory and the glory than to leave two of his fellow citizens unburied. Having ravaged the coast of Laconia and routed the Lacedaemonians who stood against him, he took Thyrea, held by the Aeginetans, and brought back those he had captured alive to Athens.
After Demosthenes fortified Pylos, and the Peloponnesians launched a combined assault by land and sea, and following the engagement roughly four hundred Spartans found themselves trapped on Sphacteria island, the Athenians considered it a great thing, as indeed it was, to have captured them; but since the siege was difficult and hard to carry out in a waterless region, and in summer the transport of supplies took a long and costly circuit, while in winter it was risky and altogether impassable, they were vexed and regretted having rejected an embassy of the Lacedaemonians that had come to them concerning a truce and peace.
They had rejected it chiefly because Cleon opposed it on account of Nicias: for being his enemy, and seeing him eagerly cooperating with the Lacedaemonians, he persuaded the people to vote down the truce. So when the siege dragged on and they learned that dire shortages beset the army, they grew angry at Cleon.
When he turned the blame onto Nicias, accusing him of letting the men slip away through cowardice and softness, and claiming that under his own command the enemy could never have withstood so lengthy a siege, it occurred to the Athenians to say, "Why don't you yourself sail out against the men now?" And Nicias stood up and yielded to him the command at Pylos, and bade him take whatever force he wished, and not to bluster with safe words, but to furnish the city some deed worthy of the effort.
At first Cleon backed away, thrown into confusion because he had not expected this; but when the Athenians pressed him on to the same course and Nicias kept crying out against him, he was carried away and inflamed by his love of honor, and took up the command, adding the further pledge that within twenty days of sailing he would either kill those men or else deliver them living into Athenian hands. This provoked mostly laughter among the Athenians rather than trust, since they were in any case used to putting up with his frivolity and his wild boasts good-naturedly, treating it as a form of amusement.
For it is said that once, when an assembly was in session, the people sat waiting above for a long time, and he came in late, crowned with a garland, and asked them to put off the assembly until the next day: "For today," he said, "I am occupied, since I am about to entertain guests and have just made sacrifice to the gods." Amid laughter, the Athenians got to their feet and broke up the meeting.
Nevertheless, on that occasion too, having met with good fortune and having generaled most excellently together with Demosthenes, within the time he had foretold he brought back as captives all the Spartans who had not fallen in battle, having made them surrender their arms. And this brought great disrepute upon Nicias. For it seemed no mere throwing away of a shield, but something more shameful and worse, that he should willingly cast off his command out of cowardice, and, by voting himself out of his post, hand the enemy such a splendid chance for triumph.
Aristophanes mocks him for this again in the Birds, speaking somewhat as follows: "By Zeus, it is no longer time for us to nod off, nor to play at Nicias-delaying." And in the Farmers he writes this: A. I wish to farm. B. Then who is stopping you? A. You are: for I offer a thousand drachmas, if you release me from office. B. We accept: for that makes two thousand, together with Nicias's.
And indeed he did the city no small harm in allowing Cleon to gain so much reputation and power thereby—power which, falling upon a heavy arrogance and unchecked boldness, brought upon the city other disasters as well, of which he himself reaped no small share; and having done away with the decorum of the speaker's platform, and being the first to shout while addressing the people, to tear off his cloak, to slap his thigh, and to run about while speaking all at once, he instilled in those engaged in politics an ease and a disregard for propriety which not long after threw all public affairs into confusion.
By this time Alcibiades too was already taking root among the Athenians as a demagogue, though not equally unmixed in his badness; rather, as the land of Egypt is said, because of its richness, to produce together both many good drugs mixed in and many baneful ones, so the nature of Alcibiades, flowing abundantly and brilliantly in both directions, gave rise to great beginnings of revolutionary change.
For this reason, even after being rid of Cleon, Nicias found no opportunity at all to give the city rest and settle it down, but just as he had set affairs on a saving course he was thrown out of it again, driven back into the war by the rush and violence of Alcibiades's love of honor. It came about in this way. Those most warring against the peace of Greece were Cleon and Brasidas, for whom the war concealed the one's baseness and adorned the other's excellence; for it furnished the one opportunities for great wrongdoing, the other for great successes.
So when these two fell together in a single battle at Amphipolis, Nicias at once took the matter in hand, finding the Spartans long desiring peace and the Athenians no longer confident in the war, and both of them as it were worn out and willingly letting their hands drop; and he worked to reconcile the cities in mutual goodwill, and to release the remaining Greeks from their hardships and grant them repose, so that by this course he might fix his reputation for good fortune firmly for the future.
Now the wealthy and the older men, and the mass of the farmers, were from the start inclined to peace; and since, meeting privately with many of the others too and instructing them, he made them blunter toward the war, in this way he was already giving the Spartans hope, and inviting and urging them to hold fast to peace. And they trusted him, both because of his fairness in other respects, and because in caring for and treating kindly those captured and held prisoner at Pylos, he made their misfortune lighter.
They had, then, previously made with one another a truce for a year, during which, coming together in the same place and tasting again freedom from fear and leisure and mingling with strangers and kinsfolk, they longed for the undefiled and warless life, listening with pleasure to choruses singing such things as: "Let my spear lie idle, for spiders to weave their web around it"; and remembering with pleasure the saying of him who said that those sleeping in peace are woken not by trumpets but by cocks.
Reviling, then, and casting aside those who said that it was fated for the war to be fought out over thrice nine years, and then coming to terms about the whole matter through discussion, they made the peace; and the opinion arose among most that a clear release from troubles had come about, and they had Nicias on their lips, saying that he was a man beloved of the gods, and that the divine had, for his piety, granted that his name be given to the greatest and finest of blessings—
—for indeed they considered the peace to be truly Nicias's work, just as the war had been Pericles's. For the one seemed to have thrown the Greeks into great misfortunes over small causes, while the other persuaded them to forget the greatest evils by becoming friends. For this reason they call that peace, even to this day, the Peace of Nicias.
When the agreement was made that they should give back to each other the places and the cities which each held, and the prisoners, those chosen by lot to restore first doing so, Nicias secretly purchased the lot with money, so that the Lacedaemonians should be the ones to restore first.
This is Theophrastus's account. But when the Corinthians and Boeotians, displeased with what was being done, seemed through their charges and grievances to be summoning the war back once more, Nicias won over both the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians to attach a mutual alliance to the peace as well, as if it were a further seal or bond, so that they might become more fearsome to those inclined to revolt and more secure toward one another.
While these things were being carried out, Alcibiades—being by nature not at all suited to quiet, and being vexed at the Lacedaemonians because they attached themselves and gave their attention to Nicias, while looking down on and despising him—at first straightway opposed the peace and, standing against it, accomplished nothing; but a little later, seeing that the Athenians were no longer as pleased with the Lacedaemonians, but thought them guilty of wrongdoing because they had made an alliance with the Boeotians and had not handed over Panactum standing, nor Amphipolis, he fastened upon these grievances and provoked the people at every point.
At last he sent for an embassy of Argives, and worked toward an alliance with the Athenians. But when envoys came from Lacedaemon with full powers, and, meeting first with the council, seemed to have come with all just terms, Alcibiades, fearing that they might win over the assembly too with the same arguments, went around them through deceit and oaths, promising to cooperate in everything, provided only that they would neither state nor concede before the assembly that their commission carried unlimited authority—for that way, he told them, their purposes would most certainly succeed.
Having been persuaded, and having gone over from Nicias to him, he presented them to the assembled people and put to them, as his opening question, whether their commission held unrestricted authority over all matters; and when they said no, changing his tack contrary to expectation, he called upon the council to witness their words, and bade the people not to attend to or trust men so plainly caught lying, saying now this and now the opposite about the same matters.
As they were thrown into confusion, as was natural, and Nicias had nothing to say, but was struck with distress and astonishment, the people were straightway set on calling in the Argives and making them allies; but an earthquake, occurring in the midst of it and dissolving the assembly, came to Nicias's aid. The next day, once the citizens had reconvened, only after much argument and effort did he manage to persuade them to postpone action regarding the Argives, and to send him to the Lacedaemonians, on the assurance that all would turn out well.
Having gone to Sparta, in other respects he was honored as a good man and one well disposed toward them, but he accomplished nothing, being overpowered by those favoring the Boeotians, and returned not only in disgrace and ill repute, but also in fear of the Athenians, who were pained and angry that, persuaded by him, they had given back so many and such men: for those brought from Pylos were from the first houses of Sparta, and had as friends and kinsmen the most powerful men there.
Yet they did nothing harsher against him out of anger; instead they chose Alcibiades general, and made allies of the Mantineans and Eleans who had revolted from the Lacedaemonians, together with the Argives, and sent raiders to Pylos to ravage Laconia; from which they were again brought back into war.
When the quarrel between Alcibiades and Nicias was at its height, and an ostracism was being held, which the people had been accustomed to carry out from time to time, banishing by the ostracon for ten years one of the men suspected either for their reputation or for the envy their wealth aroused, great turmoil and danger surrounded both of them, since it seemed certain that one or the other would fall under the ostracism.
For they loathed Alcibiades's manner of life and feared his boldness, as is shown more fully in the writings about him; while Nicias's wealth made him an object of envy, and above all the unfriendliness and unpopular character of his way of living seemed unsociable and oligarchic and strange, and he had already, in resisting their desires many times, forced them against their judgment toward what was advantageous,
and this made him burdensome. In short, it was a contest between the young war-makers and the older peace-makers, some turning the ostracon against the one, some against the other. "But in a time of factional strife even the utterly wicked man gets his share of honor"—as it happened then too, when the people, split in two, gave scope to the boldest and most unscrupulous men, Hyperbolus among them, a native of the deme Perithoedae; this was someone who possessed no real power at all, yet climbed upward purely on brazen audacity, and whose very standing in the city turned into a mark of civic shame.
This man, at that time, kept himself well clear of the ostracon, as one more suited to the pillory, but hoped that once one of the two men had been cast out he himself might become the rival of the one remaining; and he was plainly delighted with their quarrel, and stirred up the people against both of them. So the followers of Nicias and Alcibiades, perceiving his wickedness, and conferring with one another in secret, and bringing their two factions together into one and mixing them, prevailed so that neither of the two men, but Hyperbolus, was ostracized.
For the moment this gave the people pleasure and something to laugh at, but afterward they were indignant, considering that this measure had been abused against a man unworthy of it—for they held that there was a certain dignity even in punishment, or rather that ostracism was a punishment fit for men like Thucydides and Aristides and their like, but for Hyperbolus an honor and a pretension to importance, since he suffered, on account of his own wickedness, the same fate as the best men—as indeed Plato the comic poet has said about him:
"And yet he has done deeds worthy of his predecessors, though unworthy of himself and of the ostraca—for it was not for the sake of such men that the ostracon was devised." And in the end, no one at all was ostracized after Hyperbolus, but he was the last, though Hipparchus of Cholargus, a kinsman of the tyrant, was the first.
Fortune is a thing not to be judged and not to be grasped by reasoning. For if Nicias had ventured the risk of the ostracon against Alcibiades, either, prevailing, he would have dwelt securely in the city after driving him out, or, being defeated, he himself would have departed before the final disasters, preserving his reputation as the best of generals. I am not unaware that Theophrastus says it was Phaeax, not Nicias, who contended against Alcibiades and caused Hyperbolus to be ostracized; but the majority of writers have recorded it this way.
Nicias, then, when envoys from Egesta and Leontini arrived and were urging the Athenians to launch a campaign against Sicily, opposed them but was overpowered by the counsel and ambition of Alcibiades, even before the assembly properly convened, since the multitude had already been won over beforehand by hopes and speeches, so that young men in the wrestling-schools and old men in the workshops and semicircles sat together sketching out the shape of Sicily, the nature of the sea around it, and the harbors and places by which the island faces toward Libya.
For they did not regard Sicily as the prize of the war, but as a base of operations, from which they might contend against the Carthaginians and hold at once both Libya and the sea within the Pillars of Heracles. So, as they were eager for these things, Nicias, opposing them, had neither many nor powerful men to support him in the struggle. For the wealthy, fearing that they might seem to be shirking the public services and the trierarchies,
kept quiet against their own judgment. But Nicias did not tire or give up; rather, even after the Athenians had voted for the war and chosen him as general first, together with Alcibiades and Lamachus, when the assembly met again, he stood up and tried to turn them from it, and protested solemnly, and finally at last accused Alcibiades of thrusting the city into a difficult and overseas danger for the sake of his own private gain and love of honor.
He accomplished no more by this; rather, since he was thought, on account of his experience, to be all the more fitted for the task, and since it was expected that his caution, mixed with the daring of Alcibiades and the harshness of Lamachus, would provide great security, he only made the vote more firm. For Demostratus, standing up—the demagogue most eager of all in urging the Athenians on to the war—said he would put a stop to Nicias's talk of excuses; and having drafted a decree that the generals should have full powers both here and there in their deliberations and actions, he persuaded the people to vote it through.
And yet it is said that many things spoke against the expedition, even on the part of the priests; but Alcibiades, having other seers of his own, brought forward, from certain old oracles, the claim that great glory would come to the Athenians from Sicily. And certain sacred envoys came to him from Ammon bringing an oracle declaring that every Syracusan would fall into Athenian hands; yet those who dreaded the reverse outcome suppressed their own ominous reports.
Nor did the plain and evident signs turn him from it: the mutilation of the Herms, all of them defaced in a single night except one — the one they call Andocides' Herm — a dedication of the Aegeis tribe, which stood before the house then belonging to Andocides; and what was done at the altar of the Twelve Gods, where some man suddenly leapt up onto it, then straddled it and cut off his own genitals with a stone.
At Delphi there stood a golden palm tree with a golden statue of Pallas perched upon it, a dedication of the city made from the spoils of the Persian Wars; this the crows kept pecking at for many days, flying at it, and they gnawed away and knocked down the golden fruit of the palm.
Others said that this was a fabrication of the Delphians, put about at the persuasion of the Syracusans; and that some oracular response had instructed them to fetch, from Clazomenae, the woman serving as priestess of Athena, and so they dispatched men to bring her, one bearing the name Hesychia ("Quiet"). And this, it seems, was what the divine power was counseling the city to do in the present circumstance: to keep quiet.
Whether then out of fear of these things, or fearing the campaign on merely human grounds, the astrologer Meton — for he had been appointed to some command — pretended to set his house on fire, as though he had gone mad. Others say that he did not feign madness at all, but actually set his house on fire by night, and came forth into the marketplace in a humbled state, and begged the citizens that, in view of so great a misfortune, they release his son, who was about to sail as trierarch to Sicily, from the expedition.
To Socrates the wise man his divine sign, by the tokens it was accustomed to use with him, revealed this too: that the voyage was being carried out to the destruction of the city. And he told this to his intimates and friends, and the report spread to many.
Not a few were also troubled by the days on which they were sending out the expedition. For the women were then holding the Adonia, and images of the dead were laid out in many places about the city, and there were burials and beatings of breasts among the women in connection with them, so that those who took such things seriously were distressed and feared for that great armament and force, lest, having attained the most conspicuous splendor and vigor, it should quickly wither away.
That Nicias opposed the expedition when it was being voted on, and, neither carried away by hopes nor terrified at the greatness of the command, did not shift his opinion — this was the mark of a good and sensible man; but since, in trying to turn the people from the war, he had no power to do so, nor, by his entreaties, to remove himself from the generalship, but the people, as though they had picked him up bodily and were carrying him, set him as general over the force,
there was no longer any occasion for much caution and delay, such that, like a child looking back from the ship and taking up and turning over again and again the thought of not having been overpowered by his own reasoning, he would blunt both his fellow commanders and destroy the vigor of their actions; rather he ought at once to have grappled with the enemy and, pressing upon them, to have put fortune to the test in actual engagements.
But he — when Lamachus proposed outright to sail against Syracuse and to bring on battle as close as possible to the city, and Alcibiades proposed to detach the cities from Syracusan allegiance and then, so, to march against the Syracusans themselves — spoke to the contrary, and bade them proceed quietly along the coast of Sicily, circling round merely to put their arms and ships on display, contribute some small portion of the force to the men of Egesta, and only then head homeward toward Athens; and this at once undid the men's resolve and cast down their spirit.
And after a little time, when the Athenians recalled Alcibiades for trial, though nominally set forth as second in command, he was in fact sole commander, and he did not cease sitting still, or sailing about, or deliberating, until the vigor of their hope had grown old within him, and the amazement and fear which the first sight of their forces had struck into the enemy had drained away.
While Alcibiades was still present, they sailed with sixty ships against Syracuse; the rest they kept drawn up outside the harbor in battle order, but sent ten in to reconnoiter. These, calling out through a herald to the Leontines to return to their own land, captured an enemy ship carrying tablets on which the Syracusans had registered themselves by tribes; these tablets were ordinarily stored well outside the city, within the shrine dedicated to Olympian Zeus, and had just then been retrieved so that a muster and listing of men fit for service could be carried out.
When, then, the ship, taken by the Athenians, was brought to the generals, and the great number of the names was seen, the seers were troubled, fearing that this was the very moment the destined oracle would be realized — the prophecy declaring that the Athenians were to capture every last Syracusan. Yet, so the story goes, that prophecy actually came true for the Athenians through a different event entirely, in the days when Callippus the Athenian slew Dion and made himself master of Syracuse.
When Alcibiades sailed away from Sicily not long after, the whole command now passed to Nicias. Lamachus was a manly and just man, and one who used his hand without stint in battles, but he was so poor and frugal that at each generalship he had to render an account to the Athenians of a small sum of money for clothing and sandals for himself.
But the weight of Nicias was great both on other accounts and because of his wealth and his reputation. It is said that once, when the fellow commanders were deliberating something in common in the general's tent, and Sophocles the poet, being bidden by him to speak his opinion first, as the eldest of the fellow generals, said: "I am the oldest, but you are the most senior."
So too on this occasion, keeping Lamachus, though a more capable general, under his own authority, and always employing the force cautiously and with delay, first, by sailing round Sicily at the greatest possible distance from the enemy, he gave them confidence; then, attacking Hybla, a small township, and withdrawing before taking it, he was utterly despised.
And at last he withdrew to Catana, having accomplished nothing except the destruction of Hyccara, a barbarian settlement, from which it is said that Lais the courtesan, then still a girl, was carried off among the captives and brought to the Peloponnese for sale.
When the summer had passed, since he learned that the Syracusans, grown bold, would come against them first, and their cavalry now insolently rode up to the camp and asked whether they had come to settle among the Catanians or to resettle the Leontines, Nicias at last set out to sail against Syracuse.
And wishing to establish his army without fear and at his leisure, he secretly sent a man from Catana to tell the Syracusans that, if they wished to seize the Athenian camp and arms while undefended, they should come with their whole force to Catana on an appointed day; for the Athenians, he said, spent most of their time in the city, and the friends of the Syracusans there had resolved, when they perceived them approaching, to seize the gates at once and set fire to the dockyard; and that many were already conspiring and awaiting their arrival.
This was the finest piece of generalship Nicias performed in Sicily. For having drawn the enemy out with their whole force and made the city itself all but empty of men, he himself put out from Catana, gained control of the harbors, and seized with his camp a position from which, being least liable to be harmed by whatever of the enemy remained, he hoped to wage war unhindered on such terms as gave him confidence.
When the Syracusans, turning back from Catana, drew up in battle array before the city, he led the Athenians against them and quickly defeated them. He did not kill many of the enemy, for their cavalry hindered the pursuit; and by destroying the bridges over the river and cutting them off, he gave Hermocrates occasion to say, encouraging the Syracusans, that Nicias was ridiculous in arranging matters so as not to fight, as though he had not sailed there to fight.
Nevertheless he did strike deep dread and disorder into the hearts of the Syracusans, with the result that they abandoned their board of fifteen generals and chose three fresh men instead, for whom the citizens swore an oath that unrestricted and complete authority would truly be granted them.
Since the temple of Olympian Zeus was nearby, the Athenians set out to seize it, there being many gold and silver dedications within it. But Nicias, deliberately delaying, arrived too late and let a garrison sent by the Syracusans get in first, holding that, if the soldiers plundered the treasure, the common cause would gain nothing from it, while he himself would bear the blame for the sacrilege.
Having made no use of this widely celebrated victory, a few days later he withdrew again to Naxos, and there wintered, spending much on so great an army but accomplishing little against certain Sicels who were coming over to him, so that the Syracusans, taking heart again, sallied out to Catana, ravaged the countryside, and burned the Athenians' camp. For all this everyone blamed Nicias,
holding that by calculating and delaying and being over-cautious he was letting slip the opportunity for action; for no one could find fault with the man's actual achievements — once he had set himself in motion he was effective and vigorous — but in daring he was hesitant and timid.
When, then, he set the army in motion again against Syracuse, he generaled it in such fashion, and advanced with such a combination of speed and safety, that he managed to bring his ships to Thapsus and disembark unnoticed, to seize Epipolae before he could be forestalled, to defeat the picked troops who came up to help, taking three hundred of them, and to rout the enemy's cavalry too, which had been thought invincible.
But what most of all astounded the Sicilian Greeks and made the rest of the Greek world incredulous was that in a short time he built a wall of circumvallation around Syracuse, a city no smaller than Athens, but harder to work around because of the unevenness of the ground, its proximity to the sea, and the marshes lying near it — to carry so great a wall in a circle about it.
But he came within a little of failing to complete this whole undertaking — a man not even in sound health for so great a burden of cares, but suffering from a disease of the kidneys, whose unfinished remainder it is only right to reckon as loss. I marvel at the diligence of the general and the valor of the soldiers in the successes they achieved.
For Euripides, writing an epitaph after their defeat and destruction, composed: "These men won eight victories over the Syracusans, while the fortunes the gods gave were equal to both sides" [Euripides, Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graeci, ii(4), p. 265]. Not eight victories, however,
but one could find that the Athenians defeated the Syracusans in even more engagements than that, before some real opposition, from the gods or from fortune, arose against the Athenians when their power had risen to its very greatest height.
In most of his undertakings, then, Nicias was present, forcing his body to it; but once, when the sharp attack of his illness had seized him, he lay within the walls with a few attendants, while Lamachus, having charge of the army, fought against the Syracusans, who were bringing a wall out from the city to meet that of the Athenians, which was meant to prevent the counter-wall from being completed between them.
But as the Athenians, being victorious, pursued in disorder, Lamachus, cut off, withstood the Syracusan cavalry as it charged. Foremost among them was Callicrates, a warlike and spirited man. Lamachus, stepping forward at his challenge, fought him in single combat, and, receiving a wound first, then dealing one and falling, died together with Callicrates.
The Syracusans, having overpowered him, carried off his body along with his arms, and rushed at a run toward the walls of the Athenians, among whom was Nicias, who had none to help him. Nevertheless, compelled by necessity, he rose up, and seeing the danger, ordered those about him to bring fire and set alight whatever timber happened to be lying before the walls for use in siege-engines, and the engines themselves. This checked the Syracusans and saved Nicias, and the walls, and the property of the Athenians; for seeing a great flame rising up between them, the Syracusans turned back.
When this had been done, Nicias alone was left of the generals, and he was in a position of great hope. For cities were changing sides, and ships full of grain came from many quarters into the camp, all men attaching themselves to a cause whose affairs were going well. And already some talk of terms was passing from the Syracusans to him, since they had despaired of the city.
It was at this point that Gylippus too, sailing from Lacedaemon to their aid, on hearing while still under way of the wall of circumvallation and the difficulties the Syracusans were in, sailed on for the rest of the voyage as one who believed Sicily already lost, but who meant to keep the cities of Italy safe, if that at least could still be managed. For a great report had spread abroad that the Athenians were mastering everything and had a general invincible through good fortune and good judgment.
Nicias himself, however, immediately and against his own nature grown bold from the strength and fortune he now enjoyed, and above all trusting those in Syracuse who were secretly conferring with him and sending word that the city would very soon be handed over on terms, took no account whatever of Gylippus approaching by sea, and kept no clean watch; so that, being altogether overlooked and despised, the man sailed in unnoticed through the strait, and putting in at a point as far as possible from Syracuse, gathered together a large force, the Syracusans themselves not even knowing or expecting that he was present.
For this reason a meeting had already been convened among them to work out terms with Nicias, and a number of delegates had already set out, since they believed the agreement needed to be reached before the circuit wall around the city was finished; for the remaining work was quite small, and all the materials for building the wall had been assembled to complete it.
At this juncture, with the danger thus present, Gongylus arrives from Corinth with a single trireme; and when all, as was natural, ran together to him, he announced that Gylippus would arrive shortly and that other ships were coming to their aid as well. But they did not yet trust Gongylus firmly,
when a messenger came from Gylippus bidding them come to meet him. Taking courage, they armed themselves; and Gylippus at once came on straight from the road, drawn up for battle against the Athenians. But when Nicias too had drawn up his men to meet him, Gylippus grounded arms before the Athenians and, sending a herald, said he offered the Athenians safe conduct to depart from Sicily.
Nicias, then, did not think it worth replying at all; but some of the soldiers, laughing, asked whether it was through the mere presence of one worn cloak and a Laconian staff that the power of the Syracusans had suddenly grown so strong that they scorned the Athenians — men who had handed over to the Lacedaemonians three hundred prisoners far stouter than Gylippus and wearing far longer hair, bound in fetters.
Timaeus says that even the Sicilian Greeks held Gylippus in no regard, condemning him later for his shabby greed and pettiness, and at first sight mocking his cloak and his hair. Yet then he himself says that at the appearance of Gylippus many flocked to him readily to serve as soldiers, as birds fly to an owl. And this is truer than the earlier account; for it was his walking-stick and his cloak in which they recognized the emblem and the majesty of Sparta, and that recognition drew them to his side.
And that the whole achievement was his doing is said not only by Thucydides but also by Philistus, a Syracusan man who was himself an eyewitness of the events. In the first battle the Athenians, having the upper hand over the Syracusans, killed a few of them along with Gongylus the Corinthian; but on the following day Gylippus showed what experience is worth. For using the same arms, the same horses, and the same ground, but not in the same way — rather by changing the disposition of his forces —
he defeated the Athenians; and when they fled to their camp, he stationed the Syracusans there, and using the stones and timber which the Athenians had brought up for their own purposes, he built alongside it in the gaps and cut off their circumvallation, so that their advantage came to nothing further for all their earlier success. From this the Syracusans took courage, both manning their ships and riding round with their own cavalry and its attendants, capturing many.
And Gylippus, going about to the cities himself, roused them and won everyone over vigorously to obey and cooperate with him, so that Nicias, turning back again to those first calculations of his and perceiving the change in affairs, grew discouraged, and wrote to the Athenians bidding them either send another army or else withdraw this one from Sicily, while for himself he asked outright for release from his command on account of his illness.
The Athenians, even before this, had been eager to send another force to Sicily, but out of envy at the first successes achieved under Nicias' good fortune they had thrown in many delays; now at any rate they hastened to help. Demosthenes was to sail with a great fleet once winter had passed, but Eurymedon sailed out ahead during the winter itself, bringing money and announcing that Euthydemus and Menander, chosen from among those already serving there, had been appointed as fellow generals to Nicias.
Meanwhile Nicias, suddenly attacked both by land and by sea, though at first worsted with his ships, nevertheless drove the enemy back and sank many of them; but he did not arrive in time to help his infantry, and Gylippus, falling upon it unexpectedly, took Plemmyrium, where great stores of naval equipment and much money were deposited; of all this he made himself master, and he killed no small number of men and took others alive; and, greatest of all,
he took from Nicias the ease of his supply. For while the Athenians held it, transport by way of Plemmyrium was safe and swift, but once they were driven out it became difficult, and had to be carried on only with fighting against the enemy who now lay in wait there. Moreover the enemy's fleet did not appear to have been beaten by force but rather by disorder in the pursuit; so they made ready again and attempted a more brilliant engagement.
Nicias did not wish to fight at sea, saying it was great folly, with so great a fleet and fresh force sailing to join them — the force Demosthenes was hastening to bring — to risk battle with a smaller and poorly supplied one instead. But Menander and Euthydemus, only just then established in their command, were seized with rivalry and eagerness toward both the other generals, wishing to forestall Demosthenes in accomplishing something brilliant and to outdo Nicias.
The pretext was the honor of the city, which they declared would be utterly lost and undone if they showed fear of the Syracusans sailing against them; and so they forced the issue of fighting at sea. And, outgeneraled by Ariston the Corinthian helmsman as regards the midday meal, as Thucydides has said, they were decisively beaten and lost many men; and great despondency surrounded Nicias, suffering as he was under sole command and now again undone by his fellow commanders.
Meanwhile Demosthenes appeared off the harbors, most splendid in his equipment and most formidable to the enemy, bringing on seventy-three ships five thousand hoplites, and javelin-throwers, archers, and slingers not fewer than three thousand, all fitted out with fine arms, with the decorated emblems of the triremes, and with a great array of boatswains and pipers, done for theatrical show and to strike terror into the enemy.
The Syracusans, as was natural, were again in great fear, seeing no end or release to their troubles but seeing themselves toiling in vain and being worn away for nothing. But Nicias was not gladdened for long by the arrival of this force; rather, as soon as they first came to discussion, Demosthenes at once urged attacking the enemy immediately, and by risking everything in the swiftest of dangers, to take Syracuse or else sail home; and Nicias, fearing and marveling at his keenness and boldness, begged him to do nothing rashly or foolishly.
For, he said, time worked against the enemy, who no longer had money, nor would their allies remain with them for long; and if they were pressed hard by their want of resources, they would again quickly turn to him for terms, as before. And indeed there were not a few men in Syracuse secretly conferring with Nicias and urging him to stay, arguing that already, at this very point, exhaustion from the war and irritation at Gylippus had set in among the citizens, and that a little further tightening of their hardship would make them give up altogether. Of these things Nicias, partly hinting,
and partly unwilling to speak openly, gave the generals the impression of cowardice, and declaring that these were once more the same familiar traits of his — hesitation, delay, and excessive calculation, through which he had squandered his chance to strike the enemy while the moment was ripe, letting the campaign grow stale until he was held in contempt — they sided with Demosthenes. And Nicias, hard pressed, gave way only reluctantly.
So then Demosthenes, taking the infantry, attacked Epipolae by night; and coming upon some of the enemy before they were aware, he killed them, and routed those who resisted. And, though winning, he did not stop there but pressed on farther, until he encountered the Boeotians. For these were the first to rally themselves and, running together against the Athenians, drove them back with leveled spears and a shout, and cast down many of them on the spot.
Throughout the whole army there was at once panic and confusion, and those still winning became mixed in with those already fleeing, and those advancing and pressing forward were driven back by the frightened men and fell foul of one another, some thinking they were pursuing fugitives, others treating their own friends as enemies.
For the disorderly mingling together amid fear and ignorance, and the untrustworthiness of sight at night, which had neither unbroken darkness nor steady light, but such light as one would expect when the moon was already sinking low and was being crossed by the shadows of many weapons and moving bodies, failing to make forms clear amid fear of the enemy — and the suspicion cast even on one's own men — brought the Athenians into terrible confusion and reversals of fortune.
It happened, too, that they had the moon somewhat behind them; hence they themselves, casting their own shadows before them, concealed the number of their arms and their brightness, while their opponents, facing the moon, were made to appear far more numerous and brighter by the answering gleam of their shields. In the end, from every side,
once they gave way, with the enemy pressing upon them, some died at the enemy's hands as they fled, others at one another's, and others by slipping down the cliffs; and those who were scattered and wandering, once day came on, were overtaken and destroyed by the cavalry. Two thousand of them died, and of those who survived few got away safely with their arms.
Nicias, struck by this though not unexpectedly, blamed the rashness of Demosthenes; but the latter, having defended himself on this point, urged that they sail away as quickly as possible, saying that no further force would come to them, nor could they master the enemy with the one now present,
since even if they should master them, they would still have to move away and flee the place — always, as they learned, oppressive and unhealthy for an army, and now, as they could see for themselves, deadly on account of the season as well. For it was the beginning of autumn, and already many were falling sick, and all were despondent. But Nicias took the proposal of flight and withdrawal by sea badly, not because he did not fear the Syracusans, but because he feared the Athenians and their lawsuits and false accusations even more.
Nothing terrible, he said, was to be expected there, but if it should happen, he would rather choose death at the hands of the enemy than at those of his own citizens — holding a view not the same as that which Leon of Byzantium later expressed to his own fellow citizens: "I would rather," he said, "die by your hands than with you." As for the place and region to which they should move the camp, however, he would consider it at leisure.
While he was saying this, Demosthenes, since even his earlier proposal had not met with success, ceased pressing the point; and this gave the others the impression that Nicias, expecting and trusting those within the city, was thus contending so vigorously against a withdrawal by sea; and so they gave way to him. But when another army came to reinforce the Syracusans and the sickness took hold of the Athenians still more, then at last Nicias too agreed to the move, and he ordered the soldiers to be ready for the departure by sea.
But when all this was ready, and none of the enemy kept watch, since they did not expect it, the moon was eclipsed that night — a thing that struck great fear into Nicias and into others among them who through inexperience or superstition were terrified at such things. For as to the eclipse of the sun that occurs around the thirtieth of the month, most people by now more or less understood that it was caused by the moon; but as to the moon itself,
what it is that it encounters, and how it suddenly loses its light at the full and takes on colors of every kind, this was not easy to grasp, and they considered it a strange thing and a sign sent by god before some great disaster. For the first man to set down in writing the clearest and boldest account of all concerning the moon's illuminations and its shadow, Anaxagoras, was himself neither of ancient times nor was his account well known, but was still secret, passed on among few, and travelled with a certain caution or trust.
For people at that time would not tolerate the natural philosophers and "star-babblers," as they were then called, on the ground that they explained away the divine into irrational causes, unforeseeing forces, and necessitated processes; indeed Protagoras was exiled, and Pericles only with difficulty saved Anaxagoras once he had been imprisoned, and Socrates, though he had nothing at all to do with such matters, nevertheless perished on account of philosophy.
It was only late, when Plato's reputation shone forth because of the man's life, and because he subordinated the necessities of nature to divine and higher principles, that the ill repute of these doctrines was removed, and he opened a way to these studies for all. His companion Dion, at any rate, at the very time when he was about to set sail from Zacynthus against Dionysius, was undisturbed when the moon was eclipsed, and put out to sea, and on landing at Syracuse drove out the tyrant.
But it happened to Nicias at that time that he did not even have an experienced seer at hand; for his usual companion, Stilbides, who used to relieve him of much of his superstitious fear, had died a little before. For the sign, as Philochorus says, was not unfavorable to men in flight, but even quite favorable; for actions undertaken in fear have need of concealment,
Light is their enemy. Moreover the priests kept watch over sun and moon for three days, as Autocleides has set down in his exegetical writings; but Nicias persuaded them to wait for another full cycle of the moon, as though he had not seen it clear again the moment it passed beyond the shadowed region where it had been screened by the earth.
Abandoning almost everything else, he sacrificed and sat divining, until the enemy fell upon them, besieging their walls and camp with their infantry while surrounding the harbor in a ring with their ships — not the triremes alone, but even boys sailing up from every side on fishing boats and skiffs, challenging and taunting the Athenians.
An Attic ship, chasing one of these boys, a boy of well-known parents named Heracleides, who had rowed out ahead in his boat, was about to catch him. His uncle Pollichus, fearing for him, rowed out against it with the ten triremes he commanded; and the others, fearing for Pollichus, put out to sea in the same way. A fierce sea-battle followed, and the Syracusans won, killing Eurymedon along with many others.
It was no longer bearable for the Athenians to remain, and they shouted down their generals, demanding to retreat by land. For the Syracusans, having won, immediately blocked and closed off the passage out of the harbor. Nicias and his men would not agree to this: it was a terrible thing to abandon so many merchant ships and triremes, not much fewer than two hundred
in number. So they put aboard the best of the infantry and the most vigorous of the javelin-throwers, crewing one hundred and ten of the triremes, since there were not enough oarsmen for the remainder. The remaining crowd Nicias stationed along the shore, abandoning the great camp and the walls connecting to the Heracleum, so that, since the Syracusans had not yet offered their customary sacrifice to Heracles, the priests and generals then went up and sacrificed while the triremes were already being manned.
When the seers announced to the Syracusans, from the sacrifices, brightness and victory if they did not begin the battle but defended themselves — for Heracles too prevailed over everyone by defending himself when attacked first — they put out to sea. The sea-battle that followed was by far the greatest and most fiercely fought, and it produced no less suffering and turmoil for the onlookers than for the combatants, because the whole action was visible at once and underwent varied and unexpected shifts within a short span; it damaged the Athenians through their own equipment no less than through the enemy's.
For they fought with their ships massed together and heavy against light ships bearing down from different directions, and being pelted with stones, which strike the same wherever they land, they answered on every side with javelins and arrows, whose straight aim the swell distorted, so that not everything struck point-first. This tactic Ariston the Corinthian helmsman had taught the Syracusans, and fighting eagerly in the battle itself he fell just as the Syracusans were already winning.
A great rout and destruction having occurred, escape by sea was cut off for the Athenians; and seeing that safety by land too was difficult, they neither hindered the enemy, who were already close by towing off ships, nor asked for the recovery of the dead, since they already had before their eyes something more pitiable than the enemy's lack of burial — the abandonment of their own sick and wounded — and considered themselves more burdened even than these, since with more miseries they would in any case arrive at the same end.
When they had set out to depart by night, Gylippus and his men, seeing the Syracusans engaged in sacrifices and drinking because of the victory and the festival, expected that they would neither persuade nor compel them to rise up already and move against the retreating enemy. But Hermocrates, contriving a deception against Nicias on his own initiative, sent some of his companions to him,
claiming to come from those men who had before been accustomed to converse secretly with Nicias, urging him not to march during the night, since the Syracusans had set ambushes for them and already held the passes. Outgeneraled by this, Nicias waited, and so truly suffered at the enemy's hands what he had falsely feared.
For advancing at daybreak, the Syracusans seized the difficult places along the roads, walled off the river crossings, cut away the bridges, and stationed their cavalry on the level and open ground, so that no place was left for the Athenians to advance without a fight. They, having waited out that day and the following night, marched on with weeping and lamentation, rising up as though from their own homeland rather than an enemy's, because of their want of necessities and the abandonment of helpless friends and companions, yet counting their present troubles lighter than what lay ahead.
Amid the many terrible sights in the camp, none was more pitiable than Nicias himself — worn down by illness, reduced against his dignity to the barest necessities of living, his body needing much because of his sickness though it had the smallest share of provisions, enduring in his weakness what many even of the healthy could scarcely bear, plainly to all not holding fast through his own love of life or for himself, but for the sake of others, unwilling to let go of hope.
For when the others turned to tears and lamentation from fear and grief, he, if ever forced to do the same, was clearly reckoning up the shame and inglory of the campaign against the greatness and glory of what he had hoped to achieve. Nor was it only his face they saw,
but remembering also his words and the counsel he had given in opposing the expedition, they thought it all the more undeserved that he should suffer so; and they grew despondent of any hope from the gods, considering that a man beloved of the gods, who had made many great and splendid offerings to the divine, was meeting with a fortune no better than the basest and lowliest in the army.
Nevertheless Nicias tried, by voice and countenance and bearing, to appear superior to his troubles. Throughout the whole march, for eight days, though struck and wounded by the enemy, he kept the force with him unbroken, until Demosthenes was captured along with the army under him, surrounded near the estate of Polyzelus while still fighting and lagging behind.
Demosthenes himself drew his sword and struck himself, but did not die, the enemy quickly surrounding and seizing him. When the Syracusans rode up to Nicias and told him, and having sent horsemen he learned of the capture of that army, he asked to make a truce with Gylippus, so that the Athenians might be allowed to leave Sicily, giving hostages for the money the Syracusans had spent on the war. But they paid no heed,
but with insolence and anger, threatening and reviling, they attacked him, already lacking every necessity. Still he held out through the night and the following day marched on under attack toward the river Asinarus. There the enemy, driving some together, forced them into the current, while others, overcome by thirst, threw themselves in;
and there was the greatest and most savage slaughter, men drinking and being cut down in the river at the same time, until Nicias fell before Gylippus and said: "Let pity for you, Gylippus, be taken by the victors — not for me, who have won name and glory amid such great successes — but for the rest of the Athenians, remembering that war's outcomes fall on everyone alike, and that the Athenians, in their own days of fortune, treated you with moderation and gentleness."
As Nicias said such things, Gylippus was somewhat moved both by the sight of him and by his words; for he was aware that Nicias had dealt kindly with the Lacedaemonians in arranging the earlier settlements, and he thought it a great thing for his own reputation if he could bring back the opposing generals alive. So he took Nicias and encouraged him, and gave orders that the rest be taken alive. But the order spread slowly, and far more were killed than were saved — though many, too, were stolen away secretly by the soldiers.
Those openly captured they gathered together, and hung captured suits of armor from the river's tallest and stateliest trees; then, garlanded themselves and having splendidly adorned their horses, and having shorn the hair of the enemy's, they rode into the city, having brought to its conclusion the most brilliant contest that Greeks ever fought against Greeks, and the most complete victory, with the greatest superiority and strength of zeal and valor.
When the Syracusans and their allies convened a general assembly, Euryclus the demagogue put forward, as his first proposal, that the day of Nicias's capture be observed as sacred, with sacrifice and a rest from labor, naming the festival Asinaria after the river; the date fell the fourth day before the end of Carneius, the month the Athenians call Metageitnion.
and that of the Athenians the slaves be sold, along with the other allies, and that the Athenians themselves and those from Sicily be held under guard, thrown into the stone quarries, except for the generals, who were to be put to death. While the Syracusans were expecting this, Hermocrates, saying that using victory well was better than winning it, caused no small uproar; and those insulted Gylippus when he asked that the Athenian generals be led away alive to the Lacedaemonians — for the Syracusans, now flush with success, were already speaking ill of him,
especially since during the war they had not easily borne his harshness and his Laconic manner of command, and, as Timaeus says, they had also condemned in him a certain pettiness and greed, a hereditary weakness, for which his father Cleandridas too, convicted of bribery, went into exile; and Gylippus himself, having stolen thirty talents out of the thousand Lysander had sent to Sparta and hidden them under the roof of his house, was afterward informed on and cast out most shamefully of all. But this is told in greater detail in the Life of Lysander.
Timaeus holds that Demosthenes and Nicias were not put to death on Syracusan orders, as Philistus and Thucydides recorded, but rather that Hermocrates, while the assembly was still meeting, sent word through one of the guards who allowed them the means, so that each perished by his own hand; even so, their corpses were cast out before the gates, left in view for whoever wished to look.
I have learned that to this day a shield is shown standing beside a temple in Syracuse, said to be Nicias's, worked in a weave of gold and purple skillfully blended together.
The bulk of the Athenian captives died off in the stone quarries, worn down by illness and meager rations of two cotylae of barley and one of water each day; yet quite a number were sold instead, either smuggled out or passed off unnoticed as slaves. Those sold as slaves had a horse branded on their forehead; and some bore even that mark on top of their bondage.
Even for these, decency and good conduct came to their aid: they were either freed quickly, or, being honored, remained with those who had acquired them. Some were also saved on account of Euripides. For it seems that of all Greeks outside their own land, the Sicilians most desired his poetry; and learning eagerly the small samples and tastes that each new arrival brought, they shared them gladly with one another.
At any rate, they say that many of those who then returned home safe greeted Euripides warmly, and told, some, how they had been freed from slavery for having taught what they remembered of his poems, others, how, wandering after the battle, they had received food and water for singing his songs. It is no wonder, then, that they say the people of Caunus, when a ship pursued by pirates put in at their harbors, at first would not receive it and kept it out, but then, upon asking whether those aboard knew any songs of Euripides, and being told they did, allowed it in and brought the ship to safe harbor.
They say the disaster became known to the Athenians not least because of the disbelief in the messenger. For some stranger, it seems, having landed at the Piraeus and sat down in a barber's shop, spoke of what had happened as though the Athenians already knew of it. The barber, hearing this, before others could learn of it, ran at full speed into the city, and rushing to the archons, at once broke the news in the marketplace. Amid the shock and turmoil that followed, as was natural,
the archons convened an assembly, had the man brought before it, but when asked from whom he had heard the news, he could give no clear account, so he was branded a rumormonger stirring up the city, bound to the wheel, and tortured at length, until men arrived who plainly reported the whole disaster just as it had happened. Only then, with difficulty, did belief come to what Nicias had so often foretold them.

======== Crassus ========

Marcus Crassus's father had held the censorship and celebrated a triumph, yet Crassus himself was raised in a small house together with two brothers. His brothers had wives while their parents were still living, and everyone went to the same common table, which seems to be no small part of why he grew up self-controlled and moderate in his way of living. After one of his brothers died, he took the widow to live with him and had children by her, in this too proving as disciplined as any Roman,
though as he grew older he fell under suspicion of intimacy with a Vestal virgin named Licinia, and she was subsequently brought to trial with a certain Plotius acting as prosecutor. She owned a fine property in the suburbs which Crassus wanted to acquire at a low price, and it was his constant attendance on the woman and his courting of her that gave rise to that suspicion; and having in a sense cleared himself of the charge of seduction by pleading love of money instead, the judges let him go free — yet he refused to release his hold on Licinia until he had secured the property.
The Romans, then, say that though Crassus had many virtues, a single vice overshadowed them all — his love of money; and it does seem that this one vice, being stronger than all the rest that were in him, dimmed the others. The greatest proofs they offer of his love of money are the manner in which he acquired his fortune and the sheer size of it,
for having possessed no more than three hundred talents at the outset, and then, during his consulship, after sacrificing a tenth of it to Heracles and feasting the people, and providing every Roman with a three months' grain allowance out of his own funds, he nevertheless, before his campaign against the Parthians, drew up an account of his property for himself and found it worth eleven thousand talents.
Most of this, if the truth must be told even at the cost of speaking ill of him, he amassed out of fire and war, converting the city's shared calamities into the largest single source of his income. For once Sulla had seized control of the city and was selling off the estates of those he had put to death, considering and calling them spoils of war, and wishing to smear as many of the most prominent men as possible with the pollution of it, Crassus refused neither to accept nor to buy such property.
Furthermore, seeing that fires and building-collapses, caused by the weight and density of the structures, were plagues native and endemic to Rome, he bought up slaves who were architects and builders, and once he had more than five hundred of these, he made a practice of buying up the buildings that were on fire and those neighboring the ones on fire, which their owners let go for a small price out of fear and uncertainty, so that in time the greater part of Rome came into his possession.
Yet although he possessed so many craftsmen, he built nothing himself except his own house; rather, he used to say that men fond of building undo themselves without need of any rival. And though he had a great many silver mines, and land of great value, and the men who worked it, still one would judge all this to amount to nothing compared to the value he set on his household servants,
so many and of such quality did he possess — readers, secretaries, silver-assayers, stewards, table-waiters — he himself superintending them as they learned, giving them his attention, teaching them, and holding altogether that it was above all the master's business to care for his household servants, as the living instruments of household management.
And in this Crassus was correct, if indeed it is true that he habitually maintained the view that all other matters ought to be handled through one's servants, while the servants themselves ought to be governed directly by the master — for we see that household management, when it concerns inanimate things, is a mere matter of acquiring wealth, but when it concerns human beings, becomes a form of statesmanship. But in this he was not right: that he considered — and used to say — that no one should be called rich who could not maintain an army out of his own property. For war does not feed on a fixed ration,
as Archidamus put it, so that, measured against the needs of war, wealth admits no fixed limit — an outlook standing at a considerable distance from that held by Marius. For Marius, upon distributing fourteen plethra of land to each man and then learning that they wanted still more, declared, "May no Roman ever regard as insufficient whatever amount suffices to feed him."
Nevertheless Crassus was also generous in his treatment of strangers, for he kept his doors open to everyone, and he would lend his friends money free of interest, though once the agreed term had run out he demanded repayment without mercy, so that his gratuitous loan became more burdensome to many than interest would have been. At his dinners the guest-list was for the most part popular and drawn from the common people, and the plainness of the fare, together with its cleanliness and the warmth of his hospitality, made it more pleasant than extravagance would have been.
As for the education that concerns speech, he trained himself above all in rhetoric and in what was useful for practical affairs before large audiences, and having become one of the most formidable speakers, he surpassed the most naturally gifted of the Romans through sheer diligence and effort. For they say that no case was ever so small or so contemptible that he came to it unprepared, but that often, when Pompey and Caesar and Cicero hesitated to rise, he would step in and complete the advocacy. And for this reason he was liked all the more, as a man attentive and ready to help,
and people liked, too, the friendliness and popular manner of his handshakes and greetings. For there was no Roman so obscure or so lowly whom Crassus met without returning his greeting by name. He is also said to have become widely learned in history, and to have taken up something of philosophy as well, attaching himself to the doctrines of Aristotle, under a teacher named Alexander, a man who gave proof of his own good nature and gentleness through his intimacy with Crassus,
for it was not easy to say whether he had come to Crassus poorer than he became, or had become poor after coming to him. At any rate he alone, of all his friends, always received traveling money whenever he accompanied Crassus abroad, and this same sum was demanded back of him upon their return. But these things belong to a later time.
When Cinna and Marius, having gained the upper hand, at once made it plain, as they came down upon the city, that their aim was not the good of their country but rather the outright destruction and ruin of the best men, some who were caught were put to death — among them Crassus's father and his brother — while Crassus himself, being still quite young, escaped the immediate danger; but realizing he was surrounded on every side and pursued by the ruling faction, he set out accompanied by three friends and ten slaves, and fled to Spain with remarkable speed, where he had lived long before, when his father held command there, and had made friends.
Finding everyone there terrified, shuddering at Marius's cruelty as if it hung directly over their heads, he did not venture to reveal himself openly to anyone, but throwing himself into some coastal fields belonging to Vibius Paciacus, which contained a spacious cave, he hid himself there, sending a single slave to Vibius to test the ground, since his provisions were already running out.
Vibius, on hearing of it, was delighted that he was safe, and having learned the number of those with him and the place, did not come to see him himself, but brought near the overseer of the estate and ordered him to bring a prepared dinner every day and set it down by the rock and go away in silence, without prying or asking questions — warning him that inquisitiveness meant death, but faithful cooperation, freedom.
The cave lies at no great distance from the sea; cliffs meeting around it form a narrow, dim passage leading inward, but once one has passed through, a wondrous height opens up above, and in breadth it has chambers opening into one another in great curving spaces.
It lacks neither water nor light, but a spring of very sweet water flows beneath along the cliff face, and openings splitting the stone naturally, exactly where the outside light falls most directly, gather and let it in, so that the place is lit up by day, while the air within is free of dripping moisture and clean, the density of the rock forcing out whatever is damp and would otherwise drip, and sending it into the spring.
While Crassus was staying there, the man came each day bringing what was needed, himself neither seeing those within nor knowing them, though he was seen by them, who knew when he was coming and watched for the time. And the food provided for the meal was abundant, made not merely for necessity but for pleasure too.
For Vibius had resolved to attend to Crassus with every kindness, and it occurred to him to take his youth into account as well — that he was after all a young man, and that something should be granted to the pleasures suited to his age, since to see only to his necessities would be to serve him out of obligation rather than eagerness. So taking two comely serving-girls, he walked to the sea, and when he reached the place, he pointed out the way up and told them to go in and have no fear.
Crassus and his companions, seeing them approaching, feared that the place might have become known and exposed, and so questioned the girls as to what they wanted and who they were. When they answered, as they had been instructed, that they were seeking a master hidden there, Crassus, understanding Vibius's jest and kindness toward him, took the girls in;
and they stayed with him for the rest of the time, telling and reporting to Vibius whatever he needed. Phenestella says he himself saw one of these women, by then an old woman, and often heard her recall and recount these things eagerly.
Crassus, having thus spent eight months in hiding, came out into the open as soon as he learned of Cinna's death, and as no small number of men flocked to him, he selected two thousand five hundred of them and went about the cities; and one of them, Malaca, he sacked, as many have written, though they say he himself denied it and disputed vigorously with those who said so,
after which, having gathered ships and crossed over to Africa, he came to Metellus Pius, a man of distinction who had collected a force not to be despised. He did not remain there long, however, but having quarreled with Metellus, he set off to join Sulla, with whom he was among the most honored companions. When Sulla crossed over into Italy and wished to keep all the young men with him actively employed, assigning each to a different task, Crassus, being sent to the Marsi to raise troops, asked for an escort, since the route lay through enemy territory.
But when Sulla answered him with anger and great sharpness, "I give you as escort your father, your brother, your friends, your kinsmen — men unlawfully and unjustly slain, whose murderers I am now pursuing," Crassus, stung and goaded by this remark, departed without delay, and cutting his way energetically through hostile territory, assembled a considerable force and showed himself eager on Sulla's behalf in the battles that followed.
It is said that it was from these exploits that his rivalry and ambition for glory against Pompey first arose. For Pompey, though younger than Crassus and born to a father who had stood in disgrace at Rome, loathed by the citizens with the deepest hatred, nonetheless shone forth and proved himself great in the course of these events, so that Sulla — a thing he very rarely granted to men older and equal in rank — would rise from his seat as Pompey approached, uncover his head, and address him as Imperator.
This inflamed and provoked Crassus, and not without reason, since he found himself outdone. For he was lacking in experience, and the grace of his own achievements was taken away by the vices that clung to him, greed and pettiness of spirit. Indeed, when he took the Umbrian city of Tudertia, he was thought to have appropriated the greater part of the money for himself, and was denounced to Sulla for it.
But in the battle around Rome, the greatest and last of them all, while Sulla was defeated, his own forces routed and shattered, Crassus, holding the right wing, was victorious, and having pursued the enemy until nightfall, sent to Sulla asking for dinner for his soldiers and reporting his success. Yet in the matter of the proscriptions and confiscations he again fell into ill repute, buying up great properties for a trifling price and asking for gifts,
and in Bruttium he is said even to have proscribed a certain man not on Sulla's orders but for the sake of profit, for which Sulla, condemning him, ceased using him for any public business thereafter. And yet Crassus was most formidable at working upon all men through flattery, while he himself was in turn easily taken in by flattery from anyone. This too is said to be peculiar to him: that being the most avaricious of men, he most hated and reviled those who resembled him in it.
What troubled him was Pompey's success in commands, and his celebrating a triumph even before he had joined the Senate, and being hailed Magnus — that is, "the Great" — by the citizens; and once, when someone remarked that Pompey Magnus was approaching, Crassus laughed and asked how big he was.
Despairing of matching him in military matters, he took up the life of politics, and by his eager efforts, his advocacy in the courts, his loans of money, and his readiness to canvass alongside and to stand by the side of those in need of anything from the people, he built up a power and reputation to rival what Pompey possessed from his many great campaigns.
And a strange thing happened to them both: Pompey's name and power in the city were greater when he was absent, because of his campaigns, but when present he was often outdone by Crassus, since, on account of his self-importance and his concern for the dignity of his manner of life, he shrank from the crowds and withdrew from the forum, and helped few of those in need, and that not very eagerly, so as to keep his influence fresher by using it on his own behalf.
Crassus, having a usefulness that was constant, and being neither hard to find nor difficult of access, but always moving about in the very midst of people's business, prevailed over the other man's [Pompey's] solemn dignity by his commonness and his kindness to all. Yet they say that a certain dignity of person, a persuasiveness of speech, and a graciousness of countenance attended upon both men alike, drawing people to them.
This rivalry, however, did not carry Crassus into any hatred or ill will; rather, though he was vexed that Pompey and Caesar were honored above himself, he did not attach to this ambition of his any malice or ill nature. And yet Caesar, at the time when pirates seized him off the coast of Asia and held him under guard, cried out, "How great a joy, Crassus, you will enjoy when you learn of my capture!"
But later they treated one another as friends; and once, when Caesar was about to go out to Iberia as praetor and had no money, since his creditors fell upon him and were seizing his equipment, Crassus did not overlook him, but freed him by pledging himself as surety for eight hundred and thirty talents.
In general, the city was split among three factions of power: one belonging to Pompey, one to Caesar, and one to Crassus (Cato, for his part, was admired more than he was powerful, his reputation outrunning his real strength)—and the prudent, settled citizens gave their support to Pompey, while the more excitable element, easily swayed, chased after Caesar's promises,
and Crassus, standing in the middle, made use of both, and by undergoing very many changes in his political course was neither a steady friend nor an implacable enemy, but readily fell away from both favor and anger under the influence of expediency, so that often, in a short space, he was found advocate and adversary of the same men, and of the same laws.
He had strength both through goodwill and through fear, and not less through fear. At any rate, Sicinius, the man who caused the most trouble to the magistrates and demagogues of his day, when someone asked him why in the world he did not tear into Crassus as he did the others, but let him alone, said that he had "hay on his horn"—for the Romans were accustomed to wrap hay around the horn of a butting ox, so that those who met it might be on their guard.
The uprising of the gladiators and their ravaging of Italy, which most people call the Spartacus War, took its beginning from the following cause. A certain Lentulus Batiatus kept a gladiatorial school at Capua, and the men he trained there — Gauls and Thracians for the most part — had been penned up to fight there not through any crime of their own but simply through the injustice of the one who purchased them, forced by necessity into the gladiator's trade; two hundred of them planned to run away,
but when an informer had betrayed the plan, those who perceived it in time and got ahead of the rest, seventy-eight in number, snatched up cleavers and spits from some kitchen and burst out; and meeting on the road wagons carrying gladiators' weapons to another town, they seized these and armed themselves. And having taken possession of a strong position, they chose three leaders, of whom the first was Spartacus, a Thracian man of the Nomadic stock, who had not only great spirit and bodily strength, but was also, in intelligence and gentleness, superior to his fortune and more Greek than his race would suggest,
and they say of this man that, on the occasion of his first being brought to Rome to be sold, a snake was seen lying coiled around his face while he slept; and his wife — a woman of that same Thracian tribe, gifted with prophecy and given over to the ecstatic worship of Dionysus — read this as a sign that a great and terrible power would attend him, one fated to end fortunately; she was living with him at the time, and she fled together with him.
And first, having beaten back the men who came from Capua and having gotten hold of many weapons of war, they gladly exchanged their own for these, casting away as dishonorable and barbarous the gear of the gladiators. Then, when Clodius the praetor was sent from Rome with three thousand men and besieged them on a mountain that had one difficult
and narrow ascent, which Clodius kept under guard, while the rest was sheer cliffs and smooth rock, but with much wild vine growing thick upon the surface, they cut what was useful of the tendrils, and weaving from them strong and long ladders, so that let down from above they reached, along the cliff-face, down to the level ground, they climbed down safely by means of them, all but one man. This man remained behind for the sake of the weapons, and once the others had climbed down, he threw the weapons down after them, and having thrown them all down he himself came off safely last of all,
of all this the Romans were unaware; and so, having gone around them, the gladiators struck them with terror by their suddenness, and when a rout occurred, took their camp. And many of the herdsmen and shepherds of that region joined them, vigorous and swift-footed men, some of whom they armed, while they employed others as scouts and light-armed troops.
A second general is sent out against them, Publius Varinus, whose subordinate officer, a certain Furius, having two thousand soldiers, they routed when he engaged them; then Spartacus, watching for his moment, very nearly seized Cossinius, who had been sent as adviser and co-commander to Varinus with a large force, while he was bathing near Salinae.
Cossinius, having escaped with difficulty and only barely, Spartacus at once got control of his baggage train, and pressing hard upon his heels and pursuing with great slaughter took his camp. Cossinius himself also fell. Then, having defeated the general [Varinus] himself in many other battles, and finally capturing his lictors and his own horse, Spartacus was now great and formidable, yet he kept a fitting sense of proportion, and, having no expectation of overpowering Rome, directed his army toward the Alps, judging that once they were across, each man should make his way home, some to Thrace, others to Gaul.
But his men, being strong in numbers and thinking highly of themselves, would not obey, but went about ravaging Italy as they advanced. No longer, then, did the disgrace and shame of the revolt trouble the Senate, but rather fear and danger, as toward one of the most difficult and greatest of wars, and they sent out both consuls,
of whom Gellius fell suddenly upon the German contingent, which had broken off from the men of Spartacus out of arrogance and overconfidence, and destroyed it entirely, while Lentulus, having surrounded Spartacus with large armies, found him charging to close quarters and joining battle: Spartacus defeated the legates and took all their baggage; and as he was pushed on toward the Alps, Cassius, the praetor of the Gaul about the Po, with ten thousand men, met him; and a battle occurring, Cassius was defeated, lost many men, and barely escaped himself.
When the Senate learned of these things, in anger it ordered the consuls to remain quiet, and chose Crassus general of the war; and many of the notable men joined the campaign with him on account of his reputation and friendship. He himself, then, waited before Picenum, expecting to receive Spartacus as he moved that way, and he sent Mummius, a legate leading two legions, around by a circuit, ordering him to follow the enemy but not to engage or skirmish.
But Mummius, the moment he saw any chance of success, engaged the enemy and suffered defeat; many of his men were killed, while many others threw down their weapons and got away alive. Crassus received Mummius himself harshly, and, arming the soldiers again, demanded pledges for their weapons, that they would keep them; and of the first five hundred, and especially those who had fled, dividing them into fifty groups of ten, he put to death one man from each group chosen by lot, inflicting on the soldiers this ancient punishment, revived after a long time.
For there is attached to this manner of death a special disgrace, and many things horrible and grim are done in the punishment, with all the men looking on. Having thus turned his men around, he led them against the enemy. Spartacus withdrew through Lucania toward the sea, and, falling in at the strait with Cilician pirate ships, set out to make for Sicily, and by putting two thousand men ashore on the island intended to rekindle the slave war there, a fire only recently put out and lacking merely a bit of tinder to flare up again.
But the Cilicians, though they had struck a bargain with him and accepted gifts, betrayed him and sailed off. So Spartacus, marching back again from the coast, settled his army on the peninsula near Rhegium. Crassus arrived, and, recognizing what the terrain itself recommended as a course of action, undertook to wall off the isthmus, thereby denying his own soldiers idleness and the enemy easy provisioning,
the work was great and difficult indeed, yet he achieved and completed it, beyond expectation, in a short time, carrying a ditch from sea to sea across the neck of land, three hundred stadia long, with a width and depth each of fifteen feet; and above the ditch he raised a wall of wondrous height and strength.
Of these works Spartacus at first took no notice and made light of them; but when his plunder began to run short and, wishing to advance, he perceived the wall shutting him in and that nothing could be got from the peninsula, watching for a snowy night and a wintry wind, he filled in a small part of the ditch with earth, timber, and the branches of trees, so that a third of his army was able to cross.
Crassus, then, feared that some impulse might seize Spartacus to drive on Rome itself, but he took courage when many of Spartacus's men, breaking off from him over some quarrel, encamped by themselves near a Lucanian lake, which they say changes over time, becoming sweet and then again briny and undrinkable. Crassus attacked these men and drove them from the lake, yet Spartacus arrived on the scene quickly and cut short their flight, denying Crassus the chance to finish them off in slaughter and pursuit.
Though he had earlier written to the Senate saying that Lucullus should be called from Thrace and Pompey from Iberia, he now changed his mind, and, before those men could arrive, hastened to finish the war, knowing that once help arrived and had joined him, the success would be thought not his own but the newcomer's. First, then, resolving to attack those who had broken away and were campaigning on their own, whose leaders were Gaius Cannicius and Castus, he sent six thousand men ahead to seize a certain hill, ordering them to try to escape notice.
These men tried to conceal themselves by covering their helmets, but, being seen by two women who were sacrificing before the enemy's camp, they came into danger, had not Crassus, appearing swiftly, joined the most fiercely fought battle of them all, in which, striking down twelve thousand three hundred men, he found only two wounded in the back, all the rest having stood their ground in rank and died fighting the Romans.
After this defeat, as Spartacus was withdrawing toward the mountains of Petelia, Quintus — an officer under Crassus's command — together with the quaestor Scrofa, stayed close on his heels and followed. But when he turned about, a great rout of the Romans occurred, and they barely managed to snatch up the wounded quaestor and get him to safety. This success ruined Spartacus, for it brought overconfidence upon the runaway slaves.
For they no longer thought it right to avoid battle, nor did they obey their commanders, but, as these were already on the march under arms, the men surrounded them and forced them to lead the way back again through Lucania against the Romans, hastening to the same goal as Crassus. For Pompey was already reported to be approaching, and indeed not a few were canvassing openly for the war's victory to be credited to him, on the ground that as soon as he arrived he would fight and end the war. Crassus, therefore, being eager to bring the fight to a decision, and having camped alongside the enemy, was digging a ditch, against which the slaves, sallying out, fought with the men at work.
As ever more men rushed to help from either side, Spartacus, seeing the necessity upon him, drew up his whole army in battle order. And first, when his horse was led out to him, he drew his sword and declared that, should he win, he would have plenty of fine enemy horses for the taking, but should he lose, he would have no need of this one — and with that he cut the animal down; he then fought his way toward Crassus himself through a mass of weapons and wounds, and though he never reached him, he did strike down two centurions who crossed his path.
At last, when those around him had scattered in flight, he alone held his position, and, though ringed by a great number of foes, fell fighting to the last in his own defense. Though Crassus had used his fortune and generalship in the best way, and had exposed his own person to danger, still the credit for this success did not escape being claimed for Pompey's glory. For those who had fled the battle fell in with Pompey and were destroyed, so that he even wrote to the Senate that Crassus had indeed conquered the runaway slaves in open battle, but that he himself had torn out the root of the war.
Pompey, then, celebrated a splendid triumph for his victories over Sertorius and in Iberia, but Crassus himself did not even attempt to ask for the great triumph, and it was thought base and unworthy of him to celebrate even the lesser one, the so-called ovation, on account of a war against slaves. What the difference is between the two, and about the manner of proclaiming them, has been written in the Life of Marcellus.
After this, when Pompey was at once being summoned to the consulship, Crassus, though he had hopes of holding office together with him, did not shrink from asking Pompey's help. Pompey, receiving the request gladly—for he always desired somehow to have Crassus in his debt for some favor—pursued the matter eagerly, and at last said in a public assembly that he would feel no less gratitude toward Pompey for his colleague than for the office itself,
yet they did not remain in this friendly spirit once they had entered upon office; rather, disagreeing about nearly everything and being difficult with one another and quarreling over everything, they made their consulship unproductive for politics and without accomplishment, except that Crassus, after making a great sacrifice to Heracles, gave a public banquet spread over ten thousand tables and handed out enough grain to supply every household for three months.
Now when their term of office was already coming to an end, it happened that they were holding an assembly, and a certain man, not of the notable class, a Roman knight, rustic in his way of life and a private citizen, Onatius Aurelius, went up onto the platform, came forward, and described a dream-vision he had experienced while asleep. "For Zeus," he said, "appearing to me, ordered me to declare publicly that you should not allow the consuls to lay down their office before they have become friends."
While the man was saying this and the crowd was calling on them to be reconciled, Pompey stood there quietly, but Crassus, thrusting out his right hand first, said, "Fellow citizens, I hold that there is nothing base or unbecoming in my being the one to make the first move toward goodwill and friendship with Pompey — a man you hailed as 'the Great' while his chin was still bare of a beard, and to whom you granted a triumph before he had so much as taken a seat in the Senate."
Such, then, were the memorable events of Crassus's consulship. His censorship, however, passed entirely without effect and without accomplishment, for he carried out neither a review of the Senate, nor an inspection of the knights, nor an assessment of the citizens' property, even though he had as his colleague in office the gentlest of the Romans, Lutatius Catulus. But they say that when Crassus set out upon a harsh and violent measure, to make Egypt tributary to the Romans, Catulus vigorously opposed him, and from the quarrel that arose the two of them voluntarily laid down their office.
In the affair concerning Catiline, which was serious business and came close to overturning Rome, some suspicion touched Crassus, and a man came forward naming him as part of the conspiracy, but no one believed it.
All the same, Cicero, in one speech, was plainly casting the blame onto Crassus and Caesar. But this speech was published only after both men had died, whereas his treatise On His Consulship claims that a nighttime visit was paid to him by Crassus, who brought along a letter setting out the details of the Catiline affair as though the plot were already established fact.
Crassus, for his part, always hated Cicero on this account, though his son kept him from doing him open harm. For Publius, being fond of literature and learning, was so attached to Cicero that when Cicero stood trial he put on mourning dress alongside him, and induced the rest of the younger men present to follow suit. In the end he persuaded his father to become Cicero's friend.
When Caesar returned from his province, preparing to seek the consulship, and saw that Crassus and Pompey were again at odds with one another, he did not want, by asking a favor of one, to make an enemy of the other, nor did he expect to succeed if neither cooperated with him.
He therefore set about bringing them to reconciliation, pressing the matter and pointing out that by pulling each other down they were only building up men like Cicero and Catulus and Cato, men of no account at all, if only they would combine their friendships and their factions into one and lead the state by a single power and a single purpose. Having persuaded them and reconciled them, he brought the three of them together and formed out of them an irresistible strength, by which they dissolved the authority of the Roman Senate and people — not making those two greater through each other, but rather, through them, making himself the greatest of all.
For at once, lifted up by both of them, he was brilliantly declared consul. And while he was consul, they voted him command of armies and put Gaul into his hands, establishing him there as though in a citadel, thinking that meanwhile they would quietly divide up the rest between themselves, once they had secured for him the office that had fallen to his lot.
Pompey, then, acted as he did out of an unbounded love of power; but in Crassus's case, the old disease of love of wealth, taking on a new passion and a jealous rivalry over Caesar's feats of trophies and triumphs — in which alone, though he surpassed Caesar in everything else, he found himself falling short — this did not release him or let him rest until it brought him to an inglorious ruin and to public disasters.
For when Caesar came down from Gaul to the city of Luca, many other Romans went there too, and Pompey and Crassus, meeting with him privately, decided to take firmer hold of affairs and bring the whole government under themselves, with Caesar remaining under arms while Pompey and Crassus took other provinces and armies.
There was one road to this: a bid for a second consulship, and in seeking it they would need Caesar's cooperation — he would have to write letters on their behalf to his friends, and dispatch a large contingent of his soldiers to take part in the elections.
On these terms Crassus and his associates, once back in Rome, were at once objects of suspicion, and a great rumor spread through everyone that their meeting had not been for any good purpose. And in the Senate, when Marcellinus and Domitius put to Pompey the question of whether he meant to seek the consulship, his reply was that he might seek it, or he might not; pressed further, he said he would seek it for the sake of citizens who were just, but not for unjust ones.
Since this seemed to be an arrogant and puffed-up answer, Crassus spoke more moderately, saying that he would stand for office if it benefited the state, but if not, he would not. For this reason some men found the courage to seek the consulship as well, among them Domitius. But once it became clear what Pompey and Crassus intended in their campaigns, the others took fright and withdrew, while Cato, who was Domitius's kinsman and friend, encouraged him and urged him on, spurring him to hold on to his hope as one fighting on behalf of the common freedom; for it was not a consulship that Pompey and Crassus wanted, he said, but tyranny, and what was being carried out was not a bid for office but the seizing of provinces and armies.
Speaking and thinking in just this way, Cato all but forced Domitius bodily forward into the Forum, and many rallied to their side, and there was no small wonder at it: "Why is it that these two want a second consulship? Why again together with each other? Why not with others? Surely there are many men among us not unworthy to hold office alongside Crassus and Pompey."
Frightened by this, Pompey's men held back from none of the most disorderly and violent acts; besides everything else, they set an ambush for Domitius, who was still coming down in the dark with his companions, and they killed the man carrying the torch in front of him and wounded many others, among them Cato. Having routed them and shut them up in the house, they were proclaimed consuls;
and not long afterward, again surrounding the speaker's platform with armed men, they drove Cato out of the Forum, and killing some who resisted, they granted Caesar another five-year term of command, and voted for themselves as provinces Syria and both the Spains together. When lots were drawn, Crassus obtained Syria, and Pompey the Spanish provinces.
The lot was not against anyone's wishes. For most people wanted Pompey to remain not far from the city, and Pompey, devoted as he was to his wife, meant to pass the greater part of his time in her company there; while Crassus, the moment the lot fell out, was so plainly overjoyed that he thought no piece of good fortune more brilliant had ever come to him than this present one, so that he could scarcely keep quiet even among strangers and in large gatherings, and among his familiars he spoke a great deal of empty, boyish talk quite out of keeping with his age and character — a man who in his life had least been given to bragging or bluster.
But now, entirely puffed up and out of his senses, he set no bound to his prospects at Syria or even at the Parthians, but, as though meaning to make Lucullus's campaign against Tigranes and Pompey's against Mithridates look like child's play, he carried his hopes forward in imagination as far as the Bactrians and the Indians and the outer sea.
And yet the law that had been drafted concerning this had made no mention of a Parthian war. But everyone knew that this was what Crassus's heart was set on; and Caesar wrote to him from Gaul praising his impulse and urging him on to the war. When the tribune Ateius was about to oppose his departure, and many gathered angrily, protesting that it was wrong for anyone to march off to make war on people who had done no wrong but were bound by treaty, Crassus grew afraid and asked Pompey to be present and to escort him out;
for Pompey's standing with the crowd was great, and on that occasion, when many had been prepared to stand in the way and cry out against Crassus, it was the sight of Pompey going before him with a bright look and a cheerful face that calmed them, so that they yielded and let the two pass through in silence. But Ateius, meeting them, first tried by word to stop him and protested against his going, then ordered his attendant to lay hold of Crassus's person and detain him.
When the other tribunes would not allow this, the attendant let Crassus go, but Ateius, running ahead to the gate, set down a burning brazier, and when Crassus came level with it, he burned incense over it and poured libations, uttering curses that were terrible and dreadful, and calling upon certain terrible and strange gods as he did so.
The Romans say that these curses, invoked with such naming of gods, are ancient and hidden ones, of such power that no one caught in their grip can ever escape, and that even the one who employs them fares badly himself, which is why they are not pronounced on ordinary occasions nor by many people. And so at that time people blamed Ateius, saying that if he was angry with Crassus, it was upon the city, for whose sake he was angry, that he had let loose curses and such great superstitious dread.
Crassus came to Brundisium. Though the sea was still unsettled with storms, he did not wait, but put out to sea, and lost a good many of his ships; taking the rest of his force he pressed on by land through Galatia, and finding King Deiotarus, who was already quite an old man, founding a new city, he mocked him, saying, "Well, king, you are laying foundations at the day's twelfth hour." The Galatian laughed and said:
"But you yourself, general, as I see it, are not exactly setting out early against the Parthians either." Crassus was then past sixty years of age, and looked older still than his years. On his arrival, things at first met his hopes as he deserved: he crossed the Euphrates easily and led his army across safely, and he took possession of many cities in Mesopotamia that came over to him willingly.
In one of these towns, ruled by the tyrant Apollonius, a hundred of Crassus's men lost their lives; he marched his force against the place, and having overpowered them, he plundered their goods and sold the people into slavery. The Greeks called this city Zenodotia. When it had been taken, he accepted being proclaimed imperator by the army, and this brought him great disgrace, and he appeared small-minded and lacking in hope for greater things, so pleased was he with so small a gain.
After placing garrisons in the cities that had come over to him — numbering seven thousand infantry and a thousand cavalry — he himself withdrew to winter in Syria, meaning to await there the arrival of his son from Gaul, whom Caesar was sending, honored with military distinctions and now in command of a thousand chosen horsemen. Here, it was judged, lay Crassus's first blunder, and it proved the worst of everything that came after in the campaign: rather than pushing on at once to seize Babylon and Seleucia — cities that had never been friendly to the Parthians — he left his enemy time to prepare,
and further, people blamed his stay in Syria as being more suited to money-making than to generalship; for he was not reviewing the number of his arms or holding contests of exercise, but reckoning up the revenues of cities, and for many days handling with scales and balances the treasure of the goddess at Hierapolis, and imposing levies of soldiers on peoples and princes only to release them again on payment of money — for this he lost repute and was held in contempt.
The first sign that came to him was from this very goddess, whom some consider to be Aphrodite, others Hera, others still the power and nature that has furnished all things their origins and seeds out of moisture, and that has shown to mankind the beginning of all good things. For as they were coming out of the temple, the young Crassus stumbled first at the gate, and then the elder Crassus fell over him.
Already, as he was gathering his forces together from their winter quarters, envoys arrived from Arsaces with a short and pointed statement: if the Roman people themselves had authorized this army, they announced, the war that followed would allow no truce and no reconciliation; but if, as they understood the matter, Crassus had taken up arms against the Parthians and seized their land for his own private gain, against his country's own wishes, then Arsaces would show restraint, taking pity on Crassus's old age, and would send back to the Romans the soldiers he currently held captive — men who were guarded rather than guarding.
When Crassus boasted in reply that his answer would be delivered in Seleucia, Vagises, the eldest of the envoys, laughed and, showing the palm of his upturned hand, said, "Hair will grow here, Crassus, before you see Seleucia." So these men rode off to tell King Hyrodes that war was at hand, while from the cities of Mesopotamia that the Romans were garrisoning, some men who had broken through at great risk brought news worth serious concern,
having themselves been eyewitnesses of the multitude of the enemy and of the fighting they had gone through in the assaults on the cities, and reporting everything, as is natural, in a more frightening light — how the men were inescapable when pursuing and uncatchable when fleeing, how they had strange missiles that outran the sight, moving through whatever stood in the way before the one who shot them could even be seen, and how the weapons of their armored horsemen were made so that some could pierce anything, and others would give way to nothing,
hearing this, the soldiers' courage sank. For, having been convinced that the Parthians were no different from the Armenians or Cappadocians, whom Lucullus had led about and worn down until he gave up on them, and supposing that the toughest portion of this campaign would simply be a lengthy march combined with chasing an enemy who would never risk close combat, they now found themselves, contrary to their expectations, facing a great struggle and danger, so much so that even a number of the officers felt Crassus should pause and think the whole matter through once more. Among these was Cassius the quaestor.
The seers, too, quietly hinted that the omens revealed to Crassus through the sacrifices were always unfavorable and hard to expiate, but he paid no attention either to them or to anyone else who advised anything but haste.
Not least of all, Artabazes the king of the Armenians strengthened his resolve; for he came to the camp with six thousand horsemen. These, it was said, were a bodyguard and escort for the king, and he promised ten thousand more mailed cavalry besides, and thirty thousand infantry maintained at their own expense.
He attempted to convince Crassus that the invasion of Parthia should proceed by way of Armenia, arguing that his army would find abundant provisions along that route, and that Crassus would travel safely, shielded by many mountains and rugged unbroken hills, country ill-suited to cavalry, the sole strength of the Parthians. Crassus offered moderate thanks for his eagerness and for the splendid aid he proposed, but declared that he would instead march his forces through Mesopotamia, since he had left behind many good Roman soldiers there.
So the Armenian rode off on these terms. But as Crassus was leading his army across at Zeugma, many extraordinary claps of thunder broke out, and much lightning flashed against the army, and a wind mingled with cloud and whirlwind bore down upon his pontoon-bridge, tearing much of it apart and shattering it.
The very place where he intended to encamp was struck by two thunderbolts. And a horse belonging to one of the officers, splendidly adorned, dragged its driver by force into the current and vanished beneath the water. It is also said that the first eagle-standard, when it was raised, turned about of its own accord.
In addition to these things, it happened that after the crossing, when provisions were being measured out to the soldiers, the very first things given to all were lentils and salt, which the Romans consider signs of mourning and set out before the dead; and while Crassus himself was addressing the army, a word escaped him that terribly confounded the troops. For he said that he was breaking up the bridge over the river so that none of them might return. And though, when he perceived the strangeness of the remark, he ought to have taken it back and explained it to the men who were becoming afraid, he neglected to do so out of stubbornness.
Finally he performed the customary purification sacrifice, and when the seer handed him the entrails, he dropped them from his hands; and seeing how greatly distressed those present were at this, he broke into a smile and remarked, "This is what old age brings; yet no weapon, at least, could ever escape these hands."
After this he marched along the river, having seven legions of heavy infantry and cavalry falling only a little short of four thousand, and light-armed troops about equal in number to the cavalry. Some of the scouts, returning from a lookout, reported that the land was empty of people, though they had encountered the hoofprints of numerous horses, as if of men who had turned about and were being pursued back the way they came. From this Crassus himself grew even more hopeful, and the soldiers were led entirely to despise the Parthians, believing they would not come to close quarters,
Nevertheless Cassius and his companions again spoke with Crassus, and urged him above all to let the army rest within a city held by a garrison until he learned something certain about the enemy, or else, failing that, to advance toward Seleucia along the river; for the grain-transports would provide abundant supplies as they sailed down together with the army toward the camp, and having the river as a guard against encirclement, they would always be fighting the enemy on equal terms, face to face.
While Crassus was still weighing these things and deliberating, there arrived an Arab chieftain named Ariamnes, a treacherous and shifting man, who of all the evils that fortune brought together for their destruction proved the greatest and most complete.
Some of those who had served under Pompey knew this man, having enjoyed some measure of Pompey's kindness, and had thought him well-disposed to Rome; but now he had submitted himself to Crassus at the instigation of the king's generals, in the hope that he might turn him far away from the river and the foothills and drive him out into an immense open plain where he could be encircled. For they intended anything rather than to engage the Romans face to face.
So the barbarian came to Crassus—he was in fact a persuasive speaker—and praised Pompey as a benefactor, but reproached Crassus, even while congratulating him on the size of his force, for delaying and making preparations, as though he would need weapons rather than the swiftest hands and feet against men who for a long time now have been seeking to seize their most precious goods and persons and fly off to the Scythians or Hyrcanians.
"And yet," he said, "if you mean to fight, you ought to hurry, before the king recovers his courage and brings his whole force together in one place; for as it is, only Surenas and Sillaces have been set before you, having taken upon themselves the pursuit against you, while the king himself is nowhere to be seen."
All this was false; for Hyrodes had at once divided his forces in two, and he himself was ravaging Armenia, taking vengeance on Artavasdes, while he sent Surenas against the Romans—not out of arrogance, as some say; for it was not consistent for the same man to think Crassus, the foremost man of the Romans, unworthy of his own opposition, while he made war on Artavasdes and fell upon the villages of Armenia to destroy them; rather, it seems that he greatly feared the danger, and so held himself in reserve, waiting to see what would happen, while he set Surenas forward to test the battle and to draw the enemy about.
For Surenas was no ordinary man, but second to the king in wealth, birth, and reputation, and first among the Parthians of his time in courage and skill, and moreover in stature and beauty of body unmatched by any other. He always rode out attended by a thousand camels carrying his baggage, and brought along two hundred wagons of concubines; a thousand mail-clad horsemen and still more light cavalry escorted him; and altogether his mounted followers, clients and slaves together, numbered no fewer than ten thousand.
By hereditary right from the beginning, his family possessed the privilege of being first to set the diadem upon a newly made king of the Parthians; and it was he who restored this very Hyrodes, when he had been driven out, to the Parthians, and he was the first to take great Seleucia for him, mounting the wall and routing with his own hand those who resisted. Though not yet thirty years of age at that time, he had the highest reputation for good judgment and intelligence, by which qualities, not least of all, he brought down Crassus—first through overconfidence and pride, and then, once fear and misfortune had taken hold, through being easily overcome by his deceptions.
So then the barbarian, having persuaded him, pulled him away from the riverbank and guided him straight across the open plains, along a road that was smooth and easy at first, but afterward harsh, receiving them into deep sand and plains without trees or water, stretching on with no end perceptible to the senses anywhere, with the result that thirst, together with the hardship of the march, was not alone in driving them to despair,
but the very sight of the land gave rise to inconsolable despondency: they saw no plant, no stream, no jutting shoulder of a mountain, no sprouting blade of grass, but simply an endless sea-like expanse of desert sand surrounding the army on every side. Even from this alone the treachery was suspected; but then messengers also arrived from Artavasdes the Armenian, saying that he was hard pressed by a great war, since Hyrodes had fallen upon him, and that he was unable to send him aid,
but advised Crassus above all to turn there and, joining forces with the Armenians, to fight it out together against Hyrodes; or, failing that, to march and encamp always avoiding ground suited to cavalry and keeping close to the hill country. Crassus, without writing any reply, answered out of anger and stubbornness that he had no time now for the Armenians, but would come again to exact punishment from Artavasdes for his betrayal.
Cassius and his companions were again indignant, and having ceased trying to admonish Crassus, who was annoyed with them, they reviled the barbarian privately: "What evil spirit, you vilest of men, brought you to us? By what drugs and sorceries did you persuade Crassus to pour out his army into a vast and bottomless wilderness and to travel a road fit for a nomad brigand chief rather than for a Roman commander?"
But the barbarian, being a versatile man, humbly reassured them and urged them to endure just a little longer, while at the same time, running alongside the soldiers and lending them encouragement, he mocked them with laughter: "Do you suppose you are marching through Campania, longing, no doubt, for springs and streams and shade and baths and inns? Do you not remember that you are passing through the borderland of the Arabs and Assyrians?"
In this way the barbarian led the Romans along like children, and before his deception became apparent, he rode off—not unnoticed by Crassus, but having also persuaded him that he would work behind the scenes and throw the enemy's affairs into confusion.
It is said that Crassus, on this particular day, failed to appear as is the custom of Roman generals in a scarlet cloak, but rather in a black one, and that upon noticing this himself he switched it at once; and that some of the standards, as though they had become fixed in the ground, were raised only with great effort and difficulty by those carrying them.
Crassus, laughing at these things, hastened the march, forcing the infantry to match the cavalry's pace, until several men from those sent out on reconnaissance rode up and reported that the rest had been destroyed by the enemy, and that they themselves had barely escaped, and that the enemy were advancing to fight in great numbers and with great confidence,
All were thrown into confusion, and Crassus himself was utterly astounded, and in his haste, not being altogether composed, drew up his lines—first, as Cassius and his companions urged, extending the infantry line thinly over a great stretch of the plain to guard against encirclement, and distributing the cavalry along the wings; then he changed his mind, and drawing the men together, formed a deep, hollow square with a front on both sides, each side advancing with twelve cohorts,
and beside each cohort he stationed a squadron of cavalry, so that no part might lack the support of horsemen, but the whole might advance evenly on every side, fully guarded. Of the wings, he gave one to Cassius, the other to the younger Crassus, while he himself took his stand in the center. Advancing in this manner, they came to a stream called the Balissus—not large otherwise, nor abundant, but welcome enough at that time to the soldiers, appearing as it did amid drought and heat and after the rest of their toilsome and waterless march.
Now most of the officers thought it necessary to encamp there, and to pass the night, and to learn, so far as possible, the number and disposition of the enemy, and then at daybreak to advance against them; but Crassus, urged on by his son and the cavalry about him, who were eager to advance and engage at once, gave orders that those who needed food and drink should eat and drink standing in ranks.
And before this could be properly carried out by all, he led the army forward, not at a leisurely pace, nor resting as one would before battle, but using a swift and unrelenting march, until the enemy came into view—appearing, contrary to expectation, to the Romans neither numerous nor formidable. For Surenas had concealed the greater number behind his front ranks, and had hidden the brightness of their weapons by ordering cloaks and hides to be thrown over them. But when they drew near and a signal was raised by their general, first the plain was filled with a deep, resounding din and a terrifying roar.
For the Parthians do not rouse themselves for combat using horns or trumpets; instead they stretch hollow drums covered with hide over bronze resonators, and beat upon them all at once from many quarters; and these give forth a sound deep and terrible, mingled with the roar of wild beasts and the harshness of thunder, since they have observed, quite rightly, that of all the senses hearing most disturbs the soul, and most quickly stirs its passions and most thoroughly unsettles the reason.
While the Romans were still stunned by the din, the Parthians suddenly threw off the coverings of their weapons and were seen themselves ablaze in helmets and breastplates, the steel of Margiana gleaming sharp and brilliant, and their horses armored with plates of bronze and iron,
and Surenas himself, tallest and most handsome of all, though his reputation for courage did not match the effeminacy of his beauty—for he was adorned in more Median fashion, with cosmetics on his face and his hair parted down the middle, whereas the remaining Parthians still styled theirs in Scythian fashion, swept back to look fearsome.
And at first they intended to charge in with their lances and push and force back the front ranks; but when they saw the depth of the interlocked shields and the steadiness and firmness of the men, they drew back again, and while seeming to scatter and break up their formation, they were in fact, without being noticed, surrounding the Roman square on every side.
When Crassus ordered the light-armed troops to run out, they did not advance far, but meeting a great many arrows, quickly turned back again and slipped in among the heavy infantry, and caused the beginning of disorder and fear, as the men saw the force of the arrows and the strength with which they shattered armor and passed clean through every kind of covering alike, whether hard or soft.
The Parthians, spreading out at a distance, began shooting arrows from every side at once—not with precise aim, for the closeness and density of the Roman ranks made it impossible even for one who wished to, to miss a man—but delivering strong and forceful blows from powerful, large bows, and with the curvature of the bow's bend forcing the arrow onward with great impetus.
So the situation of the Romans was already bad from the outset: for even standing their ground they were being wounded, and when they tried to close and come to grips they were as far from doing the enemy equal harm, while suffering just as much themselves. For the Parthians would retreat even as they shot, and this they do best of all peoples after the Scythians; and it is a very clever thing, still defending oneself while escaping, and taking away from flight its disgrace.
Now as long as they hoped that the Parthians, once they had spent their arrows, would either cease fighting or close to hand-to-hand combat, they held out; but when they learned that many camels stood ready laden with arrows, from which the foremost archers, riding round, replenished their supply, Crassus, seeing no end to it, lost heart, and sent messengers to his son, ordering him to try to force an engagement with the enemy in front of him before he should be surrounded. For it was against him especially that they were pressing and riding round his wing, as if about to get behind him.
So the young man, taking thirteen hundred horsemen, of whom a thousand were from Caesar, together with five hundred bowmen and eight cohorts of shield-bearers stationed nearest him, mustered these for a charge. But the Parthians who were riding round him, either because they encountered marshy ground, as some say, or because they were maneuvering to draw Crassus as far as possible from his father, turned about and rode off.
And he, shouting that the enemy were not holding their line, gave chase, accompanied by Censorinus and Megabacchus — Megabacchus noted for his courage and bodily strength, Censorinus a man of senatorial standing and no mean orator; both were companions of Crassus's son and near him in years. And as the cavalry followed, not even the infantry was left behind, in eagerness and joy at their hope; for they thought they were winning and pursuing, until, having advanced far, they perceived the deception, when those who seemed to be fleeing turned about at the same moment, and many more others bore down upon them.
There they halted, thinking that the enemy, being few, would close with them hand-to-hand; but the Parthians, placing their mailed cavalry in front, opposite the Romans, and driving the rest of their unarmored horse disorderly around them, stirring up the plain, raised from its depths dunes of dust bearing an immense cloud, which robbed the Romans of clear sight and of the power to speak to one another,
but being crowded together in a small space and falling upon one another, they were struck and died — not easily, nor a quick death, but writhing in convulsion and pain, rolling about upon the arrows, breaking them off deeper in their wounds, and trying by force to pull out the barbed points that had lodged through veins and sinews, tearing themselves open further and destroying themselves.
So, as many were dying in this way, even those still alive were powerless for resistance; and when Publius urged them to charge into the mailed cavalry, they showed him their hands pinned fast to their shields and their feet transfixed and rooted to the earth, leaving them powerless to flee or to defend themselves.
He himself, then, urging on the cavalry, attacked vigorously and closed with the enemy, but the contest was unequal both in the blows given and in the protection received, striking as he did with weak, small spears against breastplates of rawhide and iron, while being struck with long lances against the light, bare bodies of the Gauls — for it was in these men especially that he trusted, and with them he was accomplishing marvelous feats.
For they would seize hold of the lances, and grappling with the men would push them from their horses, hindered as they were by the weight of their armor from moving easily; and many, abandoning their own horses and creeping under those of the enemy, struck upward into their bellies. The horses reared up in pain, and trampling alike their own riders and the enemy mixed together, they died.
What most oppressed the Gauls was the heat and the thirst, both being unaccustomed to them; and most of their horses had perished, driven upon the opposing lances. They were therefore forced to withdraw to the heavy infantry, carrying Publius, who was by now in a bad state from his wounds. Seeing a hillock of sand nearby, they made for it, and tying their horses in the middle, and closing themselves round on the outside with their shields, they thought they would more easily defend themselves against the barbarians.
But the opposite happened: for on level ground, those in front somehow afford the men behind some measure of relief, but there, since the uneven ground raised one man above another and always exposed the one behind still more, there was no escape for anyone, but all alike were struck, bewailing their inglorious and futile end.
Around Publius were two Greeks, of those settled there in Carrhae, Hieronymus and Nicomachus, who urged him to steal away with them and make for Ichnae, a nearby town in Roman hands. But he answered that no manner of death held enough terror to make him, out of fear, forsake men who were dying for his sake; instead he bade them see to their own safety, and, clasping each by the hand, bade them farewell; but he himself, unable to use his hand, for it had been pierced through by an arrow, ordered his shield-bearer to strike him with the sword, offering his side.
In like manner they say Censorinus too died; and Megabacchus took his own life, as did the most eminent of the others. Those who were left the Parthians rode upon and ran through with their lances as they still fought; and they say no more than five hundred were taken alive. Cutting off the heads of Publius and those with him, they rode at once against Crassus.
His situation was as follows: when he had ordered his son to charge the Parthians, and someone brought word to him that there was a long rout and a vigorous pursuit of the enemy, and he saw that those opposite him were no longer pressing as before — for most of them had streamed off there — he took a little heart, and gathering his forces drew his army back into sloping ground, expecting his son to return at once from the pursuit.
Of the men sent by Publius to him, to say that he was in danger, the first were destroyed, falling in among the barbarians, while the later ones, escaping with difficulty, reported that Publius was lost, unless swift and great
help should come from Crassus. And many feelings at once seized Crassus: by reasoning he could no longer clearly see anything of the situation, but drawn at once by fear for the whole and by longing for his son, torn between helping and not helping, at last he set the army in motion to advance. And at that moment the enemy came on with a din and a war-cry more terrible than before, and many of their drums again bellowed round about the Romans, who expected the beginning of another battle,
but those carrying the head of Publius fixed upon a spear-point, riding up close, displayed it, mockingly demanding to know his lineage and kin — since, they jeered, it could hardly be that a son so noble and so brilliant in courage had sprung from a coward and weakling such as Crassus. This sight broke and unstrung the souls of the Romans beyond all their other terrors, not with anger toward defense, as would have been reasonable, but with a shuddering and trembling that came upon them all.
And yet they say Crassus himself appeared most brilliant of all in that suffering; for he passed among the ranks calling out: "Romans, this sorrow belongs to me alone; the vast good fortune and the renown of Rome remain whole and unvanquished in you, who yet live. And if there is any pity for me, robbed of a son who was best of all men, show it as anger against the enemy — take away their joy, punish their cruelty, do not be terrified at what has happened, if men who reach for great things must also suffer something.
Not even Lucullus brought down Tigranes without bloodshed, nor Scipio Antiochus; the men of old lost a thousand ships around Sicily, and in Italy many generals and commanders, none of whom, though defeated first, prevented their people from mastering their conquerors afterward. For it is not by good fortune that the power of Rome has come to this greatness, but by endurance and valor in facing terrors."
Speaking thus and encouraging them, Crassus saw that not many obeyed with eagerness; indeed, when he ordered them to raise the battle-cry together, he exposed the despondency of the army, so weak and small and uneven a shout did they raise, while that of the barbarians held forth bright and bold. And when they turned to action, the horsemen, riding round on the flanks, shot their arrows, while those in front, using their lances, pressed the Romans together into a small space,
except for those who, fleeing the death that came from the arrows, dared recklessly to rush upon the enemy, doing little harm but dying quickly from great and mortal wounds, as the enemy drove the thick iron point of the lance into the horses, and often it passed through even two men at once from the force of the charge. Having fought in this way, they broke off as night came on, saying that they granted Crassus one night to mourn his son, unless indeed, thinking better for himself, he should prefer to come to Arsaces rather than be carried there.
These then camped nearby in great hopes; but a harsh night overtook the Romans, who gave no thought to burying the fallen nor to caring for the wounded and the dying, each man weeping for himself. For it seemed there was no escape, whether they remained there through the day or, by night, plunged into the vast plain; and the wounded caused great difficulty — both to carry them, which would hinder the speed of the flight, and to abandon them, since their cries would announce the escape.
As for Crassus, though they considered him the cause of it all, they nonetheless longed for the sight of him and his voice. But he lay by himself, wrapped up in the darkness — an example to the many of fortune, and to those who judge well, of poor judgment and ambition, by which he was not content to be first and greatest among so many myriads of men, but, because he was judged second to only two men, considered himself to fall short of everything.
At that point, Octavius the legate together with Cassius attempted to lift his spirits and rouse him to action; but when he had utterly given up, they themselves called together the centurions and captains, and, having decided in council not to remain, roused the army without trumpet-call and in silence at first; but then, when those unable to move perceived that they were being left behind, terrible disorder and confusion, with wailing and shouting, seized the camp.
From this a panic and terror overtook them as they advanced, as though the enemy were bearing down upon them, and often they turned aside, often formed again into order, and those wounded men who kept up with them, some being taken up and some set down, caused delay — except for three hundred horsemen, whom Ignatius led and brought to Carrhae about midnight.
Calling out in Latin to the guards on the wall, when they answered, he ordered them to tell Coponius the commander that a great battle had been fought between Crassus and the Parthians; but saying nothing else, nor even who he was, he rode off toward Zeugma, and so saved those with him, though he was ill spoken of for having abandoned his general.
Nevertheless, that word thrown out to Coponius did help Crassus; for Coponius, reasoning that a man with nothing good to report would not speak so hastily and confusedly, at once gave orders for the soldiers to arm themselves. The moment word reached him that Crassus was approaching, he marched out to meet him, gathered him in, and brought the army safely within the city.
The Parthians, perceiving the escape by night, did not pursue; but at daybreak, coming upon those left behind in the camp, no fewer than four thousand, they slaughtered them, and riding over the plain they captured many who were wandering about.
Four cohorts together, which Vargunteius the legate had broken off from the column while it was still night, having strayed from the road, they surrounded on a hill and destroyed as they defended themselves, except for twenty men. These, thrusting their way through them with drawn swords, they let pass in admiration, and gave them a way to go on foot to Carrhae. But to Surenas there came a false report that Crassus had escaped with the best of his men, and that the mixed crowd that had streamed together into Carrhae was of men not worth troubling over.
Thinking, then, that he had let slip the crowning fruit of his victory, yet uncertain and eager to find out how matters truly stood — so that he might either stay and lay siege to Crassus, or abandon the men of Carrhae and give chase instead — he sends secretly one of his bilingual attendants to the walls, ordering him, speaking in the Roman tongue, to call for Crassus himself or Cassius, saying that Surenas wished to confer with them through speech.
When the bilingual man had said this, and it was reported to Crassus's men, they accepted the proposals; and not long after, some Arabs came from the barbarian side who, having spent time in the camp before the battle, recognized both Crassus and Cassius on sight. These, seeing Cassius from the wall, said that Surenas was offering a truce and granting them, as friends of the king, safety, if they would abandon Mesopotamia — for he saw this to be advantageous to both sides before the last extremity.
Cassius accepting, and asking that a place and a time be fixed at which Surenas and Crassus should meet, they said they would do so and rode off.
Surenas, then, pleased that the men were caught fast in the siege, on the next day brought up the Parthians, who heaped much insult upon them and demanded that, if the Romans wished to obtain terms, they should hand over Crassus and Cassius in chains; and they were distressed at being deceived,
They told Crassus that the Armenians' hopes were long and empty, and were themselves bent on flight. None of the men of Carrhae was supposed to learn of this before the proper time, but Andromachus—the most treacherous man of all—found it out, since Crassus had entrusted him with this too, along with the leadership of the march. So nothing escaped the Parthians, since Andromachus reported everything in detail.
Since fighting at night is neither customary for them nor easy, and Crassus was setting out by night so that they would not fall too far behind in the pursuit, Andromachus led them by one road after another, and in the end diverted the march into deep marshes and ground full of ditches, making the going hard and full of wandering for those who followed him.
For there were some who, suspecting that Andromachus's twisting and turning boded no good, did not follow him. Cassius turned back again to Carrhae, and although his Arab guides pressed him to hold off going until the Scorpion had cleared the moon, he answered, "For my own part, I dread this Archer still more," and rode off to Syria with five hundred horsemen.
Others, using trustworthy guides, took possession of hill country called Sinnaca, and were established in safety before daybreak—about five thousand of them, led by a good man, Octavius. But Crassus was overtaken by daylight while still beset by Andromachus's treachery amid the rough ground and the marsh.
He had with him four cohorts of shield-bearing infantry, very few cavalry, and five lictors, with whom he made his way onto the road only with difficulty and effort. With the enemy already pressing on him, and about twelve stadia short of joining Octavius's force, he fled instead onto another hill—not so lacking in access for cavalry, nor so well fortified, but connected to the hills at Sinnaca by a long ridge running through the middle of the plain toward them. His danger was thus in full view of Octavius's men,
and Octavius was the first to run down with a few men to help from above; then the rest, reproaching themselves, charged in as well, and falling upon the enemy and pushing them back from the hill, they surrounded Crassus in their midst and held their shields before him, boasting loudly that no Parthian missile would touch the person of the imperator until they had all died fighting for him.
Surenas, seeing that the Parthians were now growing more sluggish in the fighting, and that if night should intervene and the Romans reach the mountains they would be altogether unreachable, brought a deception to bear on Crassus. Some of the captives were released, having heard, in the barbarians' camp, men deliberately talking among themselves, saying that the king had no desire to make the war with Rome an implacable one, but rather wanted to earn back their friendship as a kindness by dealing gently with Crassus.
The barbarians held off from fighting, and Surenas rode up quietly to the hill with his best men, unstrung his bow, extended his right hand, and invited Crassus to a parley, saying that though the king had had proof of Roman courage and power against his will, he was now willingly showing them gentleness and goodwill, granting them safe passage under truce as they departed.
When Surenas said this, the rest gladly accepted and were overjoyed, but Crassus, who had suffered nothing at their hands except through deceit, and who thought the suddenness of this change made no sense, would not comply, but deliberated.
When the soldiers shouted and urged him on, and then began reviling and reproaching him for exposing them to fight men with whom he himself did not dare to go and confer unarmed, he first tried to beg them and say that if they held out for the remaining part of the day among the rough hill country, they could travel by night, and he pointed out the road, and urged them not to throw away hope when safety was near.
But once their anger rose against him, and they clashed their weapons together in threat, fear got the better of him and he went down, saying only this as he turned: "Octavius and Petronius and all you Roman officers present, you see the necessity of my going, and you know, being present, what shameful and violent treatment I suffer. Tell all the rest, if you survive, that Crassus perished deceived by the enemy, not betrayed by his countrymen."
Octavius and his men, however, did not stay behind, but went down from the hill with him; the lictors who followed, Crassus sent away. Among the barbarians, the first to reach him were a pair of half-Greeks, who sprang down from their horses and bowed low before Crassus, and addressing him in the Greek tongue, urged him to send some men ahead, to whom Surenas would show that he and those with him were approaching unarmed and without weapons.
Crassus replied that had he set even the slightest store by his own safety, he never would have placed himself in their power; all the same, he sent the two Roscius brothers ahead to learn the terms and the number who were to meet. Surenas at once laid hold of them and kept them, then rode up himself on horseback with his finest men and remarked, "How strange—the Roman commander goes on foot, while we ride?"—and had a horse fetched for him.
When Crassus said that neither he nor Surenas was at fault, since each was conducting the meeting according to his own custom, Surenas replied that, as of that moment, King Hyrodes and the Romans stood at peace and truce, though the terms would still need to be set down in writing at the river, to which they should go: "For you Romans," he said, "are not exactly mindful of your agreements," and he extended his right hand to him. When Crassus sent for a horse, Surenas said there was no need: "the king,
gives you this one," and at the same time a horse with a golden bridle stood beside Crassus, and the grooms lifted him up and set him upon it, and walked alongside, urging the horse on with blows to make it go faster. Octavius was the first to take hold of the reins, and after him one of the military tribunes, Petronius; then the rest gathered around, trying to check the horse and to pull away those who were pressing upon Crassus from either side.
A shoving match broke out, and confusion, and then blows. Octavius drew his sword and killed one of the barbarians' grooms, while another struck Octavius from behind. Petronius had no weapon to hand, but took a blow on his breastplate and sprang back without injury. It was a Parthian named Pomaxathres who struck down Crassus.
Others say this is not so, but that another man was the killer, and that this one, when Crassus lay dead, cut off his head and his right hand. But this is conjecture more than certain knowledge; for of those present, some were killed there fighting around Crassus, while others
immediately fled back up onto the hill. When the Parthians came up and said that Crassus had paid the penalty, and that Surenas bade the rest come down without fear, some surrendered themselves and came down, while others scattered in the night, and of these very few in all made their way to safety; the rest were hunted down and captured or killed by the Arabs. It is said that in all twenty thousand died, and ten thousand were taken alive.
Surenas dispatched Crassus's severed head and hand to Hyrodes in Armenia; meanwhile he had messengers announce ahead to Seleucia that he was bringing Crassus back a living captive, and he set about arranging an absurd procession, mockingly styling it a triumph.
The captive who most resembled Crassus, Gaius Paccianus, was dressed in a woman's royal robe and taught to answer to the name Crassus and to "imperator" when so addressed, and was led along mounted on a horse. Before him rode trumpeters and certain lictors mounted on camels; purses hung from the rods, and beside the axes were fresh heads of Romans, freshly cut off.
Behind followed Seleucian courtesans who were musicians, singing a great many crude, mocking songs that made sport of Crassus's softness and lack of nerve. All the people watched this spectacle. Then, having gathered together the council of the Seleucians, he brought forward the licentious books of Aristides's Milesian Tales—and in this he was not slandering the Romans falsely, for it was found among the baggage of Roscius—and it gave Surenas occasion to heap much abuse and mockery on the Romans, saying that even while making war they could not keep away from such writings and business.
The Seleucians, however, thought Aesop a wise man indeed, seeing Surenas carrying before him the pouch of Milesian licentiousness, while trailing behind him, in wagon after wagon of concubines, a Parthian version of Sybaris—in a manner rather like the creatures called vipers and scytale-serpents, presenting in front a fearsome and beastlike appearance with spears and bows and horses,
while at the tail of the column it ended in dances and castanets and songs and licentious all-night revels with women. Roscius, then, deserves blame, but shameless indeed are the Parthians to find fault with the Milesian Tales, many of whom—the Arsacids—are descended from Milesian and Ionian courtesans and have reigned as kings.
While these things were happening, Hyrodes had already been reconciled with Artavasdes the Armenian, and had agreed to give his sister as wife to his son Pacorus, and there were feasts and banquets between them, and much entertainment brought in from Greek culture was introduced.
For Hyrodes was not unacquainted with Greek speech and literature, and Artavasdes even composed tragedies and wrote speeches and histories, some of which survive. When Crassus's severed head was carried to the entrance, the tables had already been cleared away, and a tragic actor named Jason, of Tralles, was singing the part of Agave from Euripides's Bacchae. While he was winning applause, Sillaces stood at the entrance of the men's hall, made obeisance, and threw the head of Crassus into the midst,
and amid the clapping and shouting and joy of the Parthians as they took it up, the king's attendants had Sillaces recline at the table on the king's order, while Jason passed off his Pentheus costume onto one of the men in the chorus, seized the head of Crassus instead, and, whipping himself into a Bacchic fury, chanted out those lines with rapt intensity: "We bring from the mountain a fresh-cut tendril to the halls, a blessed catch." And this delighted everyone present.
But when the exchanges that followed with the chorus were sung, — Chorus: "Who killed him?" — "The prize is mine" — Pomaxathres, who happened to be dining there, leapt up and laid claim to the head, saying that this line belonged to him rather than to Jason. The king, delighted, gave him gifts according to their custom, and gave Jason a talent. In such an afterpiece, they say, did Crassus's generalship come to an end, as though it were a tragedy.
Yet a fitting penalty overtook both Hyrodes for his cruelty and Surenas for his perjury. For not long afterward Hyrodes, envious of his glory, put Surenas to death; and when Hyrodes had lost Pacorus, defeated by the Romans in battle, and had fallen sick with a disease that turned into dropsy, his son Phraates, plotting against him, gave him poison. But the disease drew the poison into itself so that it was expelled along with it, and his body was relieved; whereupon Phraates, taking the quickest way, strangled him.

======== Comparison Of Crassus With Nicias ========

In the comparison, first, Nicias's wealth, set beside Crassus's, has a more blameless origin. One could not otherwise approve of income from mines, most of which is carried out through criminals or barbarians, some of them kept in chains and wasting away in unhealthy, pestilential places; but compared with Sulla's confiscated properties and the tax-farming contracts around the fires, it will appear more decent.
For these practices Crassus openly made use of, as he did of farming and money-lending; but the things he denied when charged with them — speaking in the senate for profit, wronging the allies, going around flattering little women, and helping to conceal wrongdoers — of these Nicias never took even a false accusation, though for giving and lavishing money out of cowardice to the sycophants he was mocked, doing a thing perhaps unbecoming to a Pericles or an Aristides, but necessary for one not naturally disposed to boldness.
About this Lycurgus the orator later spoke frankly to the people, when he was accused of having bought off one of the sycophants: "I am glad," he said, "if, having been in public life among you for so long a time, I have been caught giving before being caught taking."
In expenditures Nicias was more the statesman, spending ambitiously on dedications, gymnasiarchies, and the training of choruses; but what Crassus spent in feasting so many tens of thousands of people at once, and then feeding them again, was no fraction of what Nicias possessed together with what he spent — so that one must wonder whether it has escaped anyone that vice is a kind of unevenness and inconsistency of character, seeing those who gather shamefully and then pour out uselessly.
So much for wealth. In their political conduct, nothing knavish or unjust or violent attaches to Nicias, nor any boldness, but he was rather deceived by Alcibiades and approached the people with caution; whereas of Crassus they accuse much faithlessness and illiberality in his shifts between enmity and friendship, though he himself did not deny using force to pursue the consulship, paying men to seize hold of Cato and Domitius bodily.
In the people's voting concerning the provinces many were wounded and four fell, and Crassus himself — a thing that has escaped us in the narrative — struck Lucius Annalius, a senator who spoke against him, with his fist in the face and cast him out bloodied.
But if in these matters Crassus was violent and tyrannical, so again, on the other hand, that man's timidity in politics and lack of daring, yielding to the basest men, is worthy of the gravest censure; whereas Crassus was lofty and great-minded in these matters, his contest being — by Zeus — not against Cleons or Hyperboluses, but against Caesar's brilliance and Pompey's three triumphs; and he did not yield, but raised up his own power against each of them, and in the dignity of the censorship even surpassed Pompey.
For in the greatest affairs one must grasp not what is free of envy but what is brilliant in politics, dimming envy by the greatness of one's power. But if you love safety and quiet above all else, and fear Alcibiades on the rostrum, the Lacedaemonians at Pylos, Perdiccas in Thrace, the city has ample room for one who steps out of the way to sit at leisure, weaving for himself a crown of tranquility, as some sophists say.
For the love of peace was truly divine, and to put an end to war is a most Hellenic act of statesmanship; and for this deed it is not worthy to compare Crassus to Nicias, not even if he had brought the Caspian Sea or the Indian Ocean within the bounds of Roman rule.
Yet when one is dealing with a city that perceives virtue and is superior in power, one must not give place to base men, nor office to those unfit to rule, nor trust to those distrusted — which is what Nicias did, when he himself established Cleon, who was nothing more in the city than shamelessness and shouting from the rostrum, in the office of general,
for I do not praise Crassus for having pressed on in the affair of Spartacus more hastily than safely — and yet it was ambition that made him fear that Pompey might come and take away his glory, just as Mummius took Corinth away from Metellus's glory — yet what Nicias did was, on the whole, bizarre and appalling. For it was not out of hopes nor ease that he yielded ambition and office to his enemy, but suspecting great danger in the generalship he was content to place his own safety in security, abandoning the common good;
and yet even Themistocles, so that a base and foolish man should not, by commanding in the Persian affair, destroy the city, removed him from office with money; and Cato, when he saw the tribunate holding the greatest dangers for the city's affairs, sought it out himself;
but Nicias, keeping himself as general for Minoa and Cythera and the wretched Melians, and if there should need be fighting against the Lacedaemonians, stripping off his cloak and turning over ships, soldiers, weaponry, and a post demanding the greatest of skill to Cleon's rashness and inexperience, does not thereby give up his own reputation, but the safety and preservation of his country.
Whence afterward he was compelled, unwillingly and against his own wish, to make war on the Syracusans, seeming to deprive the city of Sicily not by a reckoning of advantage but by ease and softness on his own part. Yet this is a sign of great fairness, that though he was always vexed at making war and fled the generalship, they did not cease electing him as the most experienced and best;
whereas Crassus, though he desired a command through the whole of that time, did not manage to obtain one, except by necessity in the war against the slaves, since Pompey and Metellus and both Luculli were absent — though at that time he was most honored and most powerful — but, it seems, even to those zealous on his behalf he was thought, in the comic poet's words, "an excellent man" "in everything except in the shield."
And this benefited the Romans nothing, being forced by his lust for command and ambition. For the Athenians sent Nicias out to war unwilling; but Crassus led the Romans out unwilling: and through the one the city, through the other he himself, met with misfortune.
Nonetheless, in these matters one may rather praise Nicias than censure Crassus. For the one, employing experience and the reasoning of a sensible commander, was not deceived along with the hopes of the citizens, but refused and gave up hope of taking Sicily; but the other, setting out on the Parthian war as though it were the easiest task, erred.
He reached for great things: while Caesar was subduing the western regions, the Celts and Germans and Britain, he himself would drive on to the east and the Indian sea and add to Rome what Pompey had approached and Lucullus had contended with — men who remained well-disposed and good toward all, though they had chosen aims similar
to Crassus's and taken up the same undertakings; since even when command was being given to Pompey the senate opposed it, and when Caesar cut down three hundred thousand of the Germans, it was Cato who urged that he be surrendered to the men he had beaten, so the guilt of breaking the treaty would fall on him alone; but the people, telling Cato to go hang, offered sacrifices of victory for fifteen days and were overjoyed.
How then would the people have reacted, and over how many days would their thank-offerings have gone on, had Crassus sent word from Babylon of his victory, and then, advancing further, had made Media, Persia, Hyrcania, Susa, Bactra Roman provinces? For if indeed one must do wrong, as Euripides says, for those unable to keep quiet nor to make use of the good things at hand, it is not Scandeia, not Mende that must be cut down, nor must the Aeginetans, fleeing and having abandoned their own land,
be hunted down like birds hidden away in another country; but wrongdoing must be valued at a high price, not given up easily nor for chance occasions as though it were something trivial or small, abandoning what is just — those who praise the impulse of Alexander's campaign but blame that of Crassus judge the beginnings badly from the endings.
In the campaigns themselves, Nicias has not a few noble deeds: for he defeated the enemy in many battles, and came within a little of taking Syracuse, and did not fail in everything through his own fault, but one might also blame illness and the envy of the citizens at home; whereas Crassus, through a multitude of errors, left fortune no chance to display anything good for him, so that one must marvel at his folly, which was overcome not by the power of the Parthians but by the good fortune of the Romans.
Since the one despised nothing that came from divination, while the other looked down on everything alike, and both perished, safety in these matters is difficult and hard to judge; but more reasonable than lawless self-will is an error committed out of caution, in keeping with old and customary belief. Yet as for how his life ended, Crassus deserves less blame — he did not give himself up of his own accord, nor was he taken captive or tricked, but gave way to his friends' pleading and was betrayed by the enemy's violation of the truce; whereas Nicias, falling into the enemy's hands through a shameful and inglorious hope of safety, made his own death more disgraceful for himself.

======== Sertorius ========

It is perhaps not a marvel that, over infinite time, as fortune flows now this way and now that, chance should often bring about the same occurrences by mere coincidence. For either the number of underlying things is not fixed, in which case fortune has an inexhaustible abundance of material from which to furnish resemblances among the results, or else affairs are woven together out of some fixed number of elements, and then the same things must often come about, being brought to pass through the same causes.
Since, however, some people take pleasure in collecting instances of this sort from history and hearsay - cases where events that happened by chance resemble the works of calculation and forethought - as, for example, that there were two men named Attis who became famous, one a Syrian and the other an Arcadian, and each of them perished by a boar; and that there were two men named Actaeon, one torn apart by his own dogs, the other by his lovers; and two men named Scipio, the first inflicting an initial defeat on Carthage, the second later crushing it entirely,
and that Troy fell once to Heracles, over the matter of Laomedon's horses, once to Agamemnon through the device known as the 'wooden horse,' and a third time by Charidemus, when a certain horse stumbled into the gates and the Trojans were unable to shut them quickly; and that there were two cities bearing the same names as the sweetest-smelling plants, Ios and Smyrna, in the one of which they say the poet Homer was born, and in the other of which he died,
come, let us add this too to their collection: that the most warlike generals, and those who achieved the most by pairing cunning with skill, were missing an eye - namely Philip, Antigonus, Hannibal, and this treatise's own subject, Sertorius, whom one might declare more temperate than Philip in matters concerning women, more faithful than Antigonus toward his friends, and gentler than Hannibal toward his enemies,
though inferior to none of these in intelligence, yet inferior to all of them in fortune - a fortune he handled, though it treated him far more harshly in every respect than his open enemies did, in such a way that he made himself the equal of Metellus in experience, of Pompey in daring, of Sulla in fortune, and of the Romans in power, though he was an exile and a foreign commander opposing a barbarian people.
To this man especially, among the Greeks, we liken Eumenes of Cardia; for both were natural commanders and skilled in waging war through cunning, and both were driven from their own countries yet led foreigners, and both met with a violent and unjust fortune at their end - for both, having been plotted against by the very men alongside whom they had conquered their enemies, were destroyed by those same men.
Quintus Sertorius was of no undistinguished lineage, in the city of Nursia among the Sabines; and being brought up decorously by a widowed mother, having lost his father, he seems to have become extraordinarily devoted to his mother - they say her name was Rhea. He had trained himself sufficiently in pleading cases at law, and while still a youth he acquired a certain influence in the city through his oratory; but his brilliance and successes in military matters transferred his ambition to that sphere instead.
First, then, when the Cimbri and Teutones had invaded Gaul, he was serving as a soldier under Caepio, and when the Romans fought badly and a rout occurred, he lost his horse and, though wounded all over his body, swam across the Rhone, keeping both his breastplate and his shield, against a strong opposing current; so robust was his body and so trained by exercise.
Second, when the same enemies were advancing with many tens of thousands and terrible threats, so that it was then a great feat for a Roman soldier merely to stay in formation and obey his commander, Marius was the leader, and Sertorius undertook to spy on the enemy; disguising himself in Celtic dress and picking up enough of the commonest expressions of their language for occasional intercourse, he mingled among the barbarians. Learning some things by sight and others by hearsay of what was urgent, he returned to Marius.
On that occasion he received the prize for valor; and in the rest of the campaign, having displayed many deeds of intelligence and daring, he was advanced by the commander to renown and trust. Once the war with the Cimbri and Teutones had ended, the commander Didius dispatched him to Iberia as a military tribune, and wintered in the city of Castulo among the Celtiberians.
But when the soldiers, amid plenty, grew insolent and were mostly drunk, the barbarians, holding them in contempt, sent by night for aid from the neighboring Oretani, and going house to house they began killing them; Sertorius, slipping out with a few men and gathering those who escaped, went around the city in a circle. And finding, at the gates by which the barbarians had secretly slipped in, that these had been left open, he did not suffer the same fate as those others, but posting guards and seizing control of the city on every side, he killed all who were of military age.
When they had been killed, he ordered all the soldiers to lay aside their own arms and clothing, and to follow, arrayed in the equipment of the barbarians, toward that city from which those who had fallen upon them by night had been sent. Deceiving the barbarians by the appearance of the arms, he found the gates open and took a great number of people who supposed they were coming out to meet friends and fellow citizens who had fared well. For this reason most were slaughtered by the Romans near the gates, and the rest, surrendering themselves, were sold into slavery.
From this exploit Sertorius became famous throughout Iberia; and on his first return to Rome, he was given the quaestorship of Gaul-around-the-Po, at an opportune moment. For when the Marsic War was being organized, he was charged with levying soldiers and manufacturing arms, and by bringing zeal and speed to the task, in contrast to the slowness and softness of the other young men, he gained the reputation of a man who would live an active life.
Nor indeed did he relax his soldierly daring once he had advanced to the rank of commander, but continuing to display marvelous feats of his hand and giving his body unsparingly to the contests, he lost one of his eyes, gouged out. Over this he continued always to take a certain pride. For while other men do not always carry about the tokens of their valor, but lay aside their collars and spears and crowns, in his case the marks of his manly courage remained with him permanently, providing the same onlookers a spectacle both of his virtue and of his misfortune at once.
The people, too, paid him fitting honor. For when he entered the theater, they received him with applause and acclamation, an honor not easy even for those who had far surpassed him in age and reputation to obtain. Yet in seeking the tribunate of the people he was defeated through the factional opposition of Sulla; and it is on this account, it seems, that he became a hater of Sulla.
But when Marius, defeated by Sulla, fled, and Sulla set out to make war on Mithridates, and of the consuls Octavius remained loyal to Sulla's policy while Cinna, seeking revolution, sought to revive the faltering faction of Marius, Sertorius attached himself to this latter man, especially since he saw that Octavius was rather dull and distrustful of the friends of Marius.
When a great battle occurred between the consuls in the forum, Octavius prevailed, and Cinna and Sertorius, having lost not much fewer than ten thousand men, fled; but by winning over most of the armies still scattered about Italy, mostly through persuasion, they quickly became a match in strength for the party of Octavius.
When Marius sailed in from Libya and offered himself to Cinna, the consul, as a private citizen, the others thought he should be received, but Sertorius spoke against it, either because he supposed Cinna would pay him less heed with a more commanding man present, or because he feared the harshness of Marius, lest, in a temper without measure, he throw everything into confusion, going beyond justice once he had gained the upper hand,
for he said that the work remaining to them, now that they were already winning, was small, whereas if they received Marius, he would carry off the whole of the glory and the power for himself, being a man difficult to share command with and untrustworthy. And when Cinna said that Sertorius reasoned rightly in this, but that he himself felt shame and was at a loss how he might repel Marius, having himself called him to a share in affairs, Sertorius took up the matter
and said: "But I, supposing that Marius had come to Italy of his own accord, was considering what was advantageous; whereas for you it was not even proper to deliberate in the first place, once the man you yourself had asked to come had arrived, but rather to make use of him and receive him, since good faith allows no room for calculation." Thus Cinna sent for Marius, and the forces, divided into three parts, were commanded by the three men.
When the war had been fought through, and the men around Cinna and Marius were glutted with every kind of insolence and bitterness, so that they made the evils of the war seem golden (i.e. preferable) to the Romans, Sertorius alone, it is said, neither killed anyone out of anger nor committed outrage while in a position of power, but was displeased with Marius, and, meeting Cinna privately, begged him to act with more moderation.
Finally, as for the slaves whom Marius had made strong and rich by using them as allies in the war and as bodyguards for his tyranny - some of it granted and ordered by him, some the slaves committing lawless outrages against their own masters by force, slaughtering them, forcing themselves upon their mistresses, and violating their children - Sertorius, finding this intolerable, shot down with javelins all of them encamped together in one place, no fewer than four thousand.
When Marius died and Cinna was killed a little later, and the young Marius took the consulship against the laws and against his own father's wish, while Carbo and Norbanus and the Scipios waged war badly against the advancing Sulla, and affairs were ruined partly by the cowardice and softness of the generals, and partly destroyed by those who betrayed them,
there was no task left for Sertorius to perform, present as he was amid affairs that were being wretchedly mismanaged because those with greater power had the worse judgment. Finally, Sulla, encamping beside Scipio and treating him with friendliness, as though peace were about to come, corrupted his army; and though Sertorius foretold this to Scipio and instructed him, he could not persuade him. Having utterly despaired of the city, he set out for Iberia, thinking that if he could secure control there ahead of events, it would serve as a refuge for his friends who stumbled here.
Encountering harsh storms in mountainous regions, he was made to pay tolls and fees to the barbarians for passage along the road. His companions were indignant, complaining bitterly that a Roman proconsul should be paying tolls to destructive barbarians; but he cared little how it looked, saying that he was buying time, and nothing is a rarer commodity for a man reaching after great things; so he appeased the barbarians with money and, hastening on, took possession of Iberia.
Taking over peoples flourishing in numbers and in the age of their men, but badly disposed toward the whole Roman rule on account of the greed and insolence of the governors sent to them each time, he won over the powerful among them by association and the many by remission of tribute, and he was especially beloved for freeing them from the billeting of troops in their homes; for he compelled the soldiers to pitch their winter quarters in the suburbs, being himself the first
to encamp in this fashion. Yet he did not make everything depend on the goodwill of the barbarians, but arming those of the Romans settled there who were of military age, and setting in motion the construction of engines of every kind and the building of triremes, he kept the cities firmly in hand, being mild in matters of peaceful use but appearing formidable in his preparations against enemies.
Once word reached him that Sulla now held Rome in his grip and that the Marian-Carban faction lay in ruins, and expecting that an army under some commander would soon come to make war against him, he immediately fortified the Pyrenees mountains through Julius Salinator, who had six thousand hoplites; and not long after, Gaius Annius, sent out by Sulla, seeing that Julius was unassailable, sat idle at a loss beneath the foothills.
But a man named Calpurnius, nicknamed Lanarius, murdered Julius by treachery, and once the soldiers had abandoned the Pyrenean heights, Annius made the crossing and pushed forward with a sizable force, sweeping aside whoever stood in his path. Sertorius, not being a match for him, fled with three thousand men to New Carthage, and from there, boarding ships and crossing the sea, he put in at Libya, in the region of Mauretania.
When the barbarians fell upon his soldiers while they were drawing water unguarded, he lost many men and sailed again for Iberia; from this he was repelled, and when Cilician pirates joined him, he attacked the island of Pityussa and landed there, forcing his way past the garrison of Annius. Not long after, Annius arrived with many ships and five thousand hoplites, against whom Sertorius attempted a sea battle, though he used light vessels built for speed and not for strength,
and when a bright west wind rose over the sea and cast most of Sertorius's ships, owing to their lightness, sideways into the breakers, he himself, with a handful of ships, blocked off on the seaward side by the storm and on the landward side by his foes, held out in misery for ten days, tossing against the opposing waves and rough surge.
When the wind died down, he was carried along and put in at certain scattered, waterless islands; and setting out from there and crossing the Strait of Gades, he touched land on the outer coast of Iberia, keeping it on his right, a little above the mouths of the Baetis, which, emptying into the Atlantic sea, gave its name to the Iberia around it.
There some sailors met him who had just sailed back from the Atlantic Islands, which are two in number, separated from each other by a quite narrow strait, and lie ten thousand stades from Libya; they are called the Isles of the Blessed. They receive moderate rains only rarely, and for the most part gentle, dew-bearing winds, so that they not only provide good and rich soil for ploughing and planting, but also bear of themselves fruit sufficient in abundance and sweetness to feed a leisured people without toil or labor.
A mild climate, owing to the blending of the seasons and the moderation of their changes, holds these islands in its grip; for the north and east winds that blow off the mainland there, having traveled so great a distance, scatter and dissipate before reaching the vast expanse, while the sea-winds that circle round, the westerlies and southwesterlies, bring in from the sea light and scattered rains, and for the most part, with moist clear weather, cool and nourish the land gently, so that even the native tribes have come to firmly believe this is the very Elysian Field and dwelling-place of the blessed sung of by Homer.
On hearing this, Sertorius was seized with a wondrous longing to settle those islands and to live in peace, freed from tyranny and unceasing wars. But the Cilicians, perceiving this, wanted no part of peace and leisure, but rather of wealth and plunder, and sailed off to Libya instead, meaning to put Ascalis, Iphtha's son, back on the Mauretanian throne.
Sertorius, however, did not give up, but resolved to help those warring against Ascalis, so that his own men, taking up some new beginning of hope and a foundation for other undertakings, might not be dissolved by want; and coming to the Mauretanians, who gladly received him, he set to work, and overpowering Ascalis, laid siege to him.
When Sulla sent Paccianus with a force to help Ascalis, Sertorius joined battle, killed Paccianus, and having defeated his army won it over to himself; and he stormed Tingis, into which Ascalis had fled together with his brothers. There, the Libyans say, Antaeus lies buried; and Sertorius dug open his tomb, distrusting the barbarians on account of its great size, but on coming upon the body, sixty cubits in length as they say, he was astonished, and after offering a sacrifice, filled in the grave again, and increased the honor and fame paid to him.
The people of Tingis tell the story that after Antaeus died, his wife Tinga came together with Heracles, and that their son Sophax thereby gained the kingship of that land and gave his mother's name to a city; further, that Sophax fathered a son, Diodorus, and that under this Diodorus a great many Libyan peoples came to be ruled, owing to a Greek force of Olbians and Mycenaeans whom Heracles had once settled in that territory.
But let this be set down to the credit of Juba, the most learned in history of all kings; for they say his ancestors are descended from Diodorus and from Sophax. Sertorius, having become master of everything, did no wrong to those who had appealed to him and trusted him, but restored to them their money, their cities, and their government, keeping only what he was given fairly, from those willing to give it.
From there, while he was deliberating where next to turn, the Lusitanians sent envoys inviting him to take command, entirely in need of a leader of great reputation and experience against the fear they had of the Romans, and putting their trust in him alone, since they had learned what sort of man he was from those who had served under him.
It is said of Sertorius that he was not easily overcome either by pleasure or by fear, being by nature undismayed in the face of dangers and moderate in bearing good fortune; and in open, straightforward fighting he was no less bold than any commander of his time, but in whatever deeds of war called for stealth, and for gaining advantage in strongholds and river-crossings requiring speed, and deception and falsehood where needed, he was the most formidable of contrivers.
In rewarding acts of valor he showed himself generous, but in punishing wrongs he was moderate — though it is thought that toward the end of his life the deed he carried out concerning the hostages revealed, through its cruelty and bitterness, a nature that was not gentle at all, but had merely been cloaked over by calculation out of necessity.
As for myself, I do not think that virtue which is genuine and founded upon reason could ever be turned by any stroke of fortune to its opposite; but it is not impossible that good dispositions and natures, wronged undeservedly by great misfortunes, might, along with their fortune, undergo some change of character as well. And this, I think, is what happened to Sertorius, once his fortune began to fail him, growing harsher under the pressure of events as they turned bad against those who wronged him.
Be that as it may, at that time, when the Lusitanians called him, he set out from Libya, and immediately organized them, being appointed commander with full powers, and brought the nearby part of Iberia under his control, most of the peoples joining him willingly, chiefly because of his gentleness and energy, though in some cases he himself contrived, with cunning, deceptions and enchantments to win them over. And first of all among these was the affair of the doe. It was as follows.
A Spanish man, one of those living off the land, came upon a doe that had just given birth, fleeing from hunters; he was left behind by the mother, but, struck by the strangeness of its color — for it was entirely white — he chased and caught the fawn. By chance Sertorius was then encamped in that region, and he gladly received whatever anyone brought him as a gift from hunting or farming, and repaid those who served him kindly; so the man brought the fawn and presented it to him.
Sertorius, receiving it, was pleased at first only moderately; but in time, having tamed it so completely and made it so gentle that it would come when called, and follow him wherever he walked, and endure all the crowding and noise of the camp, he began little by little to make it a thing of wonder, declaring the doe to be a gift of Artemis, and attributing to it the revealing of many hidden things, knowing that the barbarian nature is by nature easily led into superstition. And he further contrived devices of this sort.
Whenever he learned secretly that the enemy had made an incursion somewhere into the territory under him, or that some city was in revolt, he would pretend that the doe had spoken with him in his sleep, bidding him to have his forces ready; and again, on hearing of some victory of one of his own generals, he would hide the messenger, and lead forward the doe wearing a garland in honor of the good news, urging all to take heart and offer sacrifice to the gods, as men on the verge of hearing welcome news.
Having made them tame in this way, he used them for all purposes as more tractable, since they were persuaded they were being led not by the reasoning of a foreign man, but by a god, while events themselves also bore witness, as his power grew beyond all reasonable expectation.
With a mere twenty-six hundred troops he styled Romans, together with seven hundred assorted Libyans who had crossed over into Lusitania with him, and after adding four thousand Lusitanian light-armed troops and seven hundred cavalry, he made war against four Roman generals, under whom were one hundred and twenty thousand infantry, six thousand cavalry, two thousand archers and slingers, and cities beyond counting, while he himself possessed at the start only twenty in all.
Yet nevertheless, having begun so weak and so small, he not only overcame great nations and captured many cities, but also, among his opposing generals, defeated Cotta in a naval battle in the strait near Mellaria; and he routed Fufidius, the governor of Baetica, near the Baetis river, killing two thousand Romans; and he overcame, through his quaestor, Lucius Domitius, proconsul of the other Iberia, and Thoranius,
another commander sent by Metellus with a force, he killed; and Metellus himself, a man then reckoned among the greatest and most esteemed of the Romans, he entangled in no few reverses, reducing him to such straits that Lucius Manlius had to come from Gaul near Narbo to assist him, and Pompey the Great had to be sent in haste from Rome with an army.
For Metellus had no resource against a man who dared to avoid every open battle, and shifted every kind of change with the light-armed mobility of the Iberian army — Metellus himself being a man trained in set combats fought by heavy infantry, and a general of a solid, unmoving phalanx, well disciplined to push back and cut down enemies who came to close quarters, but unable to scale mountains, to be bound up in endless pursuits and flights against men swift as the wind, and to endure hunger and a diet without fire or shelter, as those men could.
Moreover, Metellus himself was already older, and had, from many great struggles, given way somewhat to a relaxed and even luxurious way of living, while against him stood Sertorius, full of vigor at its peak, and possessed of a body wonderfully fitted out with strength, speed, and simplicity of habit.
For he never touched drunkenness even in his idle hours, and he had trained himself to bear great toils, long marches, and continuous wakefulness on little and plain food, and by constantly roaming and hunting whenever he had leisure, fleeing every encirclement and pursuing every escape, he had gained a thorough knowledge of both impassable and passable ground. Hence it happened that whoever was kept from battle suffered what men suffer when defeated, while he, even in fleeing, had the advantage of the pursuer.
For he would cut off their water supply and block their foraging; when they advanced he was out of the way, but he would stir when they had settled; when one force was besieging others, he would appear and besiege them in turn through want of necessities, so that the soldiers grew weary of it all, and once Sertorius issued his challenge for Metellus to meet him in single combat, they took up the cry demanding commander face commander and Roman face Roman, mocking Metellus for holding back.
But Metellus rightly laughed off such taunts; for, as Theophrastus put it, a commander's death should befit a commander, not some ordinary skirmisher. But seeing that the Langobrigae were giving no small aid to Sertorius, and were easily overcome through thirst — for they had only one well within the city, and the enemy besieging them was about to gain control of the springs in the suburbs and along the walls — he came against the city, expecting to bring the siege to an end within two days, since there was no water. For this reason the soldiers had been instructed to bring provisions for only five days.
Sertorius, hastening swiftly to their aid, ordered two thousand wineskins filled with water, setting a considerable price on each skin. And when many Iberians and many Mauretanians undertook the task, he chose out men who were strong and swift of foot as well, and sent them through the mountains, ordering that, once they had delivered the skins to those in the city, they should lead out the useless crowd, so that the drinking water might suffice for those who remained to defend it.
When this became known to Metellus, he was already troubled, since his soldiers' provisions had been consumed, and he sent out Aquinus with six thousand men to gather grain. But Sertorius, perceiving this, and having laid an ambush along the road, raised up three thousand men from a shaded ravine against Aquinus as he was returning, while he himself charged from the front and routed him, killing some and taking others alive. Metellus received Aquinus back, stripped of his arms and having lost his horse, and departed in disgrace, mocked greatly by the Iberians.
For these reasons Sertorius was admired and beloved among the barbarians, and also because, by imposing Roman weapons, formations, and watchwords, taking away the frenzied and beast-like quality of their fighting spirit, he turned his force from a great band of brigands into an army,
and further, using silver and gold without stint, he adorned their helmets and decorated their shields with varied patterns, and by getting them accustomed to flowered cloaks and tunics, paying for such finery himself and joining in their pleasure at fine things, he courted popularity as a leader of the people. Yet what won him the deepest attachment was his handling of their sons; he brought the best-born boys from every tribe together at Osca, a great city, and placed them under instructors versed in Greek and Roman learning — in effect holding them hostage, though in word he was educating them, as men who, once grown, would be given a share in citizenship and office.
Their fathers were wonderfully delighted to see their sons, dressed in purple-bordered robes, going most decorously to their schools, and to see Sertorius paying the fees for them himself, and often taking note of their examinations, distributing prizes to those who deserved them, and giving them the golden neck-ornaments which the Romans call bullae.
There being an Iberian custom that men chosen to guard a commander were bound to perish alongside him should he fall, a practice the local tribes called a 'libation' — while other commanders had only a few of their attendants and companions bound by this custom, Sertorius was followed by many tens of thousands of men who had pledged themselves in this way.
It is said that once, at some city, when a rout occurred and the enemy pressed hard, the Iberians, disregarding their own safety, lifted Sertorius up onto their shoulders, passing him from one man to another, to bring him to safety at the walls, and only once their commander was in safety did each of them then turn to flight for himself.
He was longed for not only by the Iberians, but also by those serving from Italy. For instance, when Perpenna Vento, from the same faction as Sertorius, arrived in Iberia with much money and a great force, and had resolved to wage war against Metellus on his own and independently, the soldiers took this badly, and Sertorius's name kept coming up all through the camp in conversation, irritating Perpenna, who was swollen with pride at his noble lineage and riches.
Nevertheless, once news arrived that Pompey was making his way across the Pyrenees, the troops seized their weapons, grabbed up their units' standards, and shouted Perpenna down, demanding that he lead them to join Sertorius; and they threatened that, should he refuse, they would desert him and make their own way to a man capable both of saving himself and of saving them. Perpenna yielded, led them there, and united with Sertorius, bringing fifty-three cohorts.
Sertorius, now that virtually all the peoples on this side of the river Ebro had joined him, had grown great in numbers -- for men kept streaming in and gathering to him from every side -- but, troubled by their barbarian lack of discipline and their rashness, when they shouted to attack the enemy and chafed at the delay, he tried to calm them with words,
but when he saw them growing angry and pressing forward out of season, he let them go and allowed them to close with the enemy, in cases where they were not utterly crushed but only took blows, hoping that they would be more obedient for the rest. And when things turned out as he had guessed, he came to their aid, rallied them as they fled, and brought them safely back to camp.
Wishing also to lift their sagging spirits, a few days later he called together a general assembly and brought forward two horses, one utterly weak and already aged, the other massive and powerful, its tail striking for how thick and lovely the hair upon it was. Beside the feeble horse stood a large and powerful man, and beside the strong one a smaller man, contemptible in appearance. When the signal was given them, the strong man took the horse's tail in both hands and pulled at it with force, as if to tear it off, while the feeble man plucked out the strong horse's hairs one at a time.
When the strong man, after giving himself much useless trouble and providing great laughter for the onlookers, gave up, while the feeble man in no time and with no effort at all showed the tail stripped bare of hair, Sertorius stood up and said, "You see, allies, that persistence accomplishes more than force, and that many things unconquerable all at once yield to what is done little by little."
"For unremitting effort is invincible: time, advancing against every kind of power, overtakes and wears it down, being a kindly ally to those who receive its opportunity with calculation, but a most hostile enemy to those who press matters out of season." With such consolations, forever woven anew, Sertorius nursed along the barbarians and managed the passage of time.
Nothing among his feats of war was admired more than what he did concerning the people called the Characitani. These are a tribe beyond the river Tagonius, dwelling not in cities or villages but on a hill of great size and height, containing caves and hollows in the rocks that face north, while all the land lying beneath it gives off a clayey mud and earth so loose and crumbly that it cannot bear the weight of those who walk upon it, and once lightly stirred, spreads far and wide like unslaked lime or ash.
Now the barbarians, whenever fear of war drove them down into the caves, gathering their plunder inside with them, would remain undisturbed, being unassailable by force; and when Sertorius at that time had separated from Metellus and had encamped by the hill, they looked down on him as though he had been defeated. Whether out of anger, or wishing not to seem to be fleeing, he rode up at daybreak and reconnoitered the place.
Finding no point of approach anywhere, and merely wandering about and uttering empty threats, he saw a great cloud of dust from that ground being carried up above them by the wind. For the caves face north, as I said, and the wind blowing from the north -- some call it the Caecias -- prevails there most and is the most frequent of the winds in that region, gathering itself together out of the moist plains and the snow-covered mountains. At that time, though it was the height of summer, it blew strong and, nourished by the release of the frosts in the arctic regions, blew most pleasantly and held steady, cooling both the people and their livestock through the day.
Reckoning on this, and hearing the same from the local inhabitants, Sertorius ordered his soldiers to scrape up that loose, ash-like earth and carry it over, piling it into a mound opposite the hill -- which the barbarians, suspecting it to be the construction of a siege-work against them, mocked.
For that day, then, he had the soldiers work at it until nightfall and then led them away; but at daybreak, first a gentle breeze blew before the rest, stirring up the finest of the heaped earth and scattering it like chaff, and then, as the Caecias grew strong and poured toward the sun and the hills were filled with dust, the soldiers set to and turned over the heap to its depth and struck at the mound, and some even drove their horses up and down through it, raising the loose earth and giving it over to the wind aloft,
and the wind, catching up everything that was broken and stirred aloft, drove it against the dwellings of the barbarians, who received the Caecias in through their doorways; and they, since the caves had but this one vent through which the wind fell upon them, quickly had their eyes darkened and quickly were filled with choking breathlessness, drawing in a harsh air thick mixed with much dust.
So, having barely held out for two days, on the third they surrendered themselves, adding to Sertorius not so much strength as reputation, as one who had subdued by cunning what could not be taken by arms.
Now as long as he was warring against Metellus and his men, he seemed to prosper in most things, since Metellus, through age and a natural slowness, could not match a man of daring who commanded a force more like that of a brigand than of a regular soldier. But when he encamped opposite Pompey, who had crossed the Pyrenees, and, giving and at the same time receiving every trial of strategic wrestling, matching craft with craft and standing on guard, gained the greater share, his fame spread all the way to Rome, as being the most formidable at the conduct of war among the generals of that time.
For Pompey's glory was not small, but was then flourishing most of all on account of his deeds of valor under Sulla, for which he had been named Magnus, that is, the Great, by Sulla himself, and had obtained the honors of a triumph before he had even grown a beard. Hence many of the cities under Sertorius, looking to Pompey, felt an impulse to change sides; but then they stopped, when the affair at Lauro turned out contrary to all expectation.
For while Sertorius was besieging them, Pompey came with his whole army to bring aid; and then the one hurried to seize beforehand a hill that seemed well placed against the city, and the other hurried to prevent this. Sertorius arrived first, and Pompey, halting his army, was pleased at the encounter, thinking that Sertorius was now caught between the city and his own army, and he sent word to the people of Lauro bidding them take heart and sit down along the walls to watch Sertorius under siege.
But Sertorius, on hearing this, laughed, and said that he would teach Sulla's pupil -- for so he mockingly called Pompey -- that a general ought to look behind him rather than in front. So saying, at the same moment he showed the besieged six thousand hoplites he had left behind on his former camp, from which he had set out to seize the hill, so that when Pompey turned to face them, they might fall upon his rear.
Pompey, realizing this all too late, did not dare to attack, fearing to be surrounded, yet was ashamed to abandon men in danger; and though present and stationed there, he was forced to watch them being destroyed, for the barbarians gave themselves up for lost and surrendered to Sertorius.
Sertorius spared their persons and released them all, but burned the city -- driven neither by rage nor by cruelty, since this man appears to have mastered his temper better than any other commander, but rather to shame and humiliate those who had admired Pompey, so that a tale would circulate among the barbarians of how Pompey, though stationed nearby and virtually warming himself at his allies' own fire, failed to come to their aid,
Now defeats came more frequently to Sertorius' side, though he himself and the troops directly under him were always kept unbeaten, while it was around his other commanders that things broke down; yet from the way he set right these defeats he was admired all the more, even when his opposing generals were winning -- as in the battle at Sucro against Pompey, and again in the one at Turia against him together with Metellus.
The battle at Sucro is said to have come about because Pompey pressed for it in haste, so that Metellus should not share in the victory. Sertorius, for his part, wished to fight it out with Pompey before Metellus could arrive, and, leading his men out when evening was already at hand, joined battle, thinking that the darkness would work against the enemy, who were strangers and unfamiliar with the terrain, hindering them both in flight and in pursuit.
When the battle came to close quarters, it happened that he himself was not engaged against Pompey but against Afranius, at first stationed against Afranius who held the left wing, while he himself was posted on the right; but when he heard that the troops opposing Pompey, who was pressing hard, were giving way and being overpowered, he entrusted his right wing to other officers and himself ran to the aid of that beaten wing.
Rallying those who were already turning to flight and those who still stood in formation, and putting heart into them, he charged afresh against Pompey as he pursued, and put him utterly to flight, at which time Pompey, coming close to death and being wounded, escaped against all likelihood. For the Libyans with Sertorius, when they took hold of his horse, adorned with gold and covered with costly trappings, in the process of dividing it up and quarreling with one another over it, let the pursuit go.
Afranius, turning back those who had opposed him at the same time that Sertorius departed to bring aid on the other side, drove them into their camp; and bursting in along with them he began to plunder, night having already fallen, knowing nothing of Pompey's flight and unable to restrain his soldiers from pillaging. Meanwhile Sertorius returned, having won his own part of the battle, and falling upon Afranius' men, thrown into confusion by their lack of discipline, destroyed many of them.
But in the early morning, arming again, he came down for battle; then, perceiving that Metellus was near, he broke off the formation and withdrew, saying, "This lad here -- had that old woman not been standing by, I would have given him a beating to remember and packed him off to Rome."
He was terribly downcast because that hind of his was nowhere to be seen; for he had been deprived of a marvelous device against the barbarians, who at that very time were most in need of comfort. But then, some men wandering about by night for other reasons happened upon her, and, recognizing her by her color, caught her.
When Sertorius heard of it, he agreed to hand over a hefty sum of money on condition that they keep silent, and, hiding the hind away, after letting a few days pass, he came forth to the tribunal looking very cheerful, telling the barbarian chiefs that some great good was being foretold to him by the god in his sleep; then, mounting the tribunal, he began to give audience to those who came to him.
The hind, released nearby by those who kept her, and catching sight of Sertorius, ran joyfully to the tribunal, and standing beside him laid her head upon his knees and touched his right hand with her mouth, as she had been accustomed to do before. Sertorius, returning her affection convincingly and even shedding a tear, at first struck those present with amazement, then, with clapping and shouting, they escorted Sertorius home as a man beloved of the gods and touched by the divine, and were filled with good cheer and bright hopes.
Having penned the enemy into the utmost straits on the plains of the Segontini, he was forced to engage them as they came down for plunder and to forage for grain. The fighting was brilliant on both sides, and Memmius, the most capable of the generals under Pompey, fell in the fiercest part of the battle, while Sertorius prevailed and, with great slaughter of those still standing together, pressed on toward Metellus himself.
Metellus, standing his ground beyond what his years allowed and fighting conspicuously, was struck by a spear. This filled the Romans, both those who saw it and those who heard of it, with shame at abandoning their commander, and at the same time with anger against the enemy. Setting their shields before them and charging forward together with vigor, they drove back the Iberians;
and the victory having thus been reversed, Sertorius, contriving safe means of flight for his men and scheming to gather another force to himself at leisure, fled for refuge into a mountain city, strong by nature, and there barred the walls and fortified the gates, intending to endure anything rather than a siege -- but in fact he was deceiving the enemy:
for they, sitting down before that place and expecting to take it without difficulty, let the fleeing barbarians go and paid no heed to the force that was again gathering for Sertorius. It was being gathered because he had sent commanders to the cities under him, bidding them, once they had a large number of men, to send a messenger to him.
When they were sent out, he broke through the enemy without any trouble and joined his own men; and again he came on strong and cut them off, blocking their supply from the land by ambushes and encirclements and swift attacks everywhere, and blocking their supply from the sea by pirate craft holding the coastline, so that the generals were forced to separate, one withdrawing to Gaul, while Pompey wintered miserably among the Vaccaei for lack of money, writing to the senate that he would lead his army back to Italy if they did not send him silver, for he had already spent his own fortune fighting on Italy's behalf.
And there was much talk of this in Rome, that Sertorius would arrive in Italy before Pompey — to such a degree had Sertorius's formidable skill set him above the foremost and most powerful generals of the time.
Metellus too showed that he was struck with fear of the man and considered him great, for he proclaimed that whichever Roman killed him would receive from him a hundred talents of silver together with twenty thousand plethra of land; and if the slayer happened to be an exile, he would grant that man return to Rome — as though, despairing of open resistance, he were purchasing the man's death through treachery.
Moreover, having once defeated Sertorius in battle, he was so elated and so pleased with his good fortune that he was proclaimed imperator, and the cities, as he visited them, received him with sacrifices and altars. It is said that he even accepted the placing of wreaths on his head and the hosting of rather pompous banquets, at which he drank wearing triumphal dress, and figures of Victory made by mechanical devices came down bearing golden trophies and crowns, and choruses of boys and women sang victory hymns to him.
For which he rightly became a laughingstock, since he, having branded Sertorius a fugitive bondsman of Sulla's and a leftover scrap from Carbo's rout, was all the same so swollen with pride and delight simply at having gotten the man to retreat. Of Sertorius's greatness of mind, the first proof was this: that he proclaimed the senators who had fled from Rome and were spending their time with him a senate,
and from among them appointed quaestors and praetors, and adorned all such matters with the ancestral laws; and next, that though he had at his disposal the weapons, money, and cities of the Iberians, he never yielded to them, not even in word, the supreme authority, but rather set Romans over them as generals and magistrates — as one winning back liberty for the Romans, not increasing those peoples' power against Rome.
For he was indeed a man devoted to his country and possessed of a great longing to return, but in adversity he acted with courage and did nothing base toward his enemies, while at the height of his victories he sent messages to Metellus and Pompey saying he was prepared to disarm and settle back into ordinary citizen life if his return home could be secured — for he said he would rather be the most obscure citizen in Rome than, in exile from his own land, be proclaimed supreme commander over all the rest combined.
And it is said that he desired his country not least on account of his mother, having been raised as an orphan by her and being wholly devoted to her; and when his friends in Iberia called him to command, on learning of his mother's death he came close, from grief, to giving up his life. For seven days he lay there giving out no watchword, and none of his companions caught even a glimpse of him; only by gathering around his tent did his fellow commanders and equals manage, with difficulty, to compel him to emerge, face the soldiers, and resume direction of matters that were faring well.
For this reason many thought he was a man naturally gentle and reasonably inclined to quiet, who was against his own judgment forced by circumstance into positions of military command, and that, not being granted safety, but driven by his enemies to take up arms, he wrapped war around himself as a necessary guard for his own body.
His dealings with Mithridates too showed greatness of mind. For when Mithridates, rising again from his defeat under Sulla as if for a second bout, once more made an attempt on Asia, and Sertorius's fame was already great and traveled everywhere, and those sailing from the west had filled the Pontus with talk of him as if with foreign cargo,
Mithridates set out to send envoys to him, spurred on above all by the boastful flatteries of those who, comparing Sertorius to Hannibal and Mithridates to Pyrrhus, said the Romans could not withstand natures and powers so great being brought against them from two sides at once, now that the most formidable of generals had joined with the greatest of kings.
So Mithridates sends envoys to Iberia bearing letters and proposals to Sertorius, by which he himself promised to supply money and ships for the war, while he asked that in return Sertorius should confirm to him the whole of Asia, which he had ceded to the Romans under the treaty made with Sulla.
When Sertorius had assembled his council, which he called the senate, and while the others urged him to accept the proposals and be content — since Mithridates was asking only for a name and an empty document concerning things not actually in their power, while in return they would receive what they most needed — Sertorius would not consent; instead he said he raised no objection to Mithridates's claiming Bithynia and Cappadocia, since these were kingdoms under royal rule with no connection to Rome,
but as for the province which the Romans had acquired by the most just method, and which he himself, warring, had lost through Fimbria, and which he had given up in making terms with Sulla — this he said he would not permit to fall again under Mithridates's power. For it was necessary that Rome be increased under his own rule, not diminished by another gaining mastery over what was hers; for a noble man ought to choose to conquer along with honor, but not even to be saved through shame.
When this was reported to him, Mithridates was struck with astonishment, and it is said he said to his friends: 'What orders, then, will Sertorius give, sitting on the Palatine, if now, thrust out to the Atlantic sea, he sets boundaries on our kingdom and threatens us with war when we merely attempt Asia?'
Nevertheless, a treaty and oaths are made: Mithridates to have Cappadocia and Bithynia; Sertorius to send him a general along with soldiers; and in exchange Sertorius would obtain from Mithridates forty ships together with three thousand talents.
And there is sent as general into Asia by Sertorius, from among those senators who had fled to him, Marcus Marius, alongside whom Mithridates, after helping him take some cities of Asia, himself followed as Marius rode in with rods and axes, having willingly taken up a secondary rank and the posture of an attendant.
Marius freed some cities and, granting others exemption from tribute by writing that it was a favor of Sertorius, proclaimed it, so that Asia, once again troubled by the tax farmers and burdened by the greed and arrogance of the officers quartered on them, was roused to hope and longed for the change of government that was expected.
But in Iberia, among the senators and men of equal rank around Sertorius, once they had first arrived at a hope of matching his power and their fear of him had relaxed, envy and a foolish jealousy of his power took hold; and Perpenna, puffed up on account of his noble birth with an empty pride, incited them toward seizing command, and secretly spread wicked talk among his intimates:
'What evil spirit has taken us up and is carrying us from bad to worse, we who, when Sulla ruled nearly the whole earth and sea, did not think it right to do as we were bid while staying at home, but now, having been driven here to live as free men, we willingly serve as bodyguard to the exile of Sertorius, bearing the name — mocked by all who hear it — of a senate, while enduring insults and orders and labors no less than those of the Iberians and Lusitanians?'
Filled with such talk, most of them did not openly break away, fearing his power, but secretly they undermined his actions, and mistreated the barbarians, punishing them harshly and levying tribute on them, as though by Sertorius's orders. From this came revolts and disturbances among the cities,
and those sent to soothe and calm these matters came back having stirred up more wars and increased the disobedience that already existed, so that Sertorius, changing from his former fairness and gentleness, acted lawlessly against the boys of the Iberians being raised at Osca, killing some and selling others.
Perpenna, then, having won over a good number of sworn conspirators for the attack, brought in Manlius, one of those holding command; this man was in love with a certain youth in the bloom of his age, and being affectionate toward him, told him of the plot, bidding him set aside his other lovers and devote himself only to Manlius, since greatness awaited him within just a few days' time. But the youth, being more attached to another of his lovers, Aufidius, reported the matter to him.
When Aufidius heard it he was struck with alarm, for he himself was party to the conspiracy against Sertorius, though he did not know that Manlius was involved — only Perpenna and Graecinus and certain others whom he himself knew to be fellow conspirators — and when the youth named him, he was thrown into confusion; toward the youth he made light of the story and urged him to despise Manlius as an empty boaster, but he himself went to Perpenna and, telling him of the urgency of the moment and the danger, urged him to act.
They were persuaded, and having prepared a man carrying letters, brought him to Sertorius. The letters announced that one of his generals had won a victory in which the enemy suffered heavy losses; overjoyed at this, Sertorius offered sacrifice for the good tidings, Perpenna promised him and the friends present — these being members of the conspiracy — a feast, and by much urging persuaded him to come.
Now dinners with Sertorius always had great decorum and order, for he tolerated seeing or hearing nothing shameful, but accustomed those in his company to use orderly and unabusive jesting and friendliness; but on that occasion, in the middle of the drinking, seeking an opening for a quarrel, they openly used indecent words, and, pretending drunkenness, behaved licentiously as if to provoke him,
and he, whether displeased at the disorder, or having read their purpose in how brazen their speech had grown and how unusually little regard they showed, shifted his position on the couch, lying back, as though neither paying attention nor listening. But when Perpenna, taking up a cup of unmixed wine, let it fall from his hands while drinking and made a noise — which was their signal — Antonius, reclining above him, strikes Sertorius with his sword.
When Sertorius turned toward the blow and tried to rise, Antonius fell upon his chest and pinned both his hands, so that, unable even to defend himself, he died under the blows of many.
Most of the Iberians at once went away and, sending envoys, surrendered themselves to Pompey and Metellus; but Perpenna, taking charge of those who remained with him, attempted to accomplish something. Making use of Sertorius's preparations only so far as to disgrace himself and reveal that he was by nature fit neither to rule nor to be ruled, he joined battle with Pompey,
and, having been swiftly overwhelmed by him and captured, he failed even to face his last misfortune the way a commander should, but, having become master of Sertorius's papers, promised to show Pompey the autograph letters of men of consular rank and of the greatest power in Rome, inviting Sertorius into Italy, as though many were eager to overturn the present state of affairs and change the constitution.
Pompey, then, performed a deed not of a young mind but of one well settled and thoroughly disciplined, and freed Rome from great fears and revolutionary upheavals; for he gathered together all those letters and the papers of Sertorius and burned them, neither reading them himself nor allowing anyone else to; and he had Perpenna himself put to death at once, fearing that if the names were made public, revolts and disturbances might arise among certain people.
Of those who had joined Perpenna's conspiracy, some were brought before Pompey and executed, while others escaped to Libya only to be cut down by Moorish javelins. None escaped except Aufidius, the rival lover of Manlius: he, either escaping notice or being overlooked, grew old in some barbarian village, poor and hated.

======== Comparison Of Sertorius With Eumenes ========

This is what we have gathered as worthy of memory concerning Eumenes and Sertorius. In the comparison, it is common to both that, being strangers and foreigners and exiles, they continued to lead peoples of every sort and warlike and great armies; but peculiar to Sertorius was that he held command given to him by all his allies on account of his reputation, while peculiar to Eumenes was that, though many contended with him over the leadership, he took the first place by his deeds; and men followed the one willingly, wishing to be ruled justly, while they obeyed the other, unable to rule themselves, out of regard for their own advantage.
For the one was a Roman ruling over Iberians and Lusitanians, the other a man of the Chersonese ruling over Macedonians, of whom some had long been enslaved to the Romans, while the others at that time were enslaving all mankind. And Sertorius advanced to command being admired for his senatorial rank and generalship, while Eumenes advanced to leadership though despised on account of his post as secretary. Eumenes, then, not only made use of lesser resources for gaining command, but also faced greater obstacles in increasing it.
For indeed he had many who opposed him openly and many who plotted against him secretly, not as with the other man, against whom openly no one at all, and secretly only a few of his allies, rose up later. Hence for the one the end of danger was victory over his enemies, while for the other danger arose out of victory itself, from those who envied him.
In their generalship, then, they were evenly matched and comparable; but in other respects Eumenes was fond of war and contentious, while Sertorius was inclined to quiet and gentleness. For the one, though it was possible for him to live safely and with honor by withdrawing from the foremost men, continued fighting and running risks, whereas for the other, who wanted no involvement in affairs beyond the mere safety of his person, the war came upon him from those who would not let him live in peace.
For Antigonus would gladly have made use of Eumenes had he withdrawn from the contests for supremacy, content with the rank next after himself; but Pompey's men did not even allow Sertorius to live free of trouble. Hence it came about that the one made war willingly for the sake of command, while the other ruled unwillingly because war was made upon him.
He is fond of war, then, who prefers gain to safety, but he is a man of war who by war acquires safety. And indeed it happened that the one died without foreseeing it, while the other even expected his end; of these, the one belongs to fair-mindedness, for he thought fit to trust his friends, the other to weakness, for wishing to flee he was caught.
And death did not disgrace the life of the one, suffering at the hands of allies what none of his enemies ever did to him; but the other, unable to flee before capture, yet wishing to live after capture, neither guarded his end well nor endured it, but by clinging and begging he made the enemy, who seemed to hold mastery only over his body, master of his soul as well.

======== Agesilaus ========

Archidamus son of Zeuxidamus, who reigned over the Lacedaemonians with distinction, left a son by his esteemed wife Lampido, Agis, and a much younger one by Eupolia daughter of Melesippidas, Agesilaus. Since the kingship belonged by law to Agis, it was expected that Agesilaus would live out his life as a private citizen, so he went through the training called the agoge at Lacedaemon, a discipline harsh in its regimen and full of hardship, but one that taught the young to be ruled.
For this reason they say Sparta was called by Simonides "tamer of men," since through its customs it made its citizens obedient to the laws and manageable, just as horses are broken in from the very start; yet the law released from this compulsion those boys who were being raised for kingship.
But it was Agesilaus's own peculiar distinction to come to rule without having gone unschooled in being ruled. For this reason he made himself far more attuned to his subjects than any other king, adding to a nature suited to leadership and kingship the popular and humane temper he acquired from the training.
Among the so-called herds of boys reared together, he had Lysander as a lover, who was struck above all by the orderliness of his nature. For though Agesilaus was the most contentious and high-spirited of the young men, and wished to be first in everything, and possessed a vehemence and impetuosity that was unbeatable and hard to overcome by force, yet in his obedience and gentleness he was such that he did nothing from fear, but everything commanded of him from a sense of shame, and he was pained more by blame than burdened by hard labor.
The lameness of his leg was hidden by the bloom of his body while it was in its prime, and the ease and good humor with which he bore the affliction—joking about it and mocking himself first—was no small remedy for the condition, but rather made his ambition all the more conspicuous, since he let it keep him from no labor or undertaking on account of his lameness. Of his appearance we have no image, for he himself would not allow one; indeed even as he was dying he forbade that any likeness, molded or painted, be made of his body. He is said to have been small and unimpressive to look at,
but his cheerfulness and good spirits, playful at every occasion, and never harsh or rough either in voice or in look, made him, even into old age, more lovable than those admired for beauty and youth. As Theophrastus records, the ephors imposed a fine on Archidamus for taking a wife of small stature, telling him that what she would give the Spartans was a line of little kinglets rather than true kings.
While Agis was king, Alcibiades came as an exile from Sicily to Lacedaemon; and not long after living in the city, he was accused of consorting with the king's wife, Timaea. Agis said he did not recognize the child born of her as his own, but declared it to be by Alcibiades. Duris says that Timaea did not take this very badly, but even whispered at home to her Helot maids that the child was Alcibiades, not Leotychides,
and moreover that Alcibiades himself said he did not consort with Timaea out of wanton insult, but out of ambition that Spartans should be ruled by kings sprung from himself. For this reason Alcibiades withdrew from Lacedaemon, fearing Agis; and the boy, for the rest of the time, was under suspicion with Agis and did not have the honor of a legitimate son from him. But when Agis fell ill, the boy threw himself at him weeping and persuaded him to declare him his son before many witnesses.
Nevertheless, when Agis died, Lysander—who had by then defeated the Athenians in the naval battle and held the greatest power in Sparta—advanced Agesilaus toward the kingship, on the ground that it did not belong to Leotychides, who was a bastard. Many of the other citizens too joined the effort and worked eagerly on his behalf, on account of Agesilaus's virtue and because he had grown up alongside them, sharing fully in the same discipline. There was a certain Diopeithes in Sparta, an interpreter of oracles, full of ancient prophecies and thought to be wise and remarkable in matters divine.
This man said it was not permitted for a lame man to become king of Lacedaemon, and in the trial he read out an oracle of this sort: "Mark well, Sparta, though you are greatly proud, lest from you, sound of foot though you are, there spring a lame kingship; for long unexpected sicknesses will hold you fast, and the wave of man-destroying war rolling on."
In response to this Lysander said that if the Spartans were truly afraid of the oracle, then Leotychides was the one they needed to watch closely; for it was not, he said, that the god cared if someone with a stumbling foot became king, but rather this: that if a man was not legitimate, nor a Heraclid, that was what constituted a "lame kingship." And Agesilaus said that Poseidon too bore witness to the illegitimacy of Leotychides, since he had cast Agis out of his bedchamber by an earthquake, and Leotychides was born more than ten months after that.
Having thus and for these reasons been declared king, Agesilaus immediately took possession also of the property of Agis, having driven out Leotychides as a bastard. Seeing that his relatives on his mother's side, though decent people, were very poor, he gave them half of the property, thereby securing for himself goodwill and good repute instead of envy and ill will over the inheritance. This is much the same point Xenophon makes, that Agesilaus gained his greatest power, and the freedom to do as he pleased, precisely by submitting to his country's will in every matter.
At that time the greatest power in the constitution belonged to the ephors and to the elders (gerontes): of these, the former hold office for only a year, while the elders hold this honor for life, having been instituted so that the kings should not have unchecked power in everything, as has been written in the account of Lycurgus. For this reason the kings, from of old, always inherited a certain hereditary rivalry and friction toward them.
But Agesilaus took the opposite path, and, letting go of contention and friction with them, he courted their favor instead, always beginning every action from them, and, if summoned, hastening rather than walking; and whenever he happened to be seated on the royal throne conducting business, he would rise before the approaching ephors; and to each man newly enrolled into the council of elders he would send a cloak and a prize ox.
By these acts, seeming to honor and magnify the dignity of their office, he was, without anyone noticing, increasing his own power and adding to the kingship a greatness granted by the goodwill felt toward him personally.
In his dealings with his fellow citizens he was a less blameworthy enemy than friend; for he did not wrong his enemies unjustly, but for his friends he would join even in what was not just. He was ashamed not to honor his enemies when they succeeded, yet found himself unable to blame his friends whenever they went wrong; rather he took pride in helping them and even in sharing in their wrongdoing, for he thought none of the services done for friends was shameful.
And again, when his rivals stumbled, he was the first to share in their distress, and when they asked for help he worked zealously with them, and so he won over the people and drew everyone to himself. The ephors, seeing this and fearing his power, fined him, adding the charge that he was making the common citizens his own private possessions.
For just as natural philosophers hold that, were strife and contention taken away from the cosmos, the stars and planets would cease their courses, and every process of coming-to-be and change would halt once all things fell into perfect agreement, so it seems the Laconian lawgiver introduced into the constitution a spark of virtue in the form of ambition and rivalry, wishing there always to be some competition and rivalry among good men with one another, and holding that the yielding accord that comes from an unchallenged deference, being idle and unexercised, is wrongly called concord.
Some think Homer too clearly perceived this: for he would not have made Agamemnon rejoice when Odysseus and Achilles were provoked into a quarrel "with terrible words," unless he considered rivalry and contention among the best men to be a great good for the common welfare. This, however, one would not concede so simply in general, for excesses of rivalry are harmful to cities and carry great dangers.
When Agesilaus had newly taken over the kingship, some who had come from Asia reported that the Persian king was preparing, with a great fleet, to drive the Lacedaemonians from the sea. Lysander, eager to be sent to Asia again and to help his friends—whom he himself had left as rulers and masters of the cities, but who, governing badly and violently, were being driven out and killed by their citizens—persuaded Agesilaus to undertake the expedition and to fight in defense of Greece, crossing as far away as possible and forestalling the barbarian's preparations.
At the same time he sent letters to his associates in Asia, urging them to send word to Lacedaemon requesting Agesilaus as their commander. So Agesilaus, coming before the assembly, undertook the war, on condition that they give him thirty Spartiate commanders and advisers, two thousand chosen neodamodeis, and an allied force of up to six thousand.
With Lysander cooperating in everything, they voted for it all zealously, and sent Agesilaus off at once with the thirty Spartiates, among whom Lysander held first place—both on account of his personal standing and influence, and equally because of his close bond with Agesilaus, for whom he thought he had accomplished a greater good than the kingship itself by securing that command for him.
While the force was gathering at Geraestus, Agesilaus himself went down to Aulis with his friends, and, spending the night there, seemed in his sleep to hear someone say to him: "O king of the Lacedaemonians, you surely realize that no one has been appointed general of all Greece together except Agamemnon before, and now you after him; and since you command the same men he did, and fight the same enemies, and set out for war from the same place, it is fitting that you too should offer to the goddess the sacrifice which he offered here before he sailed."
At once the memory came over Agesilaus of the slaughter of the maiden, whom her father had sacrificed on being persuaded by the seers. This did not trouble him, however; but rising up and recounting to his friends what had appeared to him, he said he would honor the goddess with such offerings as it is fitting for a goddess to delight in, but would not imitate the callousness of that general of old; and, crowning a deer, he ordered his own seer to perform the offering, not the one appointed by the Boeotians as was customary,
Learning of this, the Boeotarchs grew angry and dispatched officers to stop Agesilaus, since his sacrifice violated Boeotian law and ancestral practice. Beyond announcing the prohibition, these men went so far as to throw the sacrificial thigh-pieces down from the altar. Agesilaus, taking this hard, sailed away angry at the Thebans and despondent because of the omen, believing that his undertakings would go unfulfilled and that the expedition would not come to its proper conclusion.
When he arrived at Ephesus, immediately Lysander's standing and power were oppressive and burdensome, since a crowd thronged daily at his door and everyone attended and paid court to him, as though Agesilaus held only the name and outward form of command by law, while in fact Lysander held real authority over everything, having the power and doing everything himself.
For no general sent out to Asia had ever been more formidable or more feared than he, nor had any other man done greater services for his friends, or inflicted such great harm on his enemies. Since these deeds were still fresh, people remembered them, and, observing besides that Agesilaus was plain, simple in his manner, and unassuming, while Lysander retained the same intensity, roughness, and brevity of speech as before, they deferred to him completely and paid attention to him alone.
As a result of this, first the rest of the Spartiates were displeased at being, as it were, servants of Lysander rather than counselors of the king; and then Agesilaus himself, even though he was not envious nor troubled at others being honored, being nonetheless extremely ambitious and contentious, feared that if his actions turned out brilliantly, this glory would be attributed to Lysander because of his reputation. So he acted as follows.
First he opposed Lysander's advice, and, letting pass and neglecting those actions Lysander was most eager about, he pursued other courses instead. Then, of those who came to him and made requests whom he perceived to be especially devoted to Lysander, he sent away unsuccessful; and likewise in judicial matters, those whom Lysander favored had to leave with less than they sought, while conversely, those whom he was clearly eager to help found it hard to avoid being penalized instead.
Since these things were happening not by chance, but as if by design and in a regular pattern, Lysander, perceiving the cause, did not conceal it from his friends, but said that it was because of him they were being dishonored, and he urged them to go and pay court to the king and to those who had more power than himself.
So then, since it seemed that in doing and saying these things he was contriving envy against him, Agesilaus, wishing to lay hold of him still more, appointed him carver of the meat, and, with many people listening in, is reported to have remarked, "Well, let those men go now and pay court to my meat-carver."
Lysander, being vexed at this, said to him: "You certainly knew well, Agesilaus, how to belittle your friends." "Yes, by Zeus," he said, "those who wish to have more power than I." And Lysander said, "But perhaps these things have been said by you better than they have been done by me. Give me some post and place where I may be useful to you without causing offense."
Following this episode he was dispatched to the Hellespont, where he won over and brought to Agesilaus Spithridates, a Persian man from the territory of Pharnabazus, along with a considerable amount of money and two hundred horsemen; yet he did not release his grudge, but bearing it heavily he spent the rest of his time scheming how he might strip the kingship away from the two royal houses and share it among all the Spartiates in common, and it looked as though this quarrel might have stirred up a massive convulsion in the state, had he not died first while on campaign in Boeotia.
So it is that ambitious natures in political affairs, not guarding against excess, have more of harm than of good in them. For even if Lysander was overbearing, as indeed he was, exceeding due measure in his ambition, surely Agesilaus was not ignorant that there was another, less blameworthy, way of correcting a man of reputation and ambition who was erring; but it seems that by the same affliction neither the one recognized the proper authority of a ruler, nor the other could bear the ignorance of a familiar.
Now when Tissaphernes, at first fearing Agesilaus, made a truce, on the understanding that the king would release the Greek cities to be autonomous under him, but afterward, being persuaded that he had sufficient force, brought the war into the open, Agesilaus received it gladly.
For there was great expectation of the campaign; and he considered it a terrible thing that the Ten Thousand with Xenophon had reached the sea, having defeated the king as often as they themselves wished, while he himself, ruling the Lacedaemonians and leading them by land and sea, should show no deed worthy of memory before the Greeks. So immediately, defending himself with a just deception against the perjury of Tissaphernes, he made a show of intending to advance into Caria, but when the barbarian had gathered his force there, he set out instead and invaded Phrygia.
And he took many cities and became master of abundant wealth, showing his friends that while making a truce and then breaking it is an affront to the gods, tricking one's enemies is a fair and just act that carries with it renown and gain besides, pleasantly won. But being at a disadvantage in cavalry, and since the sacrificial victims proved to lack lobes, he withdrew to Ephesus and gathered a cavalry force, announcing beforehand to the wealthy that, if they did not wish to serve themselves, each should furnish a horse and a man in his place.
Many were these, and it came about for Agesilaus that he quickly had many warlike horsemen instead of cowardly hoplites; for those unwilling to serve hired those willing to serve, and those unwilling to serve on horseback hired those willing to ride. For indeed they said that Agamemnon too had done well, in that, taking a good mare, he released from the campaign a cowardly and rich man.
Now when, at his command, the spoil-sellers stripped the captives and sold them, and there were many buyers for their clothing, but when the bodies, white and soft altogether because of their sheltered upbringing, were stripped bare, they were laughed at as useless and worth nothing, Agesilaus, standing by, said, "These men are those with whom you fight, and these are the things for the sake of which you fight."
When the occasion came again for invading enemy territory, he announced beforehand that he would lead his army off into Lydia, no longer deceiving Tissaphernes in this; but that man deceived himself, distrusting Agesilaus because of the earlier deception, and now supposing that he would attack Caria, which was ill-suited to cavalry, in which he himself was far inferior.
But when, as he had announced, Agesilaus came into the plain around Sardis, Tissaphernes was forced in turn to hasten to its defense from there; and riding through with his cavalry he destroyed many of those who were plundering the plain without order. So Agesilaus, perceiving that the enemy's infantry was not yet present, while none of his own force was lacking, hastened to fight it out.
And mixing the light-armed troops in with the cavalry, he ordered them to ride as fast as possible and attack the enemy, while he himself immediately led up the hoplites; and when the barbarians were routed, the Greeks followed after and took their camp and killed many. From this battle it came about for them not only to be able to plunder and pillage the king's territory without fear, but also to see justice done upon Tissaphernes, a wicked man and most hateful to the race of the Greeks.
For the king immediately sent Tithraustes against him, and Tithraustes struck off his head, then asked Agesilaus, once terms were settled, to sail home, sending money to him as well. But Agesilaus replied that authority over peace belonged to the city, not to himself, and that he found greater satisfaction in making his soldiers wealthy than in personal riches; besides, he added, the Greeks reckoned it honorable to take spoils from their enemies but not gifts.
Nevertheless, wishing to gratify Tithraustes for having taken revenge on Tissaphernes, that enemy shared by all the Greeks, he marched his army off into Phrygia, having received from him thirty talents for provisions. And while on the road he received a dispatch-staff message from the magistrates at home ordering him to command the fleet as well; this alone fell to Agesilaus of all men. And he was admittedly the greatest and most illustrious of those then living, as Theopompus too has somewhere said, yet he himself thought more highly of himself for his virtue than for his command.
But then, in appointing Peisander commander of the fleet, he seems to have erred, in that, though there were present men older and wiser, he did not consider the interest of his country, but honored his family connection and gratified his wife, whose brother Peisander was, and handed over the admiralty to him.
He himself, having brought his army into the territory under the rule of Pharnabazus, not only lived amid abundance in all things, but also gathered much money; and advancing as far as Paphlagonia he won over Cotys, the king of the Paphlagonians, who desired his friendship because of his virtue and trustworthiness.
Spithridates, having revolted from Pharnabazus and come first to Agesilaus, was ever after his companion on campaign and abroad, having a most beautiful son, Megabates, of whom, when he was a boy, Agesilaus was passionately fond, and also a beautiful daughter of marriageable age; this girl Agesilaus persuaded Cotys to marry.
Having taken from him a force of one thousand cavalry plus two thousand light-armed men, he withdrew again into Phrygia, and did harm to the territory of Pharnabazus, who neither stood his ground nor trusted his strongholds, but kept with him at all times the greater part of his treasured and beloved possessions, shifting camp and fleeing from place to place across the country, relocating repeatedly, until Spithridates, keeping a close watch on him and taking along Herippidas the Spartan, seized his camp and took control of everything he owned.
There Herippidas, being a harsh examiner of the plunder taken, and forcing the barbarians to lay it down, and overseeing and searching everything, provoked Spithridates so much that he departed straightaway for Sardis, taking the Paphlagonians with him. This, it is said, was the most distressing thing of all that happened to Agesilaus. For he was grieved at having lost Spithridates, a noble man, and with him no small force, and he felt shame at being charged with meanness and stinginess, a reputation he had always striven to keep clear of, both for himself and for his country.
Apart from these open matters, he was not moderately stung by the love of the boy that had been instilled in him, even though, in the presence of the boy himself, striving to be contentious, he tried manfully to fight off his desire. And once, when Megabates approached him meaning to greet him with a kiss, he turned away.
But when the boy, ashamed, ceased and thereafter greeted him only from a distance, Agesilaus, being vexed in turn and regretting his flight from the kiss, pretended to wonder what had come over Megabates that he no longer greeted him affectionately in person. "You yourself are to blame," his companions said, "for not standing your ground, but shrinking and fearing the kiss of the beautiful boy; since even now he would come to you persuaded, within reach of a kiss, if only you will not flinch away again."
So Agesilaus, being for some time by himself in silence, said, "There is no need for you to persuade him: for I think I would rather fight again that battle over the kiss than have all the gold I have ever beheld become mine." Such was he while Megabates was present, but when he had gone, he was so inflamed that it is hard to say whether, had the boy changed his mind again and appeared before him, he would have held out against being kissed.
After this Pharnabazus wished to arrange a meeting with him, and Apollophanes of Cyzicus, a guest-friend to them both, brought the two together. Agesilaus, arriving first at the place with his friends, threw himself down under some shade where the grass was deep, and there waited for Pharnabazus.
And when he came up, soft fleeces and richly colored rugs having been laid out for him, he was ashamed to see Agesilaus lying thus, and lay down himself too, just as he was, on the grass on the ground, although he was clothed in a marvelous garment of fine texture and dye. And having greeted one another, Pharnabazus was not at a loss for just words, seeing that he had been of much great service to the Lacedaemonians in the war against the Athenians, and now was being ravaged by them; but Agesilaus,
seeing the Spartans with him bowing their heads to the ground in shame and at a loss, for they saw that Pharnabazus was being wronged, said, "We, Pharnabazus, when we were friends of the king before, dealt with his affairs in a friendly manner, and now, having become his enemies, we deal with them in a hostile manner. Since then we see that you too wish to be one of the king's possessions, it is reasonable that through you we do harm to him.
But from the day you judge it worthy to bear the name of friend and ally to the Greeks rather than servant of the king, count this phalanx, these weapons, these ships, and all of us as guardians of your property and of your liberty, apart from which nothing is noble or worth envying among men."
After this Pharnabazus told him the thought he had. "For my part," he said, "if the king sends out another general, I will be with you; but if he grants the command to me, I will not fall short in eagerness to defend myself against you and to do you harm on his behalf." Hearing this, Agesilaus was pleased, and taking his right hand and rising up with him, said, "Would that you, Pharnabazus, being such a man, might become our friend rather than our enemy."
As Pharnabazus was departing with his friends, his son, having been left behind, ran up to Agesilaus and, smiling, said: "I make you my guest-friend, Agesilaus." And having a javelin in his hand he gave it to him. Agesilaus, accepting it and delighted both at the boy's looks and at his friendliness, looked around among those present to see if any had something such as he might give in return as a gift to a fine and noble boy.
Seeing a horse belonging to Idaeus the scribe adorned with cheek-pieces, he quickly stripped these off and gave them to the boy. And thereafter he never ceased remembering him, but even as time went on, when the boy was deprived of his household and driven into exile in the Peloponnese by his brothers, he looked after him zealously.
And he even took a hand in the boy's love affairs. For the boy had fallen in love with an athlete's son from Athens; and when the boy, being big and hard-featured, was in danger of being disqualified at Olympia, the Persian took refuge with Agesilaus, begging on his son's behalf. Agesilaus, wishing to do him this favor too, managed it only with great difficulty and much trouble. For in other matters he was scrupulous and law-abiding, but where his friends were concerned he considered strict justice a mere excuse.
At any rate a little letter of his to Hidrieus the Carian is preserved, of this sort: "Nicias, if he is not guilty, let him go; if he is guilty, let him go for our sake; in any case, let him go." In most matters, then, Agesilaus was of this sort on behalf of his friends; yet there are occasions when he had regard rather to his own advantage than to the occasion, as he showed when, his departure having become rather chaotic, he abandoned his beloved, who was ill. For when the boy begged and called after him as he was leaving, he turned back and remarked that showing compassion and keeping a clear head could not both be done at once. This is the story Hieronymus the philosopher has recorded.
Now when the second year of his generalship was already coming round, much talk of Agesilaus was current abroad, and a wonderful reputation possessed men concerning his self-control, his frugality, and his moderation. For when away from home he pitched his tent by himself in the holiest sanctuaries, which many men are not seen doing things in, making the gods witnesses and overseers of these acts; and out of the countless thousands of troops present, no man's bedding could easily be found humbler than his own,
and toward heat and cold he was so disposed as if he alone were by nature made always to make use of the seasons as tempered by the god. And it was a truly pleasing sight for the Greek settlers living in Asia, watching men once harsh, insufferable, and softened by riches and indulgence—governors and generals—now fearing and courting a man going about in a plain cloak, and adjusting and reshaping themselves at a single brief Laconic word, so that many were moved to quote the words of Timotheus: "Ares is tyrant; Hellas fears not gold."
As Asia was being stirred up and in many places yielding to revolt, he set the cities there in order, and having restored to their constitutions their proper arrangement without murder or exile of men, he had resolved to advance further, and, carrying the war away from the Greek sea, to fight it out around the king's own person and the prosperity he enjoyed at Ecbatana and Susa, and first to strip him of his leisure, so that he should not sit at ease arbitrating the wars of the Greeks and corrupting their popular leaders,
at this point Epicydidas the Spartan arrived to him, reporting that a great Greek war beset Sparta, and that the ephors were summoning him and bidding him come to the aid of the folk at home. O the barbarous evils the Greeks have devised for themselves! For what else could one call that envy, and that combination and mustering of the Greeks against themselves? They seized upon fortune just as it was rising, and turned back upon themselves the weapons that were already looking toward the barbarians, and the war that had already been transported out of Greece,
For my own view differs from that of Demaratus of Corinth, who claimed that those Greeks who did not live to see Alexander seated upon the throne of Darius were deprived of a great pleasure; rather, I think, they might reasonably have wept, considering that these things were left to Alexander and the Macedonians by those who at that time squandered the generals of the Greeks around Leuctra and Coroneia and Corinth and Arcadia.
For Agesilaus, however, nothing greater or better has been accomplished than that withdrawal, nor has there been any finer example of obedience and justice. For whereas Hannibal, already faring badly and being pushed out of Italy, obeyed only with great reluctance those who summoned him to the war at home, and Alexander even mocked, on learning of the battle of Antipater against Agis, saying, "So it appears, gentlemen, that while we were busy defeating Darius on this side, some sort of mouse-fight was going on over in Arcadia"—
how was it not fitting to call Sparta blessed for the honor Agesilaus paid to her and for his scrupulous regard for her laws? For as soon as the scytale came to him, though such great good fortune and power were at hand and such great hopes leading him on, he let them go and gave them up, and sailed away at once "upon an unfinished task," leaving behind him great longing among his allies, and refuting most especially the saying of Erasistratus son of Phaeax, who said that the Lacedaemonians are better in public but the Athenians better in private.
For having shown himself a king and a most excellent general, he showed himself an even better and more delightful private friend and companion to those who dealt with him; and since the Persian coinage bore the stamp of an archer, as he was withdrawing he said that he was being driven out of Asia by ten thousand archers—for that many coins, dispatched to Athens and to Thebes and handed out among the demagogues there, had roused the citizens of those cities to make war on the Spartans.
As he crossed the Hellespont and marched through Thrace, he asked nothing of any of the barbarians, but sent to each people to inquire whether he should pass through their country as a friend or as an enemy. Now all the others received him in friendly fashion and escorted him, each according to his power; but those called Trallians, to whom even Xerxes, it is said, had given gifts, demanded from Agesilaus, in exchange for letting him pass, a hundred talents of silver together with an equal number of women.
But he, mocking them, said, "Why then did they not come at once to take them?" and advanced, and joining battle with them drawn up in array, routed them and destroyed many. He sent the same question to the king of the Macedonians as well; and when he said he would deliberate, Agesilaus said, "Let him deliberate then; we for our part are on our way." The king, then, admiring his boldness and taking fright, bade him proceed as a friend.
As the Thessalians were allied with his enemies, he ravaged their country. He sent Xenocles and Scythes to Larissa to negotiate friendship; but when these men were seized and kept under guard, the others, taking this hard, thought that Agesilaus ought to encamp round about and besiege Larissa; but he said he would not wish to have the whole of Thessaly if it meant losing either one of the men, and he recovered them by a truce.
And perhaps this was not surprising in Agesilaus, who, on learning that a great battle had taken place near Corinth, and that men of the very greatest distinction had perished, as it happened, quite suddenly, and that of the Spartans very few altogether had died, but very many of the enemy, was not seen to be overjoyed or elated, but instead groaned very heavily and said, "Alas for Greece, that she has destroyed by her own hand so many men as, had they lived, could have conquered all the barbarians together in battle."
When the Pharsalians kept pressing on and troubling his forces, he commanded five hundred cavalrymen to ride out alongside him, and having routed them he set up a trophy beneath Narthacium. And he took especial delight in that victory, because he himself, having organized the cavalry entirely by his own effort, had with it alone overcome men who prided themselves most greatly on their horsemanship.
At this point Diphridas, arriving from home as ephor, met him and bade him invade Boeotia at once. He, though he had intended to do this later with greater preparation, thought he must not disobey the magistrates, but told his companions that the moment they had crossed over from Asia to meet was now close at hand, and sent for two of the regiments campaigning around Corinth.
The Lacedaemonians in the city, honoring him, proclaimed that any of the young men who wished might enroll to help the king. When all had enrolled eagerly, the magistrates chose out the fifty most vigorous and strongest and sent them off. Agesilaus, having passed within the Gates and traversed Phocis, which was friendly, when he first set foot in Boeotia and encamped near Chaeronea, at the same time saw the sun eclipsed and becoming crescent-shaped, and at the same time heard that Peisander had died, defeated in a naval battle near Cnidus by Pharnabazus and Conon.
He was distressed, as was natural, at this news, both for the man's sake and for the city's; but so that despondency and fear should not fall upon the soldiers as they marched to battle, he ordered those coming from the sea to say the opposite, that they were victorious in the naval battle; and he himself came forward crowned with a garland and offered sacrifices for good tidings, and sent portions from the victims to his friends.
When, advancing and arriving at Coronea, he caught sight of the enemy and was seen by them, he drew up his line, giving the Orchomenians the left wing, while he himself led the right. The Thebans stationed themselves on the right, and the Argives took the left. Xenophon reports that the encounter was unlike any battle fought before or since; and he himself was present, fighting alongside Agesilaus, having crossed over from Asia.
Now the first clash did not involve much pushing or a long contest, but the Thebans quickly routed the Orchomenians, and Agesilaus routed the Argives; but when both sides, hearing that their left wings were being hard pressed and were fleeing, turned back, then, though victory without danger was at hand for him if he had been willing to let the frontal engagement with the Thebans go and to strike them from behind as they passed by, in his anger and love of contention he advanced directly against the men, wishing to force them back by sheer strength,
but they received him no less vigorously, and a battle occurred that was fierce throughout the whole army, but fiercest around the king himself, where he was stationed among the fifty; in this his ambition seems to have come at just the right moment and to have proved his salvation, for as they fought spiritedly and faced danger for him, they were unable to keep him unwounded, but though he received many blows to his body through his armor from spears and swords, they barely managed to snatch him away alive, and closing ranks before him they killed many, while many of their own fell.
As it was a great task to drive the Thebans back headlong, they were forced to do what they had not originally intended. For they opened their line and gave way, and then, as the Thebans went through in more disorderly fashion, following and running alongside them from the flanks, they struck them. Yet they did not rout them; rather the Thebans withdrew toward Helicon, thinking greatly of themselves for the battle, on the grounds that they had, on their own part, remained unconquered.
Agesilaus, although his body was in bad condition from many wounds, did not go off to his tent before being carried on a litter to the line and seeing the dead gathered within the ranks; and regarding the foes who had fled for safety into the temple, he commanded that every one of them be released unharmed.
For nearby stands the temple of Athena Itonia, and before it stands a trophy, which the Boeotians long ago set up there under the generalship of Sparton, when they defeated the Athenians and killed Tolmides. And at daybreak, wishing to test the Thebans to see whether they would fight it out, Agesilaus ordered his soldiers to be crowned with garlands and the flute-players to play, and a trophy to be set up and adorned as if they had won.
But when the enemy sent asking for the recovery of their dead, he granted a truce, and having thus confirmed the victory, he was carried off to Delphi, where the Pythian games were being held, and he performed the procession for the god and dedicated a tenth part of the plunder brought from Asia, a sum totaling a hundred talents.
When he returned home, he was at once beloved by his fellow citizens and much admired for his manner of life and his way of living. For he did not, like most generals, come back a changed man from abroad, disturbed by foreign customs and out of sorts and quarrelsome with things at home, but like those who had never crossed the Eurotas, he honored and cherished the present order of things, and changed neither his dinner, nor his bath, nor his attendance by his wife,
nor the adornment of his weapons, nor the furnishing of his house, but he even left the doors just as they were, so extremely old that they seemed to be those very ones which Aristodemus had set up, and the kannathron, Xenophon says, was no more splendid for his daughter than for anyone else's. They call kannathra the wooden images of griffins and goat-stags in which they carry the girls in processions.
Now Xenophon has not written the name of Agesilaus's daughter, and Dicaearchus was indignant that we know neither the daughter of Agesilaus nor the mother of Epaminondas; but we ourselves have found in the Laconian records the name of Agesilaus's wife recorded as Cleora, and his daughters as Eupolia and Proauga. And a spear of his is also to be seen lying to this day in Lacedaemon, no different from any other.
Still, seeing that some of the citizens thought themselves important and prided themselves greatly on their horse-breeding, he induced his sister Cynisca to put forward a chariot as a competitor at Olympia, wanting to demonstrate to the Greeks that victory there was a matter of no excellence at all, but of wealth and expenditure.
He kept the wise Xenophon with him, holding him in high regard, and urged him to send for his sons and raise them at Sparta, so that they would learn the finest of all lessons, to obey and to command. After Lysander had died, he found a large faction still standing together, which Lysander had organized against Agesilaus immediately upon his return from Asia, and he set out to expose what sort of citizen Lysander had been while alive.
He read a speech that had been left behind in a book, one that Cleon of Halicarnassus had written and which Lysander had intended to take up and deliver before the assembly, concerning revolutionary measures and a change of the constitution, and he wished to bring it out into the open. But when one of the elders, having read the speech and fearing its formidable power, advised him against disturbing Lysander in his grave and urged that the speech be buried together with the man, he yielded to the counsel and let the matter drop,
and those who openly opposed him he did not harm outright; instead, by arranging always to have some of them sent out as generals and officials, he would let them show themselves, once in positions of power, to be corrupt and grasping, and then, when they were brought to trial in turn, he would come to their aid and fight on their side, thereby turning enemies into friends and winning them over to himself, so that no one remained his rival,
for the other king, Agesipolis, since his father had been an exile and he himself was still quite a boy in age, and being by nature gentle and orderly, took little part in political affairs. Even so, Agesilaus made him too tractable to his hand. For the kings dine together at the same public mess when they are in the city.
Knowing then that Agesipolis, like himself, was susceptible to erotic attachments, he was always ready with some conversation about the young men in their prime, and he would draw the young king in and join in his love affairs and further them, for Laconian love affairs held nothing shameful, but involved great modesty, ambition, and zeal for virtue, as has been written in the account of Lycurgus.
Being now the most powerful man in the city, he arranged for his half-brother on his mother's side, Teleutias, to be given command of the fleet, and campaigning against Corinth he himself took the long walls by land, while Teleutias operated with the ships. At that moment it was the Argives who occupied Corinth and were in the midst of holding the Isthmian festival there, and appearing suddenly he drove them off just as they had finished sacrificing to the god,
leaving behind the whole apparatus of the festival. When those Corinthians who happened to be present as exiles begged him to conduct the games himself, he refused to do this, but when those same Argives held and completed the games again, he stayed and provided them safety. Later, after he had departed, the Isthmian games were again conducted by the Argives, and some who had won before were recorded as defeated the second time, while others who had lost earlier were recorded as victors.
Over this Agesilaus declared that the Argives had convicted themselves of great cowardice, if, regarding the presidency over the games as so solemn and weighty an honor, they nevertheless lacked the courage to defend it in battle. As for himself, he thought it proper to maintain a moderate attitude toward all such things, and he would grace the choruses and contests held at home and would always be present, full of ambition and zeal, never missing a competition of boys or of girls, yet he seemed not even to notice the things that others admired so much.
Once Callippides, the actor of tragedy, a man of renown and standing among the Greeks who was sought after by all, first came up to him and greeted him, then pompously thrust himself in among those walking with him, putting himself on display, expecting that the king would open some friendly conversation, and at last he said, "Do you not recognize me, O king?" And Agesilaus, looking at him, said, "Why, are you not Callippides the mimic?" for that is what the Spartans call actors.
On another occasion, invited to listen to a man famed for mimicking the nightingale's song, he refused the invitation, remarking, "I have already heard the bird itself." As for the physician Menecrates, who, having succeeded in some hopeless treatments, had been given the surname Zeus, and who used this title vulgarly, even daring to write to Agesilaus in this fashion: "Menecrates Zeus, to King Agesilaus, greetings," Agesilaus wrote back: "King Agesilaus, to Menecrates, good health."
During his delay in Corinthian territory, having taken the Heraeum and watching his soldiers carry off and drive away the captured goods, envoys arrived from Thebes concerning friendship. He, who always hated that city and thought it advantageous at that time to insult them, pretended neither to see nor to hear them as they approached.
But retribution soon overtook him, for before the Thebans had even left, messengers arrived bringing word that Iphicrates had cut the mora to pieces. It was a calamity of the first order, one such as they had not suffered in a great while, since many good soldiers were lost, Lacedaemonian hoplites falling before peltasts and Lacedaemonians beaten by hired troops.
Agesilaus immediately leapt up to go to their aid, but when he learned they had already been destroyed, he returned again to the Heraeum, and having ordered the Boeotians to come forward at that time, he began to negotiate with them. When they, in their arrogance, made no mention of peace but instead demanded to be allowed to pass through to Corinth, Agesilaus, angered, said, "Should you care to look upon your friends still puffed up in their good fortune, tomorrow that chance shall be granted you safely."
Bringing them along the following day, he laid waste the Corinthians' land and pressed on toward the city itself. Having thus proven that the Corinthians did not dare to defend themselves, he dismissed the embassy. He himself, taking up the survivors of the mora, led them back to Sparta, making his marches before daybreak and his encampments again under cover of darkness, so that those of the Arcadians who hated and envied them would not rejoice over it,
and after this, to please the Achaeans, he crossed over into Acarnania with an army together with them, and he drove off much plunder and defeated the Acarnanians in battle. When the Achaeans asked him to remain through the winter and destroy the enemy's sown crops, he said he would do the opposite, for they would be more afraid of war, he said, if they had their land sown in season, which indeed came to pass, for when a campaign was again announced against them, they came to terms with the Achaeans.
When Conon and Pharnabazus, with the King's fleet, controlled the sea and ravaged the coast of Laconia, and the city of Athens was walled again with money that Pharnabazus provided, the Lacedaemonians resolved to conclude a peace with the King, and they sent Antalcidas to Tiribazus, handing over to the King, in the most shameful and lawless fashion, the Greeks who inhabited Asia, on whose behalf Agesilaus had waged war,
which is why it turned out that Agesilaus had the least part in this disgrace. For Antalcidas was his enemy and pursued the peace with all his strength, believing that the war was making Agesilaus greater and more glorious and powerful. Yet even so, to the man who said that the Lacedaemonians were medizing, Agesilaus replied that it was rather the Medes who were laconizing.
By threatening those who were unwilling to accept the peace and declaring war on them, he compelled everyone to abide by what the Persian had decreed, especially on account of the Thebans, so that by leaving Boeotia autonomous they would become weaker. This became evident later on, for when Phoebidas, in a time of truce and peace, committed the outrage of seizing the Cadmea, indignation spread through the whole Greek world, and even the Spartans themselves were troubled by it,
and especially those who were at odds with Agesilaus, angrily inquired of Phoebidas at whose order he had done this, turning suspicion toward Agesilaus, he did not hesitate to come to Phoebidas' defense and to say openly that one ought to consider the action itself, whether it had any use, for whatever was advantageous to Lacedaemon was rightly done on its own account, even if no one had ordered it.
And yet in speech he everywhere declared that justice was the foremost of the virtues, for courage, he said, was of no use without justice present, but if all men became just, there would be no need of courage at all. And to those who said that this was the will of the Great King, he said, "In what way is he greater than I am, unless he surpasses me in justice too?" holding, with sound and noble judgment, that the standard for measuring one man's superiority over another must be justice itself, as though by a kingly rule,
and the letter concerning hospitality and friendship which the King sent him once the peace had been made he did not accept, saying that the common friendship was sufficient and that he would need no private one so long as that remained. Yet in his actions he no longer preserved this reputation, but was carried away in many respects by ambition and rivalry, and most of all in his dealings with the Thebans,
for he not only saved Phoebidas, but also persuaded the city to take the wrongdoing upon itself and to hold the Cadmea on its own account, and to appoint Archias and Leontidas masters of affairs and of the government, the very men through whom Phoebidas had entered and seized the acropolis.
From these events there arose immediately a suspicion that though the deed was Phoebidas' doing, the plan behind it was Agesilaus', and later actions made the charge undeniable. For when the Thebans expelled the garrison and freed their city, he, accusing them of having killed Archias and Leontidas, who were tyrants in deed though polemarchs in name, brought war against them.
And Cleombrotus, who had become king on the death of Agesipolis, was dispatched to Boeotia at the head of an army, since Agesilaus, being now forty years beyond the age of military youth and having by law an exemption from military service, avoided that command, ashamed that, having so recently made war on the Phliasians on behalf of exiles, he would now be seen again doing harm to the Thebans on account of tyrants.
There was a certain Spartan, Sphodrias, of the faction opposed to Agesilaus, stationed as governor at Thespiae, a man not lacking in daring nor in ambition, but always more full of hopes than of good sense. Desiring a great name, and thinking that Phoebidas had become famous and celebrated for his daring act at Thebes, he was persuaded that it would be far finer and more brilliant if he himself should seize Piraeus and strip the Athenians of the sea, coming upon them unexpectedly by land.
It is said that this was a scheme devised by Pelopidas and Melon and the other Boeotarchs, for they sent men pretending to favor the Spartans, who praised and magnified Sphodrias as the only man worthy of so great a deed, and stirred him up and urged him on to undertake an unjust and lawless act just like the other one, but lacking in the daring and the luck that had attended it.
For daylight caught him and exposed him on the Thriasian plain, when he had hoped to reach Piraeus by night, and they say that on seeing a light from certain sacred rites at Eleusis, the soldiers shuddered and were seized with terror. He himself lost his nerve, since it was no longer possible to escape notice, and after seizing some small plunder he withdrew shamefully and ingloriously to Thespiae.
After this, accusers were sent from Athens to Sparta, but they found that the magistrates needed no accusation against Sphodrias, having already pronounced a sentence of death against him, which he refused to face, fearing the anger of the citizens, who were ashamed before the Athenians and wished to seem to share in punishing the wrong, so as not to seem to share in committing it.
Sphodrias had a son, Cleonymus, who while still a boy and beautiful in appearance was loved by Archidamus, the son of King Agesilaus. At that time Archidamus naturally shared in the boy's anguish over the danger his father was in, but he could not openly assist or cooperate, for Sphodrias belonged to the faction opposed to Agesilaus.
When Cleonymus came to him and, with entreaty and tears, begged him to make Agesilaus well disposed toward his father — for it was Agesilaus above all whom they feared — for three or four days Archidamus, out of respect and fear of his own father, followed him about in silence; but at last, when the trial was drawing near, he ventured to tell Agesilaus that Cleonymus had begged him on behalf of his father.
Agesilaus, knowing that Archidamus was in love, did not stop him — for Cleonymus, from boyhood, gave every promise of becoming, if any man would, a serious and excellent man. Yet he gave the boy no cause then to hope for anything kind or generous in his petition, but said only that he would consider what would be honorable and fitting, and so departed.
Archidamus, out of shame, therefore stopped calling on Cleonymus, though he had previously been accustomed to do so often during the day. Because of this, Sphodrias's friends grew ever more hopeless about the outcome, until Etymocles, a companion of Agesilaus, revealed to them in a private talk Agesilaus's actual thinking: that he condemned the deed as strongly as possible, but that in other respects he considered Sphodrias a good man, and saw that the city had need of such soldiers.
For these were the arguments Agesilaus kept making on every occasion concerning the trial, wishing to please his son, so that Cleonymus at once perceived Archidamus's zeal, and Sphodrias's friends now took courage to help him. Agesilaus was, moreover, remarkably fond of children; and they tell this story of him as a form of play: that when his children were small, he used to ride a reed like a horse and play with them at home, and being seen by one of his friends, he asked him to tell no one, until he himself should become a father of children.
When Sphodrias had been acquitted, and the Athenians, upon learning of it, turned toward war, Agesilaus was very badly spoken of, since he was thought, out of some strange and childish desire, to have obstructed a just verdict, and to have made the city partly responsible for wrongs of such magnitude against the Greeks.
But when he saw that Cleombrotus was not eager to make war on the Thebans, he then let go the law which he had previously invoked concerning who should lead the campaign, and himself invaded Boeotia, doing harm to the Thebans and in turn suffering harm from them, so that once when he had been wounded, Antalcidas said: "Truly you are receiving fine tuition-fees from the Thebans, for having taught them to fight when they neither wished nor knew how."
For indeed they say the Thebans themselves became at that time the most warlike people they had ever been, having been trained, as it were, by the Lacedaemonians' many campaigns against them; for which reason old Lycurgus too, in the so-called three rhetras, forbade making frequent campaigns against the same enemies, so that they might not thereby learn how to make war. Agesilaus was also burdensome to the allies of the Lacedaemonians, since he seemed to seek the Thebans' destruction not for any public grievance, but out of some private anger and love of contention.
So they said nothing, though they were unwilling to be worn down, going here and there every year, so many of them following in the train of so few. It was on such an occasion, they say, that Agesilaus, wishing to expose their numbers, contrived the following device. He commanded that all the allies take seats intermingled with one another, while the Lacedaemonians sat apart, on their own.
Then he had it proclaimed that the potters should stand up first; and when these had stood up, he proclaimed next the smiths, then in turn the carpenters and builders and each of the other trades. So nearly all the allies stood up, but none of the Lacedaemonians; for it was forbidden to them to practice a trade or learn any manual craft. Then Agesilaus, laughing, said: "You see, gentlemen, how much larger a fighting force we furnish compared with you."
At Megara, while bringing his army home from Thebes, as he climbed toward the government building on the acropolis, he took a severe cramp and pain in his sound leg; from this it seemed to swell up and become full of blood, and it produced an excessive inflammation.
When a Syracusan doctor made an incision in a vein just under the ankle, the pain went away, but as much blood flowed and ran uncontrollably, a great faintness and acute danger from it surrounded Agesilaus. However, he then stopped the flow of blood; and having been carried to Lacedaemon, he remained ill for a long time and unable to go on campaign.
During this time many reverses befell the Spartans both by land and by sea, the worst of which was the engagement at Tegyra, the first occasion on which the Thebans defeated them in open battle. It seemed good to all, then, to make peace with everyone; and envoys assembled at Lacedaemon from all Greece to bring about the settlement, one of whom was Epaminondas,
a man renowned for education and philosophy, but who had not yet given proof of generalship. This man, seeing all the others deferring to Agesilaus, alone employed a proud and outspoken freedom of speech, and delivered a speech not on behalf of the Thebans but on behalf of Greece in common, showing that the war increased Sparta's power at the expense of all the rest, who suffered from it, and urging that peace be established on equality and justice — for only so, he said, would it endure, once all had become equal.
Agesilaus, then, seeing the Greeks marveling exceedingly at him and paying close attention to him, asked him whether he considered it fair and reasonable for Boeotia to be self-governing. When Epaminondas quickly and boldly asked in return whether he too thought it just that Laconia should be autonomous, Agesilaus sprang up in anger and demanded that he state clearly whether he was releasing Boeotia to be autonomous.
When Epaminondas again put the same question back — whether he was releasing Laconia to be autonomous — Agesilaus grew so harsh, and so gladly seized the pretext, that he at once struck the Thebans' name from the peace and declared war on them beforehand; and he ordered the other Greeks, now reconciled, to depart, treating what could be healed by peace and what could not be healed by war. For it was a great task to clear away and resolve all the disputes.
It happened that at that time Cleombrotus was in Phocis with his forces; the ephors accordingly sent at once ordering him to lead his army against the Thebans, and, sending around to the allies, they gathered them, though they were reluctant and burdened by the war, not yet daring to speak against or disobey the Lacedaemonians.
Though many bad omens occurred, as has been written in the account of Epaminondas, and though Prothous the Laconian opposed the campaign, Agesilaus did not relent but pushed the war through, hoping that, while all Greece still belonged to them, and the Thebans were now outside the treaty, it was the moment to exact justice from them.
That this campaign was undertaken in anger rather than by calculation is shown by the timing: for on the fourteenth of the month Scirophorion they concluded the treaty at Lacedaemon, and on the fifth of Hecatombaion — twenty days later — they were defeated at Leuctra. A thousand Lacedaemonians died, and King Cleombrotus, and around him the best of the Spartans,
among them, it is said, Cleonymus, Sphodrias's handsome son, who went down before the king three separate times, rose each time in turn, and finally died battling the Thebans.
Since this unexpected disaster befell the Lacedaemonians and this unexpected good fortune befell the Thebans, such as had never come to any other Greeks contending against Greeks, one might no less admire the excellence, and marvel at the defeated city no less than at the victorious one.
For Xenophon says that the words and pastimes of good men, even in wine and play, are worth remembering, and he says rightly; but it is no less, indeed even more, worthy of note and observation, what good men do and say amid misfortunes while still keeping their dignity. It so happened that the city was in the midst of a festival, crowded with visitors from abroad; for the Gymnopaediae were being celebrated, with choruses competing in the theater, when those from Leuctra arrived bringing news of the disaster.
Though it was at once evident that their affairs were ruined and they had lost their supremacy, the ephors did not allow the chorus to leave nor the city to change the form of the festival, but sending the names of the dead to their households, they themselves attended to the spectacle and the contest of the choruses.
At daybreak, when it had already become clear to everyone who had survived and who had died, the fathers and kinsmen and relatives of the dead went down into the marketplace and greeted one another with cheerful faces, full of pride and joy, while the relatives of the survivors, as though in mourning, stayed at home with the women; and if any of them was compelled to go out, he appeared humble and downcast in bearing, voice, and look.
Still more remarkable was it to see and hear the women: the mother expecting her son to return alive from the battle appeared downcast and silent, while those whose sons were reported to have fallen at once went about visiting the temples, walking to one another cheerfully and proudly.
Nevertheless, as the allies fell away, and it was expected that Epaminondas, having won, would invade the Peloponnese in high pride, remembrance of the oracles then fell upon the people concerning Agesilaus's lameness, and much discouragement and fear before the divine, as though the city fared badly for this reason: that, rejecting the sound-footed one for kingship, they had chosen a lame and maimed man — which taught them more than anything to take heed and be on guard against the divine.
Yet because of his other power, excellence, and reputation, they made use of him not only as king and general in war, but also as physician and arbiter of their political difficulties — namely, in dealing with the men who had proven cowardly in the fighting, the ones the Spartans themselves called "tremblers," being reluctant to impose upon them the disgraces prescribed by law, since they were many and powerful, fearing revolution from them.
For they are not only excluded from every office, but it is also disgraceful to give a wife to or take a wife from any of them; and whoever meets them may strike them. They endure it, going about squalid and humbled, wearing cloaks patched with dyed cloth, and shaving part of their beard while letting the other part grow.
It was, then, a fearful thing to overlook so many such men in the city, which had need of no small number of soldiers, and they chose Agesilaus as lawgiver. He, neither adding anything nor taking anything away nor rewriting anything, went in among the assembled Lacedaemonians and said that the laws must today be allowed to sleep, but from this day forward be in force for the future — and thus at once he preserved both the laws for the city and the honor of the men.
Wishing to lift the present despondency and gloom of the young men, he invaded Arcadia, and while he took great care not to join battle with the enemy, he captured a small town belonging to the Mantineans and overran their territory, thereby making the city's hopes lighter and its spirit happier, as one no longer altogether despaired of.
After this Epaminondas arrived in Laconia with his allies, a force amounting to no fewer than forty thousand hoplites, and many light-armed and unarmed troops besides followed along for plunder, so that the whole host that poured into Laconia numbered seventy thousand.
It was now no less than six hundred years since the Dorians had settled Lacedaemon, and in all that time enemies had never before been seen in the country; before this no one had dared it, but now they invaded a land that had been unravaged and untouched, and burned and plundered it all the way to the river and to the city itself, with no one going out against them.
For Agesilaus would not allow the Lacedaemonians to fight against so great a "stream and surge of war," as Theopompus calls it, but coiling his hoplites around the central and most vital parts of the city, he endured the threats and the boasts of the Thebans, who shouted his name and dared him to come fight for the country, as being the one responsible for these evils by having kindled the war.
No less than these things did the tumults and shouting and running to and fro within the city distress Agesilaus, with the older men chafing at what was happening and the women unable to keep quiet, but altogether beside themselves at the shouting and the fires of the enemy.
The matter of his reputation also vexed him, because, having taken over a city that was greatest and most powerful, he now saw its dignity shrunk and its pride cut short — the very pride which he himself had often invoked, saying that a Spartan woman had never seen the smoke of an enemy. It is said too that Antalcidas, when some Athenian disputed with him about courage and said, "We, at any rate, have often driven you back from the Cephisus," retorted, "But we have never yet been driven by you from the Eurotas."
In much the same way one of the less notable Spartiates answered an Argive: for when the man said, "Many of your people are buried here in the Argolid," he replied, "But none of yours lie in Laconia."
At that time, they say, Antalcidas, who was ephor, sent his children away in fear to Cythera. Agesilaus, when the enemy attempted to cross the river and force their way toward the city, abandoned the rest and drew up his line before the central and elevated parts.
The Eurotas at that time ran fuller and mightier than its wont, since there had been snowfalls, and its current, made harsh and difficult for the Thebans more by its coldness than by its roughness. Some pointed out to Agesilaus Epaminondas marching at the head of the phalanx; and he, as they say, gazed at him a long while, following him with his eyes as he passed, and said only this: "Oh, what a man of great designs!"
But when Epaminondas, eager for glory, was unable, for all his ambition to join battle within the city and set up a trophy, to draw Agesilaus out or provoke him, he broke camp again and set about ravaging the countryside; meanwhile in Lacedaemon some of the long-standing malcontents and rogues, about two hundred of them, joined forces and took over the Issorium, the site of the temple of Artemis, a place well fortified and hard to dislodge men from,
and when the Lacedaemonians wished at once to rush upon them, Agesilaus, fearing the revolution, told the others to stay calm, while he himself went up in his cloak with a single servant, calling out that they had misheard the order — since he had given no command for them to gather there, nor all together in one place, but some there (pointing to another spot) and others elsewhere in the city.
They, on hearing this, were pleased, thinking they had gone undetected, and separated, withdrawing to the places he had indicated. He then at once sent for others and occupied the Issorium, and having seized about fifteen of those who had banded together, put them to death that same night.
Another and greater conspiracy was disclosed, a gathering of Spartiate men meeting secretly in a house for revolutionary purposes, whom, amid such disorder, it was hard either to bring to trial or to overlook while they were plotting. Agesilaus, therefore, after taking counsel with the ephors, put these men too to death without trial, though no Spartiate before that time had ever been put to death without a hearing,
and when many of the perioeci and helots enrolled under arms were deserting from the city to the enemy, and this caused the greatest despondency, he instructed his attendants to go around the bivouacs at dawn and take up the arms of those who had gone off and hide them, so that their number might not be known.
As for why the Thebans withdrew from Laconia, other writers say it was because bad weather set in and the Arcadians began to desert and scatter in disorder, though they had remained there fully three months and had laid waste to most of the country; Theopompus, however, says that, when the Boeotarchs had already resolved to leave, Phrixus, a Spartiate, came to them bearing ten talents from Agesilaus as pay for their withdrawal, so that on top of carrying out what they had long since decided to do, they also got extra travel money from the enemy.
How the rest failed to learn of this I do not know, but Theopompus alone found it out. That Sparta was saved on that occasion all agree was owing to Agesilaus, because he set aside those passions inborn in him, love of rivalry and love of honor, and handled affairs with safety.
He was not, however, able to recover for the city its power and reputation after this stumble; but as with a body that is healthy yet has followed too strict and regimented a diet for its whole life, a single fault and a single tip of the scale overturned the entire good fortune of the city — and not without reason. For onto a constitution best arranged for peace, virtue, and concord they grafted offices of empire and violent dominions, of none of which Lycurgus thought a city meant to live happily had any need, and in this they came to grief.
Agesilaus himself was by now, on account of his age, past campaigning, but his son Archidamus, with the reinforcement that had come from the tyrant of Sicily, defeated the Arcadians in the battle called the "Tearless Battle," for not one of his own men fell, while he slew great numbers of the enemy. Yet this very victory most of all exposed the weakness of the city,
for formerly they had considered defeating the enemy so customary and fitting a task for them that they would sacrifice nothing to the gods for a victory but a cock within the city, nor did those who fought boast of it, nor did those who heard the news show excessive joy — indeed, this held true even following the engagement at Mantinea, an event Thucydides recorded, when the magistrates sent to the man who first brought news of the victory only a piece of meat from the public mess as a reward for good tidings, and nothing else;
but on this occasion, when news of the battle came and Archidamus was approaching, no one could contain himself, but his father was the first to greet him, in tears of joy, and following him came the magistrates, while the crowd of older men and of women went down to the river, stretching out their hands and calling upon the gods, as though Sparta had thrown off reproaches unworthy of her and now saw once more her light shining bright from the beginning; for before this, they say, the men were so ashamed of their failures that they could not even look their women in the eye.
When Messene was being resettled by Epaminondas and his men, with the ancient citizens streaming into it from every quarter, the Spartans did not dare to fight it out nor were they able to prevent it, but they were bitter and heavy of heart toward Agesilaus, because a country no smaller in extent than Laconia and holding first place in excellence among the lands of Greece, which they had possessed and enjoyed for so long a time, they had lost during his reign.
For this reason Agesilaus would not accept the peace offered by the Thebans; unwilling to concede in word the land that they held in fact by force, but persisting out of rivalry, he neither recovered it nor came near losing Sparta itself besides, having been outgeneraled.
For when the Mantineans again broke away from the Thebans and sent for the Lacedaemonians, Epaminondas, learning that Agesilaus had marched out with his forces and was approaching, slipped past the Mantineans unnoticed and led his army by night from Tegea straight against Lacedaemon itself, and came within a little of bypassing Agesilaus and seizing the city while it was suddenly left undefended.
But Euthynus of Thespiae, as Callisthenes says, or, as Xenophon has it, a certain Cretan, brought word to Agesilaus, who quickly sent a horseman ahead to tell those in the city, and not long after came himself into Sparta. A little later the Thebans crossed the Eurotas and assaulted the city, with Agesilaus defending it most vigorously, beyond what his age would allow.
For he saw that the moment called not, as before, for caution and defense, but rather for desperate daring; and with troops in which he had never before, at any other time, placed trust or made use, he now alone with them beat back the danger, wresting the city free from Epaminondas's grasp, setting up a trophy, and showing his sons and the women the Lacedaemonians rendering to their country the noblest repayment for their upbringing,
and in the front rank Archidamus fighting magnificently, both in strength of spirit and in nimbleness of body, running swiftly to the hard-pressed points of the battle through the narrow streets and everywhere, with but a few men, standing firm against the enemy; and Isidas, son of Phoebidas, I think, appeared a sight strange and admirable not only to his fellow citizens but even to the enemy.
For he was conspicuous in form and stature of body, and was at that age when men in their bloom are at their sweetest as they pass from boys into men; naked, without either armor or cloak for covering, his body anointed with oil, a spear gripped in one fist and a sword clutched in the other, he leapt out from his house, and cutting a path through the thick of the fighters, ranged among the enemy, striking down whoever came in his way,
and he was wounded by no one, whether because some god was guarding him for his valor, or because he appeared to his opponents as something greater and mightier than a man. For this it is said that the ephors crowned him, and then afterward imposed on him a fine of a thousand drachmas, because he had taken the risk of fighting unarmored.
A few days later they fought a battle around Mantinea, and when Epaminondas, already victorious over the front ranks, was still pressing on and hastening the pursuit, a Laconian named Anticrates stood his ground and struck him — with a spear, according to Dioscorides' account, though the Lacedaemonians even now call the descendants of Anticrates "Machaeriones," as though he had struck him with a sword.
So much did they admire and love him out of fear of Epaminondas while he lived that they voted him honors and gifts, and exemption from taxes for his line, which Callicrates, one of the descendants of Antikrates, still holds even in our own day. Once the fighting was over and Epaminondas lay dead, and the Greek states had made peace among themselves, Agesilaus and his faction excluded the Messenians from that oath, arguing that they possessed no city of their own.
But when all the rest received them and took oaths from them, the Lacedaemonians stood apart, and they alone were at war, still hoping to recover Messenia. Agesilaus therefore seemed a violent man, unyielding, and insatiable for wars, undermining and postponing the general settlements by every means, and then, forced by lack of money, troubling his friends throughout the city, borrowing and raising contributions,
though, when he had reached such a point in his fortunes, he ought to have been rid of troubles, and not, after he had let go so vast an empire — cities and land and sea — to be struggling over the properties and revenues of Messene.
He fell into still greater disrepute by giving himself as a general to Tachos the Egyptian: for people did not think it fitting that a man judged the best of Greece, who had filled the inhabited world with his fame, should hire out his person to a rebel against the king, a barbarian, and sell his name and his reputation for money, performing the work of a mercenary and a captain of hired troops.
For even though, past eighty years of age and with his whole body cut up by wounds, he had again taken up that noble and conspicuous command on behalf of the freedom of the Greeks, his ambition was not altogether blameless: for the noble has its own proper season and hour, and, more generally, the honorable differs from the shameful chiefly by measure.
Agesilaus, however, gave no thought to these things, and considered no task performed for the state too lowly for a man of his rank; rather he thought it beneath himself to live inactive in the city and sit waiting for death. So, having gathered mercenaries with the money Tachos sent him, and having manned ships, he put out to sea, taking with him thirty Spartan advisers, as before.
When he had put in at Egypt, at once the chief of the royal commanders and officials came down to the ship to pay him court, and there was great eagerness and expectation among the rest of the Egyptians too because of the name and fame of Agesilaus, and all ran together for the spectacle.
But when they saw no splendor and no fine equipment, but an old man lying on some grass by the sea, small and cheap in body, wrapped in a rough and shabby cloak, they took to mocking him and making jokes, saying that this was the mountain of legend that went into labor and then gave birth to a mouse.
They were still more amazed at his strangeness when, gifts of hospitality having been brought and offered to him, he took the barley meal, the calves, and the geese, but waved off the confections, the baked delicacies, and the scented oils; and when they pressed and urged him to take them, he ordered them carried off and given to the helots. Theophrastus says, however, that he was pleased with the papyrus used for garlands, on account of the plainness and cleanness of such wreaths, and asked for some and took it from the king when he sailed away.
At that time, joining Tachos as he was preparing for the campaign, Agesilaus was not, as he had hoped, appointed general of the whole force, but got charge only of the hired troops; command of the fleet went instead to the Athenian Chabrias, and Tachos himself held overall command of everything.
And this first vexed Agesilaus; then, weighed down by the rest of the Egyptian's boastfulness and empty conceit, he was forced to bear it, and sailed out with him against the Phoenicians, yielding against his own worth and nature and enduring it, until he found his opportunity.
For Nektanebis, being a cousin of Tachos and having under him a part of the forces, revolted; and being proclaimed king by the Egyptians, he sent to Agesilaus asking him to help him, and made the same appeal to Chabrias, promising great gifts to both,
When Tachos perceived this and turned to entreating them, Chabrias tried to persuade and console Agesilaus to remain in friendship with Tachos, but Agesilaus said: "You, Chabrias, having come here on your own, are free to follow your own reasoning; but my homeland assigned me to the Egyptians as their general, and it would be dishonorable for me to fight against the very men to whom I was dispatched as an ally, unless my city itself commands otherwise a second time."
Having said this, he dispatched agents to Sparta with instructions to denounce Tachos and speak well of Nektanebis. The two rivals likewise sent their own envoys to plead with the Lacedaemonians — one claiming a longstanding bond of friendship and alliance with them, the other insisting he would prove the more favorably disposed and eager champion of their city. The Lacedaemonians, having heard both, answered the Egyptians openly that Agesilaus would attend to these matters, but sent word to him privately, bidding him look to what would be advantageous for Sparta,
So then Agesilaus, taking the mercenaries, went over from Tachos to Nektanebis, using the advantage of his homeland as a cloak for a strange and monstrous act: for once that pretext is stripped away, the truest name for the deed was treachery. But the Lacedaemonians, giving the first place among noble things to the advantage of their homeland, neither learn nor recognize any other justice than what they think will increase Sparta.
Tachos, then, stripped of his mercenaries, fled; and from Mendes another man rose up against Nektanebis, proclaimed king; and gathering a hundred thousand men, he advanced. As Nektanebis tried to encourage Agesilaus, saying that the enemy were many, but a mixed rabble, vulgar workmen, and easy to despise because of their inexperience,
"And yet it is not their number," Agesilaus said, "but their inexperience and ignorance that I fear, as being hard to deceive. For deceptions succeed by surprise against those who suspect and expect a turn of events, but the man who expects nothing and suspects nothing gives no handhold to one plotting against him, just as a man who does not move gives no leverage to his wrestling opponent." From this, the man of Mendes too sent to try Agesilaus.
Nektanebis then took fright, and though Agesilaus urged him to fight it out as quickly as possible and not to make war at length against men inexperienced in contest — men who, with their great numbers, could go round about, dig entrenchments, and forestall and anticipate much — his suspicion and dread of Agesilaus only deepened, and he pulled back into a strongly walled town enclosed by a great circuit of fortifications.
Agesilaus was angered at being distrusted and took it hard, but ashamed also to change sides again to the other man and to depart altogether without accomplishing anything, he followed and went in with him within the walls.
Once the enemy arrived and set about digging their entrenchments around the city, the Egyptian, again afraid of the siege, wished to fight, and had the Greeks very eager to join him as well: for there was no grain within the place. But Agesilaus, who would not allow it and hindered it, was spoken of still worse than before by the Egyptians and was called a traitor to the king; yet he bore the slanders now more mildly and watched for the right moment for his stratagem.
It was this. The enemy were drawing a deep trench outside around the wall, meaning to shut them in completely. So when the last stretches of the digging were about to meet each other and encircle the city, he waited until evening came, and, bidding the Greeks arm themselves, he went to the Egyptian and said: "This, young man, is the moment of safety, which, fearing to spoil it, I did not tell you of before now.
Since the enemy have themselves, with their own hands, prepared our security, having dug so great a trench — the finished part of which stands in the way of their numbers, while the unfinished gap allows us to fight against them on an equal and fair measure — come now, be eager to prove yourself a good man, and following with us at a run, save yourself and the army together.
The troops directly ahead of us cannot hold their ground against us, and the trench itself will keep the remainder from doing us any harm." Nektanebis marveled at the skill of Agesilaus, and giving himself into the midst of the Greek weapons and falling upon the enemy, he easily routed those who opposed him. And once Agesilaus had gotten Nektanebis to trust him, he again employed the same stratagem against the enemy, like a wrestling throw.
For now retreating and drawing back, now wheeling around against them, he drove their mass into a place that had a deep channel running along on either side, and blocking and occupying the space between with the front of his phalanx, he made their numbers equal to those of the enemy actually fighting, since they had no room to go around and encircle. Hence, having resisted only a short time, they were routed; and many were killed, while the rest scattered in flight and were dispersed.
After this, the Egyptian's affairs stood well and securely, and out of affection and friendliness he begged Agesilaus to stay through the winter as his guest. But Agesilaus was anxious to get back to the fighting at home, aware that Sparta lacked funds and had mercenary troops to support. So the Egyptian sent him off with honor and magnificence, presenting him, along with other marks of esteem, a sum amounting to two hundred thirty talents of silver to help fund the campaign.
It being now winter, he kept close to the land with his ships, and putting in along Libya at a deserted place they call the Harbor of Menelaus, he died, having lived eighty-four years, and having reigned over Sparta more than forty-one of them, and for over thirty of these having become the greatest and most powerful of all, and having been reckoned leader and virtually king of nearly the whole of Greece, up until the battle of Leuctra.
It being a Laconian custom that the bodies of others who die abroad be embalmed and left there, but that the bodies of kings be brought home, those Spartans present, melting wax over the corpse — for they had no honey — carried him back to Lacedaemon; and his son Archidamus took over the kingship, and it remained in his line until Agis, whom Leonidas, who was fifth in descent from Agesilaus, put to death when he tried to restore the ancestral constitution.

======== Pompey ========

It seems that from the very beginning the Roman people felt toward Pompey what Aeschylus's Prometheus, saved by Heracles, felt toward him when he said, "Of a hateful father, this is to me a most dear child." For the Romans never displayed a hatred so strong and savage toward any other commander as toward Pompey's father Strabo; while he lived they feared his power in arms, for he was a most warlike man,
but when he died, struck by a thunderbolt, they dragged his body down from the bier as it was being carried out and heaped insult upon it. Yet again, no other Roman ever possessed a good-will more intense, or one that began sooner, or grew more in step with prosperity, or remained more steadfast in misfortune, than that which Pompey received.
The cause of the hatred toward the father was single: an insatiable desire for money. But the causes of the love felt for the son were many: moderation in his manner of living, diligent practice in arms, persuasiveness of speech, trustworthiness of character, and an agreeableness in meeting people, such that no one asked anything of him without least distress, nor did anyone render a service more gladly to one in need. For added to his graciousness was this: he gave without giving offense, and he received with dignity.
From the beginning he also had a look that contributed no small share to winning the people over, coming to meet men even before his voice did; for his charm was combined with a dignity that was kindly, and even in his youth and bloom his prime already showed through the gravity and the kingliness of his character. There was also a certain gentle upward sweep of his hair, and a softness in the lines about his eyes, of his countenance, which produced a resemblance to the images of King Alexander that was spoken of more than it was actually apparent,
and since many people began early on giving him this name, Pompey did not reject it, so some, joking, actually addressed him as Alexander. It was for this same reason that Lucius Philippus, a former consul, defending him in court, remarked that he acted quite naturally, since a man named Philippus loving an Alexander was hardly strange. Flora the courtesan, they say, in her later years still liked to remember with fondness the affair she once shared with Pompey, remarking that no encounter with him ended without her carrying away a bite-mark.
In addition to this, Flora used to relate that Geminius, one of Pompey's intimate friends, conceived a passion for her and gave her much trouble in his courting; and when she said she could not consent because of Pompey, Geminius took the matter up with Pompey himself. Pompey then handed her over to Geminius, but never afterward touched her at all nor met with her, though he seemed to be in love with her; and she did not take this in the manner of a courtesan, but fell ill for a long time from grief and longing.
And yet they say Flora was so much in her bloom and became so renowned that Caecilius Metellus, when adorning the temple of the Dioscuri with statues and paintings, had her portrait painted and dedicated there because of her beauty. Pompey, for his part, treated the wife of Demetrius, his freedman—a man whose influence over him was greatest of all and who died possessing four thousand talents—in a way at odds with his own nature, showing her neither courtesy nor the liberality of a gentleman, out of fear of her beauty, which was irresistible and much talked of, lest he seem mastered by it.
Yet although he was so very cautious and on his guard against such things from far off, he still did not escape the censure of his enemies on this score, but was slandered for overlooking and sacrificing much of the public interest to gratify his wives. Of the ease and simplicity of his manner of living, the following anecdote is told.
A physician, when he was ill and had no appetite for food, prescribed that he take a thrush. When his attendants searched but turned up none available for purchase, since the season for it had passed, someone mentioned that Lucullus kept them year-round and some might be had there. "Then," said Pompey, "if Lucullus were not so extravagant, Pompey would not have lived?" And dismissing the physician, he took some readily available food instead. But this belongs to a later time.
While still quite young and serving in the army alongside his father, who was then in the field against Cinna, he shared his tent with a comrade, a certain Lucius Terentius. Bribed by Cinna with money, this man planned to murder Pompey personally, and others were assigned to set the general's tent ablaze,
and when word of this reached Pompey while he was at dinner, he was not at all disturbed, but drank even more cheerfully and treated Terentius with even greater kindness; then, as he turned in for the night, he slipped unnoticed out of the tent, set a guard about his father, and kept quiet. Terentius, when he thought the moment had come, drew his sword and rose, and going to Pompey's pallet as though he were lying there, dealt many blows into the bedclothes.
After this a great commotion arose out of hatred for the general, and the soldiers rushed toward mutiny, pulling down their tents and taking up arms. The general did not come forward, fearing the tumult, but Pompey, moving about in their midst and weeping, begged them to stop, and at last flung himself face-down across the camp gateway, lying in the path of those leaving, weeping and urging them to walk over him instead; so that each man, ashamed, held back, and all except eight hundred relented and made their peace with the general.
As soon as Strabo died, Pompey was prosecuted on his behalf for theft of public money, and though he uncovered most of it and showed the magistrates that one of his father's freedmen, Alexander, had embezzled it, he himself was accused of possessing hunting-nets and books taken at Asculum. These he had indeed received from his father after the capture of Asculum, but he lost them to Cinna's guards, who, when he came back to Rome, forced their way into his house and plundered it.
There were, before the trial itself, no few preliminary contests with his accuser, in which, showing himself both keen and, beyond his years, steady, he won great reputation and favor, so that Antistius, who was praetor and presiding over that very trial, fell in love with Pompey, offered his own daughter to him as a bride, and discussed the matter with his friends.
Pompey accepted, and secret agreements were made between them; yet the matter did not escape the notice of the many, because of Antistius's own eagerness. At last, when Antistius announced the verdict of the judges acquitting him, the people, as though by a signal, cried out that cry which by ancient custom is shouted at weddings, "Talasio!"
They say the custom began as follows. The Sabine women had traveled to Rome to attend a public spectacle, and when the bravest of the Romans seized them as wives, some obscure retainers and herdsmen took hold of a girl who was beautiful and tall and were carrying her off. So that no one of higher standing might come upon them and take her away, they ran along shouting "To Talasius!"—for Talasius was one of the graceful and well-known men—so that those who heard the name clapped and shouted, as though rejoicing with them and giving their approval.
From this, they say—since the marriage turned out happily for Talasius—this acclamation came to be made in jest at weddings. This account is the most plausible of those given about Talasius. In any case, a few days later Pompey married Antistia.
But when he had gone to Cinna's camp, he took fright because of some accusation and slander, and quickly slipped away unseen; and since he was not to be found, a rumor and report spread through the camp that Cinna had killed the young man. At this those who had long resented and hated Cinna rose up against him. He fled, but a centurion chasing him, sword drawn, caught up with him; he fell at the man's knees and held out his signet ring, which was of great value.
But the centurion, speaking most insolently, said, "I do not come to seal a bond, but to punish an unholy and lawless tyrant," and killed him. So Cinna having thus perished, affairs were taken up and held together by Carbo, a still more reckless tyrant than he; but Sulla was longed for by most, since under their present evils they did not think even a mere change of master a small good—so far had misfortunes brought the city that they sought a more tolerable slavery, having despaired of freedom.
At that time Pompey was spending his time in Picenum, in Italy, where he had estates, and where he took greater pleasure in the cities, which through his father were on close and friendly terms with him. Seeing the most distinguished and best of the citizens abandoning their homes and rushing from every quarter into Sulla's camp as into a harbor, he himself did not think it fitting to flee there as a fugitive, without resources, and in need of help, but rather to come to him gloriously, having already conferred some benefit and bringing an armed force with him.
Accordingly he set about stirring up the people of Picenum, testing their disposition. They responded to him eagerly and paid no heed to those who came from Carbo. When a certain Vedius said that a demagogue had leapt out from the schoolroom to lead them—meaning Pompey—they were so angered that they set upon Vedius immediately and struck him dead.
From this point Pompey, then twenty-three years old, appointed general by no one, but giving himself the command, set up a tribunal in the marketplace at Auximum, a large city, and ordered the two leading men there, the brothers Ventidii, who were acting against him on Carbo's behalf, to leave the city by edict; he then enrolled soldiers, and having duly appointed centurions and other officers for each unit, went about to the surrounding cities doing the same thing.
As those who favored Carbo's cause rose up and withdrew, while the rest gladly gave themselves over to him, he thus in a short time organized three complete legions, and having procured provisions, pack-animals, wagons, and all the rest of the equipment, he led them toward Sulla, not hurrying nor content merely to escape notice, but lingering along the way to do harm to the enemy, and trying, in every part of Italy he passed through, to detach it from Carbo.
Against him three enemy generals then rose together—Carinas, Cloelius, and Brutus—not confronting him from a single side or the same quarter, but surrounding him with three armies as if to seize him. Undaunted, he consolidated all his forces and attacked one army alone, that of Brutus, stationing his cavalry in front, he himself riding among them.
When the Celts on the enemy side rode out to meet them, he was first to strike down their leader, the strongest of them, with a spear-thrust from close at hand. The rest turned and threw their own infantry into confusion, so that a general flight resulted; and after this the generals, quarreling among themselves, withdrew as each found opportunity, while the cities went over to Pompey, since the enemy had scattered in fear.
Again, when Scipio the consul advanced against him, before the phalanxes came within javelin range, Scipio's men greeted Pompey's soldiers and changed sides, and Scipio fled. Finally, when Carbo himself sent numerous squadrons of cavalry against him near the river Arsis, Pompey stoutly withstood them and, routing them, drove them all into difficult country impassable for horses, pursuing them; and they, seeing no hope of safety, surrendered themselves along with their arms and horses.
Sulla had not yet learned of these events, but on the first reports and rumors concerning Pompey, being alarmed that he was maneuvering among so many and such great enemy generals, he hastened to his aid. Pompey, learning that he was near, ordered his officers to arm and array the force so that it might appear as splendid and fine as possible to the commander-in-chief; for he hoped for great honors from him, and indeed obtained even greater ones.
For when Sulla saw him approaching, and his army standing arrayed, admirable in the manliness of its men and elated and cheerful because of its successes, he leapt down from his horse, and being hailed, as was fitting, as Imperator, he in turn hailed Pompey as Imperator—though no one would have expected Sulla to share that title, over which he was warring against Scipios and Marii, with a young man not yet even a member of the Senate.
And in other respects too his conduct matched that first display of friendliness: he would rise partway from his seat as Pompey approached, and would remove the cloak from his head—things not easily seen him do for another, though there were many good men about him.
Yet Pompey was not made light-headed by these honors; rather, when Sulla at once sent him into Gaul, which was held by Metellus, who seemed to be accomplishing nothing worthy of the preparation made there, Pompey said it was not right to take a command away from an older man of superior reputation; he was ready, however, to serve under Metellus and assist him in the war, if Metellus wished it and ordered it.
When Metellus accepted this and wrote for him to come, Pompey, after invading Gaul, both accomplished marvelous deeds on his own account, and rekindled and warmed anew the fighting spirit and boldness of Metellus, now being quenched by old age—just as molten, glowing bronze, when poured around solid, cold metal, is said rather to soften and melt it together with itself.
But just as when an athlete has won first place among men and has gloriously carried off victories everywhere, no one takes any account of his boyhood victories nor records them, so I have been afraid to dwell on the deeds Pompey did at that time, superb though they were in themselves, because they have been buried by the number and magnitude of his later contests and wars — afraid that if we spent much time on his early exploits, we should be left short of space for the greatest deeds and sufferings that most clearly reveal the man's character.
Once Sulla had become master of Italy and taken the title of dictator, he rewarded his other commanders and generals by making them rich, advancing them to offices, and granting freely and eagerly whatever each of them wanted; but Pompey he admired for his excellence, and thinking him a great asset to his own cause, he was eager to attach him to himself by some family connection.
At the urging of his wife Metella, Sulla and Metella induced Pompey to divorce Antistia and take as his bride Sulla's stepdaughter Aemilia, the daughter of Metella and Scaurus, though she was at the time living with another husband and pregnant by him. This marriage had the character of tyranny, more suited to Sulla's circumstances than to Pompey's own disposition, since Aemilia was taken from another man while pregnant and given to him,
while Antistia was driven out in disgrace and pitiably, having but lately been deprived of her father on Pompey's account — for Antistius had been cut down inside the senate-house, on the suspicion that for Pompey's sake he favored Sulla's cause — and her mother, seeing this, took her own life of her own will, so that this suffering too was added to the tragedy of that marriage; and, by Zeus, Aemilia herself died shortly afterward in Pompey's house while giving birth,
After this it was reported that Perpenna was securing Sicily for himself and offering the island as a base to those who still survived from the opposing faction, while Carbo too was hovering about there with a fleet, and Domitius had descended on Libya, and many other great men, fugitives who had fled ahead of the proscriptions, were being pushed further still. Against these Pompey was sent out with a large force.
Perpenna at once yielded Sicily to him, and Pompey took the cities in hand, worn down as they were, and treated all of them humanely except the Mamertines of Messene; for when they objected to his tribunal and jurisdiction as forbidden by an old Roman law, he said, "Will you not stop quoting laws to us who wear swords at our sides?"
He was also thought to have treated Carbo's misfortunes inhumanely. For if it was necessary to put him to death, as perhaps it was, he ought to have had him seized and killed at once, and the deed would then have rested with the one who ordered it. But instead he brought the man out in chains — a Roman who had been consul three times — set him before the tribunal, sat down himself and examined him, to the distress and displeasure of those present; then he ordered him led away and killed.
They say, however, that when he was led away and saw the sword already drawn, he begged for a little time and a place to himself, since he was troubled by his bowels. Gaius Oppius, Caesar's companion, says that Pompey behaved inhumanely also toward Quintus Valerius. For knowing that Valerius was among the few men devoted to learning and study, when he was brought before him, Pompey drew him aside, walked about with him, asked what he wanted to know and learned it, and then ordered his attendants to take him away and kill him at once.
But whenever Oppius speaks of Caesar's enemies or friends, one must trust him only with great caution; as for Pompey, he punished, as he was compelled to, those of Sulla's enemies who were most notorious and openly caught, but of the rest, as many as he could, he let escape unnoticed, and some he even helped send away.
When he had resolved to punish the city of the Himerans, since it had taken the enemy's side, Sthenis, a leading man among them, asked to speak and said that Pompey would not be acting justly if he let the guilty man go and destroyed those who had done no wrong. When Pompey asked whom he meant by the guilty man, Sthenis said it was himself — among his fellow citizens he had won over friends by persuasion and driven his opponents to comply by force.
Pompey, admiring the man's frankness and spirit, released first him from the charge, then all the rest as well; and hearing that the soldiers were behaving disorderly on their marches, he put a seal on their swords, and whoever failed to keep it intact was punished.
While he was doing this and administering affairs in Sicily, a decree of the senate reached him, along with a letter in which Sulla directed him to cross to Libya and wage all-out war on Domitius, who had gathered a force many times greater than that with which Marius, not long before, had crossed from Libya to Italy and had thrown Roman affairs into confusion, becoming a tyrant instead of a fugitive.
Pompey quickly made all his preparations, left Memmius, his sister's husband, as governor of Sicily, and himself put to sea with a hundred and twenty warships and eight hundred transports carrying grain, missiles, money, and siege engines. When he put in, some ships at Utica and some at Carthage, seven thousand of the opposing troops abandoned their side and joined him, while he himself led six full legions.
A ridiculous thing is said to have happened to him. Some soldiers, it seems, stumbled upon buried treasure and got a good deal of money; and when this became known, all the rest formed the notion that the whole place was full of money, deposited there long ago in the days of Carthaginian prosperity.
So for many days Pompey had no use of his soldiers, who were busy hunting for treasure, but went about laughing as he watched so many tens of thousands digging and turning over the plain, until at last, giving up, they told him to lead them wherever he wished, having paid a sufficient penalty for their foolishness.
When Domitius drew up his forces opposite, having placed in front of him a ravine difficult and rough to cross, a heavy rain accompanied by wind began at dawn and continued, so that Domitius, giving up hope of fighting that day, ordered a withdrawal; but Pompey, seizing this as his opportunity, advanced swiftly and crossed the ravine.
The enemy, in disorder and confusion, did not all stand their ground evenly, and the wind whirled about, driving the storm into their faces. Even the Romans were thrown into confusion by the storm, since they could not clearly make out one another, and Pompey himself came near being killed unrecognized, when he was slow in answering a soldier who asked him for the watchword.
Having routed the enemy with heavy losses — of twenty thousand, it is said, only three thousand got away — the soldiers hailed Pompey as imperator. But he said he would not accept the honor while the enemy's camp still stood intact; if they thought him worthy of the title, they must first bring that down. At once they rushed upon the rampart, and Pompey fought without a helmet, fearing a repetition of what had befallen him before.
The camp was taken and Domitius was killed. Of the cities, some submitted at once, others were taken by force; he also captured one of the kings, Iarbas, who had fought as Domitius's ally, and handed over the kingdom to Hiempsal. Taking advantage of his good fortune and the momentum of his army, he invaded Numidia, and after marching many days' journey and overcoming everyone he encountered,
he restored, once more strong and formidable, the fear of Rome among the barbarians which had by then drained away, saying that not even the wild beasts that inhabit Libya should be left ignorant of Roman strength and daring. For this reason he spent a few days hunting lions and elephants; and in all, they say, in forty days he destroyed the enemy, subdued Libya, and settled the affairs of the kings, being then in his twenty-fourth year.
When he returned to Utica, letters reached him from Sulla, directing him to break up the rest of his army and stay there himself with a single legion, awaiting the general who was to succeed him. At this Pompey himself was secretly annoyed and took it hard, but the army was openly indignant; and when Pompey begged them to go forward, they spoke ill of Sulla and said they would not desert him, nor would they let him trust the tyrant.
At first Pompey tried to calm and soothe them; but when he could not persuade them, he came down from the tribunal to his tent and departed in tears. But they seized him and set him back again upon the tribunal, and much of the day was spent, some urging him to stay and take command, while he for his part pleaded with them to fall in line and not stir up rebellion, until at last, as they kept pressing and shouting, he swore that he would take his own life should they resort to force, and only with difficulty did they desist.
The first news that reached Sulla was that Pompey had revolted, and he said to his friends that it was, it seemed, his fate now that he was old to fight the battles of children, since Marius too, when quite young, had given him the most trouble and had brought him into the utmost dangers.
But once he found out the truth and saw that everyone was keen to welcome and accompany Pompey warmly, he hastened to outdo them all; he came forward to meet him, greeted him as warmly as he could, and in a loud voice hailed him as Magnus, and ordered those present to address him so.
Magnus means "the Great." Others say that this acclamation was first uttered by the whole army in Libya, and only gained its full force and authority when confirmed by Sulla. He himself, however, was the last of all, and only long afterward, when sent out as proconsul to Iberia against Sertorius, began to write himself "Magnus Pompeius" in his letters and edicts, since by then the name, having become familiar, was no longer resented.
One may fairly admire and marvel at the Romans of old, who repaid such titles and surnames not only for military successes and victories in war, but also honored with them political achievements and virtues.
At any rate the people proclaimed two men Maximus, that is, "Greatest": Valerius, for having reconciled the senate when it was torn by faction, and Fabius Rullus, for having removed from the senate a group of men who, though risen from the ranks of freedmen, had grown wealthy, and had been enrolled among its members.
Following this Pompey requested a triumph, which Sulla resisted. For the law grants a triumph only to a consul or a praetor, no one else; that is why Scipio, though he was the first to conquer the Carthaginians in Iberia in greater and more important contests, did not ask for a triumph, since he was neither consul nor praetor.
"If Pompey, who has not even yet grown a full beard, and who by reason of his age has no place in the senate, should ride into the city celebrating a triumph, it will be altogether invidious both to my authority and to his own honor." This is what Sulla said to Pompey, meaning that he would not permit it, but would oppose him and check his ambition if he refused to obey.
But Pompey was not cowed; instead he bade Sulla consider that more people worship the rising sun than the setting one — meaning that his own power was increasing, while Sulla's was waning and fading. Sulla did not hear these words distinctly, but seeing from the faces and gestures of those who did hear them that they were amazed, he asked what had been said. On learning it, amazed at Pompey's daring, he called out twice, one right after the other, "Let him triumph!"
Since many were displeased and indignant, Pompey, wishing to vex them still further, as they say, attempted to make his entry on a chariot pulled by four elephants, since he had brought back numerous captured royal elephants out of Libya; but since the gate was too narrow, he gave this up and changed to horses.
When the soldiers, failing to get the rewards they expected, wanted to make trouble and stir up disturbance, he said he did not care in the least, and would rather give up the triumph than flatter them — at which point Servilius, a distinguished man and one who had most strongly opposed Pompey's triumph, said that now he saw Pompey as truly great and worthy of a triumph.
It is clear that if he had wished it, he could easily have obtained a seat in the senate at that time as well. But he did not pursue it, they say, since he was hunting after the glory of the extraordinary. For it would not have been remarkable if Pompey had held a senate seat before the legal age, but it was spectacular that, while not yet a senator, he celebrated a triumph. This, too, did him no small service in winning the goodwill of the people; for the populace delighted in him being reviewed among the knights after his triumph.
Sulla was troubled to watch how far Pompey's fame and influence kept climbing, yet felt it beneath him to stand in the young man's way, so he held his peace — except on one occasion, when, against Pompey's own wishes, he pushed through by sheer force the election of Lepidus to the consulship, campaigning at his side and transferring to him the popular favor that properly belonged to Pompey. When Sulla saw Pompey departing through the forum with a great crowd around him,
he said, "I see you, young man, delighting in your victory. And how could these things not be splendid and fine — that Lepidus, the worst of all men, has been declared consul ahead of Catulus, the best of all men, because you arranged the people so for him? It is time for you, though, not to sleep, but to watch events closely — for you have made your rival stronger against yourself." And Sulla made it especially clear that he was not well disposed toward Pompey through the will he wrote.
For he left gifts to his other friends, and named guardians for his son, but passed over Pompey entirely. Yet Pompey bore this very moderately and with great civic spirit, so that when Lepidus and certain others opposed the burial of the body in the Campus and objected to a public funeral procession, he came to the rescue and secured both honor for the burial and its safety.
When Sulla died and the oracles he had suppressed soon came out into the open, and Lepidus, insinuating himself into Sulla's power, went about it not by roundabout means or with any show of pretense but took up arms at once, stirring up again and gathering around himself the long-diseased remnants of factional strife that had escaped Sulla's notice — his colleague in office, Catulus, to whom the sound and healthy part of the senate and people were most attached, held then the highest reputation for prudence and justice among the Romans of that time,
and seemed more suited to civic leadership than to military command; and since events themselves called for Pompey, he did not hesitate which way to turn, but attached himself to the party of the best men, and thus received command of a force sent against Lepidus — a man who by then had roused much of Italy to revolt and, using Brutus's army, controlled Gaul on the near side of the Alps.
Now Pompey easily overcame the rest of the resistance by moving against it; but at Mutina in Gaul he sat encamped opposite Brutus for a long time, during which Lepidus, streaming toward Rome and encamping outside it, demanded a second consulship, intimidating those within the city with his great mob.
But a letter brought from Pompey dissolved the fear, announcing that he had settled the war without a battle. For Brutus — whether he handed over his forces of his own accord, or was betrayed when they went over to the other side — surrendered his person to Pompey, and taking an escort of cavalry, withdrew to a small town near the Po, where after a single day, Pompey having sent Geminius against him, he was put to death.
And Pompey incurred great blame for this. For he had written at once, at the beginning of the change of sides, to the senate that Brutus had come over to him willingly, but then afterward, once the man had been killed, sent other letters accusing him. This man's son was the Brutus who, with Cassius, killed Caesar — a man who, like his father, neither fought nor died, as is written in his own account.
Lepidus, then, immediately driven out of Italy, crossed over to Sardinia, and there fell ill and died of despondency — not, they say, over the state of affairs, but because he came upon a note by which he detected an act of adultery on the part of his wife.
Unlike Lepidus, a general holding Iberia, Sertorius, hung over the Romans as a fearsome threat, as though the civil wars had, as a final malady, all flowed together into this one man — one who had already destroyed many of the lesser generals, and was then locked in struggle with Metellus Pius,
a brilliant and warlike man, but one thought to follow the war's opportunities rather sluggishly because of his age, and to fall behind as events were seized upon with sharpness and speed, while Sertorius engaged him recklessly and more like a bandit, harassing with ambushes and encircling maneuvers a man who was a champion of regular pitched battles and a leader of a stationary and heavy force,
against this Pompey, having his army under his own command, managed to be sent as reinforcement to Metellus; and though Catulus ordered him to disband, he did not, but remained under arms around the city, always inventing some pretext, until they gave him the command, on the motion proposed by Lucius Philippus.
At which time they say that in the senate, when someone asked in wonder whether Philippus thought Pompey ought to be sent out as proconsul, Philippus said, "Not I — but rather in place of the consuls," implying that neither of the men then serving as consuls was worth anything.
When Pompey had taken hold of Iberia, as is usual before a new commander's reputation is established, he made men change their allegiance according to their hopes, and the peoples not very firmly attached to Sertorius were stirred and began to change sides; Sertorius let loose contemptuous remarks about Pompey, jesting that he would deal with this mere boy using nothing but a switch and a whip, were it not for his fear of that old woman — meaning Metellus.
In fact, though, he was guarding himself very carefully and, fearing Pompey, was generalling more cautiously. For Metellus, contrary to what anyone would have expected, had grown soft in his manner of living, giving himself over entirely to pleasures, and a great change toward ostentation and extravagance had suddenly come over him, so that this too brought Pompey a remarkable goodwill along with glory, since by contrast he intensified the plainness of his own way of life, which by nature required little effort — for he was by nature temperate and disciplined in his desires.
The war took many forms, but what most distressed Pompey was the capture of Lauro by Sertorius. For thinking he had surrounded Sertorius, and having boasted rather grandly of it, he himself suddenly found that he was the one encircled; and being afraid to move because of this, he watched the city burn while he himself stood by. He did, however, defeat Herennius and Perperna, commanding officers among those who had fled to Sertorius and served as generals for him, near Valentia, killing more than ten thousand.
Elated by this success and full of confidence in himself, he hurried against Sertorius alone, so that Metellus would have no share in the victory. Near the river Sucro, with the day already ending, they joined their forces in battle, each side fearing that Metellus would arrive — the one fighting as though alone, the other as though against him alone.
Now the outcome of the battle was doubtful, for each side's opposite wing won; but of the two commanders, Sertorius came off with the greater advantage, for he routed the force opposed to himself. Against Pompey a huge man, on foot against his horse, charged; and when they closed together and grappled hand to hand, the sword-blows fell upon the hands of both, though not equally — for Pompey was only wounded, while he cut off the other man's hand,
but as more men rushed together upon him, the rout having already begun, he escaped unexpectedly by letting go his horse to the enemy, decked as it was with golden trappings and ornament worth a great deal. For as they divided this booty among themselves and fought each other over it, they were left behind.
At daybreak both sides drew up again, each confirming their claim to victory, but when Metellus approached, Sertorius withdrew, his army scattering. Such were the dispersals and regatherings of his men that Sertorius was often wandering with only a handful, but often again marched forth at the head of some hundred and fifty thousand men, swelling like a torrent that suddenly fills up.
Pompey, then, after the battle, once he had gone to meet Metellus and the two drew close together, gave his lictors orders to dip their rods, showing deference to Metellus as the man of higher rank. But Metellus prevented even this, and was in all other respects a generous man toward him, granting himself nothing more as a former consul and elder — except that the watchword, when they camped together, was sent out to everyone by Metellus; for the most part, though, they camped separately.
For the enemy, resourceful and adept at turning up in many places over a very brief span, kept shifting his engagements and so cut the two commanders apart and held them separated; and finally, cutting off their supplies, ravaging the country, and mastering the sea, he pushed them both out of the region of Iberia he controlled, compelling them to seek refuge in provinces not their own for want of supplies.
Pompey, having spent and used up most of his own wealth on the war, asked the senate for money, warning that he would bring his army back to Italy should they fail to send it. Lucullus, who was consul at the time and at odds with Pompey, but was angling for the Mithridatic war for himself, hastened to have the money sent, fearing to give Pompey a pretext, if refused, to abandon Sertorius and turn against Mithridates — a splendid opponent for reputation, but one who looked easy to handle.
Meanwhile Sertorius died, murdered treacherously by his own friends; of whom Perperna, the chief instigator, attempted to do the same things Sertorius had done, starting from the same forces and resources, but without the same judgment in using them. Pompey at once marched against him, and perceiving that Perperna was floundering in his handling of affairs, set out ten cohorts as bait for him, ordering them to scatter over the plain.
When Perperna turned toward these and pursued them, Pompey appeared with his full force, joined battle, and defeated them all, and most of the commanders were destroyed in the battle; Perperna was brought to him and he had him killed — not ungrateful nor forgetful of what had happened around Sicily, as some accuse him, but acting from a great and salutary judgment for the good of the whole state.
For Perperna, having gotten possession of Sertorius's papers, was showing letters from the most powerful men in Rome, who, wanting to overturn the present state of affairs and change the constitution, had been inviting Sertorius into Italy. Pompey, fearing this — that it might kindle wars greater than those just concluded — put Perperna to death and consigned the letters to the fire unread.
After this he remained as long as was needed to stamp out the greatest disturbances and settle and dissolve the most inflamed affairs, then led his army back into Italy, arriving as it happened just as the war against the slaves was at its height. For this reason Crassus the general hurried the battle recklessly, and had good fortune, killing twelve thousand three hundred.
Nevertheless, fortune somehow contrived to give Pompey a share even in this success: some five thousand men fleeing the fight crossed his path, and once he had wiped them out to the last man, he sent word ahead to the senate that while Crassus had beaten the gladiators in open combat, it was he who had torn out the war entire, roots and all. And the Romans were glad, out of goodwill toward him, to hear and to say this. Yet as for Iberia and Sertorius, no one, even in jest, would have called that the achievement of anyone but Pompey.
Amid such honor and expectation surrounding the man, there was nevertheless also a certain suspicion and fear, that he would not give up his army, but would march with arms straight toward sole rule, following Sulla's model of government. For this reason, no fewer were those who ran to greet him and pay their respects along the road out of fear than those who did so out of goodwill.
But when Pompey had removed even this suspicion, by announcing beforehand that he would disband his army after the triumph, one complaint remained available to those who begrudged him: that he was attaching himself to the people rather than to the senate, and had resolved to restore the office of tribune, which Sulla had abolished, and to grant it as a favor to the multitude — which was indeed true.
For there was nothing the Roman people had ever loved so madly or longed for so much as to see that office restored again, so that Pompey too counted the occasion of this political move a great stroke of luck, reckoning that he could have found no other favor with which to repay the goodwill of the citizens, if someone else had gotten to it first.
When, then, a second triumph and the consulship were voted to him, he did not seem wonderful and great on that account so much as by this token of his distinction: that Crassus — a man who among the politicians of that time was richest, and ablest at speaking, and greatest — though he looked down on Pompey himself and on everyone else besides, did not dare to seek the consulship until he had asked Pompey for it.
And indeed Pompey was pleased, having long wished for some occasion to do Crassus a service and show him goodwill; so that he welcomed the request eagerly and canvassed the people on Crassus's behalf, promising that he would owe no less gratitude for it than for the office itself.
Nonetheless, once they were declared consuls, they disagreed on everything and clashed with one another. In the senate Crassus had more influence, but among the people Pompey's power was great. For he restored the tribunate to the people, and allowed the courts, once again, to be transferred by law to the equestrian order. And he gave the people a most delightful spectacle, when he himself begged to be excused from further military service.
It is, in fact, a Roman practice that knights who have finished their legally required years of service must bring their mounts down to the forum in front of the two officials known as censors; there each man lists the generals and commanders he served under, gives an account of his conduct, and is then released from duty, receiving praise or blame fitting to how he had lived.
So on that occasion the censors Gellius and Lentulus presided in full state, and the parade of knights being scrutinized was already under way, when people caught sight of Pompey descending toward the forum from higher ground, dressed in the remaining marks of his rank yet himself guiding his own horse on foot. Once he drew close enough to be plainly recognized, he told the lictors to clear a path and led the horse up to the platform.
The people were struck with wonder, and there was complete silence, while the magistrates felt both awe and joy at the sight. Then the elder censor asked him: "I ask you, Pompey Magnus, whether you have served all the campaigns required by law?" And Pompey answered in a loud voice, "All of them," he said, "I have served, and all of them under myself as commander." Hearing this, the people cried out, and it was no longer possible to hold back the shout for joy; and the censors rose up and escorted him home, granting this favor to the citizens who followed along, clapping.
Now when Pompey's term of office was already coming to its end, and the quarrel with Crassus was growing, a certain Gaius Aurelius, a knight who kept clear of public affairs, stepped forward while an assembly was underway, climbed onto the platform, and declared that Zeus had come to him in a dream, instructing him to tell the consuls they must not step down from their posts until they had made peace with each other.
At this, Pompey remained quiet, but Crassus, reaching out his hand and speaking to him, said: "Citizens, I regard it as nothing shameful or low to be the one who yields first to Pompey — a man you deemed worthy of the name Magnus before his beard had even come in, and to whom you granted two triumphs before he had so much as sat in the senate." Upon these words the two were reconciled and stepped down from office together.
And Crassus kept to the manner of life he had chosen from the beginning, while Pompey withdrew from most of his advocacy work, and little by little gave up the forum, and rarely went out in public, and always with a crowd — since one could hardly encounter him or catch sight of him except amid a crowd — but he showed himself most gladly together with many people all at once, wrapping himself in this way in a certain solemnity and weight for the public eye, thinking he ought to keep his dignity untouched by frequent and familiar dealings with the many.
For a life spent in the toga is precarious in regard to loss of repute for men who have become great through arms, and ill-suited to the equality of the common people. For such men think it right to hold first place there too, just as in the field; yet for those who fall behind there, it is unbearable if such men do not, at any rate, have no more than others here. Hence they take the man who is brilliant in camps and triumphs, and, once they catch him in the forum, bring him under their hand and cast him down; but to the man who declines and withdraws, they preserve his honor and power there without begrudging it. And events themselves made this clear not long after.
For the power of the pirates first set out from Cilicia, taking a beginning that was hazardous and went unnoticed, but it gained spirit and daring during the Mithridatic war, having lent itself to the service of the king.
Then, when the Romans fell to fighting among themselves in civil wars at the very doors of Rome, the sea, left without any guard, drew them on little by little and led them forward, so that they no longer attacked only those sailing upon it, but even cut off islands and coastal cities. And by now men powerful in wealth and brilliant in birth and reputed to excel in intelligence were embarking upon piratical enterprises and taking part in them, as though the work brought with it a certain glory and ambition.
And there were pirate anchorages and fortified watch-towers in many places, and fleets fell upon their prey equipped not only with crews of fine manpower, nor with the skill of their helmsmen, nor with the speed and lightness of their ships trained for their proper work — but rather the invidious arrogance of them was what troubled people more than their fearsomeness: gilt-tipped masts, canopies dyed purple, and oars plated with silver — as though they took pleasure in their crimes and paraded them with pride.
Flute music, harp-playing, and drunken feasting up and down every coastline, together with the abduction of officials and the holding of whole towns for ransom, brought shame upon Roman power. The pirate fleet by now counted over a thousand vessels, and the towns they had seized numbered four hundred.
And they attacked and plundered temples formerly inviolate and unapproached: the Clarian, the Didymaean, the Samothracian; the temple of Chthonia at Hermione, and that of Asclepius at Epidaurus, the shrine of Poseidon situated at the Isthmus, another at Taenarum, and another at Calauria; and of Apollo the one at Actium and at Leucas; and of Hera the one at Samos, the one at Argos, the one on the Lacinian promontory. And they themselves offered strange sacrifices, those of Olympus, and performed certain secret rites, of which that of Mithras survives even to this day, first introduced by them.
Having insulted the Romans in very many ways, they climbed up from the coast onto the highways themselves and pillaged travelers, and stripped out nearby farms. On one occasion they even captured two praetors, Sextilius and Bellinus, still dressed in their purple-trimmed togas, and carried them off along with their attendants and lictors together with them. And the daughter of Antonius, a man of triumphal rank, was captured while walking to her country estate, and was ransomed for a great sum of money.
But this was the most insolent thing of all. Whenever a prisoner shouted out his Roman citizenship and gave his own name, they pretended to be terrified and afraid, and struck their thighs and fell before him, begging his pardon; and he believed it, seeing them humbled and pleading — whereupon some of them put shoes on his feet, and others threw a toga around him, so that, forsooth, he might not again go unrecognized.
After mocking and amusing themselves with the man in this way for a long time, at last, in the middle of the open sea, they would set up a ladder and bid him disembark and go off rejoicing; and if he refused, they themselves would push him overboard and drown him.
This power spread over practically the whole of our sea at once, so that it became unnavigable and impassable for all trade; and this above all turned the Romans, who were being squeezed in their market and expecting a great scarcity, to send out Pompey to strip the sea of the pirates. Gabinius drafted the law —
one of Pompey's intimates — a law that gave him not merely command of a fleet but outright monarchy and power over all mankind unaccountable to anyone. For the law gave him rule over the sea within the Pillars of Heracles, and over all the mainland to a distance of four hundred stadia from the sea — a measure which escaped very few places at all in the Roman world, but rather embraced the greatest of the nations and the most powerful of the kings.
In addition, fifteen legates were his to select from among the senators to head the different commands, and to take as much money as he wished from the treasuries and from the tax-farmers, and two hundred ships, being master of the number and the levy of the army and of the rowing-crews. When these terms were read out, the people received them with extraordinary enthusiasm, but to the greatest and most powerful men of the senate it seemed that such unlimited and undefined authority, beyond mere envy, was a thing to be feared.
Hence they opposed the law — all except Caesar; he spoke in favor of the law, caring very little for Pompey, but ingratiating himself with the people and winning them for himself from the outset. But the others attacked Pompey vehemently. And one of the consuls, having said to him that in emulating Romulus he would not escape the same end as he did, came close to being torn apart by the crowd. But when Catulus came forward against the law,
the people, out of respect, kept a great silence; but after he had spoken at length, honorably and without malice, on Pompey's behalf, and advised them to spare him and not to expose such a man to danger upon danger and war upon war, he said, "But if you should lose this man, who else would you have in his place?" And with one voice they all cried back, "You yourself."
Catulus, then, since he could not persuade them, withdrew. But when Roscius came forward, no one would listen to him; so he signaled with his fingers that they should choose not Pompey alone, but a second man besides him. At this, it is said, the people, angered by this, let out such a roar that a crow passing overhead above the forum was knocked senseless and dropped down among them.
Hence it seems that it is not by any breaking-up and rending of the air, which thereby takes in a great void, that falling birds slip down, but rather they are struck by the very blow of the voice, whenever a great and strong volume of sound produces a swell and wave in the air.
At that time, then, they dispersed; but on the day when they were to cast their vote, Pompey slipped away to the countryside. When he heard that the law had been ratified, he entered the city by night, thinking that a meeting and gathering to greet him in public would provoke envy. But at daybreak he came forth and offered sacrifice; and when an assembly convened on his behalf, he succeeded in having numerous additional grants voted to him beyond what had already been decreed, so that his resources were nearly doubled.
Five hundred ships in all were fitted out and crewed on his behalf, along with a hundred and twenty thousand foot-soldiers and five thousand cavalry mustered together. He selected twenty-four men of senatorial standing as suitable commanders and generals, and two quaestors were appointed to serve him. Prices of goods dropped at once, much to the people's delight, and it was said that Pompey's name alone had brought the war to an end.
Nevertheless, dividing the seas and the whole expanse of the inner sea into thirteen districts, and assigning to each a number of ships and a commander, he simultaneously scattered his forces everywhere; and whatever bands of pirates he caught in a body he hunted down at once and brought them in, while those who anticipated this and, escaping destruction, slipped away like bees into a hive, poured down from every side into Cilicia — and against these he himself set sail, having sixty of the best ships.
He did not, however, sail out against them before he had thoroughly cleansed of the pirate-nests there the Tyrrhenian sea, the Libyan, and the sea around Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, in forty days in all, sparing neither himself, tireless as he was, nor his eager lieutenants.
At Rome, since the consul Piso out of anger and envy was damaging the preparations and disbanding the crews, Pompey sent the fleet around to Brundisium, while he himself went up to Rome through Tyrrhenia. When everyone learned of it they poured out into the road, as if he had not sent them off only a few days before,
and the joy was made all the greater by the swiftness of this unexpected turn, since the market now had overflowing abundance. Because of this Piso came near to being stripped of his consulship, Gabinius already having a law drawn up for the purpose. But Pompey prevented this too, and after conducting his other business reasonably and accomplishing what he needed, he went down to Brundisium and set sail.
Though he was pressed by the occasion and was sailing past the cities in haste, he nevertheless did not pass by Athens, but went up, sacrificed to the gods, addressed the people, and immediately as he was leaving read the single-line inscriptions written for him — the one inside the gate: "So far as you know yourself to be a man, to that degree you are a god"; and the one outside: "We were expecting you, we were paying you homage, we saw you, we are sending you on your way."
Since some of the pirate bands still banding together and roaming outside had made requests of him, he treated them with fairness, and taking over their ships and their persons he did them no harm; and the rest, coming to have good hope, escaped the other commanders and delivered themselves, together with their children and wives, into Pompey's hands. He spared them all, and it was chiefly through these men that he tracked down and seized those who were still hiding, and punished them, since they were conscious of irremediable crimes against their own kind.
The majority, and the most powerful of them, kept their families, money, and useless crowd of followers stored away in strongholds and fortified towns around Taurus, while they themselves manned their ships and met Pompey as he sailed against Coracesium in Cilicia; and when battle was joined they were defeated and besieged. In the end they held out suppliant branches, giving themselves up along with every city and island under their sway, strongholds walled and hard to force and difficult of approach.
So the war was ended and the pirate bands everywhere were driven from the sea in not more than three months' time, and he took many other ships besides ninety with bronze rams. As for the pirates themselves, who numbered more than twenty thousand, he did not so much as consider killing them; but to release them and let them go, to be scattered abroad or to band together again, poor and warlike and numerous as they were, he did not think it good policy.
Reflecting, then, that by nature man neither has been nor is a savage and unsociable creature, but becomes so by departing from his nature through vice, while by habits and changes of place and manner of life he grows civilized — and that even wild beasts, when they share in a gentler mode of living, shed their fierce and savage nature — he decided to transplant the men from the sea onto land, and to give them a taste of a decent life, accustoming them to dwell in cities and till the soil.
Some, then, were received by the small and thinly-populated cities of the Cilicians, who added territory to their own and mingled the newcomers among themselves; and taking up Soli, which had recently been laid waste by Tigranes king of the Armenians, he settled many in it. To most of them he gave as a home Dyme in Achaea, a place then emptied of inhabitants and rich in good soil.
These measures those who envied him found fault with; but even those who were quite fond of him took no pleasure in what happened with regard to Metellus in Crete. For Metellus, being a kinsman of the man who had shared command with Pompey in Iberia, had been sent as praetor to Crete before Pompey was chosen; for this was a second source of piracy after the one in Cilicia, and Metellus, catching many of them, was destroying and wiping them out.
Those who still survived and were under siege sent a suppliant branch and called upon Pompey to come to the island, on the ground that it belonged to his sphere of command and everywhere fell within the measure reckoned from the sea; and he, accepting their appeal, wrote to Metellus forbidding the war, and wrote also to the cities telling them not to obey Metellus, and sent as commander one of the officers under him, Lucius Octavius,
who, entering within the walls together with the besieged and fighting alongside them, made Pompey not only odious and burdensome but even ridiculous, lending his name to unholy and godless men and wrapping his own reputation around them like a charm against harm, out of envy and rivalry toward Metellus,
for even Achilles, they said, was behaving not like a true man but like a reckless boy mad for glory, when he waved the others back and stopped them from striking Hector down, for fear that someone else might land the blow and take the credit, leaving him in second place:
so too Pompey was acting, striving to save the common enemies of all, in order to rob a general who had labored hard of his triumph. Metellus, however, did not yield, but destroyed the pirates and took vengeance on them, and as for Octavius, he heaped abuse and insult on him in the camp and let him go.
When it was reported at Rome that the pirate war was finished and that Pompey, having leisure, was going about visiting the cities, one of the tribunes, Manilius, drafted a law that Pompey should take over all the territory and forces that Lucullus commanded, adding also Bithynia, which Glabrio held, to make war on Mithridates and Tigranes, the kings, keeping also the naval force and command of the sea which he had received at the outset.
This amounted, taken all together, to placing the Roman command in the hands of one man; for whatever provinces were thought not to be reached by the former law — Phrygia, Lycaonia, Galatia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, upper Colchis, Armenia — these were added, together with the armies and forces with which Lucullus had warred down Mithridates and Tigranes.
But while Lucullus was being stripped of the glory of what he had accomplished, and was receiving a successor for his triumph rather than for his war, the aristocratic party's protest carried less weight, though they thought the man was suffering injustice and ingratitude; but bearing heavily as they did the power of Pompey, as being set up like a tyranny, they privately urged and encouraged one another to lay hold of the law and not surrender their liberty. But when the moment for action arrived,
fearing the people, they gave up, and the rest fell silent; but Catulus, after denouncing the law and the tribune at length, when he could persuade no one, kept crying out repeatedly from the platform, bidding the senate to seek out, as their ancestors had done, some mountain and cliff, where it might take refuge and preserve its liberty.
The law, then, was ratified, as they say, by all the tribes, and Pompey, though not present, was declared master of nearly everything that Sulla had held by force of arms and war in mastering the city. He himself, on receiving the letter and learning what had been decreed, with his friends present and rejoicing with him, is said to have drawn his brows together and struck his thigh and said, as one already weighed down and displeased at having to command, "Alas for these endless labors!
How much better it would have been to remain one of the unrenowned, if I am never to cease campaigning, nor ever to shed this envy and live in the country with my wife." At these words even his closest intimates could not bear his irony, knowing that, having in his rivalry with Lucullus fuel for his innate love of honor and love of power, he rejoiced all the more.
Indeed his actions soon revealed the truth, for by posting notices everywhere he called back the soldiers and summoned to himself the subject princes and kings, and in going over the country he left nothing that Lucullus had done unaltered, but he even remitted punishments to many, and took away gifts, and did everything, in short, to show, in his rivalry with those who admired the man, that Lucullus was master of nothing.
When Lucullus complained of this through friends, it was decided that they should meet together; and they met near Galatia. As befitted the greatest of generals and men who had accomplished the greatest deeds, their attendants approached bearing rods wreathed alike with laurel; but Lucullus was coming from regions green and shaded, while Pompey had happened to pass through a country much of it treeless and parched.
So when the lictors of Lucullus saw that Pompey's laurels were withered and altogether faded, they gave up a portion of their own still-fresh wreaths and used them to adorn and crown the other men's rods. Many took this as an omen that Pompey had arrived to make off with the victories and the renown that belonged to Lucullus:
Lucullus was senior both in the order of his consulship and in age, but Pompey's rank was the greater because of his two triumphs. Nevertheless, at their first meeting they conducted themselves, as far as possible, in a statesmanlike and friendly manner, extolling each other's deeds and rejoicing in each other's successes; but in their discussion they came to no fair or moderate terms at all, and even fell to abusing each other, the one taunting Lucullus with love of money, the other taunting him with love of power, and they were separated only with difficulty by their friends.
And Lucullus, in Galatia, distributed lands from among the conquered territory and other gifts to whomever he wished, while Pompey, encamping a little farther off, forbade anyone to pay attention to him, and stripped him of every soldier save sixteen hundred, men he considered, on account of their unruly disposition, both worthless to his own purposes and hostile toward Lucullus,
and besides this, openly disparaging his achievements, he said that Lucullus had been fighting against mere stage-tragedies and painted royal shadows, while for himself was left the contest against a true and disciplined force, since Mithridates was now taking refuge in shields and swords and cavalry. Lucullus, defending himself, said that Pompey was marching to fight a phantom and shadow of war, being accustomed, like a lazy bird of prey, to swoop down upon corpses left by others and tear apart the remains of wars already fought.
For in this way, he said, Pompey had inscribed his name upon the achievements of Sertorius, of Lepidus, and of the followers of Spartacus, when it was really the doing partly of Crassus, partly of Metellus, partly of Catulus. Hence it was no wonder if he was appropriating for himself the glory of the Armenian and Pontic wars too, a man who had contrived somehow or other to insinuate himself even into a triumph over runaway slaves.
After this Lucullus departed. Pompey stationed his entire fleet to watch over the waters from Phoenicia to the Bosporus, and set out in person against Mithridates, who had thirty thousand foot soldiers arrayed in phalanx formation along with two thousand horsemen, yet would not risk battle.
At first Mithridates was encamped on a strong mountain hard to attack, but abandoned it as being without water; and Pompey, occupying this very position, and inferring from the kind of vegetation there and the contour of the hillsides that water lay underground, gave orders for wells to be sunk throughout the camp; at once it overflowed with abundant water, so that it was a wonder that Mithridates had all this time remained ignorant of it.
Next, encircling him with a camp, Pompey walled him in. Mithridates, besieged for forty-five days, secretly escaped with the most vigorous part of his force, having killed those who were useless and sick. But Pompey caught up with him at last near the Euphrates and pitched camp beside him; and fearing that Mithridates might get there first and cross the river ahead of him, he led his army forward, armed, from the middle of the night,
at the very time when Mithridates is said to have seen in his sleep a vision foreshadowing what was to come. For he seemed to be sailing the Pontic sea with a favorable wind, already sighting the Bosporus, and greeting warmly his fellow-voyagers, as one rejoicing at a sure and certain deliverance; but suddenly he seemed to appear bereft of everyone, drifting on a small piece of wreckage. While he was in the grip of such feelings and visions, his friends came and roused him, telling him that Pompey was advancing.
It was necessary, then, of sheer necessity to fight in defense of the palisade, and the generals led out the force and drew it up in order; but Pompey, perceiving their preparation, hesitated to go into danger in the darkness, and thought it best only to ride around them in a circle, so that they might not escape, and to attack when it was day, since his men were superior. But the eldest of the tribunes, begging and urging him, roused him to action; for it was not altogether dark, but the moon, sinking low, still afforded a fair view of men's bodies. And this above all proved the undoing of the king's forces.
For the Romans were advancing with the moon at their backs; and as the light was low toward its setting, their shadows ran out far in front of their bodies and fell upon the enemy, who could not accurately judge the distance but, thinking them already at close quarters, hurled their javelins in vain and hit no one.
Seeing this, the Romans charged with a shout, and since the enemy no longer dared to stand but were struck with terror and fled, they cut them down, so that far more than ten thousand died, and the camp was taken. Mithridates himself at the start cut through and drove past the Romans with eight hundred horsemen, but when the rest were quickly scattered he was left with three companions, among whom was Hypsicrateia his concubine,
a woman always of a manly and daring spirit—indeed the king used to call her Hypsicrates—who at that time, wearing a Persian man's dress and mounted on a horse, neither gave out in body under the length of the ride nor wearied of tending to the king's person and his horse, all the way to their arrival at a place called Sinora, which was stocked with money and royal valuables.
From there Mithridates took costly garments and distributed them to those who had run to join him in his flight, and handed each of his friends a lethal dose of poison to keep with them, so that none should fall unwillingly into the hands of the enemy. From there he set out for Armenia to join Tigranes; but Tigranes turned him away and offered a hundred talents as a bounty for capturing him, so Mithridates skirted the springs where the Euphrates rises and fled through Colchis.
Pompey invaded Armenia at the invitation of the younger Tigranes, who had already revolted from his father, and met Pompey near the river Araxes, which rises from the same region as the Euphrates but turns off eastward and empties into the Caspian sea,
These, then, advanced together, taking over the cities as they went; but King Tigranes the elder, having recently been crushed by Lucullus, and hearing that Pompey was by nature gentle and mild, admitted a garrison into his palace, and taking his friends and kinsmen set out himself to surrender in person,
and when he arrived on horseback at the camp, two lictors of Pompey came up to him and ordered him to dismount and come on foot, for no man had ever been seen seated on a horse within a Roman camp. Tigranes obeyed even in this, and untying his sword handed it over to them; and finally, when he came before Pompey himself, he took off his tiara and made to lay it before his feet, and throwing himself down—most shameful of all—fell upon his knees before him.
But Pompey forestalled him by taking hold of his right hand and drawing him forward, and setting him near himself, with the son on the other side, said that for the rest Tigranes must blame Lucullus, for it was by him that Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia, Galatia, and Sophene had been taken from him; but what he had kept until now he should keep, upon paying six thousand talents to the Romans as penalty for his wrongdoing, and that the son should be king of Sophene.
Tigranes was quite delighted at this, and once the Romans hailed him as king his joy overflowed, so he pledged half a mina of silver to every soldier, ten minae to every centurion, and a full talent to every tribune. The son, however, took offense, and when he was asked to dinner remarked that he had no need of Pompey to bestow such honors on him, since he would find some other Roman to do it. For this remark he was placed in chains and reserved for the triumph.
And not long after, Phraates the Parthian sent demanding the young man back, as his son-in-law, and asking that the Euphrates be used as the boundary of their respective realms. Pompey replied that Tigranes belonged to his father rather than to his father-in-law, and that as for the boundary, the just one would be used.
Leaving Afranius as guard of Armenia, Pompey himself marched through the nations dwelling around the Caucasus, of necessity, against Mithridates. The greatest of these nations are the Albanians and the Iberians, the Iberians reaching to the Moschian mountains and the Pontus, and the Albanians inclining toward the east and the Caspian sea,
these first granted passage to Pompey when he asked for it; but when winter overtook the army in their land and the Roman festival of Saturn was approaching, they, being no fewer than forty thousand, attempted to attack them, crossing the river Cyrnus, which has its source among the mountains of Iberia and, after taking in the Araxes flowing down out of Armenia, discharges through twelve mouths into the Caspian.
Others say that the Araxes does not join this river but flows on its own and empties near the same sea, close by. Pompey, though he was able to oppose the enemy at the crossing, allowed them to cross unmolested, and then, attacking, routed and destroyed a great multitude of them.
When the king begged and sent ambassadors, Pompey let go the wrong done and made a truce, then marched against the Iberians, a people not fewer in number but more warlike than the others, and strongly inclined to please Mithridates and thrust Pompey back.
For the Iberians had submitted neither to the Medes nor to the Persians, and they had also escaped the rule of the Macedonians, since Alexander had departed swiftly from Hyrcania. Nevertheless Pompey routed these too in a great battle, so that nine thousand were killed and more than ten thousand taken, and he invaded Colchis, and Servilius met him at the Phasis with the ships with which he was guarding the Pontus.
The pursuit of Mithridates, who had slipped away into the nations around the Bosporus and the Maeotis, presented great difficulties; and word came that the Albanians had again revolted against him. Turning against them in anger and eagerness for battle, he crossed the Cyrnus again, with difficulty and danger, since it had for a long distance been fortified with stakes by the barbarians on the far side,
and since a long, waterless, and toilsome road awaited him, he filled ten thousand skins with water and drove against the enemy, and came upon them drawn up at the river Abas, sixty thousand foot and over twelve thousand horse, most of them poorly armed and wearing the pelts of wild animals for clothing; their leader was the king's brother, a man named Cosis.
This man, once the fighting closed to close quarters, charged Pompey and caught him with a javelin in the folded seam of his breastplate; Pompey, however, drove his own weapon through him and brought him down. It is said that Amazons also joined the barbarians in this engagement, descending from the mountains around the river Thermodon, for afterward, as the Romans were stripping the barbarian dead, they found Amazonian light shields and buskins among them, though no woman's corpse turned up anywhere.
The Amazons dwell in the region of the Caucasus that slopes down toward the Hyrcanian sea, not bordering directly on the Albanians, but with the Gelae and Leges dwelling between; and each year for two months they go to meet these peoples at the river Thermodon and consort with them, and then withdraw again to live by themselves.
Once the battle was over Pompey began his march toward Hyrcania and the Caspian sea, but he was turned back by the multitude of deadly reptiles when he was still three days' journey away, and he withdrew into Lesser Armenia.
To the king of the Elymaeans and the Medes, who sent envoys, he wrote back in friendly terms; but the Parthian, who had invaded Gordyene and was cutting down those subject to Tigranes, he drove out by sending a force under Afranius, pursuing him as far as Arbelitis. As for the concubines of Mithridates who were brought to him, he took none of them for himself, but sent them all back to their parents and families; for most of them were the daughters and wives of generals and princes.
Stratonice, who held the highest rank among them and had charge of the fortress richest in gold, was, it seems, the daughter of a musician who was otherwise not very fortunate, an old man; and she had so quickly captivated Mithridates by playing the harp for him at a drinking party that he took her to his bed and sent the old man away, aggrieved at not even receiving a courteous greeting.
But when, rising about dawn, the old man saw within tables set with silver and gold cups, a great crowd of attendants, eunuchs and boys bringing him costly garments, and before the door a horse standing adorned as for one of the king's friends, he supposed the whole thing to be a mockery and a joke, and started to flee through the doors,
but the servants took hold of him and told him that a rich man had recently died and the king had given him his great house, and that these were only small first-fruits and samples of the rest of the money and property; so he hardly believed it, but at last he took up the purple robe, leaped onto the horse, and went riding through the city, shouting, 'All this is mine!'
When people laughed at him, he told them that this was not the remarkable part—what was remarkable was that he was restraining himself from pelting passersby with stones, so overcome with joy was he. Such was the lineage and stock from which Stratonice sprang. It was she who surrendered this stronghold to Pompey and lavished many gifts upon him, of which he accepted only what seemed suitable for adorning temples and lending splendor to his triumph, telling Stratonice to keep and enjoy the remainder.
In the same way, the king of the Iberians once presented him with a golden couch, a golden table, and a golden throne, urging him to accept and retain them; yet Pompey handed these over as well to the quaestors for the public treasury.
In the fortress called Caenum, Pompey came upon secret letters and papers of Mithridates, and read through them with no little pleasure, for they contained much insight into his character. They were memoranda from which it was discovered that he had done away with many others by poison, including his own son Ariarathes, and Alcaeus of Sardis, because he had beaten him in a chariot race.
There were also written accounts of dream interpretations, a number of them dreams he himself had seen, others reported by certain of his women, along with letters of an indecent nature exchanged between Monime and himself, hers to him and his to her. Theophanes claims that a speech by Rutilius was likewise discovered there, urging on the slaughter of Romans throughout Asia,
though most people reasonably suspect it to be a spiteful fabrication by Theophanes, who may have loathed Rutilius simply for being so unlike himself, but who probably acted also on Pompey's behalf, since Rutilius in his own histories had portrayed Pompey's father as a thoroughly wicked man.
From there Pompey came to Amisus and suffered a lapse deserving of censure, brought on by ambition. For after mocking Lucullus at length for issuing edicts and distributing gifts and honors while the enemy was still alive—things which victors are accustomed to do when a war is finished and settled—he himself, while Mithridates still held power in the Bosporus and had gathered a force fit to fight, acted in just the same way, as though everything were already accomplished,
arranging the provinces and distributing gifts, while many commanders and princes, and twelve barbarian kings, came to him; and so he did not even see fit, in writing back to the Parthian, to address him as King of Kings as the rest did, in order to gratify the others. But he was gripped by a certain yearning and ambition to win back Syria and push through Arabia toward the Red Sea, so as to reach the Ocean that girds the inhabited world on every side
wherever he pressed on he won; for in Libya too he was the first to advance, conquering, all the way to the Outer Sea, and again in Iberia he set the boundary of Roman rule at the Atlantic ocean, and a third time, lately, pursuing the Albanians he came within a little of driving into the Hyrcanian Sea, so that he was setting out, it seemed, to close the circuit of his campaigning at the Red Sea. For besides this he saw that Mithridates was hard to hunt down by arms, and harder to deal with in flight than in battle.
For this reason, saying that he would leave hunger as an enemy stronger against him than himself, he set guards of ships upon the merchants sailing to the Bosporus, and death was the penalty for those caught. Then, taking up the mass of his army, he led it forward in great numbers; and coming upon the men of Triarius who had fought unsuccessfully against Mithridates and fallen, and finding their bodies still unburied, he buried them all splendidly and with lavish honor — an omission which seems to have been not the least cause of the hatred felt toward Lucullus.
Having subdued through Afranius the Arabs about Mount Amanus, and having himself come down into Syria, he declared this land, since it had no legitimate kings, to fall under Rome's dominion as one of her provinces, and he subdued Judaea, and seized Aristobulus the king. Of the cities, some he founded, others he set free, punishing the tyrants who ruled in them.
Most of his days were taken up sitting as judge, settling quarrels between cities and kings, and whatever business he could not handle personally he sent his friends, just as when the Armenians and Parthians, who were at odds over a territory, submitted the decision to him, he sent three men as judges and arbitrators.
His power was famed far and wide, and his kindness and virtue were renowned no less; and by this reputation he concealed most of the wrongdoings committed by his friends and associates around him — being by nature unable either to prevent or to punish those who did wrong, yet presenting himself to those who dealt with him in such a way that they easily endured even the greed and heavy-handedness of those men.
Chief among those who swayed him was Demetrius, a freedman still young, a man of no small shrewdness in other matters, but one who made altogether too free a use of his fortune. About him a story of this sort is told: Cato the philosopher, while still young but already possessed of great reputation and great pride, went up to Antioch — Pompey not being there at the time — wishing to view the city.
He himself, as always, went on foot, while his friends rode along beside him on horses. Seeing before the gate a crowd of men in white garments, and along the road, on one side the young men drawn up, on the other the boys, separately arranged, he was displeased, supposing that all this was being done in his honor and attendance, though he wanted no such thing.
He did, however, bid his friends dismount and walk along with him; and when they had come near, the man overseeing and directing the whole arrangement, carrying a garland and a rod of office, came forward to greet them, inquiring at what point they had parted from Demetrius and when he was expected to show up. At this Cato's friends burst out laughing, but Cato said only, "O wretched city," and passed on, making no other answer.
And yet Pompey himself, being toyed with by this Demetrius and not taking offense, made the man less an object of resentment to others as well. For it is said that often, while Pompey waited in his own receptions and welcomed the other guests, Demetrius would already be reclining haughtily, with his cloak drawn over his head down past his ears.
Even before he had returned to Italy, Demetrius had acquired the most pleasant suburbs of Rome and the finest of its places of resort, and there were costly gardens named after him — and this though Pompey himself, up to his third triumph, lived modestly and simply. Later, when raising for the Romans that beautiful and famous theater, he built onto it, as a kind of appendage, a house more splendid than that theater — yet this too gave no offense — so that the man who became its master after Pompey, on entering it, marveled and asked where Pompey the Great used to dine. Such, then, is the story that is told.
As for the king of the Arabs about Petra, who formerly held Roman power in no account, but who now, in great fear, had written that he had resolved to obey and do everything commanded, Pompey, wishing to confirm this resolve of his, marched against Petra — a campaign not altogether free of censure among most people;
for they took it as a way of dodging the chase after Mithridates, and believed he ought instead to turn against that old adversary, who was again rekindling and preparing, as was reported, to drive an army through the Scythians and Paeonians against Italy. But Pompey, thinking it easier to destroy the man's power while he was making war than to seize his person while he fled, was unwilling to wear himself out fruitlessly in pursuit, and instead made other additions to the war and let time pass.
But fortune resolved the difficulty. For while he was no longer far distant from Petra, and had that very day pitched his camp and was exercising himself on horseback beside it, couriers rode up from Pontus bringing good news. They are at once recognizable by the points of their spears, for these are wreathed with laurel. Seeing them, the soldiers ran together toward Pompey.
He at first wished to finish his exercises, but as they shouted and pressed him, he leapt down from his horse, took the letters, and went forward. Since there was no platform, nor had time allowed a military one to be made (such a mound as soldiers normally build by cutting thick clods of turf and stacking them layer upon layer), in the eagerness and zeal of the moment they heaped together the packsaddles of the baggage animals and raised a height;
mounting upon this, Pompey announced to them that Mithridates was dead, having destroyed himself when his son Pharnaces rose in revolt, and that Pharnaces had taken possession of all affairs there, and had written making them over to himself and to the Romans.
After this the army, giving itself over to rejoicing, as was natural, passed the time in sacrifices and feastings, as though ten thousand enemies had died in the person of Mithridates alone. Pompey, having set a crown, so to speak, upon his own deeds and campaigns not at all so easily expected as this, at once broke camp from Arabia;
and quickly passing through the provinces that lay between, he arrived at Amisus, and there found many gifts that had been sent by Pharnaces, and many bodies of the royal household, and the corpse of Mithridates himself, not altogether recognizable by its face, for those who embalmed it had failed to remove the brain; but those who wished to view it recognized it by its scars.
Pompey himself could not bear to look upon it, but, discharging what was due to the dead as a matter of religious scruple, sent it off to Sinope; and he marveled at the size and splendor of the clothing Mithridates had worn, and of his arms. And yet the sword-belt, which had cost four hundred talents to make, was taken by Publius and sold off to Ariarathes, while the tiara, a piece of astonishing workmanship, Gaius, the foster-brother of Mithridates, secretly gave, at his request, to Faustus the son of Sulla; this at the time escaped Pompey's notice. Pharnaces, learning of it later, punished those who had taken these things.
Having settled and arranged affairs there, Pompey now conducted the rest of his journey in a more festive fashion; for on arriving at Mytilene he set the city free, on account of Theophanes, and watched the traditional contest of the poets, which had as its single subject his own deeds; and being delighted with the theater, he had its shape and design traced, meaning to build one like it, but greater and more magnificent, at Rome.
Coming to Rhodes, he heard all the sophists, and gave each a talent as a gift; Posidonius even wrote down the discourse he delivered before him, in which he argued against Hermagoras the rhetorician on the question of general topics. At Athens his behavior toward the philosophers was much the same;
and having given the city fifty talents for repairs, he hoped, most splendid of men, to set foot in Italy and, longing to be seen, to be seen by those at home who longed for him. But it seems that whatever divine power is charged with always mixing some portion of ill into the bright and great goods that come from fortune had long been secretly at work preparing for him a more painful homecoming.
For Mucia had behaved shamefully during his absence abroad, and while Pompey was far off he made light of the report; but when he had come near Italy, and, with more leisure for reflection, had, it seems, taken the charge to heart more seriously, he sent her a bill of divorce, neither then in writing nor afterward in speech explaining the grounds on which he divorced her; but the charge is set down in the letters of Cicero.
All manner of reports about Pompey were falling upon Rome in advance of him, and there was great tumult, as if he would at once lead his army against the city and a firm monarchy would result. Crassus gathered up his money and his children and left the city, either because he truly feared, or, as seemed more likely, because he wished to lend credit to the slander and make the ill-will against Pompey harsher.
As soon as Pompey set foot in Italy, he gathered the soldiers into an assembly, and after addressing them fittingly and speaking kindly to them, he bade each disperse to his own city and turn to his own affairs, remembering only to assemble again with him for the triumph. And so, when the army had thus been scattered and everyone was inquiring what would happen, an astonishing thing came to pass:
for the cities, seeing Pompey the Great passing through unarmed and with only a few of his intimates, as though returning from some other kind of journey abroad, poured out in goodwill and, escorting him, brought him into Rome with a greater force than before — had he then had any design to stir up revolution — though he had no need at all of that army.
Since law forbade him from setting foot inside the city until his triumph, he dispatched a request to ask the senate to postpone the consular elections, and to grant him this favor, that he might be present to help Piso in the canvass.
Cato, however, blocked the appeal, so Pompey failed to get what he wanted; still, struck with admiration for Cato's frankness and for the boldness with which he alone stood up openly in justice's defense, Pompey wanted somehow to bring the man over to his side. Cato happened to have two nieces, and Pompey hoped to marry one of them himself while giving the other to his son.
But Cato, suspecting the overture as in some sense an attempt to corrupt him by bribery through this connection, although his wife and his sister were unhappy that he would turn down a marriage tie to Pompey the Great. Meanwhile Pompey, wishing to secure the consulship for Afranius, spent money among the tribes on his behalf, and men went down to Pompey's gardens to collect it,
so that the matter became notorious and Pompey was ill spoken of, for making venal — for the benefit of those unable to acquire it through merit — that very office which he himself had won, on account of what he had accomplished, as the greatest of honors. "Yet these reproaches too," Cato said to the women, "must be shared by those who become kin to Pompey." And hearing this, they acknowledged that he judged better than they did concerning what was fitting.
For the greatness of the triumph, though it was divided over two days, the time did not suffice, but many of the things prepared fell out of the spectacle, enough in themselves to furnish the dignity and adornment of another procession; and inscriptions carried in advance declared the peoples over whom he triumphed.
The list ran thus: Pontus, Armenia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Media, Colchis, the Iberian people, the Albanian people, Syria, Cilicia, Mesopotamia, the lands of Phoenicia together with Palestine, Judaea, Arabia, and every last bit of the pirate power that had been subdued by land and sea. Among these, strongholds captured numbered no fewer than a thousand, cities not much short of nine hundred, pirate ships eight hundred, and colonies of cities, one short of forty.
In addition to these he declared in his dispatches that fifty million had come in from the tribute-taxes, and that from what he himself had added to the city's revenues they were now receiving eighty-five million, and that there was carried into the public treasury, in coin and in vessels of silver and gold, twenty thousand talents, apart from what had been given to the soldiers, of whom even the one who received the least share got, in proportion, fifteen hundred drachmas.
Among the captives paraded, apart from the pirate chiefs, were the son of Tigranes the Armenian together with his wife and daughter, the wife of Tigranes the king himself, Zosime, Aristobulus the king of the Jews, a sister of Mithridates and her five children, Scythian women, and hostages given by the Albanian and Iberian peoples as well as by the king of Commagene, and a great number of trophies, equal in count to all the battles which either he himself or his generals had won.
But what most contributed to his glory, and what had happened to none of the Romans before him, was that he brought home his third triumph, this time from a third continent. Others before him had likewise triumphed on three occasions, but he alone, having celebrated his first triumph over Libya, his second over Europe, and now this final one over Asia, seemed in some sense to have subdued the whole inhabited world through his three triumphs.
At that time his age was, according to those who in every way compare and liken him to Alexander and press the comparison, younger than thirty-four years, though in truth he was approaching forty. How fortunate it would have been for him had he ended his life there, up to the point where he possessed the fortune of Alexander; for the time beyond brought him successes that provoked envy, and misfortunes past all remedy.
For the power which he himself had rightfully acquired in the city, using it unjustly on behalf of others, he unwittingly stripped himself of his own glory to the very degree that he added strength to them, and by the might and greatness of his own power he was undone unawares—just as the strongest parts and positions of cities, when they admit the enemy, add their own strength to them—so through the power of Pompey, Caesar, lifted up against the city over the heads of others, overthrew and cast down the very man through whom he had gained his strength. It came about in this way.
When Lucullus returned from Asia, having been treated with contempt by Pompey, the Senate at once received him splendidly, and all the more, when Pompey arrived, in curtailing his glory they roused him to take part again in public affairs. He had otherwise grown blunted and his capacity for action had cooled, having given himself over to the pleasure of leisure and to pursuits concerned with wealth; but against Pompey he at once darted forth and, laying hold of him vigorously over the arrangements which he had undone, prevailed, and had the greater strength in the Senate, with Cato joining in the struggle beside him,
and Pompey, being cast out and pushed aside, was forced to take refuge with tribunes and to attach himself to mere youths; of these the most repulsive and most brazen, Clodius, took him up and flung him beneath the feet of the people, and kept him rolling about the marketplace unworthily, dragging him around, using him to vouch for the things written and spoken to court the favor and flattery of the mob, and moreover asking a fee for it,
as if he were not disgracing but doing him a favor—the fee which he later received from Pompey, namely, that he abandon Cicero, who was his friend and had done more than anyone in public life on his behalf. For when Cicero was in danger and asking for help, Pompey did not even come out to see him, but shut the front gate against those who came and slipped away through other doors. And Cicero, fearing the trial, withdrew quietly from Rome.
At that time Caesar, coming back from his campaign, took up a policy which brought him the greatest favor and power for the future, but did the greatest harm to Pompey and to the city. For he was seeking the consulship first; and seeing that, since Crassus and Pompey were at odds, siding with either one meant making a foe of the other, he turned instead to reconciling the two of them—a thing fine and statesmanlike in itself, but contrived by him from a base motive and with cunning, and to malicious purpose.
For the power of the city, which, like a single ship, had been balancing the opposing inclinations, once come together and made one, produced an irresistible momentum that threw down and overturned everything in its path. Cato, at any rate, used to say that those who claimed the city had been overturned by the later quarrel between Pompey and Caesar were mistaken in their blame,
for it was not their discord or their enmity, but rather their union and concord, that proved the worst calamity ever visited upon the city. For Caesar was elected consul; and immediately, to court favor with the poor and destitute, he proposed the settling of colonies in cities and distributions of land, overstepping the bounds proper to his office and turning the consulship, in a way, into something like a tribuneship,
and when his colleague in office, Bibulus, opposed him, and Cato had prepared himself most vigorously to assist Bibulus, Caesar brought Pompey forward openly onto the rostrum and, addressing him, asked whether he approved of the laws. When he agreed, Caesar said, "Then if anyone should use violence against the laws, are you prepared to defend the people?" "Certainly,"
said Pompey, "I shall come, bringing against those who threaten with swords a sword of my own, and a shield." Of nothing that Pompey had ever said or done up to that day did it seem to him that anything was more vulgar, so that even his friends made excuses, saying that the phrase had escaped him on the spur of the moment. Yet in what was done afterward it was already altogether plain that he had surrendered himself wholly to Caesar's use.
For Julia, Caesar's daughter, who had been promised in marriage to Caepio and was to be wed within a few days, Pompey married, to no one's expectation, having appeased Caepio's anger by promising him his own daughter in marriage, though she had earlier been betrothed to Faustus, Sulla's son. Caesar himself took as his wife Calpurnia, daughter of Piso.
After this Pompey, filling the city with soldiers, held everything by force. For when Bibulus the consul was coming down into the marketplace with Lucullus and Cato, men fell upon them suddenly and broke his rods of office, dumping a basket of dung over Bibulus's head from above, and injuring two of the tribunes accompanying him in the process.
Having in this manner emptied the marketplace of those who opposed them, they ratified the law concerning the distribution of lands. The people, having been won over by this bait, had by now become entirely tame and compliant to their doing, meddling in nothing but silently casting their vote in favor of whatever was proposed.
There were then ratified for Pompey the arrangements over which Lucullus had contended, and for Caesar Gaul, on both sides of the Alps, along with Illyricum, for a term of five years, together with four full legions of soldiers; and it was decreed that the consuls for the coming year should be Piso, Caesar's father-in-law, and Gabinius, the most shameless flatterer to be found among Pompey's followers.
While these things were being carried out, Bibulus confined himself indoors and would not emerge for the whole eight months of his consulship, but sent forth edicts containing accusations and reproaches against both of them; and Cato, as if inspired and possessed by a prophetic frenzy, foretold in the Senate what was to come upon the city and upon Pompey; while Lucullus, giving up, kept quiet, as one no longer of an age fit for public life—at which Pompey remarked that for an old man, indulgence in luxury was more unseasonable than engaging in politics.
Yet soon he himself was softened by love of the girl and devoted much of his time to her, spending whole days with her in the country and in gardens, neglecting what was being done in the marketplace, so that even Clodius, then holding the tribunate, came to despise him and undertook the most audacious measures; for once he had driven out Cicero,
and had sent Cato off to Cyprus on the pretext of a command, with Caesar having already set out for Gaul, and saw the people attentive to himself, since he did everything and conducted his politics to win their favor, he at once attempted to overturn some of Pompey's arrangements, and, snatching away Tigranes the captive, kept him with himself, and brought lawsuits against Pompey's friends, testing in their persons the strength of Pompey's power.
Finally, when Pompey had come forward to attend some trial, Clodius, having under him a crowd of men full of licentiousness and contempt, took his stand in a conspicuous place and put forth questions such as these: "Who is an unbridled commander? What man seeks out a man? Who is it that scratches his head using just one finger?" And they, resembling a chorus drilled to answer in unison, whenever he gave his toga a shake, would shout the answer to every question: "Pompey."
These things then vexed Pompey, who was unaccustomed to being spoken of ill and inexperienced in such a contest; but he was more distressed still on perceiving that the Senate rejoiced over him being insulted and paying the penalty for his betrayal of Cicero,
and when it happened that there were blows in the marketplace even to the point of wounds, and one of Clodius's household slaves, slipping through the crowd toward Pompey, was found out to be carrying a sword—doing this, he claimed, as a pretext, but in truth fearing Clodius's licentiousness and abuse—Pompey no longer came out into the marketplace for as long a time as Clodius held office, but stayed at home continually, deliberating with his friends how he might allay the anger of the Senate and of the leading men against him.
He did not listen to Culleo, who urged him to put away Julia and turn from friendship with Caesar toward the Senate; but he was persuaded by those who thought it right to bring Cicero back, a man most hostile to Clodius and most dear to the Senate. And bringing forward Cicero's brother, who begged on his behalf with a great following, after wounds had been inflicted in the marketplace and some men killed, he prevailed over Clodius.
And Cicero, having returned by law, at once reconciled the Senate to Pompey, and by supporting the grain law made Pompey in a sense master again of all the land and sea which the Romans possessed. For under his authority came harbors, markets, the disposal of crops—in a word, the affairs of those who sailed the sea and of those who worked the land.
Clodius, however, charged that the law had not been written because of the grain shortage, but that the grain shortage had come about so that the law might be passed—as though Pompey, his power fading away as if in a swoon, were rekindling and reviving it by a fresh command. Others declare this to have been a device of Spinther the consul, to shut Pompey up in a greater office so that Spinther himself might be dispatched to assist King Ptolemy.
Nonetheless Canidius, while holding the tribunate, brought in a law that Pompey, without an army, taking only two lictors, should reconcile the king to the Alexandrians; and Pompey seemed not to be displeased with the law, but the Senate rejected it, giving as a decent pretext that they feared for the man's safety. There were letters found scattered about in the marketplace and near the senate-house, purporting to be from Ptolemy, asking that Pompey be given to him as commander in place of Spinther.
Timagenes, however, says that Ptolemy departed when there was otherwise no necessity for it, and that he abandoned Egypt because persuaded by Theophanes, who was working to secure for Pompey both financial gain and the occasion of a new command. But this account is made less credible not so much by the wickedness of Theophanes as it is made incredible by Pompey's own nature, which had nothing of malice or servility in its love of honor.
Being placed in charge of the management and business of the grain supply, he sent legates and friends to many places, while he himself sailed to Sicily and Sardinia and Libya, gathering grain; and when about to put to sea, with a great wind blowing and the pilots hesitating, he was the first to go aboard and, ordering the anchor to be raised, cried out: "Sailing is a necessity, living is not."
Employing such boldness and eagerness, together with good fortune, he filled the markets with grain and the sea with ships, so that the abundance of that provisioning sufficed even for peoples beyond, and there came, as if from a spring, a plentiful outflow to all.
At this time the Gallic wars raised Caesar to great heights; and though he seemed to be very far from Rome and entangled with the Belgae, the Suebi, and the Britons, he was, by his cleverness, unnoticed, working out Pompey's political overthrow in the very midst of the people and amid the most decisive affairs.
He himself, wearing the army as a body around himself, was not exercising it against the barbarians, but training it, as if in hunts and huntings, on the contests fought against those men, and was making it invincible and formidable; and the gold and silver and further plunder, together with whatever riches had piled up from so many wars, he dispatched to Rome, and, testing men with bribes and subsidizing aediles and praetors and consuls and their wives, he made many his own.
So that when he had crossed the Alps and was wintering at Luca, while a great multitude of other men and women competed and streamed to him, two hundred senators, among whom were Pompey and Crassus, were seen at Caesar's doors, and one hundred twenty rod-bundles belonging to proconsuls and praetors.
All the rest, then, he filled with hopes and money and sent off, but with Crassus and Pompey agreements were made with him: that they should stand for the consulship, and that Caesar should assist them by sending many of his soldiers to the vote, and that once they had won election, they would secure provincial governorships and military commands for themselves, and would extend by five further years the commands Caesar already held.
When these things were carried out to the many, the leading men bore it badly; and Marcellinus, standing before the people opposite both of them, asked whether they were going to stand for the consulship. And when the many bade them answer, Pompey spoke first, saying that perhaps he would stand, and perhaps he would not; but Crassus answered more like a statesman, for he said he would do whichever course he thought would benefit the commonwealth.
When Marcellinus pressed hard upon Pompey and seemed to speak vehemently, Pompey said that Marcellinus was the most unjust of all men, since he felt no gratitude for having become, thanks to him, eloquent from being speechless, and given to vomiting from having been given to hunger.
Nevertheless, when all the others gave up canvassing for the consulship, Cato persuaded Lucius Domitius and encouraged him not to withdraw; for the struggle, he insisted, concerned not a magistracy but liberty, against the tyrants. But Pompey's party, fearing the vigor of Cato, lest he should draw off the whole senate and turn the sound part of the people, did not allow Domitius to be brought down to the forum,
but sent armed men against him and killed the torch-bearer who led the way, and put the others to flight; last of all Cato withdrew, wounded in his right forearm while defending Domitius. Having thus made their way to office by such a path, they conducted the rest no more decorously. But first, as the people were selecting Cato for the praetorship and casting their ballots, Pompey broke up the assembly, alleging unfavorable omens, and in place of Cato they proclaimed Vatinius, having corrupted the tribes with money.
Then, through Trebonius as tribune, they brought in laws granting Caesar, as had been agreed, a second five-year term added on, and giving Crassus Syria and the campaign against the Parthians, and to Pompey himself all Libya and both Spains and four legions of soldiers, of which he lent two to Caesar when he asked for them for the war in Gaul.
Crassus went out to his province after being released from the consulship, but Pompey, having dedicated his theater, held gymnastic and musical contests at its consecration, and contests of wild beasts, five hundred lions being slain, and, to crown it all, the fight of elephants, a most astonishing spectacle, he provided.
Admired and beloved for these things, he again incurred no less envy, because, after handing over his armies and provinces to friendly legates, he himself spent his time in the resort-towns of Italy, moving now here now there with his wife, whether because he loved her, or because he could not bear to leave her when she loved him; for this too is said,
and the girl's devotion to her husband was much talked of, though she was not, by her age, one who would naturally long for Pompey; but the cause seems to have been both the man's self-restraint, in knowing only his wedded wife, and his dignity, which was not harsh but had a graciousness in its company most apt to win women over — if indeed one must not disbelieve even Flora the courtesan's testimony —
So then, at the aedilician elections, when some men came to blows and not a few were killed around him, he came away drenched in blood and changed his clothes; and when much confusion and running to the house occurred among the servants carrying the clothes, the girl happened to be pregnant, and seeing the toga stained with blood, she fainted and barely recovered, and from that disturbance and shock she miscarried.
Hence not even those who most blamed Pompey's friendship with Caesar found fault with his love for his wife. But afterward, having conceived again and borne a female child, she died of the pains of labor, and the child did not survive many days. And though Pompey had prepared to bury the body at Alba, the people, forcing the matter, brought it down to the Field of Mars, showing favor more out of pity for the girl than as a courtesy to Pompey and Caesar.
Of these very honors the people seemed to grant the greater share to Caesar, absent, than to Pompey, present, for at once the city was in ferment, and all affairs were in turmoil and full of divisive talk, on the ground that the family bond, which had before rather veiled than restrained the two men's love of power, had now been removed.
Not long after, news came that Crassus too had perished among the Parthians; and this, being a great hindrance to civil war breaking out, was now removed from the way; for fearing him, both men had somehow kept to their mutual just dealings. But when fortune took away the one who sat as umpire of the contest, at once one could apply the comic line, that each one anoints himself against the other and dusts his hands.
So small a thing is fortune compared to nature. For it does not satisfy its desire, when so great a depth of dominion and such vastness of scope did not content two men; but though they heard and read that "all things are divided threefold" among the gods, and "each has his portion of honor," they did not think the empire of the Romans sufficient for themselves, being two.
And yet Pompey once told the people that every magistracy had come to him sooner than he had anticipated, and that he had relinquished each one earlier than others had expected. And indeed the disbandings of his armies always bore witness to this, by Zeus. But now, thinking that Caesar would not give up his forces, he sought to make himself secure against him by means of civic offices, but attempted no other innovation, nor did he wish to seem to distrust him, but rather to look down on him and hold him in contempt.
But when he saw that offices were not being decided according to his judgment, the citizens being bribed, he allowed anarchy to arise in the city, and at once much talk went round concerning a dictator, which Lucilius the tribune was the first to dare bring forward publicly, urging the people to choose Pompey dictator. When Cato took hold of the matter, Lucilius ran the risk of losing his tribuneship, but many of Pompey's friends came forward and pleaded on his behalf that he neither needed nor wanted that office.
When Cato praised Pompey and urged him to take care for good order, he then, out of shame, took care of it, and Domitius and Messala were established as consuls. But later, when anarchy again arose and more men were now raising the talk of a dictator more boldly, Cato's party, fearing they would be forced to yield, resolved to grant Pompey some legal office themselves, to divert him from that unmixed and tyrannical one,
and Bibulus, though an enemy of Pompey, was the first to declare his opinion in the senate: that Pompey should be made consul with no colleague; for either the city would be delivered from its present disorder, or it would find itself enslaved to the strongest man. And when the proposal seemed paradoxical because of the man who made it, Cato stood up, and having given the impression that he would speak against it, when silence fell he said that he himself would not have brought forward the proposal now before them, but that, once brought forward by another, he urged that it be adopted, choosing any government whatsoever rather than anarchy, and believing that no man could govern more capably than Pompey amid such great disturbances.
When the senate accepted this, and voted that Pompey, once elected consul, should rule alone, but that if he himself should want a colleague, he might, after two months had passed, choose one on approval, Pompey, having been thus established and declared consul through Sulpicius as interrex, greeted Cato warmly, acknowledging much gratitude and urging him to become his private counselor in the exercise of office.
But Cato said Pompey owed him no gratitude, for it was not for Pompey's sake that he had said anything of what he had said, but for the city's; and he would be his private counselor if called on privately, but if not called on, he would declare his opinion publicly. Such, then, was Cato in all things.
Pompey, having entered the city, married Cornelia, daughter of Metellus Scipio, not a virgin, but a widow lately left by Publius, the son of Crassus, to whom she had been joined from her maidenhood, he having died among the Parthians. The girl possessed many charms apart from those of youth. For she was well trained in letters and in the lyre and in geometry, and was accustomed to listen to the discourses of philosophers to good purpose.
And along with these there was in her a character free of unpleasantness and pedantry, faults which such learning tends to fasten on young women; and her father was blameless both in birth and reputation. Yet the marriage did not please some, on the ground that it was not suited to their ages; for Cornelia was of an age fit to be married to his son, rather than to him.
while the more refined thought that Pompey had overlooked the state of the city, which was in such troubles that it had chosen him alone as its physician and entrusted itself to him alone: yet he crowns himself and celebrates a wedding, when he ought to have considered his very consulship a calamity, one that would not have been given him so unlawfully had his country been prospering,
But when he took charge of the trials for bribery and corruption, and having written laws according to which the trials were conducted, he in other respects presided with dignity and integrity, providing security and order and quiet by sitting personally at the courts with armed men — yet when Scipio his father-in-law was on trial, he sent home and solicited help from the three hundred and sixty jurors, and the prosecutor gave up the case on seeing Scipio being escorted from the forum by the jurors themselves; so he was again spoken ill of,
and still more because, having by law abolished the practice of testimonials of praise being given for men on trial, he himself came in to praise Plancus. And Cato — for he happened to be sitting as a juror — covering his ears with his hands, said that it was unlawful for him to hear praises spoken in violation of the statute.
For this reason Cato was rejected before the vote was taken, but Plancus was convicted by the other jurors, to Pompey's shame. And indeed a few days later Hypsaeus, a man of consular rank, being a defendant in a suit, watched for Pompey as he was returning from the bath to dinner, and, seizing his knees, begged him as a suppliant. But Pompey passed by scornfully, saying that he was spoiling his dinner and accomplishing nothing else. So, seeming thus to be unequal in his dealings, he incurred blame.
In all other respects he set everything in good order, and he chose his father-in-law as colleague for the remaining five months. It was voted that his provincial commands be extended four more years, and that he draw a thousand talents annually, from which he would feed and administer the army.
Caesar's friends, taking this as a starting point, thought some consideration ought to be given to Caesar as well, since he was contending in so many struggles on behalf of the empire: either he ought to obtain another consulship, or an extension of time added to his command, in which no one else, coming upon what he had labored for, would take away his glory, but he himself who had accomplished it would hold office and be honored in quiet.
There being a contest over these matters, Pompey, as though pleading on Caesar's behalf out of goodwill toward turning aside envy, said he had letters from Caesar wishing to receive a successor and to be released from his command; yet he said it would be well for him to be granted the right to seek the consulship even in his absence.
Since Cato and his followers objected to this and urged that Pompey, becoming a private citizen and laying down his arms, should seek some good from his fellow citizens, Pompey did not dispute the point, but as though bested, he became more suspicious than ever of his real feelings toward Caesar, and he sent word demanding the return of the troops he had loaned him, using the war against the Parthians as his stated reason. Caesar, though he knew for what purpose his soldiers were being demanded back, sent them off handsomely rewarded.
After this, Pompey, having fallen dangerously ill at Naples, recovered, and when Praxagoras persuaded the Neapolitans to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving on his behalf, the neighboring peoples imitated them, and in this fashion the custom spread across all of Italy, with cities both large and small keeping festival over many days.
No place could hold those who came from every side to meet him, but roads and villages and harbors were filled with people feasting and sacrificing. Many, wearing garlands and carrying torches, received him and escorted him on his way pelted with flowers, so that the progress and journey of his return was a most beautiful and splendid spectacle.
Yet it is said that this became no lesser cause of the war than any of those who actually brought it about. For a spirit of overreaching pride entered in along with the greatness of his joy, overturning his sober calculations about affairs; and abandoning the caution that had always kept his good fortunes and his actions secure, he fell into unmixed rashness and contempt for Caesar's power, thinking he would need neither arms nor any laborious effort against him, but would bring him down far more easily than he had built him up before.
Besides this, Appius arrived bringing back from Gaul the army that Pompey had lent to Caesar; and he disparaged much of what had been accomplished there and spread slanderous talk about Caesar, and said that Pompey himself was unaware of his own power and reputation, since he was arming himself against Caesar with other men's soldiers, when he could crush Caesar with Caesar's own troops the moment he appeared before them: so much hatred toward Caesar and longing for Pompey existed in them.
So Pompey was puffed up in this way, and became so full of such great contempt through his confidence that he laughed even at those who feared the war, and to those who said that if Caesar marched on the city, they could see no forces with which to defend against him, he told them, smiling and relaxed, to have no worries: "for wherever in Italy," he said, "I stamp my foot on the ground, there will spring up forces both of infantry and of cavalry."
By now Caesar too was pressing his affairs more vigorously, himself no longer withdrawing far from Italy, but constantly sending soldiers into the city to stand for office, and secretly undermining and corrupting many magistrates with money: among them the consul Paulus, whose support was bought for fifteen hundred talents, and Curio the tribune, who was freed by him from an unmanageable multitude of debts, and Marcus Antonius, who shared in the benefits through his friendship with Curio.
It was said that one of the officers who had come from Caesar, standing near the senate-house, on learning that the senate would not grant Caesar an extension of his command, struck his sword with his hand and said, "But this will grant it." And indeed the things being done and prepared held to this same purpose.
Curio's demands and appeals on Caesar's behalf, however, appeared more in the people's interest. For he thought it right that one of two things be done: either Pompey too should be required to give up his forces, or Caesar should not be deprived of his soldiers either; for either, becoming private citizens on equal and just terms, they would keep quiet, or, remaining rivals with what they each already held, they would likewise keep still; but whoever weakens the one side he fears doubles the very power he fears.
In response to this, Marcellus the consul called Caesar a bandit and urged that a decree be passed declaring him a public enemy unless he laid down his arms; yet Curio, together with Antonius and Piso, prevailed to expose the senate's true mind, for he called for those who demanded that Caesar alone lay down his arms while Pompey retained command to move to one side: and the majority moved.
Again, when he asked those in favor of both parties disarming and neither man retaining command to step to one side, only twenty-two stood with Pompey, while all the rest went over to Curio. And Curio, as though he had won a victory, leapt out to the people in a blaze of joy, welcomed with applause and showers of garlands and flowers, while Pompey was not present in the senate; for commanders of armies do not enter the city.
But Marcellus rose and declared that he had no patience left for debate; since he could already see ten legions crossing the Alps on the march, he himself would dispatch the man to stand against them for the sake of the fatherland.
After this they changed their clothing as though for mourning. Marcellus went through the forum to Pompey with the senate following him, and standing before him said, "I bid you, Pompey, to help the fatherland, and to use the forces already prepared, and to levy others." Lentulus, one of the consuls designate for the coming year, said the same things.
When Pompey began to levy troops, some would not obey, a few gathered reluctantly and grudgingly, but the majority cried out for reconciliation. For indeed Antonius, having overpowered the senate, read out in the assembly a certain letter of Caesar's containing proposals attractive to the crowd; for he demanded that both men leave their provinces and dismiss their military forces and place themselves at the people's disposal and submit an accounting of their acts.
Lentulus and his fellow consuls now would not convene the senate; but Cicero, just arrived from Cilicia, was working for a reconciliation, so that Caesar, giving up Gaul and dismissing all his other forces, might await his second consulship with only two legions and Illyricum.
Pompey being displeased, Caesar's friends were persuaded to give up one of the two; but when Lentulus opposed it and Cato again cried out that Pompey was making a mistake by being deceived, the negotiations for reconciliation came to no conclusion.
Meanwhile it was reported that Caesar had seized Ariminum, a great city of Italy, and was marching straight upon Rome with his whole force; but the report was untrue, since his column numbered only three hundred cavalry and five thousand infantry, and he had not waited for the remainder of his troops, which was still beyond the Alps, wishing to fall suddenly upon men who were confused and unprepared rather than give them time to fight after full preparation.
For indeed, upon reaching the Rubicon, the river that formed the border of the province assigned to him, he stood in silence and hesitated, reckoning within himself the magnitude of the daring deed; then, like those who fling themselves down from some cliff into a vast depth, closing his reasoning's eyes and veiling himself against the terror, and crying out only these words in Greek to those present, "Let the die be cast," he led the army across.
As soon as the report reached and seized hold of Rome, there came confusion and fear with amazement such as had never been before; the senate at once rushed together, hurrying toward Pompey, and the magistrates were present; when Tullus asked about the army and its strength, and Pompey, with some hesitation, said timidly that he had ready those who had come from Caesar,
and that he thought he could soon also gather together those previously enrolled, thirty thousand in number, Tullus exclaimed, "Pompey, you have misled us," and urged that envoys be sent to Caesar. And one Favonius, otherwise not a bad man, though often through arrogance and insolence thought he was imitating Cato's frankness, told Pompey to stamp the ground with his foot and call up the forces he had promised.
Pompey bore this ill-timed jest with mildness; but when Cato recalled the warning he had once given him about Caesar, back at the very beginning, Pompey replied that Cato's words had proved the truer prediction, while his own conduct had shown the greater loyalty.
Cato advised that Pompey be chosen commander with full powers, adding that it belongs to the same men both to create great evils and to end them. Cato himself then at once set out for Sicily, for that province had fallen to him by lot, as each of the others had been allotted his own. But since almost the whole of Italy was rising up, what was happening was a source of confusion.
For those coming from outside were carried by flight from every direction into Rome, while those who dwelt in Rome themselves were fleeing out and abandoning the city, which, in so great a storm and confusion, had what was useful in it weak, and what was disobedient strong and hard for its leaders to manage. For no one could put a stop to the fear, nor did anyone allow Pompey to make use of his own judgment, but whatever emotion each man he met with felt—fear, or grief, or perplexity—he would come bearing it and fill Pompey up with it in turn:
and opposite decisions won out within a single day, and he found it impossible to discover anything accurate about the enemy, because many reported whatever they happened to hear, and then grew angry with him if he disbelieved them. So then, having decided that he saw only confusion, and having ordered all the men of senatorial rank to follow him, and having declared beforehand that he would regard as belonging to Caesar's side whoever was left behind, toward late evening he abandoned the city.
The consuls fled without even performing the sacrifices customary before wars. Yet even in the midst of these terrors he was a man envied for the goodwill men bore him, because, although many criticized how he conducted the campaign, not a single person felt hatred toward the commander himself; rather, one could find more of those who, though fleeing for the sake of their freedom, were unable to abandon Pompey.
A few days later Caesar rode in and took possession of Rome, and dealt gently and calmly with everyone else, but when the tribune Metellus attempted to stop him from removing funds from the public treasury, he threatened him with death, and added to the threat a harsher remark still, saying that it was harder for him to say this than to do it.
Having thus turned Metellus aside, and having taken what he needed, he pursued Pompey, eager to drive him out of Italy before the force from Spain could reach him. Pompey, having seized Brundisium and having an ample supply of ships, at once put the consuls aboard and sent them ahead with thirty cohorts to Dyrrachium, and sent Scipio his father-in-law and Gnaeus his son to Syria to prepare a fleet.
He himself, having barricaded the gates and stationed his lightest-armed soldiers on the walls, and having ordered the people of Brundisium to stay quietly in their houses, dug up and trenched the whole city within, and filled the narrow streets with stakes except for two, through which he himself went down to the sea.
On the third day, having already quietly embarked the rest of the crowd on the ships, he suddenly raised a signal to those guarding the walls, and taking them up as they ran down swiftly, he crossed over the sea. Caesar, when he saw the walls abandoned, perceiving the flight, in pursuing them very nearly ran into the stakes and the trenches, but when the people of Brundisium told him of them, he avoided the danger, and going around the city in a circle found that all had put out to sea except two ships, which had only a few soldiers aboard.
Now others reckon Pompey's departure by sea among his best strategic feats, but Caesar himself marveled that, though holding a strong city and expecting the forces from Spain and master of the sea, he abandoned and gave up Italy. Cicero too finds fault, saying that he had followed the strategic model of Themistocles instead of that of Pericles, even though his situation matched Pericles's case rather than the other man's.
Caesar showed by his deed that he greatly feared the passage of time: for having Numerius, a friend of Pompey's, he sent him to Brundisium asking for reconciliation on equal terms; but Numerius sailed off together with Pompey. From this point Caesar, having in sixty days become master of the whole of Italy without bloodshed, wished at once to pursue Pompey, but since no ships were at hand, he turned aside and marched into Spain, wishing to bring over the forces there.
In this time a great force gathered around Pompey — his naval strength was entirely unmatched (for he had five hundred warships, and a surpassing number of light Liburnian craft and scouting vessels), and his cavalry, the flower of the Romans and Italians, numbered seven thousand, outstanding in birth, wealth, and spirit. His infantry, however, being a mixed force in need of drilling, he trained while encamped at Beroea, not idle but treating himself as though still in his prime for the exercises.
For it was a great inducement to confidence in those who watched, to see Pompey the Great, now fifty-eight years old, competing on foot among the men-at-arms, then again on horseback drawing his sword easily while his horse ran at full speed, and sheathing it again with ease, and in javelin-throwing displaying not only accuracy but strength of range that many of the younger men did not surpass.
Kings and rulers of nations came flocking to him too, and around him was a number of Roman commanders equal to a full senate. Labienus also came, deserting Caesar despite their long friendship and shared campaigns together in Gaul; and Brutus came, son of the Brutus who had been slaughtered in Gaul—a proud-spirited man who up to now had never once spoken to or greeted Pompey, holding him responsible for his father's death, but who now gave himself over to Pompey as Rome's liberator.
Cicero too, although he had written and resolved otherwise, was nonetheless ashamed not to be counted among those risking themselves first for their country. And Tidius Sextius came as well, an extremely old man, crippled in one leg, arriving in Macedonia; and while the others laughed and mocked him, Pompey, seeing him, rose up and ran to meet him, considering it a great proof when men beyond their years and beyond their strength chose to share the danger with him rather than safety.
When the senate had convened and, on Cato's motion, voted that no Roman should be killed except in battle nor any city subject to Rome be plundered, Pompey's party was loved all the more; for even those who had no stake in the war, living far off or neglected through weakness, sided with it in wish and fought for it in word on behalf of justice, holding that whoever did not delight in Pompey's victory was an enemy to gods and men alike.
Nevertheless Caesar too showed himself gracious in his successes: having captured and defeated Pompey's forces in Iberia, he released the generals and made use of the soldiers. And crossing the Alps again and hastening through Italy, he arrived at Brundisium when winter was already turning.
Crossing the sea, he himself put in at Oricum, and sending back Vibullius, Pompey's friend whom he held captive, to Pompey, he proposed that the two of them meet together and, within three days, disband all their armies, become friends, and return to Italy after taking oaths.
Pompey again took this for a trap, and hurrying swiftly down to the sea, seized positions and places that gave his infantry camps commanding ground, and harbors and landing-places favorable to those coming by sea, so that whichever way the wind blew, it carried grain, troops, or money to Pompey, whereas Caesar, hemmed in by difficulties on both land and sea, was forced by necessity to seek battle,
and in attacking the fortifications and challenging repeatedly, for the most part he won and prevailed in the skirmishes, but once he came close to being crushed and losing his army, when Pompey fought brilliantly until he had routed the whole force and killed two thousand men, but was unable — or afraid — to press the attack and burst in with them, so that Caesar said to his friends: "Today the victory would have belonged to the enemy, if they had had a commander who knew how to win."
Emboldened by this, Pompey's men were eager to have the matter decided by battle. Pompey himself wrote to the kings, generals, and cities abroad as though he had already won, but he dreaded the risk of battle, thinking that time and shortage of supplies would defeat men who were unbeatable under arms and long accustomed to winning together,
but who, worn down by age, gave out at the rest of a campaign's demands — marches and shifts of position, the digging of trenches, the building of walls — and who therefore were eager to come to grips and grapple hand to hand as quickly as possible. Still, Pompey managed for a while, somehow, to persuade those around him to remain calm; but when, after the battle, Caesar rose up because of his shortages and marched through Athamania into Thessaly, the spirit of his men could no longer be restrained,
but shouting that Caesar was fleeing, some urged that he be followed and pursued, others that they cross into Italy, and others sent servants and friends ahead to Rome to seize houses near the forum, as though they would immediately be standing for office; and many, of their own will, sailed to Cornelia at Lesbos bringing the good news that the war was over — for there Pompey had sent her away for safety.
When the senate had gathered, Afranius declared his opinion that they should hold to Italy, since this represented the war's greatest prize, and that Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Iberia, and all Gaul would at once fall to the victors; and that of these, the country for which Pompey had the greatest concern, stretching out her hands nearby, it was not right to overlook while she was insulted and enslaved to the servants and flatterers of tyrants,
but Pompey himself thought it neither honorable for his reputation to flee from Caesar a second time and be pursued, when fortune offered him the chance to be the pursuer, nor was it pious to abandon Scipio and the consular men in Greece and Thessaly, who would immediately fall under Caesar along with great money and forces; and that Rome was best served by the man who fought for her as far away as possible, so that she might remain untouched by evils and unhearing, awaiting whoever should prevail.
Having voted these measures, he pursued Caesar, resolved to avoid battle but to besiege and wear him down by want, following close behind — for he thought this course was advantageous in itself, and also a rumor had reached him, current among the cavalry, that as soon as Caesar was routed they ought at once to be rid of Pompey himself too,
and some say that this was the reason Pompey gave no serious task to Cato, but even as he marched against Caesar left him by the sea with the baggage train, fearing that if Caesar were destroyed, he might force him too to lay down his command at once. Because he thus followed the enemy quietly, he came under blame and outcry, as though he were maneuvering not against Caesar but against his own country and the senate, so that he might rule forever and never cease making use as servants and bodyguards of men who deserved to rule the world themselves.
Domitius Ahenobarbus made him an object of envy by dubbing him Agamemnon, king of kings. And Favonius was no less unpleasant than the outspoken ones — shouting out of season in his mockery, "Men, will we not even this year get to taste the figs of Tusculum?" And Lucius Afranius, who had lost his forces in Iberia and was under suspicion of treachery, seeing Pompey now avoiding battle, said he wondered at his accusers, why they did not go out and fight against the merchant of the provinces.
Saying these things and many like them, they forced Pompey — a man too weak against reputation and too respectful of his friends — and dragged him along to follow their own hopes and impulses, abandoning the best of his calculations, a thing that would not have been fitting even for the helmsman of a ship, let alone for the supreme commander of so many nations and forces.
He, who had praised those physicians who never yield to their patients' cravings, himself gave way to the sickness of his army, fearing to become burdensome for the sake of their safety. For how could one say those men were sound of mind, when some of them, wandering about the camp, were already canvassing for consulships and praetorships, while Spinther and Domitius and Scipio quarreled and vied and paid court to one another over Caesar's office of high priest?
As if Tigranes the Armenian were encamped opposite them, or the Nabataean king—rather than Caesar himself and his forces, by which he had taken a thousand cities by storm, subdued more than three hundred nations, fought the Germans and the Gauls unbeaten in battles too many to count, taken a million prisoners, and killed a hundred thousand routed in pitched battle.
But still, pressing him and clamoring, when they came down onto the plain of Pharsalus, they forced Pompey to put the matter before a council, in which Labienus, who commanded the cavalry, was the first to rise and swear he would not withdraw from the fight until he had routed the enemy; and all the rest swore the same oath.
That night Pompey dreamed he was entering the theater and the people applauded him, while he himself was adorning a shrine of Venus Victrix with abundant spoils. Part of the dream gave him confidence, but part troubled him, for he feared that glory and splendor might come from himself to Caesar's family, which traced its descent to Venus; and certain panicked disturbances rushing through the camp startled him awake.
During the morning watch, while Caesar's camp lay in deep quiet, a great light blazed out, and from it a flame-shaped torch rose up and shot down upon Pompey's camp; and Caesar himself says he saw this while going about the watches. At daybreak, as he was about to move his camp toward Scotussa, and the soldiers were striking their tents and sending ahead the pack animals and servants, the scouts came reporting that they saw many weapons moving about in the enemy's camp, and that there was motion and the noise of men going out to battle.
After these, others arrived saying the enemy's front ranks were already forming into battle order. So Caesar, saying that the long-awaited day had arrived when they would do battle against men, not against hunger or poverty, ordered the scarlet tunic to be set out at once before his tent — for this is the Romans' signal for battle.
The soldiers, seeing it, abandoned their tents with shouting and joy and rushed to their weapons. And as the officers led them each to his assigned position, every man, like a member of a chorus, took his place in order without confusion, calmly and as though well rehearsed.
Pompey, holding the right wing himself, intended to face Antony; at the center he placed Scipio, his father-in-law, opposite Lucius Calvinus; the left wing was held by Lucius Domitius, and was strengthened by the great number of cavalry,
for there nearly all of them had streamed together, intending to overpower Caesar and cut through the tenth legion, which had the greatest reputation for being the most warlike, and in whose ranks Caesar himself was accustomed to be stationed when he fought. Seeing the enemy's left wing so fenced about with cavalry, and fearing the brilliance of their armor, Caesar sent for six cohorts from the reserve units and stationed them behind the tenth legion,
ordering them to keep quiet, unseen by the enemy; and when the cavalry rode up, to dash forward past the front lines rather than hurl their javelins, as the bravest men are accustomed to do when they hasten to draw swords, but to strike upward, wounding the eyes and faces of the enemy — for these fine, blossoming young dancers would flee rather than risk their beauty, nor would they look steadily at iron coming toward their eyes. In such matters Caesar occupied himself.
Pompey, surveying the battle line from horseback, when he saw that the enemy waited quietly and in order for the moment, whereas most of his own troops were far from steady, surging about in inexperience and confusion, feared that it would be utterly torn apart at the very start of the battle, and gave orders to those in the front ranks to stand fast with lowered spears and firmly hold their ground, receiving the enemy's charge,
a maneuver which Caesar faults: for it dulled the force of blows delivered at a run, and it also removed the counter-charging momentum that, above all, fills most men with enthusiasm and drive when they close with the enemy, a momentum that shouting and running together increase — taking this away, he says, it froze and chilled the men. Caesar's forces numbered twenty-two thousand, while Pompey's were somewhat more than double that number.
Now when the signal was given by both sides and the trumpet began to sound the call to engagement, most of the common soldiers each attended to his own affairs, but a few of the best Romans, and some Greeks present outside the fighting, as the terrible moment drew near, reflected on the greed and rivalry for power, and to what end it had brought supreme command.
For it was kindred arms and brother formations and common standards and the manpower of a single city, so great, and its own strength colliding with itself, that displayed how blind and maddened human nature becomes when it falls into passion. For it was possible for men who now wished to rule in quiet and enjoy the greatest and best part of what they had already won, land and sea obedient to their valor; and it was still possible, if they wished to gratify a love of trophies and triumphs and to slake a thirst for more, to glut themselves with Parthian or Germanic wars.
Much work was still left undone in Scythia and among the Indians, and there was a pretext not without honor for taming the barbarian world through this same greed for gain: no horsemen of Scythia, no bowmen of Parthia, no riches of India could have stood firm against seventy myriads of Romans advancing under arms, led by Pompey and Caesar, whose names those peoples had heard long before the name of Rome? So intermixed, so varied, so bestial were the nations they overcame as they advanced.
But now they came together to fight one another, without pitying even their own glory, for whose sake they had spared not their fatherland, though up to that very day they were called unconquered. For the kinship that had come about, and the charms of Julia, and that marriage, were straightway deceptive and suspect pledges of a partnership formed for expediency's sake, and had no share in true friendship.
So then, once the plain of Pharsalus lay crowded with soldiers, horses, and weapons, and both armies had raised their signals for the onset, the first to dash out from Caesar's line was Gaius Crassinius, leading a hundred and twenty men, thereby fulfilling a bold pledge he had made to Caesar.
For Caesar, going out first from the camp, had seen him, and greeting him had asked how he felt about the coming battle; and he, stretching out his right hand, cried aloud: "You will win gloriously, Caesar; and you will praise me today, whether I am alive or dead." Remembering these words, he rushed forward and drew many with him, and charged into the middle of the enemy,
and when the struggle at once came to swords and many were being slain, as he pressed forward and cut through the foremost ranks, someone standing his ground drove a sword through his mouth, so that the blade came clean through and emerged behind his neck. When Crassinius fell, the battle at that point was evenly balanced, but Pompey did not quickly bring up his right wing, but kept glancing at the other side and lingered, waiting for the work of his cavalry.
By now those horsemen were leading their squadrons up as if to encircle Caesar, and to throw the small body of cavalry posted in front of his line back upon his infantry. But when Caesar gave the signal, his horsemen withdrew, and the cohorts that had been posted for this very purpose against the encircling movement, three thousand men, ran out to meet the enemy, and standing close beside the horses, as they had been taught, used their javelins held high, aiming at the faces; and those men,
utterly inexperienced in any kind of fighting, and expecting nothing of this sort nor having learned of it beforehand, could not endure or bear the blows falling upon their eyes and mouths, but turned away, shielding their faces with their hands, and fled in disgraceful rout. Caesar's men, paying no attention to these fleeing horsemen, advanced against the infantry at the point where the cavalry wing, now stripped bare, gave them a chance to run round and encircle it.
And at the same moment that these troops fell upon the flank, and the tenth legion engaged them frontally, they could not stand their ground nor hold together, seeing themselves suffering the very thing which they had hoped to inflict on the enemy by encirclement.
When these had been routed, Pompey, seeing the dust cloud, and guessing the fate that had befallen his cavalry, it is hard to say what reasoning he used; but he seemed most like a man out of his mind and deranged in judgment, and, without even remembering that he was Pompey the Great, without a word to anyone, went off on foot at a walk to his camp, altogether fitting those verses:
"But father Zeus, throned on high, cast fear into Ajax: he stood dazed, flung down behind him the shield made of seven hides of ox, and shook with fear as he looked back upon the crowd." In just such a state he entered his tent and sat speechless, until many pursuers came rushing in together with the fleeing men. Then he uttered this one cry alone: "What, even to the camp?" And saying nothing else, he rose, and taking clothing fitting to his present fortune, slipped away.
The remainder of his legions likewise took flight, and a heavy massacre occurred among the servants and guards left behind at the tents; yet Asinius Pollio, who had taken part in that engagement on Caesar's side, reports that no more than six thousand soldiers were killed.
As Caesar's men took the camp they beheld the folly and frivolity of their enemies: for every tent was crowned with myrtle and decked with flowered couches, and tables laden with drinking cups, and mixing-bowls of wine stood set out; the arrangements and finery resembled men who had made sacrifice and were celebrating a feast, not soldiers girding themselves for combat. So corrupted were they by their hopes, and so full of senseless boldness, that they had gone forth to war.
Pompey, having gone a little way outside his camp, let his horse go, and with very few men about him, since no one pursued, went off quietly, wrapped in the kind of reflections likely to occupy a man who for thirty-four years had been accustomed to conquer and master everything, now for the first time in old age tasting defeat and flight, and considering from how many contests and wars he had built up a glory and power now cast away in a single hour,
he who but a little before had been escorted by so many arms and horses and fleets, went away now so diminished and shrunk that he escaped the notice of enemies searching for him; and passing by Larissa, when he came to Tempe, he threw himself down on his face, parched with thirst, and drank from the river, and rising again went on through Tempe, until he came down to the sea.
There he rested the remainder of the night in a fisherman's hut, and about dawn boarded a river boat, and taking with him those of his followers who were free men, and bidding his slaves go off to Caesar and have no fear, as he was carried along the coast he saw a large merchant ship about to put to sea, whose master was a Roman, not very familiar with Pompey, but who recognized his face; his name was Peticius.
It had happened that this man, in his sleep the previous night, had seen Pompey appear to him in a dream — unlike the Pompey he had often pictured before, but instead humbled and downcast — and speaking to him. And he happened to be telling this to his fellow sailors, as men at leisure are wont to talk about such great matters.
Suddenly one of the sailors, catching sight of it, reported that a river boat was being rowed out from the shore and that some men in it were waving their cloaks and stretching out their hands toward them. Peticius then halted and immediately recognized Pompey, exactly as he had appeared in his dream; and striking his own head, he commanded the crew to draw the boat up alongside, and he stretched out his right hand and called to Pompey, already understanding from the man's appearance his fortune and change of state.
Wherefore, waiting for neither invitation nor further words, but taking with him as many as he ordered — both were Lentuli, and Favonius — he was brought aboard; and a little later, seeing King Deiotarus hastening along from the shore, they took him up as well. And when supper time arrived, and the ship's master had made ready what provisions were on hand, Favonius noticed Pompey, lacking any attendant, starting to remove his own footwear; he hurried over, untied the sandals himself, and anointed him.
And from then on he continued attending and serving him in everything, just as slaves attend their masters, right down to washing his feet and getting his meal ready, so that anyone beholding the freedom and generosity of that service might have said, in its simplicity and unaffected sincerity: "Ah, how fair is everything the noble do!"
Sailing on in this manner past Amphipolis, he crossed over from there to Mytilene, intending to bring away Cornelia and his son. Having put in along the island's shore, he dispatched a messenger into the city — one who carried none of the welcome news Cornelia had been anticipating, given the cheerful reports and letters sent to her, for she believed that, with the war already settled at Dyrrhachium, all that remained for Pompey was chasing down Caesar.
The messenger, finding her still in this frame of mind, could not bring himself to greet her, but declared the greatest and worst of the misfortunes more by his tears than by his voice, and bade her hasten, if she wished somehow to see Pompey, aboard a single ship, and that not even his own. She, on hearing this, threw herself down to the ground and for a long time lay senseless and speechless; but at last, coming somewhat to herself and realizing that this was no time for lamenting and weeping, she ran through the city to the sea.
And when Pompey met her and received her into his arms as she stumbled and fell about him, she said, "I see you, husband, brought to this — not the work of your fortune, but of mine — reduced to a single small boat, you who before your marriage to Cornelia sailed round this very sea with five hundred ships. Why have you come to see me, and did not leave me, whom an evil deity has already filled with so great misfortune, to that same fate? How fortunate a woman I should have been had I died before hearing that Publius lay dead among the Parthians, my first young husband; and how prudent had I, after his death, as I once resolved, given up my own life; but instead I was preserved, it seems, to become a calamity to Pompey the Great as well."
They say that Cornelia spoke these words, and that Pompey answered, "You knew, then, Cornelia, only one fortune, the better one, which perhaps deceived you too, because it remained with me longer than is usual. But we, being born men, must bear even this, and must still make trial of fortune. For it is not beyond hope that a man who from such heights has fallen to this can rise again from this state to those former heights."
So then his wife sent for money and servants from the city; and when the Mytilenaeans greeted Pompey and urged him to enter their city, he was unwilling, but bade them too obey the conqueror and take courage, for Caesar was reasonable and kind.
He himself turned to the philosopher Cratippus — who had made the trip down from the city to visit him — and found fault with him, and joined briefly in questioning Providence, while Cratippus yielded ground and led him on toward better hopes, so as not to be distressing or ill-timed in arguing against him.
Yet it was Pompey who was asking about Providence, while Cratippus could have shown that affairs already required monarchy because of the bad state of public life, and could have asked in turn: "How, Pompey, and on what evidence should we believe that, had victory gone to you, you would have made better use of your success than did Caesar?" But these matters must be left as they stand — the affairs of the gods.
Taking up his wife and friends, he sailed on, putting in at such anchorages as he needed for water or provisions. The first city where he landed was Attaleia in Pamphylia; there several triremes out of Cilicia joined him, and soldiers began to assemble, and again some sixty senators were about him.
Hearing also that his navy remained intact, and that Cato had gathered up a large body of soldiers and was crossing to Libya, he complained to his friends and blamed himself for letting his infantry be drawn into battle, while never making use at all of his superior and unquestioned strength at sea, nor stationing his fleet nearby, so that if he had been defeated on land he would at once have had at hand a match for it — a force and strength so great from the sea.
For no error of Pompey's was greater, nor any stratagem of Caesar's more clever, than this drawing off of the battle so far from naval support. Yet still, being forced by circumstances to judge and act on what he had, he sent around to the cities, and himself sailing about asked for money and manned ships. But fearing the enemy's swiftness and speed, lest he come upon him and snatch away his preparations before they were complete, he considered for the present a refuge and a retreat.
No province, then, appeared to them, upon deliberation, a safe place of refuge; and of the kingdoms, he himself declared that of the Parthians most capable, both of receiving and protecting them for the present, weak as they were, and afterward of strengthening them and sending them forth again with the greatest
of the forces; of the rest, some turned their thoughts toward Libya and Juba, but to Theophanes of Lesbos it seemed madness that a man should abandon Egypt, only three days' sail away, and Ptolemy — who was little more than a boy in age but bound by the friendship and favor shown his father — and instead put himself into the hands of the Parthians, the most faithless of all peoples, and be unwilling even to try the moderation of that man — a Roman, and one who had become his kinsman by marriage — content to hold second place though he might be first of all the rest,
and make Arsaces his master — a man whom not even Crassus, while he lived, had been able to bring under his power — and carry among barbarians who gauge their own greatness through arrogance and unchecked license, a young woman of Scipio's household, for whom, even if she suffers no harm, it is a terrible thing merely to be thought to have suffered harm at the hands of men able to do it. This alone, they say, turned Pompey aside from the road to the Euphrates — if indeed it was still Pompey's own reasoning, and not some divine power, that was guiding him along that road.
So then, since the plan to flee to Egypt prevailed, he set sail from Cyprus on a Seleucid trireme, his wife beside him; as for the others, some accompanied him aboard warships, while still others traveled in merchant vessels. He crossed the open sea safely, but learning that Ptolemy was encamped at Pelusium with an army, at war with his sister, he put in there, sending ahead a man to announce himself to the king and to make his request.
Now Ptolemy himself was quite young; but Pothinus, who managed all affairs, gathered a council of the most powerful men — and those were most powerful whom he himself wished to be so — and bade each speak the opinion he held. It was a terrible thing, then, that Pothinus the eunuch and Theodotus of Chios, brought in as a paid rhetoric instructor, together with Achillas of Egypt, were the ones deciding Pompey the Great's fate — for these were the foremost counselors among the rest, who were mere bed-chamberlains and nursery attendants.
And it was for the verdict of such a court that Pompey waited, riding at anchor off the coast at some distance from the land — a verdict which it was not fitting he should owe his safety to, when he might have owed it to Caesar. Now the opinions of the rest were divided only so far as this: some urged that he be driven off, others that he be summoned and received.
But Theodotus, displaying his cleverness of speech and rhetorical skill, declared that neither course was safe: if they received him, they would have Caesar as an enemy and Pompey as a master; if they drove him away, they would be blamed by Pompey for the rejection and by Caesar for the pursuit. The best course, then, was to send for him and kill him; for in this way they would gratify the one and have nothing to fear from the other. And he added, smiling, so they say, that a dead man does not bite.
Having ratified this, they entrusted the deed to Achillas. Bringing along one Septimius, formerly an officer serving under Pompey, plus Salvius, a centurion, and three or four attendants, he set out toward the vessel where Pompey waited. It happened that all the most distinguished of those sailing with Pompey had gone aboard it, so that they might see what was being done.
When, then, they saw a reception that was neither royal nor splendid nor anything like what Theophanes had hoped for, but only a few men putting out toward them in a single fishing boat, they suspected the slight, and urged Pompey to have the ship pull back out to sea, so long as they were still out of range. But meanwhile, as the boat drew near, Septimius rose first and, in Latin, addressed Pompey as Imperator.
And Achillas, greeting him in Greek, invited him to come across into the fishing boat, saying that there was a great shoal there, and that the sea, being full of sand, was not deep enough for a trireme to sail through. Meanwhile several of the king's vessels could be seen taking on crews, and troops occupied the coastline, so that flight would have looked impossible even had they reconsidered; and moreover, their very distrust would give the murderers an excuse for the wrong they were about to do.
So then, having embraced Cornelia, who was already mourning his death before it came, and having ordered two centurions to go in first, along with one of his freedmen, Philip, and a servant named Scythes, and as the men around Achillas were already, from the fishing boat, holding out their hands to him in welcome, he turned to his wife and son and spoke the iambic lines of Sophocles: whoever goes to a tyrant becomes his slave, even though he comes a free man.
Having spoken these last words to his own people, he stepped aboard; and since there was a considerable distance to the shore from the trireme, and no kindly word came from any of those sailing with him, he looked toward Septimius and said, "Surely I do not mistake you — were you not once my fellow soldier?"
And the other only nodded his head, saying nothing and showing no friendliness. Since deep silence fell again, Pompey, holding a small book in which he had written out a speech in Greek, which he had prepared to use before Ptolemy, began to read it.
As they drew near the land, Cornelia, together with his friends, watched from the trireme in great anguish over what was to come, and began to take courage on seeing many of the king's men coming down to the landing as if to meet him with honor and welcome. But right then, just as Pompey gripped Philip's hand to help himself stand, Septimius came up behind and was the first to drive his blade through him; then Salvius after him; then Achillas drew their blades.
He, drawing his toga over his face with both hands, said nothing unworthy of himself and did nothing unworthy, but only groaned, and bore the blows steadfastly, having lived fifty-nine years, and dying one day after his birthday.
Those still aboard the ships, witnessing the murder, sent up a cry loud enough to reach the shore itself, then fled, weighing anchor in a rush; a favorable breeze carried them swiftly out onto open water, and so the Egyptians, despite wanting to give chase, were forced to give up. As for Pompey, they cut off his head, and the rest of his body, naked, they threw out from the fishing boat and left for those who desired such a sight.
Philip remained beside it until they had had their fill of the sight; then, washing the body in the sea and wrapping it in one of his own tunics, since he had nothing else, and looking about the shore, he found the remains of a small fishing boat, old, but enough to provide a naked and not even whole corpse with a necessary funeral pyre.
While he was gathering and putting these together, a Roman, already an old man, who as a young man had served in Pompey's first campaigns, came up and said, "Who are you, friend, who intend to bury Pompey the Great?" And when Philip said he was a freedman of his, "But this honor," he said, "shall not be yours alone: let me too be received as a partner in this pious find, so that I may not entirely resent my exile, having gained this at least in place of many griefs — to touch and to wrap with my own hands the greatest commander of the Romans."
So Pompey was given his funeral rites. The following day, Lucius Lentulus, unaware of these events, was sailing over from Cyprus and hugging the coastline, when he saw a pyre for a dead man and Philip standing beside it, and, not yet himself observed, said, "Who, I wonder, has finished his fate here and found his rest?" And after a short pause, sighing, he said, "Perhaps it is you, Pompey the Great." And a little later, having gone ashore, he was seized and put to death.
That was how Pompey's life came to a close. Before much time passed, Caesar, coming to Egypt, so polluted by so great a crime, turned away from the man who brought him the head, as from a murderer; but on receiving Pompey's signet ring, he wept — the engraving on it was a lion holding a sword. Achillas and Pothinus he had put to death; and the king himself, defeated in battle, disappeared near the river.
As for Theodotus the sophist, justice from Caesar's hand passed him by: for he fled Egypt and wandered about, living in low circumstances and hated by all. But Marcus Brutus, when, after killing Caesar, he came to power, discovered him in Asia and, after inflicting every kind of torture upon him, put him to death. As for Pompey's remains, Cornelia received them when they were brought to her, and laid them to rest near Alba.

======== Comparison Of Pompey And Agesilaus ========

Now that the Lives have been set out, let us run quickly over their points of difference, bringing them together side by side. They are these: first, that Pompey advanced to power and reputation by the most just of means, setting out under his own impulse and joining Sulla in many great labors as he freed Italy from her tyrants,
whereas Agesilaus was thought to have obtained his kingship neither blamelessly toward the gods nor toward men, having judged Leotychidas — whom his own brother had declared to be his legitimate son — to be a bastard, and having mocked and evaded the oracle concerning the lameness. Second, that Pompey continued honoring Sulla both while he lived and, when he died, buried him by force against Lepidus, and joined his own daughter in marriage to Sulla's son Faustus; whereas Agesilaus cast out and insulted Lysander on a trivial pretext,
and yet Sulla obtained no less from Pompey than he had furnished him, while Lysander made Agesilaus both king of Sparta and general of Greece. Third, the transgressions of justice in political matters that befell Pompey arose out of family ties: for most of his wrongs he committed jointly with Caesar and Scipio, who were his kinsmen by marriage,
whereas Agesilaus, out of favor to the love of his son, snatched Sphodrias away from the death he owed for the wrongs he had done the Athenians, and in the case of Phoebidas, who had broken the treaty against the Thebans, he was plainly and eagerly helping him precisely because of that very wrongdoing. And in general, whatever harm Pompey was blamed for doing the Romans through deference or ignorance, that same sort of harm Agesilaus did the Lacedaemonians through anger and contentiousness, kindling the Boeotian war.
But if one must also assign some share of fortune to the failings of each of these men, Pompey's misfortune was unforeseen by the Romans, whereas Agesilaus did not allow the Lacedaemonians, though they heard of it and knew it beforehand, to guard against the lame kingship. For even if Leotychidas had been proven a thousand times over to be a foreigner and a bastard, the Eurypontids would not have lacked a legitimate and sound-footed man to furnish Sparta as king, had not Lysander, on Agesilaus' account, thrown a shadow over the oracle.
Yet as for the remedy Agesilaus brought to the difficulty concerning those who had fled in fear, after the disaster at Leuctra, when he ordered that the laws sleep for that one day — no other political device has ever equaled it, nor do we have anything of Pompey's like it; rather, the opposite: he did not think it necessary to abide even by the laws he himself had established, displaying to his friends how great his power was. Agesilaus, on the other hand, when brought to the necessity of dissolving the laws in order to save the citizens, discovered a way by which the laws would neither be harmed nor, in order not to harm them, be left undissolved.
I set down too as that inimitable deed of Agesilaus' political virtue, his leaving behind his exploits in Asia upon receiving the scytale — for it was not, as with Pompey, that he benefited the commonwealth by the means through which he made himself great; rather, looking to what his fatherland required, he let go of a power and glory as great as no one else, before or since, possessed except Alexander.
Turning now to another starting point, in generalships and in matters of war — in the number and greatness of the trophies and of the forces which Pompey brought to bear, and in the multitude of the pitched battles which he won — I doubt even Xenophon would set Agesilaus's victories beside them, though that writer, thanks to the man's other virtues, has been granted the special privilege of writing and saying whatever he wishes about him;
yet I think the man differs from the man also in his fairness toward enemies. For the one, wishing to enslave Thebes and to uproot Messene — the one a portion equal to his own fatherland, the other the mother-city of his race — came within a hair's breadth of losing Sparta itself, and did lose the hegemony; whereas the other even granted cities to pirates who changed sides, and made Tigranes, king of the Armenians, though he might have led him in triumph over himself, into an ally instead, saying that he valued a single day's freedom above an eternity.
If, however, first place for a leader's virtue is to be given to the greatest and most decisive actions and calculations concerning arms, the Laconian has by no small measure surpassed the Roman. For, in the first place, he neither abandoned his city nor left it when seventy thousand of the enemy's army invaded, though he had but few hoplites, and those already defeated at Leuctra; whereas Pompey,
when Caesar seized a single Italian town with only five thousand three hundred men, was driven out of Rome by fear — either yielding ignobly to so few, or falsely reckoning them to be more — and having gathered up his children and his wife, but leaving those of the other citizens bereft, fled, when he should instead have either won through by fighting on his homeland's behalf, or else come to terms with the side that was stronger; for he was, after all, a citizen and bound to Caesar by marriage:
yet now, to the man for whom it seemed a terrible thing to have his term of command extended and a consulship voted, to that same man he gave occasion, once he had taken the city, to say to Metellus that he considered him too, and all the rest as well, his prisoners.
Now, what is the chief work of a good general — when stronger, to force the enemy to fight; when weaker in strength, not to be forced — this Agesilaus always did, and thereby kept himself ever unconquered; but Caesar, where he was weaker than Pompey, escaped being harmed, while where he was stronger, he forced Pompey, once he had engaged him with his infantry, to be overthrown in respect of everything; and Caesar was at once master of money, of markets, and of the sea, all of which, had they belonged to Pompey's side, might have decided the matter without a battle,
and the defense offered for these things is itself the greatest accusation against so great a general. For it is likely and pardonable that a young commander, thrown into confusion by clamor and outcry charging him with softness and cowardice, should fall from the safest calculations; but Pompey the Great was another matter entirely — his camp was what the Romans styled their fatherland, his tent what they styled their senate, while they branded as rebels and traitors those very men holding office and command back in Rome — and he was known to answer to no one's command,
and who had campaigned as sole commander in all his campaigns most excellently — who could bear that he, to avoid being called an Agamemnon, was, for the sake of the jibes of Favonius and Domitius, driven, by the narrowest margin, to risk the danger concerning empire and freedom? He who, if he had looked only to the disgrace of the passing day, ought to have stood his ground and fought it out for Rome from the very beginning, rather than, having displayed that flight as a Themistoclean stratagem, later come to regard as shameful his own delay in Thessaly before the battle.
For surely it was not that the god had marked out that Pharsalian plain as a racecourse and theater for them to contend in for the empire, nor was he summoned by herald to come down and fight or else yield the crown to another; rather, many plains, countless cities, and boundless land, or opportunity by sea, were available to one who wished to imitate Fabius Maximus and Marius and Lucullus, and Agesilaus himself,
who endured no less an uproar in Sparta among those wishing to fight the Thebans for their territory, and bore in Egypt many slanders, accusations, and suspicions from the king, by bidding them keep quiet, and by making use of the best calculations as he wished,
not only saved the Egyptians against their will, and alone kept Sparta ever upright amid so great an earthquake of troubles, but also set up a trophy against the Thebans in their own city, having furnished the means of winning again from that point on by not perishing beforehand through being forced into battle. Whence Agesilaus was afterward praised by those very men who had been forced, once they were saved, whereas Pompey, having erred on account of others, had as his accusers the very men by whose persuasion he had erred.
And yet some claim Scipio, his own father-in-law, had tricked him: much of the money he was bringing from Asia, Scipio wanted to embezzle, so he hid it away and then pushed for battle on the pretext that no money remained — yet even granting that this was so, a general should not have been taken in so, nor, duped so readily, have gambled away the highest of stakes. Such, then, is how we may view each of these two men in these matters.
Into Egypt the one man sailed because he had no other option, a fugitive; the other went neither for an honorable reason nor because he had to, but for money, so that his pay as a general serving among barbarians might fund a war against the Greeks. Then, the very things for which we blame Pompey with regard to the Egyptians, the Egyptians charge against Agesilaus for the same things: for the one was wronged after trusting them, while the other, having been trusted, abandoned them and went over to those at war with the very people he had sailed to fight alongside as an ally:

======== Alexander ========

In composing, within this book, our account of King Alexander and of that Caesar who brought Pompey down, we will, given the sheer number of the deeds that lie before us, say nothing else by way of preface except to ask our readers, if we do not report every single one of the celebrated actions in full detail but instead abridge most of them, not to find fault with us for it.
For we are not writing histories, but lives; nor do the most illustrious actions always reveal virtue or vice, but often a small thing, a word, or a jest makes plainer a man's character than battles with tens of thousands of dead, and the greatest pitched engagements, and sieges of cities.
Just as painters draw the likeness from the face and the features around the eyes, in which character is shown, taking very little care over the rest of the body, so we must be allowed to dwell more on the signs of the soul, and through these to portray the life of each man, leaving to others the great deeds and the contests.
That Alexander was, on his father's side, a Heraclid descended from Caranus, and on his mother's side an Aeacid descended from Neoptolemus, is among the things most firmly believed. It is said that Philip, having been initiated together with Olympias into the mysteries in Thrace, fell in love with her while he himself was still a young man and she a girl orphaned of both parents, and so arranged the marriage, persuading her brother Arymbas.
Now the bride, on the night before they were shut together in the bridal chamber, dreamed that a thunderbolt fell upon her womb amid a peal of thunder, and that from the blow a great fire was kindled, which then broke apart into flames carried in every direction, and so was dispersed. Philip, some time after the marriage, saw in a dream that he was setting a seal upon his wife's womb; and the device carved upon the seal,
as he thought, bore the image of a lion. And when the other seers viewed the vision with suspicion, as if it required that Philip keep closer watch over the marriage, Aristander of Telmessus declared that she must be with child — since no seal is set upon an empty thing — and that she bore within her a child of spirited temper and a lion's nature.
Once, too, a serpent was seen stretched out along the body of Olympias as she slept; and they say that this above all dimmed Philip's passion and affection for her, so that he no longer often came to lie beside her, whether because he feared some sorceries and drugs from the woman, or because he shrank from intimacy with her as one who was now consorting with something greater than himself.
There is another story told about these things: that all the women of that region, being from very ancient times given over to the Orphic rites and the orgiastic worship of Dionysus, and bearing the names Klodones and Mimallones, performed rites much like those practiced by women of Edonia and by the Thracian women near Mount Haemus — and from this, it seems, the very verb 'to practice religious rites' came to be applied to elaborate and excessive sacred observances —
and Olympias, more zealous than the others in these possessions and ecstasies, and carrying them out in a more barbaric fashion, would bring great tame serpents into the processions, which often, gliding up out of the ivy and the mystic winnowing-baskets and coiling around the women's wands and garlands, terrified the men who watched.
Nevertheless, they say that Philip, after the apparition, sent Chaeron of Megalopolis to Delphi, and received back an oracle from the god commanding him to sacrifice to Ammon and to hold that god in especial reverence; and that he lost one of his eyes — the one with which he had looked through the crack of the door and seen the god, in the shape of a serpent, lying with his wife.
Olympias, as Eratosthenes says, when she was sending Alexander off on his campaign and had told to him alone the secret about his conception, bade him think thoughts worthy of his birth; but others say that she disavowed it and would say, "Will Alexander never stop slandering me to Hera?"
Alexander, then, was born on the sixth day of the month Hecatombaeon, which the Macedonians call Loüs, on the very day on which the temple of Artemis at Ephesus was burned down — an event on which Hegesias of Magnesia hung a quip cold enough to have put out that very fire itself, for he said it was only natural that the temple of Artemis burned, since the goddess was busy attending Alexander's delivery.
But all the magi who happened to be residing at Ephesus, taking the disaster to the temple as a sign of some other calamity, ran about beating their faces and crying out that that day had brought forth ruin and a great catastrophe for Asia. To Philip, who had just captured Potidaea, there came three
messages at the same time: one, that the Illyrians had been defeated in a great battle through Parmenio; another, that his horse had won at Olympia in the horse-race; and a third, concerning the birth of Alexander. As he rejoiced at these, as was natural, the seers raised his spirits still further, declaring that the boy, born together with three victories, would be unconquerable.
As for the form of his body, the statues of Lysippus display it best of all, the very sculptor by whom alone Alexander himself thought it fitting to be modeled. For those features which many of his successors and friends later tried to imitate — the upward tilt of the neck, turned gently toward the left, and the melting quality of his eyes — this craftsman preserved with great precision.
Apelles, however, when painting the Thunderbolt-Bearer, did not reproduce his true coloring, but made it too dark and swarthy. He was, in fact, fair-skinned, they say, and his fairness took on a ruddiness especially about the chest and face. That his skin gave off a most pleasant fragrance, and that a sweet odor pervaded his mouth and his whole flesh, so that his tunics were filled with it — this is what Aristoxenus records in his memoirs.
The cause of this is perhaps the constitution of his body, which was very hot and fiery; for fragrance arises from the concoction of moist humors by heat, as Theophrastus supposes, which is why the dry and sun-scorched regions of the inhabited world bear the greatest and finest spices — for the sun draws off the moisture that lies upon bodies like the material of corruption.
Alexander's bodily heat, it seems, also made him fond of drink and quick-tempered. Yet even as a child his self-control was evident in this, that although he was headlong and violently carried away in everything else, he was hard to move toward the pleasures of the body, and touched such things with great moderation,
while his ambition kept his spirit grave and great-souled beyond his years. For he did not care for glory of every kind or from every source, as Philip did, priding himself sophist-like on his cleverness in speech and having his chariot victories at Olympia engraved on his coinage; rather, when those around him tried him out by asking whether he would be willing to compete in the footrace at Olympia — for he was swift of foot — he said, "Yes, if I were to have kings as my rivals."
He appears, indeed, on the whole to have looked unfavorably on the entire breed of athletes; certainly, although he founded a great many contests — not only for tragic actors, flute-players, and lyre-singers, but even for rhapsodes, and for hunting of every kind, and for fighting with staves — he never with any earnestness set up a prize for boxing or the pankration.
When the ambassadors from the Persian king arrived while Philip was abroad, Alexander entertained them and grew familiar with them, and won them over through his warmth and through questions that were never childish or petty, asking instead about the lengths of the roads and the manner of the journey inland, and about the king himself, what sort of man he was in war, and what was the strength and might of the Persians — so that they marveled, and came to think that the much-talked-of cleverness of Philip was nothing beside the ambition and greatness of purpose of the boy.
At any rate, whenever it was reported that Philip had taken some famous city or won some celebrated battle, Alexander was not at all pleased to hear it, but would say to his companions of the same age, "Boys, my father will forestall everything, and will leave nothing great and splendid for me to accomplish with you."
For it was not pleasure that he emulated, nor wealth, but virtue and glory; and he reckoned that the more he received from his father, the less he would accomplish through himself. So, believing that as his father's affairs grew, achievements would be spent on him, he wished to inherit a rule not full of money nor of luxuries and enjoyments, but full of contests and wars and occasions for ambition.
There were, naturally, many people concerned with his upbringing — tutors, attendants, and teachers, as they were called — but presiding over all of them was Leonidas, a man of stern character and a kinsman of Olympias, who did not himself shun the name of tutor, since it involved a fine and splendid task, but who, because of his standing and his kinship, was called by others 'Alexander's foster-father and mentor.'
The man who took on the shape and title of tutor was Lysimachus, an Acarnanian by birth, who had nothing else refined about him except that he called himself Phoenix, called Alexander Achilles, and Philip Peleus; for this he was well liked and held second place.
When Philonicus the Thessalian brought Bucephalas to sell to Philip for thirteen talents, they went out to the plain in order to put the horse through its paces, and the animal proved troublesome and wholly unmanageable, letting no one mount him and tolerating not a single one of Philip's attendants who spoke to him, rearing instead against every man there. Philip was displeased
and ordered the horse led away as entirely wild and unruly. But Alexander, who was present, said, "What a horse they are losing, for lack of skill and courage to handle him!" At first Philip said nothing; but when Alexander kept repeating this and showing his distress, he said, "Do you find fault with your elders, as though you knew more than they, or were better able to handle a horse?"
"This one, at any rate," he said, "I could handle better than anyone else." "And if you cannot, what penalty will you pay for your rashness?" "By Zeus," he said, "I will pay the price of the horse." At this there was laughter, and then an agreement between them over the money; and Alexander at once ran to the horse, took hold of the rein, and turned him toward the sun, having noticed, it seems, that the horse was disturbed by seeing his own shadow falling and shifting before him.
Running beside him for a little while in this fashion, stroking him as he went, once Alexander saw the horse was spirited and keen, he quietly slipped off his cloak and, with a light spring, mounted him safely. Holding the bit lightly with the reins, without striking or tearing at him, he reined him in; but when he saw that the horse had given up his threatening manner and was eager for the run, he let him go and drove him on, now using a bolder voice and a touch of the heel.
Philip and those with him were at first anxious and silent; but when Alexander wheeled the horse round correctly and rode back proud and rejoicing, all the rest broke into shouts, while his father, it is said, actually wept for joy, and when Alexander had dismounted, kissed his head and said, "My boy, seek out a kingdom equal to yourself, for Macedonia is not big enough for you."
Seeing that his son's nature was hard to move by force when he resisted, but was easily led by reason to what was fitting, Philip himself tried to persuade rather than command him, and, not trusting the teachers of music and the ordinary school subjects to have full charge and shaping of him, since this was, as he thought, a greater task, requiring, in Sophocles' words, 'many bits and rudders too,'
he summoned the most renowned and learned philosopher of the age, Aristotle, and paid him a fee both handsome and fitting for the undertaking. As for Stagira, Aristotle's native city, which Philip had earlier razed, he now rebuilt it, bringing back and settling there again the citizens who had fled into exile or fallen into slavery.
As a place of leisure and study for them he set aside the shrine of the Nymphs near Mieza, and even now visitors are shown Aristotle's stone seats and the shaded walks there. Alexander, it seems, received from Aristotle not only ethical and political instruction, but also a portion of those hidden and deeper doctrines that the philosophers, using their own special terms, call "acroamatic" and "epoptic" — teachings they did not spread among the general public.
For once he had already crossed into Asia, and learned that Aristotle had put certain treatises on these subjects into written and public form, he wrote to him a frank letter on the subject of philosophy, a copy of which runs as follows: "Alexander to Aristotle: greetings. It was wrong of you to make public the doctrines meant only for oral instruction; for in what shall we surpass other men, if the teachings in which we were trained become common property to all? I would rather excel in my command of the best things than in power. Farewell."
Aristotle, soothing this ambition of his, defended himself concerning those treatises, saying they were both published and not published: for indeed the treatise on First Philosophy [Metaphysics] is written in a form that offers no useful instruction for teaching or learning, but serves only as a memorandum for those already trained in these matters.
It seems to me that Aristotle, more than anyone else, instilled in Alexander his love of medicine as well; for he did not merely admire the theory of it, but actually gave aid to his ailing companions, prescribing particular cures and courses of treatment, a fact one can gather from his letters. By nature, too, he was devoted to learning and fond of reading.
And the Iliad, which he regarded and called a viaticum of the art of war, he took with him in the edition corrected by Aristotle, known as "the casket copy," and he kept it always lying under his pillow together with his dagger, as Onesicritus has recorded. And when he had no ready supply of other books in the upper regions of Asia, he ordered Harpalus to send some to him.
And Harpalus sent him the books of Philistus, along with numerous tragic works by Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus, plus the dithyrambs of Telestes and Philoxenus. Aristotle he admired at first and loved no less, as he himself used to say, than his own father, on the ground that through the one he had life, and through the other a good life; but later he came to regard him with more suspicion — not so far as to do him any actual harm, but his displays of friendship no longer carried that former warmth and affection, and became instead a token of estrangement.
Yet the zeal and longing for philosophy that had grown up in him and been nurtured from the beginning did not drain away from his soul, as is attested by the honor he paid to Anaxarchus, the fifty talents he sent to Xenocrates, and the eager attention he devoted to Dandamis and Calanus.
When Philip was campaigning against the Byzantines, Alexander was sixteen years old, and was left behind in Macedonia as master of affairs and keeper of the royal seal. He subdued the rebellious Maedi, and after capturing their city he drove out the barbarians, settled it with a mixed population, and named it Alexandropolis.
He was present at Chaeronea, joining in the fight waged against the Greek forces, and it is said that he was the first to charge the Sacred Band of the Thebans. Even in our own day an ancient oak by the Cephisus called "Alexander's oak" was pointed out, near which he had then pitched his camp, and the burial mound of the Macedonians is not far off.
For these reasons, as one would expect, Philip loved his son exceedingly, so much so that he was pleased when the Macedonians called Alexander their king and Philip their general. But the troubles in the household, arising from his marriages and love affairs, spread as it were from the women's quarters into the kingdom itself and produced many grievances and great quarrels, which the harsh temper of Olympias — a woman prone to jealousy and given to sulking — made worse still, since she goaded Alexander on.
The most glaring instance of this Attalus provided at the wedding of Cleopatra, whom Philip married after becoming enamored of her despite the difference in their ages. Attalus, her uncle, in his cups at the banquet, called on the Macedonians to pray to the gods that from Philip and Cleopatra a legitimate heir to the kingdom might be born. Alexander, provoked by this, said, "But do you take us, wretch, for bastards?"
And he threw a cup at him, and Philip rose up against Alexander with sword drawn, but fortunately for both of them, from anger and wine, he stumbled and fell. Alexander, mocking him, said, "Look, men — here is someone getting ready to sail from Europe over into Asia, yet he cannot even make it from one couch to the next without being toppled over." After this drunken quarrel he took Olympias and settled her in Epirus, while he himself stayed among the Illyrians.
Meanwhile Demaratus of Corinth, a guest-friend of the house who enjoyed freedom of speech, came to Philip. After the first greetings and courtesies, when Philip asked him how the Greeks stood in concord with one another, he said, "It surely befits you, Philip, to be concerned for the harmony of Greece, when you have filled your own household with so much strife and evil." Philip, brought to his senses by this, sent for Alexander and, through Demaratus's persuasion, brought him back home.
When Pixodarus, satrap of Caria, hoping to worm his way through a marriage tie into partnership with Philip, wished to marry off his eldest daughter to Philip's son Arrhidaeus, and sent Aristocritus to Macedonia about the matter, once again rumors and slanders reached Alexander from his friends and his mother, to the effect that Philip, through a brilliant marriage and important connections, was setting Arrhidaeus up for the throne.
Disturbed by these reports, Alexander dispatched Thessalus, the actor of tragedies, to Caria so he might treat with Pixodarus, urging that he should set aside the bastard son, who was moreover not of sound mind, and transfer the marriage alliance to Alexander instead. This proposal pleased Pixodarus considerably more than the earlier one; but Philip, learning of it, went to Alexander's chamber, taking with him one of Alexander's friends and companions, Philotas son of Parmenio, and rebuked him harshly,
and reviled him bitterly as ignoble and unworthy of the advantages he possessed, if he was content to become son-in-law to a Carian, a man who was slave to a barbarian king. As for Thessalus, he wrote to the Corinthians to send him back bound in chains. Of the other companions he banished Harpalus and Nearchus from Macedonia, and also Erigyius and Ptolemy — men whom Alexander later, upon recalling them, held in the highest honor.
When Pausanias, having been outraged at the instigation of Attalus and Cleopatra and denied justice, killed Philip, most people laid the blame chiefly on Olympias, holding that she had stirred up and driven on the enraged young man; but some suspicion touched Alexander as well. The story goes that Pausanias, once he had suffered that outrage, encountered Alexander and voiced his complaint, whereupon Alexander quoted the line of Medea: "the giver, and the bridegroom, and the bride." Nevertheless, he sought out and punished those who had shared in the conspiracy, and he was indignant that Olympias, during his absence abroad, treated Cleopatra with such cruelty.
So he came to the throne at the age of twenty, a kingdom beset with great envy, fierce hatreds, and dangers on every side. For the barbarian peoples bordering Macedonia would not bear their subjection, longing for their ancestral kingships, and Philip, though he had subdued Greece by arms, had not had time to yoke and tame it, but had merely upset and thrown affairs into confusion, leaving them in a great swell and agitation from the unaccustomed change.
The Macedonians feared the crisis and thought that Alexander ought to give up entirely on Greek affairs and not press them by force, and that he should call back the barbarian peoples who were rebelling by gentle means and attend to the early stages of the unrest. Alexander, however, moving from the opposite line of reasoning, resolved through boldness and greatness of spirit to secure safety and stability for his affairs, on the ground that if he were seen yielding even a little of his resolve, everyone would set upon him.
The barbarian uprisings and the wars there he quickly put down by marching swiftly with his army as far as the Danube, where he defeated Syrmus, king of the Triballi, in a great battle. When word reached him that the Thebans had risen and the Athenians stood with them, he marched his troops at once through the Gates, remarking that although Demosthenes had dubbed him a boy during his time among the Illyrians and Triballians, and a mere youth once he reached Thessaly, he meant to prove himself a man in front of Athens's walls.
When he approached Thebes, still allowing room for repentance for what had been done, he called for Phoenix and Prothytes to be handed over, and announced a pardon for any who deserted to his cause. But the Thebans, for their part, called on him to hand over Philotas and Antipater, and proclaimed that all who wished to join in liberating Greece should array themselves with them. So it was that he turned the Macedonians to war.
The Thebans fought beyond their strength, with courage and eagerness, arrayed against enemies many times more numerous; but when the Macedonian garrison abandoned the Cadmea and fell upon them from behind, most of them, surrounded, fell in the battle itself, and the city was captured, plundered, and razed to the ground — Alexander expecting on the whole that the Greeks, struck with terror at so great a calamity, would cower and remain quiet, but also wishing to make a show of gratifying the accusations of his allies; for indeed the Phocians and Plataeans had brought charges against the Thebans.
He spared the priests, every household bound to the Macedonians by ties of hospitality, Pindar's descendants, and whoever had opposed the uprising with their vote; everyone else was sold as a slave, some thirty thousand in number; and those who had died were more than six thousand.
Amid the many terrible sufferings that gripped the city, a band of Thracians forced their way into the home of Timoclea, a woman of good reputation and self-restraint; while they plundered her property, their commander forced himself on the woman and violated her, and then questioned her whether she had any gold or silver hidden away. She admitted that she did,
and, leading him alone into the garden, showed him a well, saying that there, when the city was being captured, she herself had thrown down her most precious valuables. As the Thracian bent over and peered into the place, she pushed him from behind, and hurling down many stones upon him, killed him.
When she was brought bound before Alexander by the Thracians, at once from her look and her bearing she appeared a woman of dignity and high spirit, following her captors without fear or dismay. Then, when the king inquired which woman among them she was, she answered that she was the sister of Theagenes, who had drawn up his forces against Philip on behalf of the freedom of the Greeks, and had fallen at Chaeronea while serving as general. Alexander, marveling both at her answer and her deed, ordered that she go free with her children.
With the Athenians he was reconciled, although they had not borne the disaster at Thebes with any moderation; indeed, they had been in the midst of celebrating the festival of the Mysteries when they let it lapse out of grief, and they extended every kindness to those who had fled to their city for refuge.
But whether it was that his anger was already sated, like that of lions, or that he wished to set an act of clemency beside one so savage and grim, he not only released them from all blame, but also instructed the city to attend to its own governance, since it would rule Greece should misfortune ever befall him. Later, however, it is said that the disaster of the Thebans often distressed him and made him gentler to no few people.
In general, he attributed both the affair of Cleitus, which happened over wine, and the Macedonians' refusal to advance further against the Indians — as though they were abandoning his campaign and his glory unfinished — to the wrath and vengeance of Dionysus. And there was no surviving Theban who, on meeting him afterward and making a request, failed to obtain it from him. So much for the affairs at Thebes.
When the Greeks gathered at the Isthmus and voted to campaign against the Persians together with Alexander, he was proclaimed their leader. And when many statesmen and philosophers came to him and offered their congratulations, he hoped that Diogenes of Sinope, who was living near Corinth, would do the same.
But when Diogenes, paying very little regard to Alexander, remained at his leisure in the Craneum, Alexander went to him himself. He happened to be lying in the sun, and he raised himself up a little as so many people approached, and fixed his eyes on Alexander. When Alexander greeted him and asked if he needed anything,
"Just this," he said, "stand a little out of my sunlight." It is said that Alexander was so affected by this, and so admired the arrogance and greatness of the man in scorning him, that when those around him, as they were leaving, laughed and mocked Diogenes, he said, "But truly, were I not Alexander, Diogenes is what I would wish to be."
Wishing to consult the god about the campaign, he came to Delphi; and as it happened to be among the forbidden days, on which it is not the custom to give oracles, at first he sent asking the priestess to come. But when she refused and pleaded the law, he himself went up and dragged her by force toward the temple, whereupon she, as though overcome by his eagerness, said, "You are invincible, my child." Hearing this, Alexander said he no longer needed any other prophecy, but had from her the very oracle he wanted.
When he set out on the campaign, other signs too are said to have come from the divine, and in particular a cypress-wood statue of Orpheus standing at Leibethra broke out in heavy sweat during those days. While everyone else was afraid of the sign, Aristander bade them take courage, since Alexander would accomplish deeds worth singing of and widely renowned, deeds that would give poets and musicians much toil and sweat in celebrating them with hymns.
As to the size of the army, those who give the smallest number record thirty thousand foot and four thousand horse, while those who give the largest put it at five thousand cavalry alongside forty-three thousand infantrymen. For provisions for these Aristobulus records that he had no more than seventy talents; Duris says only thirty days' worth of food; and Onesicritus says that he was actually in debt two hundred talents besides.
But although setting out from such small and narrow means, he did not board the ship before he had looked into the affairs of his companions and had assigned to one an estate, to another a village, to another the revenue of some township or harbor. And when nearly all the royal property had been used up and allotted, Perdiccas said, "But for yourself, O King, what are you leaving?" And when he replied that it was his hopes, Perdiccas said, "Then we too, who campaign with you, shall share in these."
When Perdiccas turned down the share assigned to him, and several of his other companions followed suit, he freely gave gifts to those who did accept and request them, and by thus giving away most of what he possessed in Macedonia he exhausted it entirely. With such eagerness and such a frame of mind he crossed the Hellespont.
He journeyed up to Ilium, where he offered sacrifice to Athena and poured out libations for the heroes. He anointed Achilles' gravestone with oil and, following custom, ran naked around it together with his companions, then crowned it, calling Achilles fortunate because in life he had won a loyal companion, and in death, a mighty proclaimer of his renown. While touring the city and taking in its sights, he was asked whether he cared to view the lyre that had belonged to Paris, and he answered that he thought little of that instrument, but was searching instead for the one Achilles had used to sing of the noble deeds of brave men.
Meanwhile, Darius's generals had gathered a great force and drawn it up at the crossing of the Granicus, so that a battle was in a sense unavoidable, fought virtually at the very threshold of Asia, with entry into it and dominion over it at stake; but most of the Macedonians feared the depth of the river and the roughness and unevenness of the banks on the far side, over which they would have to make their landing under attack, and some also thought it necessary to observe
the custom regarding the month (for the kings of the Macedonians were not accustomed to lead out the army in the month Daisius). This he corrected by ordering that it be called a second Artemisius; and when Parmenio, since the hour was late, would not allow him to run the risk, he said that the Hellespont would be ashamed of him if he feared the Granicus after having crossed that strait, and he plunged into the current with thirteen squadrons of cavalry.
Advancing against opposing missiles and rugged places fenced about with arms and horses, and through a current that swept and swirled around them, he seemed to be exercising generalship more like a man possessed by madness and desperation than by good judgment. Nevertheless, clinging to the crossing and mastering the ground with difficulty and hardship, since the footing was slippery and treacherous from the mud, he was at once forced to fight in confusion and grapple man to man with those bearing down on him, before those crossing over could form into any order,
for the enemy pressed on with shouting, and setting horse against horse they used their spears, and then their swords when the spears were shattered. As many pressed upon him — for he was conspicuous by his shield and by the crest of his helmet, on either side of which stood a plume marvelous for its whiteness and size — a javelin cast struck him under the joint of his breastplate but did not wound him; and when Rhoesaces and Spithridates, the generals, bore down upon him together, he avoided the one, and striking first at Rhoesaces, who was armored, he shattered his spear upon him and rushed upon him with his dagger.
As they closed with one another, Spithridates, wheeling his horse from the side and rising up eagerly along with it, brought down upon him a barbarian scimitar: he sheared off the crest together with one of the plumes, and the helmet held out against the stroke by the narrowest margin, so that only the topmost hairs of his head were grazed by the blade's edge; but as Spithridates was raising it again for another blow, Cleitus the Black got there first and drove his spear-shaft through the middle of him, and at the same moment Rhoesaces too fell, struck by Alexander's sword.
While the cavalry battle was thus in danger and struggle, the Macedonian phalanx was crossing the river, and the infantry forces closed with one another; but the enemy did not hold firm strongly nor for long, but turned and fled, except for the Greek mercenaries, who, gathering together on a certain hill, asked Alexander for terms of safety.
But he, acting more from anger than from calculation, charged in first, and lost his horse, which was killed by a sword-thrust through the ribs (it was a different horse, not Bucephalas); and it was there that most of those who died or were wounded happened to fall into danger, grappling with men who were desperate and warlike. It is said that twenty thousand of the barbarian infantry and two thousand five hundred of the cavalry fell. As for Alexander's men, Aristobulus puts the total dead at thirty-four, nine of them infantrymen,
and for these he ordered bronze statues to be set up, which Lysippus fashioned. Sharing the victory with the Greeks, he sent to the Athenians privately three hundred shields from the captured spoils, and for the rest of the spoils, held in common, he commissioned a highly ambitious inscription: "Alexander son of Philip, together with the Greeks — the Lacedaemonians excepted — dedicate these, taken from the barbarians inhabiting Asia." As for the drinking cups, the purple garments, and any other such Persian belongings he had captured, he sent nearly all of them to his mother, keeping back only a few pieces.
This battle at once produced a great change of fortune in Alexander's favor, so that even Sardis, the very showpiece of the barbarians' dominion over the sea, was taken over, along with everything else submitting to him. Only Halicarnassus and Miletus resisted, which he took by storm and, having subdued all that lay around them, was of two minds in his judgment as to the rest,
and often he was eager to meet Darius and risk everything at once for the whole issue, but often too he intended first to train and strengthen himself, as it were, on the affairs and resources along the coast, and only then to go up against him. There is a spring in Lycia near the city of the Xanthians, which is said at that time to have overturned of its own accord and, overflowing from its depths, cast up a bronze tablet bearing the impressions of ancient letters, in which it was declared that the empire of the Persians would come to an end, destroyed by the Greeks.
Encouraged by this, he hastened to clear the coastline as far as Phoenicia and Cilicia, and his passage along Pamphylia has become for many historians a subject for vivid writing, for astonishment and grandiloquence, as though by some divine fortune the sea made way for Alexander, though it was otherwise always rough as it came in from the deep, rarely at any time laying bare a slender and narrow passage beneath the steep and broken cliffs of the mountainous coast.
Menander too shows this in a comedy, playing on the paradox as being now proverbially "Alexander-like": "And if I seek someone, this fellow will appear of his own accord; and if indeed I need to pass through some place by way of the sea, this will be passable for me." But Alexander himself, in his letters, without indulging in any such marvel-mongering, says that setting out from Phaselis, he made his way through by means of what is called the Ladder, a road he had constructed there.
For this reason he spent several days in the city, during which time, when Theodectes had died — he was a native of Phaselis — Alexander, seeing a statue of him set up in the marketplace, after dinner went in a drunken revel and threw upon it many garlands, rendering, in a not ungraceful piece of play, honor to the intimacy that had come about with the man through Aristotle and philosophy.
After this he overcame those of the Pisidians who resisted, and subdued Phrygia, and taking over the city of Gordium, said to have been the home of the Midas of legend, he saw the celebrated wagon bound with cornel bark, and heard the story believed among the barbarians concerning it, that it was fated for whoever should loose the knot to become king of the inhabited world.
Now most say that, since the ends of the cords were hidden and the cords were carried through one another repeatedly in crooked coils, Alexander, unable to find a way to loose it, severed the knot with a stroke of his blade, and that once it was cut, many loose ends came into view. But Aristobulus says that the loosing was quite easy for him: he drew out the pin, as it is called, from the shaft that held the yoke's linkage in place, and thus drew off the yoke.
From there, having brought over the Paphlagonians and Cappadocians, and having heard of the death of Memnon, who among Darius's generals on the coast was expected to give Alexander much trouble and countless obstacles and occupations, he was strengthened all the more in his resolve for the campaign into the interior.
By now Darius too was coming down from Susa, elated both by the size of his forces — for he led six hundred thousand men — and by a dream that the magi read in a way more flattering than plausible: he had dreamed that fire blazed over the whole Macedonian phalanx, and that Alexander served him while dressed in the very robe Darius himself had once worn as a royal courier; and that Alexander then walked into the temple of Belus and disappeared from view.
By these things, it seems, it was being suggested by the god that the affairs of the Macedonians would become brilliant and conspicuous, and that Alexander would master Asia, just as Darius had mastered it after becoming king from a courier, but that he would quickly leave life, though with glory.
Darius took courage all the more, having judged Alexander's long stay in Cilicia to be cowardice. But the delay was owing to illness, which some say fell upon him from exertion, others say from bathing in the freezing current of the Cydnus.
None of the other physicians dared to attempt treatment, for they thought the danger stronger than any help could overcome, and feared the blame that would fall on them from the Macedonians if they failed; but Philip the Acarnanian, seeing that his condition was grave, yet trusting in his friendship, and thinking it a terrible thing not to share the risk of one in danger by helping and staking himself to the utmost trial, undertook to give him a medicine, and persuaded him to endure it and drink it, since Alexander was eager to be restored to strength for the war.
Meanwhile Parmenio sent a letter from the camp, urging him to be on guard against Philip, as one who had been persuaded by Darius, with great gifts and marriage to his daughter, to kill Alexander. Alexander, having read the letter and shown it to none of his friends, put it under his pillow. When the moment arrived and Philip came in with his attendants, cup of medicine in hand, Alexander passed him the letter while himself taking the draught without hesitation or suspicion,
so that it was a marvelous and theatrical sight — the one reading, the other drinking, and then the two looking at each other, though not in like manner: Alexander, with a bright and open face, showing his goodwill and trust toward Philip, while Philip, distraught at the accusation, at one moment called upon the gods and stretched his hands toward heaven, at another fell upon the couch and urged Alexander to be of good cheer and to trust him.
For the medicine, mastering his body at first, as it were thrust back and sank his strength into the depths, so that his voice failed and his senses became dim and altogether faint, a swoon having come upon him. Nevertheless he was quickly restored by Philip and, having recovered, showed himself to the Macedonians; for they would not stop grieving until they saw Alexander.
There was a certain man in Darius's army, a Macedonian who had fled from Macedonia, Amyntas, not unacquainted with Alexander's nature. Seeing Darius eager to advance within the narrow passes against Alexander, he begged him to remain in his position, in plains that had breadth and were open, so as to fight against a lesser number with so great a multitude.
But when Darius answered that he feared his enemies would slip away and escape before Alexander could be caught, Amyntas said, "But for that at least, O King, take courage, for he will march against you, and indeed is already nearly on his way." Speaking thus, Amyntas failed to persuade him; instead Darius rose up and marched into Cilicia, and in that same period Alexander was marching toward Syria to meet him,
and in the night, missing one another, they turned back again — Alexander pleased at the turn of events and hastening to meet him at the narrow passes, Darius wishing to resume his former camp and to draw his forces out of the narrows. For by now he had realized that he had thrown himself, against his own advantage, into terrain unfit for cavalry, boxed in with mountains rising on one flank and the sea pressing against the other, the river Pinarus running across the middle of it, broken up in many places, and having a position that favored the small numbers of his enemies.
To Alexander fortune gave the ground, but he made better use of the advantages fortune provided than any general in achieving victory: for though he was so vastly outnumbered by the barbarians, he did not allow them to encircle him, but himself, overlapping their left with his right and coming around on their flank, put to flight the barbarians opposed to him, fighting in the front ranks, so that he was wounded in the thigh with a sword—by Darius himself, as Chares says, they having come to close quarters with one another.
But in his letter to Antipater describing the engagement, Alexander never named the man responsible for his wound, saying merely that a dagger had pierced his thigh and that the injury proved of no great consequence. Having won a brilliant victory and cut down more than one hundred and ten thousand of the enemy, he did not capture Darius, who had gained a lead of four or five stades in his flight, but he took his chariot and his bow and returned,
and found the Macedonians carrying and driving off the rest of the wealth from the barbarian camp in overwhelming abundance, although they had come to the battle lightly equipped and had left the greater part of their baggage at Damascus, and they had seized for him Darius's own tent, full of splendid attendants and furnishings and great quantities of money.
So at once, stripping off his armor, he went toward the bath, saying, "Come, let us rinse away the grime of combat in what was once Darius's bath." And one of his companions said, "No, by Zeus, but in Alexander's bath: for the possessions of the vanquished must belong to, and be called after, the conqueror."
And when he caught sight of the bowls, jugs, basins, and flasks, every one of them golden and fashioned with astonishing craftsmanship, and the house was fragrant with a marvelous scent of spices and perfumes, and from there he passed into a tent remarkable in height and size and in the arrangement of its couches and tables and its dining furniture, he looked at his companions and said, "This, it seems, was to be a king."
As he was turning to dinner, someone told him that among the captives being led in were the mother and wife of Darius, and his two unmarried daughters, who, upon seeing his chariot and bow, were beating their breasts and wailing, believing him to be dead. So Alexander, after pausing a long while, being moved with more feeling for their misfortune than for his own, sent Leonnatus, bidding him announce that Darius had not died, nor need they fear Alexander:
for it was against Darius that he was warring for supremacy, but to them everything would be granted that they had enjoyed even while Darius reigned. When these words appeared gentle and kind to the women, still more humane did his actual deeds prove. He allowed them to bury as many of the Persians as they wished, using clothing and adornment from the spoils, and he took away nothing of the attendance and honor they had had, but they enjoyed even greater allowances than before,
and the finest and most royal grace shown them by him was that these women, noble and chaste captives as they were, heard nothing, suspected nothing, expected nothing shameful, but as though they were not in an enemy's camp but guarded in sacred and holy virgins' chambers, they kept a manner of life hidden and unseen by others. Yet the story goes that Darius's own wife surpassed in beauty every other woman of royal blood, just as Darius himself was the tallest and most handsome of men, and that the daughters resembled their parents.
But Alexander, it seems, considering mastery of himself more kingly than conquest of his enemies, neither touched these women nor knew any other woman before marriage, except Barsine. She, having become a widow after the death of Memnon, was taken near Damascus. Being educated in Greek learning and being of a gentle character, and her father Artabazus being the son of a king's daughter, she was known by Alexander—Parmenio, according to Aristobulus's account, having pressed him to take up with a woman of such beauty and noble birth,
but seeing the other captive women outstanding in beauty and stature, Alexander said jokingly that the Persian women were pains to the eyes, and, setting against their beauty the beauty of his own restraint and self-mastery, he walked past them as if they were nothing more than motionless statues.
When Philoxenus, the commander of forces on the coast, wrote that a Tarentine named Theodorus was in his camp offering two boys of extraordinary beauty for sale, and asked whether Alexander cared to purchase them, Alexander was greatly offended, and cried out repeatedly to his friends, asking what act of shame Philoxenus had ever known in him, that he should sit there procuring such reproaches for him; and he himself, in a letter, after heaping much abuse on Philoxenus, ordered him to send Theodorus, cargo and all, to perdition.
He also rebuked Hagnon, who had written to him that he wished to buy and bring to him one Crobylus, who was well thought of in Corinth; and learning that Damon and Timotheus, Macedonians serving under Parmenio, had seduced the wives of some of the mercenary soldiers, he sent Parmenio a directive that, should the men be found guilty, they were to be executed like wild creatures bred only to prey on humankind.
And concerning himself he wrote, word for word, in this letter: "For I would not be found to have seen the wife of Darius, nor to have wished to see her, nor even to have listened when others spoke of how beautiful she was." He was in the habit of remarking that he was most conscious of being mortal from sleep and from sexual intercourse, since both weariness and pleasure arise, he thought, from one and the same weakness of nature.
He was also most temperate in matters of the belly, and this he showed both by many other things and by his remark to Ada, the woman he adopted as mother and installed as ruler of Caria. When, moved by fondness for him, she took to sending him abundant delicacies and sweets each day, and finally the men who seemed to be the most skilled cooks and bakers, he said he had need of none of these:
for he had better cooks, given to him by his tutor Leonidas: for breakfast, a night march; and for dinner, a light breakfast. "And this same man," he said, "used to come and open the chests of my bedding and clothing, examining to see whether my mother had put in anything luxurious or superfluous."
He was also less given to wine than he was thought to be. It seemed so on account of the time he spent over each cup, not drinking so much as talking, always setting forth some long discourse, and this even though there was much leisure available; for as regards his actual undertakings, neither wine nor sleep nor any amusement, nor marriage, nor spectacle, held him back, as they did other generals.
This his life shows, which, though lived altogether but a short span, he filled with the greatest number of the greatest achievements. In his times of leisure, first, once up and having offered sacrifice to the gods, he would sit down at once to eat his morning meal; then he spent the day hunting, or judging cases, or arranging some military matter, or reading. And if he were traveling a road that was not too pressing, he would practice, as he went along, either shooting with the bow or mounting and dismounting from a moving chariot.
Often, too, for sport he would hunt foxes and birds, as one can gather from the journals; and when he had halted and turned to bathing or anointing himself, he would question those in charge of the bakers and cooks whether things were ready for dinner. And he would begin dining late, when it was already dark, reclining at table; and wondrous was his care and watchfulness at table, that nothing be distributed unequally or carelessly; but the drinking, as has been said, he prolonged at great length because of his talkativeness.
And in other respects being the most agreeable of all kings to be with, and lacking in no charm, at such times he became unpleasant with boastfulness and altogether too much the soldier, himself being carried away toward vainglory and giving himself over to be ridden by his flatterers, by whom the more refined of those present were vexed, not wishing either to compete with the flatterers or to fall short of the same praises, for the one course seemed shameful, the other carried danger.
After the drinking, having bathed, he would often sleep until midday; and there were times when he even spent the whole day sleeping. He himself was temperate even in delicacies, so that though the rarest fruits and fish brought to him from the sea were often sent to him, he would send them around, one to each of his companions, and leave nothing for himself alone:
his dinner, however, was always magnificent, and as his fortunes increased, the expense grew along with them, until finally it reached ten thousand drachmas. There it stopped, and this was the sum fixed for those who entertained Alexander to spend.
Following the engagement at Issus, he dispatched a force to Damascus, seizing the treasure, the baggage train, and the Persians' children and wives. And the cavalry of the Thessalians profited most: for these men, having proven themselves exceptionally brave in the battle, he sent on purpose, wishing them to profit; and the rest of the army too was filled with abundance.
And the Macedonians, then for the first time tasting gold and silver and women and barbarian luxury, rushed off, like hounds picking up a trail, to hunt down and lay hold of the Persians' riches. Nevertheless, Alexander thought it best first to secure the coastal regions. So the kings of Cyprus at once came, putting the island into his hands, and Phoenicia surrendered too, except for Tyre.
While besieging Tyre for seven months with mounds and engines and two hundred triremes from the sea, he saw in a dream Heracles standing atop the wall, hailing him and beckoning him near. And to many of the Tyrians in their sleep it seemed that Apollo said he was going away to Alexander, for he was not pleased with what was being done in the city.
But they themselves, as though they had caught the god in the very act of deserting to the enemy, threw cords around his colossal statue and nailed it down to its base, calling him "an Alexandrist." And Alexander saw another vision in his sleep.
A satyr appeared to him and seemed to play with him from a distance, then, when he wished to catch it, it slipped away; but finally, after much entreaty and running around, it came into his hands. And the seers, dividing the name, said, not implausibly, to him: "Tyre shall be yours (sa Tyros)." And they show a certain spring, near which he seemed in his sleep to see the satyr.
In the midst of the siege, having marched against the Arabs who dwelt near Antilibanus, he came into danger because of his tutor Lysimachus: for this man followed along with him, saying he was no worse nor older than Phoenix; and when, having drawn near to the mountainous region, he left the horses behind and went on foot, the rest went on far ahead,
but he himself, with dusk already settling in and the foe close at hand, could not bring himself to abandon Lysimachus, who was giving out and growing heavy, but calling him on and helping him along, was without noticing it drawn away from the army with a few men, and spent the night, amid darkness and violent cold together, in a rugged place.
He saw, then, far off many fires burning scattered about, belonging to the enemy; and trusting in the nimbleness of his body, and by his own exertion continually encouraging the helplessness of the Macedonians with him, he ran to the nearest fire that was burning: and striking down with his dagger two barbarians who sat around the fire, and snatching up a firebrand, he came back carrying it to his own men; and having kindled a great fire, they at once frightened some into flight, and routed those who came against them, and encamped safely without danger. This, then, is what Chares has recorded.
The siege had this outcome: while Alexander was resting the greater part of his force from the many struggles that had gone before, and was bringing up only a few men to the walls, so that the enemy might not be idle, Aristander the seer offered sacrifice, and upon seeing the signs, declared with some boldness to those present that the city would certainly be taken within that very month.
There arose mockery and laughter, since the month's final day had already arrived; and the king, noticing his seer's dismay, and always eager to support the diviners' predictions, ordered that day to be reckoned no longer as the thirtieth, but as the third from the end; and having given the signal with the trumpet, he made a more vigorous assault upon the walls than he had originally intended. And when a brilliant attack developed, and even those left in the camp did not hold back, but ran together and joined in the assault, the Tyrians gave up: and he took the city on that very day.
After this, while he was besieging Gaza, the greatest city of Syria, a clod of earth fell upon his shoulder, dropped from above by a bird, and the bird, having settled on one of the siege engines, had unknowingly become entangled in the sinew netting which they used for the traction of the ropes.
And the sign came out just as Aristander had foretold: Alexander was wounded in the shoulder, and he took the city. He sent back a great part of the spoils to his mother Olympias, to Cleopatra, and to the rest of his friends, and to Leonidas his old tutor he separately dispatched his old tutor five hundred talents of frankincense and a hundred of myrrh, remembering a boyhood hope.
For Leonidas, it seems, had once at a sacrifice, when Alexander scooped up incense with both hands and threw it on the fire, said, "When you have conquered the land that bears these spices, Alexander, then you may burn incense so lavishly; for now, use what you have sparingly." So now Alexander wrote to him: "We have sent you frankincense and myrrh in abundance, so that you may stop being stingy toward the gods."
When a certain chest was brought to him, which appeared to those receiving Darius's treasures and baggage to be the most costly thing there, he asked his friends what they thought most worth storing in it. Many suggested many things, but he himself said he would keep the Iliad safe by placing it there.
This is attested by no small number of trustworthy witnesses. And if what the Alexandrians say, trusting Heracleides, is true, then Homer seems to have been no idle or useless companion to him on campaign. For they say that after conquering Egypt he wished to found a great and populous Greek city and leave it named after himself, and that he had already, on the advice of his architects, marked out and enclosed a certain site.
Then one night as he slept he saw a marvelous vision: a man gray-haired and quite venerable in appearance seemed to stand beside him and speak these lines aloud: "An isle lies yonder in the heaving deep, fronting Egypt, and Pharos is its name." At once he rose and made his way to Pharos, which back then was still separated from land by water, lying a short distance north of the Canobic mouth of the Nile, though today a causeway ties it to the shore.
As soon as he saw the place, remarkable for what nature had given it—for it forms a neck of land not unlike an isthmus, of a good breadth, running between a broad lake and the open sea and closing at a spacious harbor—he declared that Homer, apart from his other wonders, had proven himself a supremely skilled builder too, and he commanded that the city's layout be sketched out so as to fit the ground.
And since no chalk was at hand, they took barley meal and traced with it in the black-soiled plain a circular enclosure, whose inner curve straight lines took up from the borders, like the folds of a cloak, drawing together evenly to a point. The king was delighted with the design, when suddenly birds from the river and the lake, countless in number and of every kind and size, swooped down on the place in cloud-like swarms and devoured every last scrap of the traced barley, leaving nothing behind, a sign that unsettled Alexander himself.
Nevertheless, when the seers urged him to take heart—for they said the city being founded by him would be most abundantly supplied and would nourish people of every nation—he ordered the overseers to get to work, while he himself set out for the shrine of Ammon, a long journey, full of much toil and hardship, and with two dangers: one from lack of water, through which the land lies waterless for many days' travel, the other, should a violent south wind fall upon them as they walked through the deep and boundless sand, as is said to have happened once long ago to the army of Cambyses, when it raised a great dune and turned the plain into waves, burying and destroying fifty thousand men.
Nearly everyone reckoned on all these dangers, but it was hard to turn Alexander from anything he had set his mind on. For fortune, yielding to his undertakings, made his resolve strong, and his spirited temper carried his ambition, unconquered, right through to action, forcing its way not only against enemies but against places and circumstances as well.
At any rate, on that journey the help that came from the god amid their difficulties won more credit than the later oracles did, and in a way it was from these events that faith in the oracles itself arose. For first, a great rain sent from Zeus and lasting showers dispelled the fear of thirst, and by quenching the dryness of the sand—which became moist and packed together—they made the air fresher and clearer to breathe. Then, when the guides' bearings became confused,
and there was wandering, and the travelers were scattered from ignorance of the way, ravens appeared and took over the guidance of the march, flying ahead of those who followed and hurrying them on, and waiting for those who lagged and fell behind. And what was most amazing,
as Callisthenes says, they called out to those who strayed at night, croaking, and set them back on the track of the march. When he had passed through the desert and reached the place, the prophet of Ammon greeted him on behalf of the god as "O son," as from a father; and Alexander, in turn, asked whether any among those who had killed his father had gotten away without punishment.
The prophet bade him speak more reverently, for he had no mortal father; so Alexander changed his question and asked whether he had punished all the murderers of Philip. Then, about his empire, whether the god granted him to become lord of all mankind. When the god responded that this too was granted, and that Philip had received full satisfaction, he presented the god with splendid offerings and gave money to the priests.
This is how most writers describe the oracle's utterances; yet Alexander, writing to his own mother, states that particular secret responses had been given to him, ones he would reveal to her and no one else once he returned home. Others report that the priest, meaning to greet him warmly in Greek as "O paidion" [O child], stumbled over the foreign word and let a sigma slip out where a nu belonged, ending up with "O paidios" instead; Alexander, far from minding, welcomed this mispronunciation, and word spread afterward that the god had hailed him as "son of Zeus."
It is also said that, after hearing the philosopher Psammon in Egypt, he most approved the saying that all men are ruled by god: for that which rules and has mastery in each person is divine. And still more, he himself held and expressed a rather more philosophical view on these matters—that god is the common father of all men, but makes his own, in a special sense, the best of them.
In general, toward the barbarians he was overbearing, and behaved as one thoroughly persuaded of his birth and descent from a god, but toward the Greeks he made claims to divinity moderately and with restraint. Except when writing to the Athenians about Samos, he says: "I would not have given you that free and famous city; you hold it as a gift from him who was then your lord and was called my father"
meaning Philip. Later, after he was struck by an arrow and was in great pain, he said, "What you see running here, my friends, is plain blood, not the ichor that flows in the veins of the blessed gods." On another occasion, a loud peal of thunder terrified everyone present, and Anaxarchus the sophist, standing nearby, said to him, "Could you, the son of Zeus, produce such a thing yourself?" Alexander laughed and said, "I have no wish to inspire dread in those close to me the way you'd have me do—you who mock my dinner table, because you see fish laid on it, not the heads of satraps."
Indeed it is said that when some small fish were sent by the king to Hephaestion, Anaxarchus made this remark, mocking and ridiculing those who pursue with great toil and danger things admired by all, as though they possessed little or nothing more than others in the way of pleasures and enjoyments. Alexander himself, in any case, is clear from these very sayings not to have been affected or puffed up by such things, but rather to have enslaved others through the reputation of his divinity.
Returning to Phoenicia from Egypt, he performed sacrifices to the gods and processions, and held contests of cyclic and tragic choruses, made splendid not only by their staging but also by the rivalry involved. The kings of Cyprus furnished the choruses, in the same manner as those Athenian tribal representatives selected by lottery, and they competed against one another with amazing eagerness. Nicocreon of Salamis and Pasicrates of Soli contended most fiercely of all.
For these two happened to be assigned to fund the most celebrated actors—Pasicrates for Athenodorus, Nicocreon for Thessalus, in whom Alexander himself took a keen interest, though he did not reveal his preference until Athenodorus had been proclaimed the winner by vote. Then, as it seems, on leaving he said that he approved of the judges, but that he himself would gladly have given up part of his kingdom rather than see Thessalus defeated.
When Athenodorus, having been fined by the Athenians because he failed to appear for the contest of the Dionysia, asked the king to write on his behalf, Alexander did not do this, but instead sent the fine from his own funds. And when Lycon of Scarphe, doing well in the theater, inserted into his comedy a line requesting ten talents, Alexander laughed and gave it to him.
When Darius sent a letter to him, along with friends who begged him to accept ten thousand talents in exchange for the captives, to retain everything he held west of the Euphrates river, and to become his friend and ally through marriage to one of his daughters, Alexander shared this with his companions. And when Parmenio said, "If I were Alexander, I would accept these terms," Alexander replied, "So would I, by Zeus, if I were Parmenio." To Darius he wrote that he would lack nothing kind if he came to him; but if not, he himself would march against him at once.
He soon regretted it, however, when Darius's wife died in childbirth, and he was visibly grieved, feeling that he had been deprived of no small chance to show kindness. So he buried the woman, sparing no expense. Then one of the eunuchs who attended the bedchamber, who had been captured along with the women, escaped from the camp and, riding to Darius, reported to him the death of his wife—his name was Tireus.
When Darius struck his head and cried out, "Alas for the fortune of the Persians, if the king's wife and sister, not only was made a captive while living, but even in death lies deprived of a royal burial!" the eunuch, taking up the reply, said, "But as for burial, O king, and every honor and all that is fitting, you have no cause to blame the evil fortune of the Persians.
For while your mistress Stateira, your mother, and your children were alive, they lacked none of the good and beautiful things they had before, except to see your light—which the lord Oromasdes will again cause to shine forth. Nor, in dying, has she gone without adornment, but has even been honored by the tears of her enemies. For Alexander is as kind in victory as he is fearsome in battle."
When Darius heard this, his agitation and grief drove him to strange suspicions, and taking the eunuch further inside the tent, he said, "If you are not siding with Macedon along with the fortune of the Persians, but I am still your master Darius, tell me, by the great light of Mithras and by the king's right hand—am I not weeping over the least of Stateira's misfortunes, and did we not suffer things more pitiable while she lived, and would we not have deserved our misfortune more had we fallen into the hands of a cruel and grim enemy? For what decency does a young man show toward his enemy's wife, to go so far as such honor?"
Before he could finish, Tireus fell down at his feet, pleading with him to speak no ill, and neither to wrong Alexander nor to shame his dead sister and wife, nor to take from himself the greatest comfort in his misfortunes—that he seemed to have been defeated by a man greater than human nature allows—but rather to marvel at Alexander, who had shown more self-control toward the Persian women than the Persians themselves had shown courage.
At the same time, as the eunuch swore fearsome oaths concerning these things and spoke of Alexander's self-restraint and greatness of soul in other matters as well, Darius went out to his companions, and raising his hands to heaven, prayed: "Gods of my birth and of my kingdom, grant above all that I may restore the fortune of the Persians upright again to the state in which I received it, so that in victory I may repay Alexander the kindness he showed toward those dearest to me in my misfortune. But if indeed this fated time has now come,
owed to retribution and change, that the rule of the Persians should end, let no other man sit upon the throne of Cyrus except Alexander." This, most historians say, is how it happened and what was said.
Alexander, now holding as his own everything up to the Euphrates, set out against Darius, who was advancing with an army a million strong. One of his companions mentioned to him, as an amusing story, that the camp followers, purely in jest, had split into two rival bands, each with its own commander, one nicknamed Alexander and the other Darius.
It started with clods of dirt thrown back and forth, moved on to fists, and eventually grew so fierce that stones and cudgels came into play, drawing in many participants who proved hard to separate. On learning of it, Alexander ordered the two mock-leaders to settle matters in single combat, arming the man called Alexander himself while Philotas armed the one called Darius. The entire army looked on, reading the outcome as a sign of what lay ahead. The fight was hard-fought, but the man playing Alexander prevailed, earning as his prize a dozen villages and permission to don Persian garb. Eratosthenes is the source for this story.
Yet the decisive battle with Darius was actually fought, contrary to what most authors claim about Arbela, at a place called Gaugamela; and they say the name means in that language "house of the camel," since one of the kings of old, fleeing his enemies on a swift camel, settled it there, assigning certain villages and revenues for its upkeep.
The moon underwent an eclipse in the month of Boedromion, near the time when the Athenian Mysteries began, and eleven nights after that eclipse, when the two camps had come into view of each other, Darius kept his forces under arms, going about the ranks by torchlight, while Alexander, while the Macedonians rested, spent the time himself before his tent with the seer Aristander, performing certain secret rites and offering sacrifice to Fear.
The older of his companions, and especially Parmenio, since the entire plain stretching from Mount Niphates to the Gordyaean range could be seen ablaze with the barbarian fires, and an indistinct sound mingled with tumult came from their camp as though from a vast sea,
were astonished at their numbers and said to one another that it would be a great and difficult task to meet and push back so great a war in the open day, and so, coming to the king when he had finished the sacrifices, they urged that he fall upon the enemy under cover of darkness and conceal the most fearful part of the coming struggle in night,
but he made the answer that is remembered, "I do not steal my victory" — to some this seemed a childish and empty reply, as though he were joking in the face of so great a danger, but to others it seemed that he was both taking courage in the present situation and judging the future correctly, giving Darius no excuse, if defeated, to take heart again for another attempt by blaming the night and the darkness, as he had earlier blamed the mountains, the narrow passes, and the sea.
For Darius, he said, would not stop making war for lack of weapons or men, having so great a force and so great a country behind him, but only when he had lost his confidence and his hope, being refuted decisively by a manifest defeat.
When these men had left, Alexander is said to have lain down in his tent and to have been overtaken by a deep sleep for the rest of the night, contrary to his custom, so that when the officers came to him at dawn they were astonished, and acting on their own initiative issued orders for the soldiers to eat breakfast first; then, since time was pressing, Parmenio came in, stood by his bed, and called his name two or three times, and when Alexander was thus roused, he asked what had come over him that he should sleep as though he had already won, and not like someone on the verge of fighting his greatest battle of all,
to which Alexander, smiling, replied, "Why, do we not seem to have already won, now that we are freed from wandering about and chasing after Darius through a vast and ravaged country, since he refuses to fight?" And not only before the battle but even right in the thick of the danger he displayed greatness and composure, trusting to his own reasoning and confidence.
For the battle underwent a setback and disturbance on the left wing under Parmenio, when the cavalry of Bactria charged into the Macedonian lines with tremendous force and violence, and Mazaeus sent horsemen around outside the phalanx to attack those guarding the baggage. Troubled by both these things, Parmenio sent messengers to Alexander telling him that the camp and the baggage were lost unless he sent strong help quickly from the front to those behind,
Now it happened that at that very moment Alexander was giving the signal for an attack to those about him, but when he heard the message from Parmenio he said that Parmenio was not in his right mind, nor within the bounds of reasoning, but had forgotten in his confusion that those who win will also gain possession of their enemies' goods, while those who are defeated must think not of money or slaves but of how to die nobly and gloriously fighting.
Having sent this reply to Parmenio, he put on his helmet, having already taken the rest of his armor from his tent — a Sicilian tunic girded about him, and over it a doubled linen breastplate, part of the plunder won at Issus. Though made of iron, his helmet gleamed like burnished silver, the work of Theophilus, and fitted to it was a neck-guard, likewise of iron,
set with precious stones. He also carried a sword, remarkable for how well it was tempered and how light it was, given to him by the Citian king, and he had made a habit of using this very sword extensively in his battles. The clasp of his cloak was more elaborately crafted than any other piece of his armor — it had been made long ago by Helicon, a gift bestowed on him by the city of Rhodes —
and this too he used for his battles. Now as long as he was arranging some part of the phalanx, or giving orders, or instructing, or riding along to inspect, he used another horse, sparing Bucephalas, who was by now past his prime; but when he was about to go into action, that horse was brought to him, and as soon as he had mounted him he would begin the charge.
At that time, after speaking at length to the Thessalians and to the other Greeks, and when their shouts had urged him onward to lead the charge against the barbarians, he moved his lance to his left hand and with his right called upon the gods, as Callisthenes says, praying, if he were truly born of Zeus, to defend and lend added strength to the Greeks,
while the seer Aristander, wearing a white cloak and a golden crown, rode along pointing out an eagle hovering above Alexander's head and directing its flight straight at the enemy, so that great courage arose in those who saw it, and out of this confidence, as they encouraged one another, the cavalry surged forward at a run against the enemy and the phalanx came billowing after,
but before the front ranks had closed the barbarians gave way, and there was a great pursuit, Alexander driving the defeated troops toward the center, where Darius was. For from a distance he had caught sight of him through the ranks drawn up before him, deep within the royal squadron, a handsome and tall man standing upon a high chariot, fenced about by many splendid horsemen closely massed around the chariot and arrayed to receive the enemy.
But Alexander, appearing terrible close at hand, drove the fleeing men in upon those who stood their ground, threw them into confusion, and scattered the greater part of them; the bravest and noblest of them, however, were slain before the king and fell one upon another, hindering the pursuit as they lay entangled and writhing together with their horses.
Darius, with all these horrors before his eyes and the forces drawn up in front of him collapsing back upon him, since it was not easy to turn the chariot about and drive it clear — the wheels were caught fast, choked with such a mass of corpses, and the horses, hemmed in and hidden by the multitude of the dead, reared up and threw the driver into confusion — abandoned the chariot and his weapons, and mounting a mare, newly foaled, as they say, fled.
He would not, indeed, have escaped even then, had not other horsemen come again from Parmenio, calling Alexander back, on the ground that a great force of the enemy still stood firm there and would not give way. Indeed, in general, men blame Parmenio for having been sluggish and slow to act in that battle, whether because age was already taking something from his boldness, or because, as Callisthenes says, he resented and was jealous of the power and greatness of Alexander's position.
At that time, then, the king, vexed at being called back, did not tell his soldiers the truth, but, as though restraining them from further slaughter and since it was growing dark, gave the signal for recall; but as he rode toward the threatened section of the line, word reached him en route that the enemy had suffered total defeat and were fleeing.
When that battle had thus come to its end, the empire of the Persians seemed to have been altogether destroyed, and Alexander, proclaimed king of Asia, offered magnificent sacrifices to the gods and gave his friends wealth, houses, and governorships; and eager for the good opinion of the Greeks, he wrote that all tyrannies were to be abolished and that the cities should govern themselves under their own laws, and in particular that the Plataeans' city should be rebuilt, because their fathers had furnished their land for the
Greeks to fight for freedom upon; and he also dispatched a portion of the spoils to the people of Croton in Italy, honoring the zeal and virtue of Phayllus the athlete, who, at the time of the Persian Wars, when the other Italian Greeks had given up on the cause of the Greeks, sailed to Salamis with a ship fitted out at his own expense, wishing to share in the danger. So kindly disposed was he toward every kind of virtue, and so much a guardian and kinsman of noble deeds.
As he advanced through the whole of Babylonia, which came under his power at once, he was struck with particular wonder by the chasm out of which fire rose continuously as though from a fountain, and by the flow of naphtha, which, because of its great quantity, forms a pool not far from the chasm; this in other respects resembles asphalt, but is so susceptible to fire that, before the flame even touches it, it is kindled by the mere radiance surrounding the light and often sets the intervening air ablaze along with it.
Wishing to demonstrate its nature and power, the natives sprinkled the narrow street leading to the king's lodging lightly with the substance, then, standing at the far end, applied their torches to the places thus wetted, for it was already growing dark. As soon as the first spots caught fire, the flame took no perceptible time to spread, but in an instant reached the other end, and the whole street had become a continuous sheet of fire.
Among those who used to look after the king's body with oil and bathing, and to guide his mind gently toward relaxation, was a man named Athenophanes, an Athenian. This man, when a boy of no particular distinction and rather ridiculous in appearance, called Stephanus, was standing by Alexander in the bath at the time, singing charmingly, said, "Do you wish, O king, that we make trial of the substance on Stephanus? For if it catches on him and is not quenched, I would say its power is altogether irresistible and terrible."
The boy readily offered himself for the test, and as soon as he was smeared with the substance and it touched him, so great a flame burst from his body and he was so entirely seized by fire that Alexander fell into utter distress and fear; and had it not been that, by chance, many were present carrying vessels of water for the bath in their hands, the help would not have come in time to overtake the spreading fire.
Even so, they barely managed to put out the fire that had taken hold of the boy's whole body, and afterward he was in a bad state for some time. It is reasonable, then, that some, reconciling the myth with the truth, say that this was the substance of Medea's drug, with which she anointed the crown and robe made famous in tragedy. For, they say, the fire did not blaze up of itself out of those objects, nor spontaneously, but when a flame was set near them beforehand, a swift attraction and contact, imperceptible to the senses, took place,
for the rays and streams of fire coming from a distance simply cast light and heat upon other bodies, but upon those that possess a dry, breath-like quality, or an oily and lasting moisture, they gather and, kindling fire, quickly transform the material. It raised a question, however, whether the origin — or rather the fuel — of the flame is the liquid that flows out from the earth, which has by nature an oily and fire-generating quality.
For Babylonia is exceedingly fiery, so much so that barley grains often spring off the ground and skip away, as though those spots were throbbing with some fever, and the people sleep in the heat upon skins filled with water.
Harpalus, who had been left behind as overseer of the region and who was fond of adorning the palace grounds and walks with Greek plantings, succeeded with the rest, but the ivy the soil not only failed to sustain but constantly destroyed, unable to bear the mixture — the one being fiery, the other loving cold. Of such digressions, provided they keep due measure, perhaps the more exacting critics will complain less.
Alexander, having become master of Susa, took possession in the palace of forty thousand talents of coined money, and other furnishings and luxury beyond description. There, they say, purple dye from Hermione was found to the amount of five thousand talents, laid up for nearly two hundred years, yet still preserving its bloom fresh and undimmed,
the reason for this, they say, being that the purple dyes are made with honey, and the white ones with white oil; for these too, after an equal length of time, are seen to keep their brightness clear and gleaming. Deinon also says that the kings used to have water brought from the Nile and from the Ister, along with other things, and stored in their treasury, as if thereby confirming the greatness of their empire and their mastery over all things,
Persia itself, difficult to enter owing to its rugged terrain and defended by the finest of the Persians (since Darius had by then fled), a guide came to him — this happening within not a long circuit of time — a man of two languages, born of a Lycian father and a Persian mother, of whom it is said that, while Alexander was still a boy, the Pythia foretold that a wolf would be Alexander's guide on his expedition against the Persians,
It happened that there was much slaughter of those captured, for he himself writes that, believing this would be advantageous to him, he ordered the men killed. As for coined money, they say they found as much as at Susa, and that the remaining furnishings and treasure needed five thousand camels and ten thousand mule-teams to haul away.
Seeing a great statue of Xerxes that had been carelessly knocked over by the crowd pressing into the palace, he stopped before it, and, addressing it as if it were alive, said, "Shall we pass you by, lying there, because of your campaign against the Greeks, or shall we set you upright again because of your greatness of spirit and virtue in other respects?" At last, after standing a long while in silence with himself, he passed on. Wishing to let his soldiers recover their strength—for it was winter—he spent four months there.
It is said that when he first sat down on the royal throne under the golden canopy, Demaratus the Corinthian, a well-disposed man and a friend of Alexander's father, wept as old men do, and said that those Greeks who had perished without living to watch Alexander take his place upon Darius's throne had missed out on a wonderful joy.
After this, being about to march out against Darius, he happened to give himself over to some drinking and amusement with his companions, so that women too came to the revel to drink with their lovers. Among these the most celebrated was Thaïs, the courtesan of Ptolemy who was later king, an Athenian by birth. Partly praising him tunefully, partly jesting with Alexander, she was led on, together with the drink, to make a speech suited to the character of her homeland, but grander than befit her own station,
for she said that of all she had endured wandering through Asia, she was being repaid by this day's luxury in the proud palaces of the Persians, and that she would take even greater pleasure in going in revel to burn down the house of Xerxes, who had burned Athens, setting the fire herself with the king watching, so that it might be said among men that the women who followed Alexander exacted a greater penalty from the Persians on behalf of Greece than did those famous generals by sea and land.
As soon as she had spoken these words, there arose clapping and uproar, and the companions urged him on with eager rivalry. The king, swept along, leapt up, and taking a garland and a torch, led the way.
Those who followed with revelry and shouting surrounded the palace, and the rest of the Macedonians, hearing of it, ran together with torches, rejoicing; for they hoped that this burning and destruction of the palace was a sign that he had his mind set on home and did not intend to go on living among barbarians. Some say it happened this way, others that it was done deliberately; but it is agreed that he quickly repented and ordered the fire put out.
Being by nature most generous, he gave still more lavishly as his fortunes grew; and to this was added a graciousness, with which alone those who give truly do a favor. I shall recall a few instances. Ariston, the leader of the Paeonians, having killed an enemy and shown Alexander the head, said, "This gift, O king, is honored among us with a cup of gold."
Alexander, laughing, said, "An empty one—but I shall drink to you with one full of unmixed wine." One of the common Macedonian soldiers was driving a royal mule laden with gold; when the animal grew weary, he himself took up the burden and carried it. Seeing him greatly distressed and learning the reason, the king, just as the man was about to set the load down, said, "Don't grow weary, but carry it the rest of the way to your own tent,
keep it as your own, since you brought it this far." In general he was more displeased with those who did not take than with those who asked. And to Phocion he wrote a letter saying he would no longer treat him as a friend if he kept refusing his favors. To Serapion, one of the young men who played ball with him, he gave nothing, because Serapion never asked for anything. So when it was Serapion's turn at ball, he passed it always to the others instead; and when the king asked, "Won't you give it to me?" Serapion answered, "Because you never ask." At this Alexander laughed a great deal and gave him many gifts.
Against a certain Proteas, a man not without wit at jesting and drinking, he seemed to be angry; and when his friends begged for him, and Proteas himself wept, Alexander said he was reconciled. "Well then, O king," said Proteas, "give me some pledge of trust first." So he ordered five talents to be given to him. As to the wealth distributed to his friends and bodyguards, how great its bulk was is shown by a letter Olympias wrote to him.
"Otherwise," she says, "do well by your friends and hold them in honor, but now you are making them all equal to kings and providing them with great followings of friends, while leaving yourself isolated." Though Olympias wrote such things often, he kept her letters to himself, with a single exception: Hephaestion, following his usual habit, once read alongside him a letter already unsealed; Alexander made no move to stop him, but took off his own ring and pressed the seal to Hephaestion's lips.
To the son of Mazaeus, who had been the greatest man at Darius's court, he added a second satrapy, greater than the one he already held; but the man declined it, saying, "O king, then there was one Darius, but now you have made many Alexanders." To Parmenio he gave the house of Bagoas near Susa, in which it is said clothing worth a thousand talents was found. And he wrote to Antipater ordering him to keep bodyguards, since he was being plotted against.
To his mother he gave and sent many gifts, but he would not allow her to meddle in affairs or interfere in military matters; and when she complained, he bore her harshness gently. Only once, when Antipater wrote a long letter against her, after reading it he said Antipater did not know that one tear from a mother wipes out ten thousand letters.
When he saw that those around him had become altogether soft and were burdensome in their extravagant living and expenses—so that Hagnon of Teos wore silver nails in his boots, and Leonnatus had dust brought from Egypt on many camels for his wrestling exercises, and Philotas had hunting-nets made a hundred stadia long, and men who used to anoint themselves with oil went instead to their rubbing and bathing using perfumed oil, and were attended by masseurs and men to put them to bed—he rebuked them gently and philosophically,
saying he wondered that men who had fought so many great contests did not remember that those who have subdued others sleep more sweetly than those they subdued, nor did they see, comparing their own lives to those of the Persians, that luxury is most slavish, but toil most kingly. "And yet how," he said, "could one tend his own horse, or drill with spear or helmet, once his hands have lost the habit of serving his own precious body? Do you not know," he said,
"that the very limit of mastery over others is not to do the same things as those we have mastered?" So he drove himself all the more in campaigns and hunts, enduring hardship and exposing himself to danger, so much so that a Spartan envoy, present when he brought down a great lion, said: "Well done, Alexander—you have fought nobly against the lion for the kingship."
Craterus dedicated this hunt at Delphi, having bronze images made of the lion and the dogs, and of the king grappling with the lion, and of himself coming to his aid; of these, some were shaped by Lysippus, others by Leochares.
Alexander, then, in training himself and at the same time spurring on the others to virtue, took risks; but his friends, wishing now, because of their wealth and status, to live in luxury and ease, grew weary of the wanderings and campaigns, and little by little went so far as to speak ill and slander him. He, in the beginning, took this very gently, saying that it was a king's part to be spoken ill of while doing good.
And yet the smallest of the things he did for his intimates were tokens of great goodwill and honor; I shall set out a few of them. He wrote to Peucestas, finding fault with him because, having been bitten by a bear, he had written to others about it but had not told him. "But now at least," he says, "write and tell me how you are, and whether any of your fellow-hunters abandoned you, so that they may pay the penalty."
To Hephaestion's circle, absent on some errand, he wrote that during a game of mongoose-hunting, Craterus, falling upon Perdiccas's javelin, had been wounded in the thighs. And when Peucestas recovered from an illness, he wrote to Alexippus the doctor in thanks. And when Craterus was ill, having seen a vision in his sleep, he himself offered certain sacrifices on his behalf and ordered Craterus to sacrifice as well.
He also wrote to Pausanias the doctor, who wished to purge Craterus with hellebore, partly anxious, partly advising him how to use the drug. And the first men to report Harpalus's flight and escape, Ephialtes and Cissus, he had put in chains, as though they were lying about the man,
and when he was sending home those of his men who were sick or elderly, Eurylochus of Aegae enrolled himself among the sick; but being found out to have nothing wrong with him, he admitted that he was smitten with Telesippa and meant to trail her to the coast, since she was leaving. Alexander asked what sort of woman she was; on learning she belonged among the freeborn courtesans, he said, "Well then, Eurylochus, count me your partner in this romance—let us work together to win Telesippa over, whether through persuasion or through presents, seeing that she is her own mistress."
One may marvel at him for finding time, amid all this, even for such letters to his friends as the one he wrote ordering a search made for Seleucus's slave-boy who had run off to Cilicia; and praising Peucestas for capturing Nicon, a slave of Craterus's; and writing to Megabyzus about the servant who had taken sanctuary in the temple, telling him to seize the man outside the temple if he could, by luring him out, but not to lay hands on him while he was within the sanctuary.
It is said that in judging capital cases at first he would place his hand over one ear while the accuser spoke, so that his judgment might be kept clean and unprejudiced toward the man in danger. But later on he was made harsher by the many slanders, which found their way through the true ones to the false. And especially when he heard himself spoken ill of, he lost his self-possession and became harsh and implacable, since he valued his reputation more than his life and his kingdom.
At that time he marched out against Darius, expecting to fight again; but hearing of his seizure by Bessus, he sent the Thessalians home, adding a gift of two thousand talents to their pay. As for the pursuit, it was grueling and long—for in eleven days he rode three thousand three hundred stadia—and most of his men gave out, especially because of the lack of water.
There some Macedonians met him carrying water from the river in skins on mules; and seeing Alexander, since it was now noon, suffering badly from thirst, they hastily poured some into a helmet and carried it over to him. When he asked whom they were carrying it for, they said, "For our own sons—but so long as you live we will make other sons, even if we lose those."
Hearing this, he took the helmet in his hands; but looking around and seeing all the horsemen around him with their heads bowed and their eyes fixed on the drink, he gave it back without drinking, but praised the men, saying, "For if I alone drink,
these men will lose heart." Seeing his self-control and greatness of spirit, the horsemen cried out for him to lead on with confidence, and whipped their horses; for it seemed to them, with a king like this leading them, that they were incapable of weariness or thirst, or even of dying.
The eagerness, then, was the same in all; but they say only sixty men managed to burst into the enemy's camp along with him, where, stepping over quantities of silver and gold thrown down, and passing by many wagons full of children and women with no drivers left, drifting about, they pursued those in the lead, thinking Darius was among them. With difficulty they found his body lying in a wagon, riddled with many javelin wounds, close to death.
Even so he asked for something to drink, and having drunk cold water, said to Polystratus, who gave it to him: "Stranger, this is the final measure of my whole misfortune, that I am unable to repay kindness with kindness; but Alexander will repay you the favor, and the gods will repay Alexander for his kindness to my mother and my wife and my children—to him I give this right hand, through you." Saying this, and taking hold of Polystratus's hand, he died.
When Alexander came up, he was plainly grieved at what had happened, and, loosening his own cloak, threw it over the body and covered it. And Bessus, whom he later found, he tore apart, bending straight trees together and fastening one part of the body to each, then releasing them so that, driven by their force, each took the share belonging to it. As for Darius's body, adorned in royal fashion, he sent it to his mother, and he took the brother, Exathres, among his own companions.
He himself, with the freshest part of his force, descended into Hyrcania. And seeing a gulf of the sea that appeared no smaller than the Pontus, but sweeter than the rest of the sea, he could learn nothing certain about it, but guessed chiefly that it was a backwater of the Maeotic Lake.
And yet the truth had not escaped the natural philosophers, but many years before Alexander's campaign they had recorded that, of four gulfs running in from the outer sea, this is the most northerly one, called the Hyrcanian and Caspian sea alike. There some of the barbarians, unexpectedly falling in with the men leading his horse Bucephalas, seized him.
He took this hard, not moderately, but sent a herald and threatened to kill them all, together with their children and wives, if they did not send back the horse. But when they came bringing the horse and handing over their cities besides, he treated them all humanely, and gave a ransom for the horse to those who had taken him.
From there he marched up into Parthia, and, having leisure, first put on the barbarian dress — whether because he wished to accustom himself to the customs of the region, on the ground that shared habit and kinship of race contribute greatly to the civilizing of men, or because this was in fact an attempt, put forward tentatively, at the matter of prostration before the Macedonians, so that they might grow accustomed little by little to bear his change of manner and way of life,
he did not, however, adopt that Median dress entirely, which was barbaric and outlandish, nor did he take the trousers, or the candys, or the tiara, but mixed together, rather skillfully, something between the Persian and the Median styles, less ostentatious than the latter, but more stately than the former. And he wore it at first only when meeting with the barbarians and his companions at home, and then later he was seen riding out and conducting business before the multitude dressed this way.
And the sight was distressing to the Macedonians, but since they admired his other virtues, they felt he deserved some concessions for what pleased and honored him — he who, besides all his other feats, had lately taken an arrow in the shin, by which the bone of the fibula was broken off and came out, and had been struck again by a stone on the neck, so that a mist even spread over his eyesight,
which lingered no small time; yet nevertheless he did not stop exposing himself recklessly to dangers, but even made his way across the Orexartes river, a stream he took to be the Tanais itself, and, having routed the Scythians, pursued them for a hundred stadia, though troubled by dysentery.
There, most say, the Amazon came to him — among them Cleitarchus, and Polyclitus, and Onesicritus, and Antigenes, and Ister; but Aristobulus, and Chares the court usher, and Ptolemy, and Anticleides, and Philo the Theban, and Philip of Theangela, and besides these Hecataeus of Eretria, and Philip of Chalcis, and Duris of Samos say that this was an invention.
And Alexander himself seems to bear witness to them. For writing everything precisely to Antipater, he says that the Scythian proposed giving him his daughter to wed, yet says nothing at all of any Amazon. And it is said that Onesicritus, long afterward, was reading the fourth book of his history aloud to Lysimachus, by then a king, at the point where the Amazon episode was recounted, and Lysimachus, with a quiet smile, asked, "And where was I at the time?" These things, then, one might neither disbelieve nor believe the more, and still marvel at Alexander.
Fearing that the Macedonians might grow weary before the remainder of the campaign, he let the rest of the multitude stay where they were, but kept his finest soldiers with him in Hyrcania — some twenty thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry — and told them that, for the moment, the barbarians regarded them as figures glimpsed in a dream, but that if they merely threw Asia into confusion and then departed, the barbarians would fall upon them at once as though upon women.
Nevertheless he did allow those who wished to depart to go, calling them to witness that, though he was conquering the whole known world on Macedonia's behalf, he found himself left with none but his friends and those still willing to fight at his side. This is written almost in these very words in his letter to Antipater, and also that, when he said this, all cried out that he should lead them wherever in the inhabited world he wished; and once these had accepted the test, it was no longer difficult to bring the mass of the army along, but it followed readily.
So then he assimilated his own manner of life still more to that of the natives, and drew them in turn closer to Macedonian customs, thinking that by mixture and partnership he would establish affairs more securely through goodwill than through force, now that he was setting off far away. For this reason too he selected thirty thousand boys and ordered them to learn Greek letters and to be trained in Macedonian arms, appointing many overseers.
And the affair concerning Roxane was brought about by love — she having been seen, beautiful and in the bloom of youth, in a dance at a drinking party — yet it seemed not out of keeping with the circumstances then prevailing. For the barbarians took heart at this partnership of marriage, and loved Alexander all the more, because, being most self-controlled in such matters, he had not endured to touch even the one woman by whom he was conquered, without the sanction of law.
And when he saw, among his greatest friends, that Hephaestion approved and shared in adopting his new manner, while Craterus held fast to their ancestral customs, he conducted his dealings with the barbarians through the former, and with the Greeks and Macedonians through the latter; and altogether he loved the one most, but honored the other, holding to the view, which he voiced again and again, that Hephaestion was devoted to Alexander the man, whereas Craterus was devoted to the king,
and so, being covertly at odds with one another, they often clashed; and once, in India, they even came to blows, drawing their swords, and as the friends of each rushed to help, Alexander rode up and openly rebuked Hephaestion, calling him reckless and mad if he did not understand that, if anyone should take Alexander from him, he would be nothing; and privately he also berated Craterus bitterly.
And bringing them together and reconciling them, he swore by Ammon and the other gods that he loved them, indeed, above all men, but warned that should he catch them quarreling again, he would put to death both of them, or at minimum whichever one had started it. From then on, it is said, they never said or did anything against each other, even in jest.
Philotas, son of Parmenio, held great standing among the Macedonians — for he was thought both brave and enduring — and no one, after Alexander himself, was so generous or so fond of his companions. It is said, for instance, that once a close friend asked him for a sum of money, and he gave orders that it be granted; and when his steward said he had none, he said, "What are you saying?",
"Have you not even a cup or a cloak?" But by the weight of his pride, the heaviness of his wealth, and the care and manner of living he indulged concerning his body — more burdensome than befits a private citizen — and since at that time he imitated dignity and loftiness not gracefully but gracelessly, in an awkward and affected manner, he incurred suspicion and envy, so that even Parmenio was once moved to tell him, "Son, be a lesser man."
And in fact he had for a very long time been the object of slanders against him with Alexander himself. For when the property at Damascus was captured, after Darius' defeat in Cilicia, and many persons were brought to the camp, there was found among the captives a young woman, Pydnaean by birth, comely in appearance, called Antigone,
and Philotas got her. And as a young man does with his beloved, and over wine, speaking with much soldierly and boastful frankness, he declared the greatest of the deeds to be his own and his father's, and called Alexander a mere boy who through them enjoyed the mere name of rule.
As the woman repeated these things to one of her acquaintances, and he in turn, as is likely, to another, word of it eventually reached Craterus, who seized the young woman and delivered her in secret before Alexander. And he, on hearing this, ordered her to keep company with Philotas as before, and to report to him whatever she should learn from him, coming to him each time.
So Philotas, unaware that he was thus being watched, continued his liaison with Antigone, letting fall many words in anger and boastfulness, and unsuitable speeches against the king.
And Alexander, although a strong proof had come to hand against Philotas, restrained himself and kept silent, whether because he trusted in Parmenio's goodwill toward him, or because he feared their reputation and power. At that time there was a Macedonian named Limnus, from Chalaestra, who, plotting against Alexander, invited a certain Nicomachus, one of the young men toward whom he himself had an erotic attachment, to share in the deed.
When Nicomachus refused him, but instead reported the approach to his brother Cebalinus, the latter went to Philotas and asked him to bring them in to Alexander, on the ground that they had urgent and important matters to bring to him. But Philotas — whatever came over him, for it is unclear — did not bring them in, on the grounds that the king was occupied with other, greater matters; and he did this twice.
They, now scorning Philotas, turned to another, and through him were brought to Alexander. First they reported the matter of Limnus, and then they gently indicated Philotas' part, namely that he had neglected them though they had come to him twice. And this greatly provoked Alexander; and when the man sent to arrest Limnus killed him as he resisted seizure, Alexander grew even more troubled, believing that the evidence needed to confirm the conspiracy had slipped from his grasp.
And being bitterly disposed toward Philotas, he drew in those who had long hated him, who now openly said that it was folly on the king's part to suppose that Limnus, a man of Chalaestra, would dare so great an undertaking on his own; rather, he was a mere agent, or instrument, let loose from a greater authority, and the plot ought to be sought among those to whom it was most advantageous that this remain hidden,
and by such words and suspicions, once the king's ears were opened, they now brought forward countless charges against Philotas. As a result he was arrested and interrogated, with the Companions standing over the torture, and Alexander listening from outside, behind a curtain drawn across — at which time, it is said, he himself remarked, hearing Philotas' piteous and abject cries and pleas addressed to Hephaestion and his men, "Being so soft and unmanly, Philotas, did you undertake affairs of such magnitude?"
And when Philotas was dead, he sent at once and had Parmenio killed too, in Media — a man who had accomplished much together with Philip, and who alone, or most of all among the older friends, had urged Alexander to cross over into Asia; and of the three sons he had had on campaign, he had already seen two die before this, and was now destroyed together with the third.
Once these events had taken place, they left many of Alexander's friends afraid of him, none more so than Antipater, who secretly sent pledges to and received them from the Aetolians. For the Aetolians feared Alexander because of the destruction of the Oeniadae, which, on learning of it, he said he would avenge — not on behalf of the children of the Oeniadae, but he himself would exact punishment from the Aetolians.
Not long after, the affair concerning Cleitus also came to pass — which, put simply for those who merely hear of it, seems more savage in the telling than the matter of Philotas; yet when we put together at once the cause and the occasion, we find that this was done by the king not out of deliberate purpose, but by a kind of misfortune, anger and drunkenness having furnished an occasion for Cleitus' evil genius.
It came about this way. Some men arrived bringing Greek fruit from the sea to the king, and he, marveling at how fresh and lovely it was, summoned Cleitus, wanting him to see it and take a share for himself. Cleitus happened to be in the middle of a sacrifice, but he broke it off and came, and three sheep already anointed with the libation trailed along behind him.
Learning of this, the king consulted the seers Aristander and Cleomantis the Laconian. When they said the sign was evil, he ordered a sacrifice of atonement to be made quickly on Cleitus' behalf. For he himself, on the third day before, had seen in his sleep a strange vision: he thought he saw Cleitus sitting together with the sons of Parmenio, in black garments, all of them dead.
Cleitus, however, had not yet completed his sacrifice, yet he hurried to the banquet all the same, since the king had already made his offering to the Dioscuri. As the drinking turned unruly, men sang songs that a certain Pranichus had written—or, as some tell it, Pierion—songs aimed at mocking and shaming the generals who had lately suffered defeat at the hands of the barbarians.
While the older men were displeased and railed against both the poet and the singer, Alexander and those around him listened with pleasure and urged the man to go on; Cleitus, already drunk and by nature harsh-tempered and headstrong, grew especially indignant, declaring that it was wrong for people surrounded by hostile foreigners to mock Macedonians who, misfortune notwithstanding, far surpassed in worth the men now laughing at them.
When Alexander said that Cleitus was pleading his own case by calling cowardice misfortune, Cleitus rose up and said, "Yet it was this very cowardice of mine that saved you, when you already owed your life to a god, by turning your back to Spithridates' sword; and it was by the blood and the wounds of Macedonians that you became so great as to disown Philip and adopt Ammon as your father."
Provoked, Alexander said, "Is this what you always say about us, you wretch, stirring up strife among the Macedonians? Do you think you will get away with it?" "No indeed, Alexander," he said, "not even now do we get away unscathed, receiving such rewards for our labors; and we count blessed those who are already dead, before they had to see Macedonians beaten with Median rods, and begging the Persians in order to gain audience with their king."
As Cleitus spoke thus with such frankness, and Alexander's companions rose up against him and abused him in turn, the older men tried to check the uproar. Alexander then looked to two men present, Xenodochus of Cardia and Artemius of Colophon, and remarked, "Do the Greeks not seem to you like demigods moving among wild beasts, when they walk among Macedonians such as these?"
But Cleitus would not yield; instead he bade Alexander say openly whatever he wished, or else stop inviting to his table those who were outspoken and unafraid to speak their minds—better, he said, to surround himself with barbarians and slaves ready to bow before his Persian sash and pale-striped robe. Alexander, no longer able to bear his anger, snatched one of the apples lying nearby, threw it at him, struck him, and began looking for his dagger.
But Aristophanes, one of the bodyguards, had already managed to slip it away, and the others crowded around him and begged him to stop; he leapt up and shouted in Macedonian, calling for his shield-bearers—this being the signal of great alarm—and ordered the trumpeter to sound the call, and struck him with his fist when he lingered and seemed unwilling. This man later won renown as the one most responsible for preventing the camp from falling into disorder. As for Cleitus, since he would not give way, his friends with difficulty pushed him out of the men's hall.
But he came in again by another door, very carelessly and boldly reciting these iambic lines from Euripides' Andromache: "Alas, how badly things are ordered in Greece." Whereupon Alexander, taking a spear from one of the guards, pulled back the curtain that hung across the doorway, met Cleitus as he stepped forward, and drove the spear through him.
As he fell with a groan and a roar, Alexander's rage at once left him; and coming to himself and seeing his friends standing there speechless, he snatched the spear out of the corpse and, rushing to strike himself in the throat, was restrained, the bodyguards seizing his hands and carrying his body by force into his chamber.
After he had passed the night in bitter weeping, and on the following day, worn out with crying and lamenting, lay speechless, drawing heavy groans, his friends, fearing this silence, forced their way in. He would not receive the words of the others, but once Aristander the seer brought up the earlier vision concerning Cleitus and the accompanying omen, as though these events had been fated long in advance, he appeared to relent.
For this reason they brought in the philosopher Callisthenes, kin to Aristotle, along with Anaxarchus of Abdera. Callisthenes attempted a gentle, ethical approach, easing his argument in gradually and handling the grief painlessly so as to get hold of it; Anaxarchus, however, who had pursued his own distinct philosophical path from the outset and had earned a name for scorning and disdaining those around him, burst straight in and exclaimed, "This is Alexander,
upon whom the whole inhabited world now looks—yet here he lies, sobbing as a slave would, cowering before law and the judgment of other men, though it is he who should stand as law and measure of justice for them, since he has won the right to rule and command rather than serve as a slave to hollow opinion.
Do you not know," he said, "that Zeus has Justice and Right seated beside him, so that whatever is done by one who has power is lawful and just?" By using such arguments Anaxarchus did indeed lighten the king's suffering, but he made his character in many respects more vain and lawless, while ingratiating himself remarkably, and he also slandered Callisthenes' company, which was not otherwise particularly pleasant on account of its severity.
It is said that once at dinner, when there was talk about the seasons and the mixture of the surrounding air, Callisthenes, siding with those who said that conditions there were colder and more wintry than in Greece, and Anaxarchus opposing him and arguing the point, said, "Surely, though, you will concede this much: the cold bites harder here than back home; there you got through winter wrapped in a single cloak, yet here you lie buried under three blankets." This too provoked Anaxarchus still further.
Callisthenes was a source of vexation to the other sophists and flatterers, being courted by the young men for his gift of speech, and equally agreeable to their elders for a manner of living that was orderly, dignified, and self-sufficient, one that lent credibility to the reason he gave for making the journey—namely, that ambition to restore his fellow citizens and resettle his native city had led him to join Alexander.
Being envied for his reputation, he gave his detractors some grounds against himself, refusing most invitations, and, when he did join company, by his gravity and silence seeming not to approve or take pleasure in what was going on, so that Alexander himself said of him, "I hate a wise man who is not wise for himself."
It is said that once, when many guests had been invited to dinner, Callisthenes was bidden to deliver, over the wine cup, a eulogy of the Macedonians, and he did so with such flowing eloquence on the subject that the guests rose up applauding and threw their garlands upon him; whereupon Alexander said that, in the words of Euripides, it is no great feat to speak well when one has been given fine material for one's speech:
"But show us your own power," he said, "by speaking against the Macedonians, so that they may learn their faults and become better men." So the man, turning to a palinode of sorts, spoke with much frankness against the Macedonians, declaring that the Greek civil strife had been the cause of Philip's rise and power: "and in time of civil discord even the utter villain gains honor"—by which he stirred up bitter and heavy hatred among the Macedonians toward him, and Alexander said that Callisthenes had given proof not of his cleverness but of his ill will toward the Macedonians.
This, then, is what Hermippus says the reader of Callisthenes, Stroebus, related to Aristotle; and that Callisthenes, perceiving the king's estrangement from him, on two or three occasions when leaving him quoted, "Patroclus too has died, who was far better than you." So it seems Aristotle spoke not amiss when he said that Callisthenes was powerful and great in speech, but had no sense.
But indeed, having firmly and philosophically rejected the practice of prostration, and being the only one to say openly what all the best and oldest of the Macedonians resented in secret, he freed the Greeks from great shame, and Alexander from an even greater one, by turning him away from requiring prostration—but he destroyed himself, seeming to force the king rather than to persuade him.
Chares of Mytilene says that Alexander, having drunk from a cup at the banquet, held it out to one of his friends; the man, receiving it, rose toward the household altar, and after drinking, first made obeisance, then kissed Alexander, and reclined again.
As all the others did this in turn, Callisthenes took the cup while the king was not paying attention, being in conversation with Hephaestion, and, after drinking, approached to kiss him; but Demetrius, surnamed the son of Pheidon, said, "Take his kiss not, my king—he alone among us failed to bow before you." So Alexander turned his face away from the kiss, and Callisthenes, speaking loudly, said, "Well then, I go away the poorer by one kiss."
As this estrangement was thus growing, first Hephaestion gained credit for saying that Callisthenes, having agreed with him to perform the prostration, had broken his promise; then men like Lysimachus and Hagnon attacked him further, claiming that the sophist strutted about full of self-regard as though he were about to topple a tyranny, and that the young men gathered around him and paid him court as though he alone were free among so many thousand others.
For this reason, when the conspiracy of Hermolaus and his companions against Alexander was discovered, those who slandered Callisthenes seemed to be making charges that resembled the truth: for to one who had asked how a man might become most famous, he was said to have replied, "By killing the most famous man"; and in urging Hermolaus on to the deed, he told him not to fear the golden couch, but to bear in mind that the man he approached could fall ill or be wounded just as any other person.
And yet none of Hermolaus' associates, even under the utmost compulsion, accused Callisthenes. Indeed Alexander himself, writing at once to Craterus, Attalus, and Alcetas, states that the boys confessed under torture to having acted on their own, with no one else sharing knowledge of the plot. But later, writing to Antipater and now implicating Callisthenes as well, he says, "The boys
died by stoning at the hands of the Macedonians, but the sophist I will deal with myself, together with those who sent him out and those cities that shelter men who conspire against me"—here at least he shows plainly enough his true feeling toward Aristotle, for Callisthenes had grown up in his household through their kinship, being the son of Hero, a niece of Aristotle.
As to his death, some say he was hanged by order of Alexander; others, that he was bound in fetters and fell ill; but Chares reports that following his arrest he remained in chains for seven months, held so that he could face trial before the council with Aristotle present, and that he died around the time Alexander suffered his wound in India, by then grown extremely fat and overrun with lice.
These things, then, took place later. Demaratus of Corinth, already an old man, was eager to go up and visit Alexander, and having beheld him said that the Greeks who had died before seeing Alexander seated upon the throne of Darius had been deprived of a great pleasure. He did not, however, enjoy the king's goodwill much longer, but died of illness and was buried with great magnificence, and the army heaped up over him a huge tomb, eighty cubits high in circumference; and his remains were carried down to the sea on a splendidly adorned four-horse chariot.
As he was about to cross over into India, seeing that the army, laden with a great quantity of spoils, had already become heavy and hard to move, at daybreak, once the wagons had been loaded, he first set fire to his own and those of his companions, and after these ordered fire to be put also to those of the Macedonians. And the plan seemed, when it came to it, a greater and more formidable thing than the deed itself.
It vexed only a few; but most of the men, with shouting and cries of enthusiasm, sharing what was necessary with those in need, and themselves burning and destroying whatever exceeded their needs, filled Alexander with eagerness and zeal. By now he was also a fearsome and unforgiving punisher of wrongdoing. Indeed, he had appointed a certain Menander, one of his companions, to command a garrison, and when that man refused to stay at his post, Alexander had him killed; and among the barbarians who rose in revolt, he personally shot down Orsodates with an arrow.
When a sheep gave birth to a lamb that had about its head the shape and color of a tiara, with two testicles on either side of it, he was disgusted by the sign and was purified by the Babylonians, whom he kept with him by custom for such matters; and he told his friends that he was troubled not for his own sake but for theirs, lest, if he should fail, providence should transfer his power to some ignoble and feeble man. However, a better sign that followed relieved his despondency.
For the Macedonian in charge of the royal bed-chamber attendants, a man named Proxenus, while digging out a spot for the royal tent near the Oxus river, struck a spring of oily, greasy liquid; once the initial flow had been drawn off, oil came up already pure and clear, apparently no different from ordinary oil in smell or taste, and matching it fully in sheen and richness—remarkable, given that the land did not even grow olive trees.
It is said, then, that the Oxus itself is a most gentle water, such that bathers come out of it with smoother, sleeker skin. Yet Alexander was clearly extraordinarily delighted, as is evident from what he writes to Antipater, ranking this among the greatest of the things that had come to him from the god; while the seers made it a sign of a glorious campaign, but a toilsome and difficult one, for oil, they said, had been given to men by the god as a relief from toils.
Now many dangers befell him in his battles, and he met with severe wounds, but the greatest destruction of his army was wrought by scarcity of necessities and by the harsh extremes of climate; while he himself, striving with daring to surpass fortune and with valor to surpass his own power, thought that nothing was unconquerable for those who dared, nor secure for those who lacked courage.
It is said that while besieging the rock of Sisimithres, which was inaccessible and sheer, and while his soldiers were losing heart, he asked Oxyartes what sort of man Sisimithres himself was in his soul. When Oxyartes said he was the most cowardly of men, Alexander said, "Then you yourself say that the rock is capturable by us, for its commander is not secure."
This rock, then, he took by frightening Sisimithres. And when he attacked another rock likewise sheer, he urged on the younger of the Macedonians, and addressing one who was named Alexander, he said, "But it is fitting for you at least to play the man, even because of your name." And when the young man fell fighting brilliantly, Alexander was not moderately stung by it.
At the place called Nysa, when the Macedonians were hesitant to advance—for there was a deep river beside it—he stood there and said, "What then? Have I, wretch that I am, not learned to swim?" and, holding his shield as he already was, he wished to cross over. But when, after he had halted the fighting, envoys came from the besieged cities to make entreaty, at first, being seen unattended in his armor, he struck them with amazement; then, when a cushion was brought to him, he ordered the eldest of them to take it and sit down—his name was Acuphis.
Acuphis, marveling at his splendor and kindness, asked what he wished them to do to be counted his friends. When Alexander said, "That you set yourselves up you as their ruler, and send to us a hundred of your best men," Acuphis laughed and said, "But I shall rule better, O king, if I send you the worst rather than the best."
Taxiles is said to have held a portion of India not inferior in size to Egypt, one especially rich in pasturage and fine fruits; he was also said to be a wise man, and when he greeted Alexander he said, "What need is there of wars and battle between us, Alexander, if you have not come to seize our water or our essential food—the sole possessions over which sensible men would feel driven to fight to the death?
As for everything else that goes by the name of wealth or property, I am glad to give freely if I hold the stronger position; but should I be the weaker one, I do not shrink from being grateful for good received." Alexander, delighted, clasped his hand and said, "Do you really suppose that our meeting will end without a battle, after such words and such friendliness? No, you will gain nothing thereby—for I shall contend against you and fight it out with you in acts of kindness, so that you may not surpass me in generosity."
And having received many gifts and given more in return, at last he drank to him a toast of a thousand talents of coined money. By this he grieved his friends exceedingly, but made many of the barbarians more kindly disposed toward him. But when the most warlike of the Indians, serving as mercenaries, kept going about among the cities defending them vigorously and doing Alexander much harm, he agreed to a truce with them within one particular city, and afterward, overtaking the whole company on the road as they marched away, he had them killed,
and this, like a stain, clings to his warlike deeds, though in other respects he waged war lawfully and in kingly fashion. No less trouble than these did the philosophers give him, reviling those kings who attached themselves to him, and inciting the free peoples to revolt; wherefore he hanged many of these also.
The events concerning Porus he himself has recorded in his letters as they took place. He says that between the two camps, with the Hydaspes flowing between, Porus kept stationing his elephants on the opposite bank and continually watching the crossing-point. He himself, therefore, made a noise and much commotion in the camp every day, accustoming the barbarians not to be afraid;
but on a stormy and moonless night, taking a portion of his infantry, and of the cavalry the strongest, and advancing far from the enemy, he crossed over to a small island. There, when a violent rainstorm poured down, and many thunderbolts and lightning-flashes came down upon the camp, nevertheless, seeing that some were perishing and being consumed by the lightning, he set out from the little island and made for the opposite banks.
And the Hydaspes, made rough and swollen by the storm as it came on, made a great breach, and a large part of the current was carried off that way; and they themselves received the middle part insecurely, since it was already sliding away and being broken apart around them. There, they say, he said, "O Athenians, would you believe what dangers I am undergoing for the sake of reputation among you?"
But this Onesicritus has recorded; he himself, however, says that they let go the rafts and crossed the breach along with their arms, wet up to the chest, and having crossed, rode ahead of the infantry for twenty stadia, calculating that should the foe come at him with horsemen he would win easily, whereas if they brought their phalanx forward instead, his own foot soldiers would reach him in time—and it was this second outcome that actually occurred.
For having routed a thousand of the cavalry and sixty of the chariots who fell upon him, he captured every one of the chariots and slew four hundred horsemen; and thus Porus, realizing that Alexander himself had crossed over, advanced with all his force, except for as much as he left behind to hinder the Macedonians who were crossing. Fearing the beasts and the multitude of the enemy, he himself charged against one wing, and ordered Coenus to attack the right,
and when a rout occurred on both sides, those who were forced back kept retreating always toward the beasts and huddling together, whence the battle already became confused, and scarcely by the eighth hour did the enemy give up. This, then, is what the author of the battle himself has recorded in his letters. But most of the historians agree that Porus, exceeding four cubits and a span in height, was in no way inferior in proportion to his elephant, by reason of the size and bulk of his body,
and yet the elephant was very large, and displayed wondrous intelligence and care for the king: while the king still had strength, it defended him vigorously against those attacking and beat them off, but once it sensed him growing faint under the weight of so many spear-casts and injuries, worried that he might slide off its back, it slowly knelt and lowered itself to the ground, and with its trunk taking hold of each of the spears gently, drew them one by one out of his body,
and when Porus was taken, Alexander asked him how he wished to be treated. "Like a king," he said; and when asked further whether he had anything else to say, he said, "Everything is contained in 'like a king.'" So Alexander not only allowed him to rule what he had ruled before, calling him satrap, but also added territory, having subdued the independent tribes—in which, they say, there were fifteen nations, five thousand notable cities, and very many villages; and yet other territory three times as much, over which he appointed Philip, one of his Companions, as satrap.
From the battle with Porus, Bucephalas also died—not at once, but later, as most say, while being treated for his wounds, but as Onesicritus says, from old age, having become worn out; for he died at thirty years of age. Alexander was severely stung by this, feeling the loss to be nothing short of a comrade and a friend; and founding a city in the horse's honor beside the Hydaspes, he named it Bucephalia. It is also said that after the death of his dog Peritas, an animal he himself had raised from a pup and loved dearly, he likewise founded a city bearing its name. This Sotion says he heard from Potamon of Lesbos.
The struggle against Porus, however, made the Macedonians more sluggish, and checked their further advance into India. For having with difficulty pushed back that man, who had drawn up twenty thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry in battle array, they resisted strongly when Alexander tried to force them to cross the river Ganges as well, learning that its width was thirty-two stadia and its depth a hundred fathoms, and that the opposite banks were hidden by multitudes of arms and horses and elephants,
for it was said that the kings of the Gandaritai and the Praisioi were waiting with eighty thousand horsemen, two hundred thousand infantry, eight thousand chariots, and six thousand war-elephants. And there was no boasting in this. For Androcottus, who reigned not long after, gave Seleucus five hundred elephants as a gift, and, marching six hundred thousand troops across the whole of India, brought it entirely under his control.
At first, then, out of despondency and anger, he withdrew into his tent and remained lying there, feeling no gratitude for what had been accomplished if he should not cross the Ganges, but regarding the withdrawal as an admission of defeat. But when his friends consoled him with fitting words, and the soldiers, standing at the doors with weeping and shouting, made supplication to him, he relented and struck camp, contriving many deceptive and sophistical devices for the sake of reputation.
For he had larger arms and mangers for horses and heavier bits made, and left them behind and scattered them about; and he set up altars of the gods, which even to this day the kings of the Praisioi, when they cross over, honor and offer Greek sacrifices upon. Androcottus, while still a youth, saw Alexander himself, and it is said that he often said afterward that Alexander came within a little of gaining control of affairs, since the king was hated and despised for his baseness and low birth.
Setting out from there, Alexander was eager to view the outer sea, and having built many oared ferry-boats and rafts, he was conveyed, borne along leisurely by the rivers. And the voyage was neither idle nor unwarlike, but attacking the cities and disembarking he subdued everything; and against the people called the Malloi, reputed to be the fiercest fighters among the Indians, he very nearly lost his life.
For he scattered the men with missiles from the walls, and being first to mount the wall by a ladder that had been set up, when the ladder broke and the barbarians, standing beneath by the wall, kept striking him from below, being nearly alone, he gathered himself together and leapt down among the enemy, and by chance landed standing upright.
And as he shook his weapons, the barbarians thought that a kind of flash and apparition was carried before his body; wherefore at first they fled and scattered. But when they saw him with only two shield-bearers, they rushed upon him, and some, fighting him hand to hand while he fought back, wounded him again and again with swords and spears despite his armor, while another man, positioned somewhat farther away, loosed an arrow from a bow drawn so hard and forcefully that it pierced his breastplate and stuck fast in the bones of his chest.
And as he gave way and bent his body under the blow, the one who had shot him ran up, drawing a barbarian sword, but Peucestas and Limnaeus stood in front of him; of these, when both were struck, one of them died while Peucestas managed to hold his ground, and Alexander killed the barbarian. Alexander sustained wound after wound, and finally, hit on the neck by a club, he propped his body against the wall, looking toward the enemy,
and meanwhile, the Macedonians pouring around him, he was snatched up, already unconscious of what was happening around him, and carried to his tent. And immediately there was a report in the camp that he was dead; but with great difficulty and much toil they sawed off the arrow, which was of wood, and when the breastplate had thus with difficulty been removed, they set about cutting out the arrowhead, which had sunk into one of the bones. It is said that its breadth was three fingers, and its length four.
Wherefore, being brought near to death by his faintings as it was being extracted, still he rallied, and having escaped the danger, though still weak and for a long time keeping himself to diet and treatments, when he perceived the Macedonians outside making an uproar in their longing to see him, he took a cloak and came forward, and having sacrificed to the gods he put to sea again and was carried onward, subduing much territory and great cities.
Of the Gymnosophists, taking ten of those most responsible for urging Sabbas into rebellion and for giving the Macedonians the greatest amount of trouble, men who were thought to be clever and terse in their answers, he put to them difficult questions, saying that he would kill first the one who did not answer rightly, and then in order the rest; and he ordered the eldest of them to be the judge.
The first, then, being asked whether he thought the living were more numerous or the dead, said the living, for the dead no longer exist. The second, asked whether the earth or the sea nourished larger beasts, said the earth, for the sea is a part of it. The third, asked what animal is the most cunning, said, "The one that man has not yet come to know."
The fourth, being questioned as to what reasoning he had used to make Sabbas revolt, answered, "Wishing him to live well or to die well." The fifth, being asked whether he thought the day or the night came first, said, "The day, by one day"—and he added this, when the king marveled, that of necessity the answers to difficult questions must themselves be difficult.
Turning then to the sixth, he asked how a man might best be loved. "If," he said, "being most powerful, he is not feared." Of the remaining three, one, asked how a man might become a god out of a mere man, said, "By doing something which it is not possible for a man to do." The one asked about life and death, which was stronger, answered that life was, since it bears so many evils.
The last one, asked up to what point it is good for a man to live, said, "Until he no longer regards dying as preferable to living." With that answer given, he addressed the judge and told him to render his verdict. And when the judge said that each had answered worse than the other, "Well then," said Alexander, "you shall die first, for judging thus." "Not so, O king," the man said, "unless you are lying in saying that you would kill first the one who answered worst."
These men, then, he let go, having given them gifts; but to those who lived in the greatest repute and by themselves in quiet, he sent Onesicritus, asking them to come to him. Onesicritus was a philosopher, one of those who had studied with Diogenes the Cynic.
And he says that Calanus, very insolently and roughly, ordered him to take off his garment and hear his words while unclothed, adding that he would refuse to speak with him under any other condition, even had he been sent down from Zeus; but that Dandamis was gentler, and having heard about Socrates and Pythagoras and Diogenes, said that the men seemed to him to have been well endowed by nature, but to have lived too much in reverence of their laws.
Others say that Dandamis said nothing except this much only: "For what reason has Alexander come so great a journey to this place?" Calanus, however, was persuaded by Taxiles to go to Alexander. He was called Sphines, but since in the Indian tongue he greeted those he met with "kale" instead of "chaire," he was named Calanus by the Greeks. This man is also said to have set before Alexander the example of his rule.
For casting down in the middle a certain dry and hardened hide, he stepped upon its edge; and it, being pressed down at one point, rose up at the other parts. And going around it in a circle and pressing it at each point, he showed this happening, until, stopping in the middle, he held it down, and all was thus at rest. His point in the demonstration was that Alexander should above all bear down on the center of his dominion instead of ranging too far afield.
The passage down through the rivers to the sea consumed a time of seven months. Having put his ships out into the Ocean, he made for an island to which he personally gave the name Scillustis, though others call it Psiltucis. There he disembarked and sacrificed to the gods, and surveyed the nature of the open sea and of the coastline as far as it was possible to reach. Then, having prayed that no man after him should cross the bounds of his expedition, he turned back.
The ships he ordered to sail around keeping India on their right, appointing Nearchus as commander and Onesicritus as chief pilot; while he himself, marching by land through the country of the Oreitae, was brought into the utmost distress and lost a great number of men, so that he did not bring back even a fourth of his fighting force from India. And yet the infantry had been a hundred and twenty thousand, and the cavalry up to fifteen thousand.
But grievous diseases and wretched fare and scorching heat, and above all famine, destroyed the greater number, as they marched through an unsown country of men living wretched lives, possessing few and paltry sheep, which, being accustomed to feed on sea-fish, had flesh that was foul and evil-smelling. So it was with difficulty that in sixty days he passed through this country, and on reaching Gedrosia he was at once in the midst of abundance of everything, the nearest satraps and kings having made provision for it.
Gathering his troops there, he departed and turned his passage through Carmania into a seven-day carousal. He himself was borne along at a leisurely pace by eight horses, feasting continually day and night with his companions upon a raised platform built above a stage, in a lofty and conspicuous frame; and countless wagons followed, some shaded with purple and embroidered coverings, others with fresh green boughs continually renewed, bearing his other friends and commanders, crowned with garlands and drinking. You would not have seen a shield there,
nor a helmet, nor a sarissa; but along the whole road the soldiers, dipping with cups and drinking-horns and Thericlean bowls from great jars and mixing-bowls, pledged one another's health, some as they went along walking, others reclining. And a great volume of music from pipes and flutes, of song and of the lyre, and of Bacchic revelry of women, filled every place.
And along with the disorderly and straggling march there followed also the sportive license of Bacchic riot, as though the god himself were present and were escorting the revel. And when he came to the royal seat of Gedrosia, he again refreshed his army with festivity.
It is said that, being drunk, he watched contests of choruses, and that his beloved Bagoas, having danced and won, crossed through the theater in his festive dress and sat down beside him; and the Macedonians, seeing this, clapped and shouted for him to kiss the boy, until he embraced and kissed him.
There, when Nearchus and his men came up to him, he was delighted, and having heard about their voyage, he himself set out with the intention of sailing down the Euphrates with a great fleet, then, being carried around by Arabia and Libya, of entering the inner sea through the Pillars of Heracles; and ships of every kind were being built about Thapsacus, and sailors and pilots were being gathered from every quarter.
The march up-country, which had proved difficult, and the wound received among the Malli, and the great loss of his force that was reported, made men despair of his safety, and this stirred the subject peoples toward revolts, and produced in his generals and satraps much injustice and greed and insolence, and altogether a wave of unrest and revolution ran through everything,
insomuch that even Olympias and Cleopatra, at odds with Antipater, split the domain between themselves, Olympias claiming Epirus while Cleopatra held Macedonia. And when Alexander heard of this, he said his mother had counseled the better course; for the Macedonians would not endure being ruled by a woman. On account of these things he sent Nearchus again to the sea, having resolved to fill the whole coast with wars, while he himself, going down, punished the
wicked among the generals. Of the sons of Abuletes, one, Oxyartes, he himself killed by running him through with a sarissa; and since Abuletes had made none of the necessary provisions but had brought him instead three thousand talents of coined money, he ordered the silver to be thrown to the horses. And when they would not taste it, he said, "What use, then, is your provision to us?" and had Abuletes imprisoned.
In Persia he first restored to the women the money custom, as the kings had been accustomed, whenever they came to Persia, to give each woman a piece of gold; and for this reason, they say, some kings did not often come to Persia, and Ochus never came even once, having through stinginess made himself an exile from his own country.
Next, finding the tomb of Cyrus dug open, he put to death the man who had done the wrong, though he was a man of Pella not without distinction, named Polymachus. And having read the inscription, he gave orders for it to be carved a second time, rendered into Greek characters. Its wording was this: "Whoever you are, man, and from wherever you have come — for come you will, I know it well — I am Cyrus, the one who won for the Persians their empire. So do not resent my having this small plot of ground that covers my body."
These things made Alexander exceedingly moved, taking to heart the uncertainty and mutability of things. And Calanus, having at that time not been long troubled by a disorder of the bowels, asked that a pyre be made for him; and being carried to it on horseback, and having prayed and poured a libation of himself and offered the first-cutting of his hair, he greeted, as he mounted, the Macedonians present, and urged them to turn that day into a festive one and to drink themselves merry alongside the king; and he said that he himself would see the king again in a short time, in Babylon.
Having said this, he lay down and covered himself, and did not move as the fire drew near, but keeping the same posture in which he had lain down, he offered himself up as a sacrifice according to the ancestral custom of the sages of that land — a thing which, many years later, another Indian, in the company of Caesar at Athens, likewise did; and to this day the monument is shown, called the Indian's Tomb.
Alexander, on returning from the pyre, gathered together many of his friends and officers for a banquet, and proposed a contest and a crown for the heaviest drinking of unmixed wine. Promachus, who drank the most, went as far as four choes, and, taking the prize, a crown worth a talent, lived three days more; but of the others, as Chares says, forty-one died from the drinking, so severe a cold set in after the drunkenness.
Celebrating also the marriages of his companions at Susa, taking himself to wife Statira, the daughter of Darius, and distributing the noblest women to the noblest men, and giving a common wedding feast for the other Macedonians who had already been married, at which, they say, of the nine thousand who had been invited to the banquet, a golden cup was given to each for the libations, he displayed magnificence in every other respect as well, and himself discharged the debts owed by the debtors to the lenders, the whole expenditure amounting to less than ten thousand talents by a hundred and thirty talents.
But when Antigenes the one-eyed had falsely registered himself as a debtor, and, having produced someone claiming to have lent him money, at the bank, had the silver paid out, and was then detected in his falsehood, the king, in anger, drove him from the court and took away his command. Yet Antigenes had been distinguished in warfare, and while still young, when Philip was besieging Perinthus, a catapult bolt having struck him in the eye, he would not let those who wished to remove it do so, nor did he give way, before he had driven back the enemy in the fighting and shut them within their wall.
So then he bore the disgrace immoderately, and it was plain that he was going to make away with himself out of grief and heaviness of heart. And the king, fearing this, let go his anger and bade him keep the money.
As for the thirty thousand youths whom he had earlier left in place to be trained and instructed, when they appeared manly in body and comely in looks, and moreover displayed a wonderful readiness and agility in their exercises, he himself was delighted, but the Macedonians felt discouragement and fear, thinking that the king would now attend to them less.
For this reason, when he sent down to the sea those of his own men who were weak and maimed, they said it was an outrage and an insult, that, having used men up for everything, he was now shamefully discarding them and sending them home to their birthplaces and their families, no longer the same men he had originally recruited. They therefore urged him to dismiss every one of them and to regard all Macedonians as worthless, now that he possessed these youthful dancing-warriors, with whose help he would proceed to subdue the whole inhabited world.
At this Alexander was greatly angered, and he reviled them much in his wrath, and, driving off their guards, he handed the duty over to Persians and appointed from these his spearmen and staff-bearers; and seeing themselves excluded and treated with contempt by these men, while he was escorted by them, they were humbled, and upon reflection found that they had come near to being driven mad by jealousy and anger.
At last, coming to their senses together, they went unarmed and in single tunics to his tent, with shouting and weeping surrendering themselves and bidding him deal with them as with base and ungrateful men. But he would not receive them, though he was already softening. Yet they did not withdraw, but for two days and nights stood there so, lamenting and calling upon their lord, and endured it.
On the third day, coming forth and seeing them pitiable and humbled, he wept for a long time; then, having reproached them moderately and addressed them kindly, he dismissed the useless ones, giving them magnificent gifts, and wrote to Antipater that in all contests and theaters they should sit crowned, having the seat of honor. And the children of those who had died, being orphans, he made recipients of pay.
Once he had arrived at Ecbatana in Media and dealt with the urgent business there, he once more occupied himself with theatrical shows and celebrations, for three thousand performers had journeyed to join him from Greece. It happened that about those days Hephaestion had a fever; and being young and a soldier, not enduring a strict diet, as soon as the physician Glaucus had gone off to the theater, he, at about breakfast time, ate a boiled fowl and drank down a great cooler of wine, and fared ill, and after a little while died.
Alexander bore this misfortune with no reasoning at all, but immediately ordered all the horses and mules to be shorn in mourning, and tore down the battlements of the surrounding cities, and crucified the wretched physician, and silenced the flutes and every kind of music throughout the camp for a great while, until word came from Ammon's oracle directing him to pay Hephaestion the honors and offerings due to a hero.
Using war as a consolation for his grief, he went out as though on a hunt and manhunt for men and subdued the nation of the Cossaeans, slaughtering all of military age; and this was called the funeral offering for Hephaestion. He intended to complete a tomb and burial and the surrounding adornment for him at a cost of ten thousand talents, and to surpass the expense with the artistry and extravagance of the construction, and he longed above all for the craftsman Stasicrates, who promised some grandeur and daring and boastfulness in his innovations.
For this man, having met with him previously, said that of the mountains Thracian Athos most of all could receive the shaping and form of a man; and so, if he should order it, he would fashion Athos into the most enduring and most conspicuous of statues, holding in his left hand a populous city of ten thousand inhabitants, and in his right pouring out a generous stream of a river flowing off into the sea. These plans, then, he declined, but at that time he spent his days devising and contriving with the craftsmen things far stranger and more costly than these.
As he advanced toward Babylon, Nearchus arrived — for he had again sailed in to the Euphrates by way of the great sea — and said that certain Chaldaeans had met with him, urging that Alexander keep away from Babylon. But he paid no heed, and went forward; and coming near the walls he saw many crows fighting with one another and striking each other, some of which fell down beside him,
and then, when information was given against Apollodorus, the governor of Babylon, that he had made a sacrifice concerning him, he summoned Pythagoras the seer. When the man did not deny the act, he asked about the manner of the sacred rites, and when he said that the liver was lobeless, "Ah," he said, "a powerful sign," and did Pythagoras no harm. He was troubled, however, that he had not obeyed Nearchus, and spent most of his time camped outside Babylon and sailing about on the Euphrates. Many signs troubled
him; for a tame donkey attacked the largest and finest of the lions kept there and killed it with kicks. And once, when he had stripped for anointing and was playing at ball, the young men who were playing ball with him, when it was time to take up their garments again, saw a man sitting silently on the throne, wearing the diadem and the royal robe.
When this man was questioned as to who he was, he was for a long time speechless; but at last, coming to himself, he answered that Dionysius was his name, a native of Messenia: on account of some charge brought against him he had been carried off from the coast and kept in fetters a long while; and just now Serapis had appeared before him, loosed his fetters, and led him to this very place, bidding him to put on the robe and diadem and to sit there in silence.
On hearing this Alexander, as the seers advised, made the man disappear; but he himself grew despondent and was distrustful now toward the divine and suspicious toward his friends. He feared Antipater most of all, and his sons, of whom Iolas was chief cupbearer, while Cassander had arrived only recently; and having seen certain barbarians doing obeisance, since he had been raised in the Greek manner and had never before seen such a thing, he laughed rather rashly.
Alexander was enraged, and seizing him hard by the hair with both hands struck his head against the wall. Again, when Cassander wished to say something against those who were accusing Antipater, cutting him off Alexander said, "What are you saying? That men should come so great a distance, doing no wrong, but bringing false charges?"
When Cassander replied that this very fact — that they had come far from the proofs — was a sign of false accusation, Alexander laughed aloud and said, "These are those sophistries of Aristotle's, good for arguing either side of a case, for which men will grieve if they are shown to have done even a little wrong to others."
And in general they say that such a terrible and indelible fear entered and took hold of Cassander's soul that, long afterward, when he was already king of the Macedonians and master of Greece, walking about in Delphi and viewing the statues, when an image of Alexander appeared, he was suddenly struck and shuddered, his body trembled, and he barely recovered himself, made dizzy by the sight.
Alexander, then, since he had at that time given way and become disturbed and fearful in his thinking toward matters divine, there was nothing so small among unusual and strange occurrences that he did not make a portent and a sign of it; rather, the palace was full of men sacrificing and purifying and prophesying.
So terrible a thing is distrust of the divine and contempt for it, and terrible again is superstition, which, like water always flowing down toward what is low, filled Alexander, once he had become full of folly, with fear. Nevertheless, after oracles concerning Hephaestion had been brought from the god, he set aside his grief and was again occupied with sacrifices and drinking.
After entertaining Nearchus and his companions splendidly, then bathing, as was his custom, meaning to go to sleep, at Medius's request he went off to revel with him; and there, having drunk through the whole of the following day, he began to run a fever — not from draining the cup of Heracles, nor from being suddenly seized with pain in the back as though struck by a spear, but these are things some thought they ought to write as though fashioning the tragic and pathetic finale of some great drama.
Aristobulus says that, raging with fever and being very thirsty, he drank wine, and as a result his mind grew disordered, and he died when the month of Daesius had reached its thirtieth day.
In the daily journals the matters concerning his illness are recorded thus. On Daesius the eighteenth, gripped by fever, he took his rest in the bathing-room. The following day, once bathed, he withdrew to his bedchamber and passed the hours throwing dice with Medius. Later, after bathing once more, he offered sacrifice to the gods, took food, and ran a fever through the night.
On the twentieth, once more after bathing, he carried out the usual sacrifice, and reclining in the bathing-room he whiled away the hours with Nearchus and his companions, hearing them tell of their voyage upon the great sea. On the tenth day counting from the month's end, the same routine having been followed, his fever burned hotter, and the night went badly for him; the next day a violent fever seized him, and when he was moved he took his place beside the great pool, and there he discussed with his officers which posts in the army stood empty, so that they might be filled once suitable men had been examined.
On the seventh day from the end, burning with fever, he had himself carried out to perform the sacrifices; and he ordered the most important of his officers to remain in the courtyard, but the captains of battalions and companies to spend the night outside. Having been carried across to the palace on the other side, on the sixth day he slept a little, but the fever did not abate. When his officers came to him he was speechless,
and likewise on the fifth day; and so it seemed to the Macedonians that he had died, and they came shouting to the doors, and threatened his companions until they forced their way in, and when the doors had been opened to them, one by one, in their tunics, they all filed past beside his bed. On this same day Python and Seleucus and their companions, sent to the temple of Serapis, asked whether they should carry Alexander there; but the god gave an oracle that they should let him remain where he was. On the third day from the end, toward evening, he died.
Most of these details are recorded word for word in this manner in the daily journals. Of poisoning, no one at the time had any suspicion; but they say that some six years later, once information had come to light, Olympias executed a number of men and had the bones of Iolas, by then dead, thrown out of their tomb, charging that he had administered the poison.
Those who claim that Aristotle had been Antipater's adviser in the deed, and that the poison was procured through him altogether, say that a certain Hagnothemis reported this, having heard it from King Antigonus — and that the poison was cold water, icy, from a certain rock in Nonacris, which they collect like a thin dew and store in the hoof of a donkey; for no other vessel could hold it, but it would break through because of its coldness and sharpness.
But most think that the whole story about the poisoning is entirely fabricated; and no small proof of this for them is the fact that, when the officers were quarreling for many days, the body, lying untended in places that were hot and stifling, showed no sign of any such corruption, but remained clean and fresh.
Roxane, as it happened, was pregnant, and for this reason was honored among the Macedonians; and being jealous of Stateira, she deceived her by means of a forged letter into coming to her, and having drawn her in along with her sister, killed them, and threw the bodies into a well and covered it over, with Perdiccas knowing of this and cooperating in it.
For he was immediately in the greatest power, dragging Arrhidaeus along as a kind of bodyguard of the kingship — a man born of an obscure and common woman, Philinna, and deficient in understanding because of a bodily illness that had not befallen him by nature nor of its own accord; rather, they say that when he was a boy he showed a charming and not ignoble disposition, but was afterward ruined in his mind, having been harmed by drugs administered by Olympias.

======== Caesar ========

Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna who had held sole power, Sulla, once he had gained control, could persuade Caesar to give up neither by hopes nor by fears, and so he confiscated her dowry. The cause of Caesar's hostility to Sulla was his kinship with Marius. For Julia, the sister of Caesar's father, was married to the elder Marius, and from her had been born the younger Marius, who was Caesar's cousin.
At first, amid the great number of killings and being overlooked by Sulla because of his many occupations, Caesar was not content to stay quiet, but came forward before the people as a candidate for a priesthood, though he was not yet quite a young man. From this Sulla, opposing him, contrived to have him rejected; and when deliberating about putting him to death, some said that it made no sense to kill a boy so young, but Sulla answered that it was foolish to overlook the many Mariuses lurking within this one boy.
When this remark was reported to Caesar, for a considerable time he wandered about among the Sabines, keeping himself hidden. Then, being moved because of illness to another house at night, he ran across a detachment of Sulla's troops who were combing that district and seizing anyone found in hiding. Their commander Cornelius he persuaded with two talents to let him go, and going down at once to the sea he sailed off to Bithynia, to King Nicomedes,
with whom he spent no great length of time; then, sailing back, he was captured near the island of Pharmacusa by pirates, who even at that time held the sea with great fleets and countless vessels.
First, when he was asked by them for a ransom of twenty talents, he laughed at them for not knowing whom they had taken, and himself agreed to give fifty. Then, sending various members of his party to various cities to raise the money, he was left among the most murderous of men, the Cilicians, with only one friend and two attendants, yet he held them in such contempt that whenever he wished to sleep he would send orders for them to keep quiet.
For thirty-eight days, as though he were not under guard but rather attended by a bodyguard, he joined in their games and exercises with great freedom from care. He wrote poems and speeches and used them as his audience, and those who did not admire his work he openly called uneducated and barbarous, and often with laughter he threatened to hang them;
and they were delighted, attributing this frankness to a kind of simplicity and playfulness. When the ransom came from Miletus and, having paid it, he was released, he immediately manned ships from the harbor of Miletus and put out against the pirates, and catching them still anchored by the island he overpowered most of them, and he made booty of their money, while the men themselves he lodged in prison at Pergamum and went himself to Junius, the governor of Asia, since it belonged to him as praetor to punish the captives.
But when that man cast covetous eyes on the money — for it was no small amount — and said he would consider the matter of the prisoners at his leisure, Caesar, leaving him to his own devices, went off to Pergamum, and bringing out all the pirates he had them crucified, just as he had often told them, when they thought he was joking, on the island.
After this, since Sulla's power was already fading and those at home were calling him back, he took ship for Rhodes, meaning to become a pupil of Apollonius son of Molon, a teacher Cicero too had studied under, a man distinguished as a teacher of rhetoric and thought to be of a reasonable character. It is said that Caesar was by nature extremely gifted for political oratory, and cultivated his natural gift most ambitiously, so that he held the second place without dispute; but the first place — being more occupied with how to be first in power and arms — he let go,
the very thing toward which his nature had led him, a formidable skill in speaking, he did not fully attain, being prevented by his campaigns and his political career, by which he won his supremacy. He himself, at any rate, later in his reply to Cicero's work on Cato, asks pardon for not measuring the language of a soldier against the eloquence of a naturally gifted orator who devotes much leisure to it.
Returning to Rome, he brought charges against Dolabella for misgoverning his province, and numerous Greek cities came forward with testimony supporting the case. Dolabella escaped conviction, but Caesar, repaying Greece for its zeal, spoke on its behalf when it prosecuted Publius Antonius for bribery before Marcus Lucullus, the praetor of Macedonia,
and had such influence that Antonius appealed to the tribunes of the people, pretending that he could not get equal treatment in Greece against Greeks. At Rome, meanwhile, much goodwill shone forth on account of his eloquence in advocacy, and much favor from the people met him because of the graciousness of his greetings and his manner in company, he being unusually attentive to people for his age.
There was also a power growing for him little by little in politics, arising from his dinners and his table and altogether the splendor of his way of living; those envious of him at first supposed that once his resources ran out it would quickly wither away, and so they overlooked it as it flourished among the many. Too late they perceived that it had become great and hard to overturn, and was making straight for the transformation of the whole state — as one ought to consider no beginning of a matter small, which persistence quickly makes great, once it has met with no resistance out of being despised.
In any case, the one credited with being earliest to view Caesar's political rise with suspicion and alarm — as one fears the smiling surface of the sea — and to have discerned the formidable quality of character hidden beneath his kindliness and cheerfulness, Cicero, said that in all his other schemes and policies he could see a tyrannical intent, "but," he said, "when I see that hair of his arranged with such elaborate care, and him scratching his head with one finger, it does not seem to me that this man could ever put into his mind so great an evil as the destruction of the Roman constitution." This, however, was said later.
Of the people's goodwill toward him he received a first proof when, contending against Gaius Popilius for a military tribuneship, he was elected ahead of him; and a second, still more evident, when, upon the death of Julia, the wife of Marius, being her nephew, he delivered a splendid eulogy for her in the forum, and at her funeral procession he dared to bring out images of Marius, on view now for the first time since Sulla's regime, when those men had been declared enemies of the state.
For when some cried out against Caesar over this, the people responded loudly in his favor, receiving him with applause and admiring him, as one bringing back, as it were from Hades after so long a time, the honors of Marius into the city. Now it was the ancestral Roman custom to deliver funeral orations over elderly women, but it was not customary for young women; Caesar was the first to speak one over his own wife when she died, and this brought him some measure of goodwill and helped, together with the sentiment of the occasion, to win over the many to love him as a gentle man and one full of feeling.
After burying his wife, he went out as quaestor to Iberia with one of the praetors, Vetus, whom he continued always to honor, and whose son, when he himself later held office, he in turn made quaestor. Having come from that office, he married as his third wife Pompeia, having by Cornelia a daughter who was later married to Pompey the Great.
Spending his money without stint, and seeming to purchase a fleeting and brief reputation at the price of great expenditures, while in truth buying the greatest things at a small cost, it is said that before he entered upon any office he had become a debtor to the amount of thirteen hundred talents.
Then, having been appointed overseer of the Appian Way, he spent a great deal of his own money in addition; and again, as aedile, he put on three hundred twenty gladiator pairs, and with his other lavish outlays for theatrical shows, processions, and banquets he overwhelmed the ambitions of those before him, so that he disposed the people to seek new offices and new honors with which to reward him.
There being two factions in the city, the one deriving great power from Sulla, the other the Marian faction, which at that time was cowed and utterly scattered, faring quite low — wishing to revive and win over this latter faction, at the height of his lavish displays as aedile he had images of Marius made secretly, along with Victories bearing trophies, and carrying them by night he set them up on the Capitol.
At daybreak those who saw them, all gleaming with gold and worked with extraordinary art, and inscribed with the record of the Cimbrian victories, marveled at the audacity of whoever had put them there — and it was no secret who that was — and word spread rapidly, drawing crowds eager to view the display.
But some shouted out that Caesar was plotting a bid for tyranny, reviving honors long since suppressed by statute and decree, and that this amounted to a test of the populace, to see whether, tamed by his largesse, they would let him play at such things and introduce innovations; while the Marians, encouraging one another, showed themselves suddenly to be amazing in number, and
they filled the Capitol with applause, and many, at the sight of Marius's image, were moved to tears of joy, and Caesar was greatly exalted with praises, as being the man most worthy, above all others, of his kinship with Marius. When the senate assembled about this matter, Catulus Lutatius, a man at that time held in the highest esteem of the Romans, rose and denounced Caesar, uttering the remembered words: "No longer by tunnels, Caesar," he said, "but now by siege-engines you are taking the state." But when Caesar, defending himself against this, won over the senate, those who admired him were roused still more, and urged him to yield his resolve to no one, since he would prevail over the whole people willingly and hold the first place.
Meanwhile, when Metellus the high priest died, and the priesthood, much contested, was being sought by Isauricus and Catulus, men of the highest distinction and of the greatest power in the senate, Caesar did not yield to them, but went down before the people and stood as a rival candidate.
As the contest appeared evenly balanced, Catulus, being the more fearful of the uncertainty because of his greater standing, sent to Caesar urging him to withdraw from the ambition for a large sum of money. But Caesar, borrowing still more, said he would fight it out. When the day arrived and his mother was escorting him to the door, not without tears, he embraced her and said, "Mother, today
you will see your son either high priest or an exile." The vote being contested and a close struggle taking place, he won, leaving the senate and its foremost men fearful that he might now embolden the populace toward any rash act whatsoever. Because of this, Piso, Catulus, and those around them faulted Cicero for letting Caesar go unpunished, since during the Catiline business he had furnished grounds enough to seize him,
for Catiline had intended not simply to alter the constitution but to overthrow the entire government and plunge everything into chaos, was himself driven out, having been caught in lesser proofs before his final designs were uncovered; but he left behind in the city Lentulus and Cethegus as successors of the conspiracy. Whether Caesar secretly gave them any encouragement and support is unclear; but when they had been thoroughly convicted before the senate, and Cicero the consul was asking each senator's opinion as to their punishment,
the others, up to Caesar, urged death; but Caesar, rising, delivered a carefully considered speech, saying that to kill without trial men distinguished in rank and family did not seem to him ancestral or just, except under the most extreme necessity; but that if they were kept in confinement, bound, in cities of Italy which Cicero himself should choose, until Catiline should be finally defeated, then later, in peace and quiet, the senate might decide about each man individually.
So humane did this opinion appear, and so powerfully was the speech delivered in its support, that it won over not just those who spoke afterward but even many who had spoken earlier, who now abandoned their prior positions and joined his; until the matter came round to Cato and Catulus, and these opposed him vigorously, Cato reinforcing the suspicion together with his speech and rising up against him with great vigor,
The men were handed over to be executed, and as Caesar was leaving the senate, a crowd of young men then guarding Cicero rushed together with swords drawn and barred his way. Yet Curio, so the story goes, wrapped his own toga around Caesar and got him clear unharmed; and Cicero, for his part, when those same men looked to him expecting a signal, merely gave a refusing shake of the head—whether out of dread of the populace, or from a conviction that the killing would be altogether unjust and contrary to law.
This, then—I do not know why, if it were true, Cicero did not write about it in his book On His Consulship. He was blamed afterward for not having made the best use of the opportunity that presented itself against Caesar at that time, but for having shrunk back, in awe of the people's extraordinary devotion to Caesar—who indeed, only a few days later, when he had come into the senate and was defending himself against the suspicions held of him, and was meeting with hostile uproar, since the session was running on longer than usual, came up with a shout and surrounded the assembly, demanding the man and ordering them to release him.
For this reason Cato, fearing above all the revolutionary spirit of the destitute—who were the tinder for the whole mass of the poor, given that Caesar was where they pinned their hopes—won the senate over to voting them a monthly grain allowance, from which an annual expense of seven million five hundred thousand [sesterces] was added to the other outlays; yet this policy visibly extinguished the great fear of the moment, and broke off and dispersed the greater part of Caesar's power at the critical time, just as he was about to become praetor and more formidable through his office.
Nothing troublesome came of it, however; but a piece of ill fortune did befall Caesar concerning his household. Publius Clodius was a man of noble birth, brilliant in wealth and eloquence, but second to none of those notorious for insolence and shamelessness in all forms of depravity.
This man was in love with Pompeia, Caesar's wife, though she herself had no knowledge of it; but the watch kept over the women's quarters was strict, and Caesar's mother Aurelia, a woman of good sense, attending closely upon the young bride, made any meeting between them difficult and dangerous.
Among the Romans there is a divinity known as the Good Goddess, corresponding to what the Greeks name the Women's Goddess. The Phrygians lay claim to her as their own, holding that she was King Midas's mother; the Romans hold instead that she was a wood-nymph, consort of Faunus; while the Greeks identify her as that Dionysus-mother who must not be named. On account of this the women marking her feast cover their tents over with vine-shoots, and, following the myth, a sacred snake is placed beside the goddess. No male may come near, nor even remain under the same roof while the holy rites go forward; the women, left entirely to themselves, are said to carry out during the ceremony a good many practices resembling the Orphic mysteries.
So whenever the time of the festival comes round, while a man holds the consulship or the praetorship, he himself withdraws along with every male, and his wife takes over the house and arranges it, and the greatest rites are performed at night, with play mixed into the all-night vigils, and much music present as well.
At that time, when Pompeia was celebrating this festival, Clodius, who was not yet bearded and for that reason thought he would go unnoticed, took on the dress and equipment of a lute-girl and went in, looking like a young woman. Finding the doors open, he was admitted without fear by a servant-girl who was in on the secret,
but she ran ahead to tell Pompeia, and as time passed while he waited where he had been left, Clodius could not endure it, and while wandering through the great house and avoiding the lights, one of Aurelia's attendants came upon him and, as woman to woman, invited him to play, and when he did not wish to, dragged him into the open, and asked who he was and where he came from.
When Clodius said he was waiting for Abra—Pompeia's own maid, called by that very name—and was betrayed by his voice, the attendant at once sprang back with a cry into the crowd near the lights, shouting that she had come upon a man; the women were seized with terror, and Aurelia halted the goddess's sacred rites and had them concealed, then ordered the doors barred and moved through the household carrying torches, hunting for Clodius.
He was found to have fled into the room of the slave-girl with whom he had come in, and being discovered by the women he was driven out through the doors; and the matter, that very night, the women, as they departed, told to their own husbands, and by day a story went through the city that Clodius had laid hands on unlawful things, and owed a penalty not only to those he had wronged but to the city and to the gods.
One of the tribunes, then, indicted Clodius for impiety, and the most powerful men from the senate combined against him, bearing witness to other terrible acts of licentiousness, and also to adultery with his sister, who was married to Lucullus. Against their zeal the people set themselves in opposition and defended Clodius, and this was of great advantage before the jurors, who were struck with fear and dread of the crowd.
Caesar at once sent Pompeia away, but when called as a witness for the trial, said he knew nothing of what was charged against Clodius. When this statement seemed strange, the prosecutor asked, "Why then did you send your wife away?" "Because," he said, "I held that my own household ought not even to be suspected." Some say Caesar spoke this as his true opinion; others say it was to gratify the people, who were eager to save Clodius.
In any case he escaped the charge, since most of the jurors gave their verdicts in confused, illegible writing, so that they might neither risk danger by condemning him before the multitude nor lose reputation among the best men by acquitting him.
Caesar, immediately after his praetorship, took Spain as his province; but since it was troublesome for him, as his creditors, pestering and shouting at him, made his departure difficult, he took refuge with Crassus, the richest of the Romans, who needed Caesar's vigor and heat in his political rivalry with Pompey. Crassus took upon himself the most harsh and implacable of the creditors and guaranteed eight hundred and thirty talents, and so Caesar set out for his province.
The story goes that while making his way across the Alps, on passing a tiny native settlement whose inhabitants were few and squalid, his companions, half in jest and half in earnest, said, "Surely even here there are ambitions for office and struggles for first place and jealousies of the powerful against one another?" And Caesar, speaking to them in earnest, said, "For my part I would rather be first among these men than second among the Romans."
Likewise again in Spain, when he had leisure and was reading something written about Alexander, he became lost in thought with himself for a long time, and then even wept; and when his friends wondered at the cause, he said, "Do you not think it a matter worthy of grief, that at my age Alexander was already king over so many peoples, while I have as yet accomplished nothing splendid?"
As soon as he set foot in Spain he was at once active, so that within a few days he gathered together ten cohorts in addition to the twenty already existing, and marching against the Callaici and the Lusitanians he conquered them, and advanced as far as the outer sea, subduing peoples who had not previously been subject to Rome. Having managed the affairs of war well, he administered the affairs of peace no less ably, establishing concord among the cities, and healing above all the disputes between debtors and creditors.
For he ordained that of the revenues coming in to debtors, the creditor should take two parts each year, while the debtor should use the remainder, until the debt was thus paid off. Winning good repute by these measures, he departed from the province, having himself become rich and having benefited his soldiers from the campaigns, and having been hailed by them as imperator.
But since those seeking a triumph had to remain outside the city, while those canvassing for the consulship had to be present in the city to do so, Caesar, finding himself caught in such a conflict, and having arrived right at the time of the consular elections, sent to the senate asking to be allowed to canvass for the consulship in absentia through his friends. Cato at first stood firmly on the law against this request; then, seeing that many had been won over by Caesar, he blocked the matter by using up the time, wearing away the day in speaking, so that Caesar chose in the end to forgo the triumph and seize instead upon the consulship.
And having entered the city, he immediately took up a policy that deceived everyone except Cato: this was the reconciliation of Pompey and Crassus, the two men of greatest power in the city, whom Caesar brought together in friendship out of their quarrel, and, gathering to himself the combined strength of both, under an action that had the name of kindness, he unnoticed transformed the constitution.
Indeed it was not, as most people imagine, the falling-out between Caesar and Pompey that gave rise to the civil wars, but on the contrary their alliance, given that the two men first combined to bring down the aristocratic party, and only later fell out against each other in the manner described. Cato, whose predictions of coming events proved frequently accurate, earned at the time a name for being troublesome and interfering, though afterward he was remembered as a sound, if luckless, adviser.
Nevertheless, Caesar, escorted in the midst of the friendship of Crassus and Pompey, was brought down to the consulship; and having been proclaimed with great splendor, together with Calpurnius Bibulus, and having entered upon his office, he immediately introduced laws not befitting a consul but some most audacious tribune, proposing, to please the multitude, certain allotments of land and distributions.
When in the senate the party of the good and honorable men opposed him, he—long wanting a pretext—cried out and called them to witness that he was being driven against his will out to the people, forced by the arrogance and harshness of the senate to court their favor out of necessity, and he rushed out toward them, and stationing Crassus on one side and Pompey on the other, asked them whether they approved of the laws.
When they said they approved, he called on them to help him against those who threatened to oppose them with swords. They promised to do so; and Pompey even added that he would come against the swords bringing a sword of his own and a shield as well. By this he vexed the aristocratic party, who heard a speech unworthy of the respect due him and unbefitting the deference owed to the senate, but rather mad and boyish; the people, however, were delighted.
Caesar, laying still greater hold upon Pompey's power—for he had a daughter, Julia, already promised in marriage to Servilius Caepio—broke that engagement and gave her to Pompey in his stead, promising Servilius that he would instead receive Pompey's own daughter, though she too was not unbetrothed, but promised to Faustus, the son of Sulla.
A little later Caesar married Calpurnia, daughter of Piso, and made Piso consul for the coming year; at this Cato protested and cried out loudly that it was intolerable, that the government was being pimped out through marriages, and that men were bringing each other into provinces, armies, and positions of power through the agency of little women.
Bibulus, Caesar's colleague in office, since he accomplished nothing by opposing the laws, but was often in danger of being killed in the forum along with Cato, shut himself up at home and spent the rest of his term of office there. Pompey, no sooner married than he packed the forum with armed men and lent his weight to pushing the popular laws through; and to Caesar he assigned Cisalpine Gaul and all of Transalpine Gaul as well, adding Illyricum, with four legions, for five years.
As for Cato, when he attempted to speak against these measures, Caesar had him hauled off to prison, expecting Cato to lodge a plea with the tribunes for release; yet Cato went along without uttering a word, and Caesar, noting that not only the foremost citizens were troubled but the ordinary people too trailed after in silent, downcast respect for Cato's character, quietly arranged through one of the tribunes to have him set free.
Of the other senators very few came together with him at all for a session; the rest, in their displeasure, kept out of the way. When a certain Considius, one of the very old men, said that the others did not assemble because they feared the arms and the soldiers, Caesar said, "Then why don't you, who also fear these things, stay home?" And Considius said, "Because my old age is what keeps me from being afraid: the life still left to me is short and needs little forethought."
The most shameful of the political acts of that time was thought to be the election, during Caesar's consulship, of that Clodius as tribune, by whom the laws concerning marriage and the secret nocturnal rites were violated. He was elected for the purpose of bringing down Cicero; and Caesar did not set out for his army until he had helped Clodius stir up factional strife against Cicero and join in driving him out of Italy.
Such, then, are said to have been the events before the Gallic campaigns. But the time of the wars which he waged after this, and of the campaigns by which he tamed Celtic territory, as though he had taken up another beginning and entered upon some other path of life and of new undertakings, showed him to be a warrior and a general leaving nothing lacking of those most admired for command and become the greatest,
but whether one should compare the Fabii and the Scipios and the Metelli, and those living in his own generation or shortly before it — Sulla and Marius both, and the Luculli, or Pompey himself, whose fame for every kind of excellence in war then flourished up to the heavens — Caesar's achievements surpass them: one in the harshness of the regions where he campaigned, another in how much territory he added to Rome, another in the number and violence of the enemies he conquered,
another in the strangeness and untrustworthiness of the customs he came to deal with familiarly, another in his fairness and gentleness toward those taken captive, another in his gifts and favors toward those who campaigned with him, and all of them in the sheer number of battles he fought and of enemies drawn up against him that he destroyed. For in less than ten years of warring in Gaul he seized by force upwards of eight hundred towns, brought some three hundred peoples under submission, and, having fought pitched battles at various times against three million men in all, he destroyed one million of them in hand-to-hand combat and took just as many more captive.
He enjoyed such goodwill and eagerness from his soldiers toward himself that men who in other campaigns were no different from anyone else became invincible and irresistible, rushing at every danger for the sake of Caesar's glory. Such a man was Acilius, who in the sea battle near Massalia, having boarded an enemy ship, had his right hand cut off by a sword, but did not let go of his shield with the other hand; instead, striking the enemies in the face with it, he turned them all back and gained control of the vessel. Such too was Cassius Scaeva,
who, in the battle near Dyrrhachium, had an eye knocked out by an arrow, his shoulder pierced through by one javelin and his thigh by another, and had received a hundred and thirty blows of missiles on his shield, and yet called out to the enemy as if he were ready to give himself up. When two of them came forward, he sliced through one man's shoulder with his sword, and struck the other in the face and turned him back, while he himself was saved when his own men closed around him.
And in Britain, when the enemy fell upon the leading centurions who had gotten into a marshy place full of water, and a soldier — with Caesar himself watching the battle — pushed his way into their midst and, performing many conspicuous deeds of daring, saved the centurions when the barbarians fled, he himself, coming across last of all with difficulty, threw himself into the muddy currents, and, without his shield, swimming part of the way and wading part of the way, barely made it across.
When Caesar's men marveled and met him with joy and shouting, he himself, quite downcast and in tears, fell at Caesar's feet, begging pardon for having let go of his shield. And in Libya, when Scipio's men took a ship of Caesar's on which Granius Petro, appointed quaestor, was sailing, they made booty of the others but said they would grant safety to the quaestor; but he said that it was the custom of Caesar's soldiers not to receive safety but to give it, and struck himself with his sword and killed himself.
Such daring and such ambitions Caesar himself nurtured and built up, first by showing, through unstinting generosity and honors, that he did not amass riches from his campaigns for his own extravagance or for any personal indulgence, but kept it as a common prize for valor laid up with him, and that he shared in wealth only to the extent that he gave it to the deserving among his soldiers; and second, by willingly undergoing every danger himself and refusing none of the hardships.
Now his love of danger was not something they marveled at, on account of his ambition; but his endurance of hardships beyond what his bodily strength seemed able to bear astonished them, because, though he was lean in build, white and soft-fleshed, and subject to headaches and to epileptic fits — the affliction having first befallen him, it is said, at Corduba — he did not use his ill health as an excuse for softness,
but instead made his campaigning the treatment for his illness, fighting off the affliction with unwearying marches, plain fare, and continual sleeping in the open and enduring hardship, and so kept his body hard to overcome. For he slept, for the most part, in wagons or litters, turning his rest into action, and by day he was carried to the forts, the cities, and the entrenchments, with one slave sitting beside him who was trained to write down what he dictated even as they went along, and one soldier standing behind him holding a sword,
and he drove on so hard that, on his first setting out from Rome, he reached the Rhone on the eighth day. Now horsemanship had come naturally to him since childhood, since he had trained himself to ride at full speed with his hands clasped behind his back. On that campaign he also practiced, while riding, dictating letters and keeping two secretaries writing at once, or, as Oppius says, even more.
It is said too that Caesar was the first to devise communicating with friends by letter, since face-to-face meetings about urgent matters of the moment could not wait, given the press of business and the size of the city. And they also give this as a mark of the ease of his diet: when his host Valerius Leo, entertaining him at dinner at Mediolanum, served asparagus and poured myrrh-oil over it instead of olive oil, Caesar himself ate it without fuss, and scolded his companions for showing their displeasure at it.
"It would have been enough," he said, "not to eat what one dislikes; the man who finds fault with such rusticity is himself the boor." And once, on the road, driven by a storm into the cottage of a poor man, when he found nothing more than a single room barely able to hold one person, he said to his friends that honors ought to go to the strongest, while necessities belong to the weakest, and told Oppius to rest there; he himself slept with the others under the porch of the door.
The first of his Celtic wars was against the Helvetii and the Tigurini, who, having burned their own twelve cities and four hundred villages, were advancing through the part of Gaul subject to Rome, just as the Cimbri and Teutones had done long before, seeming no less bold than they and equal in numbers — amounting altogether to three hundred thousand persons, one hundred ninety thousand of whom could bear arms.
Of these, the Tigurini were crushed not by Caesar himself but by Labienus, sent by him, near the river Arar; but when the Helvetii, as he was leading his army toward a friendly city, fell upon him unexpectedly along the road, he got ahead of them to a strong position and took refuge there, and there, gathering and drawing up his forces, when a horse was brought to him he said, "This I will use for the pursuit once I have won; but let us now advance against the enemy," and, setting out on foot, charged in.
After a long time and with difficulty he pushed back their fighting men near the wagons and the entrenchment, and had the greatest struggle there, since not only did the men themselves stand and fight there, but their children and wives too, defending themselves, were cut down along with them to the death, so that the battle barely came to an end at midnight.
To the fine achievement of the victory he added a still greater one: resettling those of the surviving barbarians who had escaped from the battle, and compelling them to take back the land they had abandoned and the cities they had destroyed — more than one hundred thousand of them. His reasoning was that, should the land be left empty, he feared the Germans might cross over and seize it.
Second, he fought directly against the Germans on behalf of the Celts, although he had earlier made their king Ariovistus an ally at Rome; but they were unbearable neighbors to his subjects, and, should the occasion offer, they did not seem likely to stay quiet with what they had, but
were likely to overrun and hold Gaul. Seeing that his commanders were losing heart, especially those of high rank and the young men who had gone out with him expecting to enjoy luxury and profit from campaigning with Caesar, he called an assembly and bade them go home and not risk their lives against their own judgment, being so unmanly and soft; he himself declared that he alone would take the Tenth Legion with him and advance upon the barbarians, since the enemies he faced were no better than the Cimbri, nor was he himself a worse general than Marius.
At this, the Tenth Legion sent envoys to him to express their thanks, while the other legions abused their own commanders; and, all becoming full of eagerness and enthusiasm, they followed for many days' march, until they encamped within two hundred stadia of the enemy. Now Ariovistus's confidence had already been somewhat shaken even by the mere advance itself. For, not expecting the Romans to assault the Germans, whose charge he believed they could not withstand, he marveled at Caesar's daring and saw his own army thrown into confusion.
They were blunted still further by the prophecies of the holy women, who, gazing at the eddies of rivers and reading omens from the windings and sounds of the currents, foretold and would not allow battle to be joined before the new moon appeared. When Caesar learned of this and saw that the Germans were keeping quiet, it seemed to him best to attack them while they had no heart for it, rather than to sit waiting for the moment they preferred.
And by making assaults on the fortifications and hills on which they were encamped, he provoked and goaded them into coming down to fight it out in anger. When a brilliant rout of them followed, he pursued them for four hundred stadia all the way to the Rhine, filling that whole plain with corpses and spoils; Ariovistus got ahead of the rest with a few men and crossed the Rhine. They say the number of the dead came to eighty thousand.
Having accomplished this, he left his forces among the Sequani to winter, while he himself, wishing to keep an eye on affairs at Rome, went down into the Gaul around the Po, a portion of the province that had been allotted to him; for the river known as the Rubicon marks the boundary between the rest of Italy and the Celtic land under the Alps.
Settling there, he played the popular leader, with many people coming to him, giving each what he asked, and sending all away, some already in possession of what they had from him, others in hope of it; and throughout the rest of the time of his command he kept it hidden from Pompey that, in turn, he was now subduing enemies with the arms of citizens, now winning over and mastering citizens with money taken from enemies.
When he heard that the Belgae, the most powerful of the Celts and holding a third of all Gaul, had revolted, having gathered many tens of thousands of armed men, he turned about at once and advanced with great speed, and, descending upon the enemy while they were plundering the allied Gauls, he routed and destroyed the largest and most massed of them after they fought disgracefully, so that lakes and deep rivers became passable for the Romans, filled as they were with the multitude of the dead,
and of those who had revolted, all who lived along the ocean came over without a fight; but against the fiercest and most warlike of the peoples there, the Nervii, who dwelt in tangled forests and had stored their wives, children, and belongings deep within the woodland farthest from the enemy, he made an expedition. These men, sixty thousand in number, suddenly fell upon Caesar while he was making a camp and not expecting battle at that time, and routed his cavalry, and, surrounding the twelfth and the seventh legions, killed all their centurions,
and if Caesar had not snatched up a shield and, forcing his way through those fighting in front of him, charged the barbarians, and if the Tenth had not run down from the heights when he was in danger and cut through the enemy's ranks, it seems no one would have survived; but as it was, through Caesar's daring, fighting a battle said to be beyond human strength, they still did not rout the Nervii even so, but slaughtered them even as the Nervii fought back: for it is said that five hundred survived out of sixty thousand, and three senators out of four hundred.
When the senate learned of this, it voted fifteen days of thanksgiving to the gods and public holiday for festivals — more than had ever been decreed for any victory before. For the danger had appeared great, with so many nations rising up at once, and the victory was rendered more brilliant because it was Caesar who had won it, since the goodwill of the many toward him worked in his favor. Caesar himself, having settled affairs in Gaul, again wintered in the region around the Po, preparing the ground in the city,
for not only were those canvassing for offices employing him as their paymaster, using his cash to buy over the populace and doing everything likely to increase his power, but also most of the most eminent and greatest men gathered to meet him at Luca: Pompey, Crassus, Appius who governed Sardinia, and Nepos who held the proconsulship of Spain. The result was a hundred and twenty lictors' rods assembled in one place, and upward of two hundred senators.
Having held a council, they resolved on the following terms: Pompey and Crassus were to be declared consuls, and Caesar was to be granted money and another five years added to his command — a thing that seemed most absurd to men of sense. For those who were receiving so much money from Caesar were persuading the senate to vote it to him as though he had none to give, or rather compelling it, groaning as it voted what was demanded, Cato not being present,
for they had deliberately packed him off to Cyprus, and though Favonius, who was an emulator of Cato, accomplished nothing by speaking against it, leaping out through the doors and shouting to the crowd, no one paid him any heed — some out of deference to Pompey and Crassus, but most because they were gratifying Caesar and living on the hopes he offered, and so they kept quiet.
Caesar, turning back again to his forces in Gaul, found a great war under way in the country, two large German nations having just crossed the Rhine to seize land — they call one people the Usipetes, the other the Tencteri.
Concerning the battle that took place against these, Caesar himself has written in his commentaries that the barbarians, while negotiating with him under a truce, attacked him on the march, and that for this reason they routed his cavalry of five thousand with their own eight hundred, catching them off guard; then that they sent others to him again to deceive him, whom he held back and marched his forces against the barbarians, judging that to keep faith with men so faithless and treaty-breaking would be nothing but naivety.
But Tanusius says that when the senate was voting festivals and sacrifices for the victory, Cato declared his opinion that Caesar ought to be handed over to the barbarians, so as to purify the city of the breach of faith by turning the curse upon the one responsible. Of those who had crossed the river, four hundred thousand were cut down, and the few who managed to get back over the river found refuge among the Sugambri, a nation of Germans.
Taking this as a pretext against them, and also being otherwise eager for glory and to be the first of men to cross the Rhine with an army, Caesar bridged it, though it was very wide at that point and, precisely there, most in flood and rough and swift, delivering blows and tearing loose the piles that were driven in to support the bridge from the tree-trunks and timber swept downstream against it,
but he met these by driving in great timber piles as breakwaters across the river, and by curbing the onrushing current with the framework he displayed a spectacle beyond all expectation — the bridge completed in ten days.
Having ferried his army across, with no one daring to meet him, but even the most powerful of the German Suebi withdrawing their goods into deep, wooded ravines, he burned the enemy's country, encouraged those who had always welcomed the Romans, and, after passing eighteen days on German soil, crossed back once more into Gaul.
The expedition against the Britons had a famous boldness to it, for he was the first to put out into the western Ocean with a fleet, and sailed through the Atlantic sea bringing an army for war; and an island disbelieved in on account of its size, and one that had furnished much dispute to a great many writers, some claiming that its name and account were fabricated and that it did not exist — this he attempted to seize and thereby carried the Roman dominion beyond the inhabited world.
Sailing across to the island twice from the Gaul on the opposite shore, and doing much harm to the enemy in many battles rather than benefiting his own men — for men who lived in such poverty and hardship had nothing worth plundering — he did not bring the war to the conclusion he wished, but taking hostages from the king and imposing tribute he set sail from the island.
And letters reached him there, dispatched by his friends in Rome and just then delivered across the water, announcing that his daughter had died; she died in childbirth at Pompey's house. Great grief seized Pompey, and great grief seized Caesar as well, and their friends were thrown into confusion, thinking that the kinship which, in peace and concord, had been guarding a commonwealth otherwise diseased in all else, was now dissolved — for the infant too died shortly after, not surviving its mother by many days. The people, over the resistance of the tribunes, took up Julia by force and carried her to the Field of Mars, and there she lies, given burial.
While Caesar was dividing his now great army of necessity into many winter quarters, and had himself turned toward Italy as was his custom, all Gaul again broke into revolt, and great armies going about were cutting up the winter camps and attacking the Roman fortifications; and the most numerous and strongest of the rebels, under Ambiorix, destroyed Cotta and Titurius along with their entire legion,
and they surrounded the legion under Cicero with sixty thousand men and besieged it, and came within a little of taking it by storm, all the men being wounded and defending themselves beyond their strength through sheer eagerness. When this was reported to Caesar, who was far away, he turned back quickly and, gathering seven thousand men in all, hastened to rescue Cicero from the siege. The besiegers did not fail to notice him, but went out to meet him intending to snatch him up, contemptuous of his small numbers.
And he, feigning flight, kept withdrawing, and having taken up a position suited to a man fighting many with few, he fortified a camp, and kept his men from all fighting, forcing them, by drawing up the rampart and rebuilding the gates as though in fear, to be held in contempt for lack of generalship, until, once the enemy came at him in scattered and reckless fashion, he burst out, put them to flight, and cut down a great number of them.
This put down the many revolts of the Gauls in that region, and Caesar himself, going about everywhere through the winter and attending sharply to every uprising. For three legions had come to him from Italy to replace those he had lost, two of them lent by Pompey from his own forces, one newly levied from Gaul around the Po.
Far beyond these, the seeds long since sown in secret and cultivated by the most powerful men among the most warlike tribes were now showing themselves as the opening moves of what would be the largest and most perilous war fought there, strengthened by a great multitude of fighting men gathered together in arms from every side, by great wealth brought together to the same end, by strong cities, and by country hard to invade.
At that time, too, in the season of winter, rivers were frozen and forests hidden under snow, and plains flooded by winter torrents; in places the paths were untraceable in the depth of the snow, in others there was great obscurity of the route through marshes and diverted streams — all of which seemed to make the doings of the rebels wholly unassailable for Caesar. Many tribes had revolted; the Arverni and the Carnutes made the pretext, but the whole conduct of the war, once he was chosen, was held by Vercingetorix, a man whose own father the Gauls had executed for reaching after tyranny,
This man, then, dividing his forces into many parts and setting many commanders over them, was winning over the whole surrounding region as far as the peoples inclined toward the Saone, intending, now that a faction in Rome was already forming against Caesar, to rouse all Gaul together to the war. Had he waited only a little longer, until Caesar was embroiled in civil war, no lighter terrors than those of the Cimbri would have gripped Italy.
But as it was, Caesar, who by nature was best able to use every resource for war, and above all to seize the moment, no sooner heard of the revolt than he set forth, pressing along the identical roads he had used before, and by the force and speed of his march through so great a winter he showed the barbarians that an army was coming against them that was invincible and unconquerable. For in places where it had long seemed incredible that even a messenger or letter-carrier of his could get through, there, all at once, he and his entire army were seen laying waste their land and razing their strongholds,
subduing cities, taking back those who changed sides, until even the nation of the Aedui was provoked into war against him — they who at other times called themselves brothers of the Romans and were conspicuously honored, but who now, going over to the rebels, brought great discouragement upon Caesar's army. For this reason, moving on from there, he crossed into Lingones territory, intending to make his way to that of the Sequani, who were friends and lay before Italy on the way to the rest of Gaul.
There the enemy attacked and encircled him with forces numbering many tens of thousands, and, throwing himself into the decisive struggle, he prevailed, after long time and much slaughter, forcing the barbarians down by main strength, though at the outset it seemed he had also suffered some setback, and the Arverni show a small sword hanging in a temple, said to be a trophy taken from Caesar. When he himself later saw it he smiled, and when his friends bade him take it down he would not allow it, considering it sacred.
Be that as it may, at that time most of those who had escaped fled together with the king to the city of Alesia. And as Caesar was besieging this place, which appeared impregnable both because of how massive its walls were and how numerous its defenders, a danger greater than any words can tell fell upon him from outside.
For the finest force that Gaul possessed, gathered from all its nations, came in arms against Alesia, three hundred thousand strong; and those within the city who were fighting men were no fewer than a hundred and seventy thousand, so that Caesar, caught in the midst of so great a war and himself besieged, was forced to throw up a double wall, one facing the city, the other facing those who had come against him from outside, on the ground that, should the two forces join, his own affairs would be utterly undone.
For many reasons, then, the danger at Alesia was reasonably held in high repute, as exhibiting feats of daring and skill such as no other of his contests had displayed, but one might marvel above all that Caesar's engagement with and mastery of so many tens of thousands from outside went unnoticed by those in the city — and even more, that it went unnoticed by the very Romans who were guarding the wall facing the city.
For they did not perceive the victory until wailing of men and lamentation of women were heard from Alesia, as those within saw, on the other side, many shields adorned with silver and gold, and many breastplates smeared with blood, and also cups and Gallic tents, all of it hauled off by the Romans back to their own camp. That enormous host had, in so short a span, dissolved and scattered like some vision or dream, since most of that multitude had perished in combat,
and those holding Alesia, after giving no small trouble to themselves and to Caesar, at last surrendered themselves; and Vercingetorix, the leader of the whole war, taking up the finest of his arms and adorning his horse, rode out through the gates and made a circuit around Caesar as he sat, then leapt down from his horse, cast off his full armor, and himself sat down at Caesar's feet and remained quiet, until he was handed over to be kept under guard for the triumph.
Caesar had for a long while been determined to bring Pompey down, exactly as Pompey, naturally, had determined the same regarding him; for since Crassus, who had been a counterweight to both, had perished among the Parthians, what remained for the one who wished to become greatest was to put down the man who now held that place, and for the other, in order not to suffer this himself, to destroy beforehand the man he feared.
Pompey, for his part, had begun after a while to be afraid, having until then looked down on Caesar, thinking it no hard task to pull down again a man whom he himself had helped raise up; but Caesar, having from the start made this his design, withdrew far from his rivals like an athlete and trained himself in the Celtic wars, sharpening his forces,
and increasing his reputation, being lifted by his deeds to a rank rivaling Pompey's own achievements, taking his opportunities partly from Pompey himself and partly from the times and the corrupt politics at Rome, on account of which men seeking office set up tables in the open and bribed the crowds shamelessly, and the people came down to vote for hire, contending not with ballots on behalf of the one who had paid them, but with bows and swords and slings.
Often staining the speaker's platform with blood and corpses, they parted ways, abandoning the city to be swept along by anarchy like a rudderless ship, so that sensible men were content if things came to nothing worse than that affairs should fall, out of such madness and so great a storm, into monarchy; and there were many who already dared to say openly that the constitution could be cured by nothing but monarchy, and that this medicine ought to be accepted from the gentlest of physicians, hinting at Pompey.
But when Pompey too, while professing in word to decline it, was in fact working with all his might toward being proclaimed dictator, Cato and his party, taking counsel together, persuaded the senate to appoint him consul alone, so that, soothed by a more lawful sort of sole rule, he would not push his own way through to a dictatorship; some also voted him a further span of years over his provinces — he held two, all Iberia and Libya, governing them through legates he sent out and armies he kept up, drawing from the public treasury, for this purpose, a thousand talents annually.
After this Caesar dispatched a message seeking the consulship, together with a further span of years over his own provinces; and though Pompey held his peace at first, Marcellus and Lentulus and their faction opposed the request, hating Caesar on other grounds as well and heaping upon what was necessary things not necessary, for his dishonor and humiliation.
For they stripped the people of Novum Comum, recently settled by Caesar in Gaul, of their citizenship; and Marcellus, while consul, had one of the councilmen there, who had come to Rome, beaten with rods, saying as he did so that he was adding these marks to show that the man was not a Roman, and bidding him go show them to Caesar. But after Marcellus, once Caesar had already begun letting the wealth of Gaul flow freely to all who were active in politics, and had freed Curio, then tribune of the people, from many debts,
and had given Paulus, then consul, fifteen hundred talents, out of which that man adorned the Forum with the famous monument of the Basilica, built in place of the Fulvia — Pompey, thoroughly alarmed at this combination, now openly, both on his own account and through his friends, worked to have a successor appointed to Caesar's command, and sent to demand back the soldiers he had lent him for the Celtic campaigns; and Caesar sent them back, presenting each man with two hundred and fifty drachmas.
But those who brought these soldiers to Pompey sowed among the multitude reports about Caesar neither fair nor kindly, and destroyed Pompey himself with empty hopes, telling him that he was longed for by Caesar's own army, and that though matters here were with difficulty kept in hand through jealousy of a corrupt government, the force there was already at his disposal, and would come over to him the moment they crossed into Italy — so much had Caesar, they said, become burdensome to his soldiers through the multitude of his campaigns, and suspect to them through fear of monarchy.
Puffed up by this, Pompey neglected preparation of soldiers, as one who felt no fear, and instead tried to out-politick Caesar with speeches and resolutions, voting down measures which Caesar in fact cared nothing for. There is also a story that a certain centurion, sent to Pompey from Caesar's army, stood before the senate house and learning that the senate would not grant Caesar an extension of his command, said, "But this will grant it," striking with his hand the hilt of his sword.
Nevertheless, the claim put forward on Caesar's behalf had a splendid show of justice about it. For he demanded that he himself lay down his arms, and that Pompey, having done the same, both becoming private citizens, should find some good at the hands of their fellow citizens; for men who stripped him of his forces while confirming Pompey in the power he held were, he said, slandering one man while setting up the other as tyrant.
Putting forward these proposals before the people on Caesar's behalf, Curio was applauded brilliantly; some even threw garlands on him as on a victorious athlete. Antony, then tribune of the people, brought before the assembly a dispatch Caesar had sent concerning these matters and, against the consuls' wishes, had it read out publicly; in the senate, however, Scipio, Pompey's father-in-law, proposed that unless Caesar gave up his arms by a fixed date, he be pronounced an enemy of the state,
and when the consuls put it to a vote whether Pompey ought to disband his troops, and then whether Caesar ought to do likewise, hardly anyone agreed to the first while nearly everyone assented to the second; but when Antony and his party again proposed that both should lay down their commands, all alike came over to that view. But as Scipio pressed his point by force, and Lentulus the consul shouted that arms, not votes, were needed against a brigand, the senators then broke up and changed into mourning garb on account of the strife.
But when letters came from Caesar seeming to show moderation — for he asked only that, surrendering all his other claims, he be left Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum along with a pair of legions, until the time came for him to stand for a second consulship — and Cicero the orator, just then arrived from Cilicia and working for reconciliation, was softening Pompey, who was ready to concede the rest but insisted on taking away his soldiers; and Cicero was persuading Caesar's friends to agree to a settlement on the terms mentioned, with only six thousand soldiers,
and Pompey was bending and yielding — Lentulus and his fellow consuls refused to permit this, and went so far as to expel Antony and Curio from the senate amid abuse and disgrace, themselves contriving the most plausible of pretexts for Caesar, and the one by which he most inflamed his soldiers, by showing them men of note and holders of office who had fled on hired carts wearing the clothing of slaves. For it was in this guise, disguising themselves out of fear, that they had stolen away from Rome.
Now the troops actually at his side numbered a mere three hundred cavalry and five thousand infantry; the remainder of his army, left behind across the Alps, was to be brought up by the officers sent for it. But seeing that the beginning of the enterprise he was undertaking, and the onset itself, called for daring and speed of opportunity rather than a great multitude of hands at the present moment,
since it would be easier, he thought, to strike terror by being unexpected than to force his way through after full preparation, he ordered his commanders and centurions, taking only their swords and no other weapons, to seize Ariminum, a great city of Gaul, sparing bloodshed and disturbance as much as possible; and he handed over the army to Hortensius.
He himself spent the day openly, attending and watching gladiators at their exercises; and a little before evening, having attended to his body and gone into the men's hall and spent a little time with those invited to dinner, he rose up just as it was growing dark, and, having been friendly to the rest and bidden them wait for him as one who would return, told a few of his friends beforehand not all to follow together, but each by a different road.
He himself, mounting one of the hired carts, drove first by a different road, then turned toward Ariminum; and when he reached the river marking the border between Cisalpine Gaul and the remainder of Italy — the Rubicon, as it is named — the nearer he drew to the peril and the more he weighed in his mind the enormity of the venture he was risking, the more a sober reckoning overtook him,
and he checked his course, and, halting his march, debated much within himself in silence, his judgment shifting to both sides, and his resolve then underwent the greatest number of turns; and he also discussed the matter at length with those of his friends present, among whom was Asinius Pollio, weighing how great the evils would be for all mankind that this crossing would set in motion, and how much would be said of it by those who came after.
At last, as though casting himself out of calculation and toward what was to come, with a kind of passion, uttering that phrase common to those who plunge into ventures of desperate daring, "Let the die be cast," he set out upon the crossing, and using a running pace from then on, he burst into Ariminum before daybreak and seized it. It is said that on the night before the crossing he saw a monstrous dream: he seemed to himself to be lying with his own mother, in unspeakable union.
Once Ariminum had been seized, it was as though the gates of war had been thrown open wide upon the whole earth and sea together, and the city's laws were thrown into disorder together with the province's borders; it seemed no longer that mere men and women, as had happened before, were wandering in panic across Italy, but that whole cities themselves had risen and were on the move
and being carried in flight through one another, while Rome itself was, as it were, filled to overflowing by streams of fugitives and migrations from the surrounding towns, a city neither easily persuaded by any magistrate nor held in check by argument, in a great swell and surge all but overturned by its own force. For contrary passions and violent movements possessed every quarter,
for not even those who rejoiced kept quiet, but, meeting in many places in so great a city with those who were afraid and grieved, grew bold about the future and fell into quarrels; and Pompey himself, thunderstruck, was troubled by one man from one side and another from another, some accusing him of having built up Caesar against himself and against the state, and being called to account for it, others charging that he had allowed Lentulus and his party to insult Caesar when Caesar was yielding and offering fair terms of settlement.
Favonius bade him stamp the ground with his foot, since once, boasting before the senate, he had told them not to trouble or concern themselves over preparation for the war, for he himself, whenever the time came, needed only to strike the ground with his foot to fill Italy with armies.
And indeed even then Pompey surpassed Caesar in the size of his forces; but no one allowed the man to use his own judgment, but, giving way to many false reports and fears, as though the war were already upon them and holding everything, and swept along with the general rush, he declared he saw confusion everywhere, and left the city, ordering the senate to follow him, and that none of those who had chosen their country and their freedom before tyranny should remain behind.
The consuls, then, fled without even offering the sacrifices required by law before setting out, and most of the senators fled too, snatching up in a sort of plunder whatever came to hand from their own goods as though it belonged to someone else; and there were some who, though they had been strongly on Caesar's side before, were then, out of sheer bewilderment, thrown out of their reckoning and swept along quite needlessly by the current of that rush,
and most pitiable was the sight the city presented, with so great a storm bearing down upon it, being carried, as it were, like a ship whose pilots have given up hope of steering it, wherever chance might cast it. Yet, pitiable as this change was, men counted their flight as being for their country, because of Pompey, and abandoned Rome as though it were now Caesar's camp; where indeed even Labienus, a man among Caesar's closest friends and one who had served as his legate and fought most eagerly at his side in all the Celtic wars, at that time deserted him and came over to Pompey.
But to him Caesar sent on his money and his baggage all the same. As for Domitius, who commanded thirty cohorts and held Corfinium, Caesar came up and encamped beside him. Domitius, giving up hope for himself, begged poison from his own physician, a household slave, and, having received and taken what was given him, drank it expecting to die.
But shortly after, hearing that Caesar was showing a wonderful humanity toward those who were captured, he bewailed his own fate and blamed the rashness of his resolve. And when his physician reassured him, telling him that what he had drunk was a sleeping draught, not a deadly poison, he rose up overjoyed and went to Caesar, and, having received his right hand in pledge, went over once more to Pompey. When this news was reported at Rome, it made people happier, and some who had fled turned back.
Caesar took over Domitius's army along with all the others whom he managed to overtake still being levied for Pompey in the various towns. Having grown large and formidable, he now marched against Pompey himself. Pompey did not accept the attack, but fled to Brundisium, sending the consuls ahead with a force to Dyrrachium, while he himself sailed away shortly after, when Caesar came up — as will be shown in detail in the account written about him.
Caesar wished to pursue at once, but lacked ships, and so turned back to Rome, having become master of the whole of Italy, without bloodshed, in sixty days. When he found the city more settled than he had expected, and many senators still in it, he spoke to them in a moderate and popular vein, urging them to send men to Pompey to negotiate suitable terms. But no one obeyed — whether they feared Pompey after having deserted him, or simply doubted that Caesar's words matched his real intentions and thought them merely fine talk for show.
When the tribune Metellus attempted to block him from removing funds from the state treasury, appealing to certain statutes, Caesar replied that weapons and statutes did not share the same moment: "If you are troubled by what is being done, get out of the way for now. War has no need of free speech. But when I have laid down my arms once terms are reached, then you may come forward and address the people — and this," he said, "I say while giving up what is properly my own right; for you are mine to dispose of, you and all the others I have taken who rose up against me."
Having said this to Metellus, he walked toward the doors of the treasury, and since the keys were nowhere to be found, he summoned metalworkers and had them force the doors open. When Metellus objected once more, with some bystanders applauding him for it, Caesar drew himself up and warned that he would put him to death unless he ceased being troublesome. "And this too, young man," he said, "you should not fail to know: it is harder for me to say it than to do it." This speech made Metellus withdraw in fear, and made everything else easily and quickly supplied for the war.
He marched first into Iberia, having resolved to drive out Afranius and Varro, Pompey's legates, and to bring the forces and provinces there under his own control, so that he might then march against Pompey leaving no enemy at his back. Though he was often in personal danger from ambushes, and his army suffered greatly from hunger, he did not let up in pursuing, challenging, and encircling the men with trenches until he had forcibly become master of their camps and their forces, while their commanders fled to Pompey.
Once Caesar was back in Rome, his father-in-law Piso pressed him to dispatch envoys who would arrange terms with Pompey, but Isauricus, seeking to please Caesar, argued against it. Named dictator by the senate, Caesar brought back exiles, gave back civic standing to the offspring of men ruined in Sulla's time, eased debtors' burdens with a set reduction of interest, and took up a few other such measures of policy — but in eleven days he laid down the monarchy, had himself declared consul together with Servilius Isauricus, and turned to the campaign.
He left the bulk of his troops behind and pushed forward by land, taking along five legions and six hundred handpicked cavalrymen; in the dead of winter, as January began (Poseideon by the Athenian calendar), he put to sea, crossed the Ionian Gulf, seized both Oricum and Apollonia, and then sent the ships once more toward Brundisium to retrieve the men who had lagged behind on the march.
As long as they were still on the march, being by now worn down in body and worn out by the sheer number of wars, they held Caesar to blame: "To what end, and for what purpose, will this man ever set us down, carrying us about and using us as if we were untiring and inanimate? Even iron grows weary from blows, and even a shield has some...
...sparing, in so long a time, and a breastplate too — does Caesar not reckon, even from our wounds, that he rules over mortal men, and that we are born to suffer and to feel pain as mortals do? Even a god cannot force the season of winter and of storm-wind upon the sea — yet this man risks everything as if he were not pursuing enemies but fleeing them." Saying such things, they went on their way toward Brundisium at a leisurely pace.
But when they arrived and found that Caesar had already put out to sea, they quickly changed their tune again and reproached themselves, calling themselves traitors to their commander, and they reproached their officers too for not having hastened the march. Sitting on the heights, they scanned the sea and Epirus beyond it for the ships on which they were to cross over to him.
At Apollonia, Caesar, not having with him a force adequate for battle, and as the troops from there were slow in coming, in his perplexity and distress conceived a desperate plan: unknown to everyone, he boarded a boat of only twelve oars to sail across to Brundisium, though the sea all around was held by the enemy's great fleets.
So, by night, disguising himself in a servant's clothing, he boarded, and throwing himself down like one of no account, kept still. As the Aous river carried the boat down toward the sea, the morning breeze, which usually at that hour brought calm at the river mouth by pushing back the swell, was overpowered by a strong gale blowing in from the open sea through the night, which extinguished it.
The river, raging against the incoming tide of the sea and the opposing surge, growing rough and being battered back with a great crash and hard eddies, could not be forced by the helmsman, who ordered the sailors to turn about and reverse course. But Caesar, perceiving this, revealed himself, and taking the helmsman's hand — the man being terrified at the sight of him — said, "Go on, good man, be bold and fear nothing: you carry Caesar, and Caesar's Fortune sailing with you."
The sailors forgot the storm, and gripping their oars, strained with all their eagerness against the river. Yet it could not be done — the boat had shipped a large amount of water and was in peril at the river's mouth — so, very much against his will, he yielded and let the helmsman bring the boat about. As he came back up, the soldiers came out to meet him in crowds, complaining bitterly and taking it hard that he was not convinced he could win with them alone, but was distressed and risked himself for the sake of those absent, as though he distrusted the men present.
After this, Antony sailed over from Brundisium bringing the forces, and Caesar, now emboldened, challenged Pompey, who was well entrenched and abundantly supplied both by land and by sea, while Caesar himself, though not lacking provisions at first, was later hard pressed by shortage of necessities — to the point that his men would dig a particular root out of the ground, blend it with milk, and eat it.
And once they even shaped loaves out of it, and running up to the enemy's outposts, threw them inside and scattered them about, declaring that they would keep Pompey under siege for as long as the ground kept producing such roots. Pompey, for his part, refused to let either the loaves or that message reach his troops at large, for his soldiers were losing heart, dreading the harshness and indifference of the enemy as if they were dealing with wild beasts.
There were constant scattered skirmishes around Pompey's fortifications, and Caesar had the better of all of them except one, in which, after a great rout occurred, he came close to losing his camp entirely. For when Pompey attacked, no one held his ground, but the trenches were filled with the slain, and men fell around their own ramparts and walls, driven headlong in flight.
Caesar, meeting them, tried to turn back those who were fleeing, but accomplished nothing; when he grabbed at the standards, the standard-bearers let them drop, with the result that the enemy seized thirty-two of them, and Caesar himself came close to being killed. For laying his hand on a large and powerful man who was fleeing past him, he ordered him to stay and turn to face the enemy; the man, full of panic at the danger, raised his sword as if to strike him, but Caesar's shield-bearer got there first and cut off the man's shoulder.
Caesar despaired of his own situation so completely that, when Pompey — out of some caution, or by fortune — did not press his great success to its conclusion, but shut the fleeing men up within their rampart and withdrew, Caesar, as he departed, said to his friends, "Today the victory would have belonged to the enemy, if they had had a man who knew how to win."
He himself went into his tent and, lying down, passed that night, of all nights, the most painful, in helpless reckonings — reckoning that he had led badly, since fertile land lay open before him, with Macedonia's and Thessaly's flourishing towns there for the taking, and yet he had let the war be dragged elsewhere while he sat here by the sea, with the enemy in command of it, besieged by lack of necessities rather than himself besieging with arms.
Tossed about in this way and distressed at the difficulty and harshness of his present situation, he roused his army, having resolved to advance against Scipio in Macedonia — for either he would draw Pompey after him to fight where he was not equally supplied from the sea, or he would overpower Scipio while he stood alone.
This encouraged Pompey's army and the officers around him to press Caesar as a beaten man in flight. Pompey himself was cautious about risking a battle over stakes so great, and, being excellently supplied in everything for the long term, thought it best to wear down and let wither the enemy's vigor, which was of short duration. For the most warlike part of Caesar's force had experience and irresistible daring for battle,
but in the wanderings and encampments, the assaults on walls and the broken nights, they were worn out by age, and their bodies were heavy under hardship, their eagerness failing along with their strength. And at that time, it was said, a kind of plague as well, originating from the strangeness of their diet, was going around in Caesar's army, and worst of all, being neither strong in money nor well supplied with food, it seemed that in a short time he would be undone on his own.
For these reasons, Cato alone praised Pompey for not wanting to fight, out of sparing regard for the citizens — Cato, who, seeing the enemy's dead from the battle, numbering about a thousand, went away covering his face and weeping. But all the others reviled Pompey for avoiding battle, and provoked him, calling him Agamemnon and King of Kings, as though he did not wish to give up his sole command, but delighted in having so many commanders dependent on him and coming to attend at his tent.
Favonius, imitating Cato's bluntness, complained loudly that once again, on account of Pompey's fondness for command, they would miss out on tasting the figs of Tusculum this year. Afranius — who had lately come from Iberia after a poor showing there in command, and stood accused of having sold out the army for money — asked why they were not fighting the trader who had purchased the provinces off him. Pressed on every side by such talk, Pompey, most reluctantly, advanced into battle in pursuit of Caesar.
Caesar accomplished the rest of the march with difficulty, since no one would provide him a market, everyone despising him because of his recent defeat; but upon capturing Gomphi, a Thessalian town, he managed not only to feed his troops but also, against all expectation, to cure them of their illness. For the men came upon abundant wine, and drinking without restraint, then holding revels and behaving like bacchants along the road, they shook off the sickness through their drunkenness and passed beyond it, their bodies falling into a different condition.
When both armies had entered Pharsalia and encamped there, Pompey again fell back into his original way of thinking, especially as inauspicious omens occurred, along with a dream in which he seemed to see himself in the theater being applauded by the Romans. But the men around him were so bold, and had so far anticipated victory in their hopes, that Domitius, Spinther, and Scipio quarreled with one another over Caesar's office of high priest,
and many were sending to Rome to hire and secure in advance houses suitable for men about to hold the consulship and praetorship, expecting to take office immediately after the war. Above all, the cavalry were eager for the battle, having been trained to excess in splendor of arms, in the feeding of their horses, and in beauty of body, and they thought a great deal of themselves also because of their numbers, being seven thousand against Caesar's one thousand. The infantry too were far from evenly matched, forty-five thousand drawn up against twenty-two thousand.
Caesar gathered his soldiers together, and having told them beforehand that two legions under Corfinius were close by, and fifteen more cohorts under Calenus were stationed around Megara and Athens, put it to them whether they preferred to hold off for those reinforcements, or to face the danger on their own; and they cried out, begging him not to wait, but rather to use whatever stratagem and generalship would bring them into contact with the enemy as quickly as possible.
As he carried out the lustral purification of his troops and the first victim had been offered up, the diviner immediately announced that battle against the enemy would be decided within three days. Caesar then asked whether the sacrifice also showed some favorable token of the outcome, to which the man replied, "That question you yourself are better placed to answer. What the gods point to is a sweeping reversal, a turn into its very opposite of how things now stand, so that if you presently think your affairs prosper, look for the worse to come, but if they go badly, expect improvement."
On the night before the battle, as he was going about inspecting the watches around midnight, a torch of heavenly fire was seen, which, carried over Caesar's camp, blazing and flame-like, seemed to fall into Pompey's. At the morning watch they also perceived that a panic-stricken confusion had arisen among the enemy; still he did not expect that they would give battle on that day, but was breaking camp to march toward Scotussa.
But the tents were already down when riders from his scouting parties came galloping to report that the enemy was descending to give battle. Overjoyed, and having prayed to the gods, he drew up the phalanx, making the line threefold: over the center he set Domitius Calvinus, of the wings Antony held the one, and he himself the right, intending to fight in the tenth legion.
There, seeing the enemy's cavalry arrayed opposite, and fearing their splendor and their numbers, he secretly ordered six cohorts to come around to him from the rear of the line and stationed them behind the right wing, instructing them what they must do whenever the enemy's cavalry should charge. Pompey himself held one of the wings, Domitius the left, and Scipio, his father-in-law, commanded the center.
All the cavalry bore down upon the left, so as to encircle the enemy's right and bring about a brilliant rout around the commander himself; for they thought no depth of a hoplite phalanx would hold, but that everything would be crushed and shattered against the enemy the moment so great a mass of horsemen made its assault together.
When both sides were about to give the signal for the charge, Pompey ordered his hoplites, standing with weapons leveled and remaining firmly in place, to receive the enemy's onrush until they should come within range of a javelin's throw. But Caesar says that in this too he erred, being ignorant that the clash that comes with a run and a rush at the outset adds force to the blows and kindles the spirit further, fanned up out of everything.
He himself, about to set the phalanx in motion and already advancing to the task, first saw one of the captains, a man loyal to him and experienced in wars, encouraging those under him and challenging them to a contest of valor; calling this man by name, he said, "What do we hope for, Gaius Crassinius, and how much confidence do we have?"
Crassinius, stretching out his right hand and shouting loudly, said, "We shall win, Caesar, gloriously; and you will praise me today, whether living or dead." Having said this, he was the first to charge the enemy at a run, sweeping along with him the hundred and twenty soldiers around himself. Cutting through the front ranks and pressing forward with great slaughter and force, he was checked, struck by a sword through the mouth, so that the point stood out above the back of his neck.
So the infantry clashed in the center and fought; but from the wing Pompey's cavalry came riding on proudly, pouring out their squadrons to encircle the right; and before they could charge, the cohorts ran out from Caesar's line, not, as they were accustomed, using their javelins as throwing-spears,
nor striking at the thighs or shins of the enemy from close at hand, but aiming at their faces and wounding them there, having been taught by Caesar to do this, in the hope that men not much accustomed to wars or wounds, but young and vain of their beauty and bloom of youth, would above all shrink from blows of this kind and not stand their ground, fearing at once the present danger and the future disgrace.
And this is indeed what happened; for they could not endure the javelins being raised against them, nor did they dare to look upon the steel before their eyes, but turned away and covered their faces, sparing them, and at last, having thrown themselves into such confusion, they turned to flee most shamefully, ruining the whole battle; for at once the victors surrounded these infantry and, falling upon them from behind, cut them down.
Pompey, when he saw from the other wing his cavalry scattered in flight, he lost all command of himself, forgetting that he was the great Pompey, and instead, like someone whose wits a god had violently smitten, walked off to his tent without a word, and sitting down waited to see what would happen, until, when the rout of all had come about, the enemy mounted the rampart and fought with those guarding it.
Then, as though coming to his senses, and uttering, they say, only this one word, "So, even as far as the camp?" he took off his general's and combatant's dress, and putting on clothing fitting for a fugitive, slipped away. But what fortunes he later met with, and how he gave himself over to the men of Egypt and was killed, we shall show in the writings concerning him.
Caesar, when he had come into Pompey's camp and saw the enemy's dead already lying there, and those still being killed, is said to have groaned and said, "This is what they wished, to this necessity they drove me, that Gaius Caesar, who had brought the greatest wars to a successful end, would have been condemned, if I had dismissed my armies."
Asinius Pollio says that Caesar uttered these words in Latin at that time, but that they were written down by himself in Greek; and that of those who died, most were servants killed in the taking of the camp, and that no more than six thousand soldiers fell. Of those taken alive, Caesar incorporated most into his legions; and to many of the distinguished he granted pardon, among whom was Brutus, who later killed him — concerning whom it is said that Caesar was distressed when he was not to be seen, but was extraordinarily pleased when he was found safe and came to him.
Of the many signs that occurred concerning the victory, the most notable reported is the one at Tralles. In a shrine dedicated to Victory a statue of Caesar had been erected, and the pavement surrounding it, though naturally firm and set with hard stone, is said to have from this very spot put forth a palm shoot beside the base of the statue. And at Patavium, Gaius Cornelius, a man of good repute in divination, a fellow citizen and acquaintance of the historian Livy, happened to be sitting that day observing the birds.
According to Livy's account, he first worked out when the engagement was occurring and told the bystanders that the affair stood on a knife's edge even then, with the two sides closing for combat; then, returning his gaze to the omens before him, he sprang up as though possessed and cried out, "Caesar, victory is yours!" As the onlookers stood amazed, he lifted the crown from his own head and vowed he would set it there again only once his craft had been vindicated by events. Livy insists that matters unfolded in just this fashion.
Caesar, having granted freedom to the nation of the Thessalians, pursued Pompey as a trophy of victory; and on reaching Asia, as a favor to Theopompus, the compiler of the myths, he freed the people of Cnidus, and to all who dwelt in Asia he remitted a third of their tribute.
Having put in at Alexandria after Pompey had already died, he turned away from Theodotus, who brought him Pompey's head, but on receiving the man's signet ring he wept; and as many of Pompey's companions and acquaintances as had been captured by the king while wandering about the country, he treated all of them well and drew them to himself. And he wrote to his friends in Rome that of his victory this was the greatest and sweetest thing he enjoyed, to be able always to save some of the citizens who had fought against him.
As for that war, some hold that it need never have happened, and that his passion for Cleopatra alone made it both shameful and perilous for him, while others blame the king's men, and especially Pothinus the eunuch, who, having the greatest power, and having lately killed Pompey and driven out Cleopatra, was secretly plotting against Caesar; and for this reason, they say, Caesar from that point on began to spend his nights in drinking parties for the sake of his own safety. Openly Pothinus was not to be endured, saying and doing many things full of envy and insult toward Caesar.
For he ordered the soldiers to put up with and be content with the worst and oldest grain being measured out to them, eating what belonged to others, and for their dinners he used wooden and earthenware vessels, the excuse being that Caesar had seized every piece of gold and silver plate against a debt still owing; for the reigning king's father had been in arrears to Caesar for seventeen million five hundred thousand drachmas, a sum of which Caesar had already forgiven the balance to the man's children, keeping back only a portion of it —
he then demanded to receive it and maintain the army with it. And when Pothinus told him for the present to go away and attend to his great affairs, saying he would receive it later with thanks, and that he had very little need of Egyptian counselors, Caesar secretly sent for Cleopatra from the country.
And she, taking with her only Apollodorus the Sicilian of her friends, embarked in a small boat and put in at the palace when it was already growing dark. Since there was no other way to escape notice, she got into a bed-sack and stretched herself out at full length, and Apollodorus, tying up the bed-sack with a strap, carried it in through the doors to Caesar,
and it is said that Cleopatra was first captured by this very device, appearing bold, and then, overcome by the charm and grace of her further company, reconciled her to her brother so that she should reign jointly with him. Then, afterward, during the reconciliation, while all were feasting together, a servant of Caesar's, a barber, through the cowardice by which he surpassed all men, leaving nothing uninvestigated, but listening in and prying into everything, understood that a plot was being carried out against Caesar by Achillas the general and Pothinus the eunuch,
and Caesar, having discovered it, set a guard around the men's quarters and put Pothinus to death; but Achillas, fleeing to the army camp, raised up against him a heavy and hard-to-manage war, defending so great a city and force with very few men. In this war, first, he was endangered by being cut off from water; for the aqueducts were walled up by the enemy; and second, when his fleet was being cut off, he was compelled to ward off the danger by fire, which also spread from the shipyards and destroyed
the great library. Third, when a battle was joined near Pharos, he sprang from the breakwater down into a skiff to bring aid to his men in the fight, but as the Egyptians closed in on him from every side by sea, he flung himself into the water and made his escape by swimming, though with great difficulty. It is said that on this occasion, clutching a bundle of documents, he refused to abandon them even as missiles struck around him and he was dragged under; instead he kept the papers clear of the water in one hand while paddling himself along with the other, and meanwhile the skiff went straight to the bottom.
Finally, when the king had withdrawn to the enemy, Caesar attacked, joined battle, and won, many having fallen and the king himself having disappeared; and leaving Cleopatra ruling as queen of Egypt, and not long after, once she had borne him a son the people of Alexandria named Caesarion, Caesar departed for Syria,
and pressing on from there through Asia, he received word that Pharnaces son of Mithridates had defeated Domitius, driving him out of Pontus in flight with only a handful of followers, and that Pharnaces, using his victory insatiably and holding Bithynia and Cappadocia, was reaching out for the so-called Lesser Armenia, and was stirring up all the kings and tetrarchs in that region.
So without delay he marched against him with three legions, and, engaging in a major battle by the city of Zela, chased him out of Pontus in headlong retreat and wiped out his army entirely. And announcing the swiftness and speed of this battle to Rome, to a certain friend named Amantius, he wrote three words: "I came, I saw, I conquered." In Latin the words, ending in a like grammatical form, have a terseness that is not without effect.
After this he crossed over into Italy and went up to Rome, the year in which he had been chosen dictator for the second time now drawing to a close — that office had never before lasted a full year. For the following year he was appointed consul, and he came under criticism because, when Cosconius and Galba, two men holding praetorian rank, were slain by his own mutinying troops, his only reproach to them was to call them citizens rather than soldiers, and distributed to each a thousand drachmas and allotted them a great tract of land in Italy.
Further discredit fell on him from Dolabella's wild extravagance, Amantius's love of money, Antony's drunkenness, and Corfinius's scheming over Pompey's house, which he was remodeling as though it were not grand enough for him. These were the things the Romans found hard to bear. Caesar, for his part, was not ignorant of the character of these men, nor did he wish to employ them, but the necessities of the state compelled him to make use of those who served him.
When the party of Cato and Scipio, after the battle at Pharsalus, fled to Libya, and there, with the help of King Juba, had gathered forces worth reckoning with, Caesar resolved to march against them. Crossing over to Sicily about the winter solstice, and wishing at once to cut off from the commanders under him all hope of delay and postponement, he pitched his own tent right at the water's edge, and once a wind came up he set sail, taking along three thousand foot-soldiers and a small body of cavalry,
and having disembarked these without being noticed, he put out again, being anxious on account of the greater part of his force still at sea; but meeting them already under way he brought them all safely down to the camp. Learning that the enemy took courage from some old oracle declaring that victory in Libya was forever destined to belong to the Scipio line, it is hard to say whether in mockery — since a Scipio commanded the enemy — or in earnest, appropriating the omen for himself,
for he had with him a certain man otherwise contemptible and disregarded, yet who came from the Africanus household and bore the name Scipio Sallustio; this fellow he repeatedly stationed at the army's forefront during engagements as though he were its commander, being thereby often forced to provoke the enemy and to court engagements.
For there was neither grain in abundance for the men nor fodder for the pack animals, but they were forced to feed the horses on seaweed, washed free of its brine, mixed with a little grass as a relish; for the Numidians, appearing often and swiftly, kept control of the countryside. And once, when Caesar's horsemen were at leisure,
it happened that a Libyan man was giving a display, dancing and at the same time playing the single pipe in a marvelous way, and the men, delighting in it, had sat down, having handed their horses over to the boys; suddenly the enemy came around and fell upon them, killing some on the spot, and falling in together with the rest as they were driven headlong toward the camp.
Had not Caesar himself, and along with Caesar Asinius Pollio, come to the rescue from the rampart and checked the flight, the war would have been decided then and there. There was also another battle in which, when it came to close fighting, the enemy had the advantage; in it Caesar is said to have seized the standard-bearer as he fled by the neck, turned him around, and said, "The enemy are over there."
Elated by these successes, Scipio was eager to have the matter decided by battle, and leaving Afranius camped apart, and Juba likewise camped apart at a little distance, he himself began to fortify, above a lake, a stronghold for his camp near the city of Thapsus, so that it might serve all of them as a base of operations and a refuge for the battle.
While he was occupied with this work, Caesar, passing with unimaginable speed through wooded places offering no visible approach, surrounded a portion of the enemy while striking the rest head-on; having routed these he seized the opportunity and the momentum of fortune, by which he captured Afranius's camp at the first shout, and at the first shout, as Juba fled, sacked the camp of the Numidians; and having in the space of a single day gained possession of a small part of three camps and destroyed fifty thousand of the enemy, he lost not even fifty of his own men.
Some report these things about that battle; while others claim he took no part in the fighting himself, and that instead while he was drawing up and arranging the army his usual affliction seized him, and that as soon as he felt it beginning, before he was thrown into confusion and his consciousness was altogether overtaken by the malady, already trembling, he was carried into one of the nearby towers and spent the time quietly there, while of the men of consular and praetorian rank who had fled from the battle, some destroyed themselves when they were about to be captured, while many others Caesar put to death after they were taken.
Eager to take Cato alive, he hastened toward Utica; for Cato, guarding that city, had taken no part in the battle. When he learned that the man had made away with himself, he was clearly stung by it, though for what reason is unclear. At any rate he said, "O Cato, I begrudge you your death, for you begrudged me the saving of your life." Now the speech he afterward wrote against the dead Cato does not seem to be a sign of a gentle or forgiving disposition. For how could he have shown mercy to him living, when he poured out such anger even on one who could no longer feel it?
But his fairness toward Cicero and Brutus and countless others who had fought against him leads people to judge that even that speech was composed not out of hatred but from political rivalry, for the following reason. Cicero had written an encomium of Cato, giving the speech the title "Cato"; and the speech, as one might expect, was eagerly read by many, being composed by the most powerful of orators on the noblest of subjects.
This irritated Caesar, who regarded the praise of the dead man, given on his account, as an accusation against himself. He therefore wrote a piece gathering together many charges against Cato; the book is entitled the Anticato. And each of the two speeches has, for the sake of Caesar and Cato respectively, many devoted readers.
But indeed, when he returned to Rome from Libya, he first boasted greatly to the people about his victory, saying that he had subdued so much territory that it would yield the public treasury, year after year, grain amounting to two hundred thousand Attic bushels along with three million pounds of oil. Then he celebrated triumphs — the Egyptian, the Pontic, the African — the last not over Scipio but ostensibly over King Juba,
and on that occasion Juba's son, then quite an infant, was led along in the triumph, having met with the most fortunate of captures, seeing that, born a Numidian and a foreigner, he ended up ranked among the most erudite of Greek authors. After the triumphs he gave great gifts to the soldiers and won the populace over through feasts and public shows, seating them together for a banquet spread across twenty-two thousand couches, and providing spectacles both of gladiators and of men fighting sea-battles in honor of his daughter Julia, long since dead.
After the spectacles, a census was taken, and instead of the former three hundred twenty thousand the total was found to be only one hundred fifty thousand. Such was the calamity that civil strife had wrought, and so great a portion of the people it had consumed away, not even reckoning the misfortunes that had befallen the rest of Italy and the provinces.
When these matters were completed, now serving his fourth term as consul, he launched a campaign into Spain to face the sons of Pompey, who, though still young, had gathered together an astonishing number of troops and were displaying a boldness worthy to command, so that they brought Caesar into the greatest danger he had yet faced.
The great battle was fought near the city of Munda, in which Caesar, seeing his own men being pressed hard and holding out poorly, ran through the ranks and among the weapons, crying out that if they felt no shame, they should hand him over to these mere boys. With great effort and eagerness he finally pushed back the enemy, destroying more than thirty thousand of them, but losing a thousand of his own, the best of his men,
and afterward, on withdrawing from the battle, he told his friends that on many prior occasions he had fought to win, yet only this once he had fought for his life. He won this battle on the festival of the Dionysia, on which day, it is said, Pompey the Great also had gone forth to war; the time between the two was an interval of four years. Of Pompey's sons, the younger escaped, but a few days later Didius brought back the head of the elder.
This was the last war Caesar waged. The triumph celebrated for it distressed the Romans more than anything else. For it was not over foreign generals nor barbarian kings that he had triumphed, but having utterly destroyed the sons and family of a man who had been the foremost of the Romans in his fortunes, it was not fitting to parade this in a procession over the calamities of the fatherland, exulting in deeds whose only defense before gods and men alike is that they were done under necessity — and this too, though before now he had sent neither messenger nor public dispatch announcing victory from the civil wars, but had thrust away the glory of it out of shame.
Nevertheless, having bent to the man's fortune and accepted the bridle, and considering monarchy a breathing-space from the civil wars and their evils, they appointed him dictator for life — and this was an acknowledged tyranny, since to the unaccountability of monarchy was now added permanence.
When Cicero proposed to the senate the first honors, the greatness of which had at least something human about it, others, adding excesses and vying with one another, brought it about that the man became burdensome and distasteful even to the gentlest, on account of the extravagance and strangeness of what was being voted; in this those who hated Caesar are thought to have contributed no less than his flatterers,
so that they might have as many grounds against him as possible and might seem to be attacking him on the gravest charges. For in other respects, now that his civil wars had come to an end, he offered himself blameless; and it does not seem unfitting that they voted a temple of Clemency as a thank-offering for his gentleness. For he granted pardon to many who had opposed him in arms, and even bestowed offices and honors on some, among them Brutus and Cassius, who at the time held praetorships.
The statues of Pompey that had been thrown down he did not overlook, but had them set up again, at which Cicero remarked that by setting up Pompey's statues Caesar had firmly fixed his own. And when his friends urged him to keep a bodyguard, and many offered themselves for this purpose, he refused, remarking that dying a single time beat living in constant dread of death.
Wrapping himself in the goodwill of the people as the finest and at the same time surest safeguard, he again won over the populace with feasts and distributions of grain, and the soldiery with colonies, of which the most notable were Carthage and Corinth — cities which, as it happened, had earlier met their destruction, and now, at one and the same time, both received their restoration.
To the powerful he promised consulships and praetorships for the future, to others he offered comfort with various other offices and honors, and in all he instilled hope, courting their willing obedience — so much so that when the consul Maximus died, he appointed Caninius Rebilus consul for the one remaining day of the term. To him, as it happened, when many were going to greet and escort him, Cicero said, "Let us hurry, before the man goes out of office."
But since his many successes did not turn his naturally grand and ambitious spirit toward enjoyment of what he had accomplished, but rather, serving as kindling and confidence for what lay ahead, gave birth to conceptions of greater undertakings and a longing for new glory, as though he had used up the old, the feeling was nothing other than a rivalry with himself, as if he were another man, and a kind of contention between what was to come and what had already been done,
and his preparation and design were to march against the Parthians, and having subdued them, to pass through Hyrcania along the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus, come round past the Pontus, and invade Scythia; then, having overrun the lands neighboring the Germans and Germany itself, to return through Gaul into Italy, and so close the circle of his empire, bounded on every side by the Ocean.
In the midst of his campaigning he also undertook to cut through the Corinthian Isthmus, appointing Anienus to the task, and to take the Tiber in hand at once from the city itself with a deep channel, bending it around toward Circeium so as to discharge it into the sea near Tarracina, contriving thereby both safety and ease for those who traveled to Rome for trade,
and besides this, to drain the marshes around Pomentium and Setia and turn them into a plain fit for the work of many tens of thousands of men, and to bring bars across the sea nearest Rome by means of moles, and to clear out the blind and treacherous places of the Ostian shore, so as to make harbors and roadsteads worthy of trust for so great a shipping traffic. These things were still in preparation.
The arrangement and correction of the calendar, the irregularity of time set right by him with such graceful learning, proved of the most refined usefulness. For not only in very ancient times had the Romans used disordered cycles of the months in relation to the year, so that the sacrifices and festivals, being shifted little by little, fell in the end into seasons opposite to the times they belonged to,
but even concerning the solar year then in use, most people had no reckoning of it at all, while the priests alone, knowing the season, would suddenly and without anyone's foreknowledge insert the intercalary month, calling it Mercedonius — a device King Numa, as tradition holds, was the very first to introduce, though he had devised only a slight remedy, one reaching but a short way toward correcting the fault, as has been written in his Life.
Caesar, setting the problem before the best of the philosophers and mathematicians, blended out of the methods already available a correction of his own, more precisely worked out, which the Romans use down to the present day, and by which they seem to err less than others regarding the irregularity of time. Yet even this gave occasion to those who envied him and resented his power. Cicero the orator, at any rate, it seems, when someone remarked that Lyra would rise tomorrow, said, "Yes, by edict" — as though even this were something men had to accept under compulsion.
But the hatred that was most openly displayed against him, and that proved fatal, was brought about by his desire for kingship — to most people the first cause of it, but to those who had long harbored ill will a most seemly pretext, although those who were courting this honor for Caesar had also sown a certain story among the people, that according to the Sibylline writings Parthia could be conquered by the Romans if they campaigned against it with a king, otherwise being unconquerable.
Now while Caesar was descending toward the city from Alba, some ventured to greet him as king; but when the people were thrown into confusion, he, displeased, said that he was called not king but Caesar. And when at this a silence fell over everyone, he passed on, not altogether cheerful nor gracious.
And when the Senate voted him certain extravagant honors, he happened to be seated above the rostra, and as the consuls and praetors approached, with the whole senate following as well, he did not rise, but as though transacting business with private citizens, he replied that the honors needed curtailing rather than increase. And this vexed not only the senate but the people too, feeling that the city was being insulted in the person of the senate, and those who were free to withdraw at once went away in terrible dejection,
so that he, on realizing it, immediately turned toward home and cried out to his friends, pulling his garment away from his throat, that anyone who so desired might strike his bared throat and kill him — though later he made his illness his excuse, saying that those in such a condition cannot bear to keep their senses steady when they stand and address a crowd, but instead their senses are quickly shaken and set spinning and seized by dizziness.
But this was not really the case; rather, they say, though he was quite willing to rise for the senate, he was held back by one of his friends, or rather flatterers, Cornelius Balbus, who said, "Will you not remember that you are Caesar, and not think it proper that you be paid court to as one greater?" — splendidly, O—
Upon these offenses there followed the insult done by the tribunes of the people. For it was the festival of the Lupercalia, concerning which many write that it was in ancient times a festival of shepherds, and it has some connection also with the Arcadian Lycaea.
Many of the young men of noble birth and of the magistrates run naked through the city, striking with shaggy strips of hide those in their way, in sport and laughter; and many of the women of rank purposely come to meet them and offer their hands to the blows, as though to a schoolmaster, being persuaded that it is good for those with child toward an easy delivery, and for the barren toward conceiving.
Caesar was watching these things, seated above the rostra on a golden chair, adorned in triumphal dress. Antony was one of those running the sacred course, for he was consul. So when he burst into the forum and the crowd made way for him, carrying a diadem wreathed with a laurel crown, he held it out to Caesar, and there arose applause — not loud, but slight, and prearranged,
but when Caesar pushed it away the whole people applauded again; and when he offered it a second time, few applauded, and when he refused it again, everyone did; and so, the attempt having been thus refuted, Caesar rose, ordering the crown to be carried off to the Capitol. And statues of him were seen bound with royal diadems, and two of the tribunes, Flavius and Marullus, went and tore them down, and once they tracked down the men who had first hailed Caesar as king, marched them away and had them locked up.
And the people followed applauding, and called the men Brutuses, because it was Brutus who had put an end to the succession of kings and had established the power in the senate and people out of monarchy. At this Caesar, provoked, removed the office from Marullus and his colleagues, and in accusing them, at the same time insulting the people too, repeatedly called the men Brutuses and Cumaeans.
So then the many turned toward Marcus Brutus, who was thought to be descended on his father's side from that line, and on his mother's from the Servilii, another distinguished house, and was, besides, Cato's nephew as well as his son-in-law. The honors and favors bestowed on him by Caesar had blunted any impulse of his own to move against the monarchy,
for he had not merely been saved after the rout at Pharsalus, nor merely had many of his friends saved through his intercession, but he also enjoyed great trust with Caesar. He had received the most distinguished praetorship of that time, and was to be consul four years hence, being preferred over Cassius when the two contended for it; for Caesar is said to have remarked that Cassius made the more just case, but that he himself would not pass over Brutus.
And once, when certain men were slandering him, the conspiracy already being under way, Caesar paid no heed, but laying his hand upon his own body said to those slandering him, "This skin will wait for Brutus" — meaning that Brutus was worthy of power on account of his virtue, but that for power's sake he would not become thankless and base.
But those who longed for a change of government, and looked to him alone, or to him first, did not dare speak with him directly, but under cover of darkness they covered his tribunal and the praetor's seat where he dispensed justice with scrawled messages, the bulk of them along these lines: "You are asleep, Brutus," and "You are no true Brutus." Cassius, perceiving through these that his ambition was being quietly stirred, pressed and provoked him more than before, having himself besides a private hatred toward Caesar for reasons we have set forth in the Life of Brutus.
Caesar, however, held him too under suspicion, so much so that he remarked once to his companions, "What is it, do you think, that Cassius is after? For my part I do not much like him, being so pale." And again it is said that, when a report of a plot came to him concerning Antony and Dolabella, that they were stirring up revolution, he said, "It is not these fat, long-haired men I fear so much, but rather those pale, thin ones" — meaning Cassius and Brutus.
But it seems that fate is not so much unexpected as unguarded against, since they say wondrous signs and apparitions appeared. As for lights in the sky and crashing sounds carried about in many places by night, and birds of ill omen settling in the forum, these are perhaps not worth recording in connection with a calamity of such magnitude,
but Strabo the philosopher relates that many men all on fire were seen going about, and that a soldier's slave shot forth a great flame from his hand, so that he seemed to onlookers to be burning, but when it ceased the man had suffered no harm; and that at a sacrifice Caesar himself was performing, the victim's heart could not be found within it, and this was a terrible portent, for by nature no animal could exist without a heart.
It is also possible to hear from many who tell this story, that a certain seer had warned him to be on guard against a grave danger on that day in March the Romans name the Ides; and once the day had arrived, Caesar, on his way to the senate, greeted the seer and jested with him, saying, "Well, the Ides of March have come," and the man quietly replied to him, "Yes, they have come,
but they have not yet passed." The day before, while dining at the house of Marcus Lepidus, he happened to be signing letters while reclining, as was his custom, and when a discussion arose as to what kind of death was best, he cried out before anyone else, "The unexpected one."
After this, sleeping as was his custom beside his wife, when all the doors and windows of the bedchamber flew open at once, he was startled by the noise together with the light of the moon shining in, and perceived that Calpurnia, though sound asleep, was uttering indistinct sounds and inarticulate groans in her sleep; for it seemed that she was weeping as she held him in her arms, slain.
Others say that this was not the vision that came to the woman, but that there was a certain ornament attached to Caesar's house, one which, for the sake of adornment and dignity, the senate had voted to be set upon it, as Livy relates; this Calpurnia, seeing in a dream being broken to pieces, seemed to wail and weep over. When day came, then, she begged Caesar, if it were at all possible, not to go forth, but to put off the senate; and if he cared nothing at all for her dreams, to inquire through some other divination and through sacrifices concerning the future. And he too had
as it seems, some suspicion and fear of his own, for he had never before detected in Calpurnia any womanish tendency to superstition, but now he saw her in great distress; and when, after sacrificing many victims, the seers told him the signs were unfavorable, he decided to dispatch Antony to send the senate home,
Meanwhile Decimus Brutus, called also Albinus, a man Caesar trusted enough to have named him second in line among his heirs, yet who was nonetheless party to the plot alongside the other Brutus and Cassius, grew afraid that putting off the day would let the whole scheme come to light, mocked the seers and reproached Caesar,
saying that he was bringing accusations and slanders upon himself in the eyes of the senate, which would think itself being mocked; for it had come at his own bidding, and all were eager to vote that he be proclaimed king of the provinces outside Italy and wear the diadem
going over the rest of the earth and sea. But if someone were to tell them, sitting there now, to break up and come back again once he had met with better dreams — Calpurnia — what would the talk of his enviers be? Or which of his friends would put up with hearing it taught that this was slavery and tyranny? "But if you are altogether resolved," he said, "to discharge the day's obligation, it would be better for you to go yourself, greet the senate, and then postpone the matter."
So saying, Brutus took Caesar by the hand and led him along. And when he had gone forward only a little from the doors, a slave belonging to someone else, eager to reach him but overwhelmed by the crowd and press of people around him, forced his way into the house and gave himself over to Calpurnia, bidding her keep him under guard until Caesar returned, for he carried word of weighty affairs meant for Caesar's ears.
Artemidorus, by birth a native of Cnidus and a professor of Greek eloquence, being on friendly terms, through that profession, with certain men of Brutus's circle, and so having come to know most of what was being done, arrived carrying in a little scroll the things he meant to disclose. Seeing Caesar taking each of the little scrolls handed to him and passing them on to the attendants around him, he came up very close and said, "Caesar, read this one alone, and quickly: for it is written concerning great matters that concern you."
Caesar took it, but the crowds pressing to meet him kept him from reading it, though he tried again and again to do so; holding it in his hand and keeping just that one apart from the rest, he went on into the senate house. Some, however, say that another man handed him this scroll, and that Artemidorus did not manage to approach at all, but was squeezed out along the whole route.
But these things, no doubt, even chance itself brings about. As for the place that received that murder and that struggle — the place into which the senate had then been gathered, which held a standing statue of Pompey and had been a dedication of Pompey's among the things that adorned the theater — it made it altogether clear that some divinity was guiding and calling the deed to happen there.
And indeed it is said that Cassius, looking toward the statue of Pompey before the attempt, called upon it in silence, even though he was not a stranger to the doctrines of Epicurus; but the moment, it seems, with the terrible thing now at hand, produced in him an inspired passion in place of his former reasonings.
As for Antony, who was loyal to Caesar and physically strong, Brutus Albinus kept him occupied outside, purposely engaging him in a long conversation. When Caesar entered, the senate rose partway in deference to him, while of Brutus's men some stationed themselves behind his chair, and others went to meet him, as though to join Tillius Cimber in pleading for his exiled brother, and they kept pressing their plea together as they accompanied him all the way to his chair.
When he had sat down and kept brushing aside their pleas, and grew angry with each of them as they pressed more forcefully, Tillius grabbed hold of his toga with both hands and dragged it down away from his neck — this being the agreed signal for the attempt — and Casca struck first with his sword, a blow beside the neck, not fatal nor deep, but as was natural at the start of so great a daring deed, he was thrown into confusion, so that Caesar turned and
seized and held the dagger. At the same moment somehow they both cried out — the one struck, in Latin, "Casca, you villain, what are you doing?" and the one who struck, in Greek, to his brother, "Brother, help!" Once the attack had begun in this way, those who had no part in the plot were seized with terror and shuddering at what was happening, not daring to flee, nor to defend him, nor even to utter a sound, while each of those prepared for the murder bared his sword,
and, hemmed in on all sides, wherever he turned his gaze meeting blows and the iron driving at him, both against his face and against his eyes, he was entangled like a wild beast in the hands of them all — for all had to take part and taste of the murder. For this reason Brutus too struck him once, in the groin. Some accounts claim that as he struggled against the rest and twisted his body one way and another, crying out, when he saw Brutus with his sword drawn, he pulled his cloak down over his head and let himself go,
whether by chance or pushed there by those killing him, toward the base on which Pompey's statue stood. And the murder drenched it thoroughly with blood, so that it seemed as though Pompey himself were presiding over the vengeance upon his enemy, who lay fallen beneath his feet and convulsing from the multitude of his wounds — for he is reported to have taken twenty-three wounds, and a number of the plotters cut one another as they crowded so many strokes onto a single body.
When the man had been dispatched, the senate — even though Brutus stepped forward as though about to explain what had taken place — could not bear to stay, but burst out through the doors and fled, filling the people with helpless confusion and fear, so that some shut up their houses, others abandoned their counters and business tables, and some ran toward the place to see the calamity, others away from it, having already seen it.
Antony and Lepidus, who were Caesar's closest friends, slipped away and took refuge in other houses. Brutus's men, still hot from the murder, showing their bared swords, all together in a body left the senate house and made for the Capitoline, looking not like men fleeing, but very cheerful and confident, calling on the crowd to embrace freedom and welcoming the best of those they met,
and some even went up with them and mingled themselves in, as if they too had played a part in the deed, and staked a claim to its renown — among them Gaius Octavius and Lentulus Spinther. These men afterward paid dearly for their pretense, for Antony and the young Caesar had them executed, and they gained not even the fame for which they were dying, since others did not believe them; for those who punished them exacted the penalty not for the deed itself, but for the intention.
When day had come and Brutus's men had come down and made speeches, the people neither showed displeasure nor, as it were, approval of what had been done, but by their heavy silence they made clear that they pitied Caesar while feeling shame before Brutus. The senate, meanwhile, working out certain amnesties and settlements for everyone, voted to honor Caesar as a god and to alter not the smallest of the measures he had decreed while he ruled, while to Brutus's party it distributed provinces and awarded fitting honors, so that everyone believed that affairs had achieved stability and the best possible reconciliation.
But once Caesar's will had been opened and men learned that a considerable sum had been left to every Roman, and once they saw his corpse being borne through the forum, marred by its wounds, the crowd threw off all restraint and order; piling up around the body whatever benches, rails, and stalls stood nearby in the forum, they set the pile ablaze and burned him on the spot; then, snatching up blazing brands, they ran to the houses of the killers to burn them down, while others roamed everywhere through the city seeking to seize and tear apart the men.
But none of those men came out to meet them, since all had well barricaded themselves. A certain Cinna, one of Caesar's companions, happened, it is said, to have seen a strange vision the previous night: he dreamed that he was being invited by Caesar to dinner, and that he refused to be led by the hand, not wishing to go, but resisting. But when he heard that Caesar's body was being burned in the forum, he got up and went out of respect, even though he was uneasy about the vision and also had a fever.
And when he was seen, one of the crowd told another man who asked his name, and that man told another, and at once it went through everyone that this was the man who had killed Caesar — for indeed there was among the conspirators another man of the same name, Cinna, and taking this man to be that one, they rushed at him at once and tore the man apart in their midst.
It was mainly for fear of this that Brutus and Cassius left the city not many days afterward. Their subsequent actions and the sufferings that preceded their deaths are set down in the Life of Brutus.
Caesar died at the age of fifty-six in all, having outlived Pompey by not much more than four years, and of that rule and dominion which he had pursued through so many dangers over his whole life, and had barely won, he reaped nothing but the name alone and an invidious glory in the eyes of his fellow citizens.
His great guardian spirit, however, which he had made use of throughout his life, followed after him even in death as an avenger of the murder, driving and tracking down over all the earth and sea until it left none of his killers unpunished, but pursued even those who in any way had either touched the deed with their hand or shared in the intention.
Among the human events, the most astonishing was what befell Cassius: once beaten in the battle at Philippi, he ended his own life using that very same dagger with which he had struck Caesar. Of the divine signs there was the great comet, which appeared brilliant for seven nights after Caesar's murder and then vanished, and the dimming of the sun's brightness.
For throughout that whole year the disk rose pale and without its usual radiance, and the warmth it sent down to earth was faint and feeble, so that the air, weakened in its power to warm and clarify, became dark and heavy, and the crops, half-ripened and incomplete, withered and faded away before their time because of the coldness of the surrounding air.
But above all it was the apparition that came to Brutus that revealed that Caesar's murder had not been pleasing to the gods. It was of this kind: when he was on the point of ferrying his forces over from Abydos to the continent opposite, he was lying down within his tent as night fell, following his usual habit, awake rather than asleep and turning over in his mind what lay ahead — for this man is said to have been the least given to sleep of all generals, and to have used the greatest amount of time for himself while awake,
by nature. He thought he perceived some noise near the entrance, and looking toward the light of the lamp, now dying down, he saw a dreadful apparition of a man, huge beyond nature and grim in aspect. Fear gripped him at first, yet once he noticed it neither moved nor uttered a word, but stood silently beside his couch, he asked who it was.
The apparition answered him, "I am your evil spirit, Brutus; you will see me at Philippi." Then Brutus, undaunted, said, "I shall see you," and the spirit at once departed out of sight. When the time came, at Philippi, drawn up against Antony and Caesar, in the first battle he prevailed over the forces opposite him, routed them, and drove through, sacking Caesar's camp,
yet when he was on the verge of the second engagement, that identical apparition visited him once more by night, saying nothing this time, but Brutus, understanding his fate, threw himself into the danger, carrying himself forward. He did not, however, fall in the fighting, but when the rout came he fled to a certain rocky place, and, pressing his bare sword against his chest — with a friend, they say, also helping to drive the blow home — he died.

======== Phocion ========

The orator Demades, who held power in Athens by conducting his politics to please the Macedonians and Antipater, and who was compelled in his speeches and decrees to sink well below what the city's honor and reputation called for, remarked that he ought to be excused for taking charge of a city already in shipwreck; and this saying, though rather bold coming from such an orator, would seem to be true enough if applied instead to the statesmanship of Phocion.
For Demades himself was a shipwreck of the city, having lived and governed so shamelessly that Antipater said of him, now that Demades had become an old man, that, like a sacrificial victim once it has been used up, only his tongue and belly were left; but the virtue of Phocion, matched against a harsh and violent age as against a heavy adversary, the fortunes of Greece rendered dim and without lustre in reputation.
For we should not follow Sophocles, who makes virtue weak in the passage where he says: "But no, my lord, not even should it spring up does understanding remain with men who fare badly, but it departs"; we must grant fortune only this much power in opposing good men — that in place of the honor and gratitude they deserve, by bringing upon some wicked slanders and calumnies, it makes trust in them weaker than their virtue.
And yet peoples seem more apt to grow insolent toward good men when they prosper, being lifted up by great affairs and power; but the opposite happens, for misfortunes make their tempers bitter and quick to take offense and prone to anger, and their hearing difficult and harsh, vexed by every word and phrase that carries any force; and one who rebukes their errors seems to be reproaching them for their misfortunes, and the man who speaks freely seems to be showing contempt,
and just as honey stings sores and festering places on the flesh, so words that are true and sound often bite and vex men whose fortunes are bad, unless those words are gentle and pliant — just as the poet has called the pleasant thing "heart-warming," as being something that yields to the soul's pleasure and does not fight or resist it.
For indeed an inflamed eye takes the greatest delight in dwelling on shadowy and dim colors, but turns away from those that have brightness and light; and a city that has fallen upon unwanted fortunes is, through weakness, jumpy and too delicate to endure frankness of speech, precisely when it needs it most, since its circumstances allow no recovery from a mistake — for which reason such a form of government is dangerous in every way, for it destroys along with itself the man who speaks to please, and destroys beforehand the man who does not.
Just as, then, the astronomers say that the sun neither moves in the same course as the heavens nor directly opposite and counter to it, but by using an oblique and inclined path of motion makes a moist, pliant, and coiling spiral, by which everything is preserved and receives its best blending — so too, in statesmanship, the tension that is too upright and opposes the people in everything is harsh and hard, while, on the other hand, that which is dragged along and sinks together with the errors of the many is precarious and downhill,
whereas the oversight and governance that yields somewhat to those it persuades, granting what pleases them, and then demands what is beneficial from men who render much service gently and usefully — if they are not led entirely in a despotic and forceful manner — is salutary, though laborious and difficult, and has a dignity that mixes poorly with gentleness; but if the two are mixed, this is the most harmonious and musical blending of all rhythms and of all harmonies, by which god also is said to govern the universe — not by force, but by leading necessity through persuasion and reason.
This is what happened also to Cato the Younger; for he too had a character neither persuasive nor endearing to the crowd, nor did he flourish in public life by seeking favor; but Cicero says that he, conducting himself as though in Plato's republic and not among the dregs of Romulus, fell short of the consulship, while to me it seems that he suffered the same fate as fruits that appear out of season.
For just as men look upon those fruits with delight and wonder yet never actually make use of them, in the same way Cato's antiquated style, showing up after a long gap amid ruined lives and depraved customs, earned great fame and glory but proved ill-suited to what the age required, since the weight and magnitude of his virtue outstripped the circumstances of his own time.
For he too, when his country was not yet fallen, as Phocion's was, but was tossed by a great storm and swell, took part in politics only so far as to lay hold of the sails and ropes and stand by those with greater power, and though thrust away from the tiller and the steering, still he set up a great struggle against fortune. For others did indeed seize and overthrow the constitution, but only with difficulty, slowly, and after a long time, and it came within a hair of surviving, thanks to Cato and Cato's virtue —
to whom we compare Phocion, not according to general resemblances, as of good and political men — for indeed there is a difference between courage and courage, as that of Alcibiades compared with that of Epaminondas, and between prudence and prudence, as that of Themistocles compared with that of Aristides, and between justice and justice, as that of Numa compared with that of Agesilaus —
but the virtues of these men, down to their final and indivisible distinctions, display one stamp and shape and a common color of character blended in, as though mixed in equal measure of humaneness with sternness, and of steadfastness with caution, and of concern for others combined equally with fearlessness for themselves, and of scrupulousness toward what is shameful combined with vigor toward what is just; so that a very fine argument is needed, like an instrument, for distinguishing and discovering the differences.
Now it is agreed that Cato's family sprang from illustrious stock, as will be told; but as for Phocion, I conjecture that he was by no means of a wholly dishonored and fallen family. For if he had been, as Idomeneus says, the son of a pestle-maker, Glaucippus the son of Hyperides, who gathered countless charges and spoke many evils against him, would not have passed over his low birth in his speech, nor would Phocion have shared in so free a life and sound an education as to take part, while still a youth, in the school of Plato, and later that of Xenocrates, in the Academy, and to become from the first a zealous follower of the noblest pursuits.
For no Athenian ever easily saw Phocion laughing or weeping, nor bathing in the public baths, as Duris has recorded, nor keeping his hand outside his cloak whenever he happened to be wrapped in it, since in the countryside and on campaigns he always walked unshod and without a cloak, except when the frost grew too severe to bear, so that the soldiers on campaign used to joke that it was a sign of a great winter when Phocion was seen wearing clothes.
Though most gentle and humane in character, he appeared forbidding and grim of countenance, so that not easily would any stranger approach him alone; for which reason, when Chares once, in reference to his eyebrows, made the Athenians laugh, Phocion said, "This eyebrow of mine has never caused you any grief; but the laughter of these men has made the city weep many times."
In like manner, too, the speech of Phocion was, at times of good fortune and design, salutary, having a certain commanding, stern, and unadorned brevity. For just as Zeno used to say that the philosopher ought to dip his words in sense before uttering them, so Phocion's speech packed the greatest sense into the smallest number of words. And with this in view, it seems, Polyeuctus of Sphettus said that Demosthenes was the best orator,
but Phocion was the most powerful speaker; for just as the value of a coin has the greatest power in the smallest bulk, so the power of his speech seemed to signify much from little. And indeed they say that Phocion himself, once when the theater was filling up, was walking about behind the stage, absorbed in his own thoughts, and when one of his friends said, "Phocion, you look like a man deliberating," he replied, "Yes, by Zeus, I am considering whether I can cut anything out of the speech I am about to deliver to the Athenians."
And Demosthenes, who despised the other orators greatly, when Phocion rose to speak, would murmur to his companions, "There goes the man who lops off my speeches." But this perhaps should be attributed to Phocion's character, since a mere word and a nod from a good man carries a weight of credibility equal to countless arguments and periods.
While still young he attached himself to the general Chabrias and followed him closely, gaining much benefit toward experience in warfare, but in some respects correcting that man's nature, which was uneven and unrestrained. For Chabrias, though sluggish and slow to move otherwise, in the very midst of battles would grow heated and be inflamed with passion and rush along with the boldest men too recklessly — a trait which indeed also brought about the end of his life at Chios, when he was the first to drive his trireme ashore and force a landing.
Phocion, then, appearing at once cautious and energetic, both warmed up Chabrias' hesitation and again took away the ill-timed sharpness of his impulse. Hence Chabrias, being kindly and good-natured, loved him and advanced him to commands and leading positions, bringing him to the notice of the Greek world and putting him to work on affairs of the highest importance. And from the naval battle off Naxos he won for Phocion no small measure of name and reputation, since he placed him in charge of the left flank, on which side the fight was sharpest and brought about a swift decision.
This, then, being the first naval battle the city had fought by itself against the Greeks after her capture, and having won it, she loved Chabrias exceedingly and gained a high opinion of Phocion as a man fit to command. They won during the Great Mysteries; and Chabrias provided the Athenians a libation of wine each year on the sixteenth of Boedromion.
After this, it is said, when Chabrias sent him to collect the tribute from the islands and gave him a fleet of twenty ships, Phocion replied that were he sent to make war, he would need a greater force, but if to deal with allies, one ship was enough; and sailing with his own trireme and conversing with the cities and meeting with their magistrates in a fair and simple manner, he sailed back with many ships, which the allies had sent bringing money to the Athenians.
Nor did he only attend to and honor Chabrias while he lived, but once Chabrias had died he continued to look after his kinsfolk, and though he wished to make Chabrias' son Ctesippus a good man, seeing him rash and unruly, he nevertheless did not give up correcting him and concealing his disgraces. Except once, they say, when the young man was making a nuisance of himself on some campaign, pestering him with untimely questions and advice as though correcting and giving strategy alongside him, Phocion said: "O Chabrias, Chabrias, great indeed is the gratitude I pay for your friendship, in putting up with your son."
Seeing that those managing public affairs at that time were divided, as if by lot, between the general's post and the speaker's platform, and that some only spoke and moved motions in the assembly — among them Eubulus, Aristophon, Demosthenes, Lycurgus, and Hyperides — while Diopeithes, Menestheus, Leosthenes, and Chares aggrandized themselves through generalship and war, Phocion wished to take up and restore the statesmanship of Pericles, Aristides, and Solon, whole and harmonized in both respects. For indeed each of those men appeared, in the words of Archilochus, to be both alike: "a servant of the war-god Enyalius, and one who understood the lovely Muses' gift"; and he saw that the goddess was called and was in fact both warlike and political at once.
Having thus disposed himself, he always practiced politics in the direction of peace and quiet, yet he held more generalships than not only his contemporaries but even those before him, neither canvassing for them nor seeking them out, but also neither fleeing nor shrinking from them when the city called; for it is agreed that he received forty-five generalships, not once being present at the elections, but always being summoned and elected while absent,
so that those who do not think well of the people wonder that, though Phocion opposed them in most things and never said or did anything to please them, the people employed the more agreeable and cheerful men as popular leaders for the sake of amusement — just as kings, they say, use flatterers after the ritual hand-washing — but for their offices always called upon, when sober and in earnest, the sternest and most sensible of the citizens, and the one who alone, or more than any other, set himself against their wishes and impulses.
For when an oracle was read out from Delphi saying that, while the other Athenians thought alike, one man held opinions contrary to the city, Phocion came forward and told them not to trouble themselves, since he himself was the man being sought; for he alone was pleased by nothing that was being done. But once, when he was delivering an opinion to the people and won approval, and he saw everyone alike receiving his speech favorably, he turned to his friends and said, "Surely I have not unwittingly said something bad?"
When the Athenians were asking for contributions toward some sacrifice, and the others were giving, Phocion, though called upon repeatedly, said: "Ask these rich men here; as for me, I would be ashamed to give to you while I still owe money to this man," pointing to Callicles the moneylender. And when they did not stop shouting and clamoring at him, he told them this story:
"A cowardly man was going out to war, and when the crows cried out, he laid down his arms and stayed still; then he took them up again and went out, and when they cried out again he stopped once more, and at last he said: 'You may cry out as loudly as you can, but you will not taste of me.'" And again once, when the Athenians ordered him to lead them out against the enemy, and since he was unwilling, they called him cowardly and unmanly, he said: "Neither can you make me bold, nor I make you cowardly. Still, we do know each other."
At dangerous moments, when the people were harsh toward him and demanding an accounting of his generalship, he said, "May you be saved first, blessed men." And when, being at war, they were humbled and full of fear, but once peace came grew bold and shouted against Phocion for having robbed them of their victory, he said, "You are fortunate to have a general who knows you—otherwise you would have perished long ago."
When they did not wish to settle their dispute with the Boeotians over the territory but instead go to war, he urged them to wage the struggle with speech, where their strength lay, rather than with weapons, where they were the weaker side. And when, as he spoke, they would neither accept nor endure listening to him, he said, "You can force me to do what I do not wish, but you will not compel me to say what I ought not against my judgment."
Of the orators opposed to him in politics, when Demosthenes said, "The Athenians will kill you, Phocion, if they go mad," he replied, "And you, if they come to their senses." And seeing Polyeuctus of Sphettus, in the heat, advising the Athenians to go to war against Philip, and then, being extremely fat, gasping heavily and sweating, often gulping down water, he said, "It is fitting that you should trust this man and vote for war—what do you think he will do in breastplate and shield, with the enemy close by, when merely speaking to you about what he has thought out
risks being choked?" And when Lycurgus said many abusive things against him in the assembly, and on top of everything, when Alexander demanded the surrender of ten citizens, he had advised handing them over, he said, "I have given these people much good and advantageous advice, but they do not listen to me."
There was a certain man called Archibiades, nicknamed the Laconizer, who let his beard grow to extraordinary length, always wore a rough cloak, and put on a scowling look. When this man was making an uproar in the council, Phocion would call on him as both witness and helper in his argument; but when the man stood up and gave advice that was pleasing to the Athenians, Phocion took hold of his beard and said, "Well, Archibiades, why then didn't you shave it off?"
As for Aristogeiton the informer, who was warlike in the assemblies and spurred the people on to action, but who came to the muster leaning on a cane with both legs bandaged, when Phocion saw him from far off approaching from the speaker's platform he shouted out, "Write down Aristogeiton too—lame and worthless." So that people wondered how and from where so harsh and scowling a man had gotten the title of "the good."
It is difficult, I think, though not impossible, for the same man to be, like wine, both pleasant and dry at once—just as, on the other hand, others who appear sweet are most unpleasant and most harmful to those who deal with them. And indeed they say Hypereides once said to the people, "Men of Athens, do not consider merely whether my temper is harsh, but whether that harshness serves no gain of my own"—as if men are only burdensome and painful through greed, and not rather that the many should fear and be wary of those who use their power for insolence, envy, anger, or some rivalry.
Phocion, then, harmed none of the citizens out of enmity, nor did he consider anyone an enemy, but only so far as was necessary did he rise up harshly, unyielding, and inexorable against those who opposed what he did on behalf of his country; in the rest of his life he showed himself kindly, approachable, and humane to all, so that he even helped those who had stumbled and stood by those in danger among his opponents.
When his friends reproached him for speaking in defense of some wicked man on trial, he said that decent men have no need of help. And when Aristogeiton the informer, after his conviction, sent for him and begged him to come, Phocion agreed and went walking to the prison; and when his friends tried to stop him, he said, "Let it be, blessed men—where else could one meet Aristogeiton with more pleasure?"
Indeed, the allies and islanders, when some other general sailed out from Athens, took the expeditions for enemies and barred their walls, blocked up their harbors, and brought in from the countryside into the cities their livestock, slaves, women, and children; but if Phocion were in command, they met him far out with their own ships, crowned with garlands and rejoicing, and brought him in to themselves.
When Philip was creeping into Euboea, ferrying his forces over from Macedonia and winning the cities over through tyrants, and Plutarch of Eretria was calling on the Athenians and begging them to rescue the island, which the Macedonian was seizing, Phocion went out as commander, leading a force that was not large, since those there were expected to join him readily.
But finding everything full of traitors, diseased and undermined by bribery, he came into great danger. He seized a certain hill near the plains of Tamynae, hidden by a deep ravine, and there he held and kept together the most battle-worthy part of his force,
and when the disorderly, chattering, and worthless men were deserting the camp and slipping away, he ordered his officers to pay them no attention: for there, being useless through their lack of discipline, they would be harmful to those who fought; while there, being conscious of such conduct in themselves, they would be less likely to cry out against him and would not slander him overmuch.
When the enemy advanced, he ordered his men to stay quiet under arms until he himself had made sacrifice, and he spent more time than usual, either because the sacrifices proved unfavorable or because he intended to lure the enemy nearer. For this reason Plutarch, thinking that he was cowering and hanging back, charged out with the mercenaries; then the cavalry, seeing him do this, could not hold back, but rode at once against the enemy, disordered and scattered, streaming out from the camp.
When the first ranks were defeated, all were scattered and Plutarch fled; and some of the enemy, pressing on the palisade, tried to break it open and tear it apart as if they had already conquered everything. Meanwhile the sacrifices were completed, and the Athenians, falling on them straight from the camp, routed them and cut down most of them as they fled around the fortifications. Phocion ordered the phalanx to stand in reserve, both to rally and to receive those who had earlier been scattered in the flight, while he himself, with the picked troops, charged into the enemy.
A fierce battle followed, in which all fought eagerly and without sparing themselves, but Thallus son of Cineas and Glaucus son of Polymedes, stationed around the general himself, distinguished themselves most. Yet Cleophanes too proved himself worth a great deal in that battle: calling back the cavalry from their rout, shouting and urging them to help the general who was in danger, he made them turn around and strengthen the victory of the infantry.
As a result of this he drove Plutarch out of Eretria and captured the fortress of Zaretra, a most strategic point where the island narrows most sharply into a slender strip, being squeezed on both sides by the sea; and as many Greeks as he took prisoner he released, fearing the orators at Athens, lest they provoke the people in their anger to treat them unjustly.
When Phocion, having accomplished this, sailed away, the allies quickly missed his goodness and justice, and the Athenians quickly recognized the man's experience and strength: for the man who came after him to take charge of affairs, Molossus, fought so badly that he himself was taken alive into the enemy's hands.
When Philip, contemplating great things in his hopes, came to the Hellespont with his whole force, intending to take the Chersonese and Perinthus and Byzantium at the same time, and the Athenians were eager to bring help, the orators contended for Chares to be sent out as general; and he, sailing there, accomplished nothing worthy of the force he had, nor did the cities receive his fleet, but, suspect to everyone, he wandered about extorting money from the allies and was despised by the enemy,
and the people, being provoked by the orators, grew angry and regretted having sent aid to the Byzantines. Phocion rose and said that anger was misplaced against allies who mistrusted them, and should instead fall on the generals who had earned that mistrust: "for these are the ones who make you feared even by those who cannot be saved without you." So the people, moved by his speech and changing their minds, ordered that he himself, taking on another force, should go to help the allies at the Hellespont—which made the greatest difference toward
the saving of Byzantium. For Phocion's reputation was already great; but when Leon, a man first among the Byzantines in virtue and an old companion of Phocion's from the Academy, undertook to vouch for him before the city, they would not allow him to camp outside as he wished, but opened their gates and received the Athenians, mingling them with themselves—men who proved not only blameless and self-controlled in their conduct, but also most eager in the fighting because of this trust,
and so Philip was then driven out of the Hellespont and held in contempt, though he had seemed to be some invincible and unbeatable force; and Phocion both seized a number of his vessels and won back cities that had been held by garrisons, and making landings in many parts of the country he ravaged and overran it, until, having received wounds from those who came to help the defenders, he sailed away.
When the Megarians secretly called for help, Phocion, fearing that the Boeotians, learning of it beforehand, would forestall the assistance, gathered an assembly at dawn, and having announced to the Athenians the message from the Megarians, as soon as they voted, he had the trumpet sound and led them off straight from the assembly, having taken up their arms.
When the Megarians received them eagerly, he fortified Nisaea, and threw up two walls across the middle from the city to the port, joining the city to the sea, so that it came to depend on the Athenians, caring little now for its enemies on land.
When war with Philip had by now broken out completely, and while he himself was not present as general, others having been chosen for the war, as soon as he sailed back from the islands he first sought to win over the assembly to accept terms of settlement, since Philip, greatly fearing the danger, leaned toward peace;
and when one of those accustomed to hang about the Heliaea and act as informers opposed him, saying, "Do you dare, Phocion, to turn the Athenians away now that they already have weapons in hand?" he said, "Yes indeed—even though I am aware that during wartime I hold command over you, while once peace arrives, you will hold command over me." And when he could not persuade them, but Demosthenes prevailed, urging the Athenians to set the battle as far from Attica as possible, he said, "My good man, let us not consider where we shall fight, but how we shall win.
For in that way the war will be kept far off; but for those who are defeated, every terror is always close at hand." And when the defeat had come to pass, and the agitators and revolutionaries in the city were hauling Charidemus onto the platform and demanding his appointment as general, this frightened the most respectable citizens; and holding the Council of the Areopagus in the assembly, begging and weeping, they with difficulty persuaded the people to entrust the city to Phocion.
He thought it right to accept the rest of Philip's policy and goodwill; but when Demades proposed that the city should share in the common peace and in the council of the Greeks, he would not permit it before learning what Philip would demand for himself from the Greeks;
being outvoted on this opinion because of the circumstances, when he immediately saw the Athenians regretting it, because they had to furnish triremes and cavalry to Philip, he said, "It was this I feared, and this is why I opposed it; but since you have agreed to it, you must not take it hard nor lose heart, remembering that our ancestors too were sometimes rulers, sometimes ruled, and by doing both of these well they saved both the city and the Greeks."
When Philip died, he would not allow the people to offer sacrifices of good tidings: for it was ignoble, he said, to gloat, and besides, the force that had fought against them at Chaeronea was diminished by only one body's worth.
When Demosthenes was denouncing Alexander, who was now advancing on Thebes, Phocion said: "Wretched man, why do you wish to provoke a savage man who is reaching for great glory? Or do you want to fan into the city a conflagration already so vast nearby? We will not allow that, even to men willing to destroy themselves—we who endure the burden of command for just this reason."
After the destruction of Thebes, once Alexander demanded that Demosthenes, Lycurgus, Hyperides, and Charidemus be handed over to him, and the assembly turned its eyes toward him, being called by name again and again he stood up, and drawing forward one of his friends whom he had always trusted and loved and relied on most, he declared: "Such is the pass to which these men have brought our city that, even if someone demanded this man Nicocles of me, I would order him handed over."
"For myself, to die on behalf of all of you I would count good fortune. But I pity," he said, "men of Athens, even those who have fled here from Thebes. It is enough for the Greeks to mourn Thebes. It is therefore better, on behalf of both, to persuade and entreat those in power than to fight."
It is said that Alexander, on receiving the first decree, threw it down and turned away in flight from the envoys; but he accepted the second, brought to him by Phocion, having heard from his elders that even Philip had admired this man, and had not only endured his audience and his petition but had listened to his advice as well. And Phocion's advice was: if he desired peace, to end the war; if glory, to redirect it, turning from the Greeks against the barbarians.
And speaking at length, aptly hitting on Alexander's nature and intention, he so changed and softened him that he said the Athenians should look after their own concerns, because rule would pass to them should any mishap befall him; and privately, making Phocion his friend and guest-friend, he set him in such
honor as few of those constantly in his company held. Duris at any rate has said that when Alexander had become great and had conquered Darius, he dropped the word "greeting" from his letters except in those he wrote to Phocion: him alone, like Antipater, he addressed with "greeting" as well. Chares too has recorded this.
It is agreed, however, about the money, that Alexander sent him a gift of a hundred talents; once this sum arrived in Athens, Phocion put a question to the men who had carried it: why, with so many Athenians to choose from, did Alexander give so much to him alone? and when they said, "Because he judges you alone to be a good and honorable man," Phocion said, "Then let him allow me both to seem and to be such a man always."
When they followed him to his house and saw great simplicity there—his wife kneading bread, and Phocion himself drawing water from the well to wash his feet—they pressed him even more and grew indignant, saying it was shameful that, being a friend of the king, he should live so poorly. So Phocion, seeing a poor old man walking by in a filthy cloak, asked whether they thought him worse off than that man; and when they begged him to say nothing ill,
"And yet," he said, "this man lives on less than I do and is content with it. In short," he said, "either I will not use so much gold and will possess it in vain, or by using it I will discredit both myself and him before the city." So the money went back again out of Athens, having shown the Greeks that the one who needed nothing was richer than the one who gave so much.
When Alexander grew indignant and wrote again to Phocion that he did not consider friends those who wanted nothing from him, Phocion still did not accept money even then, but asked that the sophist Echecratides, Athenodorus of Imbros, and two Rhodians, Demaratus and Sparton, be released, men who had been arrested on certain charges and imprisoned at Sardis.
These men Alexander released at once; and sending Craterus to Macedonia, he ordered that Phocion be given his pick of one among four Asian cities—Cius, Gergithus, Mylasa, and Elaea—insisting all the more that he would be angry if the gift were refused. But Phocion did not accept, and Alexander soon died. Phocion's house is still shown today in Melite, adorned with bronze plates, but otherwise plain and unadorned.
Of the wives he married, nothing is recorded about the first, except that Cephisodotus the sculptor was her brother; but of the second there was no less a reputation for modesty and simplicity among the Athenians than there was for Phocion's own goodness.
Once when the Athenians were watching new tragedies, the actor who was about to come on stage playing a queen's role demanded that the choregus provide him with many attendants richly adorned, and when this was not provided he grew indignant and held up the theater, unwilling to come forward. The choregus Melanthius, pushing him into the middle, shouted: "Don't you see Phocion's wife always going about with a single maidservant, while you play the braggart and corrupt the women's quarters?"
When the remark was heard clearly, the theater received it with much applause and uproar. And the woman herself, when a certain Ionian foreign woman displayed gold and bejeweled ornaments in her hairbands and necklaces, said, "For me, my ornament is Phocion, now in his twentieth year as general of the Athenians."
To his son Phocus, who wished to compete at the Panathenaea as an apobates, he permitted it, not because he desired the victory, but so that, taking care of himself and training his body, he might become better—for the young man was otherwise given to drink and disorderly. When he won and many asked to give the victory feast, Phocion declined the others and granted this honor to one man alone.
But when he came to the dinner and saw both other lavish preparation and foot-basins of wine mixed with spices being offered to those entering, he called his son and said, "Won't you stop your comrade, Phocus, from corrupting your victory?" And wishing to remove the young man altogether from that way of life, he took him off to Lacedaemon and mixed him in with the young men undergoing the so-called upbringing.
This grieved the Athenians, as though Phocion despised and looked down on his own customs; and when Demades said to him, "Why don't we persuade the Athenians, Phocion, to adopt the Laconian constitution? If you give the word, I am ready to write and speak for it," he said, "It would indeed be fitting for you, reeking of so much perfume and wearing such a fine cloak, to advise the Athenians about common messes and to praise Lycurgus."
When Alexander wrote about triremes, that they should send them to him, and the orators were opposing it, and the council bade Phocion speak, he said, "I tell you then: either be masters by arms, or be friends to those who are masters." And to Pytheas, who was then beginning for the first time to address the Athenians, already talkative and bold, he said, "Won't you be silent, seeing you were only just bought by the people?"
When Harpalus, having fled from Alexander with much money, arrived in Attica, and those accustomed to make profit from the platform were racing and competing with one another to be corrupted by him, he offered them small baits from his great store and scattered them about; but to Phocion he sent, offering seven hundred talents, and everything else besides, entrusting himself, along with everything, to him alone.
When Phocion answered harshly, warning Harpalus he would regret it unless he ceased corrupting the city, Harpalus shrank back and withdrew for a time; but shortly after, as the Athenians deliberated, he noticed that the men who had accepted his bribes were now shifting position and turning accusers, so as to avoid exposure themselves, while Phocion, who had taken nothing, kept watch over both the public interest and, at the same time, Harpalus's own safety.
So Harpalus, turning again to courting him, saw that the man himself was on every side unassailable, a fortress proof against gold; but he made Charicles, Phocion's son-in-law, his intimate and friend, and filled him with an evil reputation, trusting him with everything and using him for everything.
And indeed, when the courtesan Pythonice died—whom Harpalus had loved and by whom he had become father of a little daughter—wishing to build a monument at great expense, he assigned the charge of it to Charicles.
This service, base enough in itself, the finished tomb disgraced still further. For it still stands today at Hermes, on the road we take from the city to Eleusis, worth nothing like the thirty talents said to have been charged to Harpalus for the work by Charicles. And indeed, when Harpalus died, the little girl was taken up by Charicles and by Phocion and received every care.
When Charicles stood trial in the Harpalus affair and pleaded with Phocion to stand by him and appear alongside him in court, Phocion refused, saying: "I made you my son-in-law, Charicles, only for purposes that are just." When Asclepiades son of Hipparchus was the first to report to the Athenians that Alexander had died, Demades urged that no attention be paid to it—for if it were true, he said, the whole inhabited world would long since have reeked of the corpse—but Phocion, seeing the people roused to revolution, tried to calm and restrain them.
When many leaped up to the platform, shouting that Asclepiades was reporting the truth and that Alexander was dead, he said, "Well then, if he is dead today, he will be dead tomorrow too, and the day after, so that we may deliberate in quiet, or rather with safety."
When Leosthenes, by his headlong action, plunged the city into the Lamian War, and Phocion, displeased, was asked mockingly by him what good he had done the city in all his years of generalship, he said, "No small thing—that the citizens are buried in their own family tombs."
When Leosthenes was speaking boldly and boasting much before the people, Phocion said, "Your words, young man, are like cypress trees: tall and lofty, but they bear no fruit." And when Hyperides rose up and asked, "When then, Phocion, will you advise the Athenians to make war?" he said, "When I see the young willing to keep their post in the line, the rich to contribute money, and the orators to keep their hands off the public funds."
When many marveled at the force Leosthenes had assembled and put to Phocion the question of his opinion on the preparations, he said, "Good, for the sprint; but I fear the long-distance race of the war, since the city has no more money, no more ships, no more hoplites in reserve."
And events bore him out. For at first Leosthenes rose brilliant in his achievements, defeating the Boeotians in battle and driving Antipater back into Lamia; at which time they say the city, filled with great hope, celebrated good news continually and sacrificed to the gods, while Phocion, to those who thought to catch him out and asked whether he would not have wished these things done by himself, said, "Very much so—but I would still have given the advice I gave." And again, as one piece of good news after another was written up and brought from the camp, he said, "When, I wonder, shall we stop winning?"
When Leosthenes had died, those who feared Phocion, lest, sent out as general, he should put an end to the war, arranged for some undistinguished man to rise before the assembly and declare that, as a friend of Phocion's who had studied alongside him, he urged that the man be spared and preserved, since they had no one else of his caliber, and that Antiphilus be sent out to the army instead—and the Athenians resolved to follow this advice. Phocion came forward and said he had never gone to school with the man nor otherwise been acquainted or familiar with him,
"But now," he said, "from this day forward I make you both a friend and a kinsman, for what you advised was to my advantage." When the Athenians were eager to march against the Boeotians, he at first resisted; and when his friends said he would be put to death for opposing the Athenians, he said, "I would be doing wrong if I acted against your advantage, but if I go against my own judgment, I would be doing right."
But when he saw that they would not relent but kept shouting, he ordered the herald to proclaim that all Athenians up to sixty years of age, counting from their youth, should take five days' rations and follow at once from the assembly. When a great uproar arose and the older men shouted and leapt up in protest, he said, "There is nothing terrible in this — for I, your general, being eighty years old, will be with you." And so for that time he checked them and made them change their minds.
When the coastal region was being ravaged by Micion, who had put ashore at Rhamnus a sizable body of Macedonian troops together with hired soldiers and was pillaging the land, Phocion led the Athenians out against him. When men running up from various quarters played the general and advised him to seize this hill, to send the cavalry around there, to encamp here, he said, "O Heracles, what a crowd of generals I behold, and so few actual soldiers!"
When he had drawn up his hoplites in battle order, one man advanced far ahead of the rest, then, taking fright when an enemy soldier stood against him, retreated back into the ranks. Phocion said, "Young man, are you not ashamed to have abandoned two positions — the one in which you were posted by your general, and again the one in which you posted yourself?" Then, charging the enemy and routing them decisively, he killed Micion himself along with many others.
The Greek army in Thessaly, when Leonnatus joined Antipater with the Macedonians from Asia, was victorious in battle, and Leonnatus fell, while Antiphilus commanded the phalanx and Menon the Thessalian commanded the cavalry.
A little while later, when Craterus crossed over from Asia with a large force and another battle was fought at Crannon, the Greeks were defeated — not a great defeat, nor with many falling — but through disobedience toward their commanders, who were reasonable but young men, and at the same time, since Antipater was making trial of their cities, they scattered in the most shameful way and gave up their freedom.
At once, as Antipater led his force against Athens, Demosthenes and Hypereides and their circle departed from the city. But Demades, who had not paid any part of the money he owed on the judgments against him — for he was able to pay, having been convicted seven times of proposing illegal measures and, being disenfranchised, was barred from public speaking — having then obtained immunity, wrote a decree to send plenipotentiary ambassadors to Antipater to negotiate peace,
and when the people, in fear, called upon Phocion and said they trusted him alone, he said, "But if you had trusted me when I was advising you, we would not now be deliberating about matters of this sort." When the decree had thus been ratified, he was sent to Antipater, who was encamped at the Cadmea and preparing to march at once into Attica. And this was the first thing he asked — that Antipater remain where he was and conduct the settlement there,
and when Craterus said that Phocion was persuading them unjustly, that they, sitting in the country of their allies and friends when they could be doing them harm, should instead derive benefit from the country of their enemies, Antipater, taking him by the right hand, said, "This favor must be granted
to Phocion." As for the rest, he ordered the Athenians to leave it in their hands, just as Leosthenes had once done to him at Lamia.
When Phocion returned to the city and the Athenians agreed to these terms out of necessity, he set out again for Thebes with the other ambassadors, the Athenians having chosen in addition the philosopher Xenocrates. So great was the reputation of Xenocrates' virtue, his fame and the report of him among all, that it was thought neither insolence nor cruelty nor anger could grow in a human soul which, at the mere sight of Xenocrates, would not be moved to some feeling of reverence and honor toward him,
but the reverse came about, owing to a kind of carelessness and dislike of virtue on Antipater's part. To begin with, he failed to greet Xenocrates while welcoming everyone else in turn; at which, they say, Xenocrates remarked that Antipater did well to be ashamed only before him of the wrongs he intended to do the city. Then, when Xenocrates began to speak, Antipater would not tolerate it, but interrupted and grew impatient, and made him fall silent.
When Phocion's party had spoken, Antipater replied that he would grant the Athenians friendship and alliance on condition that they hand over Demosthenes and Hypereides and their circle, that they govern themselves by their ancestral constitution based on a property qualification, that they receive a garrison into Munychia, and further that they pay the costs of the war and an additional penalty.
The other ambassadors were content with the settlement as humane, except Xenocrates, who said that Antipater had dealt with them moderately as with slaves, but harshly as with free men. When Phocion pleaded and begged to be spared the garrison, Antipater is said to have replied, "O Phocion, we wish to grant you everything except the things that would destroy both you and us."
But others say it did not happen this way, but rather that Antipater asked whether, if he removed the garrison for the Athenians, Phocion would guarantee that the city would abide by the peace and cause no trouble; and when he remained silent and hesitated, Callimedon called the Crab, a bold man and a hater of the democracy, leapt up and said, "And if this man talks nonsense, Antipater, will you trust him and not do what you have already resolved?"
In this way the Athenians received a Macedonian garrison and Menyllus as commander, a reasonable man and a friend of Phocion's, but the order appeared arrogant, and more a display of power abused with insolence than a seizure made for practical reasons. And the timing added no small measure to the suffering, since the garrison entered on Boedromion's twentieth, in the midst of the Mysteries, the very day the procession leads Iacchus out from the city toward Eleusis, with the result that the sacred rite was disrupted, and the people reckoned up together the ancient signs of the gods and the recent ones,
for long ago, in their greatest strokes of fortune, mystic visions and voices had appeared, with terror and awe striking their enemies, but now, at these same rites, the gods were witnessing the harshest sufferings of Greece, and the holiest and most beloved of their times was being outraged, becoming the very name attached to the greatest evils. And indeed, a few years before, the priestesses of Dodona had given the city an oracle to "guard the headlands of Artemis," so that others might not seize them;
and at that time, around those very days, the ribbons with which they wind the mystic beds, being dyed, came out a dull yellowish, corpse-like color instead of crimson; and what was worse, everything dyed alongside private garments took on the color proper to itself. And a sea-monster seized an initiate's piglet as he was washing it in the harbor of Cantharus, and swallowed the lower parts of its body up to the belly, the god plainly showing them beforehand that, deprived of the lower parts and what lay by the sea, they would keep safe only the upper city.
The garrison, on account of Menyllus, caused the people no distress; but of those disfranchised from citizenship on account of poverty there were more than twelve thousand, and those who remained seemed to suffer harsh and dishonorable treatment, while those who for this reason left the city and moved to Thrace, where Antipater provided them land and a city, looked like people driven out under siege.
The death of Demosthenes at Calauria and of Hypereides near Cleonae, about which I have written elsewhere, all but instilled in the Athenians a longing and yearning for Alexander and Philip. And this was the very thing that happened later, when Antigonus had been killed and those who killed him began to use violence and to oppress people: a rustic man in Phrygia, digging in a field, when someone asked him "What are you doing?", sighed and said, "I am looking for Antigonus."
This came to many people's lips as they recalled the temper of those kings, how their greatness and nobility of spirit were easily appeased, unlike Antipater, who, hiding his power under the guise of a private citizen and the plainness of a cheap cloak and a frugal way of life, was, to those who suffered under him, a more oppressive master and tyrant,
yet even so Phocion secured many from exile by pleading with Antipater, and for those who did go into exile he arranged that, unlike the rest of those displaced, they should not be cast out of Greece beyond the Ceraunian mountains and Taenarum, but should settle in the Peloponnese — among whom was also Hagnonides the sycophant,
and in managing the city's affairs gently and lawfully, he always kept the decent and gracious men in office, while the meddlesome and revolution-seeking types, wasting away simply because they held no office and could cause no disturbance, he taught to love their land and take pleasure in farming. Seeing that Xenocrates was paying the metic's tax, he wished to have him registered as a citizen; but Xenocrates refused, saying he would not wish to share in the very citizenship he had gone as ambassador to prevent from coming into being.
When Menyllus offered him a gift of money, he replied that Menyllus was no better a man than Alexander, nor was the reason for which he would now accept it any stronger than the reason for which he had earlier refused. But when Menyllus asked that his son Phocus be allowed to take it, he said, "If Phocus reforms his conduct and grows sensible, what his father leaves him will suffice; but given the way he is at present, no amount would suffice." To Antipater, who wished something improper done through him, he replied more harshly still: "Antipater cannot have me both as a friend and as a flatterer."
Antipater is said to have observed that of his two friends in Athens, Phocion and Demades, he was unable to induce the former to take anything from him, and the other he could never satisfy however much he gave. And indeed Phocion made a display of his poverty as a virtue, growing old in it though he had so often served Athens as general and enjoyed the friendship of kings, while Demades prided himself on his wealth and on breaking the laws.
For there was a law at Athens at that time that no foreigner should perform in the chorus, or else the producer must pay a fine of a thousand drachmas; but Demades brought in a hundred foreigners as chorus members all at once, and paid the penalty of a thousand drachmas apiece straight into the theater treasury. And when he was leading home a bride for his son Demeas, he said, "My boy, when I married your mother, not even the neighbor noticed, but at your wedding even kings and rulers join in providing the chorus."
When the Athenians pressed Phocion to persuade Antipater to remove the garrison, whether because he did not expect to succeed in persuading him, or rather because he saw that the people, out of fear, were behaving prudently and governing themselves in good order, he kept putting off that embassy, but he did persuade Antipater not to press for the money owed, but to delay and postpone it. So they turned instead and appealed to Demades.
He took up the task gladly, and, bringing his son along, departed for Macedonia, guided by some divine agency, it would seem, to arrive at precisely the moment when Antipater was already gripped by illness, and Cassander, having gained control of affairs, found a letter written by Demades to Antigonus in Asia, urging him to appear before the Greeks and Macedonians, who were hanging, as Antipater had mockingly put it, by an old and rotten thread.
So when Cassander saw that he had arrived, he seized him, and first, bringing his son up close, he slaughtered him, so that the father received the blood in his own lap and was drenched in the murder; and afterward, heaping many reproaches and insults upon him for ingratitude and betrayal, he killed him.
When Antipater, having appointed Polyperchon general and Cassander chiliarch, passed away, Cassander at once rose up and, moving to seize control of affairs beforehand, sent Nicanor in haste to succeed Menyllus as commander of the garrison, having ordered him to take over Munychia before Antipater's death should become publicly known.
When this had happened, and a few days later the Athenians learned that Antipater had died, Phocion came under suspicion and was spoken of ill, as though he had foreseen it and kept silent as a favor to Nicanor. But Phocion paid no attention to this; instead, meeting with Nicanor and conversing with him, he made him gentle and agreeable toward the Athenians in other respects as well, and persuaded him to undertake certain outlays of generosity and expense by serving as director of games.
Meanwhile Polyperchon, who held the guardianship of the king under his own control and was maneuvering politically against Cassander, sent a letter written to the people in the city, saying that the king was restoring democracy to them and ordering all Athenians to conduct their government according to their ancestral customs.
This was in fact a plot against Phocion. For Polyperchon, contriving to bring the city over to himself, as he shortly afterward showed by his actions, had no hope of accomplishing anything unless Phocion were driven out; and he expected that Phocion would fall the moment those who had been disenfranchised were poured back into the citizen body and once again took hold of the speaker's platform, playing the demagogue and bringing false accusations.
When the Athenians began to be stirred up over these matters, Nicanor, wishing to meet with them, came forward when a council was held at the Piraeus, entrusting his person to Phocion. When Dercyllus, the general in command of the countryside, attempted to seize him, Nicanor, sensing it beforehand, leapt away and at once made it plain that he would defend himself against the city. Phocion, when accused of letting the man slip away instead of holding him under guard, replied that he had confidence in Nicanor and looked for no harm from him; but even if that were not so, he would rather appear to be wronged than to be seen doing wrong,
and this, to anyone examining it on Phocion's own behalf, might seem to have been spoken nobly and like a gentleman; but a man risking the safety of his fatherland, and a general and magistrate at that, I do not know but that he transgresses something greater and more venerable — namely, what is just toward his fellow citizens. Nor can one even say that Phocion held back from Nicanor out of fear of plunging the city into war, but rather that he put forward good faith and justice merely as pretexts, so that Nicanor, out of shame, might keep quiet and do the Athenians no wrong;
but it truly appears that some strong trust in Nicanor had genuinely grown in him, since, though many accused him beforehand and charged that he was going to attack the Piraeus, ferry foreign troops across to Salamis, and corrupt some of those living in the Piraeus, Phocion would not accept the report nor believe it, but even when Philomelus of Lamptrae proposed a decree that all Athenians should be under arms and heed the general Phocion, he paid no heed to it, until Nicanor, bringing up his forces from Munychia, dug a trench around the Piraeus.
While these things were happening, Phocion was harassed and held in contempt, wishing to lead the Athenians out against Nicanor; but Alexander, the son of Polyperchon, arrived with a force, ostensibly to help those in the city against Nicanor, but in fact to seize the city itself, if he could, now that it had fallen into confusion of its own accord.
For the exiles who had come in with him were at once inside the city, and when foreigners and disfranchised men alike rushed to join them, a mixed and disorderly assembly gathered, in which they removed Phocion from his command and chose other generals. And if Alexander had not been seen coming together in private conference with Nicanor, alone by the wall, and had not done this many times, thereby giving the Athenians cause for suspicion, the city would not have escaped danger.
But when Hagnonides the orator immediately fastened upon Phocion's party and accused them of treason, Callimedon and Charicles, out of fear, left the city; Phocion, together with those of his friends who had stayed with him, went off to Polyperchon. And Solon of Plataea and Deinarchus of Corinth went out with them, as a favor to Phocion, being thought to be intimates and friends of Polyperchon,
and since Deinarchus fell ill, they spent many days at Elateia; during which time, Hagnonides having persuaded the people and Archestratus having proposed the decree, the people sent an embassy accusing Phocion, and both parties met with Polyperchon, who was traveling with the king near a certain village of Phocis called Pharygae, lying beneath Mount Acrourium, which is now called Galate.
There Polyperchon had the gilded pavilion erected and placed the king together with his friends beneath it. He ordered Deinarchus to be seized straightaway as he came forward, tortured, and put to death, but granted the Athenians a hearing. When they made an uproar and outcry, accusing one another in the council, and Hagnonides came forward and said, "Put all of us together into a single cage and send us back to the Athenians to answer for ourselves," the king laughed,
but the Macedonians and foreigners standing about the council, having leisure, were eager to listen, and urged the envoys, by a nod, to make their accusation there. But there was no equal footing at all: whenever Phocion spoke, Polyperchon often cut him off, until finally he struck the ground with his staff and fell silent.
When Hegemon said that Polyperchon himself was witness to his goodwill toward the people, and Polyperchon answered him angrily, "Stop lying about me to the king," the king leapt up and rushed at Hegemon with his spear to strike him. Polyperchon quickly threw his arms around him, and thus the council was dissolved.
As guards surrounded Phocion and those with him, those of his companions who happened not to be standing nearby, when they saw this, covered their faces and slipped away and escaped. But Cleitus led the men off to Athens — ostensibly to be tried, but in fact condemned to die.
And the very manner of their conveyance made it grievous to see: they were carried on wagons through the Kerameikos to the theater. For there Cleitus brought them and held them, until the archons had filled the assembly, admitting neither slave nor foreigner nor disfranchised man, but throwing open the platform and the theater to all men and all women.
When the king's letter was read out, saying that he himself had determined that the men had been traitors, but leaving the judgment to them, since they were free and self-governing, and Cleitus brought the men in, the best of the citizens, on seeing Phocion, covered their faces and wept, bowing their heads; but one man stood up and dared to say that, since the king had entrusted so weighty a judgment to the people, it would be well for slaves and foreigners to withdraw from the assembly,
but the crowd would not put up with this, crying out instead that these oligarchs, these enemies of the common people, ought to be stoned, so that no one else ventured to speak up for Phocion. Phocion himself, though barely able to make himself heard, managed to say, "Is it your wish to kill us with justice, or without it?" And when some replied, "With justice," he answered, "Yet how can you decide that without first hearing our case?"
Since they would not listen any the more, he came forward closer and said, "I for my part confess that I have done wrong, and for the policies I have pursued I sentence myself to death. But these men here, men of Athens, why will you kill them, who have done no wrong?" When many answered, "Because they are your friends," Phocion withdrew and kept silent, and Hagnonides, holding a decree he had already drafted, read it aloud: by its terms the citizens would cast a hand-vote on each man's guilt, and whichever of them the vote condemned would be put to death.
When the decree had been read, some demanded that it be amended so that Phocion should die under torture as well, and they gave orders for the rack to be fetched and the torturers called in. But Hagnonides, noting that Cleitus himself was unhappy with this and thought it savage and shameful, declared, "Athenians, once we lay hands on Callimedon the scourge, let him be racked; but as for Phocion, I move nothing of the sort."
At this one of the more decent men murmured, "You do well — for if we torture Phocion, what will we do to you?" When the decree had been ratified and the vote by show of hands taken, no one remained seated, but all stood up, and most even crowned themselves with garlands, and voted death upon them. With Phocion were Nicocles, Thoudippus, Hegemon, and Pythocles; and since Demetrius of Phalerum, Callimedon, Charicles, and certain others were absent, death was voted against them as well.
So then, when they had dissolved the assembly and were leading the men to the prison, the others, embraced by their friends and family, walked along wailing and lamenting, but seeing Phocion's face, just as it looked when he was being escorted from the assembly after holding command, they marveled at the man's freedom from suffering and greatness of soul,
while his enemies ran alongside reviling him, and one man went so far as to approach and spit into his face. At this, so the story goes, Phocion turned to the archons and remarked, "Will no one stop this man's disgraceful behavior?" And when Thoudippus, once in the prison and seeing the hemlock being ground, grew indignant and wept over his misfortune, at being destroyed together with Phocion though it was not fitting, Phocion said, "Then are you not content to die together with Phocion?"
When one of his friends asked whether he had anything to say to his son Phocus, he said, "Indeed I do: I tell him not to bear a grudge against the Athenians." And when Nicocles, who was his most trusted friend, begged him to let him drink the poison first, Phocion said, "This request is a heavy and painful one for me, Nicocles; but since I have never in my whole life refused you anything,
I grant you this too." When all had already drunk the poison, it ran short, and the public executioner said he would not grind more unless he received twelve drachmas, the price at which he purchased the measure. Since time was being wasted in delay, Phocion called one of his friends and, saying that it seemed a man could not even die for free at Athens, told him to give the man the small sum.
The date was the nineteenth of Munychion, and the cavalry, escorting the procession in honor of Zeus, happened to be passing at that very moment; some of them took off their garlands, others, in tears, turned their gaze toward the doors of the prison. It seemed to those who were not entirely hardened and corrupted in soul by anger and envy that it was a most unholy thing that they had not even held off that day, nor kept the city free of public bloodshed while it was celebrating a festival.
Nonetheless, as though they had fought too weak a contest against their enemies, they resolved also to banish Phocion's body and to allow no Athenian to kindle fire for its burial. And so no friend dared to touch the body, but a certain Conopion, who was accustomed to render such services for pay, carried the corpse beyond Eleusis, took fire from the territory of Megara, and burned it.
His wife, being present with her handmaids, heaped up an empty mound there and poured libations upon it; then, placing the bones in her bosom, she carried them by night to her house and buried them beside the hearth, saying, "To your keeping, beloved hearth, I give what remains of a good man. Give them back to the tomb of his fathers, once the Athenians regain their reason."
And indeed, once a little while had gone by, and the events themselves had shown the people what sort of guardian and protector of self-control and justice they had destroyed, they set up a bronze statue of him, and buried his bones at public expense. Of his accusers, they themselves condemned Hagnonides to death by vote and put him to death; and as for Epicurus and Demophilus, who had fled the city, Phocion's son tracked them down and took vengeance on them.
They say this son proved otherwise unremarkable, and that, being in love with a young slave girl kept at a brothel-keeper's, he happened to be present when Theodorus the atheist was discoursing in the Lyceum, arguing something like this: "If it is not shameful to ransom a male friend, neither is it shameful to ransom a female one in like manner; and if it is not shameful in the case of a male companion, neither is it in the case of a female companion." Taking this argument for his own desire, as though it were a good one, he ransomed the courtesan. But what happened concerning Phocion again reminded the Greeks of what happened concerning Socrates, since the city's error and misfortune in this case proved most similar to that one.

======== Cato The Younger ========

The distinction and renown of Cato's line trace back to his great-grandfather, that Cato who rose above other Romans in reputation and influence through sheer virtue, as recorded elsewhere in his own account. Losing both parents while still a child, Cato was left along with his brother Caepio, his sister Porcia, and — as a half-sister on the mother's side — Servilia. The whole group grew up sheltered under the roof of their maternal uncle Livius Drusus, who was then prominent in public affairs; for he ranked among the most powerful of speakers, was otherwise a man of exceptional self-restraint, and yielded to no Roman in loftiness of spirit.
It is said that Cato, from earliest childhood, showed in his voice, his face, and even in the pastimes of his play, a character unbending, unaffected, and steady in all things. For his impulses had a force that carried things through beyond his years, and though he was harsh and forbidding toward flatterers, he mastered still more thoroughly those who tried to frighten him. He was also quite slow to laughter, his face rarely relaxing even into a smile, and he was not quick nor apt to slip into anger — but once angered, he was hard to appease.
When he came to his studies, he was sluggish and slow to take things in, but once he had taken them in, he held fast to them and remembered them well — which is indeed the natural pattern otherwise: that quick, gifted natures are more apt at recollecting, while those who take things in through labor and effort are the ones who truly remember; for each lesson becomes, as it were, a brand burned into the soul.
It seems too that Cato's resistance to persuasion made his learning more laborious; for to learn is, strictly speaking, a kind of being acted upon, and being quickly persuaded happens to those less able to resist. This is why the young are more easily persuaded than the old, and the sick more than the healthy, and in general, wherever the power of doubt is weakest, what is set before it is most readily accepted.
Yet they say Cato obeyed his tutor and did everything commanded of him, but demanded the reason for each thing and asked why. For his tutor was an agreeable man
— his tutor, quicker with his fist than with argument, whose name was Sarpedon.
While Cato was still a child, the allies of the Romans were working to be granted a share in Roman citizenship; and a certain Pompaedius Silo, a man skilled in war and of the very greatest standing, a friend of Drusus, lodged in his house for a number of days, during which, having grown familiar with the children, he said: "Come now, you must beg your uncle on our behalf to join in the struggle for our citizenship."
Caepio, smiling, nodded assent, but Cato made no answer and stared at the visitors with a fixed and grim look, so Pompaedius said, "And you, young man, what do you say to us? Are you not willing to join the visitors in appealing to your uncle,
as your brother is?" And when Cato still said nothing, but by his silence and his expression seemed to be refusing the request, Pompaedius picked him up and held him out over a window, as though he would drop him, and ordered him to agree or else he said he would throw him down, all the while using a harsher tone of voice and repeatedly shaking his body, which hung suspended by his hands, over the window.
But when Cato endured this for a long time, unshaken and unafraid, Pompaedius set him down and remarked to his friends, in a low voice, how lucky Italy was that this child had not yet grown up — "for were he a man already, I doubt we would win a single vote from the people."
On another occasion, when a relative was celebrating a birthday and invited to dinner other boys along with Cato and his companions, the boys, having free time, were playing by themselves in some part of the house, mixed together, younger and older, and the game they played was one of trials and accusations and the leading away of those convicted;
so one of the boys who had been convicted, a good-looking boy, was led off by an older boy into a small room and shut in there, and he began calling for Cato. Cato, quickly understanding what was happening, came to the door, and pushing aside those who stood guard and tried to stop him, led the boy out; and he went home in anger, and the other boys followed along with him.
So renowned had he become that once, when Sulla, arranging for the boys' sacred horse-race called the Troy game as a public spectacle, gathered the well-born boys and appointed two leaders, the boys accepted the one for the sake of his mother — for he was the son of Metella, Sulla's wife — but the other, who was Pompey's nephew, Sextus, they would neither allow nor wish to practice with or follow; and when Sulla asked whom they wanted, they all shouted "Cato!" and Sextus himself yielded, giving up the honor to him as the better man.
It happened that Sulla was also an old friend of their father, and once he even summoned Cato and spoke with him, granting such familiarity to very few, on account of the weight and grandeur of the office and power he held; and Sarpedon, thinking this a great matter both for honor and for safety, kept bringing Cato to Sulla's house to pay his respects, though the place then looked no different from a place of impiety, given the multitude of people being led in and tortured.
By this time Cato had reached his fourteenth year; and when he saw the severed heads of notable men being carried out, and heard the bystanders groan under their breath, he asked his tutor why no one had struck this man down. His tutor answered, "They dread him, boy, more than they hate him," to which Cato replied, "Then why did you not put a sword in my hand, so that I might kill him,
I might free my country from slavery?" Hearing this speech, and seeing at the same time his look and his face filling with anger and rage, Sarpedon became so afraid that from then on he watched and guarded him closely, lest he dare something too rash.
While still a small boy, he answered those who asked whom he loved most, "My brother"; and whom second, likewise "My brother"; and third, the same again, until, though he kept saying it many times, the questioner gave up. And as he came of age he confirmed still more his affection for his brother; for at twenty years old he never dined apart from Caepio, never traveled abroad without him, never went to the marketplace without him; and when Caepio used perfume, he himself refused it; and in the rest of his manner of living he was exacting and disciplined. At any rate Caepio, admired for his self-control and moderation, admitted that he was such only when measured against others: "But," he said, "whenever I compare my own life to Cato's, I find myself no different from Sippius" — naming one of those notorious for luxury and softness.
When Cato received the priesthood of Apollo, he moved out and took his share of the family property, which came to one hundred and twenty talents, and drew his manner of living in even tighter; and taking as his companion Antipater of Tyre, one of the Stoic philosophers, he devoted himself especially to their ethical and political doctrines, becoming possessed, as if by some divine inspiration, of every virtue, but loving beyond all else, in his devotion to what is noble, the unbending rigor of justice, unyielding toward leniency or favor.
He also practiced the kind of speaking suited to addressing crowds, holding that just as in a great city, so too in political philosophy there ought to be some martial element kept in training alongside it. Yet he did not do his exercises with others, nor did anyone listen to him speak; indeed, when one of his companions said to him, "People find fault with you, Cato, for your silence," he replied, "So long as they find nothing to fault in how I live. Speech will come from me once I have a thought worth uttering, one that silence would not serve better."
The building known as the Basilica Porcia had been erected by the elder Cato while he held the censorship. There the tribunes of the people habitually carried out their business, and finding a column standing where it blocked their seating, they resolved either to take it down or shift it elsewhere. This episode was what first drew Cato into the forum, reluctant though he was; he stood against the tribunes on the matter, and in this first trial of his eloquence and his resolve, he earned general admiration.
For his speech had nothing youthful or polished about it, but was direct, full, and rough; yet even so, a certain charm that drew the ear ran through the roughness of his thoughts, and his character, mingling in, gave a certain pleasure and a smile to his gravity that was not without warmth. His voice was strong enough in volume and had endurance enough to reach so great a crowd, and it had a strength and tension unbroken and untiring; for he often spoke a whole day through without giving out.
Having then won that case, he again withdrew into silence and his ascetic training, and toughened his body through strenuous exercise, training himself to go bareheaded through both scorching heat and falling snow and to travel the roads on foot at any hour rather than by carriage, while the friends who traveled with him used horses, and Cato often fell in beside each of them by turns to talk with them, walking himself while they rode. He also showed a remarkable endurance and self-mastery in illness; for when feverish he would spend the whole day alone by himself, admitting no one, until he perceived a firm relief and change in his sickness.
At dinners, lots were drawn for the portions; and if he drew badly, when his friends bade him take the first share regardless, he would insist it would be wrong to accept it, since doing so would slight Aphrodite. At the start he would drink once through dinner and then break it off, but as time went on he took to drinking more, so that often he would pass the time in wine until dawn.
His friends said the cause of this was politics and public affairs — that since Cato spent whole days on these and was prevented from pursuing philosophy, he made up for it at night and over wine by keeping company with philosophers. Hence too, when a certain Memmius said in a gathering that Cato spent whole nights drunk, Cicero took him up and said, "But you do not mention that he also spends whole days gambling."
In general, Cato, thinking that against the lives and customs of his time one ought to walk the opposite road, since they were base and in need of great change, when he saw that the deep, bright red purple was admired, himself wore black; and often he would go out in public after breakfast unshod and without a tunic — not chasing a reputation for eccentricity, but teaching himself to feel shame only over what genuinely deserved it, and to hold in contempt everything else that people label disgraceful.
And an inheritance that came to him from his cousin Cato, amounting to one hundred talents in silver, once he had gathered it together, he made available without interest to any friend who was in need; and some, with land and slaves of his given and pledged as security, borrowed even from the public treasury.
When he thought it time for marriage, never yet having come together with any woman, he became engaged to Lepida, who had earlier been betrothed to Scipio Metellus but was then free, since Scipio had broken it off and the engagement had been dissolved. Yet before the wedding took place, Scipio reversed his own decision once more and, sparing no effort, secured the girl for himself.
Cato, deeply provoked and inflamed, tried to pursue the matter through a lawsuit, but when his friends prevented this, in anger and youthful heat he turned to writing iambic verses and heaped much abuse on Scipio, employing the bitterness of Archilochus, though he left aside its licentiousness and puerility.
He married Atilia, daughter of Serranus, and came together with her as his first wife — but not his only one, unlike Laelius, the companion of Scipio; rather he was more fortunate than that man in one respect, for throughout the many years of his life he knew but one wife, the one he married at the outset:
When the war against the slaves broke out, the one they called the Spartacus war, Gellius was general, and Cato joined the campaign of his own accord, chiefly because his brother Caepio was serving there as military tribune and he wished to stand by him. He was not able to make use of his zeal and his practice of virtue to the extent he wished, because the war was not being well conducted; but in other respects, amid the great softness and luxury of the men serving there, by displaying good order and self-control and boldness combined with intelligence in everything, he seemed to fall short in nothing of the ancient Cato.
Gellius wanted to write up prizes for valor and conspicuous honors for him, which he neither accepted nor took up, saying that he had done nothing worthy of honors; on account of this he seemed a strange man. And when a law was written that those campaigning for office should not be attended by nomenclators, he alone, in canvassing for the military tribunate, obeyed the law, and made it his own task to greet and address by name those he met, which made him no less burdensome even to those who praised him, the more they recognized the excellence of what he practiced, being weighed down by how hard it was to imitate.
Once made military tribune, he was dispatched to the general Rubrius in Macedonia. There, it is said, when his wife was distressed and weeping, one of Cato's friends, Munatius, said, "Atilia, take heart: I will watch over him for you." "Certainly," said Cato, and when they had advanced a single day's journey, right after dinner he said, "Come now, Munatius, so that you may make good your promise to Atilia, do not leave my side by day or by night."
From that time he had two couches set up in the same room, and Munatius always slept in this way, guarded playfully by Cato. He was attended by fifteen household servants, two freedmen, and four friends; of these the friends rode horses, while he himself always went on foot, joining each of them in turn and conversing with them. When he arrived at the camp, there being several legions, and one being assigned to his command by the general, he considered the display of his own single virtue a small task, and not an effective one.
Instead, being most eager to make those under his command like himself, he did not remove fear from his authority, but added to it reason, by which he persuaded and instructed each man about his duty, honor and punishment following accordingly; it was hard to say whether he made the men more peaceable or more warlike, more eager or more just. So they appeared terrible to their enemies, gentle to their allies, unwilling to do wrong, and eager for praise. And in the matter Cato cared for least,
this above all he had in the greatest measure: glory and gratitude and surpassing honor and affection from the soldiers. For the tasks he laid upon others he willingly toiled at himself, and in dress and diet and manner of marching he made himself more like them than like the officers; yet in character and spirit and speech he surpassed all those called generals and commanders. Through these things, without meaning to, he won at the same time the goodwill of the men toward himself.
For true zeal for virtue does not arise except through the utmost goodwill and honor on the part of the one who instills it; those who praise good men without loving them respect their reputation, but do not admire their virtue nor imitate it.
Learning that Athenodorus, called Cordylion, a man of great skill in Stoic doctrine, was living around Pergamum, already an old man, and one who had most firmly resisted all the friendships and favors of leading men and kings, Cato thought he would accomplish nothing by sending letters and writing to him; instead, having a leave of two months granted by law, he sailed to Asia after the man, trusting that with the good qualities in himself he would not fail in the hunt.
Having met with him and overcome him in argument and turned him from his resolve, he came bringing him to the camp, overjoyed and exulting greatly, as though this prize outshone all the peoples and realms that Pompey and Lucullus were then upending in their armed campaigns.
While he was still on this campaign, his brother, traveling to Asia, fell ill around Aenus in Thrace. A letter came at once to Cato; but a heavy storm was gripping the sea and nothing large enough could be found in port, so, taking only two friends and three servants aboard a small trading boat, he set out from Thessalonica.
And having come within a hair of being sunk, he was saved by some extraordinary chance, just as Caepio had died. He seemed to bear the misfortune more passionately than philosophically, not only with weeping and embraces of the corpse and heaviness of grief, but also with expense on the burial and elaborate provision of incense and costly garments burned together with the body, and a polished tomb of Thasian stone, built at a cost of eight talents, set up in the marketplace of the people of Aenus.
For these things some slandered him, contrasting them with Cato's habitual freedom from vanity in other respects, not perceiving how much gentleness and affection there was in a man who was otherwise unbending and hard against pleasures and fears and shameless entreaties. For these honors, cities and rulers sent him much in tribute to the dead man; of these he accepted money from none, but he did accept incense and ornaments, giving back the honor to those who sent them.
When the inheritance came to him and to Caepio's little daughter, he demanded back none of what he had spent on the tomb, in the division of the estate. And even though he did this and continued to do it, there was one who wrote that he had sifted and strained the ashes of the corpse through a sieve, searching for gold that had melted in the burning. So it was not only by the sword but also by the pen that he came to trust in his own unaccountability and freedom from prosecution.
When Cato's period of duty was over, he was seen off, not with prayers, which is the common thing, nor with commendations, but with weeping and embraces they could not bring themselves to end, the soldiers spreading their cloaks under his feet wherever he walked and kissing his hands—honors which the Romans of that time scarcely showed to a few of their commanders.
Wishing, before entering upon a political career, both to travel through Asia in the course of inquiry and become a spectator of the customs and lives and power found in each province, and at the same time not to be ungracious to Deiotarus the Galatian, who because of hospitality and ancestral friendship begged him to come to him, he made his journey in this manner. He would send ahead at daybreak his baker and his cook to wherever he intended to lodge.
These men, entering a city in a very orderly and quiet manner, if it happened that no friend or acquaintance of Cato's family was there, would prepare his lodging at an inn, troubling no one; and if there was no inn, they would then turn to the magistrates and accept whatever hospitality was given, content with it.
Often, being disbelieved and overlooked because they did not press their business upon the magistrates with noise or threats, they would be found by Cato to have accomplished nothing; and he himself, when seen, was regarded all the less, and sitting silently on the baggage he gave the impression of a lowly and timid man.
Nevertheless, calling the magistrates to him he would say, "You wretched men, change this bad way of receiving guests. Not everyone who comes to you will be a Cato. Blunt, by your kindness, the power of those who need only a pretext, so that they may not take by force what they fail to get from willing hosts."
In Syria too something rather comic is said to have happened to him. For as he was walking to Antioch he saw outside the gates a crowd of people arranged on either side of the road, among them young men standing apart in cloaks, and boys standing in an orderly way on the other side; some wore clean garments and had crowns—priests of the gods or magistrates. Cato, thinking that some honor and reception was being arranged for him by the city more than anything else, was angry with those of his own men who had gone ahead, for not preventing it, and ordered his friends to dismount.
And he went forward on foot with them; but as they drew near, the one arranging all this and setting the crowd in order, already an elderly man, holding a staff and a crown in his hand, came to meet Cato ahead of the others, without so much as a word of greeting, inquired where Demetrius had been left behind and when he was expected. Demetrius had been a household slave of Pompey's; but at that time, so to speak, since all men looked to Pompey, he was courted beyond his worth, having great influence with him.
Such laughter seized Cato's friends that they could not compose themselves as they walked along through the crowd, but Cato, at the time greatly disconcerted, said only, "O wretched city," and nothing else; but afterward he was accustomed to laugh at this himself too, telling the story and recalling it.
Nevertheless, Pompey himself corrected the men who had so blundered toward Cato out of ignorance. For when he came to Ephesus and went to greet him, though Cato was the elder and far advanced in reputation, and Pompey then commanded the greatest of forces, Pompey, seeing him, did not remain seated, nor did he allow him to approach while he himself sat, but sprang up as though to meet one of his superiors, and met him and clasped his right hand.
And much praise of his virtue he uttered at once, while Cato was present, in the course of showing friendship and greeting him, but even more after he had gone, so that everyone, turning their attention now to Cato, marveled at the very things for which he had formerly been despised, and reconsidered his gentleness and greatness of soul. For Pompey's attentiveness toward him did not go unnoticed as being more like courting than loving; rather people recognized that he admired him when present,
but was glad when he departed. Other young visitors he would hold back out of a wish to keep their company, longing to be with him; but he needed nothing of the sort with Cato—rather, as though he were an accountable magistrate in his presence, he sent him off gladly, entrusting his children and his wife to him almost alone among those sailing to Rome, though otherwise fittingly, on account of kinship. From this arose glory and eagerness and rivalry among the cities for him, and dinners and invitations, at which he told his friends to watch him, lest he unwittingly confirm Curio's saying.
For Curio, being annoyed at Cato's severity, though he was a friend and companion, asked him whether he was eager, after the campaign, to become a spectator of Asia; and when he said he was very much so, Curio said, "You speak well, for you will come back from there more agreeable and gentler"—using some such expression.
Deiotarus the Galatian, being already elderly, sent for Cato, wishing to entrust his children and household to him; and when he arrived, offering him gifts of every kind and trying and entreating him in every way, he pressed him so hard that, though Cato had arrived in the late afternoon and spent the night, on the following day he departed about the third hour.
Yet having gone forward a single day's journey, he found at Pessinus even more gifts awaiting him again, along with a letter in which the Galatian pleaded that, even if Cato refused them personally, he should at least permit his companions to accept the gifts, since they were altogether worthy of good treatment on his account, Cato's own household not being so numerous.
But Cato yielded to these requests no more than before, although he saw some of his friends softening and complaining, but saying that every bribe would find some pretext, and that his friends would share in whatever he had acquired honorably and justly, he sent the gifts back to Deiotarus.
Just as he was preparing to embark for Brundisium, his friends proposed that Caepio's remains travel on a separate vessel, he said he would sooner give up his life than these, and so put out to sea. And indeed it is said that by chance he made a most perilous crossing, while the others were carried over without difficulty.
When he returned to Rome, he spent the rest of his time either at home with Athenodorus or standing beside his friends in the forum. When the quaestorship, an office due to fall to him, came within reach, he did not seek it before he had read through the laws governing the quaestorship, made careful inquiry of experienced men about every detail of it, and grasped in outline the powers of the office.
So the moment he took up his duties, he brought about a great change among the clerks and secretaries of the treasury, who, since they always had the public records and the laws in hand, and then received new magistrates who through inexperience and ignorance plainly needed other teachers and guides, would not yield up their power to those magistrates but were in effect the rulers themselves,
until Cato, taking hold of affairs with youthful vigor--possessing not merely the name and honor of a magistrate but intelligence and judgment and speech as well--insisted on using the secretaries as what they actually were, servants: exposing some of them when they did wrong, and instructing others where they erred through inexperience. But since they were insolent and, while fawning and cringing before the other magistrates, made war on him, he found that the first of them had, in a matter of trust concerning an inheritance, proved corrupt, and drove him from the treasury; against a second he brought a charge of malpractice,
in which Catulus Lutatius, the censor, came up to defend him, a man who held very great standing from his office, but held the greatest standing from his virtue, since he surpassed all Romans in justice and self-control; he was also an admirer of Cato and a companion of his through their manner of life. So when, being worsted on the merits, he openly begged for the man's release, Cato would not allow him to do this.
And when he pressed still more insistently, Cato said, "It is shameful, Catulus, that you, the censor, who ought to be examining our lives, should be thrown out by our own servants." When Cato had let fall this remark, Catulus looked at him as though about to answer, but said nothing; instead, whether from anger or from shame, he went away in silence, at a loss.
The man was not, however, convicted; rather, the votes for his condemnation outnumbered those for acquittal by only one, and Marcus Lollius, one of Cato's fellow quaestors, had been absent from the trial through illness, Catulus sent to him begging him to help the man; and Lollius, being carried in a litter after the trial had ended, cast his vote for acquittal. Cato, however, would not employ that clerk, nor did he pay him his salary, nor did he count Lollius's vote as valid at all.
Having thus humbled the secretaries and made them subject to him, and managing affairs exactly as he himself wished, in a short time he made the treasury more dignified than the senate house, so that it was the common view, spoken aloud by everyone, that Cato had lent the quaestorship the dignity of a consulship.
For first, discovering that many owed old debts to the public treasury and that the public treasury owed money to many, he put a stop at once to the city's being wronged and to its wronging others, exacting the debts from the former vigorously and without exception, and paying back the latter promptly and eagerly, so that the people took pleasure in seeing those who thought they would escape payment paying up, and those who had not expected it recovering what was owed them,
Then, since many were making improper claims, and false decrees were being accepted through favor and entreaty as his predecessors had been accustomed to do, nothing of this sort escaped his notice; indeed once, having doubts about a single decree whether it had duly been passed, though many witnesses testified to it he did not believe them, nor did he record it as valid until the consuls came in person and swore to it.
There were many to whom Sulla had given, as a reward for killing men under the proscription, twelve thousand drachmas apiece; everyone hated these men as accursed and polluted, but no one dared take vengeance on them. Cato, however, summoned each one who held such public money unjustly and exacted it from them, at the same time denouncing, with both anger and argument, the unholy and lawless nature of the deed.
Those who suffered this were at once treated as though guilty of murder, and, in a manner already convicted beforehand, were led off to the jurors and paid the penalty, everyone rejoicing and believing that along with this the tyranny of that time was being wiped away and that Sulla himself was watching, being punished.
The people were also won over by the unbroken and untiring diligence of his attention to duty: no one of his fellow magistrates arrived at the treasury before Cato or left after him; and he missed no assembly or meeting of the senate, being on guard and watching closely for those who readily and as a favor voted remissions of debts or taxes, or grants, to whomever they pleased.
By showing the treasury to be inaccessible to false accusers and clean of them, yet full of money, he taught that it is possible for the city to be wealthy without doing wrong. Though at first he appeared to some of his fellow magistrates burdensome and harsh, later he was loved, since he took upon himself, in place of all of them, the hostility that arose from not granting public funds as favors nor judging cases badly, and afforded them the excuse, when pressed and pushed by those who made demands, that it was impossible--Cato being unwilling.
On almost the last of his days in office, having been escorted home by nearly all the citizens, he heard that many friends and powerful men, falling upon Marcellus at the treasury and surrounding him, were forcing him to authorize the payment of a certain sum of money owed. Marcellus had been a friend of Cato's from childhood, and together with him was the best of the magistrates, but by himself he was easily led by a sense of shame toward those who made requests of him, and inclined to grant every favor,
So Cato at once turned back, and finding Marcellus forced into authorizing the payment, called for the record-tablets and struck out the entry himself, while Marcellus stood by without a word; and having done this he escorted him out of the treasury and brought him home, and Marcellus neither complained then nor afterward, but continued in their customary friendship to the very end.
Nor, indeed, even after leaving the quaestorship did he leave the treasury without a guard, but his own household slaves were present daily, recording its transactions, while he himself, having purchased for five talents the books containing the accounts of public expenditures from the time of Sulla down to his own quaestorship, always kept them at hand,
He entered the senate first and left it last of all; often, while the others were slowly gathering, he would sit calmly reading, his cloak drawn up to screen the book in front of him. He was never away when a meeting of the senate took place; and later, when Pompey's circle saw that in matters where they were pursuing unjust ends he remained always unmoved and hard to coerce, they contrived, through some friendly requests for advocacy or arbitration or business, to draw him away elsewhere. Perceiving quickly the scheme, he refused all such requests and made it a fixed rule to do nothing else whenever the senate was in session.
For he had not fallen into the conduct of the city's affairs for the sake of reputation, nor for gain, nor by chance and accident, as some others do, but having chosen public life as the proper work of a good man, he thought it right to attend to public affairs more than the bee attends to its honeycomb; so much so that he even made it his business to have the affairs, decrees, judgments, and greatest actions of the provinces sent to him by friends and guest-connections in each place.
Once, standing against the demagogue Clodius, who was stirring up and setting in motion the beginnings of great revolutionary changes and was slandering to the people priests and priestesses--among them Fabia, sister of Terentia, Cicero's wife, who was put in danger--he covered Clodius with shame and forced him out of the city; and when Cicero offered his thanks for it, he said that Cicero ought to be grateful to the city instead, since it was for her sake that he did and undertook everything in politics,
From this his reputation grew so great that, in a certain trial where a single witness's testimony was being brought forward, an advocate said to the jurors that it is not right to rely on one witness testifying, not even if it were Cato; and many, speaking already of things incredible and paradoxical, would say, as though it were a proverb, that this is not credible even if Cato says it.
When a wicked and extravagant man delivered a speech in the senate in favor of frugality and moderation, Amnaeus stood up and said, "Fellow, who will put up with you dining like Lucullus, building like Crassus, and haranguing us like Cato?" And others, mocking those who were base and unrestrained yet solemn and austere in their speeches, called them "Catos."
When many called upon him to seek the tribunate of the people, he judged it wrong to expend the power of so great an office, like some potent medicine, on matters that were not pressing. And since public business happened to be quiet just then, he gathered his books and philosophers and headed off toward Lucania, to lands he owned there that offered occupations fit for a free man:
Then, on the road, he came upon a great train of pack animals, baggage, and servants, and when he discovered that Metellus Nepos was returning toward Rome so as to seek the tribunate, he stopped without saying anything, and after pausing a while told his own company to turn around. When his friends showed their surprise, he said, "Do you not know that Metellus, through his own recklessness, is dangerous enough already, and that now, entering politics with Pompey behind him, he will crash down on the state like a bolt of lightning, throwing everything into confusion?
This is no time for leisure or travel abroad; rather, the man must be mastered, or else one must die nobly, fighting for freedom." Nevertheless, at his friends' urging, he first went on to his estates and stayed there not long, then returned to the city. Arriving in the evening, at dawn he went straight down to the forum to stand for the tribunate, so as to oppose Metellus. For strength, or office, has more power to prevent than to accomplish; and even if all the rest vote unanimously except one, the power lies with the one who is unwilling and does not allow it.
At first there were few of Cato's friends about him; but once his intention became known, in a short time all the good and respectable men came running together, calling on him and encouraging him, telling him that he was not receiving a favor but rather giving the greatest one to his country and to the most reasonable of the citizens, since, though he had often been able to hold office without trouble and had not wished to, he was now coming down to fight, not without danger, for freedom and the constitution.
It is said that so many pressed around him out of eagerness and goodwill that he was in real danger and only just forced his way through the crowd into the forum. Once elected tribune together with the others, among them Metellus, he saw that the consular elections were being bought and sold, and he rebuked the people for it; and at the end of his speech he vowed to bring charges against whoever had paid the bribe, no matter who it turned out to be, excepting only one man, Silanus, because of their family tie--for Silanus was married to Servilia, Cato's sister.
So he let this man pass, but he prosecuted Lucius Murena, who had arranged by bribery to become magistrate together with Silanus; and since a certain law always gives the defendant a watcher assigned to the accuser, so that what the accuser gathers and prepares for the prosecution should not go unnoticed, the man given to Cato by Murena, following him and keeping watch,when he saw that Cato was doing nothing treacherous or unjust,
but was pursuing a simple and just course of accusation, nobly and humanely, so admired his character and disposition that, coming to him in the forum and calling at his door, he would ask Cato whether he intended to do anything that day concerning the prosecution; and if Cato said no, he would go away trusting him.
While the case was being pleaded, Cicero, who was then consul and was defending Murena, mocked and jested a great deal, on Cato's account, at the Stoic philosophers and at those so-called paradoxical doctrines, and raised laughter among the jurors. Cato, they say, smiling, said to those present, "Gentlemen, what a comical consul we have."
Murena, having been acquitted, felt no resentment or foolish anger toward Cato — a bad or senseless man's reaction, in fact quite the opposite: for when he became consul he used him as an advisor in the greatest matters, and continued to honor and trust him in everything else. The cause of this was Cato himself, who on the rostrum and in the senate-house was harsh and formidable in defense of what was just, but afterward behaved toward everyone with goodwill and kindness.
Before he entered upon the tribunate, in the consulship of Cicero, he corrected that magistracy's course through many other contests, and put the finishing touch on the greatest and finest achievement of it, the affair of Catiline. For Catiline himself, who was bringing a ruinous and total upheaval upon the affairs of the Romans and stirring up factions and wars together, was exposed by Cicero and driven out of the city,
while Lentulus and Cethegus, and many others besides them who had taken up the conspiracy — reproaching Catiline for cowardice and pettiness in his daring schemes — themselves intended to destroy the city utterly by fire and to overturn the empire of the nations through revolts and wars waged by foreigners.
When their preparation had become plain, and Cicero put the question before the senate, Silanus, speaking first, declared that in his judgment the men ought to suffer the ultimate penalty, and those who spoke after him in turn followed his opinion,
down to Caesar. Caesar rose — being a formidable speaker, and wishing every upheaval and disturbance in the city to grow rather than be allowed to die out, as material for what he himself was planning — and, having made a long and winning, humane speech, would not allow the men to be put to death without trial, but urged that they be imprisoned and kept under guard,
and he so changed the opinions of the senate, which had grown afraid of the populace, that Silanus himself backed away from his own words, claiming he had never intended death at all, only confinement — for confinement, he said, was already the worst calamity a Roman citizen could suffer.
When such a turn had occurred and everyone had drifted toward the milder and more humane course, Cato rose to speak against the motion, and at once threw himself into his speech with anger and passion, both reproaching Silanus for his change of mind, and attacking Caesar for overturning the city under the guise of a popular pose and humane rhetoric,
and for trying to frighten the senate over matters where he himself ought to be afraid, and should be glad if he came out of what had happened unscathed and unsuspected — so openly and boldly was he snatching the common enemies from justice, and, though confessing that so great and such a city had come within a hair's breadth of destruction, felt no pity for it, but instead wept and lamented over men who ought never to have been born or come into existence, as though their death would free the city from great slaughters and dangers.
This is said to be the only speech of Cato's that survives, because Cicero the consul had beforehand instructed those scribes distinguished for speed in marks that, in small and brief forms, held the power of many letters, and had then scattered them one here, one there, throughout the senate-house — for the profession now known as shorthand-writing had not yet been developed or taken up by anyone, and people say this occasion marked the earliest footprint of the craft. At any rate Cato prevailed and changed the opinions, so that the men were condemned to death.
But if one must not omit even the small marks of character, as though sketching a portrait of the soul, it is said that then, when there was great rivalry and a mighty contest between Cato and Caesar, and the senate hung suspended upon them, a small tablet was brought in to Caesar from outside. When Cato brought the matter under suspicion and accused certain persons of stirring things up, and demanded that what was written be read aloud, Caesar handed the tablet over to Cato, who stood nearby.
Cato, reading it, found it a wanton letter written to Caesar by his own sister Servilia, who was in love with him and had been seduced by him; he flung it back at Caesar and said, "Take it, drunkard," and then turned again to his original speech.
It seems that this women's-quarter business was altogether a misfortune for Cato: this woman brought ill repute upon him because of Caesar; but the affair of the other Servilia, Cato's own sister, was even more disgraceful. She had married Lucullus, a man who ranked first among Romans in reputation, and after bearing him a child she was expelled from his house for licentiousness. And most shameful of all, not even Cato's own wife Atilia was free of such faults, but although he had had two children by her, he was compelled to divorce her for shameless behavior.
He then married the daughter of Philippus, Marcia, a woman thought to be of good character, about whom there has been the greatest deal of talk; and just as in a drama, this part of his life has become problematic and puzzling. It came about in this way, as Thrasea records it, tracing his account back to Munatius, a man who was Cato's companion and close associate:
Cato had no shortage of men who admired and courted his friendship, some far more conspicuous than the rest; among them was Quintus Hortensius, a man renowned for his brilliance and known for his fairness of character. Not content merely with being on close terms with Cato, or being counted simply as a companion, Hortensius wanted somehow to blend their two households and lineages into a single bond of kinship and shared interest. So he set about winning Cato over to the idea of handing back his daughter Porcia — then married to Bibulus and already the mother of two of his children — so that, like fertile ground lent out again, she might bear Hortensius offspring too.
For though such a thing might seem strange by human opinion, by nature it is noble and civic-minded: that a woman in her prime and full bloom should neither lie idle, quenching her fertility, nor, by bearing more children than are needed, burden and impoverish a household with no need of it, but rather, by sharing her succession with worthy men, make virtue abundant and widely diffused among families, and blend the city with itself through such kinships. And if Bibulus were altogether attached to his wife, he would give her back at once after she bore the child, having become more closely bound both to Bibulus himself and to Cato through the shared partnership of children.
When Cato answered that he loved Hortensius and approved of him as a partner in kinship, but thought it strange to speak of the marriage of a daughter already given to another, Hortensius changed his approach and did not hesitate to reveal his true request: he asked for Cato's own wife, who was still young enough to bear children, while Cato already had a sufficient succession.
And one cannot say that he did this not knowing that Cato was devoted to Marcia: for she happened, they say, to be pregnant at the time. But Cato, seeing Hortensius's eagerness and earnestness, did not refuse, but said that Philippus, Marcia's father, must also agree to this. When Philippus was approached and gave his consent, he betrothed Marcia in no other way than with Cato himself present and joining in the betrothal. This matter, even though it happened at a later time, seemed to me, once I had called the women to mind, best to set down here ahead of its place.
After Lentulus and his fellow conspirators were executed, Caesar — accused and denounced before the senate over the affair — fled to the people for protection, and set about agitating and rallying to his own side the many diseased and corrupted elements of the commonwealth. Alarmed by this, Cato induced the senate to enroll the destitute, landless masses in the grain distribution, at a yearly cost of twelve hundred and fifty talents; and through this conspicuous act of goodwill and generosity, the earlier danger was visibly dissolved.
From there Metellus, having fallen into the tribunate, began to hold turbulent assemblies, and drafted a law that Pompey the Great should come with speed together with his forces into Italy and, taking charge, save the city, as though it were endangered by Catiline. This was the specious pretext; but the actual effect and purpose of the law was to hand over affairs and surrender command to Pompey.
When the senate met and Cato, instead of falling upon Metellus fiercely as he was accustomed to do, offered instead many reasonable and moderate exhortations, and in the end even turned to entreaty and praised the house of the Metelli as having always been aristocratic in sympathy, Metellus, all the more emboldened and contemptuous, thinking that Cato was yielding and cowering, broke out into arrogant threats and bold speech, as one who would carry through everything by force against the senate.
At this point Cato's whole manner shifted — his stance, his tone, his words — and after declaring to everyone else with vehemence that as long as he lived Pompey would never set foot armed within the city, he drove home this point to the senate: reason guided neither combatant safely, nor was either man sound of mind, yet Metellus's course was a frenzy sped by sheer wickedness toward ruin and universal chaos, whereas Cato's own stance was virtue's passion, fighting for what was noble and right.
When the people were about to cast their vote on the law, Metellus had arms, foreigners, gladiators, and servants stationed in the forum, and no small part of the populace, longing for change, hoped for Pompey; and there was also great strength coming from Caesar, who was praetor at that time,
The foremost citizens sided with Cato's outrage and grievance more than they actually stood beside him in the fight, and a heavy dread and gloom settled over his home — enough that a number of his friends went the whole night without sleep or food, huddled together, turning over hopeless calculations for his sake, even as his wife and his sisters cried out in lamentation and tears.
But he himself, meeting everyone fearlessly and confidently and offering encouragement, and having dined as usual and spent the night, was roused from deep sleep by one of his fellow magistrates, Minucius Thermus; and they went down to the forum, few escorting them, but many meeting them and urging them to be on guard.
As soon as Cato arrived and caught sight of the temple of the Dioscuri ringed by armed men, its steps held by gladiators, and Metellus himself perched above beside Caesar, he wheeled toward his friends and remarked, "What a reckless coward, to muster such a host of troops against a single unarmed, defenseless man!" With that he pressed on at once alongside Thermus.
Those holding the steps parted for them, and let no one else through except that Cato, barely dragging Munatius up by the hand, brought him along; and going straight on as he was, he threw himself down in the middle, planting himself between Metellus and Caesar, so as to break off their conference.
They were at a loss what to do, but the more refined onlookers, watching and admiring the face, the resolve, and the boldness of Cato, came closer, and shouted their encouragement to Cato to be of good courage, and to the rest to hold together and rally to one another and not betray liberty and the man contending on its behalf.
Then, when the attendant took up the law to read it, and Cato would not allow him to read it, and Metellus took it up himself and began to read, Cato snatched the document away, and Thermus, when Metellus went on reciting the law from memory, clapped his hand over Metellus's mouth and shut off his voice,
until Metellus, seeing that the contest against these men was unwinnable, and that the people were losing ground to their own advantage and turning away, ordered armed men to come running from a distance with shouts to strike fear. When this happened and everyone was scattered, Murena — the very man who had once been prosecuted and accused by Cato — would not stand by and see him left alone, standing his ground and being pelted with stones and sticks from above,
but he held out the fold of his toga and shouted for them to hold back from the men throwing missiles, and finally, persuading Cato himself and embracing him, led him off into the temple of the Dioscuri. But when Metellus saw the platform deserted and his opponents fleeing the forum, entirely persuaded that he was master of the field, he ordered the armed men to withdraw again, and coming forward in orderly fashion himself set about carrying through the business of the law.
But his opponents, quickly recovering themselves from their rout, came on again with a great and confident shout, so that panic and fear fell upon Metellus's people, who supposed that the others had somehow gotten hold of weapons and were charging upon them, and no one stood his ground, but all fled from the platform. When his party had thus been scattered,
and Cato had come forward and partly praised, partly encouraged the people, the multitude arrayed themselves to put down Metellus by every means, and the senate, being assembled, ordered from the outset that aid be given to Cato and that the law be fought to the end, as one introducing faction and civil war into Rome.
Metellus himself was still unbending and bold, but seeing his own followers utterly terrified of Cato and reckoning him unconquerable and impossible to force aside, he suddenly rushed out into the forum, and gathering the people together he went through many charges hateful to Cato, crying out that he must flee that man's tyranny and his conspiracy against Pompey, on account of which the city would soon repent dishonoring so great a man, and he set out at once for Asia, to lay these charges before Pompey in person.
Great, then, was the reputation Cato won for having removed no small burden from the tribunate, and for having in a way, through Metellus, cast down the power of Pompey. He won still greater esteem when he did not allow the senate, which was eager to dishonor and vote against Metellus, but opposed it and begged them off. For the many took it as humanity and moderation that he did not trample on his enemy nor insult him in his hour of victory, while to the prudent it seemed both right and expedient not to provoke Pompey.
After this Lucullus, returning from the campaign of which Pompey was thought to have stripped away both the conclusion and the glory, came into danger of not celebrating a triumph, since Gaius Memmius roused the populace against him with hostility and pressed accusations, more to curry favor with Pompey than out of any private hatred. But Cato, having become connected by marriage to Lucullus, who had his sister Servilia as wife, and thinking the matter a serious wrong, stood against Memmius, and endured many slanders and
accusations, being cast even out of office as though committing tyranny, yet in the end he so prevailed that he forced Memmius himself to abandon the prosecutions and flee the contest. Lucullus, then, having triumphed, attached himself all the more to Cato's friendship, holding him as a great bulwark and defense against the power of Pompey.
Pompey, returning great from his campaign, and trusting in the brilliance and eagerness of his welcome that he would fail in nothing he might ask of the citizens, sent word ahead requesting that the senate postpone the consular elections, so that he himself might be present and support Piso's candidacy.
Though most yielded, Cato did not think the postponement the main issue, but wishing to cut off Pompey's attempt and hope altogether, spoke against it and turned the senate, so that they voted it down. This disturbed Pompey not a little; and reckoning that he would stumble badly in many things if Cato did not become his friend, he sent for Munatius, a companion of his, and since Cato had two nieces of marriageable age, he requested that the older be given to him in marriage, while the younger would marry his son.
Some say it was not the nieces but the daughters whose betrothal was proposed. When Munatius reported this to Cato, and to his wife and to his sisters, the female relatives were delighted by the prospect of such a tie, given the man's greatness and standing, but Cato, without pausing or deliberating, but struck at once, said:
"Munatius, go back and inform Pompey that Cato cannot be won over by way of the women's chambers, yet I welcome his goodwill, and if he acts justly I will offer him a friendship more trustworthy than any marriage-tie; but I will not hand over hostages to serve Pompey's designs against my country." At this the women were vexed, and Cato's friends blamed the answer as both boorish and arrogant.
Then, however, when Pompey was laboring to win the consulship on behalf of one of his friends and was sending money to the tribes, and the bribery became notorious, the sums being counted out in his own gardens, Cato said to the women that it was necessary, had he been joined to Pompey by kinship, to share and be tainted by such doings as well; and they admitted that he had planned better in rebuffing the match.
Yet if one must judge by what came to pass, Cato seems to have erred in the whole matter by not accepting the connection, but letting it turn instead to Caesar and a marriage which, by bringing the power of Pompey and Caesar together into one, very nearly overturned the affairs of Rome and destroyed the constitution — none of which would perhaps have happened, had not Cato, fearing Pompey's small faults, overlooked the greatest one, namely his gaining another man's power added to his own.
These things, then, were still to come. When Lucullus fell into dispute with Pompey over the arrangements in Pontus — for each demanded that his own dispositions hold good — and Cato openly took Lucullus's side as one being wronged, Pompey, getting the worse of it in the senate and turning to popular agitation, called upon his soldiers to be settled on land.
When here too Cato, standing firm, blocked the law, Pompey so attached himself to Clodius, then the boldest of the popular leaders, and drew in Caesar as well, Cato himself having in a way given the occasion. For Caesar, returning from his generalship in Iberia, wished at once both to declare his candidacy for the consulship and to request a triumph in the same breath.
Since by law those seeking office had to be present in person, while those about to celebrate a triumph had to remain outside the walls, he asked that the senate grant him permission to seek the office through others in his absence. Though many were willing, Cato spoke against it; and when he perceived they were inclined to favor Caesar, he consumed the whole day speaking, and so blocked the senate.
Caesar, then, letting the triumph go, came in at once and attached himself to Pompey and the consulship. Having been declared consul, he betrothed his daughter Julia to him, and the two now bound themselves as allies against the state; one of them brought forward laws granting land allotments and distributions to the poor, while the other stood by supporting the laws,
and Lucullus and Cicero, joining themselves with Bibulus, the other consul, worked against them, but Cato most of all, already suspecting the friendship and alliance of Caesar and Pompey as having arisen for no honest end, and declaring that what he feared was not the distribution of land, but the price which those courting and baiting the multitude would demand in return for it.
As he spoke thus he had the senate voting with him as one, and not a few of those outside came forward too, indignant at Caesar's outrageousness; for what the boldest and most reckless of tribunes used to practice for popular favor, this he now did by consular authority, shamefully and basely insinuating himself among the common people.
Frightened, then, they resorted to force, and first a basket of dung was scattered over Bibulus himself as he came down, then men fell upon his lictors and broke their rods; finally, missiles being thrown and many wounded, everyone else bolted from the forum in a headlong dash, but Cato alone went off last, walking, turning back and calling the citizens to witness.
They not only ratified the distribution, but voted further that the whole senate swear to uphold the law and come to its defense if anyone acted against it, setting heavy penalties against those who would not swear. All swore, then, out of necessity, calling to mind the fate of the elder Metellus, whom the people had allowed to be driven into exile when he refused to swear to a similar law,
out of Italy. Wherefore his wife and the women at home besought Cato with many tears to yield and swear, and his friends and companions urged him much as well, but the one who most persuaded and led him to the oath was Cicero the orator, urging and teaching him that it was, perhaps, not even proper to suppose that one man alone should defy decisions reached in common, and that when nothing already done could be undone, to be reckless of himself
was altogether senseless and mad, and the worst of evils, if, for the sake of which he did all things, he should abandon the city and give it over to its schemers, and be as it were glad to be rid of the struggles undertaken on her behalf; for even if Cato had no need of Rome, Rome had need of Cato, and so did all his friends, of whom Cicero said he himself was first, being plotted against by Clodius, who through the tribunate was marching straight against him,
by such words and entreaties, they say, Cato, being softened both at home and in the forum, was with difficulty compelled, and stepped up to swear the oath after everyone else save one, Favonius, among his friends and companions.
Emboldened, then, Caesar brought in another law, distributing nearly the whole of Campania among the destitute and impoverished. No one raised his voice against it except Cato, and Caesar had him dragged from the platform to prison, though this made him no more inclined to give up his outspokenness, but even as he walked he went on discoursing about the law and urging them to cease from such political conduct,
and the senate followed after him in dejection, and the best part of the people were indignant in silence and grieved, so that it did not escape Caesar's notice that they took it hard; but persisting out of contentiousness and waiting for some appeal or entreaty from Cato, he kept on leading him away. But when it was clear that Cato was not even going to think of making one, overcome by shame and disgrace, Caesar himself persuaded one of the tribunes to intervene and have Cato released.
Having tamed the crowd, however, with those laws and favors, they voted Caesar command of all Illyricum and Gaul together with four legions for five years, Cato foretelling that by their own votes they were setting up the tyrant in the citadel, and, transferring Publius Clodius unlawfully from patrician into plebeian rank, they appointed him tribune,
at the price of Cicero's banishment, conducting all his politics wholly to gratify them, and as consuls Calpurnius Piso, who was father of Caesar's wife, and Aulus Gabinius, a man out of Pompey's bosom, as those who knew his character and manner of life used to say.
But though they had thus taken firm hold of affairs, holding one part of the city under them by favor, the other by fear, they nonetheless feared Cato; for even where they got the better of him, it was with difficulty and hardship, and not without disgrace, but only by being with effort exposed and forced down, which was galling and hard to bear.
Clodius did not expect that he could overthrow Cicero while Cato was present, but as soon as he had entered his office, contriving this very thing first, he sent for Cato and addressed him with words claiming that of all Romans he judged him the most incorruptible, and was ready to give proof of this in deed: for while many were requesting the command over Cyprus and Ptolemy and asking to be sent, he thought only Cato worthy of it, and was glad to grant him the favor.
When Cato cried out that this was a trap and an insult, not a favor, Clodius said with haughty contempt, "Well then, if you feel no gratitude, you shall sail vexed all the same," then straightway went before the assembly and had a law passed to send Cato away; but as he departed he gave him neither ship, nor soldier, nor attendant, except only two clerks, one of whom was a thief and thoroughly wicked,
while the other was a client of Clodius. And as though the charge of Cyprus and Ptolemy were too small a task for him, he further ordered him to bring back the exiles of Byzantium, wishing that Cato should be kept out of the way as long as possible while he himself held office.
Caught in such a necessity, Cato advised Cicero, who was being driven out, not to resort to faction nor to plunge the city into arms and bloodshed, but to yield to the occasion for a time and become again the savior of his country. He himself sent one of his friends, Canidius, ahead to Cyprus so as to win Ptolemy over to yielding peacefully, assuring him that neither riches nor honor would be denied him, since the people would bestow on him the priestly office of the goddess worshiped at Paphos.
He himself remained at Rhodes, making his preparations and at the same time waiting for the replies. Meanwhile Ptolemy, king of Egypt, having left Alexandria because of some anger and quarrel with his citizens, and sailing toward Rome, hoping that Caesar and Pompey would restore him with troops at their command, desired an audience with Cato, and sent him word, supposing that Cato would present himself before him.
But Cato happened at that time to be undergoing a purge of the bowels, and told Ptolemy, if he wished, to come to him; and when he came, Cato did not go out to greet him nor even stand up from where he sat, but received him casually as he might any passerby and bid him take a seat. By this alone he first threw the king into confusion, who marveled that beneath the plain, common style of Cato's establishment lay such haughtiness and gravity of character.
But when the king began to speak of his own affairs and Cato listened to words full of good sense and frankness — for Cato rebuked him and pointed out how much happiness he had left behind for the sake of subjecting himself to such servility and toil, bribery and greed among the powerful men of Rome, whom, even if all Egypt were turned into money, he could scarcely satisfy — and urged him to return home by ship and make peace with his own people, offering even to sail along with him and assist in bringing about that reconciliation,
the king, as though coming to his senses out of some madness or derangement through these words, and perceiving the truth and good sense of the man, set out to follow his counsel; but he was again overturned by his friends, and as soon as he reached Rome and approached the doors of a single magistrate, he groaned over his own poor judgment, realizing he had spurned no mere advice of a decent man, but what amounted to a god's prediction.
While Ptolemy in Cyprus, by a stroke of good fortune for Cato, killed himself with poison, and it was said that he had left behind a great sum of money, Cato himself resolved to sail to Byzantium, and sent his nephew Brutus on to Cyprus, not entirely trusting Canidius. Having reconciled the exiles and left Byzantium in harmony, he then sailed to Cyprus.
Since a great quantity of royal furnishings — cups, tables, gems, and purple fabrics — needed to be converted into cash through sale, wishing to make everything exact and to press every item to its highest value, and to be present himself at everything and bring the final reckoning to bear, he did not even trust the customary practices of the market, but suspecting everyone alike — attendants, criers, buyers, friends — in the end he himself conversed privately with the buyers and drove each one on, and in this way sold off most of the goods.
For this he offended his other friends, as though he distrusted them, and he threw Munatius, the most intimate of all of them, into an anger nearly incurable, so that when Caesar wrote his speech against Cato, this part of the accusation furnished the bitterest material.
Munatius himself, however, relates that the anger arose not from Cato's distrust of him, but from Cato's neglect of him, and from a certain jealousy of his own toward Canidius. For he himself published a treatise about Cato, which Thrasea followed most closely.
He says that he arrived at Cyprus later and received a neglected welcome, and that when he came to the door he was turned away, Cato being occupied at home in some business with Canidius; and when he complained moderately, he received an answer that was anything but moderate — that excessive love, as Theophrastus says, is apt often to become the cause of hatred: "since you too," Cato said, "thinking yourself honored less than is fitting because of your great love for me, grow angry.
But I employ Canidius both for his experience and because I trust him more than others, since he came to me from the beginning and has shown himself honest." These words, spoken to Munatius alone in private, Cato nevertheless reported to Canidius. Munatius, on perceiving this, no longer came to dinner nor answered when called on for counsel; and when Cato threatened, as he was accustomed to do with those who disobeyed him, to take pledges from him, Munatius, caring nothing for this, sailed away and continued
in anger for a long time. Then, when Marcia — for she was still living with Cato — spoke with him, it happened that they had both been invited to dinner by Barca, and Cato, coming in later while the others were already reclining, asked where he should recline. When Barca told him wherever he wished, Cato looked around and said, "next to Munatius," and going over he reclined beside him, but showed no further friendliness during the dinner.
But again, at Marcia's request, Cato wrote to him saying he wished to meet with him about something, and Munatius came at dawn to the house and was kept there by Marcia until everyone else had left; and then Cato came in, threw both arms around him, embraced him, and was affectionate. We have gone into these matters at greater length, believing that they, no less than public and great actions, offer some clarity for showing and understanding character.
For Cato there was collected a sum of silver amounting to a little less than seven thousand talents; and fearing the length of the voyage, he had many vessels made, each holding two talents and five hundred drachmas, and to each he attached a long cord, at the end of which he fixed a sizable cork float, so that were the vessel to break up, the buoy, riding the waves above the depths, would mark the spot,
and so the money, except for a small part, was carried safely across. But of the accounts of everything he had administered, which he kept carefully written in two books, he saved neither: for the one, carried by his freedman named Philargyrus, who had set out from Cenchreae, was lost when the ship capsized along with the cargo; the other he himself guarded as far as Corcyra and pitched camp with it in the marketplace.
But the sailors, being cold, lit many fires that night, and the tents caught fire, and the book was destroyed. Now the royal officials who were present would have been able to silence his enemies and slanderers, but otherwise the matter caused Cato bitter distress. For it was not to gain credit for himself, but out of ambition to leave an example of exactness for others, that he had brought forth the accounts, and in this he was disappointed.
When he had crossed over with his ships, he did not escape the notice of the Romans, but every magistrate and priest, the entire senate, and a large portion of the citizenry came out to the river to greet him, so that both banks were hidden from view, and his voyage upstream fell short of a triumph in nothing, in either spectacle or honor,
and yet to some this seemed awkward and stubborn, that though the consuls and praetors were present, he neither disembarked to greet them nor stopped his sailing, but drove along past the bank on a royal six-oared ship amid the rushing water, and gave no pause until his fleet lay safely moored within the dockyard.
Nevertheless, as the money was carried through the marketplace, the people marveled at its quantity, and the senate, having assembled, voted Cato, along with fitting praises, an extraordinary praetorship and the right to watch the games clad in a purple-bordered robe. Cato refused these honors himself, yet he induced the senate to grant freedom to Nicias, the steward of the royal property, bearing witness to his diligence and honesty.
Philip, Marcia's father, held the consulship in that year, and in a way the dignity and power of the office passed over to Cato, since his colleague added no less honor to Cato, both for his virtue and for his kinship with Philip, than he did to his own office.
When Cicero returned from the exile into which Clodius had driven him, and being now powerful, tore down by force and destroyed, in Clodius's absence, the tablets of the tribunate which Clodius had set up inscribed on the Capitol, and when upon this the senate assembled and Clodius made accusation, Cicero said that since Clodius's tribunate had been irregular, all that had been done and enacted at that time ought to be void and without authority.
Cato objected to him as he spoke, and finally stood up and said that while he considered nothing at all in Clodius's policy sound or good, yet if anyone should annul all that he had done as tribune, then Cato's whole mission concerning Cyprus would also be annulled, and the sending would not have been legitimate, since it was voted by an illegitimate magistrate: it was not illegally that Clodius had been elected tribune, having passed from patrician to plebeian status under a law that permitted it; and if, once magistrate, he had proved wicked, as others had, it was he himself who should be called to account for the wrong, not proper to dissolve the office that had been wronged along with him. From this Cicero held anger against Cato, and though he had been his friend, he ceased to be so for a long time; but afterward they were reconciled.
After this, Pompey and Crassus, meeting with Caesar who had crossed the Alps, resolved jointly to seek a second consulship, and once established in it, to have Caesar's command voted an equal further term, and for themselves the greatest provinces, money, and military forces — which was in fact a conspiracy for the partition of power and the overthrow of the constitution,
and though many good men were then preparing to seek the office, by their mere appearance in canvassing they turned the others aside; only Lucius Domitius, who was married to Cato's sister Porcia, Cato persuaded not to withdraw or give way, since the contest was not about office, but about the freedom of the Romans.
Indeed, talk went about even among the still sound-minded part of the city, that it was not to be overlooked that, with the power of Crassus and Pompey come together into one, the resulting authority would be altogether overgrown and oppressive, and that one of the two ought to be stripped of it. And people banded together urging and encouraging Domitius to lay claim to it, for many, even of those who kept silent out of fear, would be on his side in the voting.
Alarmed at this, Pompey's faction laid an ambush for Domitius while he made his way down before daybreak, torches lighting his path into the Campus, and first the torch-bearer, standing near Domitius, was struck and fell dead; then, as the others too were being wounded, there was a general flight, except for Cato and Domitius.
For Cato held him back, though he himself had been wounded in the arm, and urged him to stay and not abandon, while they still had breath, the struggle for freedom against the tyrants, who were showing what use they would make of power by the very magnitude of the crimes through which they were advancing toward it.
Domitius did not stand up to the danger, but fled to his house, and Pompey and Crassus were elected consuls; yet Cato did not grow weary, but came forward himself and sought the praetorship, wishing to have a base of operations for his struggles against those men and to stand opposed to the magistrates not as a private citizen. They, fearing this too, since the praetorship would become a match for the consulship because of Cato,
first, suddenly and while most people were unaware, gathered the senate and voted that the praetors elected should take office at once, without waiting out the customary interval during which lawsuits were brought against those who had bribed the people. Then, by means of this decree, having contrived that giving bribes would go unpunished, they put forward their own agents and friends for the praetorship, themselves giving money and themselves standing over the votes as they were cast.
But when even against these measures Cato's virtue and reputation prevailed — the mass of people, out of shame, regarding it as a great disgrace to sell Cato's vote, a man it would have been honorable for the city to buy as praetor — and when the first tribe called had declared for him, suddenly Pompey, falsely claiming to have heard thunder, broke up the assembly in the most disgraceful manner, because established practice in such cases required a man to purify himself of the omen and confirm nothing once a sign from the heavens had appeared.
Then, employing lavish bribery once more, they thrust the best men out of the field and by force brought it about that Vatinius, rather than Cato, was elected praetor. Those who had cast their ballots in so lawless and unfair a manner are said to have hurried away at once as though fleeing the scene, while the others gathered together in indignation, and when a certain tribune provided them an assembly, Cato took his stand and, as if inspired by the gods, foretold everything that was to come upon the city,
and roused the citizens against Pompey and Crassus, as men conscious of such deeds in themselves, and clinging to such a course of politics that they had feared Cato, lest he prevail over them as praetor. At last, as he went off to his house, so great a crowd escorted him as had not escorted all the elected praetors together.
When Gaius Trebonius proposed a law for the allotment of provinces to the consuls, so that one should hold Iberia and Libya under himself, and the other Syria and Egypt, with power to make war upon and subdue whomever they wished with naval and land forces, the rest, having despaired of opposing and hindering it, gave up even speaking against it. But when Cato mounted the rostrum before the voting and wished to speak, they grudgingly granted him barely two hours to speak,
and when, speaking much, instructing, and prophesying, he had used up the time, they no longer allowed him to speak, but an attendant came forward and pulled him down as he lingered. And when, standing even from below, he cried out and had those who heard him sharing his indignation, again the attendant took hold of him and led him out of the forum and set him there,
and no sooner was he let go than he turned and rushed back toward the rostrum, crying out and summoning the citizens to defend the city. When this had happened repeatedly, Trebonius, at his wits' end, gave orders that Cato be taken off to prison; yet a throng followed along, catching his words even as he was marched away, so that Trebonius took fright and released him.
In this way Cato used up that day; but on the following days, having intimidated some of the citizens and won others over with favors and bribes, and having barred one of the tribunes, Aquillius, from coming out of the senate-house by force of arms, and having driven Cato himself out of the forum while he shouted that thunder had occurred, and having wounded not a few, some even falling, they ratified the law by force, so that a crowd, gathering together in anger, pelted Pompey's statues,
but Cato, coming upon this, put a stop to it. When Caesar in turn had a law drawn up concerning provinces and armies, Cato no longer turned to the people but to Pompey himself, and called him to witness, foretelling that in taking Caesar upon his own neck he did not know it now, but when he began to be weighed down and mastered, being able neither to set the burden aside nor to endure bearing it,
he would fall upon the city together with him, and would then remember Cato's counsels, since no less Pompey's own interest was contained in them than what was honorable and just. Pompey, hearing this often, neglected it and let it pass, out of disbelief in any change in Caesar, through confidence in his own good fortune and power.
In the following year, when Cato was elected praetor, he seemed to add nothing to the office's dignity and grandeur by exercising it well, so much as he detracted from it and brought it into disgrace by often coming forward to the rostrum barefoot and without a tunic, and presiding in this way over capital trials of eminent men. Some even say that he transacted business after lunch, having drunk wine; but this is not truly said,
since the people were being corrupted with bribes by those seeking office, who treated bribery as a customary trade of the many, and wishing to root out this disease from the city entirely, he persuaded the senate to pass a decree that those established in office, if they had no accuser, should of necessity come forward themselves before a sworn court and render an account of themselves.
At this those seeking office took offense, but the bribe-taking mob took even greater offense. So, at daybreak, when Cato had come forward to the rostrum, they fell upon him in a body, shouting, hurling abuse, throwing things, so that everyone fled from the rostrum, and he himself, thrust out by the crowd and swept along, barely managed to grasp the ships' beaks,
and rising up from there, by the boldness and confidence of his look he at once mastered the uproar and stopped the shouting, and, saying what was fitting and being heard in silence, he entirely dissolved the disturbance. And when the senate praised him, 'But I,' he said, 'do not praise you, for abandoning a praetor in danger and not coming to his aid.'
Each of those seeking office was gripped by a helpless anxiety, afraid on the one hand to bribe himself, afraid on the other that if someone else did so he would lose the office. So it was decided that they should come together into one and each deposit twelve and a half thousand drachmas of silver, and then all seek the office honestly and justly; and whoever transgressed and made use of bribery should forfeit the money.
Having agreed to this, they chose Cato as guardian, arbiter, and witness, and brought the money and deposited it with him; and they drew up the agreement with him, taking sureties in place of the money, since he did not accept the money itself. When the appointed day for the declaration of results came, Cato stood beside the presiding tribune and, watching the vote closely, showed that one of those who had deposited money had cheated, and ordered him to give back the money to the others.
But they, praising and admiring his uprightness, remitted the penalty, considering that they had received sufficient satisfaction from the wrongdoer; but Cato distressed the rest and incurred the greatest envy on account of this, as though he had appropriated to himself the power of the senate, the courts, and the magistrates. For no reputation and trust in any virtue makes men more envied than in the case of justice, because power and trust follow it most of all from the many.
For men do not simply honor a just man the way they honor a courageous one, nor merely admire him the way they admire a wise one; rather they feel affection for him too, place confidence in him, and trust him. As for the others, some they fear, others they distrust; and besides this, they suppose those men differ by nature rather than by choice — courage being a kind of sharpness, and wisdom a kind of strength of soul — whereas in the case of the just man, it is at once within the power of anyone who wishes to be so, and they are ashamed of injustice as an inexcusable vice.
For this reason all the great men made war on Cato as one who exposed them; and Pompey, thinking that Cato's reputation was the undoing of his own power, kept setting people upon him to abuse him, among whom was the demagogue Clodius, who had again slipped over to Pompey's side and railed against Cato, saying that he had embezzled much money from Cyprus, and that he was warring against Pompey out of resentment at Pompey's refusal of his daughter's marriage.
But Cato said that he had gathered so much money from Cyprus for the city, taking neither a single horse nor a soldier, as Pompey, though he had thrown the whole world into confusion with so many wars and triumphs, had not brought in; and that he had never chosen Pompey as a son-in-law, not because he considered him unworthy, but because he saw the difference between them in political principle.
'As for me,' he said, 'I turned down a province that was offered to me once my praetorship ended, whereas this man keeps some provinces he has seized for himself and hands out others to different men; and now he has even lent Caesar a force of six thousand hoplites for Gaul, which neither did that man ask of you, nor did this man give with your consent, but such great forces and arms and horses are the private favors and exchanges of individuals.'
'Though called supreme commander and general, he has handed the armies and provinces over to others, while he himself sits beside the city, presiding as umpire over factional strife at the elections and contriving disturbances, from which it does not escape notice that through anarchy he is courting monarchy for himself.'
In this way he defended himself against Pompey. Now there was a certain Marcus Favonius, his companion and zealous admirer, such as Apollodorus of Phalerum is recorded to have been in relation to Socrates of old — passionate and carried away by argument, not gently or gradually, but seizing upon it undiluted, like wine, and rather madly.
This man, when running for the aedileship, was being defeated; but Cato, being present, gave attention to the ballot-tablets, which had been written in a single hand, and having exposed the fraud, on that occasion annulled the declaration of the result by the tribunes' intervention. Later, when Favonius had been established as aedile, Cato took care of the other business of the office and managed the shows in the theater, giving to the performers crowns not of gold, but, as at Olympia, of wild olive,
and in place of expensive prizes he gave the Greeks beets, lettuces, radishes, and pears, while the Romans received jars of wine, pork, figs, cucumbers, and bundles of firewood. Some laughed at the cheapness of these, while others were moved to reverence, seeing Cato's austerity and grimness quietly turning into good humor.
At last Favonius threw himself into the crowd and, sitting among the spectators, applauded Cato and cried out that he should give to the successful and honor them, and he called upon the spectators to join in, as though he had handed over authority to that man. Meanwhile, in the other theater, Curio, Favonius's fellow magistrate, was putting on a lavish production; but the people, abandoning that one, kept crossing over to this one, and joined eagerly in the game, with Favonius playing the private citizen and Cato the master of the games.
He did this to ridicule the whole affair, and to teach that one ought to treat sport as sport and conduct it with unpretentious grace, rather than lavishing great concern and effort on things worth nothing at all.
When Scipio and Hypsaeus and Milo were competing for the consulship, and were driving forward not only with the customary and by-now-naturalized wrongs of bribery and corruption, but outright, through arms and bloodshed, toward civil war with reckless daring, some thought it proper for Pompey to preside over the elections. Cato at first spoke against it, saying that safety ought to come to Pompey from the laws, not the laws from Pompey.
But when, after a long period of anarchy, with three armed camps occupying the forum every day, it fell little short of having become an incurable evil, he decided that, before the last extremity, the state of affairs should be turned over to Pompey by the voluntary favor of the senate, and that, applying the mildest of remedies for the worst of illegalities, it was better to bring in a monarchy of this kind than to let the strife end in monarchy of another sort.
Bibulus, then, who was a relative of Cato, proposed in the senate that Pompey alone be chosen consul: for either matters would go well once he had set them in order, or the city would be enslaved to the strongest man. Cato rose — to no one's expectation — and praised the proposal, and advised that any government was better than no government at all, and that they should expect Pompey to manage the present situation as well as possible, and to guard the city once it had been entrusted to him.
Once Pompey had been appointed consul in this way, he asked Cato to come to him at his estate outside the city. When Cato came, Pompey received him warmly, with greetings and handclasps, acknowledged his gratitude, and urged him to be his adviser and colleague in the office.
Cato replied that neither his earlier statements had been made out of hostility to Pompey, nor would these be made out of favor to him, but everything for the good of the city. In private, then, he would be his adviser if asked; in public, whether asked or not, he would always say what he thought.
And this is how he acted, as he had said. First, when Pompey was legislating new penalties and heavy punishments aimed at men who, before this, had already bought votes from the people, Cato pressed him instead to leave bygone matters alone and turn his attention to what lay ahead. For it was not easy to determine where an inquiry into prior wrongdoing would stop, and if newer penalties were written for old offenses, terrible things would befall people punished under a law they had not broken at the time they did wrong.
Then, when many prominent men were being tried, some of them friends and relations of Pompey, and Cato saw him yielding in many cases and bending, he reproached him sharply and stirred him up. And when Pompey, having by law abolished the customary practice of giving character-testimonials for those on trial, himself wrote one for Munatius Plancus and gave it in at the trial, Cato — who happened to be sitting as a juror — clapped his hands over his ears and would not let the testimony be read out.
Plancus struck him from the jury after his speech, but was convicted nonetheless. And in general Cato was a difficult and unmanageable problem for defendants, who neither wanted him left on the jury nor dared to challenge him off it. Not a few were convicted for seeming, by challenging Cato, not to trust in the justice of their case; and to some the revilers cast up, as a great reproach, that they had not accepted Cato as a juror when he was offered.
When Caesar, rooted among his armies in Gaul and holding fast to his weapons, was using gifts, money, and friends chiefly to build power in the city, and Cato's forewarnings were now bringing Pompey back — out of much prior distrust — to dream of the danger, while Pompey still remained full of hesitation and timid delay about hindering and taking action, Cato resolved to stand for the consulship, so as to strip Caesar of his arms at once, or else expose the plot. Now those—
—who were running against him were both agreeable men, but Sulpicius in particular had profited greatly from Cato's reputation and influence in the city; so it did not seem a moderate or gracious thing to do. Yet Cato found no fault in it: 'For what is strange,' he said, 'if a man does not yield to another what he considers the greatest of goods?'
By persuading the senate to vote that candidates for office should greet the people themselves, and not use a canvasser going about and soliciting on their behalf, he stirred the people up even more to fury, on the grounds that he had deprived them not only of receiving payment but even of granting the favor, and had thereby made the people at once poor and dishonored.
In addition, Cato himself was not persuasive in soliciting on his own behalf, wishing rather to preserve in his manner the dignity proper to his life than to gain office by such greetings, and he would not permit his friends to resort to the tactics used for winning over and flattering a crowd — and so he failed to win the office.
Though the matter brought upon those who failed, and upon their friends and relatives too, a certain shame, dejection, and mourning for many days, Cato bore what had happened so lightly that, after anointing himself, he played ball in the Campus, and after lunch, as was his custom, went down again to the forum barefoot and without a tunic and walked about with his companions,
Cicero, however, faults him because, when the situation demanded a man of such quality in office, he did not make an effort or court the people with friendly manner, but instead grew weary of it thereafter and gave it up — though he later stood again from the beginning for the praetorship.
Cato used to say that he had failed at the praetorship not because the majority judged against him, but because they had been coerced or corrupted; but in the consular vote, where no wrongdoing had occurred, he recognized that he had offended the people through his own character — which it is not the mark of a sensible man either to change to please others, or, by keeping it the same, to suffer the same fate again.
When Caesar had invaded warlike tribes and won victories at great risk, and, though a truce had been made with the Germans, was thought to have attacked them and cut down three hundred thousand, the rest thought it right for the people to offer thanksgiving sacrifices, but Cato urged that Caesar be handed over to those he had wronged, so as not to turn the pollution upon themselves nor bring the guilt into the city.
'All the same,' he said, 'we ought indeed to offer sacrifice to the gods, since it is not upon the soldiers that they visit the penalty for their general's madness and recklessness, but the city they spare instead.' Following this, Caesar composed a letter to the senate and had it delivered; once it had been read aloud before that body, full of abuse and accusations directed at Cato,
Cato rose — not in anger nor out of contentiousness, but as if from calculation and preparation — and showed that the charges against himself were like insults and jests, a kind of playfulness and buffoonery on Caesar's part; but then, taking hold of Caesar's designs from the beginning and laying bare his whole purpose, as one not an enemy but a fellow-conspirator and partner, he taught them that it was not the children of the Germans or the Celts, but that man himself,
if they were wise, whom they ought to fear — and he turned and provoked them so much that Caesar's own friends regretted having read the letter aloud in the senate, since it had given Cato the occasion for just words and true accusations. Nothing was ratified, but it was only said that it would be well to give Caesar a successor.
When Cato's friends urged that Pompey too should lay down his arms on equal terms and give up his provinces, or else Caesar not be made to — Cato now cried out that the very things he had foretold to them had come, and that the man was already using, openly and by force, the power he had gained by deceiving and cheating the city; but he accomplished nothing beyond this, since the people always wanted Caesar to be greatest, while he kept the senate persuaded and fearful of the people.
When Ariminum had been seized and Caesar was reported to be advancing on the city with his army, then indeed everyone looked to Cato — the people at large and Pompey too — as the one man who had foreseen it all from the start, and had been the first to declare openly what Caesar intended. Cato then said:
'But if, men, any of you had ever been persuaded by what I foretold and advised, you would neither now be afraid of one man nor have placed your hopes in one man.' When Pompey said that Cato's words had proved more prophetic, but his own actions more friendly, Cato advised that affairs be handed over to Pompey alone by the senate; for it belonged to the same men both to cause great evils and to end them.
Pompey, then, having neither an army ready nor seeing those he was then enrolling eager, left Rome; and Cato, having resolved to follow and flee with him, sent his younger son away to Munatius in Bruttium, and kept the elder with him. When his household and daughters required a guardian, he took back Marcia, now widowed and possessed of great wealth; for Hortensius, on dying, had left her his heir.
It was chiefly for this that Caesar, in reviling Cato, charged him with greed and mercenary motives regarding the marriage. For why, he asks, was there need to give her up if he needed a wife, or to take her back again if he did not — unless the woman had been lent out from the start as bait for Hortensius, given to him young so that Cato might get her back rich? To this the line of Euripides applies with some moderation: 'First, the unspeakable things — for among unspeakable things I count your cowardice, O Heracles.'
For it is much the same to charge Heracles with softness as to accuse Cato of sordid gain. But if in some other respect the marriage was not handled well, that should be examined. Cato, having betrothed Marcia and entrusted the household and his daughters to her, himself went off in pursuit of Pompey.
From that day on, it is said, he let his hair grow untrimmed and his beard unshaven, refused any garland, but kept one fixed expression of mourning, dejection, and gravity over his country's misfortunes, alike toward victors and vanquished, until his death. At that time, having drawn Sicily by lot, he crossed to Syracuse; and learning that Asinius Pollio had arrived from the enemy with a force at Messana, he sent to demand from him an account of his crossing.
When in turn Pollio demanded from him an account of the change in affairs, and Cato heard that Pompey had abandoned Italy entirely and was encamped at Dyrrhachium, he said that the workings of providence were deeply confused and obscure, seeing that Pompey — who had never been beaten while his cause was neither sound nor just — should now, in this struggle to rescue his homeland and defend liberty, find fortune deserting him.
He said, then, that he was capable of driving Asinius out of Sicily, but since a larger force was approaching, he did not wish to destroy the island by making war in it, and, having advised the Syracusans to go over to the stronger side and save themselves, he sailed away. When he arrived at Pompey's side, he held always to one single opinion — to drag the war out, hoping for a settlement, and not wishing that the city, once brought low in the contest, should suffer the ultimate horrors at its own hands, decided by the sword.
He also persuaded Pompey and his council to vote other measures akin to these: neither to sack any city subject to Rome, nor to kill any Roman outside of battle — measures which brought him reputation and won over many to Pompey's side, who welcomed his fairness and gentleness.
Sent off to Asia, so that he might be of use to the men there in gathering ships and troops, he brought with him his sister Servilia and the child of hers by Lucullus—for she had followed him, now a widow—and by submitting herself to Cato's guardianship and to a wandering and austere way of life, she took away much of the slander cast on her looseness.
Yet Caesar did not spare even Cato the reproaches he made against her. Now in other matters, it seems, Pompey's officers had no need of Cato at all; but having won over the Rhodians by persuasion, and having left Servilia and the child there, he returned to Pompey, who already had a splendid force of infantry and of ships about him,
and it was there above all that Pompey's real intention seemed to be exposed. For he set out to hand over to Cato the command of the fleet—there were no fewer than five hundred warships, and a great multitude besides of Liburnian galleys, scout-ships, and undecked vessels—
but quickly, either realizing it himself or being taught by his friends, that the one great principle of all Cato's political creed was to set his country free, and that if he became master of so great a force, then on whatever day they overcame Caesar, he would demand of Pompey too, on that very same reasoning, that he lay down his arms and submit to the laws, Pompey changed his mind—though he had already spoken with him about it—and appointed Bibulus admiral instead.
Yet for all that he did not find Cato's zeal at all blunted. Indeed it is said that before a certain battle near Dyrrhachium, when Pompey himself was rousing the army's spirit, and each of the other commanders in turn was bidden to say something to encourage them, the soldiers listened idly and in silence; but when Cato, last of all, went through, as the occasion allowed, all that philosophy has to say about freedom and courage and death and glory, speaking as one who felt every word,
and at the end turned his speech to a summoning of the gods, as being present and looking down upon this struggle fought for their country, so great a shout went up and such a stirring seized the army, roused as it was, that all the commanders, full of hope, rushed eagerly into the danger; and though they routed the enemy and won the field, the full victory was snatched away by Caesar's guardian spirit, working through Pompey's caution and mistrust of his own good fortune.
These things, then, have been written in the Life of Pompey. While everyone else rejoiced and magnified the achievement, Cato wept for his country, and lamented its ruinous and ill-starred lust for power, seeing many good citizens fallen at one another's hands.
As Pompey struck camp to chase Caesar toward Thessaly, he left behind at Dyrrhachium a great store of arms and money and kinsmen and dependents, and he placed Cato in charge of it all as its overseer and defender, giving him fifteen cohorts of troops to command, acting out of both confidence in Cato and wariness of him: for if defeated, he reckoned Cato the most reliable of all to hold everything together; but if he himself proved victorious, he did not mean to let Cato be present to handle affairs as he, Cato, thought right.
Many distinguished men too were cast aside at Dyrrhachium along with Cato. Once word of the rout at Pharsalus reached him, Cato worked out this plan: should Pompey have died, he would ferry his companions across to Italy and spend his own remaining days banished as far as could be from despotic rule; but should Pompey have lived, he would keep the force whole for him in every respect.
So crossing over to Corcyra, where the fleet lay, he yielded up the command to Cicero as a man of consular rank, being himself only of praetorian standing; but when Cicero would not accept it, and instead set off for Italy, Cato—seeing Pompey, out of self-will and untimely pride, wishing to punish those who were sailing away, and about to lay hands first of all on Cicero—admonished him privately and calmed him down, so that he plainly saved Cicero from death and secured immunity for the rest as well.
Guessing that the great Pompey would flee toward either Egypt or Libya, and eager to join him there, he put out to sea with everyone aboard, but sailed in such a way as to allow those not eager to campaign further to depart and be left behind; and having touched at Libya and sailing along the coast, he met Sextus, the younger of Pompey's sons, bringing word of his father's death
in Egypt. Everyone bore it heavily, and none, with Cato present, thought it right after Pompey to give ear to any other commander; and so Cato, out of respect and pity for good men who had given proof of their loyalty, unwilling to abandon them destitute and without resources in a foreign land, took up the command and made his way to Cyrene—for the people there received him, having a few days before shut out Labienus.
There he learned that Scipio, Pompey's father-in-law, had taken refuge with Juba the king, and that Attius Varus, appointed by Pompey to govern Libya, was also there with a force under arms, he set out on foot in the season of winter, having gathered many donkeys to carry water, and driving along a great deal of plunder, and bringing besides wagons and the men called Psylli, who cure the bites of wild beasts by drawing out the poison with their mouths, and who blunt and charm the creatures themselves by chanting over them.
The march went on for seven days without a break, and he led it in front, using neither horse nor pack-animal. He had taken his meals sitting up from the very day he learned of the defeat at Pharsalus, and added this further to his mourning, that he would not lie down except to sleep. Having spent the winter in Libya he led the army out; they numbered a little short of ten thousand.
Matters stood badly for Scipio and Varus, who through rivalry and faction had insinuated themselves into Juba's favor and courted him—a man not to be borne for the weight of his arrogance and the swelling pride his wealth and power gave him, who, when he first met Cato, placed his own throne so it stood between Scipio's seat and Cato's,
but Cato, as soon as he saw it, picked up his own seat and moved it to the other side, placing Scipio in the middle instead, even though Scipio was his enemy and had even put out a book containing abuse of Cato. Yet this they count as nothing, while if he took Philostratus by the middle walking in Sicily, in honor of philosophy, they find fault with that. At any rate, on that occasion he checked Juba, who had all but made satraps of Scipio's people, and reconciled them to one another.
And when all called on him to take command, and Scipio and Varus themselves were first to stand aside and hand over the leadership, he said he would not overturn the very laws for whose sake they were making war on the man overturning them, nor, being only a propraetor, would he set himself above a proconsul who was present. For Scipio had been declared proconsul, and most people took heart from the name itself, believing that success would come with Scipio in command in Libya.
When, however, Scipio, upon taking over the command, at once wished, to gratify Juba, to put the men of Utica to the sword down to the youths and raze the city, on the ground that it favored Caesar's cause, Cato would not allow it, but calling the gods to witness and crying out in the council, he barely rescued the people from their cruelty:
and partly at their own request, partly at Scipio's, he undertook to guard the city, so that it should fall to Caesar neither against its will nor with its consent. For indeed the place was useful and sufficient in every respect for those who held it, and it was made still stronger under Cato. He brought in grain in overflowing abundance, and strengthened the walls, raising towers and throwing up strong ditches and palisades before the city.
Of the men of Utica he ordered the young men to live within the palisades, having first surrendered their arms to him, while he kept the rest within the city, taking great care that they should suffer no wrong or ill-treatment at the hands of the Romans. He sent out to the men in camp a great quantity of arms, money, and grain, and altogether he kept the city as the treasury of the war.
What he had advised Pompey earlier, and now advised Scipio—not to fight against a man skilled and formidable in war, but to use time, which withers away every peak of strength on which tyranny relies—this advice Scipio, out of self-will, despised; and once, taunting Cato with cowardice, he wrote that it was not enough for him to indulge himself by sitting quiet in a city behind walls, but he would not even let others make bold use of their own judgment as the occasion required.
To this Cato wrote back that he was ready to take the infantry and cavalry he himself had brought into Libya and carry them across to Italy, and there draw Caesar off and turn him away from the others onto himself. But when Scipio laughed at this too, it was quite plain that Cato was troubled at having yielded up the command, for he believed Scipio was fit neither to manage the war competently nor, if some improbable stroke of luck brought him success, to deal moderately with his fellow citizens once victorious.
For this reason Cato told his close friends that he expected little good to come of the war, given how green and reckless its commanders were; but that if, after all, some stroke of fortune should come and Caesar be overthrown, he would not stay in Rome, but would flee the harshness and bitterness of Scipio, who was already making dreadful and arrogant threats against many.
And the outcome proved worse than he expected. For about deep evening someone arrived from the camp, three days on the road, announcing that after a great battle at Thapsus everything was utterly ruined and Caesar was master of the camps, while Scipio and Juba had gotten away with only a handful of men, the remainder of the army having been wiped out.
When this news fell upon them, the city, as was natural in the night and in wartime at such a report, came near to losing its senses altogether, and could scarcely hold itself within its walls; but Cato went out, and as each group ran about crying out, he met them, took hold of them, and comforted them, taking away the wild, bewildered edge of their fear, saying that things were probably not as bad as reported, but magnified in the telling beyond their true measure; and so he quieted the uproar, and at daybreak summoned the three hundred whom he used as a council,
Romans who did business in Libya through trade and money-lending, ordering them by proclamation to assemble in the temple of Jupiter, along with any senators present and their sons; and while they were gathering, he came forward calmly and with composure, as though nothing new had happened, holding a book in his hands, and read from it. It was a register of the war's equipment—arms, grain, bows, men-at-arms.
Once they had assembled, Cato began with the three hundred and at length praised their eagerness and faithfulness, which they had shown themselves most useful in displaying with money, persons, and counsel alike, he urged that none of them should let go of hope by procuring for himself some private flight or means of escape. For if they held together, Caesar would think less of them even in making war, and would be more inclined to spare them if they sought terms.
He bade them deliberate on their own behalf, and said he would find fault with neither course: if they should turn their minds to accommodate fortune, he would set down the change to necessity; but if they stood firm against the danger and took up the risk on behalf of freedom, he would not merely praise but admire their courage, and would offer himself as their leader and fellow combatant,
until they should put to the final test the fortune of their country—which, he said, was not Utica nor Adrumetum, but Rome, a city that had often risen again out of worse disasters by the very greatness in it; and there lay open to them many resources for safety and security, and, greatest of all, they were making war against a man drawn in many directions at once by the pressures of circumstance, with Spain now falling away from Pompey's cause toward the younger Pompey,
Rome herself, moreover, had not yet by long habituation fully accepted the bridle, but chafed at her condition and rose up in response to every change of fortune, so that danger itself ought not to be shunned; rather they should have as their teacher the enemy, who spared no life even for the greatest wrongdoings — not, as if the matter rested with themselves, ending either in the happiest life through success or in the most glorious death through failure, but in the uncertainty of war.
Nevertheless, he said, they must deliberate for themselves, and he prayed that, in place of their former courage and zeal, whatever they decided might turn out well for them.
When Cato had spoken thus, some were moved by his words toward confidence, but the greater part, overcome by his fearlessness, his nobility, and his humanity, all but forgot their present circumstances, and, holding him to be the one invincible commander and superior to every fortune, begged to place at his disposal their persons, their money, and their arms, in whatever way he had determined; for it was better, they said, to die obeying such a man than to save themselves by betraying so great a virtue.
When someone said that they ought to vote freedom to the slaves, and most agreed, Cato said he would not do this; for it was neither lawful nor just — though he would accept those of military age whom their own masters chose to release. When many promises had been made, he ordered whoever wished to register his name, and then withdrew,
and not long after, letters reached him, one from Juba and one from Scipio — Juba, who was hiding in the mountains with a few men, wrote asking what Cato had resolved to do; he added that he would wait for Cato to leave Utica, and would bring troops to relieve him should he come under siege; Scipio, meanwhile, lay at anchor near a headland a short distance from Utica, watching for the same news.
Cato therefore decided to detain the letter-bearers until he had confirmed the disposition of the three hundred; for those of the senatorial order were eager, and were at once freeing their household slaves and arming them, but of the three hundred — men of shipping and money-lending, whose wealth lay chiefly in their household slaves — Cato's words held them for no long time before they slipped away,
for just as porous bodies readily take on heat and just as readily let it go, growing cold once the fire is withdrawn, so it was with these men: the sight of Cato rekindled and warmed them, but once they gave themselves an accounting alone, fear of Caesar drove out both their reverence for Cato and their sense of honor. "For who are we," they said, "that we should refuse to do what is commanded, and by whom?
Is this not Caesar, into whose hands the whole power of Rome has come? And among us there is no Scipio, no Pompey, no Cato — yet in a season when fear has driven every man to think less of himself than he ought, are we the ones fighting on behalf of Roman freedom, waging war from Utica, a city which Cato himself, fleeing with Pompey the Great, yielded up along with the rest of Italy? And do we free slaves against Caesar, when even they themselves will have only as much freedom as he is willing to allow? No — even now, wretched men that we are, let us come to know ourselves, and beg the conqueror's pardon, and send men to entreat him."
This is what the most moderate of the three hundred urged; but most of them plotted against the senators, thinking that if they seized them they might thereby appease Caesar's anger against themselves.
Cato, suspecting the change in them, did not confront them openly, but wrote to Scipio and Juba to keep away from Utica, distrusting the three hundred, and sent off the letter-bearers. Meanwhile those of the cavalry who had escaped from the battle — a number not to be despised — rode up to Utica and sent to Cato three men who did not all hold the same opinion,
for some were eager to go over to Juba, others to join Cato, and still others were afraid even to enter Utica. On hearing this, Cato instructed Marcus Rubrius to look after the three hundred, taking down the registrations of those freeing their slaves quietly and without any compulsion,
while he himself took the senators and went out of Utica, and met with the cavalry commanders, begging them not to abandon so many men of the Roman senate, nor to choose Juba as commander in Cato's place, but to save themselves together with the others by coming into a city that could not be taken by storm and that had provisions of grain and everything else for very many years.
While the senators too were begging this with tears, the cavalry commanders conferred with the horsemen, and Cato sat down upon a certain mound with the senators and waited for their answer,
and in the meantime Rubrius arrived in anger, denouncing much disorder and uproar among the three hundred, saying that they were in revolt and throwing the city into confusion. At this the others sank into utter despair and broke into weeping and lamentation, but Cato attempted to hearten them, and dispatched word to the three hundred asking them to hold off.
But those who came from the cavalry made no moderate demands: they said they had no need of Juba paying them wages, nor did they fear Caesar while Cato commanded them, but that it was intolerable to be shut up together with the men of Utica, Phoenicians, a fickle people; for even if they were quiet now, when Caesar came upon them they would join him and betray them.
If then anyone needed them as fellow soldiers and companions in the field, let him first drive out or destroy all the men of Utica, and then call them into a city cleansed of enemies and barbarians. Cato thought these demands terribly savage and barbarous, but answered mildly that he would take counsel with the three hundred.
And going back into the city he met with the men, who no longer contrived pretexts or evasions out of shame before him, but grew openly angry whenever anyone pressed them to fight Caesar, a thing they had neither the power nor the wish to do; and some even murmured that the senators ought to be held back in the city as Caesar approached.
Cato, however, let this pass as if it had not reached his ears, for his hearing was somewhat impaired; but when someone came to him and reported that the cavalry were now leaving, fearing that the three hundred might in utter desperation turn against the senators, he rose and went out with his friends; and seeing that they had already advanced some way, he took a horse and rode after them,
and they, glad to see him riding up, welcomed him and urged him to save himself along with them; and it is said that then Cato even wept, pleading for the senators and stretching out his hands, and turning back the horses of some and laying hold of their weapons, until he prevailed on them to remain that day at least, and so provide the men a safe means of flight.
So, having them with him, he returned, stationed some at the gates, and put others in charge of guarding the citadel; and the three hundred, fearing they would answer for their reversal, sent word urging Cato to come to them at any cost, but the senators, gathering around him, would not permit it, saying they would not give up their guardian and savior to men so faithless and treacherous.
For then, it seems, there came upon all alike who were in Utica the clearest perception, and longing, and wonder at Cato's virtue, seeing that nothing false or deceitful had been mixed into anything he did. And this man, who had long since resolved to take his own life, was laboring at terrible toils, taking on cares and pains on behalf of others, so that, once he had set them all in safety, he might himself depart from life.
For his bent toward death was not hidden, although he did not admit it. He yielded, then, to the three hundred at that time, having consoled the senators; and he went to them alone, and they acknowledged their gratitude and begged him to trust and make use of them in other matters, but said that if there are no more Catos, nor the spirit of Cato,
they were themselves too weak to rise to it, and he should pity their weakness; they had resolved, then, to entreat Caesar and send envoys to him, and would make their entreaty on Cato's behalf first and foremost of all; but if they could not persuade him, they would not even accept for themselves any favor granted, but would fight on his behalf as long as they had breath. To this Cato, praising their goodwill, said that they ought to send quickly for the sake of their own safety, but not to make any entreaty on his behalf,
for entreaty belonged to the conquered, and pardon-seeking to wrongdoers; as for himself, not only had he been unconquered his whole life long, but he had won, so far as he wished, and had mastered Caesar in the things that were noble and just; it was Caesar who had been caught and defeated, for the things he had long denied doing against his country were now exposed and detected.
Having said such things to the three hundred, he withdrew; and learning that Caesar was already on the march with his whole army, he said, "Ah, what men he takes us to be," and, addressing the senators, urged them not to delay, but to make their escape now, before the cavalry arrived. And he shut all the other gates but one leading to the sea, and to those under his charge he distributed the ships and looked after their order, stopping wrongdoing, quelling disturbances, and supplying those who were without means.
When Marcus Octavius, leading two legions, camped nearby and sent to ask Cato to settle with him the question of command, Cato made him no answer at all, but said to his friends, "Do we then wonder how our cause has been ruined, when we see the love of command still keeping pace with us even as we stand on the very brink of destruction?"
Meanwhile, hearing that the departing cavalry were now carrying off and driving away the property of the men of Utica as though it were plunder, he hurried to them at a run, and coming upon the foremost took the goods from them, while each of the others hastened to throw down and set aside what he had taken; and all, in shame, went off in silence with eyes lowered. Then Cato, gathering the men of Utica into the city, begged on behalf of the three hundred that they not provoke Caesar against them, but work together for the safety of all.
Then, turning again toward the sea, he watched over those embarking, and embraced and sent off every friend and guest-friend whom he managed to convince to depart. As for his own son, no amount of persuasion could get him onto a ship, and he felt it wrong to divert a young man so devoted to his father from staying. There was a certain Statyllius, a man young in years but strong in resolve, who wished to imitate
Cato's freedom from passion. Him Cato urged to sail, for he was conspicuously a hater of Caesar; but when he was unwilling, Cato, looking toward Apollonides the Stoic and Demetrius the Peripatetic, said, "It is your task to soften this swollen young man and bring him round to what is expedient." As for Cato himself, he passed that night and most of the day after it seeing off the rest and dealing with the affairs of anyone who required his help.
When Lucius Caesar, who was a relative of that Caesar and was about to go as an envoy on behalf of the three hundred, urged Cato to help him work out a persuasive speech to use on their behalf — "for on your own account it would be honorable for me to clasp his hands and fall at Caesar's knees" — Cato would not let him do this.
"For as for me," he said, "if I wished to be saved by Caesar's favor, I ought to go to him myself alone; but I do not wish to owe thanks to the tyrant for his acts of lawlessness, and it is lawlessness for him to save, as a master, those over whom he had no right to be lord. But as for how you may beg off the three hundred, let us consider that together, if you wish."
Having gone over this together with Lucius, he commended his son and Lucius's companions to him for his departure; and having escorted him and clasped his hand in farewell, he returned home, and gathering his son and his friends he spoke with them at length on many other matters, and forbade the young man to take any part in public affairs — for it was no longer possible to take up affairs in a manner worthy of a Cato, and to do otherwise would be shameful. And already toward evening he turned to the bath.
While bathing, remembering Statyllius, he called out loudly, "Apollonides, have you sent Statyllius off, stripped of that pride of his? And has the man sailed away without even bidding us farewell?" "How could that be?" said Apollonides. "We spoke with him at length, but he is high-minded and unbending, and says he will stay and do whatever you do." At this they say Cato smiled and said, "Well, that will soon become clear."
After bathing he dined sitting up, with many others present, as had been his custom since the battle — for he reclined only when sleeping. All his companions dined with him, along with the magistrates of the people of Utica, and after dinner the drinking held much charm and grace, as one philosophical topic after another circled around, until the inquiry came round to those so-called Stoic paradoxes: that only the good man is free, and that all bad men are slaves. At this point, as was to be expected,
when the Peripatetic present objected, Cato fell upon him fiercely, and raising the pitch and roughness of his voice, drove the argument to its furthest extreme, engaging in an astonishing contest, so that no one failed to perceive he had made up his mind to end his own life and quit the present state of affairs. Because of this, after the discourse, when silence and dejection had fallen on everyone, Cato, trying to raise their spirits and turn them away from their suspicion, again brought up questions and concerns about present matters, as though he were anxious on behalf of those sailing, and anxious on behalf of those traveling overland through waterless and barbarous wilderness.
Having thus broken up the dinner party, and having walked with his friends the usual after-dinner walk, and having given the officers of the watch the orders the occasion required, he went off to his chamber; and there, embracing his son and each of his friends more warmly than he had been accustomed to before, he again gave rise to suspicion of what he intended.
Going in and lying down, he took into his hands Plato's dialogue on the soul; and having gone through most of the book, he looked up above his head, and finding no sword hanging in its place — it had been removed by his son during the time Cato was dining — he called a servant and asked who had taken the dagger. When the man was silent, he turned back again to his book; and after a little pause, as though not hurrying or pressing the matter, but merely asking after his sword incidentally, he ordered it brought to him.
As time went by and no one brought it, he finished reading through the book and again called for each of the servants one by one, and raised his voice all the more, demanding the sword. He struck one of them on the mouth with his fist, bloodying his own hand, and grew angry, shouting now that he was being handed over naked to the enemy by his own son and his servants, until his son, weeping, dashed in along with the friends who were there, and threw himself upon him, wailing and pleading.
Cato stood up and looked at him fiercely, and said, "When and where have I unknowingly been convicted of madness, that no one instructs me or tries to change my mind about what they think I have decided badly, and yet I am prevented from using my own reasoning and am being disarmed? Why do you not also bind your father, noble youth, and twist his hands behind him, until Caesar comes and finds me not even able to defend myself?
For I have no need of a sword against myself, when it is possible to die simply by holding my breath a short while, or by striking my head once against the wall."
As he was saying this, the young man went out weeping, and all the rest as well; but to Demetrius and Apollonides, who alone remained behind, he now spoke more gently and said, "Have the two of you also decided to hold a man of such an age against his will in life, sitting beside him to watch him in silence, or have you come bearing some argument that it is not terrible or shameful for Cato, lacking any other means of safety, to wait for the safety that comes from the enemy?
Why then do you not speak, persuading us of this and teaching us otherwise, so that, having cast aside those former opinions and doctrines by which we have lived, and having become wiser through Caesar, we may feel all the greater gratitude toward him? And yet I myself have decided nothing at all about myself; but having deliberated, I must be master of putting into practice what I have resolved.
I will deliberate, in a way, together with you, deliberating with the very arguments that you too, as philosophers, make use of. So go, then, with confidence, and tell my son not to force upon his father what he cannot persuade him to do."
To this Demetrius and his companions made no reply, but withdrew in tears. The dagger was sent in through a small boy, and taking it he drew it and examined it. When he saw that the point held firm and the blade had kept its edge, he said, "Now my life belongs to no one but me," and laid the sword aside, and again took up the book to read; and it is said that he went through the whole of it twice.
Then he fell into a deep sleep, so that those outside became aware of it, and around midnight he summoned a pair of his own freedmen — Cleanthes, who practiced medicine, and Butas, the one he mainly used for public business. The latter he sent down to the sea, so that after looking he might report back to him whether all had in fact put out; but to the physician he gave his hand, which was swollen from the blow he had struck the servant, to be bandaged,
and this made everyone more cheerful, thinking that he had a will to live. After a little while Butas arrived, reporting that the others had put out to sea, but that Crassus was left behind because of some business, though he too was on the very point of embarking, and that a great storm and strong wind held the sea in its grip. Hearing this, Cato groaned in pity for those sailing, and again sent Butas down to the sea, in case anyone had turned back and had need of any necessities, to report to him.
By now the birds were singing, and he sank once more for a little into sleep. When Butas returned and reported that there was great quiet around the harbors, Cato ordered him to shut the door, and let himself down onto his couch as though to rest for what remained of the night.
Once Butas was out of the room, Cato took up his sword and drove it in under his chest; yet his swollen hand could not deliver a clean blow, so death did not come instantly — instead, thrashing in agony, he tumbled off the bed and, in doing so, knocked over a small geometry tablet that had been lying next to it, and the noise made the servants outside call out, bringing his son and friends rushing in at once.
Seeing him drenched in blood and much of his entrails fallen out, but still alive and conscious, everyone was struck with horror; the physician came forward and, since the entrails remained uninjured, tried to put them back in place and stitch up the wound. But when Cato recovered and became aware of what was happening, he pushed the physician away, and tearing at his entrails with his hands and ripping open the wound further, he died.
In the time in which one would not have thought that everyone in the house could have become aware of what had happened, the three hundred were already at his doors, and not long after the citizens of Utica had also assembled, hailing him with a single voice as their benefactor and savior and the only free man and the only unconquered man,
and they did this though it was being reported that Caesar was approaching; but neither fear nor flattery of the man in power, nor their discord and factional strife among themselves, made them any less earnest in honoring Cato. Having adorned his body splendidly and provided a magnificent procession, and having buried him by the sea, where now a statue of him stands bearing a sword, they then turned to saving themselves and the city.
Caesar, learning from those who arrived that Cato was remaining at Utica and not fleeing, but was sending the others ahead while he himself, together with his companions and his son, went about fearlessly, considered the man's intention hard to guess, but since he held Cato in the highest regard among his concerns, he pressed on toward him with his forces in haste.
When he heard of his death, he is said to have said only this much: "Cato, I begrudge you your death, for you begrudged me the saving of your life." For in truth, if Cato had consented to be saved by Caesar, he would not seem to have so much disgraced his own reputation as to have adorned Caesar's; but what would have happened remains unclear, and the more generous outcome is only conjectured on Caesar's part.
Cato died at the age of forty-eight. His son suffered no wrong at Caesar's hands, but he is said to have become careless and not above reproach where women were concerned. In Cappadocia, he kept company with a certain host-friend of his, Marphadates, a member of the royal house whose young wife was quite lovely, and he spent more time around the couple than was fitting,
he was mocked in verses written against him: "Tomorrow Cato marches, thirty days from now"; and, "Porcius and Marphadates, two friends, one soul" — for Marphadates's wife was named Psyche — and further, "noble and splendid Cato has a royal soul."
But he wiped out and erased all such disgrace by his death. For fighting at Philippi against Caesar and Antony on behalf of freedom, and when the line was giving way, refusing either to flee or to hide himself, but calling the enemy on, showing himself in front and urging on those who stood their ground, he fell, providing his enemies a marvel of courage.
Still more did Cato's daughter fall short neither in self-control nor in courage — for she was married to Brutus, the killer of Caesar, and she herself was privy to the plot against Caesar, ending her own life in a way that matched the nobility of her lineage and character, a story told in the account of Brutus's life. As for Statyllius, though he declared a wish to follow Cato's example, the philosophers stopped him at that time from ending his own life, but later, having shown himself most faithful and useful to Brutus, he died at Philippi.

======== Agis ========

Not absurdly, nor without point, do some suspect that the myth about Ixion was constructed with an eye to men who love glory: as he took hold of the cloud instead of Hera, and from this the Centaurs came to be, so such men, consorting with glory as with a kind of phantom image of virtue, do nothing pure or consistent, but many things bastard and mixed, carried now this way, now that, following their zeal and their passions—exactly what the herdsmen of Sophocles say of their flocks: "Though we are their masters, we are slaves to these, and must listen to them even when they are silent."
This is truly what happens to those who conduct politics in service of the desires and impulses of the crowds: they are slaves and followers, even while wearing the titles of popular leaders and rulers. Much as the men stationed at a ship's bow, who spot what lies ahead, still fix their gaze on the helmsmen and carry out what is commanded, so too those who engage in politics with an eye toward glory become servants of the multitude, though they bear the label of rulers.
The man who is perfect and completely good has no requirement of glory whatsoever, apart from the way it opens, by winning trust, a path toward action; but a young man, still full of ambition, must be allowed to take some pride and boast a little from his good deeds. For virtues that are sprouting in men of that age and beginning to bud, as Theophrastus says, are confirmed by praise, and for the rest grow, lifted up along with a sense of pride.
But excess is everywhere dangerous, and in political ambitions it is deadly; for it carries those who have laid hold of great power out into madness and derangement, whenever they are unwilling that the good should be what wins them glory, but instead consider the glorious to be the good. This, then, is what Phocion said to Antipater when he asked of him something not honorable: "You cannot have Phocion as both friend and flatterer at once"—this, or something like it, must be said to the multitude:
"You cannot have the same man as both ruler and follower." Since it comes about, in this way too, just as in the fable of the serpent, whose tail, so the story goes, quarreled with the head and demanded to lead in its turn and not follow it forever; and having taken the leadership, it fared badly, journeying in folly, and tore up the head, which was compelled, against nature, to follow blind and deaf parts of itself:
This is what we see has happened to many of those who have conducted all their politics to please the crowd; for having hung themselves upon mobs carried along at random, they were unable afterward either to recover themselves or to check the disorder. These thoughts occurred to us to say concerning the reputation gained from the many, when we considered how great a power it had in the affair of Tiberius and Gaius the Gracchi, men who were born most nobly, raised most nobly, and took up the noblest foundation for their political career, yet were destroyed not so much by an immoderate desire for glory as by a fear of disgrace that sprang from no ignoble cause.
For having received great goodwill beforehand from the citizens, they were ashamed to abandon it as though it were a debt; and always competing to outdo their honors with good measures of policy, and being honored the more for the favors by which they governed, and in this way kindling each other with equal ambition, the people toward them and they toward the people, they did not notice that they had taken hold of affairs in which it was no longer honorable to persist, yet already shameful to stop.
These things, then, you will judge for yourself from the narrative; let us set beside them a Laconian pair of popular leaders, Agis and Cleomenes the kings. For these men too, in raising up the people, as those others did, and restoring a fine and just constitution that had lapsed for a long time, likewise incurred the hatred of the powerful, who were unwilling to give up their accustomed greed. The Laconians, then, were not brothers to one another, but they took hold of a kindred and sisterly policy, having such a beginning as this.
Since a passion for silver and gold first crept into the city, and along with the acquisition of wealth came greed and stinginess, and with its use and enjoyment came luxury and softness and extravagance, Sparta fell from most of its noble ways, and continued to fare meanly, below its worth, until those times in which Agis and Leonidas were kings,
Agis, of the Eurypontid house and son of Eudamidas, sixth in line from Agesilaus, the one who crossed into Asia and rose to be foremost in power among the Greeks. For Agesilaus's son was Archidamus, who died near Mandurium in Italy at the hands of the Messapians; and of Archidamus the elder son was Agis, and Eudamidas the younger, who, when Agis was killed by Antipater near Megalopolis without children, took the kingship; and of this Eudamidas came Archidamus, and of Archidamus another Eudamidas, and of Eudamidas Agis, concerning whom these things have been written:
Leonidas, whose father was Cleonymus, belonged to the other royal line, the Agiad house, and stood eighth after Pausanias, victor over Mardonius at Plataea. Now Pausanias fathered a son named Pleistoanax, and Pleistoanax in turn fathered a Pausanias, who, having fled from Lacedaemon to Tegea, was succeeded by his elder son Agesipolis as king, and when he died without children, by the younger son, Cleombrotus,
and from Cleombrotus again came another Agesipolis and Cleomenes, of whom Agesipolis neither ruled long nor had children, while Cleomenes, becoming king after Agesipolis, lost his elder son Acrotatus while he himself was still alive, and left behind the younger, Cleonymus, who did not become king; but Areus, grandson of Cleomenes and son of Acrotatus, did; and when Areus fell near Corinth, his son Acrotatus held the kingship.
This man likewise met death, beaten in combat near Megalopolis by the tyrant Aristodemus, and he left behind a pregnant wife. When a male child was born, Leonidas son of Cleonymus held the guardianship, and then, when the child died before reaching manhood, the kingship passed around to him, though he was not at all well suited to the citizens.
For although the whole citizen body had by now sunk gradually into corruption, there was in Leonidas a conspicuous departure from his ancestors' ways, since he had spent a long time rolling about in satrapal courts and had paid court to Seleucus, and then transferred the pomp of that world into Greek affairs and a lawful rule, without doing it gracefully.
But Agis so far surpassed in natural gifts and loftiness of spirit not only this man but nearly all who had reigned as kings since Agesilaus the Great, that although not yet twenty years old, and reared in the wealth and luxury of women—Agesistrata his mother and Archidamia his grandmother, women whose fortunes exceeded those of any other Lacedaemonian—he at once steeled himself against pleasures, and stripped off from his body the very adornment of grace that seemed to suit his beauty best, casting off and escaping all extravagance, took pride instead in the plain cloak, and sought out Laconian dinners, baths, and ways of life, and said that he had no need of the kingship at all, except insofar as through it he might restore the laws and the ancestral discipline.
The beginning, then, of the corruption and disease that afflicted the affairs of the Lacedaemonians came about virtually from the time when, after overthrowing the empire of the Athenians, they filled themselves with gold and silver. Yet still, so long as the number of households which Lycurgus had fixed was preserved through the successions, and a father left his portion to his child, this order and equality, somehow surviving, kept the city clear of its other faults.
But a certain powerful man who had served as ephor, headstrong and harsh in character, named Epitadeus, when a quarrel arose with his son, drafted a decree allowing a man to give his house and his portion of land to whomever he wished, whether as a gift while living or by testament at death.
This man, then, introduced the law to satisfy some private anger of his own; but the rest accepted and ratified it out of greed, and so destroyed the best of institutions. For the powerful now acquired without restraint, thrusting aside the rightful heirs from the successions, and quickly, as wealth flowed together into the hands of a few, poverty took hold of the city, bringing with it a want of leisure for noble pursuits and an illiberal meanness, together with envy and hostility toward those who had property,
so that there were left no more than seven hundred Spartiates, and of these perhaps a hundred were men who possessed land and an allotment; while the rest of the crowd sat idle in the city, without means and without honor, defending themselves against wars from abroad sluggishly and without enthusiasm, but always watching for some opportunity to change and overturn the present state of affairs,
For these reasons Agis, considering it a noble thing, as indeed it was, to level and fill up the city again, made trial of the people. The young men, then, quickly and beyond expectation gave heed to him, and stripped for the contest of virtue together with him, exchanging their manner of life, as one exchanges a garment, for the sake of freedom,
yet among the elder men, corrupted by now to a deep degree, the majority, as though being led back to a master from whom they had run away, feared and trembled at the name of Lycurgus, and found fault with Agis for lamenting the present state of affairs and longing for the old dignity of Sparta. Lysander son of Libys, and Mandrocleidas son of Ecphanes, and further Agesilaus, welcomed and urged on his ambition.
Lysander was foremost among the citizens in reputation; Mandrocleidas was the cleverest of the Greeks at putting affairs together, having this shrewdness and craft mixed with boldness; Agesilaus, who was the king's uncle and a capable speaker, but otherwise soft and fond of money, was openly stirred up and emboldened by his son Hippomedon, a man of good repute from many wars and possessing great influence through the goodwill of the young men:
but the true cause that persuaded Agesilaus to take part in what was being done was the multitude of his debts, from which he hoped to be freed by a change in the constitution. As soon as Agis had won this man over, he immediately set about persuading, along with him, his mother, who was Agesilaus's sister, and who, through the great number of her clients, friends, and debtors, had great power in the city and managed much of the public business.
She, on hearing it, was at first astonished and tried to stop the young man, thinking he was reaching for something neither possible nor advantageous; but when Agesilaus explained that it would turn out well and be brought about to their advantage, and the king himself begged his mother to give up her wealth for his glory and ambition, saying that in money he could not
be made equal to the other kings—for the servants and slaves of satraps, the stewards of Ptolemy and Seleucus, held riches greater than every Spartan king combined—but that if in self-control, simplicity, and greatness of soul he should surpass their luxuries, and establish equality and fellowship among the citizens, he would win the name and reputation of a truly great king—so the women's minds were changed, lifted up by the young man's ambition, and they were seized by something like an inspiration toward the good,
so that they urged Agis on and hastened him further, and summoning their friends they conversed with them and with the other women as well, knowing that the Lacedaemonians were always obedient to their women, and allowed them to meddle more in public affairs than they themselves did in their own. But in that era the greater part of Laconian riches rested with the women, a fact that rendered the undertaking difficult and troublesome for Agis.
For the women resisted, not only because they were being cast out of the luxury that, through poor taste, was accounted happiness, but also because they saw being cut away the honor and power which they reaped from being wealthy. And turning to Leonidas, they urged him, as the elder, to check Agis and hinder what was being done.
Leonidas wished, then, to help the rich, but fearing the people, who desired the change, he did not openly oppose it; instead he sought secretly to sabotage and undermine the undertaking, meeting with the magistrates and slandering Agis, saying that he was offering the property of the rich as a reward to the poor in payment for a tyranny, and that by distributions of land and cancellations of debts he was buying himself many bodyguards, not citizens for Sparta.
Nevertheless, Agis, having managed to get Lysander made ephor, straightway introduced through him a rhetra before the elders, the chief points of which were that debts should be cancelled, and that the land should be redistributed: the portion from the ravine at Pellene toward Taygetus and Malea and Selasia to be made into four thousand five hundred lots, and that outside it into fifteen thousand:
and this latter to be divided among the perioikoi who were able to bear arms, and the inner portion among the Spartiates themselves; and their number to be filled up from perioikoi and foreigners, as many as had shared a free upbringing, were physically attractive, and stood at the height of their bodily prime; and that they were to be arranged into fifteen dining-messes of four hundred and two hundred members, and should live the manner of life their ancestors had lived.
When the rhetra had been drawn up, and the elders were not agreed among themselves in their opinions, Lysander called an assembly and himself addressed the citizens, and Mandrocleidas and Agesilaus begged them not to allow, for the sake of a few living luxuriously, the dignity of Sparta to lie cast down, but to remember the oracles of old, which enjoined them to guard against love of money as ruinous to Sparta, and also the oracle recently brought to them from Pasiphae.
There was a shrine and oracle of Pasiphae at Thalamae held in honor, which some accounts hold to be one among the daughters of Atlas, she who bore Ammon to Zeus, while others say it was Cassandra the daughter of Priam, who died there, and because she reveals her oracles to all was called Pasiphae. But Phylarchus says she was the daughter of Amyclas, named Daphne, who, fleeing from Apollo who wished to lie with her, was changed into the plant, and so came into honor with the god and received the power of prophecy.
They said, then, that the oracles from her too commanded the Spartans to become all equal, according to the law which Lycurgus had established from the beginning. And after all this King Agis, coming forward into their midst and speaking briefly, said that he was contributing to the constitution he was establishing the greatest of contributions: for he was first putting into the common stock his own property, which was great both in cultivated and pasture lands, and besides these he held six hundred talents of coined money; and that his mother and his friends and relatives, who were the richest of the Spartans, were doing the same.
Now the people were amazed at the young man's greatness of soul, and were overjoyed that after nearly two hundred years a king worthy of Sparta had appeared; but Leonidas at that point set himself in the strongest opposition. For, reckoning that he too would be compelled to do the same things, yet would not receive the same gratitude from the citizens, but that, since all alike were putting down what they possessed, they would attribute the honor solely to the one who had begun it, he asked Agis whether he considered Lycurgus to have been a just and worthy man.
When Agis agreed, Leonidas said, "Where then did Lycurgus ever grant cancellations of debts, or enroll foreigners into the citizen body, he who did not even consider the city healthy unless it practiced the expulsion of foreigners?" Agis replied that he was not surprised that Leonidas, having been raised abroad and having had children by a marriage with a satrap's family, was ignorant of Lycurgus — namely, that Lycurgus banished owing and lending from the city together with coined money,
but of the foreigners in the cities he was more displeased with those unsuited by their pursuits and manner of life; for he drove those out, warring not against their persons, but fearing their ways of living and their characters, lest by mingling with the citizens they should implant in them a taste for luxury and softness and greed; since Terpander and Thales and Pherecydes, though foreigners, because they continued doing the same things as Lycurgus in their songs and their philosophy, were held in special honor at Sparta.
"But you," he said, "praise Ecprepes, who as ephor took an axe and cut out two of the nine strings of Phrynis the musician, and those who did this same thing again to Timotheus, yet you blame us for removing luxury and extravagance and pretension from Sparta — as if it were not the very same guarding against the showy and excessive in music, so that it should not advance further here, where when excess and discord of living and manners come to be, they make the city out of tune and out of harmony with itself."
After this the multitude followed Agis, but the rich kept urging Leonidas not to abandon them, and by beseeching and persuading the elders, in whose hands lay the power over the preliminary decree, they prevailed so far that those voting against the rhetra were more numerous by just one.
But Lysander, still holding his office, set out to prosecute Leonidas under a certain ancient law, which does not allow a Heraclid to father children by a foreign woman, and orders one who has left Sparta to settle among others to be put to death — having instructed others to bring these charges against Leonidas, while he himself, together with his fellow officials, kept watch for the sign.
It is of this sort: once every nine years the ephors, choosing a clear and moonless night, sit in silence gazing up at the sky. If then a star shoots across from one region to another, they judge the kings to have sinned against the divine, and suspend them from office, until an oracle comes from Delphi or Olympia to help the king thus caught.
Lysander now declared that this sign had appeared to him, and brought Leonidas to trial, producing witnesses that he had begotten two children by an Asiatic wife, whom he had taken to live with him when he was in the service of a certain Seleucus, and, being disliked and hated by his wife, had returned home against her will, and had taken up the kingship though without proper succession.
At the same time as the trial he was persuading Cleombrotus, who was son-in-law of Leonidas and of the royal line, to lay claim to the kingship. Leonidas, therefore, in fear, became a suppliant of the goddess of the Bronze House, and his daughter joined him as a suppliant, leaving Cleombrotus. And when he was summoned to trial and did not come down, they voted him out and handed the kingship over to Cleombrotus.
Meanwhile Lysander's term of office expired with the passing of time. The ephors who were then installed raised up Leonidas from his supplication, and brought a suit against Lysander and Mandrocleidas for having proposed, contrary to law, the cancellation of debts and the redistribution of land.
Being in danger, therefore, they persuaded the kings, coming together, to let the resolutions of the ephors stand aside; for this office, they argued, had its power from disagreement between the kings, the vote being added to whichever spoke the better course whenever the one contended against the other's advantage; but when both were resolved on the same thing, the authority was without force, and it was unlawful for them to contend against the kings, whose proper function it was, when the kings were in dispute, to arbitrate and give judgment between them, not to meddle when they were of one mind.
Persuaded thus, both kings went down into the market-place together with their friends, and lifted the ephors bodily out of their chairs, putting new men in their positions, one of whom was Agesilaus; and arming many of the young men, and releasing those who had been imprisoned, they became fearsome to their opponents, as though they would put many to death.
But no one was killed by them; rather, when Agesilaus wished to destroy Leonidas as he was withdrawing to Tegea, and sent men to waylay him on the road, Agis, learning of it, sent other trusted men, who surrounded Leonidas and brought him safely into Tegea.
So while the enterprise was proceeding on its way for them, with no one opposing or hindering, one man, Agesilaus, overturned everything and ruined it, corrupting the noblest and most truly Laconian design with the most shameful of diseases, love of wealth.
For since he possessed, among the largest holdings, much good land, but owed a very great deal, and was able neither to pay off his debts nor willing to give up the land, he persuaded Agis that if both measures were carried out together there would be great upheaval in the city, but that if the propertied men were first won over by the cancellation of debts, they would afterward easily and quietly accept the redistribution.
Lysander's circle too thought this good, being themselves deceived along with the rest by Agesilaus, and they gathered together into the market-place the bonds of the debtors, which they call *klaria*, and, piling them all together, burned them. And when the flame rose up, the rich and the money-lenders went away in great distress, but Agesilaus, as if mocking them, said he had never seen a brighter light nor a purer fire than that one.
When the multitude demanded that the land be divided at once, and the kings ordered it be done so, Agesilaus, forever throwing in some occupation or other and citing pretexts, kept delaying the time, until a military expedition fell to Agis, the Achaeans, who were allies, sending for aid from Lacedaemon. For the Aetolians were expected to invade the Peloponnese through Megarian territory, and Aratus, general of the Achaeans, was gathering a force to prevent this and wrote to the ephors.
They at once sent Agis out, elated by the eagerness and enthusiasm of those campaigning with him; for most of them were young men and poor, and, having already gained relief from their debts and being freed of them, and hoping for the fields, if they returned from the campaign, to be distributed to them, they showed themselves marvelous in Agis' service:
and the cities gazed on them as a spectacle while they made their way across the Peloponnese, doing no injury, mild in bearing, moving in near silence, so that the Greeks marveled and reasoned among themselves what sort of order there must have been in a Laconian army when Agesilaus or that famous Lysander or Leonidas of old commanded it, seeing that toward a mere youth, nearly the youngest of them all, there was such reverence and fear among those campaigning with him.
And indeed the young man himself, priding himself on his frugality and diligence, and on being dressed and armed no more splendidly than a common man, was a sight worth seeing and was admired by the multitude; though the wealthy were not pleased by his revolutionary program, fearing it might become an example and a stirring for the common people everywhere.
When Agis joined Aratus near Corinth, who was still deliberating about battle and formation against the enemy, he displayed much eagerness and a boldness that was neither reckless nor unreasoning. For he said that it seemed to him best to fight it out and not let the war pass within, having abandoned the gates of the Peloponnese, but that he would do whatever seemed best to Aratus; for Aratus was older and was general of the Achaeans, whom he had come not to command or lead, but to campaign alongside and to help.
Baton of Sinope says that Agis was unwilling to fight when Aratus ordered it, but he has not read what Aratus himself wrote about these matters in his own defense — that he considered it better, since the farmers had already gathered in nearly all their crops, to let the enemy pass by rather than risk everything in a battle.
When, then, Aratus decided against fighting and dismissed the allies with thanks, Agis, having won admiration, broke camp and returned home, at a time when those within Sparta were already in great turmoil and upheaval.
For Agesilaus, holding the office of ephor, freed from the humble state he had formerly been in, spared no man who could bring in money, however wrong the charge; but though the reckoning did not yet demand it, he inserted a thirteenth month into the tax year, contrary to the established order of the seasons, and levied taxes on it—and, fearing those he wronged and hated by everyone, he kept sword-bearing bodyguards, and went down to his office under their protection.
Of the two kings, he wished one to be altogether despised, and the other, Agis, to be held in some honor because of kinship rather than because of his kingship. He also spread word that he intended to serve as ephor again. So his enemies, taking the risk more quickly, banded together and openly brought Leonidas back from Tegea to his office, and most people watched this gladly too—for they were angry at having been deceived, since the land had not been redistributed.
As for Agesilaus, his son Hippomedon, entreating the citizens and beloved by all for his manly courage, got him away and kept him safe. Of the two kings, Agis took flight and sought sanctuary at the temple of Athena Chalcioecus, while Cleombrotus went to the sanctuary of Poseidon and sat as a suppliant—for Leonidas seemed to be harsher toward him. Passing over Agis, Leonidas went up against Cleombrotus with soldiers and accused him angrily, since he had schemed against him despite being married to his daughter, taken away his kingship, and joined in driving him from his homeland.
Cleombrotus had nothing to say, but sat there at a loss and in silence. But Chilonis, the daughter of Leonidas, who had earlier shared in her father's suffering when he was wronged, and who, when Cleombrotus took the kingship, had left him to tend her father's misfortune—being present with him as a suppliant while he was there, and while he was in exile grieving and remaining harshly disposed toward Cleombrotus—now, in turn, changing with the shift of fortune, could be seen seated beside her husband as a suppliant, her arms wrapped around him, and her children, one on this side and one on that, kept close beneath her,
and as everyone marveled and wept at the woman's goodness and affection, touching her robes and her hair, which were unkempt, she said, "Father, this dress and this appearance of mine were not put upon me by pity for Cleombrotus; rather, ever since your misfortunes and your exile, this mourning has stayed with me as a companion and housemate. So must I now live out my life amid these misfortunes while you reign in Sparta and are victorious, or must I take up bright royal clothing, while through you I watch the husband of my youth being murdered?
If he does not win your pardon, and is not persuaded by the tears of his children and his wife, he will pay a harsher penalty for his ill counsel than you intend, once he has seen me, who am dearest to him, die before him. For with what boldness ought I to live before other women, I who find pity neither from a husband nor from a father? No—I was born to be both a woman and a daughter who shares in misfortune and dishonor along with my own.
As for him, even if he had some plausible argument, I stripped it away when I took my stand alongside you then and testified against what he had done. But you are making his wrongdoing easy to excuse, by showing that kingship is so great a prize and so much worth contending over that killing a son-in-law for it counts as justified and to neglect one's children."
Such were Chilonis's pleas; and she laid her face upon Cleombrotus's head, and turned her gaze, ruined and wasted by grief, upon those present. Leonidas, after conferring with his friends, ordered Cleombrotus to rise and go into exile, yet asked his daughter to stay and not forsake him, so great was his fondness for her and had granted her, as a favor, the safety of her husband.
Yet she was not persuaded, but as her husband rose she put one of the children into his arms, took up the other herself, and, after bowing before the altar of the god, went out with him—so that, had Cleombrotus not been utterly corrupted by empty ambition, he would have counted his exile from the kingship a greater blessing, because of his wife. Having removed Cleombrotus and cast the first ephors from office, putting others in their place, Leonidas at once began plotting against Agis.
First he tried to persuade him to rise from sanctuary and share the kingship with him, on the ground that the citizens had granted pardon—for he had been deceived by Agesilaus, being young and ambitious. But since Agis remained wary and stayed where he was, Leonidas himself gave up his deceiving and dissembling; but Amphares, Damochares, and Arcesilaus, going up regularly, used to converse with him, and once even took him along down from the sanctuary to bathe, and after he had bathed brought him back up into the sanctuary again,
and all were on familiar terms with him. But Amphares, who had recently borrowed expensive garments and cups from Agesistrata, for this reason plotted against the king and the women, meaning to keep the goods for himself. And it is said that he above all listened to Leonidas and incited the ephors, of whom he himself was one.
Since Agis remained in the sanctuary for most of each day, though he customarily went down to bathe when the occasion arose, they resolved to seize him there, once he was outside the sanctuary. So, watching for their moment, they met him after he had bathed and greeted him, and walked along together conversing and joking as with a familiar young friend.
There was a turn off the road leading sideways to the prison, and when they came to it as they walked, Amphares, because he held office, laid hold of Agis and said, "I am taking you, Agis, before the ephors, to give account of your public conduct." And Damochares, who was strong and tall, threw his cloak around his neck and dragged him.
Others, as arranged, pushed him from behind, and since no one came to help—with no one nearby to help him, they shoved him into the prison. Leonidas showed up immediately with many mercenaries and surrounded the building from outside, while the ephors went in to Agis, and after summoning into the building those of the elders who shared their purpose, as though a trial were actually taking place, ordered him to defend himself concerning what he had done.
When the young man laughed at their pretense, Amphares told him he would soon be groaning and would pay the penalty for his insolence. Another of the ephors, as though granting Agis some concession and showing him a way to escape the charge, asked whether he had done these things under compulsion from Lysander and Agesilaus.
When Agis answered that he had been compelled by no one, but had, in emulation and imitation of Lycurgus, come to the same form of government, the same man asked again whether he now repented of what he had done. When the young man said he did not repent of policies so nobly conceived, even though he saw himself about to suffer the ultimate penalty, they voted him guilty of death, and ordered the officers to take him to the place called the Dechas.
This chamber of the prison was the place where condemned men were strangled to death. Seeing that the officers did not dare lay hands on Agis, and likewise that the mercenaries standing by turned away and shrank from the deed, thinking it neither lawful nor customary to lay hands upon the body of a king, Damochares, with threats and abuse toward them, himself dragged Agis into the chamber.
For by now many had learned of the arrest, and there was an uproar at the doors and many torches, and Agis's mother and grandmother were present, crying out and pleading that the Spartan king be granted a public hearing and trial before the assembled citizens. For this very reason they hastened his execution all the more, fearing he might be snatched away by night if more people came to his aid.
So Agis, being led to the noose, when he saw one of the officers weeping and overcome with pity, said, "Stop weeping for me, man; for even though I am perishing thus unlawfully and unjustly, I am better than those who are killing me." And having said this, he willingly gave his neck to the noose,
while Amphares, going out to the doors, and raising up Agesistrata, who fell before him out of long acquaintance and friendship, said that nothing violent or irreparable would happen to Agis, and told her that she might go in to her son if she wished. And when she asked that her mother might come in with her, Amphares replied that nothing stood in the way of it;
and having received both of them, and having ordered the doors of the prison shut again, he first handed over Archidamia, who was already very old and had grown old in the greatest esteem among the women of the city; and when she was dead, he ordered Agesistrata to go inside.
When she entered and saw her son lying on the ground and her mother hanging dead from the noose, she herself, with the help of the officers, took down the body, and having laid it out beside Agis, covered and wrapped it; then throwing herself over her son and pressing kisses on his face, she spoke these words, "Your great caution, my child, and your gentleness and kindness toward men, have destroyed you along with us."
Amphares, watching from the door what was happening and hearing what was said, came in and said to Agesistrata in anger, "Since you approved the same things as your son, you shall suffer the same fate too." And Agesistrata, rising toward the noose, said only, "May this at least turn out well for Sparta."
When word of the disaster reached the city and the three corpses were brought forth, the fear was not so great but that the citizens were plainly seen grieving over what had happened, and hating Leonidas and Amphares, thinking that no deed more dreadful or impious had occurred at Sparta since the Dorians settled in the Peloponnese.
For it seems that not even enemies, meeting a king of the Lacedaemonians easily in battle, would readily lay hands on him, but turned aside, in fear and reverence for his dignity; wherefore, though the Lacedaemonians fought many contests against the Greeks, only one king was ever killed—Cleombrotus, struck by a spear at Leuctra, before the time of Philip. And though the Messenians say that Theopompus too fell at the hand of Aristomenes, the Lacedaemonians deny it,
saying he was only wounded—but this matter admits of some dispute. In Lacedaemon, however, Agis became the first reigning king whom the ephors condemned to death—a man who had chosen noble deeds befitting Sparta, at an age at which men who err still find pardon, and blamed by his friends more justly than by his enemies, because he had spared Leonidas and trusted the others, having become the gentlest and mildest of men.

======== Cleomenes ========

When he died, Leonidas did not manage to arrest his brother Archidamus, who fled at once, but he dragged the man's wife from the house by force, though she had a newborn child, and married her to his own son Cleomenes, though the boy was not yet quite of marrying age—simply because he did not want the woman given to anyone else. For Agiatis, daughter of Gylippus, was heiress to a great estate, and in beauty and bloom far surpassed the women of Greece, and was besides of a reasonable character. That is why, as they say, she did a great deal
in her pleas not to be forced into it, but once she was joined to Cleomenes, she came to hate Leonidas, while toward the young man himself she proved a good and affectionate wife. He, for his part, had fallen passionately in love with her from the moment he took her, and in a way shared her feeling for Agis and her memory of him as her former husband, so that he often asked her about what had happened and listened carefully as she told him of the purpose and character that Agis had had.
Cleomenes himself was ambitious and high-minded, and by nature no less inclined than Agis toward self-control and simplicity of life, but he lacked that excessive caution and gentleness; instead a kind of goad of spiritedness was fixed in his nature, together with a vehement impulse toward whatever appeared to him at any time to be noble. It seemed to him noblest of all to rule over willing subjects, but it was also noble, when men would not obey, to force them by compulsion toward what was better.
He was displeased, then, with the state of affairs in the city—the citizens bewitched by idleness and pleasure, and the king letting everything go its own way so long as no one troubled him in his desire for abundant leisure and self-indulgence, while public affairs were neglected and each man dragged what profit he could toward his own household; and since the events surrounding Agis had come to ruin, it was not even safe to mention the training of the young, endurance, and equality.
It is said that Cleomenes also had a share in philosophical discourse while still a lad, when Sphaerus of Borysthenes came to Lacedaemon and spent no little care on the young men and the ephebes. Sphaerus had been among the foremost pupils of Zeno of Citium, and it seems he came to admire the manly quality in Cleomenes' nature and to kindle further his ambition,
for they say that the elder Leonidas, when asked what sort of poet Tyrtaeus seemed to him to be, said, "Good at inflaming the souls of the young." For filled with a kind of enthusiasm from his poems, men would spare themselves nothing in battle. Now the Stoic doctrine carries something perilous and hazardous for great and keen natures, but when it is blended with a deep and gentle character it contributes most of all toward that character's own proper good.
When, upon the death of Leonidas, he took over the kingship and saw the citizens by then altogether unstrung—the rich looking past the common good toward their own private pleasures and gains, and the many, because their own affairs were going badly, grown reluctant for war and without ambition for the traditional discipline, while he himself was king in name only and all authority lay with the ephors—
he set his mind at once on shifting and stirring up the present state of things. He had a friend, Xenares, who had been his lover (this the Lacedaemonians call "being inspired"), and he sounded him out, asking repeatedly what sort of king Agis had been, and by what manner and with whose help he had set out on that course. Xenares at first recalled those events without displeasure, telling the story of how each thing had been done in detail,
but when it became plain that Cleomenes was attending with too much feeling, stirred to an extraordinary degree by Agis's revolutionary policy, and wanting to hear the same things told again and again, Xenares grew angry and rebuked him as being unsound of mind, and in the end broke off talking with him and visiting him, though he told no one the reason for the falling-out, only saying that Cleomenes himself knew it.
With Xenares thus turned against him, and supposing the others felt the same way, Cleomenes worked out the undertaking by himself. And thinking he would be better able to change the present state of things in war than in peace, he brought the city into collision with the Achaeans, who themselves gave him grounds for complaint. For Aratus, who held the greatest power among the Achaeans, had wished from the start to bring the Peloponnesians into a single confederation, and this was the aim of his many generalships and his long political career, since he believed that only in this way would they be unassailable by enemies from outside.
Since almost all the others had by now joined him, and only the Lacedaemonians, the Eleans, and such Arcadians as adhered to the Lacedaemonians were left out, as soon as Leonidas died he began harassing the Arcadians and cutting away especially those of them bordering on the Achaeans, testing the Lacedaemonians and despising Cleomenes as young and inexperienced.
After this the ephors first sent Cleomenes to seize the Athenaeum near Belbina, a place that is an entry-point into Laconia and was at that time in dispute with the Megalopolitans. When Cleomenes had seized it and fortified it, Aratus made no complaint but marched out by night and made an attempt on Tegea and Orchomenus.
But since the traitors lost their nerve, Aratus withdrew, thinking his move had gone unnoticed; Cleomenes, however, using irony, wrote to him, asking as if in friendly curiosity where he had gone off to that night. When Aratus wrote back that he had heard Cleomenes was about to fortify Belbina and had gone down to prevent it, Cleomenes wrote again saying he was persuaded this was so, but added: "the torches, though, and the ladders—if it makes no difference to you—write and tell me what they were following you for."
When Aratus laughed at the jibe and asked what sort of young man this was, Damocrates the Lacedaemonian exile said, "If you are up to anything against the Lacedaemonians, it is time for you to make haste, before this chick grows its spurs." After this, while Cleomenes was encamped in Arcadia with a few horsemen and three hundred foot, the ephors ordered him to withdraw, fearing the war.
But when, after his withdrawal, Aratus took Caphyae, they sent Cleomenes out again; and when he had taken Methydrium and overrun the Argive territory, the Achaeans took the field with twenty thousand foot and a thousand horse, under the generalship of Aristomachus. Cleomenes met them near Pallantium and was eager to fight,
but Aratus, fearing his boldness, would not let the general risk battle, and withdrew, reviled by the Achaeans and mocked and despised by the Lacedaemonians, who numbered not even five thousand. Cleomenes, then, grown great in confidence, began speaking boldly to his fellow citizens, and reminded them of one of the old kings who had said, not without reason, that the Lacedaemonians ask not how many the enemy are, but where they are.
When he went to help the Eleans, who were being attacked by the Achaeans, and fell upon the Achaeans as they were already withdrawing near Mount Lycaeum, he routed their whole army utterly and threw it into panic, killed many, and took many alive, so that a rumor even spread among the Greeks that Aratus was dead. Aratus, making the best possible use of the occasion, went straight from that rout to Mantinea and, when no one expected it, took the city and held it,
and when the Lacedaemonians had entirely lost heart and were resisting Cleomenes' calls for further campaigns, he set out to summon Archidamus, Agis's brother, from Messene, to whom the kingship belonged by right from the other royal house, thinking that the ephors' power would be blunted once the kingship became balanced and whole again,
but those who had earlier put Agis to death, perceiving this and fearing they would pay the penalty once Archidamus returned, received him into the city when he arrived secretly and helped bring him in, but killed him at once—whether against Cleomenes' will, as Phylarchus supposes, or because he had been persuaded by his friends and had given the man up to them. For most of the blame for this fell on those who were thought to have coerced Cleomenes into it.
Nevertheless, being resolved from the start to alter the state of the city, he persuaded the ephors with money to vote him a campaign. He also won over many others through his mother Cratesicleia, who spent lavishly and shared eagerly in his ambition—she who, though she had no need of marriage, is said for her son's sake to have taken a husband who ranked first among the citizens in reputation and power,
Leading out the army, he seized Leuctra, in the territory of Megalopolis; and when the Achaeans came swiftly to its aid under the generalship of Aratus, and battle was joined under the city itself, he was defeated in part of his force. But when Aratus would not let the Achaeans cross a deep ravine,
and called off the pursuit, Lydiadas the Megalopolitan, indignant, charged forward with the horsemen about him, and in the pursuit rushed into ground full of vineyards, ditches, and walls, and was scattered and badly mauled among them. Cleomenes, seeing this, sent the Tarentines and Cretans against him, and Lydiadas, defending himself vigorously, fell beneath them. Emboldened by this, the Lacedaemonians charged the Achaeans with a shout and routed the whole army.
Many having fallen, Cleomenes gave back the rest under truce, but ordered Lydiadas's body brought to him, and after dressing it in a purple robe and setting a crown on it, sent it to the gates of the Megalopolitans. This was the Lydiadas who had laid down his tyranny, restored freedom to his citizens, and brought the city over to the Achaeans.
After this Cleomenes, now grown high in confidence and persuaded that if he handled affairs as he wished and made war on the Achaeans he would easily prevail, instructed his mother's husband Megistonous that they must be rid of the ephors, put all property in common among the citizens, and, once Sparta was made equal, raise her up and lead her forward to the leadership of Greece. Megistonous, once persuaded, brought in two or three more of his friends.
It happened around those days that one of the ephors, sleeping in the shrine of Pasiphae, saw a marvelous dream: it seemed to him that in the place where the ephors are accustomed to sit and give judgment, only one chair remained standing, and the other four had been taken away, and as he marveled a voice came from the sanctuary declaring that this was better for Sparta.
When the ephor described this vision to Cleomenes, at first he was disturbed, suspecting that he was being tested in some way, but when he was convinced that the man telling it was not lying, he took courage. And taking with him those citizens he most suspected would oppose the undertaking, he captured Heraea and Alsaea, cities aligned under the Achaeans, brought in grain for the Orchomenians, and encamped before Mantinea,
and altogether, wearing out the Lacedaemonians up and down with long marches, he left the greater part of them, at their own request, in Arcadia, and himself, keeping the mercenaries, made for Sparta. And along the way he shared his intention with those he trusted most to be well disposed toward him, and advanced at a measured pace, so as to fall upon the ephors while they were at their supper.
As Cleomenes drew close to the city, he dispatched Euryclidas ahead to the mess where the ephors dined together, on the pretense that he carried word from the army on Cleomenes' behalf, while Therycion, Phoebis, and a pair of Cleomenes' foster-brothers (those the Spartans term mothakes) trailed behind with a handful of soldiers. While Euryclidas kept the ephors occupied in conversation, this group burst in, swords bared, and cut them down.
The first, Agylaeus, when he was struck, fell and, thought to be dead, quietly gathered himself and dragged himself out of the building, unnoticed, and crept into a small chamber, a shrine of Phobos which was otherwise always kept locked but happened by chance to be open at that time. Bringing himself into it he shut the little door. The other four were killed, and of those coming to their aid no more than ten. For they did not kill those who kept quiet, nor did they hinder those leaving the city. They spared Agylaeus too, when by day he came out of the shrine.
The Lacedaemonians have shrines not only of Phobos (Fear) but also of Thanatos (Death) and Gelos (Laughter) and other such experiences. They honor Phobos not as they do those spirits they avert, thinking them harmful, but because they believe their whole civic order is held together above all by fear.
That is why, as Aristotle says, the ephors on entering office would proclaim to the citizens to shave their moustaches and obey the laws, so that the laws might not be harsh toward them—putting forward the matter of the moustache, I think, as a way of accustoming the young to obedience even in the smallest things.
And courage itself, it seems to me, the ancients considered not fearlessness, but rather fear of blame and dread of disgrace. For the most cowardly toward the laws are the boldest toward the enemy, and those who fear most to be spoken of ill are least afraid of suffering. Hence the poet was right who said:
"For where there is dread, there also is reverence." And Homer: "You are reverend to me, dear father-in-law, and terrible"; and "fearing their commanders, in silence." For it happens that men feel shame most before those whom the many also fear; that is why the Lacedaemonians set up the shrine of Phobos right beside the common mess of the ephors, having made that office nearest of all to a monarchy.
Cleomenes, then, when day came, posted the names of eighty citizens who had to leave the country, and took away the chairs used by the ephors, keeping only a single one in place, meaning to occupy it himself for conducting business. He called an assembly and defended what he had done, saying that Lycurgus had joined elders to the kings, and that for a long time the city had been governed in this way, needing no other office;
but later, when the war against the Messenians dragged on, the kings, being too occupied with their campaigns for judging cases, picked out several friends and installed them as substitutes to handle matters for the citizens, officials known as ephors, and that these continued at first to be servants of the kings, but then little by little turned the power to themselves, so that without anyone noticing they had built up an office of their own.
A sign of this is that even to this day, when the ephors summon the king, he refuses the first and second time, and only on the third summons rises and goes to them; and the first man to make the office formidable and to stretch it out, Asteropus, became ephor many generations later. Now, he said, if they had kept to moderation it would have been better to put up with them, but since by usurped power they were overturning the ancestral rule — so that of the kings some they drove out, others they killed without trial, and they threatened those who longed to see again the fairest and most divine constitution at Sparta — this was not to be endured.
If, then, it had been possible to rid Lacedaemon of the imported plagues without bloodshed — luxuries and extravagances and debts and loans, and the still older evils of poverty and wealth — he would have considered himself the most fortunate of all kings, having healed his country painlessly like a physician; but as it was, he had the excuse of necessity, the same necessity Lycurgus had, who held no royal title or public office, a mere private citizen acting the part of a king, came forward into the marketplace under arms, so that King Charillus in fear fled to an altar.
But that king, being good and a lover of his country, quickly took part in what Lycurgus was doing and accepted the change of constitution; and by his action Lycurgus bore witness that it is difficult to change a constitution without violence and fear — means which he himself said he had used most moderately, putting out of the way those who stood in the way of Lacedaemon's salvation.
As for everything else, he said, he was putting all the land into a common fund, freeing debtors from their debts, and instituting a scrutiny and examination of the foreigners, so that those who proved the best might become Spartiates and save the city by arms, and so that we might stop watching Laconia be plundered by the Aetolians and Illyrians for want of defenders.
After this, first he himself put his property into the common fund, and Megistonous his stepfather and each of his other friends did likewise, and then all the rest of the citizens too, and the land was distributed. He also assigned a portion to each of the exiles created by his own action, and promised to bring all of them back once matters were settled in peace.
Having filled out the citizen body with the most suitable of the perioikoi, he made four thousand hoplites, and having taught them to use the sarissa with both hands instead of the spear, and to carry the shield by a strap rather than by an armband, he turned to the education of the young and to the so-called agoge, most of which Sphaerus, being present, helped him set up; and quickly the proper order of the gymnasia and the common messes was restored, with a few submitting under compulsion but most voluntarily accepting that frugal and Laconian way of life.
Yet, to soften the name of sole rule, he appointed his brother Eucleidas as king along with himself; and that was the only time it happened to the Spartiates to have two kings from one house.
Perceiving that the Achaeans and Aratus, because their affairs stood precariously on account of the revolution, would not think he would go outside Lacedaemon nor leave the city exposed in so great an upheaval, he thought it neither ignoble nor useless to display the army's eagerness to the enemy.
So invading the territory of Megalopolis, he gathered great spoils and inflicted much destruction on the land; and finally, catching the performers of Dionysus passing through from Messene, and setting up a theater in enemy territory, and offering a prize of forty minae for a contest, he sat and watched for a single day — not because he needed the show, but as it were reveling over the enemy, and displaying a certain superabundance of mastery through his contempt for them.
For otherwise, of all Greek and royal armies, his alone had no mimes following it, no jugglers, no dancing-girls, no harp-girls, but was pure of all licentiousness and buffoonery and festivity, the young men mostly training and the older men teaching, and their recreations, whenever they had leisure, being conducted among themselves with their customary wit and with saying something graceful and Laconic; what benefit this kind of play brings has been written in the Life of Lycurgus.
Of all this he himself became the teacher, keeping his own life frugal and simple and in no way ostentatious or above the common run, setting it up as a pattern of self-control in the midst of them all — which also gave him a certain leverage over the affairs of Greece. For when people met other kings, they were not so much struck by their wealth and extravagance as they were disgusted by their arrogance and by the harsh and difficult manner in which their pomp treated those who approached them; but going to meet Cleomenes,
seeing him indeed a king and called one, and then seeing no purple robes about him, no cloaks, no elaborate couches and litters, nor being kept waiting with difficulty through a crowd of messengers and doorkeepers or transacting business by written petitions, but himself meeting people in whatever cloak he happened to have, conversing and giving his time cheerfully and kindly to those who needed him — they were charmed and won over, and said that he alone was descended from Heracles.
As for his dinners, his everyday one was in a triclinium, very modest and Laconian; but if he received ambassadors or foreign guests, two more couches were added, and his servants brightened the table a little more, not with any elaborate sauces or pastries, but by making the servings more generous and the wine more liberally poured. Indeed he once rebuked one of his friends when he heard that in entertaining foreign guests the man had served them black broth and barley cake, as was the custom in the common messes; for he said one need not be so strictly Laconic in these matters, even toward foreigners.
When the table was removed, a tripod was brought in holding a bronze mixing-bowl full of wine, and two silver bowls each holding two cotylae, and very few silver cups, from which whoever wished could drink, but no one was forced to take a cup against his will. There was no entertainer, nor was one asked for; for he himself guided the drinking-party with conversation, sometimes asking questions, sometimes telling stories, his seriousness never unpleasant in its talk nor his playfulness ill-bred or crude,
for the kind of hunting after men that the rest of the kings practiced, luring and corrupting them with money and gifts, he considered artless and unjust; but to win over and draw to oneself those one met by pleasing and trustworthy conversation seemed to him the finest thing and the most kingly, on the ground that nothing differs from a hired friend except that the one is caught by character and speech, the other by money.
First, then, the Mantineans invited him in, and when he slipped into the city by night they helped him drive out the Achaean garrison and put themselves in his hands; and he gave them back both their laws and their constitution and departed that very day for Tegea. A little later, going around through Arcadia, he came down against the Achaean city of Pherae, wishing either to force a battle with the Achaeans or to discredit Aratus as running away and abandoning the territory to him. For Hyperbatas was general at the time, but all the power among the Achaeans lay with Aratus.
When the Achaeans went out in full force and camped at Dyme near the Hecatombaeum, Cleomenes came up and it seemed not wise for him to camp in the midst of the hostile city of Dyme and the army of the Achaeans; but boldly challenging the Achaeans he forced them to engage, and defeating them decisively and routing their phalanx, he destroyed many of them in the battle and took many alive as well. He then marched on Langon, expelled the garrison the Achaeans had stationed there, and restored the town to the Eleans.
With the Achaeans so shattered, Aratus, who was accustomed to hold the generalship every other year, renounced the office and declined it, though they called on him and begged him unworthily — as it were in a worse storm of affairs than ever — letting go the rudder to another and giving up his authority. Cleomenes at first seemed to make moderate demands of the Achaean envoys, sending others to bid them hand over the leadership to him, saying he would not otherwise differ with them, but would even at once give back the captives and the places he held,
and when the Achaeans were willing to accept the settlement on these terms and summoned Cleomenes to Lerna, where they were going to hold the assembly, it happened that Cleomenes, after a strenuous journey, took to drinking water at an ill-chosen moment, coughed up a large amount of blood, and could no longer speak. So he sent back to the Achaeans the most distinguished of the captives, and putting off the meeting, withdrew to Lacedaemon.
This ruined the affairs of Greece, which could still, somehow, from its present state, have recovered itself and escaped the insolence and greed of the Macedonians. For Aratus, whether from distrust and fear of Cleomenes, or out of envy at his unexpected good fortune, thinking it a terrible thing that after being first for thirty-three years he should now, as an old man, be brought down by a young man springing up beside him in both reputation and power,
and should take over an office whose affairs had been increased and mastered by another for so long a time — first he tried to force and hinder the Achaeans; but when they would not listen to him, being struck with fear of Cleomenes' boldness, and even thought the demand of the Lacedaemonians just, that the Peloponnese be arranged according to its ancestral form,
he turned to a deed fitting for none of the Greeks, and most shameful for himself and most unworthy of all he had done and stood for in politics — calling in Antigonus against Greece and filling the Peloponnese with Macedonians, whom he himself, as a young man, had driven out of the Peloponnese by freeing the Acrocorinth, and had thereby become suspect and at odds with all the kings; and this same Antigonus he had spoken countless ills of in the memoirs he left behind,
and yet he himself says he suffered much and risked much on behalf of the Athenians, so that the city might be freed of a garrison and of the Macedonians; and then he brought these very Macedonians under arms into his own homeland and hearth, even into the women's quarters; while the man descended from Heracles and reigning as king of the Spartiates, who was tuning the ancestral constitution back again, like a slackened harmony, to that temperate and Dorian law and life of Lycurgus, he did not think worthy to be enrolled as leader of the men of Sicyon and Tritaea,
but fleeing the barley cake and the coarse cloak, and — the most terrible of the charges he brought against Cleomenes — the abolition of wealth and the relief of poverty, he flung himself along with Achaea under the diadem and the purple and the commands of Macedonians and satraps, so that he might not seem to be doing what was ordered by Cleomenes, sacrificing at the Antigoneia and singing paeans, himself garlanded, to a man rotting away from consumption.
But we write this not wishing to accuse Aratus — for in many respects this man proved himself Greek and great — but out of pity for the weakness of human nature, if not even in characters so estimable and so distinguished for virtue can the good be brought forth free of blame.
When the Achaeans came again to Argos for the assembly, and Cleomenes had come down from Tegea, there was great hope among the people that a settlement would be reached. But Aratus, since the greatest matters had already been agreed between him and Antigonus, fearing that Cleomenes, by winning over the crowd or even by force, might accomplish everything, demanded that he take only three hundred hostages and enter alone to meet them, or else come up with his forces to the gymnasium called the Cyllarabium outside the city and confer there.
Hearing this, Cleomenes said he was being wronged; for they ought to have told him this at once, not now, when he had come to their very doors, to distrust and drive him away. He wrote a letter to the Achaeans about this, the bulk of it laying blame on Aratus, while Aratus in turn poured abuse on Cleomenes in front of the assembled crowd; and Cleomenes broke camp in haste and sent a herald to declare war on the Achaeans, not against Argos, but against Aegium instead, according to Aratus's account, in order to steal a march on their preparations.
There had already been unrest among the Achaeans, and the cities were moving toward revolt, the common people hoping for redistribution of land and cancellation of debts, and the leading men in many places being weary of Aratus, and some too being angry at him for bringing Macedonians into the Peloponnese. Emboldened by this, Cleomenes invaded Achaea; and first he took Pellene by a sudden attack and drove out the Achaean garrison there; after that he won over Pheneus and Penteleum.
When the Achaeans, fearing some treachery being carried out in Corinth and Sicyon, sent their cavalry and mercenaries from Argos to guard those places, while they themselves went down to Argos for the Nemean games, Cleomenes, hoping — as indeed happened — that by an unexpected attack he would throw the city, crowded with festival crowds and spectators, into greater confusion, led his army by night against the walls,
and seizing the place called the Aspis above the theater, which was difficult and hard of access, he so terrified the people that no one turned to resist, but they even accepted a garrison, and gave twenty hostages from among the citizens, and became allies of the Lacedaemonians, with him holding the leadership.
This, then, was no small thing for his reputation and power. For not even the ancient kings of the Lacedaemonians, for all their efforts, had been able to win Argos over securely, nor had Pyrrhus, most formidable of generals, who entered and used force, been able to hold the city, but died there, and a great part of his army perished with him.
This is why people marveled at Cleomenes' sharpness and intelligence: even those who had before mocked those who claimed to be imitating Solon and Lycurgus in their cancellation of debts and equalization of property were now completely persuaded that this had been the cause of the change that had come over the Spartans,
for previously they had been in such a humbled and helpless state that when the Aetolians invaded Laconia and carried off fifty thousand slaves, one of the older Spartans is said to have remarked that the enemy had done Laconia a favor by lightening it of its burden.
But a short time later, once they had merely touched their ancestral customs and set foot again on the track of that discipline, they made, as though Lycurgus himself were present and sharing in their civic life, a great display of courage and obedience, recovering for Lacedaemon the leadership of Greece and winning back the Peloponnese.
When Argos had been captured, and immediately after it Cleonae and Phlius had gone over to Cleomenes, Aratus happened to be in Corinth conducting an inquiry into those said to be Laconizing; when news of these events fell upon him he was thrown into confusion, and perceiving that the city was inclining toward Cleomenes and wished to be rid of the Achaeans, he summoned the citizens to the council chamber, but slipped away unnoticed as far as the gate, and there, when his horse was brought up, he mounted and fled to Sicyon.
As the Corinthians raced to Argos to join Cleomenes, Aratus says that all his horses broke down, and that Cleomenes blamed the Corinthians for not seizing him but letting him escape; nevertheless Megistonous came to him on Cleomenes' behalf, asking him to hand over Acrocorinth (for it had an Achaean garrison) and offering a great sum of money; and he answered that he was not master of events, but was rather held fast by events. This is what Aratus himself has written.
Cleomenes, advancing from Argos and winning over the Troezenians, the Epidaurians, and the Hermioneans, came to Corinth and threw a palisade around the citadel, since the Achaeans refused to abandon it; then, summoning Aratus's friends and stewards, he ordered them to take charge of his house and property and keep them safe.
He again sent Tritymallus the Messenian to Aratus, asking that Acrocorinth be guarded jointly by the Achaeans and Lacedaemonians together, and privately promising Aratus double the stipend he was receiving from King Ptolemy; but since Aratus would not comply, but instead sent his son to Antigonus along with the other hostages and persuaded the Achaeans to vote to hand Acrocorinth over to Antigonus, Cleomenes in response invaded and ravaged the territory of Sicyon, and received as a gift, by vote of the Corinthians, the property of Aratus.
When Antigonus with a large force was crossing the Geraneia, Cleomenes did not think it necessary to hold the Isthmus itself, but rather to fortify and guard the Onean hills with a palisade and wall, and by fighting from position to wear down the Macedonians rather than engage a well-drilled phalanx in close combat. By this reasoning he reduced Antigonus to great difficulty.
For Antigonus had neither adequate provisions laid in, nor was it easy to force a passage while Cleomenes sat blocking the way; and when he attempted to slip through by night past Lechaeum, he was driven back and lost some of his soldiers, so that Cleomenes and his men, elated by their success, turned altogether to their dinner in confidence, while Antigonus grew despondent, shut up by necessity into a set of unpromising calculations,
for he was considering breaking camp for the Heraeum and from there ferrying his forces across to Sicyon by ship, a plan that would require a great deal of time and no ordinary preparation. But already toward evening some friends of Aratus arrived by sea from Argos, calling him, since the Argives were defecting from Cleomenes — the man managing the defection being Aristoteles — and he had persuaded the populace without difficulty, since they were angry that Cleomenes had not, as they had hoped, canceled their debts.
So Aratus, taking fifteen hundred soldiers from Antigonus, sailed along the coast to Epidaurus. But Aristoteles did not wait for him; instead, taking the citizens with him, he attacked those guarding the acropolis, and Timoxenus, coming to his aid from Sicyon with the Achaeans, joined him.
Hearing of this about the second watch of the night, Cleomenes sent for Megistonous, and in anger ordered him to go at once to the relief of Argos, for it was he above all who had guaranteed the Argives' loyalty to him, and had prevented the expulsion of the suspect ones; so, having sent Megistonous off with a force of two thousand, Cleomenes remained behind to watch Antigonus in person, and reassured the Corinthians that nothing of great importance had happened at Argos, only some disturbance caused by a few men.
But when Megistonous, having burst into Argos, was killed fighting, and the garrison held out only with difficulty and kept sending frequent messages to Cleomenes, he grew afraid that the enemy, gaining control of Argos and blocking off the passes, might ravage Laconia unopposed and besiege Sparta, left defenseless; so he withdrew his army from Corinth.
And that city he immediately lost, as Antigonus entered and established a garrison; but falling upon Argos at the wall, he attempted to leap in, rallying his forces straight from the march, and having broken open the vaulted passages beneath the Shield he climbed up and joined those inside who were still holding out against the Achaeans, and with the help of some inside who set up ladders he seized ground and cleared the narrow streets of enemies, ordering the Cretans to use their missiles.
But when he saw Antigonus descending from the heights into the plain with his phalanx, and the cavalry already riding at full speed into the city, he gave up hope of prevailing, and gathering all his men safely to himself he withdrew along the wall, having in the shortest time gained mastery over the greatest affairs, and having come within a little of becoming master of nearly the whole Peloponnese in a single circuit, only to fall quickly again from everything — for some of his troops deserted him at once, and others a little later handed their cities over to Antigonus.
While he had been faring thus in the campaign and was leading his forces back, near Tegea in the evening some men arrived from Lacedaemon bringing news of a misfortune no less than the one already at hand: that his wife had died — she for whose sake he had not even endured the most successful of campaigns without constantly coming down to Sparta, so much did he love Agiatis and hold her above all else.
He was struck and grieved, as was natural for a young man bereft of a most beautiful and most virtuous wife; yet he did not disgrace himself, nor did he let the suffering betray his resolve and greatness of soul, but keeping his voice, bearing, and expression in their accustomed character, he gave his commanders their orders and took thought for the safety of the people of Tegea.
At daybreak he went down to Lacedaemon, and having grieved out his mourning at home with his mother and children, he was at once immersed in calculations concerning the whole state of affairs. And when Ptolemy, king of Egypt, promising him aid, asked to receive his children and his mother as hostages, for a long time he was ashamed to tell his mother, and often, going in and coming right up to the subject in speech, he fell silent, so that she began to suspect it and inquired of his friends whether there was something he was hesitant to bring up with her.
At last, when Cleomenes ventured to say it, she burst out laughing and said, "Was this the thing you so often set out to say and then lost your nerve? Hurry and put us on a ship and send us wherever you think this body of mine may still be of use to Sparta, before it wastes away sitting here in old age."
So when everything was ready they went on foot as far as Taenarum, and the army escorted them under arms; but as Cratesicleia was about to board the ship, she took Cleomenes alone aside into the temple of Poseidon, and embracing him and drawing him close as he was overcome with grief and shaken,
she said, "Come, king of the Lacedaemonians, let no one, once we are outside, see us weeping or doing anything unworthy of Sparta. For this alone is in our power; as for fortunes, they come as the god gives them." Having said this and composing her face, she went to the ship carrying the child, and told the pilot to put out at once.
When she arrived in Egypt and learned that Ptolemy was receiving envoys and proposals from Antigonus, and heard about Cleomenes, that when the Achaeans invited him to a settlement he was afraid, for her sake, to end the war without Ptolemy's consent, she sent word to him to do what was fitting and advantageous for Sparta, and not to go on fearing Ptolemy forever for the sake of one old woman and a small child. Such, then, is said to have been her conduct amid these fortunes.
When Antigonus had captured Tegea and laid waste to both Orchomenus and Mantinea, Cleomenes, now shut up within Laconia itself, freed those of the helots who paid down five Attic minas, and thereby collected five hundred talents, and equipped two thousand additional men in Macedonian style to match Antigonus's white-shields, and set his mind on a great undertaking, unexpected by everyone.
Megalopolis at that time was, in itself, in no way inferior or weaker than Lacedaemon, and it had besides the support of the Achaeans and of Antigonus, who was encamped on its flank and was thought to have been summoned there chiefly at the urging of the Megalo
politans. It was this city that Cleomenes planned to plunder — for there is nothing that more resembles the speed and unexpectedness of that action — and ordering his men to take five days' rations, he led his force out toward Sellasia as though he meant to raid the Argolid; then, descending from there toward the territory of Megalopolis and having his men take their evening meal near Rhoeteum, he marched at once by way of
Helicus toward the city. When not far off he sent Panteus with two divisions of Lacedaemonians, ordering him to seize a stretch of wall between towers which he had learned was the most undefended part of the Megalopolitans' fortifications, while he himself followed on slowly with the rest of the force. Panteus found not only that spot but a great part of the wall unguarded, and at once began tearing down some sections and undermining others, killing every one of the guards he came upon, and Cleomenes came up in time to join him, and before the Megalopolitans were aware of it he was inside the city with his force.
When the disaster had at last become plain to the people in the city, some fled at once, snatching up whatever property they could, while others banded together under arms and, standing against the enemy and attacking them, though they could not drive them out, they did enable their fleeing fellow citizens to get away safely, so that no more than a thousand people were captured, and all the rest, together with their children and wives, managed to escape in time to Messene.
The greater number of those who had come to help and had fought also got safely away; only a few were caught outright, among them Lysandridas and Thearidas, men of distinction and the most powerful of the Megalopolitans. For this reason the soldiers who had seized them brought them straight to Cleomenes. Lysandridas, seeing Cleomenes from a distance, cried out, "It is in your power now, king of the Lacedaemonians, to perform a deed finer than the one you have just done and to become the most glorious of kings."
Cleomenes, suspecting what he was about to ask, said, "What do you mean, Lysandridas? Surely you are not telling me to give the city back to you?" And Lysandridas replied, "That is exactly what I mean and advise: not to raze so great a city, but rather to populate it anew with loyal and dependable friends and allies, giving the fatherland back to the Megalopolitans and thereby becoming the savior of so great a people."
Cleomenes, falling silent a little while, said, "It is hard to trust in this, but among us the love of glory must always prevail over expediency," and having said this he sent envoys to Messene, together with a herald of his own, proposing to restore the city to the Megalopolitans on condition that they become allies and friends, breaking away from the Achaeans.
But although Cleomenes had made this fair and generous offer, Philopoemen would not let the Megalopolitans abandon their loyalty to the Achaeans; instead, accusing Cleomenes of seeking not to restore the city but to win over its citizens, he drove Thearidas and Lysandridas out of Messene. This was the same Philopoemen who afterward became foremost among the Achaeans and won the greatest renown among the Greeks, as has been written separately about him.
When this was reported to Cleomenes, who had kept the city untouched and intact, so that no one had so much as taken the smallest thing without his knowledge, he now, altogether embittered and enraged, plundered its wealth, sent its statues and paintings off to Sparta, and having razed and destroyed the greatest and largest part of the city, marched back home, fearing Antigonus and the Achaeans,
though nothing was in fact done against him by them, for they happened to be holding a council at Aegium; and when Aratus, mounting the platform, wept for a long time with his cloak held before his face, and, since they marveled and urged him to speak, said that Megalopolis had been destroyed by Cleomenes, the assembly of the Achaeans broke up at once, stunned by the swiftness and magnitude of the disaster,
Antigonus set out to help, but since his forces were slow in rising up from their winter quarters, he ordered them to remain again in position, while he himself went ahead to Argos, not having many soldiers with him. This is why Cleomenes' second undertaking seemed to have been ventured recklessly and madly, yet was in fact carried out with great forethought, as Polybius says.
For knowing that the Macedonians were scattered in winter quarters throughout the towns, and that Antigonus, wintering in Argos with his friends, did not have many mercenaries with him, he invaded the Argive territory, calculating that either Antigonus, provoked by shame, would be spurred into a battle he could win, or that by not daring to fight he would discredit himself before the Argives. And this is exactly what happened, for as the country was being ravaged by him and everything was being carried off and driven away,
the Argives, unable to bear it, gathered at the doors of the king and shouted him down, demanding that he either fight or yield his command to better men. But Antigonus, as a sensible general should, considered it shameful to run into danger recklessly and throw away safety, not to be spoken ill of by outsiders, and so he did not come out but held firm to his own calculations. Cleomenes, however, advanced with his army right up to the walls, insulted and ravaged the place, and withdrew without fear.
A little later, hearing that Antigonus was advancing on Tegea intending to invade Laconia from there, he quickly took up his soldiers, cut across by other roads, and at daybreak appeared before the city of the Argives, ravaging the plain — not cutting the grain, as others do, with sickles and knives, but beating it down with great wooden clubs fashioned into the shape of swords, so that his men, treating it as a game as they marched, ground down and destroyed the whole crop without any effort.
When, however, they reached the Cyllarabis and were attempting to set fire to the gymnasium, he stopped them, on the grounds that even the events near Megalopolis had been done by him more out of anger than well. Then, when Antigonus withdrew at once to Argos and afterward occupied all the mountains and passes with garrisons, Cleomenes, pretending to be careless and contemptuous of him, sent heralds asking to be given the keys of the Heraeum, so that he might depart after sacrificing to the goddess.
Having thus mocked and made sport of him, and having sacrificed to the goddess beneath the closed temple, he led his army away to Phlius; from there he drove out the men guarding Oligyrtus and came down to Orchomenus, having instilled not only in his own citizens confidence and boldness, but also making himself seem to his enemies a man fit to command and worthy of great affairs,
for that a man setting out from a single city should wage war at once against Macedonian might, the combined forces of the Peloponnesians, and royal resources, and not merely keep Laconia untouched but also ravage their country and capture such great cities, seemed to be no ordinary display of skill and greatness of spirit.
But the one who first called money the sinews of affairs seems to have said this with an eye chiefly to the business of war. And Demades, when the Athenians once ordered the triremes to be launched and manned but had no money, said, "It is necessary first to knead the dough before baking it." And it is said that old Archidamus too, at the start of the Peloponnesian War, when the allies urged him to fix the contributions, said that war does not feed on a fixed ration.
For just as athletes who have trained their bodies wear down and overpower in time those who are graceful and skilled, so too Antigonus, drawing on great resources for the war, wore down and exhausted Cleomenes, who was scraping together with difficulty pay for his mercenaries and food for his citizens.
since in other respects time was on Cleomenes' side, as troubles at home were rousing Antigonus to leave. For barbarians were cutting off and overrunning Macedonia in his absence, and just then a great army of Illyrians had poured down from the north, and being ravaged by them the Macedonians were sending for Antigonus, and it happened that this letter arrived to him only a little before the battle — had it arrived, he would have departed at once, bidding the Achaeans a long farewell.
But fortune, which decides the greatest of affairs, showed by a hair's breadth such a weight and power in timing that, the battle at Sellasia having taken place and Cleomenes having lost his army and his city, immediately afterward those summoning Antigonus arrived. And this above all made Cleomenes' misfortune more pitiable.
For if he had held back only two days and put off the fight, avoiding battle, he would not have needed to fight at all, but could have come to terms on his own conditions with the Achaeans once the Macedonians had departed. As it was, however, as has been said, because of his lack of money he staked everything on arms and was forced, with twenty thousand men, as Polybius says, to array himself against thirty thousand.
And though he showed himself a wonderful general amid the danger, and his citizens fought with great spirit, and the mercenaries too fought not blamably, he was squeezed out by the manner of arming and the weight of the hoplite phalanx of his enemies. Phylarchus says that a betrayal too occurred which did the most to undo Cleomenes' cause.
For when Antigonus ordered the Illyrians and Acarnanians to circle around secretly and encircle the other wing, on which Eucleidas, Cleomenes' brother, was stationed, and then drew up the rest of his forces for battle, Cleomenes, watching from a lookout point, and seeing nowhere the arms of the Illyrians and Acarnanians, grew afraid that Antigonus had used them for some such purpose.
Calling Damoteles, the man in charge of the secret service, he ordered him to look and find out how matters stood at the rear and around the flanks of the battle line. Damoteles — who had, it is said, already been corrupted with money by Antigonus into carelessness — told him that those matters were fine, and that he should attend to the enemy closing from the front and repel them; and Cleomenes, trusting this, advanced against Antigonus,
and with the charge of the Spartans around him he pushed back the phalanx of the Macedonians, driving and overpowering them as they retreated for about five stadia, and he pursued. Then, when Eucleidas' men were encircled from the other wing, he stopped, and seeing the danger, said, "You are gone, my dearest brother," he said, "you are gone — noble as you were, and admired by the boys of Sparta and sung of by its women."
With Eucleidas' men thus destroyed, and the enemy from that quarter, now victorious, bearing down upon him, seeing his soldiers thrown into confusion and no longer daring to hold their ground, he saved himself; but they say that many of the mercenaries died too, and all the Lacedaemonians except two hundred, out of six thousand.
When he arrived in the city, he urged those citizens who met him to receive Antigonus, while he himself said he would do whatever, whether he lived or died, would be of benefit to Sparta. Seeing the women running out to those who had fled with him, taking their weapons and bringing them drink,
he himself went into his own house; and when the girl he kept — a freeborn woman from Megalopolis whom he had taken up after his wife's death — came forward, as was her custom, wishing to attend to him now that he had come from the campaign, he neither, though parched with thirst, would drink, nor, though exhausted, would sit down, but just as he happened to be, still in his breastplate, leaning his hand sideways against one of the columns and resting his face upon his forearm,
and after resting his body thus for no long time, and running through in his mind all his calculations, he set out with his friends for Gythium. And from there, boarding ships that had been prepared for this very purpose, they put out to sea.
Antigonus, having taken the city by storm, and having treated the Lacedaemonians humanely, and neither disgracing nor insulting the dignity of Sparta, but restoring its laws and constitution and sacrificing to the gods, withdrew on the third day, on receiving word that a major war had broken out in Macedonia and that barbarians were laying waste to the land; and by now, too, his illness had taken hold of him, having turned into a severe consumption with a violent catarrh.
He did not, however, give up, but held out through his own country's struggles long enough to die more gloriously, with the greatest victory and the greatest slaughter of the barbarians — as is likely, and as Phylarchus and his school say, having ruptured his body by the very shouting during the battle; and it was said in the schools that, shouting after the victory out of joy, "O glorious day," he brought up a great quantity of blood, and after a violent fever, died. Such were the affairs concerning Antigonus.
Cleomenes, sailing from Cythera to another island, Aegialia, put in there. From there, as he was about to cross over to Cyrene, one of his friends, named Therycion, a man who had always carried himself with great pride in action and had always been lofty and boastful in speech, came to him privately and said, "We let slip, O king, the most beautiful death, the one in battle.
And yet all heard us say that Antigonus would never step over the king of the Spartans except as a corpse. But the second in reputation and valor is still present with us now. Where are we sailing to so senselessly, fleeing an evil that is near and pursuing one far off? For if it is not shameful for the descendants of Heracles to be slaves to the descendants of Philip and Alexander, we will gain a great deal of sailing by handing ourselves over to Antigonus, who is likely to differ from Ptolemy as much as Macedonians differ from Egyptians,
but if we do not think it fitting to be ruled by those who have conquered us in arms, why do we make ourselves subject to one who has not even defeated us, so that we may appear worse than before by two masters instead of one — fleeing Antigonus while flattering Ptolemy? Or shall we say we have come to Egypt because of your mother? A fine and enviable spectacle you would make for her, displaying to Ptolemy's women her son as a captive and a fugitive instead of a king.
Should we not, while we still command our own swords and can look upon Laconia, free ourselves right here from fortune and give an account to those lying at Sellasia on behalf of Sparta, rather than sit in Egypt asking what satrap Antigonus has left in charge of Lacedaemon?" When Therycion had said such things, Cleomenes answered, "You pursue, wretch, the easiest of human things, ready at hand for all — dying — and think yourself brave, while fleeing a more shameful flight than the earlier one.
For even men better than us have already yielded to enemies, either stumbling by fortune or overpowered by numbers; but the one who gives up in the face of hardships and toils, or the blame and opinions of men, is defeated by his own softness. For a self-chosen death must not be a flight from action, but an action in itself. For it is shameful to live for oneself alone, and shameful too to die for oneself alone — which is what you are now urging us to, hastening to escape our present troubles while accomplishing nothing noble or useful in the process,
whereas I think that both you and I ought not to abandon our hopes on behalf of our fatherland; but wherever those hopes abandon us, it will be easy enough for us to die whenever we wish." To this Therycion made no reply, but at the first opportunity he had to leave Cleomenes' side, he turned aside along the shore and killed himself.
Cleomenes, putting out from the Aegialiae, made for Libya, and being escorted through the king's territory arrived at Alexandria. Being seen by Ptolemy, at first he met with a general kindliness and moderation from him; but when, upon giving proof of his judgment, he showed himself to be a sensible man, and the Laconic plainness of his daily conversation had a free and gracious charm, and he in no way disgraced his noble birth nor bent beneath fortune, he appeared more persuasive than those who spoke for the sake of pleasure and flattery,
much shame and regret possessed Ptolemy for having neglected such a man and abandoned him to Antigonus, who had thereby gained such reputation and power besides; and, restoring him with honors and kindness, he encouraged Cleomenes with the promise that he would send him to Greece with ships and money and restore him to his kingdom.
He also gave him an allowance of twenty-four talents each year, from which Cleomenes, managing himself and his friends frugally and moderately, spent most of it on acts of kindness and gifts to those who had been driven out of Greece into Egypt.
Now the elder Ptolemy died before he could carry out the sending of Cleomenes; and as the kingdom immediately fell into much licentiousness and drunkenness and rule by women, Cleomenes' affairs too were neglected,
for the king himself was so corrupted in soul by women and drink that, whenever he happened to be most sober and most serious about himself, he would perform mystic rites and go about the palace holding a tambourine, while the greatest affairs of the kingdom were managed by Agathoclea, the king's mistress, and her mother, and the procuress Oenanthe.
Yet even so it seemed at the start that there had been some use for Cleomenes as well. For Ptolemy, fearing his brother Magas, who was powerful in the army through his mother, took Cleomenes into his confidence and let him share in the secret councils, since he was planning to do away with his brother. Cleomenes, though everyone else urged this course, alone spoke against it, saying that it would be better, if it were possible, for the king to have more brothers born to him, for the safety and permanence of his affairs.
When Sosibius, who had the greatest influence among the king's friends, said that the loyalty of the mercenaries could not be relied upon while Magas lived, Cleomenes told him not to worry on that account: for more than three thousand of the foreign soldiers were Peloponnesians devoted to him, and if he merely gave a nod they would eagerly appear under arms on his side.
This remark, at the time, gave Cleomenes no small measure both of credit for goodwill and reputation for power; but later, as Ptolemy's ill health increased his timidity, and as—according to his habit of having no judgment at all—being afraid of everything and distrusting everyone seemed to him the safest course, it made Cleomenes an object of fear to the courtiers, as a man of strength among the foreign troops.
And one could hear many saying, "This lion is prowling among these sheep." For indeed such a character he showed among the royal court, watching quietly and keeping an eye on what was going on.
So then he asked for ships and an army, and was refused; but when word reached him of Antigonus's death, of the Achaeans being locked in conflict with the Aetolians, and of home affairs yearning for him and summoning his return, since the Peloponnese had fallen into turmoil and division, he asked to be sent off alone with his friends, but he could persuade no one,
since the king would not listen at all, but kept himself occupied among women and revels and drinking-parties, while Sosibius, who stood at the head of everything and took the decisions, considered that Cleomenes, if he remained against his will, would be hard to manage and dangerous, but that if he were let go, he would be a bold man, one prone to great undertakings, who had become a spectator of the sickness of the kingdom.
For not even the gifts calmed him, but just as Apis, though living amid abundance and seeming to enjoy luxury, still feels a longing for his natural way of life, for unrestrained runnings and leapings, and plainly chafes at his confinement in the hands of the priests, so nothing soft pleased Cleomenes, but his heart pined away, like Achilles', as he remained there, and he longed for the war-cry and for war.
While matters concerning him stood thus, Nicagoras the Messenian arrived in Alexandria, a man who hated Cleomenes but pretended to be his friend; he had once sold him a fine piece of land, and, it seems, owing to preoccupation with wars, had not received the money. Seeing him then disembarking from his merchant ship—for Cleomenes happened to be walking on the mole of the harbor—he greeted him warmly and inquired what errand had brought him to Egypt.
When Nicagoras returned the greeting cordially and said he was bringing fine war-horses for the king, Cleomenes laughed and said, "I would rather you had come bringing harp-girls and catamites; for these are what the king is most eager for now." Nicagoras smiled at the time, but a few days later, reminding Cleomenes of the piece of land, he now asked to be paid the price, saying he would not have troubled him except that he had suffered some loss in the disposal of his cargo.
When Cleomenes said that he had nothing left over from what had been given him, Nicagoras, offended, carried Cleomenes' jest to Sosibius, who was glad to receive this too, but, seeking a greater ground on which to provoke the king, persuaded Nicagoras to write a letter against Cleomenes and leave it behind, to the effect that he had planned, if he obtained triremes and soldiers from him, to seize Cyrene.
So Nicagoras wrote this and sailed away; and Sosibius, four days later, brought the letter to Ptolemy as though it had just been delivered to him, and provoked the young man's anger, and it was decided to bring Cleomenes into a large house, and, while providing him with the same manner of living as before, to shut off his ways out.
Now this too was distressing to Cleomenes, but he came to hold still worse hopes for the future because of the following chance event. Ptolemy the son of Chrysermus, a friend of the king, had always spoken to Cleomenes on fair terms, and there existed between them a certain familiarity and frankness of speech with one another,
This man, then, when Cleomenes begged him to come to him, came and spoke moderately, removing his suspicion and making excuses on the king's behalf; but as he was leaving the house again, not noticing that Cleomenes was following behind him as far as the doors, he bitterly rebuked the guards for keeping so great and hard-to-guard a beast so carelessly and negligently.
Cleomenes, having heard this himself, withdrew before Ptolemy noticed, and told his friends. At once, then, all of them, casting aside the hopes they had previously held, resolved in anger to avenge Ptolemy's wrongdoing and to die in a manner worthy of Sparta for the outrage done them, rather than wait to be slaughtered like fattened victims: for it would be terrible,
if Cleomenes, who had scorned to make terms with Antigonus, a warlike and energetic man, should now sit waiting for the leisure of a begging-priest of a king, until he should first put away his tambourine and bring his revel-band to a halt, before he put him to death.
When this had been resolved, and by chance Ptolemy had set out for Canopus, first they spread a rumor that he was to be released from custody; then, since it was a certain royal custom for those about to be freed from confinement to be sent a dinner and gifts of hospitality, his friends prepared many such things and sent them in from outside, deceiving the guards into thinking they had been sent by the king.
For indeed Cleomenes made sacrifice and shared these things generously with them, and putting on garlands and reclining he feasted with his friends. The story goes that he launched the deed earlier than planned, because he learned that one of the servants who knew of the plot had slipped out to sleep with a woman he loved. And fearing an informer, since it was midday and he perceived that the guards were asleep from drink, he put on his tunic, loosened the seam from the right shoulder, and burst out with his friends, sword in hand, all similarly equipped, thirteen in number,
Hippitas, being lame, rushed out eagerly with the first onset, but when he saw that they were moving too slowly on his account, he ordered them to kill him and not ruin the undertaking by waiting for a useless man. It happened that one of the Alexandrians was leading a horse past the doors; taking this from him and setting Hippitas upon it, they rushed at a run through the narrow streets, calling on the crowd to join the cause of freedom.
But the people, it seems, had just enough spirit to praise and admire the daring of Cleomenes, but no one dared to follow and help. So then, three of them, falling at once upon Ptolemy the son of Chrysermus as he came out of the court, killed him; and when another Ptolemy, the guardian of the city, drove toward them in his chariot, they rushed to meet him, scattered his attendants and spearmen, and, dragging him down from the chariot, killed him.
Then they made for the citadel, intending to break open the prison and make use of the multitude of those in bonds. But the guards got ahead of them and barricaded it well, so that Cleomenes, repulsed also in this attempt, wandered about distracted through the city, no one joining him, but all fleeing and afraid,
So then, giving up, he said to his friends, "It was no wonder, then, that women should rule over men who flee from freedom," and he called on them all to die in a manner worthy of himself and of what they had done. And first Hippitas, at his own request, was struck down by one of the younger men; then each of the others, easily and fearlessly, killed himself, except Panteus, the first man to have taken Megalopolis.
Him the king, since he had been the handsomest in his prime and the most naturally gifted of the young men for training, and had been his beloved, had ordered to wait, once he saw him and the others fallen, to die in that way. And now that all lay there, Panteus went about, touching each with his little sword, testing whether anyone might be lying hidden still alive. And when he pricked Cleomenes near the ankle and saw his face contract, he kissed him, then sat down beside him; and when he was dead, he embraced the corpse and slew himself upon it.
Cleomenes, then, having reigned over Sparta for sixteen years, and having become such a man, met his end in this way. When the report had spread through the whole city, Cratesicleia, though she was a noble woman, gave up her composure before the magnitude of the disaster, and, embracing Cleomenes' children, wailed aloud.
But the elder of the children, in a way no one would have expected, leapt from the roof headfirst, and though badly hurt he did not die, but was picked up crying out and angry at being prevented from dying. And Ptolemy, when he learned of this, ordered that the body of Cleomenes be flayed and hung up, and that the children and their mother and the women around her be put to death,
among whom was also the wife of Panteus, most beautiful and most noble in appearance. Their fortunes had befallen them while they were still newly married and at the height of their love; when Panteus was about to sail off, her parents at first would not allow her to go with him, wishing to sail with him, but shut her up by force
and kept guard over her; but a little later, having procured for herself a horse and a small amount of gold, she escaped by night, and, riding hard to Taenarum, from there boarded a ship sailing to Egypt; and she was brought to her husband and shared with him his life in a foreign land, without sorrow and cheerfully. It was she who then, as Cratesicleia was being led out by the soldiers, took her by the hand, holding up her robe and encouraging her not to be terrified of death, she who was herself not dismayed, but asked only one thing, to die before the children.
When they came to the place where the executioners were accustomed to carry out such things, first, with Cratesicleia looking on, they slaughtered the children; then they killed her, who, amid such great sufferings, uttered only this one thing: "O children, where have you gone?" But the wife of Panteus, girding up her garment, being strong and tall, tended to each of the dying women in silence and with quiet composure, and arranged their bodies as best she could.
Finally, after all the rest, having arranged herself, and drawing down her garment, and allowing no one to come near or see her except the man appointed for the slaughter, she died heroically, asking no one to arrange or cover her after her death. So did the orderliness of her soul remain with her even in death, and she preserved to the end the guard she had set about her body while alive.
So Lacedaemon, having contended on equal terms in this drama of women against that of men, showed in its last extremities that valor could not be outraged by fortune. A few days later those who were keeping watch over the impaled body of Cleomenes saw a great serpent coiled about his head and hiding his face, so that no carrion bird could fly upon it.
Because of this, superstition and fear fell upon the king, giving occasion for other rites of purification among the women, on the ground that a man beloved of the gods and greater than human nature had been put to death. And the Alexandrians even took to visiting the spot, addressing Cleomenes as a hero and child of the gods, until the wiser among them put a stop to it,
explaining that just as bees are born from decaying oxen, and wasps from horses, and beetles are engendered when donkeys undergo the same process, so human bodies, when the fluids about the marrow gather and combine within themselves in a certain flow, give rise to serpents. And observing this, the ancients above all other creatures associated the serpent with heroes.

======== Tiberius Gracchus ========

We, having given our first account, have no lesser sufferings than these to observe in the Roman pairing, when we set the life of Tiberius and Gaius alongside it. These men were sons of Tiberius Gracchus, who, having become censor of the Romans and having twice held the consulship and having celebrated two triumphs, had a dignity more splendid still from his virtue than from these honors.
For this reason too he was thought worthy to take Cornelia, daughter of Scipio who had defeated Hannibal, after that man's death, though he had not been his friend but had actually been at odds with him. And it is said that once a pair of snakes was caught on his bed, and that the seers, examining the portent, would not allow him to kill or release both, but drew a distinction concerning one of the two, holding that if the male were killed and removed it would bring death to Tiberius, but if the female, to Cornelia.
So Tiberius, both loving his wife and thinking it more fitting that he, being the elder, should die while she was still young, killed the male of the snakes and let the female go; and then, not long after, he himself died, leaving twelve children born to him by Cornelia.
Cornelia, taking up the children and the household, showed herself so prudent, so devoted to her children, and so magnanimous, that Tiberius did not seem to have chosen badly in choosing to die rather than such a wife; she indeed even refused the courtship of King Ptolemy, who offered to share his crown with her in marriage,
and while widowed she lost her other children, yet a daughter survived who was wed to the younger Scipio, along with the pair of sons, Tiberius and Gaius, about whom this account is written, and she raised them with such devotion that, though acknowledged to be the best-endowed by nature of all the Romans, they seemed to owe their virtue more to their upbringing than to their nature.
But since, just as the likeness of the Dioscuri as they are molded and painted has some difference in form between the boxer and the runner, so among those young men, amid a great resemblance in courage and self-control, and further in generosity and eloquence and greatness of soul, there blossomed forth and became visible great dissimilarities in their deeds and in their political conduct, it seems to me not amiss to set these forth first.
In the first place, then, in the look of his face and in his glance and movement Tiberius was gentle and composed, while Gaius was intense and vehement, so that even in public speaking the one stood in a single spot in an orderly manner, while the other, first among the Romans, used to walk about upon the platform and pull the toga from his shoulder as he spoke, just as it is recorded that Cleon the Athenian was the first of public speakers to pull back his cloak and slap his thigh.
Further, Gaius's speech was fearsome and full of passion, given to exaggeration, while Tiberius's was more pleasant and better suited to arousing pity; in diction the latter was pure and worked out with precision, while Gaius's was persuasive and highly wrought. So too in mode of life and at table Tiberius was simple and unaffected, while Gaius, though temperate and severe in comparison with others, was in his rivalry with his brother given to novelty and fastidiousness, as
those around Drusus proved, when they showed that he had bought silver dolphins at a price of one thousand two hundred fifty drachmas per pound; and in character, corresponding to the difference in their speech, the one was mild and gentle, the other harsh and passionate, so that often, carried away against his own judgment while speaking, through anger he would sharpen his voice, and utter abuse, and throw his speech into confusion.
For this reason he made use, as a remedy for this deviation, of Licinnius, a servant not without sense, who had a pitch-instrument, with which they raise the tones of the voice; standing behind Gaius as he spoke, whenever he perceived him growing harsh in voice and breaking off through anger, he would sound a soft note, at which Gaius would immediately relax the intensity, both of his passion and of his voice, and would grow gentle and become easy to recall to himself.
Such, then, were the differences between them; but in valor against enemies, in justice toward their subjects, in diligence in office, and in self-control regarding pleasures, they were exactly alike. Tiberius was older by nine years; and this made the political career of each fall in a different period and did no small harm to their actions, since their powers did not flourish together nor combine into one, which, had it come from both at once, would have become great and unsurpassable. One must, then, speak of each separately, and first of the elder.
He, then, straightway from boyhood was so renowned that he was thought worthy of the priesthood of the augurs, so called, on account of his virtue rather than his noble birth. This was made clear by Appius Claudius, a man of consular and censorial rank, and enrolled first according to the dignity of the Roman senate, and far surpassing his contemporaries in pride of spirit. For when the priests were feasting together in the same place, he greeted Tiberius and treated him with great friendliness, and himself proposed a marriage for him with his daughter.
When Tiberius gladly accepted, and the agreement was thus made, Appius, going into his own house, straightway from the doorway called out to his wife in a loud voice, crying, "O Antistia, I have betrothed our Claudia to a husband." And she, astonished, said, "What is the haste, or what the speed? Unless indeed you have found Tiberius Gracchus for her as bridegroom."
I am not unaware that some refer this story to the father of the Gracchi, Tiberius, and to Scipio Africanus; but the majority, as we write it, record it thus: Polybius states that once Scipio Africanus had died, his kinsmen judged Tiberius to be the best man of all and gave Cornelia to him in marriage, since she had been left by her father unbetrothed and unengaged.
The younger Tiberius, then, serving in the campaign in Libya together with the second Scipio, who had his sister as wife, sharing quarters with the general under the same tent, quickly came to understand his nature, which brought forth many great examples for the emulation and imitation of virtue in action, and quickly became first among all the young men in discipline and courage;
and indeed he was the first to mount the wall of the enemy, as Fannius says, who himself claims to have mounted with Tiberius and to have shared in that feat of valor. He also, while present, had great goodwill in the camp, and left behind him longing for himself when he departed.
After that campaign, having been elected quaestor, he was allotted to serve with the consul Gaius Mancinus against the Numantines, a man not wicked, but the most ill-fated of Roman generals; wherefore all the more, amid irrational turns of fortune and adverse circumstances, there shone forth in Tiberius not only his intelligence and courage, but, what was remarkable, also great reverence and honor toward his commander, who under his misfortunes scarcely recognized himself as general anymore,
since he had suffered defeat in a string of major engagements, he tried under cover of darkness to pull back and abandon the camp; but the Numantines noticed, seized the camp at once, fell on the fleeing men and cut down those at the rear, hemming in the whole army and forcing it into rough terrain with no way out; Mancinus, despairing of safety by force, sent heralds to treat of a truce and settlement with them:
but they said they trusted no one except Tiberius alone, and bade him be sent to them; and this trust had grown up because of the young man's own reputation, since word of him circulated widely among the soldiers, and they recalled his father Tiberius, who, having warred against the Iberians and subdued many, made peace with the Numantines, and always kept the people faithful in maintaining it, rightly and justly.
So Tiberius, being sent, and meeting with the men, and persuading them in some matters, and yielding in others, concluded a truce, and thereby manifestly saved twenty thousand Roman citizens, apart from the camp servants and those following outside the ranks.
But all the money taken in the camp the Numantines seized and plundered. Among these were also Tiberius's writing-tablets, containing records and accounts of his quaestorship, which, being anxious to recover, since the army had already advanced on, he turned back to the city, having with him three or four
companions; and calling out the magistrates of the Numantines, he asked to have the tablets returned, so that he might not give his enemies an occasion for slander through being unable to render account of his transactions. The Numantines, glad of this pretext arising from his need, urged him to come inside their city; and while he stood there weighing what to do, they came up close, took hold of his hands, and pleaded earnestly that he no longer regard them as enemies but treat them as friends and place his trust in them.
So it seemed good to Tiberius to do this, since he was anxious about the tablets and feared to provoke the Numantines by seeming to distrust them. Upon entering the city, they first set a meal before him, and made every entreaty that he would eat something in common seated with them; then they gave back the tablets, and bade him take whatever else of their goods he wished. But he took nothing except the frankincense which he used for the public sacrifices, and departed, having embraced and shown friendship to the men.
When he returned to Rome, the whole affair was blamed and denounced as shameful and disgraceful to Rome; but the relatives and friends of the soldiers, being a great part of the people, ran together to Tiberius, attributing the shameful parts of what had happened to the commander, but saying that so many citizens were saved on his account.
Those who took a dim view of the settlement, however, called for imitating the example set by earlier generations; for those men too had thrown naked to the enemy the very generals who had been glad to be released by the Samnites, and had likewise cast forward those who had touched and taken part in the truce, such as quaestors and tribunes, turning upon them the perjury and the dissolution of what had been agreed.
It was then above all that the people displayed their goodwill and zeal toward Tiberius. For they voted that the consul be handed over naked and bound to the Numantines, but spared all the others on account of Tiberius. Scipio too, it seems, gave assistance, being then greatest and most powerful of the Romans; but nonetheless he was blamed for not having saved Mancinus, nor having been eager that the truce made through Tiberius, a man related to him and his friend, be kept firm for the Numantines.
But it seems that the greater part of this disagreement arose from ambition, and from the friends and sophists who were egging Tiberius on; yet this quarrel fell into nothing incurable or base. It seems to me that Tiberius would in no way have fallen into what he suffered, if Scipio Africanus had been present in his political affairs; but as it was, that man being already at Numantia and at war, Tiberius took up the political business concerning the laws, from the following cause.
The Romans, of whatever land of their neighbors they cut off by war, sold part, and made part public land, giving it to be worked by the propertyless and poor among the citizens, who paid a not-large rent into the treasury.
But when the rich began to outbid for these rents and to drive out the poor, a law was written not allowing anyone to hold more than five hundred plethra of land; and for a short time this written law checked their greed, and helped the poor, who remained in their place upon the leased lands and worked the portion each had held from the beginning.
But later the neighboring rich men, transferring the leases to themselves through fictitious persons, and at last openly holding most of it in their own names, the poor, having been driven out, no longer offered themselves eagerly for military service, and neglected the raising of children, so that soon all Italy came to feel a scarcity of free men, and to be filled instead with barbarian slave-pens, through which the rich farmed their estates, having driven out the citizens.
Gaius Laelius, the companion of Scipio, undertook the correction of this; but when the powerful men opposed him, fearing the disturbance he desisted, and was called wise, or prudent — for the word "sapiens" seemed to signify either. But Tiberius, having been elected tribune of the people, straightway set out upon this very undertaking, as most say, spurred on by the rhetorician Diophanes and the philosopher Blossius,
of whom Diophanes was an exile from Mytilene, and the other was from Cumae in Italy itself, having become in the city an intimate of Antipater of Tarsus and honored by him with dedications of philosophical writings; and some also point to his mother Cornelia, who is said to have repeatedly reproached her sons that Rome still spoke of her as Scipio's mother-in-law, and had not yet begun calling her mother of the Gracchi.
Others say that a certain Spurius Postumius was responsible, a contemporary of Tiberius's and his rival in reputation for pleading cases, whom, upon returning from the army, he found far surpassed in reputation and influence and admired, and wished, it seems, to outdo by laying hold of a hazardous political measure carrying great expectation.
His brother Gaius has written in a certain book that Tiberius, traveling to Numantia through Tyrrhenia, and seeing the desolation of the land and the farmers or herdsmen there who were imported slaves and foreigners, first then conceived the policy that would begin countless evils for them. But it was the people themselves who kindled most of the impulse and ambition in him, calling on him through writings inscribed on porticoes and walls and monuments to recover the public land for the poor.
Yet he did not draft the law on his own authority, but used as advisers the citizens foremost in virtue and reputation, among whom was Crassus the high priest, and Mucius Scaevola the jurist, then consul, and Appius Claudius, the father-in-law of Tiberius.
And it seems that no law was ever written more gently or mildly against such great injustice and greed. For those who ought to have paid the penalty for their disobedience, and to have given up with a fine the land they had been enjoying contrary to the laws, he ordered these men only to withdraw, upon receiving compensation, from the land they had unjustly acquired, and to admit into it those citizens who needed help,
But although the correction was so reasonable, the people were content, letting bygones be bygones, only to be free of injustice for the future; while the rich and the propertied, hating the law out of greed and hating the lawgiver out of anger and rivalry, tried to turn the people away from it, claiming that Tiberius was bringing in a redistribution of land to throw the state into confusion, and was stirring up everything.
But they accomplished nothing; for Tiberius, contending for a fine and just cause with a manner of speech able to adorn even lesser matters, was formidable and unanswerable, whenever, with the people crowded around the platform, he stood and spoke concerning the poor — how the wild beasts that range over Italy each have a den and a lair,
and a refuge to retreat to, yet the men who wage war and perish on Italy's behalf possess a portion of nothing except air and sunlight; lacking house and hearth they roam about with wives and children in tow, while their commanders mislead them, urging the troops in the thick of combat to shield ancestral graves and altars from the foe — for not a single one of this great multitude of Romans owns a family altar, nor a family burial-place, but instead they wage war and perish so that others may enjoy luxury and riches, styled rulers of the earth even as they hold not one clod of ground that belongs to them.
These words, descending upon the people — already roused and rising to their feet in sympathy — from a great spirit and genuine passion, none of his opponents could withstand; so, abandoning any attempt to speak against him, they turned instead to Marcus Octavius, one of the tribunes, a young man of grave and orderly character,
and a companion and intimate of Tiberius; for this reason he at first drew back out of respect for him. But when many powerful men begged and pressed him, he was, as it were, forced into opposing Tiberius and blocking the law. Now among the tribunes the power of veto is absolute: the many can accomplish nothing by their wish if a single man stands opposed.
Provoked by this, Tiberius withdrew the humane law and brought forward instead one more pleasing to the many and harsher against wrongdoers, ordering them simply to give up the land they held contrary to the earlier laws.
So there were, one might almost say, daily contests between him and Octavius upon the platform, in which, although they opposed each other with the utmost zeal and rivalry, it is said that neither ever spoke ill of the other, nor did an unseemly word ever fall from either in anger against the other. For it seems that a noble nature and a sound upbringing govern and adorn the mind not only in revelry, but in ambition and anger as well.
But when Tiberius saw that Octavius himself was bound by the law, holding a large portion of the public land, he asked him to let go of his opposition, promising to make good his loss out of his own property, though it was not considerable; and when Octavius would not yield, he issued a decree forbidding all the other magistrates to transact business until the vote on the law had been decided;
and he put his own seals upon the temple of Cronus, so that the quaestors could take nothing from it nor deposit anything in it, and he proclaimed a penalty against any praetors who disobeyed, so that all of them, in fear, gave up the administration proper to each.
At this the wealthy put on mourning attire and moved through the forum looking wretched and downcast, yet all the while they were secretly conspiring against Tiberius and recruiting men to kill him, a fact so openly known that he took to wearing, strapped beneath his clothes, a short bandit's blade called a dolon.
When the day arrived and the people were called to the vote, the water-jars were seized by the rich, and there was great confusion in the proceedings. Nevertheless, since Tiberius's supporters were able to overpower them by numbers and had rallied for this purpose, Manlius and Fulvius, men of consular rank, fell upon Tiberius, taking hold of his hands and weeping, and begged him to stop.
He, aware that what was coming was already close to disaster, and out of respect for the men, asked what they bade him do; they said they were not competent to advise on so grave a matter, but urged and persuaded him to entrust it to the senate. But when the senate, meeting, accomplished nothing, because of the power the rich held in it, he turned to a course neither lawful nor fitting — to remove Octavius from office, having no other means of bringing the law to a vote.
And first he openly begged him, addressing kindly words to him and taking his hands, to yield and grant a favor to the people, who asked what was just and would receive only a small return for great toils and dangers. But when Octavius rejected the appeal, Tiberius declared that two officeholders of equal power could not, once divided over matters of such weight, continue on without open conflict, and that as he viewed it there existed just a single cure for the situation: that one of the two step down from his post,
and he bade Octavius himself put to the people first the vote concerning himself, saying that he would at once step down and become a private citizen, if the citizens so decided. But when Octavius was unwilling, Tiberius said he himself would put the vote concerning him, unless he changed his mind upon reflection.
For that time he dismissed the assembly on these terms; but on the next day, when the people had assembled again, he mounted the platform once more and tried to persuade Octavius; but since he was unpersuadable, he brought in a law depriving him of his tribunate, and at once called on the citizens to cast their vote,
there being thirty-five tribes; and when seventeen had already cast their vote, and with one more added Octavius would have to become a private citizen, Tiberius ordered a halt and again pleaded with Octavius, embracing him in sight of the people and kissing him, begging earnestly that he neither allow himself to be dishonored nor bring upon Octavius the blame for so harsh and grim a measure.
They say that Octavius did not listen to these entreaties wholly unmoved or unyielding, but that his eyes filled with tears, and he was silent for a long time; yet when he looked toward the rich and the propertied men standing together, out of shame, it seems, and fear of the disgrace among them, he endured every hazard with no want of nobility, and bade Tiberius do what he wished.
So once the law had passed in this way, Tiberius directed a freedman of his to haul Octavius bodily off the platform; since it was his own freedmen he employed as attendants, the spectacle of Octavius being hauled off in humiliation seemed all the more wretched to behold.
The people rushed upon him, and when the rich men ran together and held out their hands to protect him, Octavius was with difficulty saved, snatched away and escaping the crowd; but a loyal slave of his, who had stationed himself in front to shield him, lost his eyesight in the struggle — something Tiberius did not want, and when he realized what was going on he hurried down to the commotion as fast as he could.
After this the law concerning the land was ratified, and three commissioners were appointed to handle the division and distribution of land: Tiberius, Appius Claudius (his father-in-law), and his brother Gaius Gracchus, who was absent at the time, then on campaign with Scipio near Numantia.
Tiberius carried these measures through in quiet, with no one opposing him, and moreover set up as tribune in Octavius's place, not one of the prominent men, but a certain Mucius, his own client; the powerful men, displeased at all this and fearing the growth of Tiberius's power, insulted him in the senate at every turn — when he asked, as was customary, for a tent at public expense,
so that he might have shelter while distributing the land, they refused to give it, though others had often received one for lesser needs, and they fixed his daily allowance at nine obols, on the motion of Publius Nasica, who had given himself over unsparingly to his hatred of Tiberius; for he possessed a very great deal of public land, and bore it ill to be compelled to give it up.
The people grew even more inflamed after one of Tiberius's friends died without warning and his body showed ominous marks; declaring that poison had killed him, they ran together to the funeral and lifted up the bier and stood by him as he was buried, not thinking it an unreasonable suspicion, poisoning.
For the corpse burst open and a quantity of corrupted fluids poured out, so that it extinguished the flame; and though they brought other wood again, it would not burn until the body had been carried to another place, and only with much labor did the fire at last catch upon it. Stirred further by this, Tiberius worked the crowd up even more, put on mourning dress, and, presenting his children before them, pleaded with the people to look after them and their mother, as though he no longer expected to survive himself.
When Attalus Philometor died, Eudemus of Pergamum brought a will in which the Roman people was named heir to the kingdom; immediately Tiberius, currying favor with the people, put forward a law providing that the king's treasure, once transported to Rome, be distributed among those citizens receiving land grants, so they could equip themselves and afford the tools of farming.
As for the cities that had belonged to Attalus's kingdom, he said it was not proper for the senate to deliberate about them at all, but that he himself would lay a proposal before the people. By this above all he gave offense to the senate; and Pompeius stood up and said that, being a neighbor of Tiberius, he was aware that Eudemus of Pergamum had given him a king's diadem along with a purple robe, as though he were being groomed to reign one day over Rome,
and Quintus Metellus reproached Tiberius, saying that when his father held the censorship, as often as he returned home after dinner the citizens used to put out their lamps, fearing they might seem to have spent too much time in feasting and drinking parties, whereas to this man the boldest and neediest of the common people carried torches at night;
and Titus Annius, a man neither decent nor sober, but thought unanswerable in speech in question and answer, challenged Tiberius to a formal contest, declaring that he had indeed dishonored his fellow magistrate, who was sacred and inviolable by the laws. When many raised an uproar, Tiberius leapt up, called the people together, and, ordering Annius to be brought before them, wished to accuse him.
But Annius, far inferior in both eloquence and reputation, took refuge in his own cleverness, and asked to be allowed to put a small question before Tiberius spoke. When Tiberius agreed to let him ask, and silence fell, Annius said, "If you wish to dishonor and insult me, and I call upon one of your fellow tribunes to help me, and he rises to help, and you grow angry — will you then take away his office too?"
At this question Tiberius, they say, was thrown into such perplexity that, though of all men the readiest in speech and the boldest in confidence, he fell silent.
Then he dismissed the assembly. But perceiving that the political actions taken against Octavius had roused not only the powerful but also the common people to unusual passion — for it seemed a great and noble thing, the dignity of the tribunes, preserved down to that very day, now to have been abolished and outraged — he delivered a speech to the people, from which it is not out of place to set out a few of his arguments, so that the persuasiveness and density of the man's reasoning may be understood.
For he said that the tribune is sacred and inviolable, because he is consecrated to the people and stands at the head of the people. If, then, he turns against the people and does them wrong, and cuts short their power and takes away their right to vote, he has by his own act deprived himself
of the honor for which he received it, since he is no longer doing the things for which it was given. For if it were necessary, one would allow even a tribune who tore down the Capitol and set fire to the dockyard — and in doing these things he would be a wicked tribune, yet still a tribune; but should he turn against the popular will, then he ceases to be a tribune whatsoever. How then is it not monstrous that a tribune should be able to lead a consul off to prison, and yet the people should not be able to take away the tribune's power when he uses it against the very one who gave it to him? For the people choose the consul and the tribune alike.
And indeed kingship, in addition to holding every kind of authority within itself, is also consecrated to the divine by the greatest sacred rites — yet the city expelled Tarquin when he did wrong, and because of the outrage of one man that ancestral rule, which had even founded Rome, was overthrown. And what is so holy and revered in Rome as the virgins who tend and guard the undying fire? Yet if one of them should sin, she is buried alive; for by committing impiety against the gods they no longer keep that inviolability which they hold on account of the gods.
So neither is a tribune who wrongs the people entitled to keep the inviolability which exists on the people's account; for the very power by which he is strong, that same power he destroys. And indeed, if he received the tribunate justly, by the vote of most of the tribes, how would it not be still more just for him to be removed from it when all the tribes vote against him?
Nothing is so sacred and inviolable as offerings dedicated to the gods; yet no one has ever prevented the people from using these, moving them, and transferring them as it wishes. It was therefore permitted to the people to transfer the tribunate too, like a dedicated offering, to another man. And that the office is neither inviolable nor irremovable is clear from the fact that men holding office have often, of their own accord, sworn themselves out of it and resigned it.
Such, then, were the main points of Tiberius's defense. But since his friends, seeing the threats and the conspiracy forming against him, thought he ought to secure another tribunate for the year to come, he again won over the multitude with further laws, cutting down the length of military service, granting the people the right to appeal from the judges, and mixing into the panel of judges — who were then drawn from the senators — an equal number from the equestrian order,
and in every way now curtailing the power of the senate, moved more by anger and rivalry than by any reckoning of justice and advantage. When, as the voting proceeded, they perceived that their opponents were prevailing — for not all of the people were present — first they turned to abusing their fellow magistrates and dragged out the time, and then they dismissed the assembly, ordering it to reconvene the next day.
And first Tiberius went down into the forum and begged the people, humble and in tears; then, saying that he feared his enemies might force their way into his home after dark to murder him, he moved the people so much that a great many of them camped around his house and kept watch there through the night.
At daybreak the man who kept the birds by which they took the auspices arrived, and threw out food for them. But they would not come forward, except one only, and even that one only when the man shook the cage hard; and even this one did not touch the food, but raising its left wing and stretching out its leg, it retreated once more into the cage. This incident brought to Tiberius's mind a previous omen as well.
For he had a helmet which he used in battle, splendidly adorned and conspicuous; into this snakes had crept unnoticed and laid eggs, and the eggs had hatched there. Because of this, Tiberius grew even more troubled by what had happened with the birds. Nevertheless he went out, on learning that the people were gathering above, around the Capitol.
And before he went out he stumbled against the threshold, so violent a blow that the nail of his big toe was split, and the blood showed through his sandal. When he had gone forward a little way, crows were seen fighting above a roof-tile on his left; and though, as would be expected, many bystanders happened to be nearby, a rock knocked loose by one of the crows landed right next to Tiberius's foot. This made even the boldest of those around
him stop short. But Blossius of Cumae, who happened to be there, declared it would bring great shame and disgrace if Tiberius — son of Gracchus, grandson of Scipio Africanus, and champion of the Roman people — should, out of fear of a crow, fail to answer the citizens' summons; and that this disgrace would not be met with laughter from his enemies, but would rather be shouted out against him before the people as proof that he was already acting the tyrant and living in luxury.
At the same time many came running to Tiberius from his friends on the Capitol, urging him to hurry, since things there were going well; and at first, indeed, his arrival was met splendidly — as soon as he appeared they raised a friendly shout, and as he climbed up they received him eagerly, and formed ranks around him so that no stranger might come near.
But when Mucius began again to call the tribes to vote, nothing of the usual order could be carried through, because of an uproar arising from those at the outer edge, some pushing and others being pushed as their opponents forced their way in and mixed among them. Meanwhile Fulvius Flaccus, a man of senatorial rank, stood forth in plain view, and since he could not make himself heard by shouting, signaled with his hand that he wished to say something privately to Tiberius.
And when Tiberius ordered the crowd to make way, Fulvius climbed up with difficulty, came to him, and reported that the senate was in session, and that the rich, unable to persuade the consul, were themselves planning to kill Tiberius on their own authority, and had armed for this purpose a great number of slaves and friends.
When Tiberius announced this to those around him, they immediately hitched up their togas, and, tearing apart the staves the attendants use to hold back the crowd, they divided the pieces among themselves so as to defend against the attackers with the broken fragments.
Those farther off, wondering at what was happening and asking what it meant, Tiberius touched his head with his hand, signaling by this gesture the danger he was in, since his voice could not reach them over the noise. Yet his adversaries, seeing this, ran to the senate and reported that Tiberius was asking for a diadem, and that this was the meaning of his touching his head.
All were thrown into confusion at this; and Nasica demanded that the consul come to the defense of the city and put down the tyrant. When the consul answered mildly that he would use no violence, and would not put any citizen to death without trial, but that if the people, persuaded or forced by Tiberius, should vote for anything unlawful, he would not regard that vote as binding — Nasica leapt up and said, "Since, then, the magistrate betrays the city, let those who wish
to defend the laws follow me." And as he said this he threw the fold of his toga over his head and set off toward the Capitol. Each of those following him wrapped his toga around his arm and shoved aside whoever stood in his way, no one daring to resist men of such standing, but fleeing and trampling one another instead.
Now those in Nasica's party had brought clubs and staves from their own homes; while the men themselves, as the fleeing crowd broke apart the benches, snatched up the broken pieces and the legs, and climbed up toward Tiberius, striking down those posted in front of him; and of these there was rout and slaughter. As for Tiberius himself, as he fled, someone caught hold of his garments.
He let go of his toga and, fleeing in his tunic, stumbled and fell over some of those who had already fallen in front of him. As he was rising, the first man to land an open blow to his skull, using a broken bench-leg, was Publius Satyreius, one of his fellow tribunes; Lucius Rufus boasted that he had delivered the second strike, treating it as some mark of distinction. As for the remainder, upward of three hundred men perished, cut down with clubs and stones, none by the sword.
This, they say, was the first civil strife in Rome, since the kings were overthrown, to be settled by the blood and slaughter of citizens; the others — none of them small, nor over small matters — men had ended by yielding to one another, the powerful out of fear of the many, the people out of reverence for the senate. And even then it seems that Tiberius could have been persuaded to yield without much difficulty, and would have given way still more easily, without bloodshed
and wounds, if his enemies had approached him; for there were no more than three thousand men around him. But it seems that the conspiracy against him arose more from the anger and hatred of the rich than from the pretexts they alleged; and a great proof of this is the savage and lawless outrage done to his corpse — for they did not permit his brother, though he begged for it, to retrieve the corpse and give it burial after dark; instead they cast it into the river together with the other bodies. And this was not the end of it,
but they also banished some of his friends without trial, and seizing others put them to death — among these the orator Diophanes perished. A certain Gaius Villius they shut up in a jar together with vipers and serpents, and so destroyed him. Blossius of Cumae was hauled before the consuls, and upon being questioned about what had happened, admitted that he had done everything at Tiberius's command.
When Nasica put to him the question, "Suppose, then, that Tiberius had directed you to burn down the Capitol?" he answered at first that Tiberius would never have issued such an order; but when several people pressed him repeatedly with the same question, he replied, "But had he given that command, it would have been proper for me to carry it out; for Tiberius would never have ordered such a thing unless it served the people's interest." This man later escaped and went to Aristonicus in Asia, and when Aristonicus's cause was destroyed, he took his own life.
The senate, to court the people's favor given the present situation, no longer opposed the distribution of the land, and proposed that the people choose a new commissioner in place of Tiberius. Taking the vote, they chose Publius Crassus, who was related to Gracchus; for his daughter Licinia was married to Gaius Gracchus.
Yet Cornelius Nepos reports that the woman Gaius married was not Crassus's daughter but rather the daughter of Brutus, who celebrated a triumph over the Lusitanians; but most authorities record it as we have written it. Since the people bore the death of Tiberius badly and were plainly waiting for an opportunity for vengeance, and since lawsuits were already being threatened against Nasica, the senate, fearing for the man, voted — though there was no need for it — to send him to Asia.
For people did not conceal their hostility whenever they met him, but grew savage and shouted abuse wherever they came upon him, calling him accursed and a tyrant, one who had defiled with the blood of murder the most sacred and most awesome of the city's holy things — a body inviolable and sacred. Thus Nasica withdrew secretly from Italy, although he was bound by the greatest sacred offices, for he was the chief and first of the priests; and wandering abroad in disgrace and without honor, not long after he ended his life near Pergamum.
It should come as no surprise that the populace hated Nasica so intensely, when even Scipio Africanus — whom the Romans think no man ever loved more justly or more deeply — very nearly fell from favor and was stripped of the people's goodwill, because, first, on learning of Tiberius's death while at Numantia, he cried out, quoting from Homer, that so may perish anyone else who does such things,
and then, when Gaius and Fulvius questioned him before the assembly as to what he thought about Tiberius's death, he gave an answer that did not please them, being displeased with what Tiberius had done as a politician. Because of this the people shouted him down as he spoke, something that had never happened to him before, and he himself was provoked into speaking ill of the people. These matters, however, have been written out in detail in the Life of Scipio.

======== Caius Gracchus ========

Caius Gracchus, at first, either fearing his enemies or gathering resentment against them, withdrew from the forum and spent his time quietly by himself, like a man who for the present was living in a humble way and meant to go on living so unambitiously for the future, so that he even gave some people occasion to say of him that he disliked and had rejected the political course of Tiberius.
He was also altogether a mere youth, for he was nine years younger than his brother in age, and Tiberius had died before he was even thirty. But as time went on, he gradually revealed a character quite alien to idleness, softness, drinking, and money-making, and by preparing his rhetoric like fledgling wings for public life, he made it clear that he would not remain at rest,
for when he spoke in defense of a friend of his, Vettius, who was on trial, and the people joined in a shared ecstasy of delight and ran riot around him, he showed the other orators to be no different from children, and the powerful men once again fell into fear, and there was much talk among them that they would not allow Caius to advance to the tribunate.
It happened, quite by chance, that he was allotted the quaestorship in Sardinia under the consul Orestes; and while this pleased his enemies, it did not distress Caius. For being a man fond of war and trained no less in campaigns than in lawsuits, and still dreading political life and the speaker's platform, yet unable to resist the people and his friends who kept calling on him, he welcomed that assignment abroad wholeheartedly.
And yet a widespread opinion prevails that he became an unmitigated demagogue, and far more brilliant than Tiberius in his pursuit of popularity with the masses. But the truth is not so; rather it seems that he fell into political life more from a kind of necessity than from choice.
The orator Cicero too records the story that when Caius was steering clear of every office and had opted for a quiet life, a vision of his brother came to him while he slept, and, speaking to him, said: "Why then, Caius, do you delay? There is no escape; one life is fated for us both, and one death, in living our political lives on behalf of the people."
So Caius, once he was in Sardinia, gave every proof of excellence, and far surpassed all the young men both in contests against the enemy and in fair dealing toward the subject peoples, and in goodwill and honor toward his commander; and in self-control, plainness of living, and diligence he outdid even his elders,
and when a severe and sickly winter came upon Sardinia and the commander asked the cities for clothing for the soldiers, they sent to Rome asking to be excused. When the senate accepted their plea and ordered the commander to clothe the soldiers from some other source, and he was at a loss and the soldiers were suffering, Caius went around the cities himself and made them send clothing and aid to the Romans of their own accord.
This news, reported back to Rome and thought to be the preliminary skirmishes of demagoguery, threw the senate into confusion. First, when envoys arrived from King Micipsa in Libya saying that the king, out of favor to Caius Gracchus, had sent grain to the commander in Sardinia, they were angered and expelled them; then they made a decree that a relief force be sent for the soldiers but that Orestes remain, on the assumption that Caius too, because of his office, would remain along with him.
But when this news fell upon him, he at once sailed off in anger, and appearing in Rome contrary to expectation, he was blamed not only by his enemies, but it also seemed strange to the many that a quaestor should leave before his commanding officer. Nevertheless, when an accusation was brought against him before the censors, he asked to speak, and so changed the minds of his hearers that he came away thought to have suffered the greatest wrongs,
for he said that he had served twelve years, though others served their required time in ten; that as quaestor he had remained with his commander for three years, though the law allowed him to return after one; and that he alone of those who served had brought his purse out full and carried it back empty, while the others, having drunk up the wine they brought, came back here carrying their jars full of silver and gold.
After this, they brought other charges and lawsuits against him again, alleging that he was inciting the allies to revolt and had taken part in the conspiracy exposed at Fregellae; but he cleared himself of every suspicion and, having shown himself blameless, at once set out for the tribunate, with all the notable men uniformly opposed to him, yet with so great a crowd streaming into the city from Italy to join in supporting his candidacy that lodgings ran short for many, and when the Field could not hold the multitude, their voices resounded together from the roofs and tiles.
So great a force did the powerful men bring to bear on the people and so far did they diminish Caius's hope that, contrary to his expectation, he was proclaimed not first but fourth. Yet once he had taken office, he was at once first of all, being powerful in speech as no other was, and his grief giving him great freedom of speech as he lamented his brother.
For on this ground, using every pretext, he led the people around, reminding them of what had happened and setting beside it the deeds of their ancestors: how they had made war even on the Faliscans on behalf of a certain tribune Genucius who had been insulted, and had condemned Caius Veturius to death because he alone did not give way to a tribune passing through the forum: "But before your very eyes," he said, "these men beat Tiberius to death with clubs, and dragged his corpse straight across the city so as to hurl it from the Capitol into the river;
and those of his friends who were caught were put to death without trial, although it is our ancestral custom, if anyone under a capital charge does not answer the summons, that a trumpeter should go to his door at dawn and summon him by trumpet, and the judges are not to cast their vote against him before that. So cautious and guarded were they in matters of judgment."
Having thus roused the people beforehand with such speeches — and he was also the loudest-voiced and most vigorous in speaking — he brought forward two laws: one, that if the people had removed any magistrate from office, that man should not be permitted to hold a second office; the other, that if any magistrate had banished a citizen without trial, judgment concerning him should be given to the people.
Of these laws, the one directly disgraced Marcus Octavius, who had been deposed from the tribunate by Tiberius; the other applied to Popillius, for he, as praetor, had banished the friends of Tiberius. And Popillius, not standing trial, fled from Italy; but the other law Caius himself withdrew, saying he was granting this favor to his mother Cornelia, who had asked it for Octavius.
And the people admired this and agreed to it, honoring Cornelia no less for her sons than for her father; indeed they later set up a bronze statue of her and inscribed on it, "Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi." Many sayings of Caius about her are remembered, spoken in the forceful and popular manner of oratory, against one of his enemies: "You," he said, "revile Cornelia, who bore Tiberius?"
And when the man who had reviled her had himself been accused of softness, Caius said: "With what boldness do you compare yourself to Cornelia? Have you borne children as she did? And yet all the Romans know that she was without a husband longer than you have been a man." Such was the bitterness of his words, and one can find many similar examples among his writings.
Of the laws he brought forward to gratify the people and to undermine the senate, one was an agrarian law distributing public land to the poor; another was a military law ordering that clothing be furnished at public expense and nothing deducted from the soldiers' pay for it, and that no one younger than seventeen be enrolled as a soldier; another was an alliance law giving the Italians equal voting rights with the citizens.
Another was a grain law, lowering the price of grain in the market for the poor. Another was a judiciary law, by which he cut away the greater part of the senators' power — for they alone judged lawsuits, and were for this reason feared by both the people and the knights — he added three hundred of the knights to the existing three hundred senators, and made judgments common to the six hundred.
In bringing forward this law he is said to have taken particular pains in other respects, and, whereas all the demagogues before him had faced toward the senate house and the so-called comitium, he was the first to turn instead toward the forum and address the people from there, and to do so from then on, thereby, by a slight change and shift of posture, setting a great matter in motion and in a sense transferring the constitution from aristocracy to democracy, as though it were the many, not the senate, whose views speakers ought to aim at.
And when the people not only accepted this law but also granted him the power to select those who would serve as judges from among the knights, a kind of monarchical power had come to surround him, so that even the senate endured his advising it. And he always advised something fitting for it, proposing measures suitable to that body:
such was the decree about the grain, most moderate and excellent, which the propraetor Fabius sent word of from Iberia, and which he persuaded the senate to sell and to send back the money to the cities, and further to bring a charge against Fabius for making his administration burdensome and intolerable to the people — for which he gained great reputation and goodwill in the provinces.
He also proposed that colonies be sent out, that roads be built, and that granaries be constructed, setting himself over all these undertakings as their director and administrator, and wearying at none of them, however many and great, but with a certain marvelous speed and diligence carrying out each as though it were his only task, so that even those who thoroughly hated and feared him were astonished at his thoroughgoing efficiency and capacity to bring things to completion.
The many marveled even at the very sight of him, seeing hanging about him a crowd of contractors, craftsmen, envoys, magistrates, soldiers, and scholars, all of whom he met with ease, preserving dignity within his affability, and giving to each what suited him individually, thereby exposing as malicious slanderers those who called him fearsome or altogether vulgar or violent. So much more formidable was he as a popular leader in his private dealings and actions than in his speeches from the platform.
He was especially devoted to road-building, taking care at once for utility and for grace and beauty, for the roads were laid out straight through the country, unwavering, and were paved in part with cut stone, in part packed firm with rammed sand. Hollows were filled in, and wherever torrents or ravines cut across, bridges joined the way, the elevation on either side being made equal and parallel, so that the whole work presented a level and handsome appearance throughout.
In addition to this, he measured out the entire road by the mile — a mile falling a little short of eight stadia — and set up stone pillars as markers of the distance. He also placed other stones, spaced closer together, on either side of the road, so that men on horseback could easily mount from them without needing a groom to help them up.
When the people, in return for these things, exalted him and stood ready to show him goodwill in any way whatever, he once said in a public speech that he himself would ask a favor — one which, if granted, he would value above everything, and if refused, he would hold no grudge against them for it. This remark was taken to be a request for the consulship, and it gave everyone the expectation that he was seeking the consulship and the tribunate at the same time.
When the consular elections were under way and everyone was in suspense, he was seen bringing Gaius Fannius down to the Campus and canvassing for him alongside his friends — and this carried great weight in Fannius's favor. Fannius was made consul, while Gaius himself was declared tribune for the second time, though he neither canvassed nor stood as a candidate, but was chosen by the eager will of the people.
When he saw that the Senate was openly hostile to him, and that Fannius's goodwill toward him had grown dull, he again tried to win the multitude over by other laws, proposing that colonies be sent out to Tarentum and Capua, and inviting the Latins to share in Roman citizenship. The Senate, fearing that he might become altogether unmanageable, introduced a new and unaccustomed device for turning the people aside — competing with him for popular favor and granting concessions beyond what was best.
For one of Gaius's fellow tribunes was Livius Drusus, a man born of no worse family than any Roman and no less well brought up, and in character, eloquence, and wealth a rival of those most honored and most powerful because of these things. It was to him, then, that the most prominent men turned, urging him to take up the fight against Gaius and join them against the man — not by using force or opposing the multitude outright, but by governing in a way pleasing to them and granting favors for the sake of which it would even be honorable to incur their hatred.
Livius, then, having placed his tribunate at the Senate's disposal for this purpose, drafted laws that aimed neither at what was good nor at what was profitable, but at one thing only — to outdo Gaius in pleasing and gratifying the multitude, as if he were competing in a comedy, hastening and striving to surpass him. By this the Senate made it perfectly plain that it was not displeased with Gaius's policies as such, but wished only to destroy the man himself or utterly humble him.
For when Gaius proposed two colonies and enrolled the most respectable citizens in them, they accused him of currying favor with the people; but when Livius proposed to settle twelve colonies and to send three thousand of the poor to each, they lent him their support. And whereas Gaius was hated as flattering the multitude because he distributed land to the poor while requiring each to pay a rent to the public treasury, Livius pleased them by removing even this rent from those who received allotments.
Further, Gaius gave offense by granting the Latins equal voting rights, but when Livius proposed that no Latin might be beaten with rods even on campaign, they supported his law. And indeed Livius himself, in his public speeches, always said that he proposed these measures because the Senate approved of them and cared for the welfare
of the multitude — which was, in fact, the only useful thing to come of his policies. For the people became gentler toward the Senate; whereas before it had been suspicious and hostile toward the Senate's most eminent members, Livius dissolved and soothed this rancor and harshness, by representing himself as acting on their own judgment in courting the people's favor and granting them concessions.
The greatest proof of Drusus's goodwill toward the people and of his justice was that he was never seen proposing anything for his own benefit or on his own behalf; for he sent out other men as founders of the colonies, and had nothing to do with the handling of the funds, whereas Gaius took upon himself the largest and most important share of such business.
When Rubrius, one of his fellow tribunes, proposed to resettle Carthage, which had been destroyed by Scipio, and Gaius, chosen by lot, sailed off to Libya for the founding of the colony, Drusus took the opportunity of his absence to press his advantage still further, winning over and drawing the people to himself, above all by the slanders he spread against Fulvius.
This Fulvius was a friend of Gaius, and had been chosen as his colleague for the distribution of the land. He was a turbulent man, hated outright by the Senate, and suspected by others too of stirring up the allied cities and secretly inciting the Italians to revolt. Though these charges were made without proof and without being tested, Fulvius himself lent them credibility, being a man of unhealthy and unpeaceable temperament.
This above all undermined Gaius, who bore the brunt of the hatred; and when Scipio Africanus died from no apparent cause, and certain marks of blows and violence seemed to appear on the corpse — as has been written in his own Life — the greater part of the slander fell upon Fulvius, who was Scipio's enemy and had that very day railed against him from the rostrum,
but suspicion also touched Gaius. And so terrible a deed, dared against the foremost and greatest of the Romans, met with no justice and was not even brought to trial; for the people rose up and put a stop to the inquiry on Gaius's behalf, fearing that he might become entangled in the charge if the murder were investigated. This, then, had happened earlier,
and in Libya, in connection with the founding of Carthage — which Gaius named Junonia, that is, Heraea — they say many hindrances arose from divine displeasure. For the first standard, when the wind snatched at it, was broken even though the bearer held it fast, and a squall of wind scattered the sacred offerings laid upon the altars and flung them beyond the boundaries that had been marked out for the founding, while wolves came upon the boundary-markers themselves, tore them up, and carried them far away,
nevertheless, Gaius, having arranged and set everything in order, returned to Rome within seventy days in all, on learning that Fulvius was being hard pressed by Drusus, and that affairs required his presence: for Lucius Opimius, an oligarchic man of great power in the Senate, had earlier failed in his bid for the consulship when Gaius put forward Fannius and secured his election over him;
but now, with many supporting him, he was expected to win the consulship, and, once consul, to overthrow Gaius, since his power was already withering in a way, and the people had grown sated with such policies, both because there were now many demagogues courting their favor and because the Senate was yielding to them of its own accord.
On his return, he first moved his residence from the Palatine down to the district below the Forum, as being more in keeping with the common people, since it was there that most of the humble and the poor happened to live. Next he published the rest of his laws, intending to bring them to a vote. As a crowd gathered around him from every side, the Senate persuaded the consul Fannius to expel from the city all but Roman citizens,
and when a strange and unusual proclamation was made that none of the allies or friends of Rome should show themselves in the city during those days, Gaius issued a counter-proclamation denouncing the consul and promising to help the allies if they stayed. Yet he did not, in fact, help; instead, seeing one of his own guest-friends and acquaintances being dragged off by Fannius's officers, he passed by without coming to his aid — whether because he already feared that his strength was failing him and dared not put it to the test, or because, as he said, he did not wish to give his enemies grounds for starting a brawl and a scuffle which they were looking for.
It happened, too, that he fell into anger with his fellow magistrates over the following matter. The people were about to watch a gladiatorial show in the Forum, and most of the magistrates had built viewing-stands around it and were letting out seats for hire. Gaius ordered them to tear these down, so that the poor might be able to watch from those places without paying.
When no one paid him any heed, he waited for the night before the show, and, taking with him all the workmen he had under contract, tore down the stands and left the ground clear for the people by daybreak. By this act he seemed to the multitude to have shown himself a man, but he vexed his fellow magistrates, who thought it reckless and violent. And because of this he is thought to have lost his bid for a third tribunate, even though he received the most votes, his colleagues having made the announcement and declaration unjustly and by foul means.
But this matter was disputed. He took his defeat with no moderation, and when his enemies mocked him, he is said to have retorted, rather more boldly than he should have, that they were laughing a Sardonic laugh, not knowing what darkness his policies had spread over them.
When they had established Opimius as consul and were repealing many of his laws and undoing the arrangement of Carthage, provoking Gaius so that, given cause for anger, he might be put to death, he held his peace for the first while; but when his friends, and especially Fulvius, urged him on, he set out once more to gather men to oppose the consul.
At this point they say his mother, too, joined in the agitation on his behalf, secretly hiring men from abroad and sending them to Rome disguised as harvesters — for this, they say, was hinted at in riddling terms in her letters to her son. Others say that Cornelia was in fact quite displeased that these things were being done.
On the day, then, on which Opimius and his party intended to repeal the laws, the Capitol had been occupied since dawn by both sides. When the consul had performed sacrifice, one of his attendants, Quintus Antyllius, carrying the entrails to another place, said to Fulvius's followers, "Make way for honest men, you wicked citizens." Some say that as he spoke these words he also bared his arm, gesturing as if in insult, as he pushed past.
At any rate, Antyllius was killed on the spot, stabbed with large writing-styluses, which are said to have been made for this very purpose. The multitude was thrown into confusion at the murder, but the two leaders were affected in opposite ways: Gaius was distressed and rebuked his followers, telling them they had at last given his enemies, who had long wanted one, a pretext against themselves; but Opimius, taking it as if it were the opening he needed, was elated, and incited the people to take vengeance.
For the time being they dispersed, since a rainstorm came on; but at daybreak the consul convened the Senate and was transacting business inside, while others laid out Antyllius's body, stripped bare, on a bier and deliberately carried it through the Forum past the senate-house, with wailing and lamentation — Opimius knowing well what was being done, but pretending to be surprised, so that the senators too came out to see.
When the couch had been set down in the middle, some cried out as though at a terrible and monstrous misfortune, but the majority found themselves hating and reviling the oligarchic party, saying that they themselves had murdered Tiberius Gracchus on the Capitoline while he was tribune, and had cast out his body besides, while this attendant Antyllius, though perhaps he had not deserved his fate,
had nevertheless furnished the greatest cause of his own suffering, now lay exposed in the forum, and the Roman senate stood around him lamenting and joining in his funeral procession-a hired man-so as to make away with the one man still left who cared for the people. After this they went back again into the senate-house and voted, and ordered the consul Opimius to save the city however he could, and to put down the tyrants.
When Opimius had proclaimed beforehand that the senators should go under arms, and had given orders to each of the knights to bring two armed household slaves at dawn, Fulvius on his side made counter-preparations and gathered a crowd, while Gaius, coming away from the forum, stopped by his father's statue, and after gazing at it a long time in silence, burst into tears and groans, and went away.
This moved many of those who saw it to pity Gaius, and reproaching themselves for abandoning and betraying the man, they came to his house and kept watch all night at his doors-not at all like those who were guarding Fulvius. For that crowd spent the night in applause and shouting, drinking and growing bold, with Fulvius himself the first to get drunk and to say and do much that was crude and unbefitting his years,
whereas the men around Gaius, as though in the face of a common disaster to their country, kept quiet, watching what was to come, taking their turns on guard and resting.
At daybreak they roused Fulvius, still heavy with sleep from his drinking, and armed themselves with the spoils about his house, which he had taken when he triumphed over the Gauls as consul, and with much threatening and shouting set out to seize the Aventine hill. Gaius refused to arm himself, but went forth as though to the forum, in his toga, with only a small dagger girded on,
and as he was going out, at the doorway his wife fell before him and, throwing her arms about him with one hand and about their child with the other, said, "It is not to the rostrum that I am sending you off, Gaius, as before, to serve as tribune and lawgiver, nor to a glorious war, where, if something happened to you, you would at least leave me an honored grief in return; no, you are throwing yourself before the murderers of Tiberius, unarmed-nobly enough, so that you may suffer rather than do harm-but to no advantage at all for the commonwealth will you perish.
Already the worse cause has prevailed: by force and by the sword they exact their justice now. If your brother had fallen at Numantia, his body would have been given back to us under truce; but now perhaps I too shall be a suppliant to some river or sea, to beg that your body be shown to me at last, wherever it lies guarded. For what trust is left any longer in laws, or in gods, after the murder of Tiberius?"
While Licinnia was lamenting in this fashion, Gaius gently loosened her embrace and went off in silence with his friends; she, trying to catch hold of his cloak, collapsed onto the pavement and remained there mute for a great while, until, having fainted, she was raised up by the servants and borne to her brother Crassus.
When they had all assembled together, Fulvius, persuaded by Gaius, sent his younger son with a herald's staff to the forum. The young man was very handsome to look at; and standing there then, composed and full of modesty, in tears, he made proposals of reconciliation to the consul and the senate.
Now most of those present were not at all averse to a settlement; but Opimius said that they ought not to persuade the senate by messengers, but that the men should come down as citizens answerable to the law, submit to trial, and only in that way beg off its anger; and he charged the young man to say that on these terms he should either come down again or not come down at all.
Gaius, then, as they say, was willing to go and try to persuade the senate; but since none of the others would allow it, Fulvius again sent his son to speak on their behalf, to the same effect as before. But Opimius, eager to bring on a battle, at once seized the young man and handed him over to be held in custody, and set upon the followers of Fulvius with a large body of hoplites and Cretan archers,
who, above all by shooting and wounding them, threw them into confusion. When the rout occurred, Fulvius took refuge in a disused bath-house and, a little later, was found and cut down together with his elder son; Gaius was seen by no one fighting, but, sickened by what was happening, withdrew to the temple of Artemis; there, wishing to kill himself, he was prevented by his most faithful companions, Pomponius and Licinius: for these men, being present, took the sword away from him and urged him to flee once more,
where indeed it is said that, sinking to his knee and raising his hands to the goddess, he prayed that the Roman people, in return for that ingratitude and betrayal, might never cease to be enslaved; for most of them plainly changed sides once amnesty was proclaimed.
As Gaius fled, then, with his enemies pressing on and overtaking him near the wooden bridge, his two friends, bidding him go on ahead, themselves stood their ground against the pursuers and, fighting before the bridge, let no one pass until they were killed,
while with Gaius fled a single servant named Philocrates. Everyone, as if at a race, was urging him on, but no one came to his aid, nor was anyone willing to give him a horse even though he asked for one; for the pursuers were pressing close behind. He got just ahead of them by taking refuge in a sacred grove of the Furies, and there he perished, Philocrates first killing him and then slaying himself.
But as some say, both were taken alive by their enemies, and because the servant had thrown his arms about his master, no one was able to strike the one before the other had been beaten down and killed by many blows. They say that someone else cut off Gaius' head and was carrying it, when a friend of Opimius named Septumuleius took it from him; for a reward of gold equal to its weight had been proclaimed at the start of the battle for anyone who brought in the head of Gaius or of Fulvius,
and it was brought by Septumuleius, spitted on a spear, to Opimius, and when it was placed on a scale it weighed seventeen and two-thirds pounds, Septumuleius having proved himself vile in this matter too and played a foul trick-for he had taken out the brain and poured in molten lead. Those who brought Fulvius' head-for they were men of no distinction-received nothing.
The bodies of these men and of the others were thrown into the river, three thousand having been killed; and their properties were sold to the public treasury. They forbade the women to mourn, and they even stripped Licinnia, the wife of Gaius, of her dowry. Most cruel of all was what they did to Fulvius' younger son, who had neither raised a hand against them nor been among the combatants, but had come under truce before the battle began-they seized him then, and after the battle put him to death.
Yet what grieved the people more than this and than all the rest was the temple of Concord that Opimius built: for he seemed to be exalting himself and taking great pride, and in a way celebrating a triumph, over the slaughter of so many citizens; and so, one night, someone wrote beneath the temple's inscription this line: "A work of madness builds a temple of Concord."
This man, moreover, the first to make use of a dictator's power while holding the consulship, and to put to death, without trial, along with more than three thousand citizens, Gaius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus-of whom the one had been consul and had celebrated a triumph, the other had held first place among men of his own age in excellence and reputation-did not even refrain from theft, but, sent as an ambassador to Jugurtha the Numidian, was corrupted by his money; and having been convicted on the most shameful charge of bribery, grew old in disgrace, hated and abused by the people,
who, at the very time these things were done, had been humbled and cowed, but a little later showed how great a longing and yearning they had for the Gracchi. For they had their images made and set up in public view, and consecrated the places where they had been slain, and brought there the first-fruits of all that the seasons bring; and many sacrificed there daily and fell down before them, as though visiting the shrines of gods.
And indeed Cornelia too is said to have borne the rest of her misfortune nobly and greatly, and to have said of the sacred places in which they had been killed that the dead had tombs worthy of them; and she herself spent her time in the region called Misenum,
changing nothing of her accustomed way of life. She had many friends, and, out of hospitality, kept a fine table, always having Greeks and men of letters about her, while all the kings both received gifts from her and sent them to her. She was most delightful to those who visited and spent time with her, recounting the life and habits of her father Africanus; but most admirable of all was her recollection of her sons, without grief and without tears, as she related their sufferings and their deeds to those who asked, as though speaking of men of old.
For this reason it seemed to some that she had become senseless through old age or the greatness of her misfortunes, and insensible to her calamities-they themselves being truly insensible to how great a benefit good natural gifts, and a good birth and upbringing, are to human beings toward freedom from grief, and to the fact that fortune, even when virtue is on guard against it, often prevails over evils, but it cannot take away the capacity to bear a misfortune with good reason when one stumbles.

======== Comparison Of Tiberius And Caius Gracchus With Agis And Cleomenes ========

Now that this narrative too has reached its end, it remains for us to take up the comparative view of the lives. As for the Gracchi, not even those who otherwise speak most ill of them and hate them most have dared to say that they were not the most naturally gifted of all Romans for virtue, and
they received an upbringing and education of distinction; yet the natural endowment of Agis and Cleomenes appears to have been more vigorous even than theirs, inasmuch as, without partaking of a right education, and having been reared amid the customs and manner of living by which their elders had long since been corrupted, they nevertheless made themselves leaders in frugality and self-control,
and further, whereas the one pair lived when Rome possessed her greatest splendor and highest reputation and an eager zeal for noble deeds, and so were ashamed to abandon what was, as it were, an inheritance of ancestral and paternal virtue, the other pair, though born of fathers who had chosen the opposite course, and though they took over their fatherland in a wretched and sickly condition, nevertheless in no way blunted, on this account, their impulse toward what is noble.
And indeed the surest proof of the freedom from love of money and the mastery over silver shown by the Gracchi is this: that they kept themselves clear of unjust gains throughout their magistracies and public careers. But Agis would have been indignant even to be praised merely for taking nothing that belonged to another, seeing that he gave over his own property to the citizens — a property which, apart from his other possessions, contained six hundred talents in coin. How great an evil, then, must he have reckoned unjust gain, who considered it a form of greed even to possess more than another by just means?
Yet in the scope and daring of their innovations the two pairs differed greatly. For the one pair engaged in politics through the construction of roads and the founding of cities, and Tiberius's boldest measure was reclaiming public land for the people, while Gaius's boldest was reshaping the juries by adding three hundred men from the equestrian order; whereas the revolutionary program of Agis and Cleomenes,
regarding it as no cure to heal and cut away, bit by bit, the errors of the state — like one, as Plato says, who lops off a hydra's heads one at a time — brought upon affairs a wholesale transformation, able to remove all the evils at once and to recast the whole.
Though perhaps it would be truer to say that they drove out the transformation that had wrought all the evils, leading the city back and restoring it to its proper form. Since one might also say this: that against the political program of the Gracchi stood arrayed the greatest men of Rome, whereas the cause which Agis undertook and Cleomenes brought to completion had as its underlying model the fairest and most magnificent of examples — the ancestral rhetrai concerning temperance and equality, for which Lycurgus stood surety to the one pair, and the Pythian god to the other.
And what is greatest, by the political measures of the former Rome gained nothing greater than what she already possessed, whereas from what Cleomenes accomplished, Greece, within a short time, beheld Sparta mistress of the Peloponnese, contending in a struggle for supremacy against those then possessed of the greatest power, the end of which was that Greece, delivered from Illyrian and Gaulish arms, was once more adorned by the sons of Heracles.
I think, too, that the deaths of these men reveal some difference in their virtue. For the one pair died fighting against their fellow citizens, and then fleeing; but of the other pair, Agis died almost willingly, that he might kill none of the citizens, while Cleomenes, having been outraged and wronged, set out to avenge himself, but when opportunity did not offer, took his own life with courage.
Again, if one looks at the opposite side: Agis performed no deed of generalship, but was put to death beforehand; whereas to the many splendid victories of Cleomenes one may compare Tiberius's capture of the wall at Carthage, no small feat, and the treaty at Numantia, by which he preserved twenty thousand Roman soldiers who had no other hope of safety; and Gaius likewise displayed much valor there, and much again on campaign in Sardinia, so that he would have rivaled the foremost Roman generals, had he not been cut off before his time.
As for their statesmanship, Agis appears to have taken it up too gently, being thwarted by Agesilaus and having falsely promised the redistribution of land to the citizens, and altogether falling short of and failing to accomplish what he had chosen and proclaimed, through a lack of boldness owing to his youth; whereas Cleomenes, on the contrary, came to the transformation of the state more boldly and violently, killing the ephors unlawfully — men whom, being master by force of arms, it would have been easy for him to win over or remove, just as he removed not a few others from the city —
for to bring the sword to bear without the utmost necessity belongs neither to the physician's art nor to the statesman's, but both are marks of a lack of skill, and in this case injustice attends the deed as well, along with cruelty. Of the Gracchi, neither began a slaughter of fellow citizens, and Gaius, it is said, did not even turn to defend himself when he was being struck, but though most brilliant in matters of war, proved most inactive amid civil strife.
Indeed he came forward unarmed and withdrew while men were fighting, and altogether he was seen to take more forethought against doing anything than against suffering anything. Wherefore one must set down their flight not as a sign of cowardice, but of caution. For it was necessary either to yield to those attacking, or, by remaining, to defend oneself by action so as not to suffer harm.
Now among the charges brought against Tiberius the greatest is that he deposed his colleague from the tribunate, and himself sought a second tribunate; against Gaius the murder of Antyllius was laid neither justly nor truly, for he perished against Gaius's own will, indeed while Gaius was indignant at it. Cleomenes, on the other hand — to say nothing of the slaughter of the ephors — freed all the helots,
and reigned in fact alone, though second in name, having chosen as his colleague Eucleidas his brother from the one royal house, while Archidamus, to whom it belonged, as a member of the other house, to reign jointly with him, he persuaded to return from Messene, but when Archidamus was murdered, by not pursuing the killing he confirmed the charge against himself of the deed; and yet Lycurgus,
whom he pretended to imitate, willingly gave back the kingship to his brother's son Charillus, and fearing lest, even should the boy die by some other cause, some charge might come upon him, wandered abroad for a long time and did not return until Charillus had a son to succeed to the throne — but to Lycurgus not even any other Greek is comparable; whereas that in the statesmanship of Cleomenes there are innovations and lawless acts greater still has been shown.
And indeed those who censure their character charge the one pair with having been tyrannical and warlike from the start, but the natures of the other pair with an excess of ambition, and nothing else could their detractors allege against them; but being fanned, as it were by winds, beyond their own nature by the struggle and passion against their opponents, they admit that they let the state drift to extremes.
Since, as to the first undertaking, what could have been fairer or more just, had not the rich, attempting by force and dominance to thrust out the law, surrounded both men with contests — the one fearing for himself, the other avenging his brother, who had been put to death without trial or decree, and not even by a magistrate?
You yourself, then, perceive from what has been said the difference between them; but if one must also declare a verdict upon each severally, I set down Tiberius as having stood first of all in virtue, and the youth Agis as having erred least, while in action and daring Gaius came to be not much inferior to Cleomenes.

======== Cicero ========

As for Cicero's mother Helvia, they say she was well-born and lived well, but about his father nothing definite could be learned: some say the man was born and raised in a fuller's shop, while others trace the origin of the family back to Tullus Attius, who reigned splendidly among the Volscians and made war on the Romans not without success.
The first of the family to be given the name Cicero seems to have been a man worth mentioning, which is why his descendants did not reject the surname but embraced it, even though it was mocked by many. For the Latins call a chickpea "cicer," and that man, it seems, had a blunt, chickpea-shaped notch at the tip of his nose, and it was from this that he acquired the name.
Cicero himself, the subject of this account, when his friends thought he ought to flee the name and change it, at the time he first entered public life and took up politics, is said to have answered, with the boldness of youth, that he meant to work until the name Cicero outshone those of the Scauri and the Catuli.
When serving as quaestor in Sicily and making a silver dedication to the gods, he had the first two of his names inscribed, Marcus and Tullius, but instead of the third, as a joke, he had the craftsman engrave a chickpea alongside the letters. This, then, is what has been recorded about the name.
They say Cicero's birth caused his mother neither pain nor trouble, and that it occurred on the third day of the new Kalends, on which day the magistrates now offer prayers and sacrifices on behalf of the ruler. To his nurse, it seems, an apparition appeared and foretold that she was raising a great boon for all Romans.
These things, though they seemed mere dreams and idle talk, he himself soon proved to be a true prophecy when he reached the age for learning, blazing forth through natural talent and gaining name and reputation among the boys, to such a degree that their fathers would go to the schoolrooms in person, eager for a glimpse of Cicero himself and firsthand word of the sharpness and grasp he showed in his lessons, of which everyone spoke, while the more boorish among them grew angry at their own sons when they saw Cicero being taken up in the streets between them as a mark of honor.
Being, as Plato requires of the nature that loves learning and philosophy, the sort to welcome every subject of study and to disdain no form of reasoning or education, he was drawn somehow more eagerly toward poetry. And a certain little poem of his still survives from when he was a boy, the Pontius Glaucus, composed in tetrameter verse. As time went on and he took up the Muse of poetry in more varied ways, he came to be regarded as unmatched among the Romans, in poetry no less than in oratory.
His reputation for oratory endures to this day, even though no small innovation has occurred in the field of speech, but his poetry, since many gifted men came after him, has fallen away altogether into obscurity and disrepute.
Having left behind his boyhood studies, he attended Philo of the Academy, whom the Romans, among the associates of Cleitomachus, admired most for his reasoning and loved most for his character. At the same time, in the company of the circle around Mucius, men of public affairs and leaders of the senate, he profited toward experience in the laws; and for a time he even took part in military campaigns under Sulla during the Marsic War.
Then, seeing affairs falling into faction, and out of faction into unchecked monarchy, he turned to the life of leisure and contemplation, keeping company with learned Greeks and devoting himself to studies, until Sulla gained control and the city seemed to reach some settlement. In this period Chrysogonus, a freedman of Sulla, having reported someone's property as belonging to a man put to death by the proscription, bought it himself for two thousand drachmas,
but when Roscius, who was the dead man's son and inherited from him, objected and demonstrated that the property was worth two hundred and fifty talents, Sulla, being exposed, grew angry and brought against Roscius a charge of parricide, Chrysogonus having contrived it; and no one helped him, but all turned away, fearing Sulla's severity,
and so, through such desolation, the young man took refuge with Cicero, and his friends urged him on, saying that no brighter opportunity for glory, nor a finer one, would ever come to him again. So he took up the defense, and having succeeded, was admired; but fearing Sulla, he went abroad to Greece, spreading word that his body needed treatment.
And indeed he was truly thin and lacking in flesh, taking in, on account of a weak stomach, only small and scanty food, and that late in the day; his voice was full and good, but harsh and unshaped, and being driven always, by the vehemence and passion of his speech, through the higher registers, it caused fear for his health:
once in Athens, he became a listener of Antiochus of Ascalon, drawn in by the fluent grace of the man's delivery, even while withholding approval from the doctrinal changes Antiochus was introducing — for Antiochus had by then broken away from the school known as the New Academy and given up the Carneadean position, whether he was bending under the force of clear evidence and the senses, or, as some say, out of a certain rivalry and disagreement with the associates of Cleitomachus and Philo, courting the Stoic doctrine instead, in most matters.
Cicero, however, loved and adhered more to the teachings of those men, thinking that, if he were ever entirely shut out from public affairs, he would transfer his life here, away from the forum and politics, and spend it in quiet together with philosophy.
But when word came to him that Sulla had died, and his body, being strengthened by exercises, was moving toward a vigorous condition, and his voice too, taking on a fuller shape, had been trained to be pleasant to the ear and had been moderately adapted to the condition of his body, while many of his friends from Rome wrote urging him, and Antiochus too kept exhorting him to take up public affairs, he again tuned up his rhetorical speech like an instrument and stirred back to life his political power, both training himself with exercises and seeking out the most praised orators,
and for this reason he sailed to Asia and Rhodes, and among the Asian orators he studied with Xenocles of Adramyttium, and Dionysius of Magnesia, and Menippus of Caria; and at Rhodes, with the orator Apollonius, son of Molon, and the philosopher Posidonius. It is said that Apollonius, not understanding the Roman tongue, asked Cicero to declaim in Greek; and he complied readily, thinking that in this way the correction would be all the better.
Once he had declaimed, the others were astonished and vied with one another in praise, but Apollonius, neither warming while listening to him nor, once Cicero had finished, betraying any delight, remained silent and pensive a good while; and when this unsettled Cicero, he said: "You, Cicero, I praise and admire, but I pity the fortune of Greece, seeing that the only fine things left to us — even these, through you, have now passed to the Romans: learning and eloquence."
So then Cicero, full of hopes as he was carried toward public life, had his impulse blunted by a certain oracle. For when he asked the god at Delphi how he might become most illustrious, the Pythia's response was that he should let his own character, rather than the judgment of the crowd, direct how he lived.
And for the first period in Rome he lived cautiously, approached office hesitantly, and was passed over, being called by those most vulgar and familiar terms among the Romans, "Greek" and "schoolman." But since he was by nature ambitious, and was spurred on by his father and his friends, he gave himself over to advocacy, and did not advance gently toward the first rank, but at once blazed forth in reputation and stood far above those contending in the forum.
It is said that he himself, no less than Demosthenes, was afflicted with concern for delivery, and paid careful attention now to Roscius the comic actor, now to Aesopus the tragic actor. This Aesopus, they relate, while performing in the theater the role of Atreus deliberating vengeance for Thyestes, when one of the attendants suddenly ran past him, was so carried outside his own reckoning by passion that he struck and killed the man with his scepter.
No small weight toward persuasion came to Cicero from his practice of delivery. And he used to mock those orators who employed loud shouting, saying that through weakness they leapt to shouting the way lame men leap onto a horse. This wit and playfulness about jesting seemed suited to the courtroom and elegant, but since he used it excessively, he gave offense to many and gained a reputation for malice.
Having been appointed quaestor during a grain shortage and allotted Sicily, he was, at the start, a nuisance to the people, who were compelled to send grain to Rome; but afterward, having had experience of his diligence, justice, and mildness, they honored him as they had honored none of their governors ever before.
And when many young men from Rome, distinguished and of good birth, on a charge of disorder and cowardice in the war, were sent up before the governor of Sicily, Cicero pleaded for them with distinction and secured their acquittal. Thinking greatly of himself for this, then, as he walked toward Rome, he says something ridiculous happened to him:
for meeting, in Campania, a man of distinguished standing whom he thought a friend, he asked what account the Romans held of the things he had done, and what they thought — assuming his own doings had by now spread his name and glory through the entire city; and the man replied: "Why, where were you, Cicero,
all this time?" At that moment he was utterly discouraged, seeing that the report about him, falling into the city as into a vast, shoreless sea, had produced no perceptible effect on his fame; but afterward, giving himself an accounting, he greatly reduced his ambition, since he had been competing for glory against something boundless and having no attainable limit.
Nevertheless, his exceptional delight in being praised, and his rather passionate attachment to reputation, remained with him to the very end, and often disturbed many of his otherwise sound judgments.
Taking up politics more eagerly, he considered it shameful that craftsmen, who use instruments and lifeless tools, should be ignorant of none of their names, place, or function, while the statesman, through whom public affairs are carried out by means of men, should be careless and negligent about knowing the citizens.
For this reason he trained himself not only to remember people's names, but also the place where each of his acquaintances lived, and what land he owned, and what friends he kept company with, and he came to know their neighbors as well; and as Cicero traveled every road of Italy, he could readily name and point out the estates and country houses of his friends.
He possessed a small estate, but one sufficient and adequate to his expenses, and he was admired for accepting neither fees nor gifts for his advocacy — above all when he took up the case against Verres. For this man, who had been governor of Sicily and had committed many crimes, he convicted at the prosecution of the Sicilians, not by speaking, but in a sense by not speaking.
For when the presiding officials, doing Verres a favor, kept throwing the trial into postponements and many delays until the last possible day, so that it was plain in advance that the time allotted for the day would not suffice for the speeches and the judgment would never reach its conclusion, Cicero stood up and said he had no need of speeches, but bringing forward the witnesses and examining them, he ordered the jurors to cast their vote. Nevertheless many witty remarks are still remembered concerning that very trial.
The Romans call a gelded pig a "verres." So when a certain freedman, a man liable to the charge of Judaizing, named Caecilius, wished to push aside the Sicilians and himself bring the prosecution against Verres, Cicero remarked, "What business does a Jew have with a pig?" Verres had a son just short of manhood, who was thought not to conduct himself in his youth in a manner befitting a free man. So when Verres taunted Cicero as effeminate, Cicero replied, "One ought to hurl abuse at one's sons
within doors." And when the orator Hortensius, not daring to speak directly in defense of Verres, nevertheless consented to appear at the assessment of the penalty and received an ivory Sphinx as his fee, Cicero made an oblique remark to him; and when Hortensius answered that riddle-solving was not among his talents, Cicero said, "Yet a Sphinx sits right there in your own house."
Verres having thus been condemned, Cicero assessed the damages at seven hundred and fifty myriads, and thereby incurred the accusation that he had lowered the assessment for money. Nevertheless the Sicilians, in gratitude, when he was serving as aedile, brought many things from the island and carried many things to him, from none of which he made any profit, but he made use only of the men's eager generosity to lower the price of goods in the market.
He owned a fine property at Arpinum, and there was a field near Naples and another near Pompeii, neither large; and there was added the dowry of his wife Terentia, ten myriads, and a certain inheritance amounting to nine myriads of denarii. From these means he lived generously and at the same time temperately together with the Greeks and Romans devoted to letters who shared his life, rarely, if ever, reclining before sunset — not so much because of business as because his body was in poor condition as regards his stomach.
He was also precise and meticulous in his other care of his body, so that he made use of rubbings and walks arranged according to a fixed number. By managing his constitution in this way he kept it free of illness and equal to many great contests and labors. His paternal house he gave over to his brother, while he himself lived near the Palatine, so that those who paid court to him should not be troubled by walking far,
and they attended on him daily, coming to his door in numbers no fewer than those who attended Crassus for his wealth or Pompey for his power in the armies — he being among the most admired of the Romans and reckoned among the very greatest. And Pompey too paid court to Cicero, and Cicero's political conduct contributed greatly to Pompey's power and reputation.
When he stood for the praetorship together with many others of note, he was proclaimed first of all of them, and he was thought to have conducted the trials with purity and honor. It is also said that Licinius Macer, a man powerful in his own right in the city and using Crassus as his helper, being tried before him for embezzlement and trusting in his power and influence,
while the jurors were still casting their votes, went off home, had his hair cut in haste, and put on a clean garment as though he had won, and was setting out again for the forum; but when Crassus met him at the courtyard gate and informed him that every single vote had gone against him, he turned back, lay down, and died.
This affair brought Cicero a reputation for having presided over the court with diligence. And when Vatinius — a man who had something rough and disdainful toward magistrates in his advocacies, and whose neck was covered over with scrofulous swellings — stood up and asked something of Cicero, and Cicero did not grant it but deliberated a long time, Vatinius said that he himself, if he were praetor, would not hesitate on such a matter; Cicero, turning to him, said, "But I do not have so great a neck as you."
Again, when he had two or three days left of his office, someone brought Manilius before him charged with embezzlement. This Manilius had the goodwill and enthusiasm of the people, being thought to be persecuted on Pompey's account, for he was a friend of Pompey's. When Manilius asked for a day, Cicero granted him only the very next day, and the people were indignant, since the praetors were accustomed to grant at least ten days to men in jeopardy.
When the tribunes brought him before the rostrum and accused him, he asked to be heard, and said that since he had always, so far as the laws allowed, treated men in jeopardy with fairness and humanity, he thought it a terrible thing not to grant the same to Manilius; that the single day still under his authority as praetor he had deliberately fixed as the day, for to throw the case forward onto another magistrate was not the act of a man who wished to help.
These words produced a remarkable change in the people, and amid much acclaim of him they begged him to take up the advocacy on Manilius's behalf. He undertook it eagerly, not least on account of the absent Pompey; and standing up again he delivered a fresh speech from the beginning, attacking with youthful vigor the oligarchic faction and those who begrudged Pompey his position.
To the consulship he was advanced no less by the aristocratic party than by the common people, on account of the city, for the following reason, both sides working together on his behalf. The change in the constitution brought about by Sulla, which at first had seemed strange, but which by then, through time and habit, seemed to the many to have achieved a settlement not without some merit, had its opponents: men seeking to shake up and overturn the present state of things for their own private gain, not for the best interest of the state — while Pompey was still off fighting the kings of Pontus and Armenia, and in Rome there stood no force adequate to match those bent on revolution,
and these men had as their leader a bold and ambitious man of versatile character, Lucius Catiline, who had once, in addition to other great crimes, been charged with having lain with his own virgin daughter and with the slaying of his own brother; dreading a trial over that killing, he had persuaded Sulla to enter the man, though still alive, on the list of those marked for death.
Taking this man as their champion, the wicked bound themselves to one another by further pledges, and having sacrificed a human being, tasted his flesh; and a large share of the city's young men had been corrupted by him, he procuring for each man continually pleasures, drinking bouts, and love affairs with women, and unstintingly providing the expense for such things. All Etruria too had been roused toward revolt, and much of Gaul this side of the Alps.
Rome was in a most precarious state for revolution because of the inequality in wealth: men of the greatest repute and pride had beggared themselves upon theaters and banquets and love of office and building projects, while riches had flowed together into the hands of low and mean men, so that affairs needed but a small push, and it lay in the power of any man bold enough to overturn the constitution itself, sick as it already was from within.
Nevertheless, wishing to secure in advance some strong base of operations, Catiline canvassed for the consulship, and he was brilliant in his hopes, expecting to hold the office together with Gaius Antonius, a man who by himself was inclined neither strongly to the better course nor to the worse, but who, as an addition bringing another man's power, would tend toward whichever side prevailed.
Foreseeing this, most of the good and honest men put forward Cicero for the consulship; and the people receiving him eagerly, Catiline was rejected, and Cicero and Gaius Antonius were chosen. And yet of the candidates Cicero alone was the son of a man of equestrian, not senatorial, rank.
And while the matter of Catiline was still, for the most part, unnoticed by the many, great preliminary contests awaited Cicero's consulship. For on the one hand, those who had been barred by Sulla's laws from holding office — men neither weak nor few — were canvassing for offices and stirring up the people, bringing against Sulla's tyranny accusations true and just in themselves, yet not moving the constitution at the right time nor with good judgment;
and on the other hand, the tribunes for their part kept bringing forward laws serving that same end, establishing a board of ten men with absolute authority, to whom was granted power over all Italy, all Syria, and whatever had lately been added through Pompey — men who, being masters of these, could sell the public lands, judge whomever they thought fit, banish exiles, found and settle cities, take money from the treasury, and maintain and levy as many soldiers as they required.
For this reason the law was supported by other men of distinction, and first of all by Antonius, Cicero's colleague, as one who was to be among the ten. And it was thought too that he was aware of Catiline's revolutionary designs and was not displeased by them, being burdened by a mass of debts — a thing which caused the greatest fear among the best citizens.
Cicero, courting this man first, voted him the province of Macedonia among the provinces, while he himself declined Gaul, which was offered to him, and by this favor he won over Antonius so completely that, like a hired actor, he now spoke the second part on behalf of the fatherland; and once he had thus been won over and made tractable, Cicero, taking greater courage, now stood firmly against those bent on revolution.
In the senate, then, delivering a kind of prosecution against the law, he so overwhelmed the very men proposing it that none of them made any reply. But when they made the attempt again, and, having made their preparations, summoned the consuls before the people, Cicero, feeling no fear at all, but bidding the senate to follow him, went forth, and not only threw out the law but also caused the tribunes themselves to abandon their other measures, so thoroughly were they overcome by his argument.
For this man above all demonstrated to the Romans how much pleasure eloquence adds to what is honorable, and that justice, when rightly pleaded, cannot be beaten down, and that the man who conducts public affairs harmoniously must always in deed choose what is honorable over what merely flatters, but in speech remove whatever is painful from what is advantageous,
and a proof of the charm of his eloquence is what happened concerning the theatrical shows during his consulship. For whereas previously the knights had sat mixed in among the multitude in the theaters and watched together with the common people as chance had it, Marcus Otho, as praetor, was the first to distinguish the knights in honor from the rest of the citizens, and assigned to them a separate section of seats at the shows, which they still hold as a special privilege to this day,
the common people felt this as a slight aimed at them, and the moment Otho showed himself in the theater they greeted him with insulting hisses, while the knights received the man with brilliant applause; then the people redoubled their hissing, and the knights in turn their applause. From this they turned upon one another with abuse, and disorder took hold of the theater.
But when Cicero, hearing of it, arrived and called the people together at the temple of Bellona, he rebuked them and gave them counsel, and they went back again into the theater and applauded Otho brilliantly, and vied with the knights in honoring and praising the man.
The conspiracy around Catiline, which had cowered and grown fearful at first, took heart again, and its members began meeting with one another and urging a bolder approach to the business before Pompey returned, who was already said to be on his way back with his army. What most inflamed Catiline were Sulla's old soldiers, scattered though they were across all Italy, but with the largest and most warlike contingents settled in the Etruscan cities, dreaming again of plunder and the carving up of ready-made fortunes.
These men, with Manlius as their leader — one of those who had served under Sulla with distinction — joined forces with Catiline and came to Rome to help him in the elections; for he was again standing for the consulship, having resolved to kill Cicero amid the confusion of the polling.
The divine also seemed to give advance warning of what was happening, through earthquakes, thunderbolts, and apparitions. The reports from human informants were true, but not yet sufficient to secure a conviction against a man so distinguished and powerful as Catiline. On that account Cicero put off the election date and had Catiline brought before the senate, where he questioned him about the rumors circulating.
He, supposing there were many in the senate who desired a revolution, and at the same time signaling to his fellow conspirators, gave Cicero a mad answer: "What terrible thing am I doing," he said, "if, there being two bodies, one lean and wasted but possessing a head, while the second, headless yet powerful and massive, still lacks one — should I not be its head?"
Since these words were spoken as a riddle aimed at the senate and the people, Cicero grew more afraid, and all the powerful men, along with many of the young, escorted him down to the Campus in a breastplate, having brought him from his house; and he deliberately let part of the breastplate show, having loosened his tunic at the shoulders, to demonstrate the danger to those who saw it.
They were indignant and gathered closely around him, and in the end, at the voting, they again rejected Catiline and chose Silanus and Murena as consuls.
Not long after this, while Catiline's men in Etruria were already assembling and organizing into companies, and the day fixed for the attack was drawing near, around midnight some of Rome's leading and most influential citizens came to Cicero's house — Marcus Crassus, Marcus Marcellus, and Scipio Metellus. They knocked on the doors and, calling the doorkeeper, told him to wake Cicero and announce their presence; and the reason was this.
After dinner the doorkeeper handed Crassus some letters, brought by some unknown person, addressed severally to different people, and to Crassus himself one without a name. Crassus, reading only that one, found that it told of a great slaughter about to occur through Catiline, and it advised him to steal away from the city without delay. Crassus left the rest unopened and hurried straight to Cicero, shaken by the frightening news, and in part clearing himself of the suspicion he had incurred through his friendship with Catiline.
Cicero, after deliberating, at daybreak convened the senate, brought in the letters, and handed each one over to the person it named, directing that they be read aloud before the assembly. Every one revealed the same plot. Quintus Arrius, a man of praetorian rank, then reported that troops were gathering in Etruria, and word came that Manlius was roaming near those towns with a sizable force, forever watching Rome for some fresh turn of events,
the senate passed a decree entrusting affairs to the consuls, that they, taking charge, should manage matters and preserve the city as they knew how. This the senate is not accustomed to do often, but only when some great danger is feared.
When Cicero had received this authority, he entrusted external affairs to Quintus Metellus, but kept the city in his own hands, and each day went out surrounded by so great a bodyguard that a large part of the forum was filled by his escort when he entered it. Catiline, no longer able to bear the delay, decided to set out himself to join Manlius
and his army, directing Marcius and Cethegus to arm themselves with swords, appear at Cicero's door at dawn as though paying a courtesy call, and then attack and kill him on the spot. Fulvia, a woman of high birth, revealed this plan to Cicero; she visited him at night, pressing him to be on his guard against Cethegus's men. They came at daybreak, and being prevented from entering, grew indignant and shouted at the door, which made them all the more suspect,
and Cicero, coming out, summoned the senate to the temple of Zeus Stesios, whom the Romans call Stator, situated at the beginning of the Sacred Way, on the ascent to the Palatine. There, when Catiline too came with the others intending to defend himself, not one senator could bring himself to remain at his side, and everyone shifted away from that seat. When he began to speak he was shouted down, and finally Cicero rose and ordered him to leave the city: for since he himself governed by words and Catiline by arms, there had to be a wall between them.
So Catiline immediately went out with three hundred armed men, and surrounding himself with the rods of office as though he were a magistrate, and raising axes and standards, made his way to Manlius; and when about twenty thousand men had gathered together, he went around the cities urging them to revolt and inciting them to rebellion, so that, the war having become open, Antonius was sent out to fight it.
Those of the corrupted who remained behind in the city were rallied and stirred up by Cornelius Lentulus, called Sura, a man born to a distinguished house, but one who had lived basely and had earlier been expelled from the senate for licentiousness, and who was then serving his second term as praetor, as is the custom for those recovering senatorial rank from the beginning,
and it is said that he got his surname Sura for a reason of this kind. In the times of Sulla, while serving as quaestor, he lost and squandered a great deal of public money. When Sulla grew angry and demanded an accounting before the senate, he came forward and, with great disdain and contempt, said he would render no reckoning at all, but instead offer up his shin — just as boys do when caught missing the ball in their games.
From this he was nicknamed Sura, for the Romans call the leg "sura." Again, being on trial and having corrupted some of the jurors, since his acquittal came by a margin of just two votes, he remarked that the payment made to the extra juror had gone to waste, since it would have been enough if he had been acquitted by even a single vote.
This man, being of such a nature, once stirred up by Catiline, was further corrupted by empty hopes offered by false prophets and charlatans who chanted fabricated verses and oracles, as though from the Sibylline books, foretelling that it was fated for Rome to have three Cornelii as monarchs, of whom two had already fulfilled their destiny, Cinna and Sulla, and that to the third remaining Cornelius the divine power was bringing the monarchy, and that he must by all means accept it and not ruin the opportune moment, as Catiline had done.
So Lentulus contemplated nothing small or obscure, but had decided to put to death the whole senate together with every other citizen he could reach, to set the city itself ablaze, and to leave unharmed only Pompey's children; those they intended to capture and hold under their own guard as hostages, to use in negotiating terms with Pompey — for there was already much steady talk that he was coming down from his great campaign.
A single night among the Saturnalia was fixed for the attack, and swords, tow, and sulfur were carried to Cethegus's house and hidden there. They assigned a hundred men and distributed among each an equal number of districts of Rome, so that the city might be set ablaze everywhere at once by many hands lighting fires. Others were to block the aqueducts and slaughter those drawing water.
While these things were being carried out, it happened that two envoys of the Allobroges were staying in the city, a people whose affairs were then in an especially bad way and who were burdened by Roman rule. Lentulus and his associates, thinking them useful for stirring up and turning Gaul against Rome, made them fellow conspirators. They gave them letters to their senate there, and letters to Catiline, in the one promising freedom, and in the other urging Catiline, once he had freed the slaves, to march on Rome.
Along with the envoys they dispatched to Catiline a man named Titus of Croton, entrusted with carrying the letters. But the schemes of unstable men, plotted for the most part over wine and in the company of women, were being tracked down by Cicero with painstaking, sober reasoning and extraordinary intelligence; he had many outside observers watching what was happening and tracking it down together with him, and he was in secret conversation, trusting them, with many who seemed to share in the conspiracy,
and he learned of the negotiation with the foreigners, and by lying in wait at night he caught the man from Croton and the letters, the Allobroges secretly cooperating with him.
At daybreak he gathered the senate at the temple of Concord, read out the letters, and heard the informers. Junius Silanus also said he had heard some of Cethegus's people saying that three consuls and four praetors were about to be killed. Piso too, a man of consular rank, reported other such things.
Gaius Sulpicius, one of the praetors, sent to Cethegus's house, found there many missiles and weapons, and a great many swords and daggers, all newly sharpened. Finally, when the senate voted immunity to the man from Croton for his information, Lentulus, once convicted, stepped down from office — since he was serving as praetor — and, removing his toga edged in purple there in the senate house, put on garments suited to his changed fortune. He and his associates were then handed over into unfettered custody with the praetors.
It being already evening, and the people waiting in a crowd, Cicero came out, told the citizens what had happened, and, with an escort, made his way to a nearby friend's house, because his own home was taken up by women carrying out secret rites for the goddess whom the Romans call Bona and the Greeks call the Women's Goddess.
Sacrifice is made to her each year in the house of the consul, through his wife or mother, with the Vestal virgins present. So Cicero, entering, kept by himself, very few being present with him at all, and pondered how he should deal with the men. He shrank from the extreme punishment fitting for crimes of such magnitude, and hesitated, both out of the fairness of his character and so as not to seem to abuse his authority too greatly and trample harshly upon men of the first rank who also had powerful friends in the city; yet if he treated them too gently, he feared the danger from them.
For, he reasoned, a punishment milder than death would never satisfy them; instead they would erupt into the most reckless extremes, piling new fury onto their earlier crimes; and he himself would seem unmanly and soft, not otherwise thought by most people to be a man of the greatest courage.
While Cicero was still in this perplexity, a sign occurred to the women as they were sacrificing. For the altar, when the fire seemed already to have died down, sent up from the ashes and the burnt bark a great and bright flame. The other women were frightened by this, but the sacred virgins told Cicero's wife Terentia to hurry to her husband at once and urge him to follow through on the course he had decided for his country's benefit, for the goddess was sending forth a brilliant light as a sign of his safety and coming glory.
As for Terentia, she was not by nature a mild or timid woman, but ambitious, and, as Cicero himself says, took a larger share of his political concerns from him than she gave him of household ones; she told him these things and spurred him on against the men. Likewise his brother Quintus, and among his philosophical companions Publius Nigidius, whom he consulted more than any other on the most important matters apart from politics, did the same.
The following day, during a senate debate over what penalty the men deserved, Silanus, called on first for his view, said it was fitting that they be led to the prison and suffer the ultimate penalty. And all agreed with him in turn, down to Gaius Caesar, who afterward became dictator. He at that time was still young and only at the first stages of his rise, but already, in his political course and hopes, had set foot upon that road by which he later changed the affairs of the Romans into monarchy.
The others he escaped notice of, but toward Cicero he gave rise to many suspicions, though no handle for proof; indeed some could be heard saying that he came near to being caught and slipped from the man's grasp, while others say that Cicero willingly overlooked and passed over the information against him out of fear of his friends and his power. For it was plain to everyone that those men would more likely become an addition to Caesar's safety than Caesar to their punishment.
When, then, the turn for an opinion came round to him, he rose and declared that the men should not be put to death, but that their property should become public, and that they themselves should be led away to such cities of Italy as might seem good to Cicero, and kept there in bonds until Catiline should be defeated in war.
Since this opinion was moderate and its speaker most capable, Cicero added no small weight to it, for he himself rose and argued for each side, supporting in part the earlier opinion, in part Caesar's; and all his friends, thinking that Caesar's opinion was more advantageous for Cicero — since he would be less liable to blame if he did not put the men to death — favored the second opinion the more,
so that Silanus too, changing his position again, begged off and said that not even he himself had proposed a sentence of death, for the prison was, for a man who was a Roman senator, the ultimate penalty. When this opinion had been stated, the first to speak against it was Catulus Lutatius; then Cato took it up, and pressing his suspicion of Caesar vigorously in his speech, he filled the senate with anger and resolve, so that they voted death for the men.
Concerning the confiscation of the property Caesar objected, holding that it was not right, having rejected the humane parts of his own proposal, to adopt the single harshest one; and when many pressed the point he appealed to the tribunes, who would not listen to him — but Cicero himself yielded and gave up the proposal about confiscation.
He proceeded with the senate against the men; not all were in the same place, but each of the praetors kept guard over one. First, taking Lentulus from the Palatine, he marched him along the Sacred Way and across the center of the forum, encircled by leading men who formed a bodyguard around him, while the people shuddered at what was happening and passed by in silence, especially the young, as though they thought some ancestral rite of an aristocratic authority was being performed with fear and awe.
Passing through the forum and coming to the prison, he handed Lentulus over to the executioner and ordered him put to death; then Cethegus in turn, and so, bringing down each of the others, he had them killed. Seeing that many of those still remaining from the conspiracy stood gathered together in the forum, unaware of what had already happened and lingering there until nightfall, believing the men were still alive and could be rescued, he cried out loudly to them, "They have lived," he said. This is how those Romans who do not wish to speak ill-omened words signify death.
It was already evening, and he made his way up across the forum toward home, no longer accompanied by citizens escorting him in silence and good order, but receiving him with shouts and applause wherever he passed, calling him savior and founder of his country. Many lights lit up the narrow streets, as people set up little lamps and torches at their doors,
and the women showed themselves from the rooftops in honor and for the sight of the man, as he went up most solemnly escorted by the noblest men — most of whom, having brought great wars to conclusion, entered the city in triumphal processions, and had added no small extent of land and sea to their conquests — walked along acknowledging to one another that the Roman people were indebted to numerous commanders and generals of that era for wealth, plunder, and dominion, yet owed their safety and survival to Cicero alone, who had removed from them so great and so terrible a danger.
For it did not seem so wonderful that he had stopped what was being done and punished those doing it, but that he had extinguished the greatest of all revolutions ever attempted, with the fewest possible evils, without civil strife and disorder. Indeed most of those who had flocked to Catiline, as soon as they learned what had happened to Lentulus and Cethegus, abandoned him and departed; and fighting it out against Antonius with those who remained with him, he himself was destroyed along with his army.
Nonetheless there were those prepared both to speak and to act against Cicero on account of these things, with Caesar, holding the praetorship, together with Metellus and Bestia, holding the tribuneship, as their leaders among the newly installed magistrates. These, having assumed office while Cicero still had a few days left in his, would not allow him to address the people, but placing benches in front of the rostra, they did not permit or allow him to speak, but ordered that, if he wished, he could only come down after swearing an oath concerning his office.
And he came forward as though to take this oath; and when silence fell for him, he swore — not the customary oath, but a peculiar and new one of his own — that he had indeed saved his country and preserved its supremacy. And the whole people swore the oath along with him, at which Caesar and the tribunes, growing all the more angry, contrived other troubles for Cicero, and a law was introduced by them to summon Pompey with his army, as though to overthrow Cicero's power.
But it was of great benefit to Cicero and to the whole city that Cato was then tribune, opposing their political maneuvers with equal authority but greater reputation; for he easily dissolved their other measures, and he extolled Cicero's consulship so highly in a speech delivered before the people that they awarded him the most extraordinary honors ever bestowed, and addressed him as father of his country, for he seems to have been the first to receive this title, Cato having so addressed him before the people.
And though he had the greatest power in the city at that time, he made himself an object of envy to many, not from any wicked act, but because he was resented by many for always praising and magnifying himself. For there was no meeting of the senate, the people, or a court in which one did not have to hear Catiline and Lentulus endlessly repeated.
In the end he even filled his books and writings with self-praise, and made his speech — which was in itself most pleasant and full of the greatest charm — burdensome and tiresome to his hearers, as though some sort of wax of this unpleasantness were always sticking to him. Yet even so, being possessed of such unrestrained ambition, he was free of envy toward others, being most generous in praising both the men before him and those of his own time, as one can gather from his writings.
Many of his sayings are also remembered, such as that concerning Aristotle, that he was a river of flowing gold; and concerning Plato's dialogues, that if Zeus were by nature to use speech, he would speak in such a manner. Theophrastus he was accustomed to call his own particular delight. When asked, concerning the speeches of Demosthenes, which one seemed to him the finest, he said, "the longest."
Even so, certain men who claim to be imitators of Demosthenes seize upon a remark of Cicero's, which he set down in a letter written to one of his friends, that Demosthenes nods off in places in his speeches; but they forget the great and admiring praises which he applies to the man in many places, and that the speeches about which he took most particular care among his own, those against Antony, he entitled "Philippics."
Among the men of his own time renowned for eloquence and wisdom he enhanced the reputation of every single one, whether through speaking or writing well of them. For Cratippus the Peripatetic he arranged to have Roman citizenship conferred, Caesar now being in power, and he arranged also that the council of the Areopagus should vote to request that he remain in Athens and lecture to the young men, as an adornment to the city.
Cicero's correspondence includes letters addressed to Herodes, as well as others sent to his own son, encouraging him to pursue philosophy alongside Cratippus. Gorgias the rhetorician, whom he charged with leading his young son on to pleasures and drinking, he drove away from his company,
and this is nearly the only one of his Greek letters, along with a second to Pelops of Byzantium, written in some anger — the one rebuking Gorgias fittingly, if indeed he was worthless and dissolute, as he seemed to be; the other, to Pelops, being petty and full of complaints, as though he had neglected to see that certain honors and decrees be granted him by the Byzantines.
Such things were signs of ambition, and also this: that often, carried away by the cleverness of his speech, he let go of what was fitting. For once, when pleading for Munatius, after that man was acquitted and then prosecuted his own friend Sabinus, Cicero is said to have burst out so far in anger as to say: "Was it, Munatius, on your own account that you escaped that trial, and not because I poured much darkness over the light of the courtroom?"
Once, praising Marcus Crassus from the rostrum, he had great success, and a few days later, reviling him instead, when Crassus said, "Did you not just now praise us here yourself?" he replied, "Yes," he said, "exercising my speech as practice on a poor subject."
And when Crassus once said that no Crassus at Rome had ever lived beyond sixty years, and then afterward denied it and said, "What could have made me say such a thing?", Cicero said, "You knew the Romans would be glad to hear it, and that is why you courted the people with it." And when Crassus said he was pleased with the Stoics, because they declare the good man to be rich, Cicero said, "See rather whether it is not that they say all things
belong to the wise man" — for Crassus was accused of love of money. And when one of Crassus's sons, who bore a supposed resemblance to a man named Axius, and on that account his mother faced a shameful slander involving Axius, won approval by a speech he delivered in the senate, Cicero, when asked what he thought of it, said, "Worthy [axios] of Crassus."
When Crassus was about to depart for Syria, he wished to have Cicero as a friend rather than an enemy; and, being friendly, he said he wished to dine at his house, and Cicero received him gladly. A few days later, when some friends were interceding on behalf of Vatinius, as if he were seeking a truce and goodwill — since the two were enemies — Cicero said, "Surely Vatinius too does not wish to dine at my house?" Such was he toward Crassus,
but Vatinius himself, who had swellings on his neck, and who was pleading a case, he called "a swollen orator." And hearing that he had died, then a little later learning for certain that he was alive, he said, "Then may the man who lied about it come to a bad and evil end."
And when, after Caesar had carried a vote that the land in Campania be distributed among the soldiers, many in the senate were displeased, and Lucius Gellius, who was nearly the oldest man there, said that this would not happen while he lived, Cicero said, "Let us wait, since Gellius isn't requesting much of a delay."
There was a certain Octavius who was said to be of Libyan descent. When he claimed in some trial that he could not hear what Cicero was saying, Cicero said, "And yet you have a pierced ear." And when Metellus Nepos said that Cicero had destroyed more men by testifying against them than he had saved by defending them, Cicero replied, "Yes, I admit that I have more good faith than eloquence."
There was a young man accused of giving his father poison in a cake, who boasted and said he would abuse Cicero with insults; Cicero said, "I'd sooner take that abuse from you than the cake." And when Publius Sestius took him on as an advocate along with others in some trial, but wanted to say everything himself and let no one else speak, and the jurors were plainly on the verge of voting to acquit him as the ballots were already being cast, Cicero said, "Use your opportunity today, Sestius,
for tomorrow you will be a private citizen again." And Publius Cotta, who wanted to be thought a legal expert but was in fact ignorant and unskilled, Cicero called as a witness in some trial; and when the man said he knew nothing, Cicero said, "Perhaps you think you are being asked about points of law." And when Metellus Nepos, in some dispute, kept repeatedly saying, "Who is your father?" Cicero said, "In your case your mother has made that question a harder one to answer."
For Nepos's mother was thought to be unchaste, while he himself was a fickle sort of man. Once he abandoned his tribunate abruptly and sailed off to Pompey in Syria, then came back from there even more unaccountably. When he buried his teacher Philagrus, he set up over his grave, with excessive care, a stone raven; and Cicero said, "This was the wiser thing to do, since he taught you to fly better than to speak."
And when Marcus Appius, opening some case with a preamble, said that his friend had begged him to provide diligence, eloquence, and good faith, Cicero said, "How is it, then, that you have become such a man of iron that you have provided your friend with none of all the things he asked for?"
Now to use rather bitter jokes against enemies or opposing litigants seems to belong properly to oratory; but to give offense to whomever he happened upon merely for the sake of a laugh brought Cicero a great deal of hatred. I will record a few instances of this too. As for Marcus Aquinius, whose two daughters had both married men now living in exile, Cicero nicknamed him Adrastus.
When Lucius Cotta, then serving as censor and remarkably devoted to wine, was standing for the consulship, Cicero grew thirsty, and as his friends stood around him while he drank, he said, "You are right to be afraid that the censor will be harsh with me for drinking water." And meeting Voconius, who was leading along with him his three exceedingly ugly daughters, he recited: Though Phoebus forbade it, he sowed his children.
When Marcus Gellius, who was thought not to be freeborn, read out a letter to the senate in a loud and ringing voice, Cicero said, "Do not be surprised — he too belongs among those who bawl out announcements for a living." (a reference to the town criers). And when Faustus, son of Sulla who had made himself sole ruler at Rome and had posted for death the names of many, having fallen into debt and squandered much of his estate, posted a notice of auction, Cicero said that this proscription pleased him more than his father's.
From all this Cicero became burdensome to many people, and Clodius's faction combined against him, having gotten their start in this way. Clodius came of noble stock, still youthful in age but daring and reckless in temperament; being in love with Pompeia, Caesar's wife, he made his way secretly into Caesar's house, dressed and got up as a woman lute-player, for the women were performing that secret sacrifice which no man may see, in Caesar's house, and no man was present;
but Clodius, being still a mere youth and not yet bearded, hoped to slip in unnoticed among the women to Pompeia; but once he had gone by night into the great house, he lost his way among its passages. And a maidservant of Aurelia, Caesar's mother, seeing him wandering about, asked his name; and when he was forced to speak and said he was looking for Pompeia's attendant, a girl named Abra, the maid, recognizing that the voice was not a woman's, cried out and called the women together.
They shut the doors and, searching through everything, discovered Clodius hiding in the room of the slave girl with whom he had entered the house. When the matter became widely known, Caesar divorced Pompeia and brought a charge of impiety against Clodius.
Cicero, on friendly terms with Clodius, had relied on him during the Catiline affair as an especially eager helper and bodyguard; but when Clodius, defending himself against the charge, maintained that he had been nowhere near Rome during that period, claiming instead to have been staying at places quite far off, Cicero testified against him that he had come to his house and
had discussed certain matters with him, which was true; yet it did not seem that Cicero testified for the sake of the truth, but rather to defend himself before his wife Terentia. For she resented Clodius over his sister Clodia, believing that Clodia wanted to be married to Cicero and was working toward this through a certain Tullus, who was a close companion and intimate friend of Cicero's, and who, by constantly visiting and courting Clodia, who lived nearby, aroused suspicion in Terentia,
who, being harsh in temper and dominant over Cicero, provoked him to join in the attack on Clodius and to testify against him. Many good and honorable men testified against Clodius, charging him with perjuries, corrupt practices, bribing the crowds, and the seduction of women. Lucullus even produced maidservants who testified that Clodius had had intercourse with the youngest of his sisters while she was married to Lucullus.
It was also widely believed that Clodius kept company with his other two sisters as well, of whom Marcius Rex had Tertia, and Metellus Celer had Clodia, whom people called Quadrantaria, because one of her admirers slipped copper coins into a small purse and sent them to her as though they were silver ones — the coin of least value in bronze bearing the name quadrans. It was chiefly on this sister's account that Clodius got his bad reputation.
Nevertheless, since the people at that time were arrayed against those who testified and conspired against Clodius, the jurors grew afraid and stationed a guard about themselves, and the greater part of them turned in ballots with the letters blurred into illegibility. All the same, the majority appeared to be for acquittal, and it was even said that bribery had passed through the court.
For this reason Catulus, meeting the jurors, said, "You really did ask for a guard for your safety, being afraid that someone would take the money away from you." And when Clodius said to Cicero that his testimony had won no credit with the jurors, Cicero replied, "On the contrary, twenty-five of the jurors believed me — that many voted to convict you; but thirty did not believe you, for they did not acquit you until they had taken the money."
Caesar, however, though summoned, did not testify against Clodius, nor did he say that he had found his wife guilty of adultery; he said he had divorced her because he thought that whoever was married to Caesar must be clear not only of any shameful act, but even of the mere report of one.
Having escaped this danger, Clodius, elected tribune of the people, immediately set himself against Cicero, gathering and stirring up every affair and every man against him. He won over the people with humane laws, voted great provinces for each of the consuls — Macedonia for Piso, Syria for Gabinius — enrolled many of the poor into the citizen body, and kept armed slaves about him.
Of the three men who then held the greatest power, Crassus was openly hostile to Cicero, Pompey was playing coy toward both sides, while Caesar, on the verge of departing for Gaul at the head of his army, was the one Cicero worked his way toward for protection; though Caesar was not his friend but rather suspicious of him because of the Catiline affair, Cicero asked to serve as his legate on the campaign.
Caesar accepted, and when Clodius saw Cicero escaping his tribunate, he pretended to be reconciled, laying most of the blame on Terentia, always speaking of Cicero himself moderately and offering fair-minded words, as one who felt neither hatred nor anger but was making only measured and friendly complaints, and so entirely removed Cicero's fear that Cicero declined the legation from Caesar and took up public affairs again,
at which Caesar, provoked, both strengthened Clodius's hand and turned Pompey completely away from Cicero, and personally declared before the people that putting men to death without a trial struck him as neither right nor lawful — meaning Lentulus and Cethegus and their associates. For this was the charge, and it was on this account that Cicero was being summoned. Being in danger and pursued, Cicero changed his dress and went about with unkempt hair, begging the people for mercy.
Everywhere Clodius met him in the narrow streets, with insolent and bold men about him, who mocked without restraint at the change in Cicero's dress and bearing, and in many places pelted him with mud and stones, obstructing his pleas for mercy.
Nevertheless, nearly the whole body of the knights changed their dress along with Cicero, and no fewer than twenty thousand young men followed him about with unkempt hair, joining in his supplications. Then, when the senate met to vote that the people should change their garments as in a time of mourning, and the consuls opposed it, and Clodius stationed armed men about the senate house, many of the senators rushed out, tearing their tunics and shouting.
But since this spectacle drew neither pity nor any respect, and Cicero faced a choice between running away and letting armed force and the blade settle the matter with Clodius, he appealed to Pompey for aid — Pompey having purposely made himself scarce and withdrawn to his estates near Alba. Cicero sent his son-in-law Piso ahead to plead with him, then went up in person afterward.
But Pompey, on learning of it, could not bring himself to appear before him, for he felt a terrible shame before a man who had fought great struggles on his behalf and had conducted much of his public life for his sake; but being Caesar's son-in-law, and Caesar making the request, he betrayed his old debts of gratitude, and slipping out by another door, avoided the meeting. Thus betrayed by him and left utterly alone, Cicero took refuge with the consuls,
and Gabinius was harsh as always, but Piso spoke to him more gently, advising him to give way and yield before the onrush of Clodius, and to bear the change in circumstances, and to become again the savior of his country when it was in factional strife and troubles because of Clodius. Having received such an answer, Cicero deliberated with his friends: Lucullus urged him to stay, on the ground that he would prevail, while others urged him to flee, on the ground that the people would soon long for him once they had had their fill of Clodius's madness and folly.
This is what Cicero decided to do. The statue of Athena which he had long kept set up in his house and honored above all others, he carried up to the Capitol and dedicated, inscribing it "To Athena, Guardian of Rome"; and taking an escort from his friends, he slipped out of the city about the middle of the night and traveled on foot through Lucania, intending to make for Sicily.
But when it was now clear that he had fled, Clodius brought a vote of exile against him, and posted an edict denying him fire and water and forbidding anyone to house him within a five-hundred-mile radius of Italy. Most people, however, showed scant regard for this decree, out of the esteem they held for Cicero, and showed him every
escorted him with friendly courtesy. At Hipponium, a city of Lucania which they now call Vibo, Vibius, a Sicilian man who had enjoyed many benefits of Cicero's friendship and had, during Cicero's consulship, been appointed prefect of engineers, would not receive him into his house, though he promised to make over an estate to him; and Gaius Vergilius, Sicily's praetor, a man long counted among Cicero's closest friends,
wrote telling him to keep away from Sicily. Discouraged by these things, he made his way toward Brundisium, and once there set sail for Dyrrhachium with a favorable wind, when a sea wind blew against him during the day he turned back, then put out again later. It is said that when he had landed at Dyrrhachium and was about to disembark, there occurred at the same time an earthquake and a convulsion of the sea; and from these the diviners concluded that his exile would not be lasting, for these were signs of change.
Though many came to see him out of sheer goodwill, and city after Greek city competed to send him embassies, still he spent most of his time despondent and grief-stricken, gazing toward Italy like a lovesick man, and had become, in his pride, so very small and humbled and shrunken by his misfortune that no one would have expected such a thing of a man who had lived with so great a training in learning.
And yet he himself had many times urged his friends to call him a philosopher rather than an orator, since it was philosophy he had taken up as his life's work, and used rhetoric merely as an instrument for the needs of his political career. But reputation has a terrible power to wash the dye of philosophy off the soul, as it were, and to smear onto men engaged in politics the passions of the multitude, through their intercourse and familiarity with them, unless one guards very carefully against being carried along with externals to such a degree as to share in the passions attached to affairs, rather than merely in the affairs themselves.
Clodius, having driven Cicero out, burned down his country houses, and burned down his city house too, and built on the site a temple of Liberty; and he put the rest of his property up for sale and had it cried day after day, though no one would buy any of it. Having thereby become formidable to the aristocratic party, and dragging the people along, given over to great insolence and boldness, he set upon Pompey, tearing apart some of the arrangements Pompey had made during his campaigns,
over which Pompey, in disgrace, reproached himself for having abandoned Cicero, and again, in a complete reversal, became active in every way, joining Cicero's friends in working for his recall; and since Clodius stood against it, the Senate resolved to ratify no public business in the meantime, and to conduct no public affair, unless Cicero's return should be granted,
and when Lentulus and his colleague were consuls and factional violence had reached the point where tribunes suffered wounds in the forum, and Quintus, Cicero's own brother, lay unnoticed among the corpses as if slain, opinion among the populace began to shift, and of the tribunes Annius Milo was the first who dared haul Clodius into court on a charge of violence; a great crowd rallied around Pompey, drawn from both the city populace and the towns nearby, and marching out together with them and driving Clodius out of the forum, he called on the citizens to vote.
And it is said that never before had the people passed any measure with such unanimity. The Senate, vying with the people, decreed that the cities which had shown Cicero care during his exile should be commended, and that his town house and his country estates, torn down by Clodius, should be restored at the public's cost.
Cicero came back in the exile's sixteenth month, and the cities' rejoicing, together with the crowds eager to greet him along the way, was so great that what Cicero later said fell short of the truth: he said that Italy had carried him on her shoulders into Rome. Even Crassus, who had been his enemy before the exile, then came eagerly to meet him and made up with him, doing a favor, as he said, to his son Publius, who was an admirer of Cicero.
Not long after this, watching for a time when Clodius was away from the city, he went up to the Capitol with many companions and tore away and destroyed the tribunician tablets, on which were recorded the acts of Clodius's tribunate. When Clodius made an accusation about this, and Cicero said that Clodius had unlawfully passed from patrician status to the tribunate, and that therefore nothing done by
him had any validity, Cato grew indignant and spoke against this; not that he approved of Clodius, indeed he was displeased with his political conduct, but he declared it a dangerous and violent thing for the Senate to vote the annulment of so many decrees and acts, among which was his own administration of affairs in Cyprus and Byzantium. From this Cicero fell into a quarrel with Cato, one that did not come to anything open, but which made their friendliness toward one another somewhat dimmer.
After this, Milo killed Clodius; and being prosecuted for the murder, he brought in Cicero as his advocate. The Senate, fearing that with a man so famous and high-spirited as Milo in danger, disturbance might arise in the city, entrusted to Pompey the conduct of this and the other trials, so that he should provide security for the city and the courts.
While Pompey, while it was still night, had surrounded the forum with soldiers occupying the heights, Milo, fearing that Cicero, disturbed by the unfamiliar sight, might plead his case worse, persuaded him to be carried to the forum in a litter and remain quiet there until the judges assembled and the court was filled; for Cicero was not only,
as it seems, lacking in courage amid weapons, but he even approached speaking with fear, and would scarcely stop trembling and shaking even after his speech, in many contests, had reached its peak and settled into its course. When he was defending Licinius Murena, who was being prosecuted by Cato, and was eager to surpass Hortensius, who had performed brilliantly, he did not rest at all during the night, so that from excessive worry and sleeplessness he was worn out and appeared inferior to himself.
So then, on that occasion, coming forward from his litter for Milo's trial, and seeing Pompey seated up above as if in a military camp, and weapons gleaming all around the forum, he was thrown into confusion and could scarcely begin his speech, his body trembling and his voice choked, while Milo himself stood by fearlessly and manfully to face the contest, disdaining to let his hair grow long or to change into mourning clothes; which indeed seems to have contributed not a little to his conviction. But Cicero, because of this, was thought to be more devoted to his friend than cowardly.
He was also enrolled among the priests the Romans term augurs, filling the vacancy left when young Crassus perished on Parthian soil. Then, having received by lot the province of Cilicia and an army of twelve thousand infantry and two thousand six hundred cavalry, he sailed out, having also been instructed to render King Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia friendly and obedient.
These things he accomplished and arranged blamelessly, without war; and seeing the Cilicians, elated by the Roman disaster against the Parthians and by the revolutionary movement in Syria, he calmed them by governing mildly. He accepted no gifts even when kings offered them, and he released the provincials from the burden of banquets; instead he himself, each day, entertained the cultivated men of the region with feasts, not extravagant, but generous.
His house had no doorkeeper, nor was he himself ever seen lying abed by anyone, but from early morning he stood or walked before his chamber and greeted those who came to pay their respects. It is said that he never had anyone beaten with rods, nor tore anyone's clothing, nor in anger hurled abuse together with insult upon anyone incurring a fine,
and having discovered that much public money had been embezzled, he made the cities prosperous, and kept those who repaid it from suffering anything further, preserving their civic standing. He also engaged in war, routing the bandits who lived around Mount Amanus, for which he was even hailed imperator by the soldiers.
When Caelius the orator asked him to send leopards from Cilicia to Rome for some spectacle, priding himself on his accomplishments he wrote back to him that there were no leopards in Cilicia, since they had fled into Caria, indignant that they alone were being warred upon while everyone else was at peace. Sailing away from his province, he touched first at Rhodes, and then lingered at Athens gladly, longing for his old pursuits there.
After spending time with the leading men in learning, and greeting the friends and companions of his earlier days, and being admired as was fitting by Greece, he returned to the city, since affairs were already, as it were, moving toward civil war under some inflammation.
Now in the Senate, when a triumph was voted to him, he said he would rather follow in Caesar's triumph if an agreement were reached; and privately he gave much advice, writing much to Caesar and asking much of Pompey himself, soothing and consoling each of them. But when matters proved beyond remedy and Caesar was advancing, Pompey did not remain, but left the city with many good men; from this flight Cicero held back, but he was thought to be siding with Caesar.
And it is clear from his own words that his mind was tossed back and forth many times between the two sides and suffered greatly. In his letters he confesses that he cannot decide toward which side he should incline, for Pompey had a glorious and noble cause for the war, while Caesar was managing affairs more skillfully and was better able to save himself and his friends, so that he had someone to flee from, but no one to flee to.
When Trebatius, one of Caesar's companions, wrote a letter saying that Caesar thought it best that Cicero above all should be examined together with himself and share in his hopes, but if he shrank back on account of old age, he should go to Greece and sit quietly there, keeping out of both men's way, Cicero, astonished that Caesar himself had not written, answered angrily that he would never do anything beneath the dignity of his career in public affairs. Such, then, are the things written in his letters.
Once Caesar had departed for Spain, Cicero without delay took ship to join Pompey; and while he appeared welcome to the others, Cato, on seeing him privately, reproached him at length for having gone over to Pompey's side, saying that for himself it would not have been honorable to abandon the political position he had chosen from the beginning, but that Cicero, by contrast, could have served his country and his friends better by remaining where he was, adapting himself with neutrality to whatever should happen, and that it was by no reasoning and not out of necessity that he had become an enemy of Caesar and had come here to share in so great a danger.
Cato's words shook Cicero's resolve, as did the fact that Pompey found little use for his services. The cause was Cicero himself, who did not deny that he regretted having come, but disparaged Pompey's preparations and was covertly discontented with his plans, and did not refrain from mocking and saying witty things against the allies, though he himself always went about the camp gloomy and never laughing, while providing others with laughter they had no need of.
It is worth setting down a few of these as well. When Domitius was bringing forward a man not suited to war for a command post, and saying that he was reasonable and moderate in character, Cicero said, "Then why not keep him as a guardian for your children?"
When some were praising Theophanes of Lesbos, who held the post of camp engineer-in-chief, for how skillfully he had comforted the Rhodians after losing their fleet, Cicero said, "What a fine thing it is to have a Greek as prefect!" And when Caesar was succeeding in most things and in a way besieging them, and Lentulus said he heard that Caesar's friends were gloomy, he answered, "You mean they are ill-disposed toward Caesar."
And when a certain Marcius, newly arrived from Italy, said that a rumor prevailed at Rome that Pompey was being besieged, he said, "Then did you sail here so that you might believe this by seeing it for yourself?" And after the defeat, when Nonius urged that hope was still warranted, given that seven eagles remained in Pompey's camp, Cicero said, "Now that would be fine counsel to follow,"
he said, "your advice would be sound if we happened to be fighting jackdaws." And when Labienus kept pressing certain oracles on him and insisting that Pompey must win, he said, "well, thanks to that clever plan of yours, we have now lost our camp."
But when the battle at Pharsalus took place — which he did not take part in on account of illness — and Pompey had fled, Cato commanded a sizeable army together with a substantial fleet stationed at Dyrrachium, and he thought that Cicero ought to take command in accordance with the law, since he outranked him in consular standing; but Cicero, pushing away the command and altogether avoiding further campaigning, came within a hair's breadth of being killed,
with the younger Pompey and his friends calling him a traitor and drawing their swords, had not Cato stepped in and with difficulty rescued him and got him away from the camp. Putting in at Brundisium, he remained there, awaiting Caesar's arrival, since Caesar had been held up by affairs in Asia and the region around Egypt,
and when word came that Caesar had put in at Tarentum and was making his way on foot from there to Brundisium, he set out toward him — not altogether without hope, but ashamed, with so many people present, to make trial of a man who was both an enemy and now in power. Yet he had no need to do or say anything unworthy of himself.
As soon as Caesar caught sight of him approaching well ahead of the rest to greet him, he got down and embraced him, and conversing with him alone he walked on for a good many stadia. And from that time he continued to honor and treat him kindly, so that when Cicero wrote a eulogy of Cato, Caesar, writing in reply, praised the speech while likening the man's career to that of Pericles and Theramenes.
Cicero's speech is entitled Cato, and Caesar's Anticato. And it is said that when Quintus Ligarius was on trial because he had become one of Caesar's enemies, and Cicero was pleading on his behalf, Caesar said to his friends, "what's stopping us from hearing Cicero speak again after all this time, since the man has long since been judged wicked and hostile?"
But when Cicero, having begun to speak, moved his audience extraordinarily and his speech advanced, varied in its pathos and marvelous in its charm, many colors came and went over Caesar's face, and it was plain that every turn of feeling passed through his soul; and finally, when the orator touched on the struggles at Pharsalus, Caesar was so overcome that he shook in his body and dropped some of the papers from his hand — in the end he was forced to acquit the man of the charge.
After this, with the constitution having shifted into monarchy, Cicero gave up public business and devoted his leisure to the young men eager to take up philosophy, and it was almost through his familiarity with these — who were of the noblest birth and foremost rank — that he again came to have very great influence in the city,
his own task being to render philosophical dialogues into Latin and translate them, and to give a Roman equivalent to each of the terms of logic or natural philosophy; for it was he, they say, who first, or most of all, gave the Romans names for "presentation," "assent," "suspension of judgment," and "comprehension," and further "the atom," "the indivisible," "the void," and many other such terms, making them familiar and expressible, some by metaphors, others by other devices of adaptation.
He used his facility for poetry as a form of play. It is said that whenever the impulse came upon him, he would compose five hundred verses in a night. For most of this period he spent his time at his country estates near Tusculum, and in letters told his friends he felt he was living out Laertes' existence — whether jesting, as was his custom, or because he burned with ambition for public life and was troubled by the state of affairs.
It was seldom that he came down into the city, and on those occasions merely to pay his respects to Caesar; yet he stood at the front of those pressing for honors in Caesar's favor, eager as they were to find some fresh praise for the man and his deeds — such as the remark he made about Pompey's statues, which had been taken down and thrown to the ground, but which Caesar ordered set up again — and they were set up. For Cicero said that by this act of humanity Caesar was setting up Pompey's statues while fixing his own firmly in place.
He was planning, it is said, to compose in writing the history of his fatherland, mixing in much from Greek history, and altogether to turn into it the stories and myths he had gathered — but he was overtaken by many public troubles and many private ones and sufferings, of which most seem to have come about through his own choice.
For first he sent away his wife Terentia, who had shown him neglect during the war, so that he was sent off short of even the necessary provisions for the journey, and did not find her considerate even when he returned again to Italy — for she herself did not come to him, though he stayed a long time at Brundisium, and when his daughter, a young girl, came so great a distance, she provided her neither with a fitting escort nor with the necessary funds, and moreover she left Cicero's house stripped bare and empty of everything, burdened with many great debts.
These are said to be the most respectable pretexts for the separation; but even as Terentia denied these very charges, he himself made her defense a brilliant one — for not long afterward he married a young girl, as Terentia gave it out, out of desire for her youthful beauty, but as Tiro, Cicero's freedman, has written, for the sake of wealth to pay off his debts,
for the girl was extremely rich, and Cicero, having been left as trustee of her estate, was keeping it safe. Since he owed a great many thousands, his friends and relatives urged him toward marrying the girl despite the difference in age, so that he could use her money to clear his creditors. Antony, mentioning this marriage in his replies to the Philippics, says that Cicero cast out a wife with whom he had grown old — wittily mocking at the same time Cicero's staying at home as that of a man inactive and unfit for soldiering.
Not long after he married her, his daughter died in childbirth at Lentulus's house — for she had been married to him after the death of her former husband Piso. Friends gathered from every side to console Cicero, but he took the event so hard that he even sent away the wife he had just married, believing she had seemed pleased at Tullia's death.
Such, then, was the state of affairs at home for Cicero. As for the plot forming against Caesar, he took no part in it, although he was among the closest companions of Brutus, and seemed, more than anyone else, to be weighed down by the present state of things and to long for the old order. But the conspirators feared his nature, as lacking in boldness, and also his age, at which even the most vigorous natures fall short of courage.
So when the deed had been done by Brutus and Cassius and their circle, and Caesar's friends were combining against them, there was fear again that the city would be plunged into civil wars; but Antony, then consul, convened the senate and spoke briefly about concord, while Cicero, discoursing at length in a manner suited to the occasion, persuaded the senate, imitating the Athenians, to vote an amnesty for what had been done against Caesar, and to hand out provinces to Cassius, Brutus, and their associates.
But none of this came to anything; for the people themselves, moved to pity of their own accord when they saw the corpse being borne through the forum, and when Antony displayed before them the garment drenched in blood and slashed everywhere by the swords, went mad with rage and searched the forum for the men, and ran with fire toward their houses meaning to burn them down. The conspirators escaped this danger because they had guarded against it beforehand, but expecting many other and greater dangers, they left the city.
At once Antony was exalted, and was feared by everyone as one about to become sole ruler, but most feared of all by Cicero. For seeing his power reviving again in the state, and knowing him to be well disposed toward Brutus's circle, Antony was displeased at his presence. And there had already existed some measure of suspicion between them owing to the dissimilarity and difference of their ways of life.
Fearing this, Cicero first set out to sail off with Dolabella to Syria as his legate; but when Hirtius and Pansa, who were to be consuls after Antony, both of them decent men who admired Cicero, pleaded with him to stay by them, promising to put down Antony while he remained, he — neither wholly distrusting nor wholly trusting them — let Dolabella go his way, and having agreed with Hirtius's circle that he would spend the summer at Athens and return again once they took up their office, he set sail on his own.
But there was a delay in the voyage, and when news arrived from Rome, as usually happens, that Antony had undergone an astonishing change and was doing and managing everything in accordance with the senate's wishes, and that only his own presence was lacking for affairs to be in the best condition, he reproached himself for having been overly cautious and turned back toward Rome once more.
And he was not mistaken in his first hopes: so great a crowd of people poured out to meet him in joy and longing that almost an entire day was spent in the greetings and expressions of goodwill around the gates and at his entrance. But on the next day, when Antony convened the senate and summoned him, he did not come, but lay in bed, pretending to be unwell from fatigue.
The truth seems to have been fear of a plot, arising from some suspicion and information that had reached him on the road. Antony was angered at this slander and sent soldiers either to bring him or to burn down his house, as he ordered; but when many objected and pleaded, he stopped after merely taking hostages.
And from then on they went about warily, keeping their distance from one another and on guard, until the young Caesar arrived from Apollonia, took up the inheritance of the elder Caesar, and fell into a dispute with Antony over the twenty-five million sesterces which Antony was withholding from the estate.
After this, Philip, who had the young Caesar's mother, and Marcellus, who had his sister, brought the young man to meet with Cicero, and reached an agreement: Cicero would provide him the power that came from his oratory and his standing in politics, both in the senate and with the people, and he in turn would provide Cicero the security that came from his money and his arms — for the young man already had around him not a few of those who had served under the elder Caesar.
There seems also to have been a greater cause for Cicero's eagerly accepting Caesar's friendship. It is said that while Pompey and Caesar were still alive, Cicero dreamed that someone was calling the sons of senators to the Capitol, since one of them was about to be appointed by Jupiter as ruler of Rome;
and that the citizens, running eagerly, stood around the temple, and the boys, in their purple-bordered togas, sat in silence, and suddenly the doors opened and, one by one, as each boy rose, he walked in a circle past the god, who looked over all of them and sent them away disappointed. But when this one came up to him, he stretched out his right hand and said, "Romans, this one, when he becomes your leader, will be the end of your civil wars."
They say that after seeing such a dream, Cicero had the boy's appearance impressed upon him and held it clearly in mind, though he did not know who he was. The next day, going down to the Campus Martius, he saw the boys already finished with their exercises departing, and that boy appeared to Cicero looking exactly as he had appeared in the dream; and astonished, he inquired who his parents were,
His father was an Octavius, not a man of any great distinction, and his mother was Attia, the niece of Caesar; and it was for this reason that Caesar, having no children of his own, gave him his property and his household in his will. From that time, they say, Cicero made a point of meeting the boy diligently whenever they crossed paths, and the young man received his friendly attentions warmly, since it had also happened, by chance, that he was born in the year of Cicero's consulship.
These, then, were the reasons that were given out. But it was Cicero's hatred of Antony that came first, and then his nature, which was too fond of honor, that led him to court Caesar's favor, thinking he was thereby adding that young man's power to his own political cause. So completely did the boy win him over that Cicero even called him father.
At which Brutus was furious, and in his letters to Atticus he reproached Cicero, saying that in courting Caesar out of fear of Antony he was plainly not securing freedom for his country but was seeking out a kindly master for himself. Nevertheless Brutus took Cicero's own son, who was then living in Athens among the philosophers, and kept him at his side in positions of command, and made good use of him in many matters.
At that time Cicero's power in the city had reached its very height, and, master of the situation to whatever degree he wished, he drove Antony out and organized the political forces against him, dispatching the pair of consuls, Hirtius and Pansa, against him in war; and it was he who won over the senate to grant Caesar the fasces and full military insignia, as though the young man were waging war for his homeland's defense.
But when Antony had been defeated, and both consuls had died as a result of the battle, their forces joined themselves to Caesar; and the senate, afraid of this young man who had enjoyed such brilliant fortune, attempted through honors and rewards to lure his soldiers from his side and to strip away his power, on the ground that it no longer needed defenders now that Antony had fled.
It was because of this that Caesar, taking fright, sent men privately to Cicero, urging him to seek the consulship jointly with himself, so that Caesar could manage affairs however he himself had determined, while taking hold of the office, and could let the young man administer things while getting only the name and the glory of it. Caesar himself admitted that, being afraid of being disbanded and in danger of being left without support, he had made use of Cicero's ambition for office when it suited his need, urging him to stand for the consulship while promising his own cooperation and support in the canvass.
It was here above all that Cicero, an old man led on by a young one, was deceived, and by joining in the canvassing and gaining the senate's support for him, he at once incurred blame from his friends, and only a little later realized that he had destroyed himself and had surrendered the people's freedom in the bargain.
For the young man, once he had grown in strength and obtained the consulship, said farewell to Cicero, and, becoming friends with Antony and Lepidus and combining his forces with theirs, divided up the supreme power among them as though it were some piece of property; and there were drawn up lists of men who were to die, more than two hundred of them. But the greatest dispute among their claims was caused by the proscription of Cicero, with Antony refusing any settlement unless Cicero were the very first to die, and Lepidus siding with Antony, while Caesar held out against them both.
Their meetings were held in secret, with none but themselves present, near the city of Bononia, over the course of three days, and they came together in a certain place at some distance from the camps, encircled by a stream. For the first two days, it is said, Caesar contended vigorously in Cicero's defense, but on the third day yielded and abandoned the man; and the terms of this exchange of victims were as follows.
Caesar had to give up Cicero, Lepidus his own brother Paulus, and Antony had to give up Lucius Caesar, who was his uncle on his mother's side — so far had they fallen, through rage and madness, from human reasoning, or rather, so clearly did they reveal that man, once passion has mastered him, becomes more savage than any wild beast.
While these things were being carried out, Cicero was on his own estate near Tusculum, with his brother at his side; and when they learned of the proscriptions they decided to move on to Astura, a coastal property of Cicero's, and from there to sail to Macedonia to join Brutus, for word was already going about that he was in control there. They were carried in litters, worn out with grief, and along the road they would stop and set their litters side by side and weep together.
Quintus was the more despondent of the two, and a reckoning of his own lack of resources came over him — he said he had brought nothing from home with him, and that even Cicero's traveling funds were scanty; it would be better, then, for Cicero to go on ahead in his flight, while he himself ran back home to gather his belongings. This they decided; and, embracing one another and weeping, they parted.
Quintus, then, not many days later, was betrayed by his own household slaves to those hunting him, and was put to death along with his son. Cicero, having been carried to Astura and finding a boat there, at once boarded it and sailed along the coast as far as Circaeum, making use of a favorable wind. From there, though the pilots wished to set sail at once, he disembarked — whether from fear of the sea, or because he had not yet entirely given up hope in Caesar's good faith — and went on foot for a hundred stadia, as though making his way toward Rome.
But again he grew distracted and changed his mind, and went back down to the sea toward Astura. There he spent the night turning over terrible and desperate calculations, so much so that he even considered making his way secretly into Caesar's house and killing himself upon the hearth, to bring down an avenging spirit upon him. But fear of torture turned him away from this course as well, and, going through many confused and shifting plans in his thinking, he entrusted himself to his servants to be carried by sea to Caieta, where he had estates and a pleasant refuge in the summer season, when the etesian winds blow most agreeably.
The place also has a small temple of Apollo above the sea. From there a flock of crows rose up together, screeching, and flew toward Cicero's boat as it was being rowed to land; and settling on the yardarm on either side, some cawed while the rest gnawed at the rope-ends, and to everyone present, the omen looked ill-boding. Cicero, in any case, disembarked, and went into his villa to rest, and lay down.
Most of the crows perched on the window, making a great commotion with their cries, but one of them flew down onto the couch where Cicero lay with his face covered, and with its beak began little by little to pull the cloak away from his face. The servants, seeing this, and reproaching themselves for waiting about as spectators while their master was being murdered, when even wild creatures came to his aid and showed concern for him beyond what he deserved, while they themselves offered no defense, partly by pleading with him and partly by taking him up by force, carried him in his litter down toward the sea.
Meanwhile the assassins arrived — a centurion, Herennius, and Popillius, a military tribune, whom Cicero had once defended when he was on trial for the murder of his father — and they had attendants with them. Finding the doors closed, they broke them down, and since Cicero was nowhere to be seen and those inside claimed not to know where he was,
it is said that a young man, one who had been raised by Cicero in liberal letters and learning but who was a freedman of his brother Quintus, named Philologus, informed the tribune that the litter was passing along the shaded, overgrown walkways on its way toward the sea. The tribune, taking a few men with him, ran around to the exit, while Herennius came running through the walkways; and Cicero became aware of him, and ordered his servants to set the litter down right there.
He himself, as was his custom, touched his chin with his left hand and gazed steadily at his killers, filthy and unkempt and his face wasted away with anxieties, so that most of those present covered their own faces while Herennius cut him down.
He was slaughtered as he stretched his neck out from the litter, in the sixty-fourth year of his life; and Antony ordered that his head and his hands be cut off — the hands with which he had written the Philippics. For Cicero himself had entitled his speeches against Antony the Philippics, and to this day the books are still called by that name.
When the severed parts were brought to Rome, Antony happened to be presiding over an election; and when he heard of it and saw them he cried out that now the proscriptions were at an end. He ordered the head and the hands to be placed above the Rostra on the speaker's platform, a spectacle horrifying to the Romans, who felt they were looking not at Cicero's face but at an image of Antony's own soul —
except that in one small matter he showed some moderation in these dealings: he turned Philologus over to Quintus's wife, Pomponia. Once the man was in her power, she inflicted other terrible punishments upon him, forcing him to slice off pieces of his own flesh, roast them bit by bit, and eat them. So, at least, some of the historians have recorded it; but Tiro, the freedman who had once served Cicero, says nothing whatsoever about Philologus's treachery.
I have also learned that Caesar, a long time afterward, came in upon one of his grandsons who was holding a book of Cicero's in his hands; and the boy, in alarm, tried to hide it under his cloak, but Caesar, seeing this, took the book and read through a great part of it standing there, and then, handing it back to the young man, said, "An eloquent man, my boy — eloquent, and a lover of his country."
Indeed, as soon as he had finished off Antony in the war, being consul himself he chose Cicero's son as his fellow consul; and during that same consulship the senate pulled down Antony's statues, annulled all his other honors, and further decreed that no one of the Antonii should bear the name Marcus — so did the divine power bring round, upon the household of Cicero, the final act of Antony's punishment.

======== Comparison Of Demosthenes And Cicero ========

As for what is worth remembering in the accounts told of Demosthenes and Cicero, this has now come to our knowledge; but setting aside the comparison of their ability in speeches, I think I should not pass over in silence this: that Demosthenes strained toward oratory every gift he had, whether from nature or from training, surpassing in vividness and force those who competed with him in contests and lawsuits, in grandeur and magnificence the display-orators, and in precision and technique the sophists;
whereas Cicero, having become a man of wide learning and varied application in his devotion to speech, left to posterity quite a number of philosophical works composed by his own hand, following the Academy's approach; yet even in the speeches he wrote for trials and contests, he clearly wished to display some acquaintance with letters.
There is also a certain difference of character visible in the speeches of each. For the Demosthenic style, kept entirely free of ornament and playfulness, is drawn together into force and earnestness, and does not smell of the lamp-oil, as Pytheas mocked it, but rather of water-drinking, of careful thought, and of the reputed bitterness and grimness of his manner,
whereas Cicero, often carried by his fondness for mockery into buffoonery, and treating in his lawsuits matters worthy of seriousness with laughter and jest in an ironical way, disregarded propriety for the sake of expediency—as in his defense of Caelius, where he claimed there was nothing strange in the man indulging in pleasures amid such luxury and extravagance, since it is madness not to partake of what is permitted, especially when the most eminent philosophers place happiness in pleasure.
It is said that when Cicero, as consul, was defending a man prosecuted by Cato, and made many jokes at Cato's expense mocking the Stoic school for the absurdity of its paradoxical doctrines, and a great burst of laughter came down from the bystanders upon the judges, Cato, smiling quietly, said to those sitting near him, "What a ridiculous consul we have, gentlemen."
Cicero seems indeed to have been naturally inclined to laughter and fond of jesting, and his face wore a look of smiling calm, whereas upon Demosthenes there always lay a certain seriousness, and this pensive and thoughtful cast he did not easily set aside; for which reason his enemies called him difficult and ill-tempered, as he himself says.
Furthermore, one may observe in their writings that the one touches on praise of himself gracefully and without giving offense, whenever this was needed for some other, greater purpose, and is otherwise cautious and moderate; whereas Cicero's immoderate self-praise in his speeches revealed a certain lack of self-control in his desire for reputation, as when he shouted that arms ought to yield to the toga and the tongue to the triumphal laurel.
In the end his self-praise extended beyond what he had done and accomplished to encompass the very speeches he had spoken and composed, as though vying boyishly with the sophists Isocrates and Anaximenes, rather than aiming to lead and set upright the Roman people—weighty, warlike, a wrestler in arms, dreadful to his rivals.
For while it is necessary for the statesman to be strong through speech, it is ignoble to delight in and hanker after the reputation that comes from speech. In this respect Demosthenes is weightier and more magnificent, declaring his own ability to be a kind of skill requiring much goodwill from his hearers, and considering those who prided themselves on it to be, as indeed they are, illiberal and vulgar,
Now the capacity for public speaking and statesmanship existed equally in both men, so that even those in command of arms and armies had need of them—Demosthenes of Chares, Diopeithes, and Leosthenes; Cicero of Pompey and the young Caesar, according to what Caesar himself relates in the memoirs he dedicated to Agrippa and Maecenas.
But that which most seems, and is said, to reveal and test a man's character—power and office, which stir every passion and expose every vice—this Demosthenes never had, nor did he give such a trial of himself, having held no prominent office, since he did not even command in the field the force he himself had organized against Philip;
whereas Cicero, dispatched as quaestor to Sicily and later as proconsul over Cilicia and Cappadocia, during an era when greed for riches had reached its peak, and when the generals and governors sent out, thinking mere theft ignoble, turned to outright plunder, so that taking bribes did not seem terrible but the man who did it moderately was even loved—Cicero made great display of his contempt for money, and great display of kindness and generosity.
And in Rome itself, having been appointed consul in name but given the authority of an absolute commander and dictator against the followers of Catiline, he bore witness together with Plato's prophecy that cities would find respite from evils when, by some good fortune, great power and wisdom should meet together with justice in the same persons.
As for making money from speech, Demosthenes is spoken of with reproach, for secretly writing speeches for the opponents of Phormio and Apollodorus, and for being accused in the matter of the king's money, and being convicted in the Harpalus affair. But even granting that those who put these charges in writing—and there are quite a number of them—are guilty of falsehood,
still it is impossible to deny that Demosthenes would not have dared to look with indifference upon gifts given by kings with favor and honor, nor was this the conduct of a man who lent money on maritime ventures; whereas concerning Cicero it has been said that he resisted, both when he was market-overseer for the Sicilians and proconsul for the king of the Cappadocians, and when his friends in Rome, at the time he was driven from the city, offered him much and begged him to accept it.
And indeed exile befell the one shamefully, as a man convicted of theft, but the other as a man who had cut out the most wicked citizens from his country in the noblest of deeds; for which reason no one spoke a word for the one when he was driven out, whereas for the other the Senate changed its dress and went into mourning, and was persuaded to vote on behalf of no one else before voting Cicero's return.
Cicero, however, spent his exile idly, sitting in Macedonia, whereas for Demosthenes exile too became a great part of his statesmanship. For, as has been said, striving alongside the Greeks and driving out the envoys of the Macedonians, he went about the cities, proving himself, under similar misfortunes, a citizen considerably superior to Themistocles or Alcibiades; and indeed, on returning, he gave himself again to this same statesmanship, and continued warring against Antipater and the Macedonians.
Cicero, by contrast, was reproached in the Senate by Laelius, when Caesar—not yet bearded—asked leave to stand for the consulship contrary to law, and Cicero sat in silence. Brutus too wrote, accusing him of having fostered a tyranny greater and heavier than the one he himself had overthrown.
At the end, as for their deaths, one might pity the one—an old man, through lack of spirit carried this way and that by his servants, fleeing death and hiding from men who came against him not long before nature would have taken him anyway—and then being cut down; whereas for the other, even if he yielded a little in his supplication, admirable was the preparation and keeping of the poison, and admirable its use, since when the god did not grant him sanctuary, he went off as though taking refuge at a greater altar, having freed himself from the weapons and the spearmen, laughing at the cruelty of Antipater.

======== Demetrius ========

Those who first supposed that the arts resemble the senses seem to me to have grasped especially well the power involved in judging them, by which we are naturally able to apprehend opposites alike in each kind. For this is common to both; but they differ in the reference their judgments make to their respective ends.
For sense-perception has come into being no more for distinguishing white from black, or sweet from bitter, or soft and yielding from hard and resistant, than for anything else; rather its function, in meeting with each of these, is to be moved by all of them and, once moved, to report to the mind how it has been affected. But the arts, being constituted along with reason for the choosing and taking of what is proper to them, and the avoidance and rejection of what is foreign, contemplate the one primarily for its own sake, the other incidentally, for the sake of guarding against it.
For it belongs to the art of medicine to consider what is sickly, and to the art of music what is discordant, in each case for the sake of producing their opposites; and those most perfect of all arts, temperance, justice, and prudence, being judgments not only of what is noble, just, and beneficial, but also of what is harmful, base, and unjust, do not praise the innocence that prides itself on inexperience of evils, but consider it foolishness and ignorance of matters which those who intend to live rightly ought especially to know.
Now the ancient Spartans, at their festivals, would compel the helots to drink much unmixed wine and would bring them into the banquets, thereby showing the young what drunkenness looks like. We, however, do not consider it a very humane or civilized form of correction to reform some by the corruption of others;
but of those who have used themselves less carefully, and who, being placed in positions of authority and great affairs, have become conspicuous for vice, it is perhaps no worse to insert one pair or two into our models of lives — not, by Zeus, for the pleasure and entertainment of our readers, embellishing the narrative,
but rather, just as Ismenias the Theban, when demonstrating for his pupils, used to play both those who piped well and those who piped badly, saying, 'thus one ought to pipe,' and again, 'thus one ought not to pipe,' while Antigenides held the view that young listeners would take more delight in skilled flute-players once they had also encountered the inept ones — so it seems to me that we too shall pursue with greater zeal, whether as onlookers or as imitators, the lives that deserve emulation, provided we are not kept ignorant of the base and blameworthy ones as well.
This book, then, will contain the life of Demetrius the Besieger and of Antony the Imperator — men who, above all others, confirmed by their own case Plato's remark — namely, that great natures bring forth great vices no less than great virtues. Being alike given to love, to drink, to soldiering, to lavish giving, to extravagance, and to insolence, they had as well the corresponding likenesses in their fortunes.
For not only did they, throughout the rest of their lives, accomplish great things and suffer great falls, gain mastery over very many things and lose very many, stumble unexpectedly and rise again unhopefully, but they even met their ends in similar fashion — the one being captured by his enemies, the other coming very near to suffering this same fate.
Antigonus, then, having had two sons by Stratonice the daughter of Corrhagus, named the first Demetrius, after his own brother, and gave the second the name Philip, taken from his own father. Such is what most writers relate. But some say that Demetrius was not his son but his nephew; for his father having died while he was still altogether an infant, and his mother having then straightway been married to Antigonus, he was accordingly reckoned as the latter's son.
Now Philip, who was not many years younger than Demetrius, happened to die; but Demetrius, though less in stature than his father, great though he was, was in form and beauty of countenance so marvelous and extraordinary that none of those who modeled or painted him could attain the likeness. For his features held at once grace and weight and awe-inspiring charm, and mingled with his youthful boldness there was a heroic majesty and royal dignity difficult to imitate.
And his character too was somehow so naturally disposed as to inspire in men both astonishment and affection at once. For while most delightful to be with, and given over, in his leisure, to drinking-parties, luxury, and the most soft-living manner of life of any king, he had again, when it came to action, the most vigorous and intense persistence and energy; wherefore he emulated above all the gods Dionysus, in that he was most formidable in the use of war, and again most graceful in turning peace, after war, to cheerfulness and delight.
He was, moreover, exceptionally devoted to his father; and by the zeal he showed toward his mother as well he made it clear that the honor he paid his father sprang from genuine goodwill rather than from a courting of power. And once, when Antigonus was at leisure attending to some embassy, having returned from hunting, Demetrius came upon him, and going up to his father and kissing him, sat down beside him just as he was, still holding his javelins.
Antigonus, just as the envoys were leaving to carry back their reply, raised his voice and called after them: 'This too,' he said, 'gentlemen, you should report concerning us — that this is how we stand toward one another' — implying that harmony and trust toward a son were a display of the strength and power of royal affairs.
So utterly difficult it is, it seems, for royal power to be shared, and so full of mistrust and ill-will, that the greatest and eldest of Alexander's successors took pride in the fact that he did not fear his son, but let him approach with his spear close to his own body. And indeed this house alone, one might almost say, remained pure of such evils through very many successions — or rather, only one of Antigonus's descendants, Philip, killed a son.
But nearly all the other successions have, among their many children, many murders too, of mothers and of wives: for to do away with brothers was granted, like a postulate that geometers take for themselves, as a sort of common and royal postulate assumed for the sake of safety.
That Demetrius was by nature both humane and a good friend to his companions, there is this example to relate, from the beginning. Mithridates, son of Ariobarzanes, was his companion and familiar in age, and served Antigonus, being neither, nor thought to be, wicked; yet from a certain dream he brought suspicion upon himself in Antigonus's eyes.
For Antigonus dreamed that, walking over a great and beautiful plain, he was sowing gold-dust upon it; and from this there first sprang up a golden harvest, but a little later, returning, he saw nothing but stubble that had been cut down. And being grieved and much troubled, he heard some people saying that Mithridates had gone off to the Pontus Euxinus, having reaped the golden harvest.
Disturbed by this, and having made his son swear to keep silence, he told him the vision, and said that he had resolved in every way to remove the man and destroy him. Demetrius, hearing this, was greatly distressed, and when the young man came to him, as he was accustomed, and was together with him at leisure, he did not dare to speak out or to denounce the plan aloud, because of the oath, but drawing him away little by little from their friends, when they had come to be alone by themselves, he wrote in the ground with the butt-spike of his spear, while the other watched, 'Flee, Mithridates.'
Understanding, the man fled by night into Cappadocia. And soon the vision that had come to Antigonus was fulfilled for him in waking reality. For Mithridates gained mastery over much good country, and it was he who founded the royal dynasty of Pontus, which endured through some eight generations of kings until the Romans finally put an end to it. This, then, is an example of Demetrius's natural inclination toward fairness and justice.
But since, just as in Empedocles's elements there exists among themselves, because of Strife and Love, difference and conflict — or rather all the more in those that touch and draw near one another — so too the unbroken warfare which every one of Alexander's successors carried on against the rest was, in certain instances, rendered more conspicuous and further kindled by the coming together of circumstance and place — as indeed then befell between Antigonus and Ptolemy,
Antigonus himself was then residing in Phrygia; and on learning that Ptolemy had sailed across from Cyprus and was laying waste Syria, seizing cities and treating them with violence, he dispatched his son Demetrius southward, then twenty-two years old and for the first time engaging in an independent command in great affairs. Being, as young and inexperienced, matched against a man trained in the palaestra of Alexander, who had contested many great struggles on his own account, he was worsted and defeated near the city of Gaza, eight thousand of his men being taken prisoner and five thousand killed.
He lost, besides, his tent and his treasure, and indeed the entire equipment of his personal comfort. But these Ptolemy sent back to him along with his friends, adding a courteous and humane message, that they ought to wage war for glory and empire alone, not for everything together. Demetrius, receiving them, prayed to the gods not to remain long a debtor to Ptolemy for this favor, but to repay him quickly in kind.
And, suffering an experience not that of a mere youth overthrown at the outset of an undertaking, but rather that of a weighty general accustomed to the changes of fortune, he saw to the gathering of men and the preparation of arms, kept the cities in hand, and drilled those who were assembled.
Antigonus, on learning of the battle, said that Ptolemy had beaten beardless boys, and would now have to contend against men once more; but not wishing to crush and diminish his son's spirit, he did not oppose him when he asked again to fight on his own. And not long after, Cillas, Ptolemy's general, arrived with a splendid force, meaning to expel Demetrius from the whole of Syria altogether, since after his previous defeat he was now held cheaply.
But Demetrius, falling upon him suddenly while he was unaware and off his guard, and striking terror into him, captured his camp along with the general himself: he took seven thousand soldiers alive, and got possession of a very great deal of money. Yet he rejoiced in his victory not for what he was to keep, but for what he intended to give back, and he valued the victory not so much for its wealth or its glory as for the opportunity it gave to repay that act of kindness and generosity.
He did not, however, act in this on his own judgment, but wrote to his father. And when the latter granted it and bade him deal with them all as he pleased, he sent away Cillas himself and his friends, presenting them with lavish gifts. This reversal forced Ptolemy out of Syria and drew Antigonus down from Celaenae, rejoicing at the victory and eager to see his son again.
After this, Demetrius, having been sent to subdue the Arabs called the Nabataeans, ran into danger by falling into waterless regions, but by not being thrown into confusion or terror he struck fear into the barbarians, and, having taken a great deal of plunder and seven hundred camels from them, withdrew.
And when Seleucus, who had earlier been driven out of Babylonia by Antigonus, but had afterward recovered his rule by his own efforts and now held it firmly, went up with a force to bring under him the peoples bordering on India and the provinces around the Caucasus, Demetrius, hoping to find Mesopotamia undefended, crossed the Euphrates suddenly and got the jump on him by invading Babylonia; and having driven out Seleucus's garrison from one of the two citadels there and gained mastery of it, he installed seven thousand of his own men in it.
Then, having ordered his soldiers to take and carry off whatever they could bear or lead away from the countryside as booty, he returned to the sea, leaving to Seleucus a rule made more secure; for it seemed to him a case of withdrawing from doing harm, since it no longer belonged to them. Yet when Ptolemy was besieging Halicarnassus, he went swiftly to its aid and rescued the city.
This act of ambition having brought him fame, a wonderful impulse came upon them to free the whole of Greece, which had been enslaved by Cassander and Ptolemy. No king waged a fairer or more just war than this one; for the resources which they had gathered together in humbling the barbarians, they spent for the sake of glory and honor upon the Greeks.
When an expedition against Athens first seemed the best course, a certain friend told Antigonus that Demetrius should keep the city for himself once captured, since it was a gangway into Greece; but Antigonus paid no heed, and said that goodwill was a fine and unshakeable gangway, and that Athens, like a watchtower over the inhabited world, would swiftly beacon his deeds by reputation to all mankind.
Demetrius sailed against Athens with five thousand talents of silver, commanding two hundred and fifty ships in all, while the city itself was administered for Cassander by Demetrius of Phalerum, and a garrison was stationed in Munychia. Enjoying good fortune together with foresight, he appeared off the Piraeus on the fifth day from the end of Thargelion,
no one having sensed it beforehand; and when the fleet was seen close at hand, everyone was preparing to receive the ships as Ptolemy's, until the generals, realizing the truth late, rushed to defend, and there was confusion, such as is natural when men are forced to defend themselves against enemies landing unexpectedly. For Demetrius, finding the mouths of the harbors unclosed, sailed through and was already inside in plain view of all, and signaled from his ship a request for quiet and silence.
When this was done, he set forward a herald and proclaimed that his father had sent him, with good fortune, to free the Athenians, to expel the garrison, and to restore to them their laws and their ancestral constitution.
When this had been announced, most of the people at once set down their shields before their feet, clapped, and shouted for Demetrius to land, hailing him as benefactor and savior; but the men around Phalereus thought it necessary in every case to receive the conqueror, even if he meant to fulfill nothing of what he proclaimed, and nonetheless sent envoys with entreaties, whom Demetrius received kindly and sent back accompanied by Aristodemus of Miletus, a man counted among his father's companions.
Since Phalereus, because of the change of constitution, feared his fellow citizens more than the enemy, Demetrius did not neglect him, but out of respect for the man's reputation and virtue sent him off safely to Thebes, as he wished. As for himself, he said he would not look upon the city, much as he desired to, until he had entirely freed it by removing the garrison; and having thrown up a palisade and trench around Munychia in the meantime, he sailed against Megara, which was garrisoned by Cassander.
Learning that Cratesipolis, who had become the wife of Alexander the son of Polyperchon, was staying in Patrae and would not be unwilling to come to him, since she was renowned for her beauty, he left the bulk of his troops behind in Megarian territory and pressed ahead with only a few lightly-armed men. Then, turning even these away, he pitched camp apart by himself, so that the woman might come to him unnoticed.
Some of the enemy became aware of this and suddenly ran down upon him. He, taking fright, snatched up a cheap cloak and fled at a run, escaping, though he came within little of being captured in the most shameful manner through his own incontinence. His tent, together with his money, the enemy made off with.
When Megara was taken and the soldiers turned to plunder, the Athenians interceded for the Megarians with much entreaty; and Demetrius, expelling the garrison, freed the city. While still engaged in this, he remembered the philosopher Stilpo, a man reputed to have chosen to live out his life in quiet retirement. He sent for him, then, and asked whether anyone had taken anything of his. And Stilpo said, "No one; for I saw no one carrying off knowledge."
When nearly all his household slaves had been stolen away, Demetrius again showed him kindness, and finally, as he was leaving, said, "I leave your city free, Stilpo." "You speak rightly," he replied, "for you have left none of us a slave."
When he had returned again to Munychia and encamped there, cut out the garrison, and razed the fortress to the ground, the Athenians now at last received and summoned him; he entered the city, and gathering the assembly, restored to them their ancestral constitution. He further promised on his father's behalf that a hundred and fifty thousand measures of grain would be sent to them, along with a quantity of shipbuilding timber sufficient for a hundred triremes.
The Athenians, recovering their democracy in the fifteenth year — the years between, dating from the war at Lamia and the clash at Crannon, having been in name an oligarchic but in fact a monarchic condition because of the power of Phalereus — made Demetrius, who had appeared so brilliant and great in his benefactions, burdensome and heavy by the excess of the honors they voted him.
For they were the first of all men to proclaim Demetrius and Antigonus kings, others still shrinking from the name out of scruple, this being the one royal title still seeming to remain untouched and unshared by others among the descendants of Philip and Alexander. They alone recorded them in writing as savior gods, and, abolishing the eponymous, ancestral archon, they elected each year a priest of the Saviors, whose name they prefixed to decrees and contracts.
They voted to have them woven into the sacred robe together with the gods; and the spot where he first stepped down from his chariot they consecrated, setting up an altar and calling it the altar of Demetrius Descender; to the tribes they added two more, Demetrias and Antigonis, and made the council of five hundred into one of six hundred, since each tribe now furnished fifty councillors.
But the most extravagant contrivance of Stratocles — for he was the inventor of these clever and excessive flatteries — was his decree ordaining that envoys chosen by public vote to go to Antigonus or Demetrius were henceforth to bear the title "sacred deputies" rather than ambassadors, in the manner of those who conduct the ancestral sacrifices on behalf of the cities to Delphi and Olympia at the Greek festivals.
Stratocles was reckless in other respects too, having lived a dissolute life and seeming to imitate the buffoonery and coarseness of the old Cleon in his readiness to please the people. He had taken up with the courtesan Phylacion; and once, when she had bought brains and necks from the market for his dinner, he said, "Ha! Such fare have you bought us, the very things we politicians play ball with."
When the defeat of the Athenian ships off Amorgos occurred, he got ahead of those bringing the report and rode into the city crowned with a garland through the Ceramicus, and announcing that they had won, moved that thank-offerings be sacrificed and made a distribution of meat by tribe. A little later, when those bringing back the wreckage from the battle arrived and the people angrily summoned him, he boldly withstood the uproar and said, "Well then, what terrible thing have you suffered, if you have spent two pleasant days?" Such was the impudence of Stratocles.
There were, it seems, things even hotter than fire, according to Aristophanes. For another man, outdoing Stratocles in servility, moved that Demetrius be received, whenever he arrived, with the hospitality due to Demeter and Dionysus, and that to whoever should surpass this reception in splendor and expense, funds be granted out of the public coffers toward setting up a votive offering.
Finally they renamed the month Munychion "Demetrion," and the last day of the month "Demetrias," and they changed the name of the festival of the Dionysia to the Demetria. The divine power gave signs of displeasure at most of these things. For the sacred robe, on which they had voted to have Demetrius and Antigonus woven in together with Zeus and Athena, was torn in two down the middle as it was being carried through the Ceramicus, a squall having struck it;
and around their altars a great quantity of hemlock sprang up in a circle from the earth, though it did not otherwise grow in many parts of the country; and on the very day when the procession of the Dionysia was to take place, they had to call it off because of a severe frost occurring out of season. And when a heavy hoarfrost fell, it did not merely scorch all the vines and fig trees with cold, but destroyed most of the grain while still in the blade.
For this reason Philippides, who was an enemy of Stratocles, wrote these lines against him in a comedy: "Through whom the frost scorched the vines, through whose impiety the sacred robe was torn in two, making the honors of the gods into honors for men. These things, not comedy, destroy a democracy."
Philippides was a friend of Lysimachus, and the people benefited much through him from that king. He was also thought to be a man of good omen to meet, both for business and for a military expedition, whenever one encountered and saw him. He was well regarded, too, for his character generally, being no trouble to anyone and not tainted with the meddlesomeness of courtiers. Once when Lysimachus was showing him favor and said, "Philippides, what of my possessions shall I share with you?" he replied, "Only, O king, not your secrets." This man, then, we have deliberately set beside the other, the man of the speaker's platform beside the man of the stage.
But the most extravagant and bizarre of the honors was that which Dromocleides of Sphettus proposed: that concerning the dedication of the shields, they should obtain an oracle from Demetrius in place of one from Delphi. I will transcribe the very wording from the decree, which runs thus: "With good fortune.
Be it resolved by the people to elect one man from among the Athenians who, going to the Savior and performing due sacrifice, shall inquire of the Savior how the people may most piously, most nobly, and most speedily accomplish the restoration of the dedicated offerings; and whatever answer he gives, the people shall carry it out." In this way, mocking the man, they further corrupted him, who was not sound in mind to begin with.
But while he was then at leisure in Athens he married the widow Eurydice, who was a descendant of the ancient Miltiades, and who, after living with Ophellas, ruler of Cyrene, came back again to Athens following his death.
The Athenians, then, took this marriage as a mark of favor and honor to their city; but Demetrius was in general rather easygoing about marriages, and kept company at the same time with many women, of whom Phila held the greatest rank and honor, both through her father Antipater and through her having previously been married to Craterus, the man who had left behind the greatest goodwill of himself among the Macedonians of all Alexander's successors. This woman, it seems, his father persuaded Demetrius, quite young as he was, to take, though she was not suited to him in age but older;
and to him, reluctant, it is said, his father whispered in his ear the line of Euripides: "Where profit lies, one must marry against nature," speaking frankly something equivalent to "one must serve as a slave." Such, then, was the regard Demetrius showed toward Phila and his other wives — he mingled without restraint with a great number of courtesans and no fewer freeborn women, and gained an especially bad reputation among the kings of that time for this indulgence in pleasure.
When his father summoned him to make war on Ptolemy over Cyprus, he was compelled to obey, though vexed that he was leaving behind the war on behalf of Greece, which was the nobler and more brilliant one; he dispatched envoys to Cleonides, the Ptolemaic commander holding Sicyon and Corinth under garrison, offering money so that he might release the cities free.
When Cleonides would not accept, Demetrius put out to sea quickly, took on additional forces, and sailed against Cyprus. He joined battle with Menelaus, Ptolemy's brother, and defeated him at once; but when Ptolemy himself appeared with a great force of both infantry and navy, there were some threats and boastful exchanges, Ptolemy bidding Demetrius sail away before he was trampled under by the whole assembled force, and Demetrius saying he would let him go, if he agreed to free Sicyon and Corinth from their garrisons.
This contest held great expectation, for the uncertainty hanging over it concerned not only these two men themselves but all the other rulers as well, since it was not Cyprus or Syria but at once the greatest of all things that victory would add to the one who prevailed.
Ptolemy himself sailed out with a hundred and fifty ships, and from Salamis he ordered Menelaus, with sixty ships, to bear down on Demetrius' rear once the battle was fully engaged, and to strike from behind and throw his line into disorder. Against these sixty Demetrius stationed ten ships opposite them (for that many were enough to block the narrow mouth of the harbor),
while he himself drew up his infantry and stationed them around the headlands that jutted into the sea, and then, taking a fleet of one hundred eighty vessels, moved out onto open water. Closing with the enemy in great strength and force, he routed Ptolemy decisively; Ptolemy himself, once defeated, fled swiftly with only eight ships (for that many alone were saved out of all of them), while of the rest some were destroyed in the sea battle and seventy were captured crews and all,
and of the crowd riding at anchor in transport ships — servants, friends, and women, and besides these arms, money, and siege engines — none of it eluded Demetrius; rather, he seized the whole of it and carried it back down to his camp. Among these was the celebrated Lamia, who at first had been sought after for her skill (for she was thought to play the flute not contemptibly), but later became famous for her amorous exploits as well.
At that time, though already past her prime and taking up with Demetrius, who was much younger than herself, she overpowered him with her charm and held him fast, so that she alone was his lover, while he was merely the beloved of the other women. After the sea battle, Menelaus too could not hold out, but surrendered Salamis to Demetrius, along with the ships and the infantry, twelve hundred cavalry and twelve thousand hoplites.
Making this splendid and glorious victory still more brilliant by his magnanimity and humanity, Demetrius buried the enemy dead magnificently and released the prisoners; and to the Athenians he gave as a gift twelve hundred suits of armor from the spoils.
As the messenger to bring news of the victory to his father, he sent Aristodemus of Miletus, who ranked first among all the courtiers in flattery, and who now, it seems, had prepared to bring the greatest of all his flatteries to bear on events. Once his crossing from Cyprus was complete, he refused to let the vessel put in at land, instead ordering the anchors let down and all hands to stay quietly on board,
while he himself boarded the ship's boat and went ashore alone, and made his way up to Antigonus, who was in suspense with anticipation over the battle and in the state one would expect a man to be in who is anxious about affairs of such magnitude. Then indeed, hearing that Aristodemus had arrived, he was thrown into even greater agitation than before, and could scarcely keep himself at home, but kept sending out one after another of his attendants and friends to learn from Aristodemus what had happened.
But Aristodemus answered no one at all, and approached at a walking pace with a composed expression and in deep silence, until Antigonus, utterly astonished and no longer able to contain himself, went out to meet him at the gates, while by now a great crowd was escorting Aristodemus and running together toward the palace.
So when he came near, Antigonus stretched out his right hand, and Aristodemus cried out in a great voice, "Hail, King Antigonus! We are victorious over Ptolemy in the sea battle, and we hold Cyprus, and sixteen thousand eight hundred soldiers taken prisoner." And Antigonus said, "And to you, by Zeus, hail! But since you have tortured us so, you shall pay the penalty — you shall receive your reward for the good news more slowly."
From this, the people first hailed Antigonus and Demetrius as kings. Antigonus his friends crowned at once, while to Demetrius his father sent a diadem and, in writing him a letter, addressed him as king. And the people in Egypt, when these things were reported, themselves also proclaimed Ptolemy king, so as not to seem to lower their pride on account of the defeat.
In this way the practice spread among the successors through rivalry. For Lysimachus too began to wear a diadem, and Seleucus, when meeting with the Greeks, did so as well, though toward the barbarians he had already been transacting business as king before this. Cassander, however, though the others addressed him and wrote to him as king, himself continued writing his letters as he had been accustomed to before.
This was not merely an addition of a title and a change of outward form, but it also stirred the men's pride and elevated their thinking, and it introduced pomp and gravity into their manner of life and their dealings with others — just as tragic actors, along with their costume, change together their walk, their voice, their manner of reclining, and their way of addressing others.
As a result of this they also became harsher in matters of justice, stripping away the pretense of powerlessness which had before made them lighter and gentler toward their subjects in many respects. Such was the power of one flatterer's words, and so vast was the transformation with which they filled the whole inhabited world.
Antigonus, elated by what Demetrius had accomplished at Cyprus, immediately marched against Ptolemy, himself leading the land force while Demetrius sailed alongside with a great fleet. Now as to how the matter was going to turn out, Medius, a friend of Antigonus, saw a vision in his sleep.
For he dreamed that Antigonus himself, with the whole army, was running a double-length race vigorously and swiftly at first, but then that his strength gradually gave out, and finally, as he rounded the turn, he grew weak and full of gasping breath, and had difficulty getting back. And in fact Antigonus encountered no small trouble on his own march by land, while Demetrius, caught in a great storm and heavy swell, was in danger of being cast onto harborless and hostile places, and lost many of his ships, and returned having accomplished nothing.
He was then not far short of eighty years old, and because of the size and heaviness of his body, more than because of his age, he had become hard to transport on campaigns, and so he made use of his son, who by now was managing the greatest affairs excellently both through good fortune and through experience, and was not troubled by his son's luxuries, extravagances, and drinking bouts. For when there was peace, Demetrius indulged in these to excess, and in his leisure gave himself over to pleasures freely and without restraint, but in wars he was sober like men who are temperate by nature.
It is said that once, when Lamia was already openly in control of him, Antigonus, seeing Demetrius kissing him upon returning from abroad, said with a laugh, "You seem to be kissing Lamia, my boy." And again once, when Demetrius had spent several days in drinking bouts and gave as his excuse that a discharge had troubled him, Antigonus said, "So I heard — but was the discharge Thasian or Chian wine?"
And once, hearing that he was ill, he went to see him, and met one of his handsome young men near the door; and going in and sitting down beside him, he took his hand. When Demetrius said that the fever had now gone away, Antigonus said, "Of course it has, my child — I just met it myself leaving by the door."
These things he bore so mildly from Demetrius on account of his conduct otherwise. For the Scythians, when drinking and getting drunk, pluck the strings of their bows, as if calling back their spirit when it is being relaxed by pleasure; but Demetrius, giving himself over wholly to pleasure at one time and to serious business at another, and keeping each pursuit undiluted by the other, he proved just as fearsome when readying himself for war.
Indeed he was thought a better general at equipping a force than at using one, since he wished everything to be available in abundance for whatever need might arise, and he had an insatiable appetite for grandeur in the building of ships and siege engines, and took a certain pleasure simply in contemplating them. For being naturally gifted and given to contemplation, he did not turn his love of craft toward idle amusements or useless pastimes, as other kings did who played the flute, painted, or worked in metal.
For Aëropus the Macedonian used to spend his leisure time making small tables and little lamp-stands. Attalus Philometor raised toxic herbs in his garden — henbane, hellebore, and hemlock among them, along with monkshood and dorycnium — planting and tending them with his own hands within the palace grounds, and taking care to study their properties, gathering the sap and seed of each once it had ripened in due course. Meanwhile the Parthian kings prided themselves on personally engraving and honing their arrowheads.
But Demetrius' craftsmanship, even so, was a royal one, and his method had a certain grandeur, since along with the elaborateness and skill of his works there was combined a certain loftiness of mind and spirit, so that his works appeared worthy not only of judgment and abundance but also of a royal hand. For by their size he astonished even his friends, and by their beauty he delighted even his enemies. And this has been said of him more truly than cleverly.
His ships of sixteen and fifteen banks of oars the enemy would stand and marvel at as they sailed along their own coast, and his siege towers were a spectacle even to those under siege, as the facts themselves bear witness. For Lysimachus, who of all the kings was most hostile to Demetrius, when he was arrayed against him during the siege of Soli in Cilicia, sent asking him to display his engines and his ships under sail; and when Demetrius had displayed them, Lysimachus went away in admiration.
The Rhodians, who had been besieged by him for a long time, when they made peace, asked for some of his siege engines, so that they might have a memorial both of his power and of their own valor.
He went to war against the Rhodians, allied as they were with Ptolemy, and moved the largest of his siege towers up to their fortifications, whose base was square, each side of the lower frame measuring forty-eight cubits, and it had a height of sixty-six cubits, narrowing toward the top so that the upper sides were narrower than the base.
Inside it was partitioned into stories and many compartments, and the face turned toward the enemy was opened on each story with windows, and through these all kinds of missiles poured out; for it was full of men fighting in every form of combat. And the fact that it did not shake or lean as it moved, but advanced upright on its base and unshaken, evenly balanced, with a great rushing sound and force, produced both awe in the soul and a certain pleasure in the sight for those watching.
For this war two iron breastplates were also brought to him from Cyprus, each weighing forty minas. To demonstrate their toughness and strength, the craftsman Zoilus ordered a catapult bolt to be shot from twenty paces; when it struck, the iron remained unbroken, and received only a faint scratch, as if from a stylus.
This one he wore himself; the other Alcimus the Epirote wore, the most warlike and most powerful man in his company, who alone made use of a full suit of armor weighing two talents, while the others used armor weighing one talent; and he fell fighting at Rhodes near the theater.
Though the Rhodians defended themselves vigorously, and Demetrius accomplished nothing worth mentioning, he nevertheless raged furiously against them, because, when his wife Phila had sent him letters and bedding and clothing, they had seized the ship, just as it was, and sent it off to Ptolemy, and had not imitated the humanity of the Athenians, who, when they captured Philip's letter-carriers during his war against them, read all the other letters but did not open that of Olympias alone, and sent it on to him just as it was sealed.
Nevertheless, though Demetrius was stung deeply by this, he did not, once they had given him an opening, bring himself to retaliate against the Rhodians. For it happened that Protogenes of Caunus was in the process of painting for them the disposition of the Ialysus, and Demetrius captured the panel, which lacked little of being finished, in one of the suburbs. When a herald came from the Rhodians asking him to spare it and leave the work undestroyed, he replied that he would sooner set fire to the portraits of his own father than to a labor of art of such magnitude.
Protogenes, they say, spent seven years finishing the painting. And Apelles said that he was so astonished when he beheld the work that his voice failed him, and at last he said only, "Great is the labor, and marvelous the work" — though it lacked the graces by which the things he himself painted touched heaven.
This painting, along with the others gathered in the same place, was consumed by fire at Rome. When the Rhodians rose up against the war, the Athenians, arriving and finding Demetrius in need of a pretext, reconciled the two sides, stipulating that the Rhodians become allies with Antigonus and Demetrius, save against Ptolemy.
The Athenians called on Demetrius while Cassander was besieging their city. Commanding a fleet of three hundred and thirty vessels along with a substantial land force, he arrived by sea, pushed Cassander not only out of Attica but in headlong retreat all the way to Thermopylae, and there defeated him decisively; he also took Heraclea, which surrendered to him of its own accord, along with six thousand Macedonian troops who came over to his side.
On his return he freed the Greeks within the Gates, made the Boeotians his allies, and took Cenchreae; and Phyle and Panactum, fortified posts in Attica garrisoned by Cassander's men, he reduced and gave back to the Athenians. And they, though they had already poured out upon him every extravagance and used up every form of flattery, still found ways at this time to appear fresh and original in their servility.
For they gave over to him, as his lodging, the innermost room of the Parthenon, where he settled in, said now to be a guest hosted by Athena herself — hardly a well-behaved guest, and hardly gentle in how he billeted himself upon the virgin goddess.
And yet, when his own father once learned that his brother Philip was lodged in a house that had three young women in it, he said nothing to Philip himself, but in his presence he summoned the billeting officer and said, "Will you not get my son out of these cramped quarters?"
Demetrius, however, who owed Athena at minimum the deference one gives an older sister — the kinship he himself claimed to hold with her — committed such outrages against freeborn boys and citizen wives within the Acropolis that the place was reckoned cleanest precisely while he indulged his debaucheries up there in the company of those courtesans Chrysis, Lamia, Demo, and Anticyra.
As for the rest, it is not fitting to report it plainly, out of regard for the city, but the virtue and self-restraint of Democles ought not to be passed over. He was still a boy not yet come of age, and it had not escaped Demetrius that he carried in his very name an announcement of his beauty — for he was called Democles the Fair. Since neither many attempts, nor gifts, nor threats could win him over, at last, fleeing the wrestling-schools and the gymnasium, he took to visiting a private bathhouse to wash; and Demetrius, watching for his chance, came in upon him there alone.
And the boy, when he realized the solitude around him and the compulsion he was under, took the lid off the bronze cauldron and leapt into the boiling water and destroyed himself — suffering a fate he did not deserve, but displaying a courage matching both his homeland and his good looks. Cleaenetus, son of Cleomedon, showed no such spirit; who, having arranged to have his father released from a fine of fifty talents by procuring a letter from Demetrius to the Assembly, not only disgraced himself but threw the whole city into confusion.
For they let Cleomedon off from the fine, but a decree was passed forbidding any citizen from carrying a letter of Demetrius's before the people. Word of this reached Demetrius, who reacted with anger rather than calm; the Athenians, frightened once more, not only rescinded the decree but even executed several of the men who had moved and backed it, banishing still others; and further they voted that whatever King Demetrius should command was to be held holy toward the gods and just toward men.
And when one of the decent, respectable citizens said that Stratocles must be mad to write such things, Demochares of Leuconoe said, "Mad he would indeed be, if he were not mad." For Stratocles profited greatly by his flattery. And Demochares was slandered on this account and driven into exile. Such were the doings of the Athenians, who thought they had been freed of the garrison and had gained their liberty.
Demetrius then advanced into the Peloponnese, and since none of his opponents stood their ground but fled and abandoned their cities, he won over the district called Acte and Arcadia, except for Mantinea, and, handing over a hundred talents to their garrison troops, secured the freedom of Argos, Sicyon, and Corinth.
At Argos, when the festival of the Heraea fell due, he presided as director of the games and joined in the general assembly of the Greeks, and there he married Deidameia, whose father Aeacides ruled the Molossians and whose brother was Pyrrhus. And telling the Sicyonians that their city was built next to itself, he persuaded them to resettle where they now live; and the city, along with the place, changed its name from Sicyon and was called Demetrias.
At the Isthmus, when a general congress was held and many people had assembled, he was proclaimed leader of Greece, as Philip and Alexander had been before him; and he considered himself not a little superior to them, exalted as he was by his present fortune and the power of his circumstances. Alexander, after all, never stripped any of the other rulers of their royal title, and he refrained from styling himself King of Kings, even though it was he who had allowed many to be addressed and recognized as kings in the first place —
whereas Demetrius, mocking and laughing at those who addressed anyone but his father and himself as king, listened with pleasure when men pouring wine at drinking parties drank toasts hailing Demetrius King, giving Seleucus the title Elephant-Master, naming Ptolemy Fleet-Commander, calling Lysimachus Keeper of the Treasury, and dubbing Agathocles of Sicily Ruler of the Islands.
When these toasts were reported to the kings, the others laughed them off, but Lysimachus alone was indignant that Demetrius should think of him as a eunuch — for it was customary to have eunuchs serve as treasurers.
Lysimachus, indeed, was the man most hateful to him of all, and reviling him over his passion for Lamia he said that he had now for the first time seen a whore stepping out of a tragic stage-set; and Demetrius replied that his own whore was more chaste than Lysimachus' Penelope.
At that time, on setting out again for Athens, he wrote that he wished, as soon as he arrived, to be initiated at once and to receive the whole rite from the Lesser Mysteries through to the final revelation. This was neither lawful nor had precedent; custom set the Lesser Mysteries in the month of Anthesterion and the Greater in Boedromion, and men underwent the final revelation only after waiting at least a year from the Greater Mysteries.
When his letter was read out, only Pythodorus the torch-bearer dared to speak against it, but he accomplished nothing; instead, on Stratocles' motion, they voted to call and treat the month of Munychion as Anthesterion, and performed for Demetrius the rites at Agra; and after this, Munychion, having again become Boedromion out of Anthesterion, received the remaining rite, while Demetrius at the same time obtained his final revelation as well.
For this reason Philippides, reviling Stratocles, wrote of him: the man who compressed the year into a single month; and about the encampment in the Parthenon: the man who took the Acropolis for an inn and brought in the courtesans to the Virgin.
Of the many offenses and lawless acts that occurred in the city at that time, what is said to have grieved the Athenians most was this: when they were ordered to raise two hundred and fifty talents quickly and hand them over, and the collection was carried out with rigor and no exemptions, Demetrius, seeing the money gathered together, ordered it given to Lamia and her attendant courtesans for soap. For the shame of the exaction, and the very word used for it, troubled the people more than the loss itself.
Some say this happened to the Thessalians, not the Athenians, at his hands. Apart from this, Lamia herself, preparing a dinner for the king on her own, extorted money from many people. And the dinner became so famous for its extravagance that it was written up by Lynceus of Samos. For this reason one of the comic poets aptly called Lamia truly a "Taker of Cities." And Demochares of Soli called Demetrius himself Myth — for he too had his Lamia.
Not only to his wives but also to the friends of Demetrius, her prosperity and the affection shown her brought jealousy and envy. Some men, for instance, came to Lysimachus on an embassy from him, and Lysimachus, having leisure, showed them deep scars on his thighs and arms from a lion's claws, and told the story of the fight he had once had with the beast, having been shut up with it by King Alexander. And they, laughing, said that their own king too bore the bite-marks of a terrible beast on his neck — from Lamia.
It was a remarkable thing that though at first he was displeased with a mistress not suited to his age, he was conquered by Lamia and loved her for so long a time, even when she was already past her prime. Demo, at any rate, the one nicknamed Mania, when Lamia was playing the flute at dinner and Demetrius asked her, "What do you think of her?" said, "An old woman, my king." And again, when dainties were set before her and Demetrius said to her, "Do you see how much Lamia sends me?" she said, "My mother will send you more, if you're willing to sleep with her too."
There is also recorded a retort of Lamia's concerning the so-called judgment of Bocchoris. A man in Egypt, in love with the courtesan Thonis, asked for a great sum of gold; then, having dreamed that he had slept with her, his desire ceased, and Thonis brought a suit against him for her fee.
Bocchoris, once he had heard both sides, directed that the sum of gold demanded be counted into a vessel and that the man simply pass it back and forth in his hand, and the courtesan to hold on to its shadow, on the ground that reputation is but the shadow of reality. Lamia did not think this judgment just — for the shadow did not release the courtesan from her desire for the money, but the dream had released the young man from his desire. So much, then, concerning Lamia.
But the fortunes and the deeds of the man whose story we are telling now carry our narrative, as it were, out of a comic stage-set and back into a tragic one. For when all the other kings joined together against Antigonus and combined their forces into one, Demetrius set out from Greece, and joining his father, who was striving beyond his years for the coming war, gave him even greater strength.
And yet it seems that Antigonus, if he had yielded on some small points and relaxed his excessive love of power, might have preserved for himself, and left to his son, the first place among all, to the very end. But being by nature harsh and disdainful, and rough in speech no less than in action, he provoked and exasperated many powerful young men; and he himself said that their coalition and alliance at that time would be scattered, like a flock of grain-picking birds, by a single stone and a single noise.
He led more than seventy thousand infantry and ten thousand cavalry and seventy-five elephants, while ranged against him were sixty-four thousand foot soldiers, a cavalry force outnumbering his by five hundred, four hundred beasts of war, and a hundred twenty scythed chariots. And when he drew near them, his mind suffered a reversal — more in feeling than in judgment.
For though he was accustomed to be lofty and proud in battle, using a great voice and boastful words, and often even displaying his composure and contempt by making some quip or joke while the enemy was at close quarters, at that time he was seen to be thoughtful and for the most part silent, and he brought his son before the troops, introducing him to them as the one who would succeed him.
But what everyone marveled at most was that Alexander conversed with him alone in his tent, though he was not accustomed to hold private conversations even with him, but kept his own counsel, and then gave his orders openly and acted on what he had resolved by himself. At any rate it is said that Demetrius, still a young lad, once asked him when they intended to break camp; and he answered angrily, "Are you afraid that you alone will not hear the trumpet?"
But at that time, indeed, evil omens too were mastering their minds. For Demetrius dreamed that Alexander, splendidly armored, asked what watchword he meant to issue for the fight to come; and when Demetrius answered, "Zeus and Victory," Alexander responded, "In that case I am joining the enemy, since they are the side taking me in."
And Antigonus, as the phalanx was already being drawn up, going out stumbled and fell flat on his face, and was badly hurt; but rising up and stretching his hands toward heaven he asked the gods for victory, or else an unfeeling death before defeat.
When the battle had come to close quarters, Demetrius, leading the greatest and finest portion of the horsemen, engaged Antiochus the son of Seleucus, and having fought brilliantly until he routed the enemy, he ruined the victory in the pursuit, which was carried on too far and too ambitiously, out of proportion to the occasion. For he himself could not manage to wheel about and rejoin the foot soldiers, since the elephants had come between them, and Seleucus' men, seeing the phalanx bare of cavalry, did not charge, but by threatening to charge and riding around them, terrified them and gave them the chance to change sides — which is in fact what happened.
For a large part of the force voluntarily broke away and went over to the other side, and the rest turned to flight. As many were bearing down on Antigonus, and one of his attendants said, "These men are coming for you, king," he said, "What other target could they have but me? But Demetrius will come to my aid."
And hoping for this to the very end, and looking about for his son, he fell when many javelins were hurled at him at once; and when the rest of his attendants and friends abandoned him, Thorax of Larissa alone remained beside the corpse.
The battle having thus been decided, the victorious kings, cutting up the whole realm that had belonged to Antigonus and Demetrius as if it were one great body, took their portions, and further divided among themselves those provinces which they themselves had held before. Demetrius, fleeing with five thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry, and riding hard, reached Ephesus, where, though everyone supposed that since he lacked money he would not keep his hands off the temple,
fearing that his soldiers might do this, he rose up quickly and made his voyage toward Greece, placing the greatest of his remaining hopes in the Athenians. For indeed he had left ships and money and his wife Deidameia there, and he thought no refuge for his affairs more secure than the goodwill of the Athenians.
Hence, when he had come among the Cyclades, ambassadors of the Athenians met him urging him to keep away from the city, since the people had voted to admit none of the kings into the city, and they sent Deidameia to Megara with honor and a fitting escort. At this he lost his usual composure through anger, though he had borne all his other misfortune very easily and had shown himself, in such a reversal of fortune, neither abject nor ignoble.
But to be deceived, against his hope, by the Athenians, and to find their apparent goodwill exposed by events as empty and counterfeit, was painful to him. For the most worthless proof of the goodwill of crowds toward kings and rulers, it seems, is an excess of honors, since fear robs of its credit the beauty that such honors would have if given by the free choice of those who bestow them; for people vote the very same honors both out of fear and out of affection.
Wherefore men of sense do not look to statues or paintings or deifications, but rather to their own deeds and actions, and either believe, as in honors, or disbelieve, as in things done under compulsion: since the masses often, in the very midst of the honors themselves, hate most those who receive them immoderately, excessively, and against the will of the givers.
Demetrius, then, at that time, considering that he was suffering terrible treatment, but being unable to retaliate, sent to the Athenians with moderate complaints, demanding to get back his ships, among which was the Thirteen-Banker. Having recovered them, he sailed along the coast to the Isthmus, and since his affairs were going badly (for garrisons were being expelled from every quarter and everything was changing over to the enemy),
leaving Pyrrhus in charge of affairs in Greece, he himself set out and sailed for the Chersonese; and while doing harm to Lysimachus he was at the same time helping himself, holding together the force around him, which was beginning to recover and become once more not to be despised. Lysimachus was neglected by the other kings, being thought no more reasonable than Demetrius, but more to be feared because he was stronger.
Not long after, Seleucus, sending word, sought in marriage Stratonice, the daughter of Demetrius and Phila, though he already had a son, Antiochus, by Apama the Persian; he judged that his position was strong enough to sustain more than a single heir, and that he required the tie to Demetrius, especially since he saw that Lysimachus had taken one of Ptolemy's daughters for himself and the other for his son Agathocles.
For Demetrius it was an unhoped-for piece of good fortune to become related by marriage to Seleucus. And taking the girl he sailed with all his ships to Syria, touching necessarily at other land, and putting in at Cilicia, which Pleistarchus held, it having been given to him as a special prize by the kings after the battle against Antigonus; and Pleistarchus was the brother of Cassander.
Thinking that his own territory was being wronged by Demetrius through his landings, and wishing to reproach Seleucus for coming to terms with the common enemy apart from the other kings, he went up to see him.
On hearing this news, Demetrius left the coast and made for Cyinda; and finding there still remaining twelve hundred talents of money, he packed these up, and having anticipated loading them quickly, put out to sea. And when his wife Phila was already present, Seleucus met him near Rhosus.
And they conducted their meeting at once in a manner free of guile, suspicion, and befitting kings, Seleucus first entertaining Demetrius at a banquet in his tent in the camp, and then Demetrius receiving him aboard the Thirteen-Banker. There were also leisurely times and private conversations and days spent together unguarded and unarmed, until Seleucus, taking Stratonice, went up to Antioch in splendid style.
Demetrius held on to Cilicia, and dispatched his wife Phila to her own brother Cassander, so she might respond to Pleistarchus' charges. Meanwhile Deidameia, having sailed to him from Greece and spent a short time with him, died of some illness. When friendship came about between Demetrius and Ptolemy through Seleucus' mediation, it was agreed that he should take Ptolemais, the daughter of Ptolemy, as his wife.
So much for the courteous conduct of Seleucus. But when he asked Demetrius to hand over Cilicia in exchange for money, and Demetrius would not be persuaded, he angrily demanded Sidon and Tyre as well, and seemed to be acting violently and doing terrible things, if, having made everything from India to the sea off Syria subject to himself, he was still so lacking in resources and so poor as to harry, for the sake of two cities, a man who was his son-in-law and had experienced a reversal of fortune,
thereby giving splendid testimony to Plato's teaching, that the man who truly wishes to be rich should make not his possessions greater but his greed for more possessions smaller — since he who does not put an end to the love of wealth is rid neither of poverty nor of want.
Demetrius, however, was not cowed, but declaring that even if he were defeated ten thousand times in other battles like Ipsus, he would never love Seleucus as a son-in-law at such a price, he secured the cities with garrisons; and he himself, learning that Lachares had set himself up as tyrant by attacking the Athenians during their factional strife, hoped that by appearing before the city he would easily take it. And he crossed the open sea safely with a great fleet, but as he sailed along the coast of Attica he was caught in a storm and lost most of his ships, and no small number of men perished along with them.
He himself, having survived, took up some kind of war against the Athenians, but as he was accomplishing nothing, he sent for a fleet to be gathered again, while he himself passed into the Peloponnese and laid siege to Messene. And fighting against the walls he was in danger, when a catapult bolt hit him in the face, driving through his jaw and into his mouth.
Having recovered, and having brought back to his side some cities that had revolted, he invaded Attica again, and having taken Eleusis and Rhamnus he ravaged the country, and having captured a ship carrying grain and bringing it in to the Athenians, he hanged the merchant and the pilot, so that the others, turning away out of fear, a severe famine arose in the city, and along with the famine a shortage of everything else. At any rate they were buying a medimnus of salt for forty drachmas, and a modius of wheat sold for three hundred.
The Athenians were given a small breathing space when one hundred fifty ships appeared off Aegina, which Ptolemy sent to their aid. Then, when many ships came to Demetrius, some from the Peloponnese, some from Cyprus, so that in all three hundred were gathered together, Ptolemy's men set sail and fled, and Lachares the tyrant ran away, abandoning the city.
The Athenians, although they had voted death for anyone who mentioned peace and reconciliation with Demetrius, at once opened the nearest gates and sent ambassadors, expecting nothing good from him, but driven by the pressure of their want,
in which, as many hardships had befallen them together, it is said that even something of this kind happened: a father and son sitting together in a room, having given up hope for themselves, when a mouse, already dead, dropped from the ceiling, and both, on seeing it, sprang up and fought over it. At that time, too, they say, the philosopher Epicurus kept those close to him alive by distributing among them a counted number of the beans they were accustomed to share.
The city being in such a state, Demetrius entered it, and having ordered everyone to assemble in the theater, he blocked off the stage-building with armed men and surrounded the platform with spearmen, while he himself came down, like the tragic actors, through the upper entrances; and though the Athenians were even more terrified at the very beginning of his speech, he put an end to their fear.
For, sparing them any harsh tone or bitter language, and reproaching them gently and in a friendly manner, he was reconciled with them, and gave them a hundred thousand medimni of grain, and established magistracies that were especially agreeable to the people. And Dromocleides the orator, seeing that the people, out of joy, were shouting all kinds of things and vying to outdo the praises of the popular leaders from the platform, proposed a motion that the Piraeus and Munychia be handed over to King Demetrius.
When this had been voted, Demetrius, on his own initiative, threw in an additional garrison at the Museum, so that the people might not rear up again and cause him further trouble and business.
With Athens now in his grip, he immediately began plotting against Sparta. Near Mantinea he met King Archidamus, defeated him in battle, routed him, and invaded Laconia. Then, in a pitched battle right by Sparta itself, he took five hundred prisoners and killed two hundred more, so that it seemed the city — unconquered up to that time — was on the very verge of falling.
But fortune seems to have taken no king through such great and swift reversals, nor in any other man's affairs to have turned so many times from small to great again, from splendor to humiliation, and back from weakness to strength. That is why they say that in his worse turns of fortune he would cry out the line of Aeschylus: 'You it is who kindle me, and you, I think, who put me out.'
For indeed just then, while his affairs were flowing so favorably toward power and dominion, word came that Lysimachus had been the first to strip him of his cities in Asia, that Ptolemy had taken Cyprus except for the single city of Salamis, and that at Salamis he was besieging Demetrius's own children and mother, who were trapped there.
Yet fortune, like the woman in Archilochus who craftily carried water in one hand and fire in the other, having driven him from Laconia with such terrible and frightening reports, at once brought him fresh hopes of great new affairs, and from a source like this.
When Cassander died, his eldest son Philip, who had reigned over the Macedonians only a short time, also died, and the two remaining brothers fell into strife with one another. When one of them, Antipater, murdered their mother Thessalonice, the other called in allies — Pyrrhus from Epirus, and Demetrius from the Peloponnese.
Pyrrhus arrived first, and having cut off a large part of Macedonia as payment for his help, he was already a fearsome neighbor to Alexander. When Demetrius, upon receiving the letters, approached with his forces, the young man, fearing him still more because of his reputation and prestige, met him near Dium, greeting him warmly and in a friendly manner, but saying that his affairs no longer required Demetrius's presence.
From this, suspicions arose between them, and as Demetrius was walking to a dinner to which the young man had invited him, someone informed him of a plot, that they meant to kill him during the drinking itself. He, showing no alarm, but slowing his pace a little, ordered his officers to keep the army under arms, and his attendants and servants — who were far more numerous than Alexander's — to go in with him into the men's hall and stay there until he rose.
Alexander's men, fearing this, did not dare make their attempt. Demetrius, pretending that his body was not fit for drinking, left quickly; and the next day he set about breaking camp, saying that some fresh business had come up, and he begged Alexander's pardon if he departed rather hastily, promising to spend more time with him at leisure on another occasion. Alexander was pleased, thinking he was leaving the country not out of hostility but of his own will, and escorted him as far as Thessaly.
But when they reached Larissa, they again began inviting each other to banquets while plotting against one another; and this above all put Alexander into Demetrius's power. For being reluctant to take precautions, lest he teach the other man to be on his guard as well, he suffered what he was about to do to the other — Demetrius struck first, so that the man could not escape what he was contriving. Invited to dinner, Alexander went to Demetrius. But when Demetrius rose up in the middle of dinner, Alexander, alarmed, rose with him and followed close behind him toward the doors.
When Demetrius reached the doors, he came upon his own bodyguards, and saying only this — 'Strike the man following' — he himself slipped away, while the guards cut Alexander down together with several friends who had rushed to help him; one of these men, as he was being killed, is said to have shouted that Demetrius had beaten them to it by a single day.
That night, as one would expect, was full of turmoil. But at daybreak, while the Macedonians were in confusion and fearful of Demetrius's power, since no one fearsome came against them, and Demetrius sent word wishing to meet them and give an account of what had been done, they took courage and resolved to receive him kindly.
When he came, he needed no long speeches; for out of hatred for Antipater, the murderer of his mother, and having no better man to turn to, they proclaimed him king of the Macedonians, and taking him at once they brought him down into Macedonia. Nor was the change unwelcome to the Macedonians at home, who still remembered and hated the lawless things Cassander had done against Alexander after his death.
And if any memory still remained of the moderation of the elder Antipater, Demetrius reaped the benefit of that too, being married to Phila and having by her a son as successor to the throne, already by that time a young man and campaigning alongside his father.
Enjoying such brilliant good fortune, he learned about his children and mother — that they had been released, Ptolemy having even added gifts and honors for them — and he learned about the daughter who had married Seleucus, that she was now living with Antiochus, Seleucus's son, and had been proclaimed queen of the upper barbarian lands.
For it happened, it seems, that Antiochus had fallen in love with Stratonice, who was young and already had a child by Seleucus, and was in a bad way over it, struggling hard to resist the feeling; yet in the end he blamed himself severely for craving something so monstrous, and, sick beyond cure though his reason still held sway, he sought a way to be rid of life, and gradually let himself waste away, neglecting treatment and refusing food, pretending to be suffering from some illness.
The physician Erasistratus had no difficulty in perceiving that he was in love, but since it was hard to discover who it was he loved, he spent the whole day in the young man's room, and whenever any of the beautiful young men or women came in, he would watch Antiochus's face closely and observe those parts and movements of the body that are naturally affected in sympathy with a soul so moved.
So when the others who came in produced no such effect, but whenever Stratonice came, whether alone or with Seleucus, all those symptoms that Sappho describes would occur in him — a checking of the voice, a fiery blush, a dimming of the eyes, sudden sweats, disorder and turmoil in the pulse, and at last, his soul utterly overpowered, helplessness, confusion, and pallor —
reasoning further from this that, in all likelihood, a king's son in love with any other woman would not have persisted in silence to the point of death, Erasistratus, though he considered it a difficult thing to tell and denounce, nevertheless, trusting in Seleucus's goodwill toward his son, ventured at last to speak, and said that the young man's affliction was love, and a love impossible and incurable.
When Seleucus, astonished, asked how it was incurable, Erasistratus said, 'Because, by Zeus, he is in love with my wife.' 'Then would you not,' said Seleucus, 'grant the marriage to my son, Erasistratus, since you are his friend, especially seeing that we are tossed about on this one thing alone?' 'Not even you,' he replied, 'though you are his father, would have done this, if Antiochus had desired Stratonice.'
And Seleucus said, 'Would that some god or man, my friend, might quickly turn and change this passion toward that, since it would be a fine thing for me even to give up my kingdom, so that I might keep hold of Antiochus.' When Seleucus said this with great emotion and many tears, Erasistratus, taking his right hand, said that he had no need of Erasistratus at all; for being father and husband and king, he was himself, all at once, the best physician for his own household.
After this Seleucus, gathering the whole assembly of the people, said that he wished and had resolved to appoint Antiochus king of all the upper regions, and Stratonice queen, joined to one another in marriage; he thought his son, accustomed to obey in everything and being dutiful, would raise no objection to the marriage.
And if his wife should be reluctant at what was unprecedented, he called on his friends to instruct and persuade her to consider what seemed good and just to the king as bound up with the common advantage. In this way, they say, the marriage of Antiochus and Stratonice came about.
Demetrius, after Macedonia and Thessaly, had also taken most of the Peloponnese, and, outside the Isthmus, Megara and Athens, and marched against the Boeotians. At first there was a moderate agreement of friendship reached with him; but then, when Cleonymus the Spartan came to Thebes with an army, the Boeotians, emboldened, and with Pisis of Thespiae — who was then foremost in reputation and power — urging them on together, revolted.
When Demetrius brought up his siege engines against Thebes and laid siege to it, and Cleonymus, afraid, slipped away, the Boeotians, terrified, surrendered themselves. He, having installed a garrison in the cities and exacted large sums of money, and having left Hieronymus the historian behind as overseer and governor, was thought to have treated them gently, especially because of Pisis; for having captured him, he did him no harm, but greeted him kindly and appointed him polemarch at Thespiae.
Not long after, Lysimachus was captured by Dromichaetes; and when Demetrius set out quickly for Thrace on this account, as if to seize territory now left empty, the Boeotians revolted again, and word came that Lysimachus had meanwhile been released. Demetrius, therefore, turning back swiftly and in anger, discovered that his son Antigonus had already beaten the Boeotians in battle, and once more he besieged Thebes.
While Pyrrhus was overrunning Thessaly and had appeared as far as Thermopylae, Demetrius, leaving Antigonus in charge of the siege, set out himself against him. Pyrrhus fled swiftly; and having stationed ten thousand hoplites and a thousand cavalry in Thessaly, Demetrius again pressed the siege of Thebes and brought up the so-called Helepolis, laboriously and slowly moved by its own weight and size, so that it barely advanced two stadia in two months.
While the Boeotians defended themselves vigorously and Demetrius often forced his soldiers to fight and risk their lives more out of stubborn rivalry than necessity, Antigonus, seeing not a few falling and deeply moved, said, 'Father, why do we look on while these men are being needlessly spent?' But Demetrius, provoked, said, 'And why does it trouble you? Do you owe rations to the dead?'
Yet, not wishing to seem to spare others while keeping himself free of danger, he exposed himself to the fighting and took a dart in the neck. He suffered terribly, but did not give up, and took Thebes again. And entering the city, he caused dread and fear as if they were to suffer the worst; but after putting thirteen men to death and banishing some others, he let the rest go free.
So it happened that within less than ten years of being resettled, Thebes was captured twice. When the time of the Pythian games came round, Demetrius allowed himself to do something quite unprecedented: since the Aetolians held the narrow passes around Delphi, he himself conducted the contest and festival at Athens, on the ground that it was most fitting for the god to be honored there, since he is also the ancestral god and is said to be the founder of Demetrius's own line.
From there he returned to Macedonia, and being by nature unable to remain at rest himself, and seeing that the others paid him more attention on campaigns, while at home they were turbulent and meddlesome, he marched against the Aetolians; and having ravaged their country and left Pantauchus behind with no small part of his forces, he himself advanced against Pyrrhus, and Pyrrhus against him.
Missing each other, one of them ravaged Epirus, while the other fell in with Pantauchus and joined battle, routing him in hand-to-hand combat after it came to blows given and taken, and killed many of the rest, but took five thousand prisoners.
This above all hurt Demetrius: the Macedonians felt less hatred toward Pyrrhus for his actions than admiration for what he had achieved with his own hands, and he won a great and shining name among the Macedonians from that battle; and many of the Macedonians came to say that in this one man alone of the kings could be seen an image of Alexander's daring, while the others, and especially Demetrius, merely acted out, as on a stage, the weightiness and grandeur of that man.
And indeed there really was a great tragedy playing out around Demetrius, who not only dressed and adorned himself extravagantly with double-mitred caps and purple robes shot through with gold, but also had made for his feet boots of pure purple felted together and dyed with gold. There was also a cloak being woven for him over a long time, a work of overweening pride, an image of the cosmos and of the things visible in the heavens,
which was left half-finished amid the upheaval of his affairs, and no one afterward dared to wear it, though not a few haughty kings later arose in Macedonia.
He grieved people not only with these spectacles, since they were unaccustomed to them, but they were also weighed down by his luxury and manner of life, and above all by his being hard to approach and difficult to meet with. For either he gave no opportunity to meet him, or he was harsh and rough with those who did meet him. The Athenians, for instance, toward whom he had been most eager of all the Greeks, he kept an embassy waiting for two years; and when a single envoy came from Lacedaemon, feeling himself slighted, he grew angry.
That man, however, replied wittily and in true Laconic style when Demetrius said, "What do you mean? The Lacedaemonians sent one envoy?" "Yes," he said, "O king, to one man." Once, when he seemed to be riding out in a more approachable, popular manner, and not unwilling to receive petitions, some people ran up to him and handed him written petitions. He received them all and gathered them in the fold of his cloak, and the people were delighted and followed along; but once he reached the bridge spanning the Axius, he shook out his cloak and cast the whole lot into the water.
And this grievously vexed the Macedonians, who felt themselves insulted rather than ruled as subjects, and who remembered Philip, or heard of him from those who remembered him, how moderate and accessible he had been in such matters. And once, when an old woman kept accosting him along some road and begging repeatedly to be heard, he said he had no time; and when she cried out and said, "Then don't be king,"
he was stung to the quick, and being moved by this above all, he turned back to his house, and having put everything else aside, he gave audience for many days to all who wished to meet him, beginning with that old woman.
For no task suits a king better than the exercise of justice. Ares, says Timotheus, is a tyrant; yet, in Pindar's phrase, it is law that rules over all things; and Homer holds that kings are given by Zeus, to watch over and preserve, not siege-machines that crush cities, nor beaked ships of bronze, but the ordinances of justice — and he names the most just among kings, not the fiercest fighter nor the most murderous and lawless one, as the companion and disciple of Zeus.
But Demetrius took delight in claiming for himself a surname most unlike that of the king of the gods: for the one was called Guardian of the City and Protector of the City, while the other was surnamed the Besieger. In this way, wickedness, coming upon the domain of the beautiful through ignorant power, made injustice at home with fame.
Demetrius, then, having fallen most dangerously ill at Pella, very nearly lost Macedonia at that time, since Pyrrhus swept down swiftly and advanced as far as Edessa. But as soon as he grew somewhat lighter, he drove him out quite easily and made certain agreements with him, since he did not wish, while constantly stumbling against him and fighting over territory, to be less able to pursue the greater designs he had in mind.
And his designs were no small ones, but nothing less than to recover the entire empire that had been his father's. His preparations were not lacking to match this hope and undertaking: he had already assembled an infantry force just short of a hundred and eighty thousand men, and, besides these, cavalry a little short of twelve thousand.
And laying down a fleet of five hundred ships together, he set some keels in the Piraeus, some in Corinth, some in Chalcis, and some around Pella, going himself to each place and instructing the workers in what was needed and joining in the designing, so that everyone was astonished not only at the numbers but also at the scale of the works.
Never before had anyone laid eyes on a vessel with fifteen or sixteen banks of oars, though later Ptolemy Philopator built one of forty banks, measuring two hundred eighty cubits from stem to stern and rising forty-eight cubits to the top of the stern-ornament, fitted out with four hundred sailors apart from the rowers, and four thousand rowers, and capable of holding, besides these, close to three thousand marines on the gangways and deck.
But that ship provided only a spectacle, and differing little from a fixed building, made for display rather than for use, it was moved with difficulty and danger. Demetrius's ships, however, were not deprived of beauty for the sake of usefulness, nor was their usefulness taken away by the elaborateness of their construction, but their speed and performance made them more worth seeing than their size.
So then, as so great a force was being raised against Asia — greater than any man had possessed since Alexander — the three combined against Demetrius: Seleucus, Ptolemy, and Lysimachus; and then they jointly sent to Pyrrhus, urging him to seize upon Macedonia and not to consider himself bound by the truce, since Demetrius had not granted Pyrrhus immunity from being warred upon, but had merely reserved for himself the right to make war on whomever he wished first.
Pyrrhus having agreed, a great war rose up around Demetrius even while he was still preparing. For at the same time Ptolemy sailed with a great fleet and caused Greece to revolt, while Lysimachus invaded from Thrace, and Pyrrhus from the neighboring territory, and they ravaged the land. Demetrius put his son in command over Greek affairs and himself set out first to help Macedonia against Lysimachus. But word reached him that Pyrrhus had taken the city of Beroea.
And when this report quickly fell upon the Macedonians, nothing any longer went well for Demetrius, but the camp was full of lamentation and tears and anger and abuse directed at him, and the men were unwilling to stay together but wished to disperse — nominally to their homes, but in truth to Lysimachus.
Demetrius therefore decided to keep as far away as possible from Lysimachus and turn instead against Pyrrhus, reasoning that the one was a kinsman and familiar to many because of Alexander, while the Macedonians would never prefer Pyrrhus, a foreigner and a newcomer, over himself. In this calculation, however, he was greatly deceived.
For when he came near and encamped alongside Pyrrhus, the Macedonians, who had always admired the splendor Pyrrhus showed in arms, and who from oldest custom were accustomed to consider the man most powerful in arms as most kingly, and who now also learned that he had treated his captives gently, and who in any case were seeking any way at all, whether toward this man or another, to be rid of Demetrius, began to slip away secretly and in small numbers at first, and then openly the whole camp was full of movement and disorder,
until at last some of them worked up the nerve to approach Demetrius and urge him to flee and preserve his own life, since, as they put it, the Macedonians were weary of fighting merely to sustain his extravagance. These words seemed to Demetrius the most moderate of all, compared to the harshness of the others; and going to his tent, like an actor rather than a king, he changed into a plain gray cloak instead of that tragic costume, and slipped away unnoticed.
And when most of the men at once rushed to plunder, fighting each other and tearing apart the royal tent, Pyrrhus appeared and took the camp without a blow, gaining control of it. And thus all of Macedonia, which Demetrius had ruled securely for seven years, was divided between him and Lysimachus.
When Demetrius had thus fallen from power and had taken refuge in Cassandreia, his wife Phila, overcome with grief, could not bear to look again upon Demetrius, most wretched of kings, now a private citizen and a fugitive; and abandoning all hope, and hating his fortune as being more constant in misfortune than in success, she drank poison and died. Demetrius, still intent on clinging to what remained of the wreck, sailed off to Greece and gathered together the generals and friends he had there.
The image, then, that the Menelaus of Sophocles applies to his own fortunes — "but my fate forever turns upon the crowded wheel of god and changes its nature, just as the face of the moon could never for two nights stand in one shape, but first it comes forth new from obscurity, growing more beautiful and being filled out, and when it appears at its noblest, again it flows away and comes to nothing" —
this image one might rather apply to the affairs of Demetrius, and to the increases and decreases and refillings and abasements that surrounded him, since even then, when his power seemed altogether to be failing and being extinguished, it flared up again, and certain forces flowing in little by little kept filling out his hope once more. And at first he went about the cities as a private citizen, stripped of all royal adornment, and someone who saw him in that state at Thebes applied to him, not without wit, the lines of Euripides: "Having exchanged his divine form for a mortal one, he stands here beside the streams of Dirce and the water of Ismenus."
But once his hope had been set, as it were, upon a royal road, and a body and shape of power was again forming around him, he restored their constitution to the Thebans, while the Athenians revolted from him. And they struck Diphilus, who had been recorded as priest of the Saviors, from the list of eponymous officials, and voted to choose archons again as had been their ancestral custom, and they sent for Pyrrhus to come from Macedonia, seeing Demetrius stronger than they had expected.
He came against them in anger and set up a fierce siege around the city; but when Crates the philosopher, a man of renown and influence, was sent to him by the people, Demetrius, partly persuaded by what he asked on behalf of the Athenians, and partly, from what Crates taught him, coming to understand what was to his own advantage, lifted the siege, and gathering together all the ships he had, and putting aboard eleven thousand soldiers along with cavalry, sailed for Asia, intending to detach Caria and Lydia from Lysimachus.
Eurydice received him near Miletus — the sister of Phila — bringing with her Ptolemais, one of her own and Ptolemy's daughters, who had earlier been betrothed to Demetrius through Seleucus. This woman Demetrius married, with Eurydice giving her away. And immediately after the marriage he turned to the cities, many of which joined him willingly, but many he took by force.
He also took Sardis, and several of Lysimachus's generals defected to his side, contributing funds and soldiers. But when Agathocles, Lysimachus's son, marched against him with an army, he went up into Phrygia, having decided that, if he could seize Armenia, he would set Media in motion and lay hold of the upper regions, since there he would have many refuges and places to retreat to if pressed hard.
As Agathocles followed, he prevailed in the skirmishes, but being cut off from provisioning and foraging, he fell into difficulty, and his soldiers grew suspicious of him, thinking he was leading them off toward Armenia and Media. At the same time famine pressed harder, and a mistake made in crossing the Lycus swept away a great number of men in the current and destroyed them. Yet even so they did not refrain from mockery: someone wrote up before his tent, with a slight alteration, the opening of the Oedipus: "Child of blind old Antigonus, to what regions have we come?"
Finally, as sickness joined itself to famine—as usually happens when men are driven to eat what necessity forces on them—he lost no fewer than eight thousand men in all, and led the rest back. Coming down to Tarsus, he wished to keep clear of the territory, since it then belonged to Seleucus, and to give him no pretext for complaint,
but since this proved impossible, his soldiers being in the utmost want, and Agathocles having walled off the passes of the Taurus, he wrote a letter to Seleucus—a long lament over his own fortune, followed by much supplication and entreaty that a kinsman take pity on him, having suffered things that would move even enemies to sympathy. Seleucus, somewhat softened, wrote to the generals there to supply Demetrius himself with a royal allowance and his forces with abundant provisions,
but Patrocles, a man reputed sensible and a loyal friend of Seleucus, came forward and said that the greatest part of the expense was not in feeding Demetrius's soldiers, but that it was not safe for him to overlook Demetrius lingering in the country—a man who, being always the most violent and most ambitious of kings, had now fallen into circumstances such as drive even naturally moderate men to dare and to do wrong.
Provoked by this, Seleucus set out for Cilicia with a large force. Demetrius, astonished and frightened by this sudden reversal in Seleucus, withdrew to the strongest positions of the Taurus, and sent envoys asking, above all, that Seleucus permit him to carve out some domain among the unconquered native tribes, in which he could spend his remaining days without further wandering and flight; failing that, that he be allowed to feed his army there through the winter, and not be driven out destitute and exposed, naked before his enemies.
But when Seleucus, suspecting all this, ordered him, if he wished, to winter two months in Cataonia, giving the chief of his friends as hostages, while at the same time walling off the passes into Syria, Demetrius, hemmed in and encircled on every side like a wild beast, was forced by necessity to turn to fighting. He overran the country, and in every clash with Seleucus's advancing forces he always had the better of it.
Once, when scythed chariots were sent against him, he withstood them and put them to flight, and he drove off those who were walling the passes into Syria and gained control of them. Altogether he grew confident in his judgment, and seeing his soldiers with their spirits restored, he prepared to fight a decisive battle against Seleucus for the highest stakes, Seleucus himself now being in difficulties.
For Seleucus had turned away the help offered by Lysimachus, distrusting and fearing him, yet he himself hesitated to engage Demetrius on his own, fearing his desperation and the way his fortune always turned, bringing the greatest successes out of the direst straits. But a severe illness then seized Demetrius, which terribly wrecked his body and utterly ruined his cause. A number of his troops crossed over to join the opposing side, while others merely abandoned him and drifted away.
After barely recovering in forty days, and gathering the survivors, he set out, so far as could be seen and supposed by the enemy, toward Cilicia, then by night, without trumpet-signal, marched off in the opposite direction, crossed the Amanus, and ravaged the lower country as far as Cyrrhestica.
When Seleucus appeared and made his camp nearby, Demetrius roused his army by night and marched against him while he was still unaware and asleep. But some deserters came over and reported the danger, and Seleucus, alarmed, sprang up and ordered the trumpets sounded, pulling on his boots at the same moment and shouting to his companions that he was entangled with a terrible beast. Demetrius, perceiving from the enemy's uproar that he had been betrayed, led his men back in haste.
At daybreak, with Seleucus pressing upon him, he dispatched one of his commanders to attack the enemy's opposite flank, throwing the forces there into disorder. But then Seleucus himself, dismounting from his horse and setting aside his helmet, took up a light shield and went to meet the mercenaries, showing himself to them and calling on them to change sides, since they had at last come to realize that it was for their sake, not Demetrius's, that he had held back so long.
At this every one of them saluted him, proclaimed him king, and defected to his side. Demetrius, perceiving that of the many reversals he had suffered this was the final one to come upon him, turned aside and fled to the Amanic Gates, and having gone down into a densely wooded spot with a few friends and attendants—altogether very few—waited there for night, wishing, if he could, to seize the road to Caunus and break through to the sea, where he hoped to find his fleet.
But when he learned that his men did not even have provisions for that one day, he turned to other plans. Then Sosigenes, a companion of his, came up, having four hundred gold pieces girded about him; and hoping to hold out to the sea with this money, they made their way toward the passes in the dark. But seeing enemy fires burning near the passes, they abandoned that route and withdrew again to the same place, neither all of them (for some had already run off) nor were those who remained equally eager to stay;
and when someone ventured to say that Demetrius ought to surrender his person to Seleucus, he drew his sword and made to kill himself, but his friends gathered round and pleaded with him, and persuaded him to do it. So he sent to Seleucus, putting himself entirely in his hands.
When Seleucus heard this, he said that it was not by Demetrius's fortune that Demetrius was to be saved, but by his own, which, along with its other blessings, now gave him the chance to display kindness and generosity. He summoned his stewards and ordered a royal tent pitched, and everything else done and prepared for a magnificent reception and hospitality.
There was a certain Apollonides at Seleucus's court who had once been an intimate of Demetrius; this man he at once sent to him, so that Demetrius might be more at ease and approach him confidently, as one would a kinsman and connection by marriage. Once his intention became known, at first a few, then most of his friends hurried to Demetrius's side, competing and rushing to be the earliest to reach him, since it was assumed that whichever of them arrived first would quickly rise to favor with Seleucus.
This turned Seleucus's pity into jealousy, and gave the malicious and envious an opening to turn him aside and spoil the king's kindness, by frightening him with the claim that the moment the man was seen, without delay, there would be great upheaval in the camp.
Just as Apollonides had come back to Demetrius overjoyed, and others were arriving and reporting wonderful things about Seleucus, and Demetrius—after so great a misfortune and disaster—though he had earlier thought the surrender of his person a shameful act, had now, through this new confidence and trust in his hopes, changed his mind, Pausanias arrived with about a thousand soldiers, both foot and horse, together.
Surrounding Demetrius suddenly with these and driving off all the others, he did not bring him into Seleucus's presence, but led him away to the Syrian Chersonese, where thereafter, under strong guard, he was provided adequately by Seleucus with attendants, money, and a daily manner of living that was not to be complained of; and royal running-tracks and walks and game-parks stocked with animals for hunting were set aside for him.
Any of the friends who had shared his flight and wished to stay with him were permitted to do so, and some even came to visit him from Seleucus, bringing reasonable words and urging him to take heart, saying that once Antiochus arrived together with Stratonice, his situation would be settled.
Demetrius, now in such a plight, sent instructions to his son and to his commanders and friends at Athens and Corinth to trust neither his letters nor his seal, but to preserve the cities and the rest of his affairs for Antigonus, as though he himself were dead.
Antigonus, learning of his father's capture, bore it heavily, and putting on mourning dress, wrote to the other kings and to Seleucus himself, pleading with him, offering to hand over whatever remained to them, and above all offering himself as a hostage on his father's behalf. Many cities and rulers joined in these entreaties, except Lysimachus.
Lysimachus, for his part, sent much money and promised more to Seleucus if he would kill Demetrius. Seleucus, who already held him in low regard on other grounds, thought him all the more vile and barbarous for this; but as for Antiochus his son and Stratonice, he kept Demetrius alive in order that the favor might come from them, and let time pass.
Demetrius, as he had at first borne his misfortune when it fell upon him, and now grew accustomed to bear his present circumstances more easily, at first exercised his body somehow or other, taking up hunting, as far as was possible, and running, but little by little he became filled with reluctance and sluggishness toward these, and gave himself over to drinking and dice, spending most of his time at them,
whether fleeing the sober reckonings of his present state and veiling his mind in drunkenness, or having come to admit to himself that this was the life he had long desired and pursued, wandering in vain through folly and empty ambition, causing much trouble both to himself and to others, seeking in arms and fleets and armies the good that he now found, unexpectedly, in inactivity, leisure, and rest.
For what other end do wars and dangers have for poor and foolishly disposed kings, not merely because they pursue luxury and pleasure instead of virtue and honor, but because they do not even truly know how to enjoy pleasure or luxury? Demetrius, then, having been shut up in the Chersonese for the third year, fell ill from idleness, overindulgence, and wine, and died, having lived fifty-four years.
And Seleucus was ill spoken of for this, and repented not a little for having then held Demetrius in suspicion, since he had not even imitated Dromichaetes, a barbarian Thracian, who had treated the captured Lysimachus with such kindness and royal generosity.
Even the circumstances of his funeral had something of a tragic and theatrical arrangement to them. For his son Antigonus, upon hearing that the ashes were on their way home, sailed out with his whole naval force and encountered them among the islands; and receiving the urn, which was of beaten gold, he placed it aboard his largest flagship.
The cities to which they put in brought crowns to lay upon the urn, and sent men in mourning attire to join in the funeral procession and escort. As the fleet sailed into Corinth, the urn could be seen plainly from the stern, adorned with royal purple and a diadem, and young men stood by it under arms as a guard of honor. Xenophantus, the most celebrated flute-player of that time, sat close by and played the most solemn of melodies;
and to this, as the oarsmen rowed in a certain rhythm, there answered a sound like that of mourners beating their breasts, timed to the phrases of the flute-music. But the greatest pity and lamentation was stirred among those gathered on the shore by the sight of Antigonus himself, humbled and in tears. After honors and crowns had been offered at Corinth, he carried the remains to Demetrias and laid them there, a city named after him, formed by the union of the small towns around Iolcus.
Demetrius left behind him as offspring: Antigonus and Stratonice by Phila; two sons named Demetrius, one called the Fair, by an Illyrian woman, the other, who ruled Cyrene, by Ptolemais; and by Deidameia, Alexander, who lived out his life in Egypt. It is also said that a son named Corrhagus was born to him by Eurydice. His line descended through successive kings down to Perseus, the last of them, under whom the Romans brought Macedonia under their rule. Now that the Macedonian drama has been played out, it is time to bring on the Roman one.

======== Antony ========

Antony's grandfather was the orator Antony, whom Marius put to death for having sided with Sulla's faction, and his father was Antony called Creticus, a man not so distinguished or brilliant in politics, but honest and good, and in particular generous when it came to giving, as one might learn from a single deed of his.
For possessing not much property, and for that reason being hindered by his wife from indulging his generosity, when one of his acquaintances came to him needing money, he had no money, but ordered a slave-boy to bring water in a silver cup; and when it was brought, as if he were about to shave, he wetted his chin.
Then, when the boy had gone off on some other pretext, he gave the cup to his friend and told him to make use of it; and when a great search was made among the servants, seeing his wife angry and wanting to interrogate everyone one by one, he confessed, begging her pardon.
Julia, a member of the Caesar family and a rival to the noblest and most virtuous women of her day, was his mother. Antony was brought up by her after his father died, when she remarried to Cornelius Lentulus, the man Cicero executed as one of Catiline's co-conspirators. This appears to be why Antony harbored such fierce hatred for Cicero.
Antony himself claims that Lentulus's body was withheld from them until his mother pleaded with Cicero's wife. Yet this claim is plainly untrue, since nobody executed by Cicero at that time was refused burial.
But once Antony blossomed into a brilliant youth, Curio's friendship and closeness fastened onto him like a curse, people say — for Curio had grown reckless in indulging his own appetites, and, wanting to bend Antony to greater compliance, he drew him into drink, women, and lavish spending without restraint. As a result a crushing debt, far too great for a man his age, piled up against him: two hundred and fifty talents.
When Curio had gone security for all of this, his father, learning of it, drove Antony out of the house. He then attached himself for a brief time to the following of Clodius, the most reckless and foul of the demagogues of that day, who was throwing everything into turmoil; but quickly, having had his fill of that man's madness, and fearing those banding together against Clodius, he departed from Italy for Greece, and spent his time there training his body for military contests and practicing oratory.
He employed the so-called Asiatic style of oratory, which was then flourishing most of all at that time, and which bore great resemblance to his own life — being boastful and blustering, and full of empty vaunting and uneven ambition.
When Gabinius, a man of consular rank, was sailing to Syria and was trying to persuade him to set out on the campaign, he said he would not go along as a private citizen; but on being appointed commander of the cavalry he served with the army. And first, being sent against Aristobulus, who was inciting the Jews to revolt, he himself was the first to mount the largest of the fortifications, and drove that man from all of them; then, joining battle and routing, with the few men he had, forces many times more numerous, he killed them all except a few; and Aristobulus himself was taken captive along with his son.
After this, when Ptolemy was trying to persuade Gabinius, for ten thousand talents, to join in an invasion of Egypt with him and restore him to the kingship, most of the commanders were opposed, and Gabinius himself had some hesitation about the war, though he had been thoroughly enslaved by the ten thousand talents; but Antony, both because he longed for great deeds and because he wished to gratify Ptolemy, who was pleading with him, persuaded Gabinius and set him in motion for the campaign,
and when they feared the road to Pelusium more than the war itself, since their march would go through deep, waterless sand alongside the Ekregma and the Serbonian marshes, which the Egyptians call the exhalations of Typhon, and which seem to be a backflow and seepage of the Red Sea, where it is separated from the inner sea by a very narrow isthmus,
Antony, sent ahead with the cavalry, not only seized the narrow passes but also took Pelusium, a great city, and overpowered its garrison, thereby both making the road safe for the army and securing for the general a firm hope of victory. Even the enemy profited from his ambition for honor. For when Ptolemy, upon entering Pelusium, was moved by anger and hatred to slaughter the Egyptians, Antony stood in his way and prevented it.
In the battles and the great and frequent contests that followed, he displayed many deeds of daring and of a commander's foresight, most conspicuously by encircling the enemy and coming around behind them, thereby granting victory to those fighting them in front, for which he received the prizes and honors befitting valor. Nor did his kindness toward the dead Archelaus escape the notice of the many:
for having become his friend and guest-companion, he had fought against him of necessity while he lived, but upon his falling he sought out his body, adorned it royally, and gave it burial. By these actions he left behind him the greatest renown among the Alexandrians, and to the Romans on campaign he seemed to be a most splendid man.
He also had a certain noble dignity of form; and a beard not without nobility, a broad forehead, and an aquiline nose seemed to have the same virile look as the faces of Heracles drawn and sculpted. There was also an old tradition that the Antonii were Heraclids, descended from Anton, a son of Heracles.
This tradition, he thought, was confirmed both by his bodily shape, already described, and by how he dressed. For always, whenever he was to be seen by a larger crowd, he girded his tunic to the thigh, wore a great sword at his side, and put on a heavy soldier's cloak. Moreover, things that seemed vulgar to others — great boasting, joking, drinking openly from the cup, sitting beside a man who was eating, and eating standing at a soldier's table — produced in his soldiers a marvelous degree of goodwill and longing toward him.
There was also, in some way, something not unattractive in his amorousness; indeed by this too he won over many, joining in with lovers and not unpleasantly enduring being teased about his own love affairs. His generosity, and his giving to soldiers and friends with no stinting or sparing hand, provided him at first with a splendid road toward power, and once he had become great, raised his power still further, even as it was being overturned by countless other faults. I will relate one example of his lavish giving.
He ordered that twenty-five myriads be given to one of his friends: this the Romans call a decies. When his steward, in astonishment, in order to show him the amount, laid the money out in the open, Antony, passing by, asked what this was. When the steward said it was what he had ordered to be given, Antony, perceiving his pettiness, said, "I thought the decies was more than this; this is a small amount: so add as much again to it."
These things, however, belong to a later time. When Rome's affairs were torn in two directions — the aristocratic faction clinging to Pompey, who was on hand, while the popular faction called for Caesar, then under arms in Gaul — Curio, Antony's friend, having changed sides to serve Caesar's cause, brought Antony over to him; and having great influence from his speaking before the people, and spending money without stint from what Caesar supplied, he had Antony appointed tribune, and then one of the priests concerned with augury, whom they call Augurs.
As soon as he entered office he was of no small service to those working politically on Caesar's behalf. But first, when Marcellus the consul was instructing Pompey to take command of the soldiers already gathered and giving him leave to levy others, he stood in the way, drafting a decree that the gathered force should sail to Syria and go to the aid of Bibulus, who was at war with the Parthians, and that those whom Pompey was levying should not obey him;
and second, when the senators would not receive Caesar's letters nor allow them to be read, he himself, exercising the power of his office, read them, and won many over in their opinion, since what Caesar had written appeared just and moderate.
Finally, when two questions were put in the senate, one whether it seemed good for Pompey to disband his forces, the other whether Caesar should, and when they voted that Pompey should lay down his arms only in the case of a few, but that Caesar should in the case of almost all, Antony stood up and asked whether it seemed good for both Pompey and Caesar together to lay down their arms and disband their forces. This proposal all received with acclaim, and with a shout of praise for Antony they demanded it be put to the vote. But since the consuls were unwilling, Caesar's friends again put forward other demands that seemed reasonable, to which Cato objected, and Lentulus, then consul, expelled Antony from the senate. He, as he went out, heaped many curses upon them, and taking a servant's dress and hiring a carriage with Cassius Quintus, set out for Caesar; and as soon as they were seen they cried out that the affairs at Rome no longer had any order left, since not even tribunes had freedom of speech, but every man who spoke on behalf of justice was driven out and endangered.
Following this, Caesar marched his army into Italy as an invader. It was for this reason that Cicero, in the Philippics, claimed Antony was to the civil war what Helen had been to the Trojan War — its cause — though this is plainly false.
For Gaius Caesar was not so rash, nor so easily swept off his calculated course by rage, that he would have hurled his country into war on a sudden impulse, without long since having settled on that course already, simply because he saw Antony and Cassius, shabbily dressed, fleeing to him in a hired carriage,
but rather these events furnished him, long in need of a pretext, with a fair appearance and rationale for the war. What drove him against all mankind was the same thing that had earlier driven Alexander, and Cyrus before him: an insatiable passion for power and a mad craving to be first and greatest — which could not be attained unless Pompey were overthrown.
When, then, he had marched in, taken control of Rome, and forced Pompey out of Italy, he resolved first to turn against Pompey's forces in Spain, and then, having thus prepared a fleet, to cross over against Pompey; and he entrusted Rome to Lepidus, then praetor, and the armies and Italy to Antony, who was tribune.
Antony was at once beloved by the soldiers, exercising with them, sharing their manner of living for the most part, and giving gifts from what he had, but he was burdensome to others. For out of laziness he neglected those who were wronged, listened with irritation to petitioners, and had a bad reputation regarding other men's wives.
And in general his friends charged that Caesar's rule, which appeared to be anything rather than a tyranny because of the man himself, and Antony, who was thought to have committed the greatest offenses from his very great power, bore the greatest share of the blame.
Nevertheless, when Caesar returned from Spain he overlooked the charges against him, and in employing him for the war as an energetic, brave, and commanding man he was in no way mistaken. He himself, then, crossing the Ionian sea from Brundisium with few men, sent the ships back, instructing Gabinius and Antony to embark the forces and cross over speedily into Macedonia.
But when Gabinius, frightened by the difficulty of the voyage in the season of winter, led the army by the long land route instead, Antony, fearing for Caesar, who was cut off among many enemies, drove off Libo, who was blockading the mouth of the harbor, by surrounding his triremes with many light boats, and then, embarking eight hundred cavalry and twenty thousand infantry on the ships, put out to sea.
The enemy caught sight of him and gave chase, yet he slipped free of that peril when a bright south wind whipped up a great swell and rough sea around their triremes; but carried by the current toward cliffs and steep ravines, he had no hope of safety.
Then suddenly a strong west wind blew out of the gulf, and the surge poured from the land out to open sea; turning away from the shore and sailing on boldly, he saw the beach strewn with wrecks. For the wind had cast up there the triremes that had been pursuing him, and not a few were destroyed. Antony took possession of many men and much property, captured Lissus, and gave Caesar great confidence, arriving in time with so considerable a force.
In the many continuous engagements that followed he distinguished himself in all of them, and twice, meeting Caesar's men fleeing headlong, he turned them back and forced them to stand and join battle again with their pursuers, and won. So after Caesar he was the man most talked of in the camp.
Caesar made clear what opinion he held of him. For when the final, decisive battle at Pharsalus was at hand, he himself commanded the right wing, while entrusting the left to Antony, judging him the most warlike man serving under him.
After the victory, having been proclaimed dictator, he himself pursued Pompey, and choosing Antony as Master of Horse, dispatched him to Rome in that capacity. Whenever the dictator is present, this post ranks just below him, but in his absence it stands nearly alone at the top; for the tribunate continues to function, while every other magistracy is suspended for as long as a dictator holds power.
Nevertheless, at that time Dolabella, then tribune, a young man reaching for revolutionary measures, was proposing the cancellation of debts, and was persuading Antony, who was his friend and always wished to please the multitude, to cooperate and share in the policy. But when Asinius and Trebellius urged the opposite course, a terrible suspicion by chance fell upon Antony, that he was being wronged by Dolabella in respect of his marriage.
Taking the matter badly, he drove his wife from the house — she was his cousin, being the daughter of Gaius Antonius, who had been consul with Cicero — and, taking the side of Asinius and his friends, made war on Dolabella. For Dolabella had seized the forum, intending to ratify his law by force. Antony, the senate having voted that arms were needed against Dolabella, attacked him and joined battle, killing some of his men and losing some of his own.
By these actions he made himself hated by the multitude, and to the respectable and moderate men he was not pleasing either, because of the rest of his life, as Cicero says, but was detested, they being disgusted by his untimely drinking bouts, his oppressive expenditures, and his wallowing among loose women, and by the fact that by day he slept and wandered about dazed and hungover, while by night he spent his time at revels, theaters, and the wedding-feasts of mimes and buffoons.
It is said, at any rate, that once, having been entertained at the wedding of Hippias the mime and having drunk through the night, then, once dawn came and the crowd called for him at the forum, he came forward still stuffed with food and vomited, one of his friends holding out his cloak for him. Sergius the mime was also among those with the greatest influence over him, and Cytheris, a little woman from the same wrestling-school, was beloved by him, whom indeed he carried about with him in a litter when visiting the cities, and the litter was attended by no fewer people than that of his own mother.
People were also distressed by the sight of golden drinking-cups carried about on his travels as if in processions, by the roadside pitching of tents, by the arrangement of costly breakfasts by groves and rivers, by lions yoked to chariots, and by the houses of respectable men and women being requisitioned for harlots and harp-girls.
For they thought it a terrible thing that Caesar himself should be camping out of doors outside Italy, clearing up with great toil and danger what remained of the war, while others, because of him, were living in luxury and insulting the citizens.
These things seem both to have increased the discontent and to have let the soldiery loose into terrible outrages and greed. Hence when Caesar returned he pardoned Dolabella, and being chosen consul for the third time, took not Antony but Lepidus as his colleague.
Antony bought Pompey's house, which was for sale, but when payment was demanded of him he was indignant, and he himself says that it was for this reason that he did not take part in Caesar's African campaign, having received no repayment for his earlier successes. Caesar, however, seems to have removed much of his foolishness and profligacy, not receiving his misdeeds without notice.
For giving up that mode of life he turned to marriage, taking Fulvia, who had been the wife of Clodius the demagogue — a woman with no interest in spinning wool or housekeeping, nor satisfied with governing an ordinary man, but bent on ruling one who himself ruled and giving orders to one who himself gave orders — so that Cleopatra really owed Fulvia a teacher's fee for schooling Antony in obedience to women, since she took him over already thoroughly tamed and trained from the start to obey women.
Nevertheless Antony tried, by playful teasing and boyish pranks, to make even her more cheerful — as, for instance, once when crowds of people were streaming out to welcome Caesar back from his Spanish triumph, he too joined the crowd going out. Then suddenly a rumor fell upon Italy that the enemy were advancing and Caesar was dead, and he turned back to Rome. Taking a servant's clothing, he came to the house by night, and saying that he was bringing a letter to Fulvia from Antony, he was admitted to her, muffled up.
Then she, overcome with anxiety, did not even take the letter before asking if Antony still lived; but he, silently holding out the letter, as she began to unwrap and read it, threw his arms around her and kissed her. These few incidents, out of many, we have brought forward as a sample.
When Caesar was returning from Spain, all the leading men went out to meet him many days' journey away, but Antony was honored by him conspicuously. For traveling by carriage through Italy, Caesar had Antony riding with him in the same vehicle, and behind, Brutus Albinus and the son of his niece, Octavian, who afterward was named Caesar and ruled the Romans for the longest time.
When Caesar was declared consul for the fifth time, he at once chose Antony as his colleague, but wished to resign the office and hand it over to Dolabella, and brought this proposal before the senate. Antony opposed it harshly, and after speaking many evil words against Dolabella and hearing no fewer in return, Caesar, then ashamed of the disorder, withdrew.
Afterward, coming forward to proclaim Dolabella, when Antony cried out that the omens were unfavorable, he yielded and gave up Dolabella, who was vexed. It seemed that Caesar too detested Antony no less. For it is said that when someone was denouncing them both together to him, he said that he did not fear these fat, long-haired men, but those pale and thin ones, pointing out Brutus and Cassius, by whom he was destined to be plotted against and destroyed.
And it was to those men that Antony, unwittingly, gave the most plausible pretext. For there was the festival of the Lycaea among the Romans, which they call the Lupercalia, and Caesar, adorned in triumphal dress and seated above the rostrum in the forum, was watching those who ran the course; many young men of noble birth and of the magistrates run in this race, anointed with oil, striking with strips of shaggy hide, in sport, those they meet.
Among these Antony was running, but he let the ancestral customs go, and, wreathing a diadem with a crown of laurel, ran up to the rostrum, and being lifted up by those running with him, placed it on Caesar's head, as though it were fitting for him to be king. Caesar, affecting reluctance and turning aside, the people, delighted, applauded.
And again Antony brought it forward, and again Caesar pushed it away. And as they contended thus for a long time, with only a few of Antony's friends supporting him in pressing it, but the whole people applauding Caesar with shouts as he refused it — a thing which was indeed remarkable, that while enduring in fact the condition of subjects under a king, they fled from the name of king as the destruction of their freedom.
So Caesar rose, vexed, from the rostrum, and drawing his cloak back from his neck, cried out that he offered his throat to whoever wished. But the crown, having been placed on one of his statues, certain tribunes tore down, and the people followed them with applause and acclamation, while Caesar deposed them from office.
These events emboldened the party of Brutus and Cassius; and as they listed the trustworthy among their friends for the deed, they took counsel about Antony. While the others were for admitting the man, Trebonius spoke against it; for he said that at the time when they had gone to meet Caesar returning from Spain, while Antony shared a tent and traveled with him, he had gently and cautiously broached the idea to him, and that Antony had understood but had not accepted the approach, yet had not reported it to Caesar either, but had faithfully kept silent about it.
After this they again deliberated whether, having killed Caesar, they should also dispatch Antony; but Brutus prevented it, insisting that the deed undertaken on behalf of the laws and justice should be sincere and pure of injustice. But fearing Antony's strength and the dignity of his office, they assigned some of the conspirators the task of keeping him occupied: as Caesar entered the senate house and the killing was on the point of happening, they were to draw Antony into conversation outside about some pressing matter and detain him there.
When these things had been carried out as planned, and Caesar had fallen in the senate, Antony at once dressed in a servant's clothes and went into hiding. But once word reached him that the killers were attacking no one else and had instead assembled on the Capitol, he induced them to descend by offering his own son as a hostage; and he himself gave Cassius dinner, while Lepidus entertained Brutus.
Calling together the senate, he himself spoke in favor of amnesty and of the distribution of provinces to Cassius and Brutus and their party, and the senate ratified this and voted to alter nothing of what had been done under Caesar. Antony left the senate the most brilliant of men, seeming to have put down civil war and to have handled matters of great difficulty and no ordinary turmoil with the greatest prudence and statesmanship.
Yet the popular opinion of the crowds quickly shook him out of these calculations, since he had first hoped that his own position would be firmly secure once Brutus was overthrown. Now it happened that, as Caesar's body was being carried out, as was the custom, he was delivering the funeral eulogy in the forum; and seeing the people extraordinarily moved and enchanted, he mixed with his praises at the same time pity and outrage at the deed, and at the end of his speech, brandishing the bloodied and sword-slashed tunics of the dead man,
and calling those who had done this murderers and assassins, he threw the people into such a rage that, gathering benches and tables, they burned Caesar's body in the forum, then grabbed blazing brands from the pyre and rushed off to the killers' houses to assault them.
Because of this, when Brutus's party had left the city, Caesar's friends banded together around Antony, and his wife Calpurnia, trusting him, deposited with him most of her property from the house — in all, four thousand talents.
He also took Caesar's papers, in which memoranda of his decisions and decrees had been recorded; and by inserting into them whatever names he wished, he appointed many men to magistracies, many to the senate, and some he even recalled from exile and released from prison, as though Caesar had decided these things.
For this reason the Romans mockingly called all these men "Charonites," since when challenged they took refuge in the memoranda of the dead man. And in everything else too Antony acted with absolute authority, himself holding the consulship while keeping his brothers as colleagues in office, Gaius holding the praetorship and Lucius serving as tribune of the plebs.
While matters stood thus, the young Caesar arrived in Rome — the son of the dead man's niece, as has been said, and left heir to his estate, who had been residing at Apollonia at the time Caesar was murdered. This youth at once greeted Antony as his father's friend and reminded him of the bequests; for Caesar owed each Roman citizen seventy-five drachmas, as he had written in his will.
At the outset Antony looked down on him as nothing more than a boy, saying he had lost his wits, and that lacking both judgment and friends he was shouldering, in accepting Caesar's inheritance, a load far heavier than he could bear; and when the youth would not be persuaded by this but demanded the money, Antony kept on saying and doing much to insult him. For he opposed him when he stood for the tribunate, and when the young man set up his father's golden chair, as had been voted, he threatened to have him carried off to prison unless he stopped his popular agitation.
When, however, the young man gave himself over to Cicero and to all the others who hated Antony, and through them won the goodwill of the senate while himself courting the people and gathering soldiers from the veteran colonies, Antony grew alarmed and met him for a parley on the Capitoline, where the two settled their quarrel. Then, sleeping that night, Antony had a strange dream: he seemed to see his own right hand struck by a thunderbolt.
And within a few days a rumor arose that Caesar was plotting against him. Caesar defended himself, but did not persuade him; and the enmity was again active, and as both men went about Italy, they raised, with great pay, the veterans already settled in the colonies, and each tried to get ahead of the other in winning over the troops still under arms.
Of those in the city, Cicero had the greatest power, and by stirring up everyone's hostility toward Antony he eventually got the senate to brand him an enemy of the state, to award Caesar the rods and remaining emblems belonging to a praetor, and to send Pansa and Hirtius out to push Antony beyond the borders of Italy. Both men then held the consulship, and when they clashed with Antony's forces near Mutina, with Caesar present and fighting alongside them, they defeated the enemy but themselves died.
As Antony fled, many hardships befell him, and hunger was the harshest of them all. Yet it was characteristic of him that misfortune brought out the best in him, and in adversity he most resembled a good man — for while it is common for people brought low by some want to perceive what virtue is, not all are strong enough amid such changes to imitate what they admire and avoid what they find repugnant; indeed some, weakened, give in all the more to their habits and have their judgment shattered.
Antony, at any rate, was at that time a marvelous example to his soldiers: from such luxury and extravagance he readily drank foul water and ate wild fruits and roots. Even bark was eaten, it is said, and men tasted creatures never eaten before as they crossed the Alps.
There was an eagerness to join the forces beyond, which Lepidus commanded — a man thought to be Antony's friend and to have enjoyed much benefit from Caesar's friendship through him. Coming and encamping nearby, when nothing friendly met him, Antony resolved to risk everything. His hair, unkempt, and a thick beard he had let grow immediately after his defeat; and taking a dark cloak he approached close to Lepidus's camp and began to speak.
As many were being moved both by his appearance and swayed by his words, Lepidus, taking fright, ordered the trumpets to sound together so as to drown out what could be heard of Antony. But the soldiers pitied him all the more and conferred with him in secret, sending Laelius and Clodius to him, who had put on the dress of camp-following women, and who urged Antony to attack the camp boldly; for there would be many to receive him, and to kill Lepidus too, if he wished.
Antony did not allow Lepidus to be harmed, but the next day, with his army, made trial of the river. He himself was first to wade in and push toward the far shore, and he could already see a good number of Lepidus's men reaching out their hands toward him while pulling apart the rampart. Entering and gaining mastery over all, he treated Lepidus most gently; for he greeted him and addressed him as father — though in fact he alone held mastery over everything, while he continued to preserve for Lepidus the name and honor of imperator.
This also made Munatius Plancus join him, though his camp, holding a sizable body of troops, lay only a short distance away. Restored in this way to great power once more, he crossed back over the Alps, leading into Italy seventeen legions of infantry with himself and ten thousand cavalry; besides these he had left six legions to garrison Gaul under a certain Varius, one of his intimates and drinking companions, whom they called Cotylon.
Caesar no longer paid attention to Cicero, seeing him devoted to liberty, and instead invited Antony through friends to a reconciliation. The three came together on a small island surrounded by a river and conferred there for three days. On other matters they came to reasonable agreement, and they divided up the entire empire between themselves as though it were their father's estate, but arguing over whose names should go on the death lists proved their hardest task, since each wanted his own enemies destroyed while his relatives were spared.
In the end, giving way to their anger against those they hated rather than to honor for kin or affection for friends, Caesar handed Cicero over to Antony, while Antony in exchange surrendered to him Lucius Caesar, his mother's brother; and Lepidus was granted leave to kill his brother Paulus — though some say that Lepidus yielded up Paulus to those very men when they asked that he be put to death.
I think nothing more savage or more brutal than this exchange has ever occurred. For in trading death for death they killed those they surrendered just as readily as those they received, but they were more unjust still toward their friends, whom they put to death without even hating them.
After this reconciliation, then, the soldiers stood around and demanded that Caesar bind the friendship further by a marriage, taking Clodia, the daughter of Fulvia, Antony's wife. When this too was agreed, three hundred men were put to death by them from the proscription lists.
When Cicero had been slaughtered, Antony ordered that his head be cut off, and his right hand as well, with which he had written his speeches against him. When they were carried to him, he studied them with delight, breaking into laughter over and over out of sheer pleasure; then, having had his fill, he ordered them set up above the rostra in the forum, as though he were insulting the corpse, while in fact displaying his own insolence toward fortune and his abuse of power.
His uncle, hunted down and chased, fled for safety to his own sister's house. When the killers reached her and attempted to push their way inside her room, she planted herself in the entrance, flung her arms wide, and shouted repeatedly: "You will not kill Lucius Caesar unless you first kill me, who bore the imperator." In this way she managed to hide and save her brother.
The rule of the three men was in most respects burdensome to the Romans, and the greater part of the blame fell upon Antony, since he was older than Caesar and more powerful than Lepidus, and since, as soon as he had shaken off the burden of affairs, he had again poured himself out into that life of pleasure and license.
To the general ill repute was added no small hatred on account of the house he lived in, which had belonged to Pompey the Great, a man admired no less for his moderation and for living in an orderly, unassuming manner than for his three triumphs. For people were vexed to see it so often closed to commanders, generals, and ambassadors, who were thrust away from its doors with insult, while it was full of mimes and conjurers and drunken flatterers, on whom the greater part of the money was squandered — money raised in the most violent and harsh manner.
For they not only sold off the property of those they murdered, framing their relatives and wives with false charges, but set in motion every kind of tax, and even, learning that certain deposits had been placed with the Vestal Virgins by both foreigners and citizens, went and seized them.
But since nothing was enough for Antony, Caesar demanded that the money be divided between them. They also divided the army, both marching against Brutus and Cassius into Macedonia, and entrusting Rome to Lepidus.
When, however, they had crossed over and engaged in war and encamped opposite the enemy, with Antony arrayed against Cassius and Brutus against Caesar, no great deed appeared to come from Caesar, but Antony was the one who won everything and succeeded in everything.
In the opening battle, Caesar suffered outright defeat at Brutus's hands, saw his camp fall, and barely got away from those chasing him; and as he himself has written in his memoirs, he withdrew before the battle because one of his friends had seen a dream.
Antony defeated Cassius; though some have written that Antony was not present at the battle but came up only afterward, already in pursuit. Cassius was killed, at his own request and command, by Pindarus, one of his trusted freedmen; for he did not know that Brutus had been victorious.
After a few days had passed they fought again; and Brutus, defeated, took his own life, while Antony bore off the greater share of the glory of the victory, since Caesar was in fact ill. Standing over Brutus's corpse, he reproached him only slightly for the death of his brother Gaius (for Brutus had killed him there in Macedonia in vengeance for Cicero), saying rather that he held Hortensius more to blame than Brutus for his brother's slaughter; he ordered Hortensius slain over the tomb, but he threw his own scarlet cloak, worth a great sum of money, over Brutus, and assigned one of his own former slaves the task of arranging the funeral rites. Later, learning that this man had not burned the cloak with the corpse and had embezzled much of the expense meant for the burial, he had him put to death.
After this Caesar was carried back to Rome, thought unlikely to survive long because of his illness, while Antony crossed over into Greece to collect money from all the provinces of the East, leading a large army; for having promised each soldier five thousand drachmas, they needed a more strenuous collection of funds and tribute.
To the Greeks, at any rate, he was at first neither strange nor burdensome in his dealings, but even turned his playful side toward attending the lectures of scholars, watching contests, and taking part in initiations, and was reasonable in his judgments, and was pleased to be called a lover of Greece, and still more to be addressed as a lover of Athens, and gave the city very many gifts.
When the Megarians, wishing to display something fine of their own in rivalry with Athens, asked him to view their council-house, he went up and looked at it, and when they inquired what he thought, he said, "Small, but rotten." And he measured the temple of the Pythian god as though intending to complete it; for this he had promised to the senate.
Once Antony had put Lucius Censorinus in command of Greece and gone across into Asia, and had gotten his hands on the riches to be found there, kings came flocking to his door, and the wives of kings vied with one another in gifts and in beauty to corrupt him, while in Rome Caesar was worn down by factions and wars, Antony himself, enjoying much leisure and peace, rolled back with his passions into his accustomed way of life.
Anaxenor the lyre-singer and Xuthus the flute-player and a certain Metrodorus the dancer, and other such a troop of Asiatic performers, who outdid even the plagues that came from Italy in shamelessness and buffoonery, poured in and took charge of the court; nothing was bearable, since everything was swept along toward these things.
For all of Asia, just like that city of Sophocles, was at once full of incense and full of paeans and groans together. When he entered Ephesus, women arrayed as Bacchants led the way, and men and boys as Satyrs and Pans, and the whole city overflowed with ivy, thyrsus-wands, harps, pipes, and flutes together, as they called upon him as Dionysus the Giver of Joy and the Gentle.
For indeed he was such a god to some, but to the greater number a savage and terrible one. For he stripped wellborn men of their property to gratify scoundrels and flatterers. Some, on the pretense that men still living were dead, asked for and received their estates. He gave the house of a man of Magnesia to a cook, for winning acclaim, so it is said, over a single dinner.
Finally, when he laid a second tribute upon the cities, Hybreas dared to speak on behalf of Asia, saying — in a manner suited to the marketplace and not unpleasing to Antony's own taste for wit — "If you can take tribute twice in one year, you must be able to make us two summers and two autumns as well," and then, gathering the matter up forcefully and boldly, that Asia had given two hundred thousand talents, he said, "If it never reached you, go ask the men who took it for it; but if you did take it and no longer have it, then we are ruined."
This turned Antony sharply about; for he was ignorant of most of what was going on, not so much through carelessness as because, out of simplicity, he trusted those around him. For there was in his character a simplicity, and a slowness of perception, but once he did perceive his errors he felt strong repentance, and made confession to those he had wronged; and he was great both in his rewards and in his punishments. Yet he seemed to exceed due measure more in acts of kindness than in acts of punishment.
As for the insolence in his jesting and mockery, it carried its own remedy within it. For one could jest back and answer insolence with insolence, and he enjoyed being laughed at no less than laughing. And this ruined a great many of his affairs. For, not supposing that men who spoke freely with him in jest were flattering him in earnest, he was easily caught by their praises,
not knowing that some, mixing frankness with flattery like a sharp seasoning, thereby removed its cloying sweetness, contriving through boldness and free talk over the wine-cup that their yielding and agreement in matters of business should not appear to be done to please him, but rather as men overcome by his good judgment.
Such, then, being Antony's nature, the love of Cleopatra came upon him as the final evil, rousing and rousing to frenzy many of the passions still hidden and quiet within him, and it destroyed and corrupted utterly whatever good and saving quality still held out. He was caught in this manner. As he was setting about the Parthian war, he sent to her, ordering her to meet him in Cilicia to answer the charge of having given much aid to Cassius and his party and contributing to the war.
Dellius, who was sent, as soon as he saw her appearance and had observed the cleverness and cunning of her speech, understood immediately that a man like Antony would never even consider harming a woman such as this, and that she instead would hold the greatest sway over him; and so he turned to courting and urging on the Egyptian queen, in that Homeric phrase, to come to Cilicia "having well adorned herself," and not to fear Antony, a commander as agreeable and humane as any.
She, persuaded by Dellius, and judging from the encounters she had had earlier, from the flower of her youth, with Caesar and with Gnaeus, the son of Pompey, hoped the more easily to bring Antony under her sway. For those men had known her when she was only a young girl, still unschooled in the world, but she would meet this one at just the time when women reach their most brilliant bloom and stand at the peak of their intellectual powers.
She therefore prepared many gifts and sums of money and adornment, such as it was fitting to bring from great affairs and a prosperous kingdom, but she came relying for her greatest hopes on herself and on the charms and love-spells that were her own.
Though she received many letters both from him and from his friends calling her, she so despised and mocked the man that she took a barge with a gilded stern up the Cydnus river, its purple sails unfurled, while the oars were silver and moved to the music of a flute blended with pipes and lyres.
She herself reclined beneath a gold-spangled canopy, dressed to resemble a painted Aphrodite, while boys got up to look like painted Erotes flanked her on both sides, cooling her with fans. In the same fashion her serving-women, the loveliest among them, dressed as Nereids and Graces, took their places, some at the rudders, others at the sail-ropes. Wondrous scents from many kinds of incense filled the riverbanks.
Of the people, some at once ran along the riverbanks on either side following her, while others came down from the city to see the sight. As the crowd from the marketplace poured out, at last Antony himself was left alone, sitting upon the tribunal. And a rumor went about among all that Aphrodite was come in revel to Dionysus, for the good of Asia. So he sent, inviting her to dinner; but she thought it fitter that he should come to her instead.
At once, then, wishing to display a certain graciousness and friendliness, he agreed and came. There he met with preparations beyond description, and was most struck by the multitude of the lights. For so many, it is said, were let down and made to appear on every side at once, arranged and set together in such patterns and combinations, in squares and circles, that the sight became one of the few truly wondrous and beautiful things to behold.
On the next day, entertaining her in turn, he was ambitious to surpass her splendor and elegance, but, falling short in both and being outdone at his own game, he was the first to mock the poverty and rusticity of his own arrangements. Cleopatra, seeing in Antony's jesting much that was soldierly and coarse, herself now met him on that ground too, freely and boldly.
For her beauty, as they say, taken by itself, was not so incomparable as to strike those who saw her with wonder, but to actually spend time in her company was to fall under a spell no one could resist; and the character of her looks, together with the persuasiveness of her conversation, and the charm that surrounded every word and action, had something stimulating about it.
Pleasure attended even the sound of her voice, and her tongue, like some many-stringed instrument, she turned with ease to whatever language she pleased, so that she conversed with only a very few barbarians through an interpreter, but to most she gave her answers herself, in their own tongue — for instance to Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabs, Syrians, Medes, and Parthians.
She is said to have learned the languages of many other peoples besides, although the kings before her had not even deigned to take up the Egyptian tongue, and some of them had even let go of speaking Macedonian.
In this way, then, she so seized hold of Antony that, while his wife Fulvia was at war with Caesar in Rome on his behalf, and a Parthian army was hovering about Mesopotamia — where the king's generals, having proclaimed Labienus Parthian Imperator, were about to invade Syria — he let himself be carried off by her to Alexandria, and there, living the leisure of a young man amid pastimes and amusements, he spent and squandered, as Antiphon said, the most costly of expenditures — time.
For they had a certain company they called the "Inimitable Livers": each day they entertained one another, making the extravagance of what was spent almost past belief. Philotas of Amphissa, our grandfather Lamprias used to tell us, was at that time in Alexandria studying medicine, and, having become friendly with one of the royal cooks, was persuaded, being a young man, to go and see the extravagance and preparation of the dinner.
So he was brought into the kitchen, and when he saw, among the great abundance of other things, eight wild boars roasting, he marveled at the number of the diners. But the cook laughed and said that the diners were not many, only about twelve; but that every dish set before them had to be at its perfect point, and a moment of time could spoil it. For it might happen that Antony would want dinner at once, or shortly after, or, if it so chanced, would put it off, asking for a cup or falling into some conversation.
"For this reason," he said, "not one dinner but many are prepared together, since the right moment is hard to hit." This is what Philotas used to tell, and, as time went on, he said, he came to serve among the staff of Fulvia's son, Antony's eldest, and would join him and the rest of his companions at dinner fairly often, whenever the young man did not dine with his father.
Once, then, a doctor who was being overbold and giving them much trouble at dinner was silenced by the young man with this piece of sophistry: "To one who is somewhat feverish, cold water should be given; but everyone who is feverish is feverish in some manner; therefore cold water should be given to every feverish person." The man, struck dumb and silenced, the boy laughed with delight and said, "All this, Philotas, I give to you as a present," pointing to a table laden with many great drinking-cups.
Philotas accepted the gesture gladly, yet never imagined that a child of such an age could actually be entitled to bestow so lavish a gift; but shortly after, one of the slaves brought the cups to him in a vessel and told him to put his seal upon it. When he hesitated and was afraid to take them, the man said, "What, wretch, are you hesitating? Do you not know that the one giving them is the son of Antony, who has the right to give away so much gold?
Still, take my advice, and exchange it all with us for money; for perhaps the father might miss some of the pieces, being old and highly valued works of craftsmanship." This, then, is what our grandfather used to tell us Philotas related each time.
Cleopatra, dividing flattery not fourfold, as Plato says, but into many kinds, and always bringing some new pleasure and charm to him whether he was engaged in serious business or in play, kept Antony under her tutelage, giving him no rest by night or day. She diced alongside him, shared his cups, joined his hunts, and stood by to watch him drill under arms; and at night, when he stood at the doors and windows of ordinary citizens and mocked those within, she would wander about with him and share the game, taking on the dress of a serving-girl herself,
for he too would try to disguise himself in the same way. From this he would come back having reaped a harvest of jibes, and often of blows as well, though most people suspected who he was. Still, the Alexandrians took delight in his buffoonery and joined in the game with no lack of wit or grace, being fond of him and saying that he used the tragic mask toward the Romans, but the comic mask toward them.
It would be great foolishness to relate the many things he did in jest; but once, when he was fishing and having bad luck, he was vexed that Cleopatra was present, and ordered the fishermen secretly to dive down and fasten to his hook fish they had already caught before, and, hauling up two or three, he did not escape the notice of the Egyptian queen. Pretending to be amazed, she recounted the trick to her friends, and asked them to come along and watch the next day.
Many had gotten into the fishing boats, and Antony had let down his line, when she ordered one of her own men to slip ahead of him, swim underwater, and spear a salted Pontic fish onto his hook. When Antony, believing he had caught something, hauled it up, there was laughter, as one might expect, and she said, "Hand the rod over to us, Imperator — to the fishermen of Pharos and Canopus. Yours is a different sort of catch: cities, kingdoms, and whole continents."
While Antony was trifling and playing the boy like this, two messages reached him. The first came from Rome, reporting that Fulvia his wife and Lucius his brother, after first quarreling between themselves, had then joined forces to make war against Caesar, only to be defeated and driven out of Italy. The second, no more welcome, told how Labienus, with Parthian forces at his side, was conquering Asia, sweeping from the Euphrates through Syria all the way to Lydia and Ionia.
So at last, as if roused from sleep and shaking off his drunkenness, he set out against the Parthians and pushed forward as far as Phoenicia; yet once Fulvia's letters arrived, full of complaints, he changed course and headed back toward Italy, bringing with him two hundred ships. During the crossing he picked up the friends who had fled Italy, and from them he discovered that the war's true cause had been Fulvia — a woman naturally meddlesome and bold, who had hoped, if any disturbance arose in Italy, to draw Antony away from Cleopatra.
As it happened, Fulvia, while sailing to join him, fell ill and died at Sicyon; this made reconciliation with Caesar all the more timely. For when he reached Italy and it was plain that Caesar was bringing no charge against him, while he himself laid off onto Fulvia the blame for what he was accused of, their friends would not let the pretext be examined further,
but reconciled the two men and divided the empire between them, making the Ionian Sea the boundary: the eastern parts they assigned to Antony, the western to Caesar, while letting Lepidus keep Libya, and arranging that the consulship, whenever they themselves did not care to hold it, should go in turn to friends of each.
This arrangement, which seemed satisfactory, needed a stronger pledge of trust, and fortune supplied one. Octavia was Caesar's sister, older than him but not by the same mother — she had been born of Ancharia, he later of Atia. He loved his sister extraordinarily, she having proved, as is said, a wonder among women.
She had recently been widowed by the death of her husband Gaius Marcellus. Antony, likewise, with Fulvia now dead, was regarded as free to remarry; he did not deny his liaison with Cleopatra, yet he also refused to acknowledge any marriage to her — still contesting that point, at least in word, against his love for the Egyptian woman. Everyone urged this marriage, hoping that Octavia, possessing beauty joined with dignity and good sense, once brought together with Antony and loved by him — as such a woman was likely to be loved — would prove the salvation and blending together of all their affairs.
So once the two men had come to terms, they traveled to Rome, where Octavia's marriage was celebrated, even though custom forbade a widow to wed inside ten months of losing her husband; but a decree of the senate relaxed the time limit for them.
Since Sextus Pompeius held Sicily and was ravaging Italy, and with his many pirate ships, commanded by the pirate Menas and by Menecrates, had made the sea impassable, while he was thought to have dealt kindly with Antony (for he had received Antony's mother when she fled together with Fulvia), it was decided to come to terms with him as well.
They met together at the promontory and mole at Misenum, Pompey's fleet riding at anchor there, while the infantry of Antony and Caesar were drawn up along the shore. When they had agreed that Pompey should keep Sardinia and Sicily free of pirates, clear the sea of piracy, and send a fixed quantity of grain to Rome, they invited one another to dinner.
By lot it fell to Pompey to entertain them first. When Antony asked him where they would dine, he said, "Here," pointing to his flagship, a six-banked vessel — "for this is the only ancestral house left to Pompey." He said this as a reproach aimed at Antony, since Antony held the house that had belonged to Pompey's father. He moored the ship at anchor, bridged a gangway from the promontory, and received them eagerly.
When the party was at its height and jests about Cleopatra and Antony were flourishing, Menas the pirate came up to Pompey where the others could not hear and said, "Shall I slip the ship's mooring lines and hand you dominion — not merely over Sicily and Sardinia, but over the whole Roman empire?"
Pompey, hearing this, was silent with himself a short while, then said, "You should have done this, Menas, without telling me beforehand. As it is, let us be content with what we have — breaking my word is not my way." So, having been entertained in turn by both of the others, he sailed back to Sicily.
After the reconciliation, Antony sent Ventidius ahead into Asia to check the Parthians' further advance, while he himself, to please Caesar, was appointed priest of the elder Caesar; and in other matters, great and public, they acted together as friends. But the rivalries in their games always vexed Antony, since he was continually getting the worse of it against Caesar.
There was with him a certain man skilled in divination, from Egypt, one of those who cast horoscopes, who — whether to please Cleopatra or speaking the truth — spoke frankly to Antony, telling him that his fortune, however great and dazzling, was overshadowed by Caesar's, and urging him to put as much distance as he could between himself and the young man. "For your guardian spirit," he said, "fears his: proud and lofty when alone, it grows lower and meaner once his draws near."
And indeed events seemed to bear out the Egyptian. For it is said that whenever, in sport, they cast lots for something or played at dice, Antony came off worse. Often too, when they matched fighting cocks, and often fighting quails, Caesar's would win. Antony, secretly troubled by this and paying more heed to the Egyptian, left Italy, entrusting his household affairs to Caesar; he took Octavia as far as Greece, a little daughter having been born to them.
While he was wintering at Athens, the first news of Ventidius's successes was reported to him: that in battle he had defeated the Parthians and killed Labienus, and Pharnapates, the most capable of King Hyrodes's generals. On this news he gave a feast for the Greeks and served as gymnasiarch for the Athenians, and, leaving at home the insignia of his command, went about with the gymnasiarch's rods, in a cloak and slippers, and, taking the young men by the neck, wrestled them down.
Just before setting out for the campaign, he took a wreath cut from the sacred olive, and, following the instructions of an oracle, drew water into a vessel from the Clepsydra spring, which he carried along with him. Meanwhile Ventidius met Pacorus, the king's son, who was again advancing on Syria with a great Parthian army, and routed him in Cyrrhestica, destroying very great numbers, Pacorus himself falling among the first.
This exploit, ranked among the most famous, at last made the Romans whole after the calamities they had endured under Crassus, and drove the Parthians back within Media and Mesopotamia, having been defeated in three battles in succession, each decisively. Ventidius decided against pursuing the Parthians any farther, fearing Antony's jealousy, but marched against those who had revolted and subdued them, and besieged Antiochus of Commagene in the city of Samosata.
When Antiochus asked to give a thousand talents and to do whatever was ordered by Antony, Ventidius directed him instead to Antony, since Antony was by then drawing near and refused to let Ventidius settle matters with Antiochus himself; Antony wanted at least this single success credited to him, unwilling to let Ventidius be the author of everything.
But as the siege dragged on, and those inside, once they had given up hope of terms, turned to resistance, Antony, having gained nothing and now embarrassed with regret, was content in the end to settle with Antiochus for a payment of three hundred talents; then, after arranging a handful of affairs in Syria, he went back to Athens, where he gave Ventidius the honors he had earned and dispatched him home to celebrate his triumph.
He is, to this day, the only man to have celebrated a triumph over the Parthians — a man obscure by birth, who, by enjoying Antony's friendship, gained the means to great achievements, and by using them most excellently confirmed the saying current about Antony and Caesar, that they were more fortunate acting through others than through themselves.
For indeed Sossius, Antony's general in Syria, accomplished much, and Canidius, left behind by Antony in Armenia, defeated its people and the kings of the Iberians and Albanians, advancing as far as the Caucasus. From these deeds the name and fame of Antony's power grew great among the barbarians.
He himself, again provoked against Caesar by certain slanders, sailed with three hundred ships toward Italy; but the inhabitants of Brundisium refused his fleet entry, so he steered it instead to anchor off Tarentum. It was there that, at her own asking, he sent Octavia — who had made the voyage from Greece at his side — back to her brother — she being pregnant, and already having a second daughter by him.
She met Caesar on the road, and, taking along his friends Agrippa and Maecenas, pleaded with him at length and with many entreaties not to let her, from being the happiest of women, become the most wretched. For now, she said, all men looked to her, wife of one commander and sister of the other:
"But if the worse course prevails," she said, "and war comes, it is unclear which of you is fated to conquer and which to be conquered, but my lot either way is wretched." Caesar, moved by this, came peaceably to Tarentum, and those present beheld a most beautiful sight: a great army on land keeping quiet, many ships lying still by the shore, and the two men themselves, with their friends, exchanging visits and courtesies.
Antony gave the feast first, Caesar granting this to his sister. Once the terms were fixed — Caesar to furnish Antony two legions for the Parthian campaign, and Antony to furnish Caesar a hundred bronze-prowed ships — Octavia, besides what had been agreed, asked for her brother twenty light galleys from her husband, and for her husband a thousand soldiers from her brother.
Having thus parted from one another, Caesar at once occupied himself with the war against Pompey, being set on Sicily, while Antony, leaving Octavia and the children by her, along with the children by Fulvia, in his charge, crossed over into Asia.
But the terrible affliction that had long lain sleeping — his love for Cleopatra — which seemed to have been lulled and charmed away by better reasonings, blazed up again and grew bold once more as he drew near Syria. And at last, as Plato says of the unruly and unchastened beast of the soul, kicking away all that was good and salutary, he sent Fonteius Capito to bring Cleopatra into Syria.
When she arrived, he bestowed on her, and added, no small or slight gift, but Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Cyprus, much of Cilicia, and further the part of Judaea that bears the balsam, and as much of Nabataean Arabia as inclines toward the outer sea. These gifts most of all vexed the Romans. And yet he bestowed on many private persons tetrarchies and kingdoms of great nations, while from many he took kingdoms away, as from Antigonus the Jew, whom he even led forth and beheaded — no other king before having been so punished.
But the shame of it was the most galling part of the honors given to Cleopatra. He increased the scandal by acknowledging twin children by her, and naming them Alexander and Cleopatra, with the surnames Sun and Moon. Yet since he was skilled at putting a fine face on shameful things, he was fond of remarking that Roman greatness could be measured not by what it seized but by what it bestowed, and that noble lineages grow far and wide when many kings, generation after generation, father children.
In this way, he said, Heracles, from whom his own family sprang, had likewise refused to limit his offspring to one wife's womb, nor did he dread statutes such as Solon's or the penalties attached to fathering children, but allowed nature freely to sow the many roots and origins of noble houses.
When Phraates had killed his father Hyrodes and seized the kingdom, and not a few other Parthians were fleeing, Monaeses too, a distinguished and powerful man, came fleeing to Antony, comparing his own fortune to that of Themistocles, and setting his own wealth and magnanimity beside that of the Persian kings; and Antony granted him three towns — Larissa, Arethusa, and the city once known as Bambyce but now called Hierapolis.
But when the king of the Parthians sent a pledge of safety to Monaeses, Antony gladly sent him back, having resolved to deceive Phraates by holding out the prospect of peace, while demanding the return of the standards captured at the defeat of Crassus and of the surviving prisoners. He himself, having sent Cleopatra off to Egypt, marched through Arabia and Armenia,
where, once his forces and the allied kings had joined him — and there were very many of these, the greatest of all being Artavasdes of Armenia, who supplied six thousand cavalry and seven thousand infantry — he reviewed the army. Of the Romans themselves there were sixty thousand infantry and the cavalry attached to the Roman forces, ten thousand Iberians and Celts, and from the other nations thirty thousand more, counting cavalry and light-armed troops together.
Yet they say that so vast a mustering of force, one that alarmed even the Indians beyond Bactria and set all Asia trembling, came to nothing on Cleopatra's account. For, eager as he was to pass the winter at her side, he opened the campaign too soon and managed the whole affair in disorder, no longer his own master but, as though drugged or bewitched, continually turning his thoughts back to her, more concerned with a swift return than with defeating his enemy.
In the first place, though he ought to have wintered in Armenia and given his army rest — worn out as the men were after covering eight thousand stadia on foot — and ought to have held off stirring the Parthians from their winter quarters until spring had begun, and then to have invaded Media, he could not endure the delay, but immediately led his forces on, keeping Armenia on his left, and touching Atropatene, laid waste the country.
Then, since the siege engines necessary for a siege were being brought up on three hundred wagons, among them a battering ram eighty feet long — none of which, if destroyed, could be replaced in time, since the upper country produces no timber suitable in length or strength — he left them behind as hindrances to his speed, setting a guard over the wagons under Statianus's command, while turning himself to besiege Phraata, a large city where the king of Media's wives and children were being kept.
But the need for the siege engines, once he had left them behind, immediately exposed how badly he had erred, for he pressed close upon the city and began to raise a mound, slowly and with great labor. Meanwhile Phraates, coming down with a large army, on hearing of the abandonment of the wagons carrying the engines, sent many of his cavalry against them; and Statianus, surrounded by them, was killed, and ten thousand of those with him died as well. The barbarians captured and destroyed the engines, and took very many prisoners, among them King Polemon.
This distressed all of Antony's men, as was natural, struck as they were unexpectedly at the very outset; and Artavasdes the Armenian, despairing of Roman success, went off with his own army, even though he had been most responsible for the war.
When the Parthians appeared in force before the besiegers and used their threats to insult them, Antony, unwilling to let despondency and terror settle in and spread among his idle troops, marched out with ten legions, three cohorts of the praetorian heavy infantry, and the whole body of cavalry, ostensibly to forage for grain, calculating that this maneuver was most likely to draw the enemy into open battle.
Having advanced a single day's march, when he saw the Parthians pouring around him in a circle and seeking to fall upon him along the road, he displayed the signal for battle in the camp, and took down the tents as though he did not mean to fight but to withdraw, and passed along the enemy's line, which was drawn up in a crescent, having ordered that when the front ranks seemed within reach of the heavy infantry, the cavalry should charge against them.
To the Parthians, drawn up opposite, the order of the Romans seemed beyond description, and they watched them passing by at equal intervals, without disorder or noise, shaking their spears as they went. Yet once the signal went up and the cavalry turned about, charging with a shout, the Parthians stood firm and drove them back, though the enemy came within bowshot at once; and when the heavy infantry closed in together with shouting and the clashing of arms, the Parthians' horses shied in terror, and the men themselves fled before coming to close quarters.
Antony pressed the chase eagerly, confident that this single engagement had decided the entire conflict, or at least its larger share. But when the pursuit had gone fifty stadia for the infantry, and three times that for the cavalry, and they counted the enemy's dead and captured, they found only thirty prisoners and eighty dead; and helplessness and despondency fell upon them all, for they reckoned it a terrible thing that, winning, they killed so few, while, losing, they would be deprived of as many men as they had lost around the wagons.
On the next day they packed up and advanced toward Phraata and the camp. Along the road they met a handful of the enemy at first, and then increasing numbers, until at last they were assailed and provoked from all directions by what looked like a force still unbeaten and untired, they made their way back to camp with great difficulty and hardship.
When the Medes made a sortie against the mound and terrified the men fighting in front, Antony, in anger, applied to the cowards the so-called decimation. Dividing the men into groups of ten, he put to death one man chosen by lot from each group, and ordered the rest to be issued barley instead of wheat.
The war was harsh for both sides, and its future course still more fearsome — for Antony, in the expectation of famine, since it was no longer possible to gather provisions without wounds and many deaths; while Phraates, knowing that the Parthians could endure anything rather than hardship and open-air exposure in winter, feared that the Romans, by holding out and remaining, might wear him down, now that the air was already thickening after the autumn equinox.
So he devised the following trick. The most eminent of the Parthians, in their encounters during foraging expeditions and other meetings, treated the Romans more gently, letting them take some supplies and praising their courage as men most warlike and justly admired even by their own king.
After this, riding closer and letting their horses mingle quietly with the Romans, they reviled Antony, saying that though Phraates wished to make peace and spare such numerous and excellent men, he gave no opening for it, but sat waiting for enemies harsher and greater — famine and winter — through which it would be hard even to escape while being escorted by the Parthians. When many reported this to Antony, he was softened by the hope it offered, but nevertheless did not send heralds to the Parthian king until he had learned from those friendly barbarians whether they spoke with the king's approval.
When they affirmed this and urged him not to fear or distrust, he sent some of his companions again, demanding the return of the standards and the prisoners, so that it might not be thought that he was altogether content merely to be saved and to escape. The Parthian king told him to let those matters rest, but said that as soon as he departed there would be peace and safety; and within a few days, having packed up, Antony broke camp.
Although he was, beyond anyone of his time, persuasive in addressing the people and in leading an army by speech, he himself, from shame and dejection, omitted to encourage the multitude, and ordered Domitius Ahenobarbus to do it instead. Some were indignant at being disregarded, but most were moved and understood the reason; and for that they thought they ought all the more to respect and obey their general.
When he was about to lead the army back by the same road, which was level and treeless, a man of Mardian race, well acquainted with Parthian ways, who had already shown the Romans his loyalty during the fight over the baggage train and siege engines, came to Antony and urged him to make his retreat with the mountains kept on his right hand, rather than expose a heavily armed and burdened army on open, bare roads to so great a force of cavalry and archers,
which was precisely what Phraates was contriving in order to draw him off the siege by friendly agreements; he himself, the Mardian said, would be guide along a shorter route, one better supplied with provisions. Hearing this, Antony deliberated; he did not wish to appear distrustful of the Parthians after a truce, but, won over by how short the route was and by the fact that it ran past settled villages, he demanded that the Mardian give some guarantee of his good faith.
The man offered to be bound until he brought the army safely into Armenia, and, once bound, guided them for two peaceful days. It was on the third day, however, once Antony had stopped worrying about the Parthians altogether and was marching along carelessly in his confidence, the Mardian noticed a dam at a river's mouth that had recently been broken open, letting a great flow of water pour toward the road
along which they had to travel, and grasped that the Parthians were behind it, having diverted the river across their path to hinder and slow them down; and he told Antony to watch and be on guard, since the enemy was near. Just as Antony was drawing up his forces in order and preparing, with their help, a sortie of javelin-men and slingers against the enemy, the Parthians appeared and rode around as if to encircle and throw the whole army into confusion from every side.
When the light-armed troops ran out against them, giving many blows with their bows but receiving no fewer from the leaden bullets and javelins, they withdrew; then they advanced again, until the Celts wheeled their horses about and charged, scattering them, so that they made no further attempt that day.
Learning from this what he had to do, Antony strengthened not only the rearguard but each of the flanks with many javelin-men and slingers, and led the army in a hollow square, and ordered the cavalry, when attacked, to turn and repel the enemy, but, having repelled them, not to pursue far; so that for the next four days the Parthians accomplished nothing more than they suffered, and grew duller for it, and began, using the winter as their pretext, to think of leaving.
On the fifth day Flavius Gallus, an officer both combative and vigorous, approached Antony asking to be given additional light-armed troops drawn from the rear guard, plus some cavalry taken from the vanguard, intending to accomplish some great success. Given them, he beat back the enemy in his attacks, not, as before, retreating step by step toward the heavy infantry, but standing his ground and engaging more recklessly.
The commanders of the rearguard, seeing him being cut off, called him back by sending messengers; but he would not obey. Titius the quaestor, they say, seized hold of the standards and turned them back, and reviled Gallus for destroying so many good men. Gallus reviled him in return and urged those with him to stand firm; so Titius withdrew, but Gallus, being pushed forward among those facing him, was, without his knowing it, surrounded from behind by many of the enemy.
Struck from every side, he called out, sending for help. Those in charge of bringing the heavy infantry forward, Canidius among them — a figure who carried more weight with Antony than almost anyone — appear to have blundered seriously. For whereas they ought to have wheeled the whole phalanx around at once, instead they sent small groups one after another to help, and when these too were beaten, sent others still, and so came close, without realizing it, to filling the whole camp with defeat and flight — had not Antony himself quickly come up from the front with his forces to meet the danger, and had not the third legion quickly pushed its way through the fleeing men against the enemy and checked the further pursuit.
No fewer than three thousand had died, and five thousand wounded were carried back to the tents; among them was Gallus, pierced through by four opposing arrows. He did not survive his wounds, but Antony went around visiting the others, encouraging them with tears and deep feeling. And they, cheerful, took hold of his right hand and urged him to go and look after himself and not distress himself, calling him imperator and saying that they would be saved if he were well.
For altogether, it seems no other imperator of that age had gathered together an army more brilliant in courage, endurance, and youthful vigor; and the reverence and obedience joined with goodwill that all showed toward their commander, and the fact that all alike—the distinguished and the obscure, officers and private soldiers—preferred the honor and favor that came from Antony above their own safety and security, left no room even for the old Romans of former days to surpass.
There were several causes for this, as we have said before: his noble birth, his power of speech, his simplicity, his generosity and lavishness in giving, his wit in games and social gatherings. And at that time, by laboring and grieving alongside those who suffered, and by sharing whatever anyone needed, the ill and injured found themselves spurred on even beyond the healthy.
As for the enemy, though already worn down and exhausted, this victory so lifted them up, and they held the Romans in such contempt, that they even camped for the night near the army, expecting to plunder the abandoned tents and goods at any moment as the Romans fled.
At daybreak far more of them gathered, and they are said to have numbered no fewer than forty thousand cavalry, the king having sent even those always stationed about his own person, as though for a certain and assured success—for he himself was present at no battle. Antony, wishing to address the soldiers, asked for a dark cloak, so that he might appear more piteous. When his friends objected, he came forward in his general's scarlet cloak instead and delivered a speech, praising those who had fought well and rebuking those who had fled.
Some of the soldiers urged him to take courage, others offered themselves up, saying he might decimate them or punish them in some other way if he wished—only they begged him to stop grieving and being distressed. In response he raised his hands and prayed to the gods that if indeed some retribution were now pursuing his past good fortune, it should fall upon him alone, and grant safety and victory to the rest of the army.
The next day, having fortified themselves better, they advanced; and the Parthians, when they attacked, met with a great surprise. For they had thought they were riding out for plunder and pillage, not battle, but then, encountering many missiles and seeing the Romans strong and fresh in spirit, they again grew weary.
When the Parthians attacked them as they came down from certain sloping hills and shot at them as they slowly withdrew, the shield-bearers wheeled about and enclosed the light-armed troops within their weapons, while they themselves knelt down and held their shields before them; those behind held their shields over them, and others in turn over those. The formation, resembling roof-tiling, presents a theatrical appearance and is the most impenetrable of defenses against arrows, which slide off it.
The Parthians, however, thinking that the Romans' kneeling posture was a sign of exhaustion and giving up, laid down their bows, and taking up their lances closed in near. But the Romans, raising a sudden shout together, leapt up, and striking with their javelins at close range killed the foremost and put all the rest to flight. This happened on the other days as well, though they made little progress along the road.
Famine now gripped the army, since grain was procured in small quantity and only through fighting, and there was no ready supply of equipment for grinding it. Most of it had been left behind, some with the pack animals that died, some with those carrying men who were ill or hurt. Reportedly a single Attic choenix of wheat went for fifty drachmas, while barley loaves sold at the price of an equal weight in silver.
Turning to vegetables and roots, they found few of the kinds they knew, and being forced to try even those they had never tasted, some took hold of a certain herb that led to death through madness. For the one who ate it remembered and recognized nothing else, but had only one occupation: to move and turn over every stone, as though accomplishing some task of great importance.
The plain was full of men bent down to the ground, digging up and shifting stones about; in the end they died vomiting bile, since even the one remedy, wine, had run out. As many perished and the Parthians would not relent, they say that Antony often cried out, "O ten thousand!"—marveling at those who had marched with Xenophon, because although they had come down a longer road from Babylonia and fought against far more numerous enemies, they had come through safely.
The Parthians, unable to break through the army or scatter its formation, and having now been defeated and put to flight many times, once again began mingling peaceably with those going out for fodder or grain, and showing the strings of their bows slackened, said that they themselves were withdrawing, and that this marked the end of their hostility, but that a few of the Medes would still follow for one or two more days' march without giving any trouble, only guarding the more distant villages.
Along with these words came embraces and expressions of friendliness, so that the Romans took heart again, and Antony, on hearing this, was more inclined toward the route through the plains, since word had it that no water could be found anywhere along the mountain road. While he was about to do this, a man came to the camp from the enemy named Mithridates, cousin of that Monaeses who had come over to Antony and received the three cities as a gift. He asked that someone able to converse in Parthian or Syrian come out to him.
When Alexander of Antioch, who was on familiar terms with Antony, came forward, the man, having first said who he was and reminding him of the favor owed to Monaeses, asked Alexander whether he saw a continuous range of high hills in the distance. When he said he saw them, the man said, "Beneath those hills the Parthians lie in ambush for you with their whole army."
"For the great plains extend from these hills, and they expect that you, deceived by them, will turn that way, abandoning the route through the mountains. That route indeed involves thirst and hardship you are used to, but if Antony goes this way, let him know that the fortune of Crassus awaits him."
Having said this, he departed. Antony, hearing it and greatly disturbed, called together his friends and the guide of the march, Mardus, who himself thought no differently. For even apart from the enemy he knew that the trackless routes through the plains were difficult and hard to determine, while he pointed out that the rugged path presented only one hardship—going without water for a single day.
So he turned to that route and led the army along it by night, having ordered water to be carried. But most of the men lacked vessels; so they filled their helmets with water and carried it, others taking it up in leather skins. As they were already advancing, word was brought to the Parthians, and, contrary to their custom, they pursued even in the night. At sunrise they overtook the rearmost, who were in bad condition from lack of sleep and exertion—for they had covered two hundred and forty stadia in the night—and the fact that they had not expected the enemy to come upon them so quickly caused despondency.
And the fighting increased their thirst, for they had to defend themselves as they advanced. Those marching in front came upon a river with cold, clear water, but salty and noxious—drinking it at once caused pains from a griping stomach and inflamed the thirst further. Though Mardus warned them of this, they nonetheless forced their way past those trying to hold them back and drank.
Antony went around begging them to hold out a little longer, for there was another river not far off with drinkable water, and after that the remaining stretch was impassable to horses and rough, so that it would turn the enemy back altogether. At the same time he called back those who were fighting and gave the signal to make camp, so that the soldiers might at least get some shade.
As the tents were being pitched, and the Parthians immediately withdrawing, as was their custom, Mithridates came again, and when Alexander came forward he advised that the army rest a little and then rise up and hurry to the river, since the Parthians would not cross it, though they would pursue as far as it. Alexander reported this to Antony, and brought out from him a great many golden cups and bowls, of which the man, taking as much as he could hide in his clothing, rode off.
While daylight still remained, they struck camp and set out on the march, unmolested by the enemy, yet the night that followed proved the cruelest and most terrifying of the whole ordeal, and by their own hands at that. For those who had silver or gold, men were killing and robbing them, and snatching the money from the pack animals; finally they attacked Antony's own baggage carriers and cut up and divided among themselves the costly drinking cups and tables.
As much confusion and disorder gripped the whole army—for they thought the enemy had fallen upon them and that a rout and scattering had occurred—Antony called one of his freedmen who served as his bodyguard, named Rhamnus, and made him swear that whenever he gave the order, he would run him through with his sword and cut off his head, so that he might neither be captured alive by the enemy nor be recognized once dead.
As his friends wept, Mardus encouraged Antony, saying the river was near; for a certain breeze, moist and cooler, was blowing toward them and making their breathing easier, and he said that the time of the march also confirmed his estimate, since not much of the night now remained.
At the same time others reported that the disturbance arose from wrongdoing and greed among themselves toward one another. Wishing therefore to restore the multitude to order out of their confusion and scattering, he ordered the signal for making camp to be given.
Day was already beginning to dawn, and as the army began to gain some order and quiet, the arrows of the Parthians fell upon those in the rear, and the signal for battle was given to the light-armed troops. The heavy infantry again, in like manner, covered one another with their shields and held out against those shooting at them, who did not dare to close in near.
As those in front withdrew gradually in this way, the river came into view; and Antony, drawing up the cavalry beside it facing the enemy, brought the weak across first. By now even those still fighting had freedom and ease to drink. Once the Parthians caught sight of the river, they loosened their bowstrings, urged the Romans to cross without fear, and heaped praise on their bravery.
So they crossed at their leisure and rested themselves, then continued the march, not altogether trusting the Parthians. On the sixth day after the last battle they came to the river Araxes, which marks the boundary between Media and Armenia. It appeared difficult both in depth and roughness, and a rumor went around that the enemy lay in ambush there to attack them as they crossed.
But when they had crossed safely and set foot on Armenian soil, as though they had just now sighted that land after being at sea, they fell down and did obeisance, and turned to tears and embraces of one another out of joy. But as they advanced through a prosperous country and indulged themselves in everything without restraint, after such great want, they fell into dropsical and intestinal ailments.
There, holding a review of them, Antony found that twenty thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry had been lost, not all by the enemy, but more than half by sickness. The march from Phraata had taken twenty-seven days, and during it eighteen separate clashes had ended in defeat for the Parthians, yet these triumphs yielded neither firm strength nor real safety, because each pursuit of the beaten foe was carried out only partially and half-heartedly.
It was Artavasdes the Armenian who most clearly deprived Antony of the outcome of that war. For if the sixteen thousand cavalry he had led away from Media had been present, equipped in the same manner as the Parthians and accustomed to fighting against them, while the Romans routed those who stood and fought and the Armenians caught those who fled, the Parthians could not, after being beaten, have rallied and dared to attack so many times over.
Everyone therefore, in anger, urged Antony to punish the Armenian. But he, reasoning it through, neither reproached him for the betrayal nor withdrew his usual friendliness and honor toward him, since he had grown weak in his army and short of resources.
Later, however, invading Armenia again, and by many promises and invitations persuading him to come into his hands, he seized him, and bringing him in chains down to Alexandria, celebrated a triumph. This above all grieved the Romans, that he was granting the fine and solemn things of his homeland to the Egyptians for Cleopatra's sake. This, however, took place later.
At that time, pressed by heavy winter and unceasing snowstorms, he lost eight thousand men along the way. He himself, with only a few companions, went down toward the coast, at a place lying between Berytus and Sidon called White Village, and waited for Cleopatra. As she delayed, he grew distressed and wandered off, giving himself quickly to drinking and getting drunk,
unable to stay reclining, but rising up amid the drinking parties and often jumping up to look out, until she sailed in, bringing a great store of garments and coin meant for the troops. Some say he accepted the garments from her yet paid out the coin from his own treasury, letting it pass as if it were her gift.
A quarrel arose between the king of the Medes and Phraates the Parthian, said to have started over division of the plunder taken from the Romans, though it left the Mede fearful and suspicious that he might lose his throne. For this reason he sent and summoned Antony, promising to join the war with his own forces.
Antony, then, coming to have great hope — for it seemed that only cavalry and archers had been lacking to complete the conquest of the Parthians, and he saw this now being added to him as a favor rather than something he had begged for — was preparing to go up again through Armenia, and, joining with the Mede around the river Araxes, to set the war in motion in that way.
In Rome, when Octavia wished to sail to Antony, Caesar permitted it, as most say, not to gratify her but so that, being treated with contempt and neglect, she might furnish him a fair pretext for war. She came to Athens and there received letters from Antony ordering her to wait there and telling her about his expedition.
She, though grieved and understanding the pretext, nevertheless wrote asking where he ordered the things she was bringing to be sent. She was bringing a great quantity of military clothing, many pack animals, money, and gifts for the commanders and friends around him; besides these, two thousand picked soldiers equipped for elite cohorts with splendid full armor. This a certain Niger, a friend of Antony's sent by her, reported, adding the praises she deserved and that were fitting.
When Cleopatra perceived that Octavia was coming to grapple with her directly, and feared that if Octavia's dignity of character, combined with Caesar's power, were added to the pleasure of her company and attentiveness toward Antony, she would become unbeatable and gain complete mastery of the man, she herself pretended to be in love with Antony, and wasted her body away with a meager diet. Her look, when he approached, seemed struck with wonder, and when he departed, seemed to melt and grow humble.
Taking pains often to be seen weeping, she would quickly wipe away and hide her tears, as though wishing it to go unnoticed by him. This she did while the man was about to go up from Syria to the Mede. And the flatterers, working eagerly on her behalf, reviled Antony as hard-hearted and unfeeling, destroying a poor woman who was devoted to him alone.
For Octavia, they said, had come together with him for practical reasons, for her brother's sake, and enjoyed only the name of wife; but Cleopatra, ruling over so many people, was called Antony's beloved, and neither shunned nor scorned the name, as long as she was able to look upon him and remain at his side; yet should she ever be torn from that, she would not go on living.
In the end, then, they so melted and unmanned the fellow that, fearing Cleopatra might take her own life, he returned to Alexandria and put off the Mede until summer, although the Parthians were said to be in a state of civil discord. Nevertheless, going up again later, he brought this king into friendship, and having taken one of Cleopatra's sons and betrothed him to one of the Mede's daughters, still very young, he returned, now turned toward the civil war.
Caesar, thinking Octavia had been insulted, when she returned from Athens ordered her to live in her own house. She said she would not leave her husband's house, but instead — unless he had already decided to make war on Antony for some other reason — she begged him to let her situation be, since it was not even good to hear it said that of the two greatest commanders, one had brought the Romans into civil war for love of a woman, the other out of jealousy.
By what she said she confirmed this all the more by her actions. For she kept his house as though he were present, and cared for his children beautifully and generously, not only her own but also those born of Fulvia; and receiving those of Antony's friends sent out to some office or business, she helped them obtain whatever they required from Caesar. Yet without meaning to, she damaged Antony's own cause by these very acts, since he came to be despised for mistreating so admirable a wife.
He was hated too because of the distribution he made to his children in Alexandria, which appeared theatrical, arrogant, and hateful to Rome. For filling the gymnasium with a crowd and setting up two golden thrones on a silver platform, one for himself, one for Cleopatra, and lower ones for the children,
he first proclaimed Cleopatra ruler of Egypt, Cyprus, Libya, and Coele Syria, sharing the throne with Caesarion — the boy who was thought to have been born to Cleopatra by the elder Caesar, who had left her pregnant. Second, he proclaimed the sons born of himself and Cleopatra kings of kings, and assigned to Alexander Armenia and Media and the Parthian territory, once it should be subdued, and to Ptolemy Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia.
At the same time he brought forward his children, Alexander in Median dress with a tiara and upright headdress, Ptolemy adorned with boots, a mantle, and a broad-brimmed hat bearing a diadem. For this was the attire of the kings descended from Alexander, that other the dress of the Medes and Armenians.
When the children had embraced their parents, Alexander was surrounded by a bodyguard of Armenians, Ptolemy by one of Macedonians. Cleopatra, both then and at other times, when going out among the crowds, wore the sacred robe of Isis and went by the title New Isis.
Caesar, bringing these things before the senate and often denouncing Antony before the people, incited the multitude against him. Antony too sent countercharges against him. The greatest of his accusations were, first, that having taken Sicily from Pompey he had not given him a share of the island; second, that ships borrowed from him to fight the war had never been given back; third, that having expelled his co-ruler Lepidus from office and disgraced him, he himself kept the army, territory, and revenues that had been assigned to Lepidus,
and above all, that he had allotted nearly all of Italy to his own soldiers, leaving nothing for Antony's men. In answer to these charges Caesar pleaded that he had removed Lepidus from office for his outrageous conduct, and that what he had won by war he would divide with Antony once Antony likewise shared Armenia with him; and that his soldiers had no claim on Italy, for they had Media and Parthia, which they had won for the Romans by fighting well alongside their commander.
Antony, staying in Armenia, heard these things, and at once commanded Canidius to march sixteen legions down toward the coast. He himself took Cleopatra and went to Ephesus. There the fleet gathered from every direction, eight hundred ships including transports, of which Cleopatra supplied two hundred, along with twenty thousand talents and provisions for the whole army for the war.
Antony, won over by Domitius and some others, told Cleopatra to sail back to Egypt and wait there for the war's outcome. She, fearing again his reconciliation through Octavia, persuaded Canidius with large sums of money to speak to Antony on her behalf, arguing that it was unjust to banish from the campaign a woman contributing resources of such magnitude,
nor would it help matters to discourage the Egyptian troops, who made up so much of the naval force; and besides, she said, one could not see in what respect Cleopatra's judgment fell short of any of the kings taking part in the campaign, since she had for a long time governed by herself so great a kingdom, and for a long time had been with him and had learned to handle great affairs. This view prevailed — for all things had to fall out to Caesar's advantage — and when the forces had assembled, they sailed to Samos and spent their time in pleasures.
For just as kings, potentates, tetrarchs, nations, and every city between Syria and the Maeotic Sea, Armenia, and Illyria had all been directed to furnish and deliver provisions for the campaign, so all the artists devoted to Dionysus were required to gather at Samos; and while nearly the whole inhabited world round about was full of lamentation and groaning, one single island rang for many days on end with the sound of pipes and lyres, its theaters packed and its choruses vying with one another.
Every city joined in the sacrifices, sending an ox, and kings vied with one another in receptions and gifts. So that a saying went about: what will the victors be like at the victory celebrations, when the preparations for the war are being celebrated with such extravagance?
Having finished with these things, he gave Priene as a dwelling place to the artists of Dionysus, and himself sailed to Athens, where he again gave himself over to games and theaters. Cleopatra, jealous of the honors paid to Octavia in that city — for Octavia had been especially beloved by the Athenians — tried to win over the populace with many acts of generosity.
The Athenians, having voted her honors, sent envoys to her house bringing the decree, among whom was Antony, acting as though he were an Athenian citizen; and indeed, standing before her, he delivered a speech on behalf of the city. He also sent men to Rome to drive Octavia out of his house.
They say she left taking with her all of Antony's children except the eldest of those by Fulvia, who was with his father, weeping and distressed that she too would seem to have become one of the causes of the war. The Romans pitied not her but Antony, and especially those who had seen Cleopatra, who was no match for Octavia either in beauty or in youthful bloom.
Caesar, hearing of the speed and scale of the preparations, was thrown into alarm, fearing he might be forced to fight the war out that very summer. For much was lacking, and the people were distressed by the exactions of money: forced to pay, some a quarter of their produce, freedmen an eighth of their property, they cried out against him, and disturbances from this held all of Italy in their grip.
For this reason they count the delay of the war among Antony's greatest mistakes. Indeed it gave Caesar time to prepare and dissolved the unrest among the people. For while measures were still being carried out, men grew savage, but once they were carried out and the money given, they quieted down. Titius and Plancus, friends of Antony among the ex-consuls, were subjected to abuse by Cleopatra—for they had most strongly opposed her taking part in the campaign—and so they fled and went off to Caesar, and became informers concerning Antony's will, since they knew what was written in it.
It had been left in the keeping of the Vestal Virgins, and when Caesar sent to request it, the priestesses refused to hand it over; instead they told him that he must come in person if he meant to obtain it. So he came and took it. First he read through the contents privately by himself and marked certain passages that would make for easy accusation; then he gathered the senate and read it aloud, though most of the senators were displeased.
It struck people as monstrous and unjust that a living man could be judged for instructions meant to take effect only once he was dead. What people fastened on most in the will was the clause about his burial. For he ordered that his body, even if he died in Rome, should be carried in procession through the forum and sent to Alexandria to Cleopatra.
Calvisius, a companion of Caesar's, also brought forward these charges against Antony regarding Cleopatra: that he had given her the Pergamum library collection, some two hundred thousand separate scrolls; that during a crowded banquet he had risen from his couch to massage her feet, in fulfillment of some bet or private arrangement between them; that he had allowed the Ephesians, in his presence, to salute Cleopatra as "mistress";
that often, while sitting in judgment on tetrarchs and kings, he received from her little tablets of onyx and crystal containing love messages, and read them there on the tribunal; and that on one occasion, while Furnius, a highly esteemed man and the most skilled orator among the Romans, was addressing the court, Cleopatra happened to be borne through the forum in her litter, and Antony, as soon as he saw her, jumped up from the trial and left it, and hanging on to her litter escorted her along.
Yet it was thought that Calvisius had fabricated most of these charges. Antony's friends went about Rome pleading with the people, and among their number they dispatched Geminius to beg Antony not to let himself be stripped of office by vote and declared an enemy of Rome.
Geminius sailed to Greece, where he was regarded with suspicion by Cleopatra as acting on behalf of Octavia; and being constantly mocked at dinner and insulted with dishonorable seating, he put up with it, waiting for an opportunity to speak with Antony. When he was told to state, there at dinner, why he had come, he said that the rest of his message required a sober hearing, but there was one thing he knew well whether sober or drunk: that all would be well if Cleopatra went off to Egypt.
At this Antony grew angry, and Cleopatra said, "Well spoken, Geminius—admitting the truth without needing the rack to force it out of you." So Geminius, a few days later, fled away to Rome. And many of the other friends were driven out by Cleopatra's flatterers, since they could not endure their drunken insolence and coarse jesting,
among them Marcus Silanus and Dellius the historian. This man says he even feared a plot against him from Cleopatra, after Glaucus the physician told him of it. He had offended Cleopatra at dinner by remarking that they were being poured sour wine while, back in Rome, Sarmentus got to drink Falernian. Sarmentus, it should be noted, was one of Caesar's young pages, of the sort the Romans call "pets."
When Caesar had made sufficient preparation, he arranged for the people to vote war on Cleopatra, and to take from Antony the power he had handed over to a woman's control. Caesar further declared that Antony, under the influence of drugs, no longer even governed himself, and that the real conduct of the war on their side lay with the eunuch Mardion, and Pothinus, and Iras, Cleopatra's hairdresser, and Charmion, by whom the greatest affairs of the government were managed.
Before the war, it is said, the following signs occurred. Pisaurum, a city of Antony's, a colony settled near the Adriatic, was swallowed up when chasms opened beneath it. From one of Antony's stone statues near Alba, sweat oozed out for many days, and did not stop even though people kept wiping it away. While he was staying at Patrae, the temple of Heracles was struck by lightning and burned; and at Athens the Dionysus in the Gigantomachy was shaken loose by the winds and hurled down into the theater.
Antony claimed kinship with Heracles through his lineage, and with Dionysus through his manner of life, as has been said, being called the New Dionysus. The same storm, falling upon the colossal statues of Eumenes and Attalus at Athens which were inscribed as Antonys, overturned those alone out of many others. And Cleopatra's flagship was called the Antonias, and a dreadful sign appeared about it: swallows had built a nest under its stern, but other swallows came and drove them out and destroyed the nestlings.
As the forces assembled, Antony mustered at least five hundred warships, including a good number of eights and tens, decked out with pomp and splendor, and a hundred thousand infantry and twelve thousand cavalry. Subject kings fought as his allies: Bocchus ruling the Libyans, Tarcondemus over upper Cilicia, Archelaus over Cappadocia, Philadelphus over Paphlagonia, Mithridates over Commagene, and Sadalas over Thrace.
These were present in person; but Polemon sent troops from Pontus, and Malchus sent his from Arabia, and Herod the Jewish king sent his own, and further still Amyntas, king of the Lycaonians and Galatians; and there was also help sent from the king of the Medes. Caesar had two hundred and fifty ships fit for battle, eighty thousand infantry, and cavalry roughly equal in number to the enemy's.
Antony's territory stretched from the Euphrates and Armenia across to the Ionian Sea and Illyria, while Caesar's domain ran from Illyria out to the western ocean and then curved back to the Tyrrhenian and Sicilian waters. In Libya, the portion facing Italy fell to Caesar, together with Gaul and Iberia all the way out to the Pillars of Heracles, whereas Antony controlled the stretch running from Cyrene down to Ethiopia.
Such was his subjection to her by now that, despite commanding a far larger force of infantry, he preferred the outcome to be settled at sea, purely to please Cleopatra—and this though he could see that for lack of crews the trierarchs were dragging together, from a Greece that had already suffered much, travelers, muleteers, harvesters, and youths, and even so were unable to fill out the ships, most of which sailed undermanned and in poor condition.
Caesar, on the other hand, kept his fleet gathered at Tarentum and Brundisium, ships not built for display of height and bulk but easily maneuverable, swift, and precisely manned; and he sent word to Antony urging him not to waste time but to come with his forces: he himself would provide unhindered anchorages and harbors for Antony's fleet, and would withdraw his infantry from the coast a horse's ride back from the sea, until Antony had safely disembarked and made camp.
In answer to this bravado, Antony challenged Caesar himself to single combat, even though he was the older man; and if Caesar declined this, Antony proposed that they fight it out at Pharsalus with their armies, just as Caesar and Pompey had done long before. But Caesar got there first: while Antony lay at anchor off Actium, where Nicopolis now stands, Caesar crossed the Ionian Sea and seized a place in Epirus called Toryne. When Antony's men were thrown into confusion at this—for their infantry was still behind—Cleopatra mocked them, saying, "What is so terrible if Caesar sits on a ladle (torynē)?"
At daybreak, as the enemy sailed against them, Antony, fearing that his ships would be captured empty of marines, armed the rowers and stationed them on the decks for the sake of appearance, and raised the oar-blades of the ships, fanning them out on both sides like wings near the entrance to the gulf of Actium, with the bows all pointed seaward, so that they looked as though they were fully manned and ready to defend themselves.
And Caesar, thus outmaneuvered, withdrew. Antony also cleverly managed, by enclosing the water supply with certain works, to deprive the enemy of it, since the surrounding country had little water and that of poor quality. He also treated Domitius generously, against Cleopatra's wishes. For when Domitius, already ill with fever, boarded a skiff and crossed over to Caesar's side, Antony, stung though he was, still had his baggage, retinue, and companions sent along after him.
And Domitius, as though changing sides had only served to expose his faithlessness and betrayal rather than hide it, died soon after. There were also defections of kings, Amyntas and Deiotarus, to Caesar. The fleet, faring badly in every respect and lagging behind in every kind of support, again forced Antony to turn his attention to the infantry. Canidius too, the commander of the infantry, changed his opinion in the face of danger, and advised sending Cleopatra away, withdrawing into Thrace or Macedonia, and deciding the issue by a land battle.
Dicomes, ruler of the Getae, had pledged to bring him substantial reinforcements; and Canidius argued there was no shame in ceding the sea to Caesar, a man seasoned by his Sicilian campaign, yet it would be disgraceful if Antony, most experienced of all in land battles, failed to make use of the strength and equipment of so many infantry, distributing and squandering his forces among ships instead.
Nevertheless Cleopatra prevailed, that the war be decided by the ships, since she was already looking toward flight, and was arranging her own affairs not with a view to where she might be useful for victory, but to where she could most easily get away once things were being lost. Long walls ran from the camp down to the naval station, and along this route Antony habitually walked without any thought of danger.
A slave informed Caesar that Antony could be captured as he passed along these walls, and Caesar dispatched a party to set an ambush. They came so close to success that they seized the man walking ahead of him, having risen up too soon; Antony himself barely escaped by running.
When it had been decided to fight at sea, he burned all his other ships except sixty of the Egyptian ones, and manned the best and largest, from triremes up to ten-bank ships, putting aboard twenty thousand heavy infantry and two thousand archers. It is said that there, as Antony was passing by, one of the infantry officers, a man who had fought very many battles under Antony and whose body was scarred all over, wept aloud and said:
"General, why put your trust in miserable planks of wood instead of these wounds and this sword? Leave sea-fighting to Egyptians and Phoenicians, but grant us solid ground, the element we know how to hold, whether to fall or to overcome our foes." Antony answered him nothing, but only by a gesture of hand and face, as though bidding the man take heart, passed on—though he himself had no good hopes, since he even forced the helmsmen, who wished to leave their sails behind, to take them aboard and carry them, saying that none of the enemy should escape by flight.
On that day and for three days following, the sea, tossed by a strong wind, held off the battle; but on the fifth day, when there came a calm without wind and an unrippled stillness, the two fleets engaged, with Antony and Publicola commanding the right, Coelius commanding the left, and Marcus Octavius together with Marcus Insteius stationed in the center.
Caesar stationed Agrippa on the left and kept the right for himself. Of the infantry, Canidius drew up Antony's, and Taurus Caesar's, along the shore, and both stayed quiet. As for the commanders themselves, Antony went about everywhere in a rowboat, urging his soldiers, weighed down by the size of their ships, to fight as though standing firm on land,
and instructing the helmsmen to receive the enemy's charges as though the ships were riding at anchor undisturbed, keeping their position at the narrow mouth of the gulf. It is said that Caesar, while still going around in the dark from his tent to the ships, met a man driving a donkey, and asked him his name; the man recognized him and said, "My name is Eutychus (Fortunate), and my donkey's name is Nicon (Victor)." For this reason, when Caesar later adorned the site with the ships' beaks, he set up a bronze donkey and man.
Having inspected the remainder of the line, Caesar had himself rowed over to the right wing, and wondered at the enemy's fleet standing motionless within the strait; for they had the appearance of ships riding at anchor. Convinced of this for a long time, he kept his own ships back, about eight stades from the enemy. It was now the sixth hour, and as a wind rose from the sea, Antony's men, growing impatient at the delay, and confident that the tall bulk of their own vessels made them invincible, they got the left wing moving.
Caesar saw this and was delighted, and backed water on his right wing, wanting to draw the enemy still further out of the gulf and the straits, and, circling round with his own ships, which were easy to row, to grapple with vessels that, because of their bulk and the shortage of their crews, were sluggish and slow.
When the battle began to come to close quarters, there was no ramming or shattering of ships: for Antony's ships, being heavy, had no speed, which is what chiefly makes the blows of the rams effective, while Caesar's ships not only avoided meeting prow to prow against those solid, rough bronze plates, but did not even dare to ram them broadside.
For the rams broke off easily whenever they struck against hulls made of great squared timbers bound together with iron. So the battle was more like a land fight, or to speak more truly, a siege of walls. For three or four ships at once clustered around a single one of Antony's, using wicker shields, spears, poles, and fire-throwers, while Antony's men shot from wooden towers as well, using catapults.
When Agrippa extended his other wing to encircle the enemy, Publicola, being forced to move against him in turn, was pulled apart from the center. While these were in confusion and locked in struggle with the forces of Arruntius, and the sea battle still stood undecided and general, suddenly Cleopatra's sixty ships were seen hoisting their sails for departure and fleeing straight through the combatants; for they had been stationed behind the large ships, and in bursting through they caused confusion.
The enemy watched in astonishment, seeing them running before the wind and making for the Peloponnese. Then indeed Antony showed himself to be governed neither as a commander, nor as a man, nor at all by his own reasoning, but — as someone said in jest — the soul of the lover lives in another's body: grown fast to her, he let himself be towed off in her wake, swept along wherever she went.
For no sooner had he seen her ship sailing away than, forgetting everything, abandoning and deserting the men fighting and dying for him, he transferred to a five-banked ship, with only Alexas the Syrian and Scellius going aboard with him, and chased after the very woman whose doing had already been his ruin and whose doing would ruin him yet more.
She, recognizing him, raised a signal from her ship; and thus brought alongside and taken aboard, neither did he look upon her nor did her eyes meet his; instead he made his way to the bow unaccompanied, and there he sat apart, wordless, his head buried in his two hands.
Meanwhile light Liburnian galleys were seen pursuing from Caesar's fleet. Antony ordered the ship turned prow-on to face them, and this checked the others, but Eurycles the Laconian pressed on boldly, brandishing a spear from the deck as though about to hurl it at him. When Antony stood at the prow and said, "Who is this pursuing Antony?" he answered, "I am Eurycles, son of Lachares, who by Caesar's fortune avenges my father's death."
This Lachares had been charged by Antony with piracy and beheaded. But Eurycles did not ram Antony's ship; rather he struck one of the two flagships (there were two) with his bronze beak and spun it around, and captured this one as it fell broadside, and also one of the other ships, in which there were costly furnishings for daily use.
When Eurycles had gone off, Antony again sank down into the same posture and kept still; and after spending three days by himself at the prow, whether out of anger or out of shame before her, he put in at Taenarum. There the women who usually attended them first brought the two together to talk with each other, then persuaded them to dine and sleep together.
By now not a few of the round transport ships, and some of their friends, were gathering to them out of the rout, reporting that the fleet had perished, though they trusted the land forces were still intact. Antony dispatched couriers to Canidius, instructing him to lead the army back through Macedonia and on into Asia with utmost haste,
while he himself, intending to cross from Taenarum to Libya, picked out one merchant ship that carried much coin and possessions of great value in silver and gold from the royal stores, and gave it to his friends in common, telling them to divide it and save themselves. When they refused it, weeping, he comforted and pleaded with them very kindly and affectionately, and sent them off,
writing to Theophilus, his agent at Corinth, to keep the men safe and concealed until terms of peace with Caesar could be reached. This Theophilus fathered Hipparchus, the freedman who stood higher in Antony's regard than any other and who was also the first among Antony's freedmen to desert to Caesar, afterward making his home in Corinth.
So much, then, for Antony's part. At Actium the fleet held out against Caesar for a long time, and though greatly damaged by the high waves that struck it head-on, it barely gave up the fight about the tenth hour. The dead numbered no more than five thousand, yet Caesar's own record put the number of captured ships at three hundred.
Word of Antony's flight reached only a few, and those who did hear it at first found the story impossible to credit — that, leaving behind nineteen legions of undefeated infantry and twelve thousand cavalry, he was gone, as if he had not often experienced fortune turning both ways, and had not been schooled by countless struggles and shifts of war.
His soldiers felt a longing and an expectation that he would soon appear from somewhere; and they showed such loyalty and courage that even after his flight had become plain, for seven days they stayed united, ignoring Caesar's repeated attempts to win them over. Only when Canidius, their commander, slipped away by night and left the camp behind, finding themselves stripped of every ally and abandoned by their own officers, did they finally cross over to the victorious side.
After this Caesar sailed to Athens, and having reconciled himself with the Greeks, distributed the grain left over from the war to the cities, which were in a wretched state, stripped of money, slaves, and pack animals. Nicarchus, my own great-grandfather, would relate that every one of the citizens were forced to carry down on their shoulders a fixed measure of wheat to the sea near Anticyra, driven on by whips;
and how they brought one such load in this way, and were already measured out for a second and about to shoulder it, when word came that Antony had been defeated, and this alone saved the city; for at once, since Antony's officials and soldiers fled, the citizens divided up the grain among themselves.
Antony, having reached Libya and sent Cleopatra on ahead to Egypt from Paraetonium, himself enjoyed abundant solitude, wandering aimlessly with two friends, Aristocrates the Greek rhetorician and Lucilius the Roman, about whom we have written elsewhere, that at Philippi, to allow Brutus to escape, he gave himself up to the pursuers as though he were Brutus, and having been saved by Antony for this reason, remained loyal and steadfast to him to the very end.
But when the man entrusted with his forces in Libya caused them to revolt, he set out to kill himself, but his friends stopped him and carried him instead to Alexandria, where he came upon Cleopatra engaged in a daring and ambitious scheme. The isthmus dividing the Red Sea from the waters off Egypt, held to mark the border between Asia and Libya, narrows at one point to its slenderest breadth, pressed in on both sides by sea — three hundred stadia — she attempted, having drawn her fleet up, to haul it overland,
and, lowering the ships into the Arabian Gulf along with much money and a force of men, to settle outside, escaping slavery and war. But when the Arabs around Petra burned the first of the ships as they were being hauled up, and Antony still believed the army at Actium held together, she gave up the attempt, and kept guard over the entrances instead.
Antony, leaving the city and his companionship with friends, built for himself a dwelling out over the sea near Pharos, throwing out a mole into the water, and there he lived as an exile from human company, and said he was embracing and emulating the life of Timon, as though he had suffered the same things; for he too had been wronged by friends and treated with ingratitude, and for this reason distrusted and was disgusted with all mankind.
This Timon was an Athenian, and his life fell mostly in the era of the Peloponnesian War, a fact one can infer from the comedies of Aristophanes and from Plato's dialogues. In these he is mocked as ill-natured and a hater of mankind; yet, while shunning and repelling every encounter, he embraced and warmly kissed Alcibiades, who was then young and bold. When Apemantus expressed surprise and asked the reason, he said he loved the young man because he knew he would be the cause of many evils for the Athenians.
He would admit only Apemantus to his company, as being like himself and emulating his way of life; and on one occasion, during the Feast of Pitchers, the pair dined together alone; when Apemantus said, "How fine our banquet is, Timon," he replied, "It would be, if you weren't here." The story goes that on one occasion, while the Athenians were meeting in assembly, he climbed up onto the speaker's platform, and produced a silence and a great expectation because of the strangeness of it;
then he said: "I have a small plot of land, men of Athens, and there grows on it a fig tree from which not a few citizens have already hanged themselves. Since I intend to build on the site, I wished to announce this publicly, so that, if any of you wish to, before the fig tree is cut down, you may hang yourselves." When he died and was buried at Halae by the sea, the projecting part of the shore slipped away, and the wave came round it and made his tomb unreachable and inaccessible to anyone.
It bore this inscription: "Here, having torn away my ill-fated soul, I lie. You will not learn my name; but may you wretches perish wretchedly." This, they say, he composed himself while still alive; but the one that circulates is by Callimachus: "Timon the man-hater dwells here. But pass on; curse as much as you like, only pass on."
So much, from many things, concerning Timon. To Antony came Canidius in person bearing news that the forces at Actium were lost, and word came too that Herod the Jew, together with certain legions and cohorts, had defected to Caesar, and that the remaining rulers likewise were deserting him, and that nothing abroad still held together for him.
None of this troubled him greatly; rather, as if gladly setting aside hope, so as to set aside care as well, he left that dwelling by the sea which he called the Timoneion, and, being received back by Cleopatra into the palace, turned the city to dinners, drinking-parties, and largesses, enrolling among the ephebes Cleopatra's son by Caesar,
and putting on Antyllus, Fulvia's son, the purple-bordered and unadorned toga of manhood; on account of which for many days banquets, revels, and festivities held Alexandria in their grip. They themselves dissolved that former society of the "Inimitable Livers," and formed another, in no way inferior to it in elegance, luxury, and extravagance, which they called "Those Who Will Die Together." For their friends enrolled themselves as men who would die together, and passed their days pleasurably in a round of dinners.
Cleopatra was gathering together all kinds of deadly poisons, and, to test which of them was painless, tried each on those under sentence of death who were kept in confinement. When she saw that the quick-acting ones brought the sharpness of death together with pain, while the milder ones lacked speed, she made trial of wild creatures, watching as they were set one against another.
He did this every day: and in almost every case he found that the bite of the asp brought on, without spasm or groan, a sleepy torpor and a heaviness, with a gentle sweating of the face, and a dulling of the senses that slipped away easily and objected to being roused or sat up, just like people who are sleeping deeply.
At the same time they also sent envoys to Caesar in Asia, she asking for the rule of Egypt for her children, he asking to be allowed to live as a private citizen at Athens, if it did not seem good for him to remain concerned with Egypt. Because of the shortage and untrustworthiness of friends, owing to the desertions, the children's tutor Euphronius was sent as envoy.
For Alexas of Laodicea, who had become known at Rome through Timagenes and had wielded more influence than any other Greek, and who had become the most violent of Cleopatra's instruments against Antony and the overturner of whatever considerations stood on Octavia's behalf within him, had been sent to keep King Herod firm in his allegiance,
but he stayed there and betrayed Antony, and dared to come into Caesar's presence, trusting in Herod. But Herod did him no good at all; instead he was at once imprisoned and brought back to his own homeland in chains, and there, on Caesar's order, put to death. Such was the penalty Alexas paid to Antony, while Antony still lived, for his treachery.
Caesar would not tolerate the pleas made on Antony's behalf, but he answered Cleopatra that she would suffer nothing improper if she put Antony to death or drove him out. He also sent along with his own messengers one of his freedmen, Thyrsus, a man not without sense and not unpersuasive when speaking, on behalf of a young commander, to a woman who was proud and thought amazingly highly of herself on account of her beauty.
This man, in conversing with her at greater length than the others and being honored above the rest, gave Antony grounds for suspicion, and he had him seized and whipped, and afterward returned him to Caesar bearing a letter, explaining that the fellow's arrogance and disdain had roused his anger, since he was a man easily provoked by his misfortunes. "But you," he said, "if you do not bear the matter with moderation, you have my freedman Hipparchus: hang him up and whip him, so that we may be even."
After this Cleopatra, in order to clear herself of the charges and suspicions, courted him with extraordinary attentions: and whereas she had kept her own birthday modestly, in keeping with her circumstances, she celebrated his with a splendor and extravagance surpassing all bounds, so that many of those invited to the dinner arrived poor and left rich. Caesar, meanwhile, was repeatedly summoned back from Rome by Agrippa, who wrote that affairs there longed for his presence.
So the war was then suspended for a time: but when winter had passed he advanced again through Syria, while his generals came through Libya. A rumor arose, once Pelusium fell, that Seleucus had given it up with Cleopatra's tacit approval. She, however, allowed Antony to put to death Seleucus's wife and children, while she herself had tombs and monuments constructed with extraordinary care for both beauty and height, which she had built adjoining the temple of Isis,
and there she gathered together the royal possessions of greatest worth — gold, silver, emerald, pearl, ebony, ivory, cinnamon — and on top of all this a great quantity of pine-torch wood and tow, so that Caesar, fearing for the money, lest the woman in despair should destroy and burn up the wealth, kept dispatching to her, while he moved his troops toward the city, repeated messages full of reassuring hope.
When he had established himself near the hippodrome, Antony sallied out and fought brilliantly, and routed Caesar's cavalry, and pursued them all the way to their camp. Exalted by the victory, he went into the palace, and kissed Cleopatra still in his armor, and presented to her the soldier who had fought most eagerly of all. She gave him as a prize a golden breastplate and helmet. That man, however, having taken these, deserted by night over to Caesar.
Again Antony sent to Caesar, challenging him to single combat. When Caesar answered that Antony had many roads open to death, Antony, realizing that there was no death better for him than one in battle, resolved to make his attempt by land and sea together. And at dinner, it is said, he ordered his household servants to pour freely and to feast him more lavishly than usual,
for it was uncertain whether they would still be doing this tomorrow, or would be serving other masters instead, while he himself would lie a skeleton and a thing become nothing. Watching his friends weep over this, he told them he would not bring them out into a fight where what he himself sought was a splendid death, not safety or triumph.
On that night, it is said, at about midnight, while the city sat silent and downcast, gripped by dread and anticipation of what lay ahead, all at once a blend of music from every kind of instrument rang out, together with a crowd's roar of victory shouts and satyr-like capering, as though a band of revelers were parading off, and not quietly:
the procession appeared to cut straight across the city's center toward the gate facing the enemy on the outside, where the clamor swelled to its peak before erupting and fading away. To those who reasoned about the sign it seemed that the god whom Antony had all along most likened and attached himself to was abandoning him.
At daybreak he himself stationed his infantry on the hills before the city and watched his ships put out and bear down upon those of the enemy: and expecting to see some deed of theirs, he waited quietly. But when they came near, they saluted Caesar's men with their oars, and when those saluted back, they changed sides, and the whole fleet, becoming one, sailed toward the city bow-first against Antony.
Seeing this, Antony was at once abandoned by his cavalry, who went over, and being defeated with his infantry he pulled back within the city walls, shouting that Cleopatra had betrayed him to the very men against whom he had waged this war for her sake. She, fearing his anger and his desperation, fled for refuge into the tomb, and let down the portcullis gates, which were fitted with strong bolts and bars; and she sent messengers to Antony to announce that she was dead.
Believing this, and saying to himself, "Why do you still delay, Antony? Fortune has stripped away the last pretext I had for holding onto life," and with that he entered his chamber, and as he loosened and opened his breastplate, he said, "O Cleopatra, losing you does not grieve me, since I shall join you at the same destination before long: but I am grieved that, great commander as I am, I have been found inferior to a woman in courage."
He had a faithful servant named Eros. Him he had long ago made promise, should the need arise, to kill him, and now he demanded the fulfillment of that promise. Eros drew his sword and raised it as though to strike his master, but then, turning his face away, killed himself instead. As he fell at his feet, Antony said, "Well done, Eros, that though you were not able to do it yourself, you teach me what I must do": and he struck himself through the belly and let himself fall onto the couch.
The blow, however, did not bring an instant death. So when the flow of blood stopped, since he had been laid down, he came to himself and begged those present to finish him off. But they fled from the chamber as he shouted and writhed, until Diomedes, Cleopatra's secretary, came, having been ordered to bring him to her, into the tomb.
Learning that he was alive, he eagerly ordered his attendants to lift the body, and they bore it in their arms up to the chamber entrance. Cleopatra refused to unbar the doors, but appeared instead at some windows and let down cords and ropes. Antony was tied to these, and she herself, together with two women — the only companions she had allowed into the tomb with her — hauled him up.
Those present say that nothing more pitiable was ever seen than that. For, smeared with blood and in the throes of death, he was hauled up, stretching out his hands to her and lifting himself as best he could. For it was no easy task for women; but Cleopatra, clinging on with both hands and straining with her whole face, barely managed to draw up the rope, while those below cheered her on and shared her anguish.
Having received him thus and laid him down, she tore her robes over him, and beating and tearing her breast with her hands, and smearing her face with his blood, called him master and husband and commander: and she had all but forgotten her own troubles in pity for his. Antony, calming her grief, called for wine, whether from thirst or from a wish to hasten his release from life.
Once he had finished the wine, he urged her to secure her own safety in any way that would not bring shame, placing her greatest trust among Caesar's men in Proculeius; and rather than mourning him for this last reversal, she should count him fortunate for all that had come his way, seeing that he had risen to be the most renowned of men and had commanded the greatest power, and that now, defeated, it was one Roman yielding to another, with no disgrace in it.
He had scarcely breathed his last when Proculeius arrived from Caesar. For when Antony, having struck himself, was being carried to Cleopatra, a certain Dercetaeus, one of his bodyguards, took his dagger and, hiding it, slipped away, and running to Caesar was the first to announce Antony's death, and showed the sword, still bloody.
On hearing the news, Caesar retreated deeper into his tent and mourned a man who had once been kin to him through marriage, a fellow officeholder, and a companion through many hardships and joint ventures. Then, taking the letters, he called his friends and read them out, to show how reasonable and just were his own writings, and how coarse and arrogant Antony's replies had always been.
After this he sent Proculeius, ordering him, if possible, above all to take Cleopatra alive; for he was afraid for the treasure, and thought it would greatly add to his glory to lead her in his triumph. She, however, was unwilling to come into Proculeius's hands:
but conversation took place, he approaching the building from outside by way of the ground-level doors, which were securely barred but allowed a passage for the voice. And they talked, she asking that the kingdom be given to her children, he bidding her take courage and trust everything to Caesar.
When he had inspected the place and reported to Caesar, Gallus was sent again to negotiate with her: and coming to the doors he purposely drew out the conversation at length. Meanwhile Proculeius had a ladder raised and climbed in through the same window through which the women had drawn Antony up. And going straight to the very doors at which Cleopatra stood attending to Gallus, he came down, having with him two attendants.
When one of the women shut up with Cleopatra cried out, "Wretched Cleopatra, you are taken alive," she turned and, seeing Proculeius, made to stab herself; for she happened to have on her a kind of dagger such as brigands use. But Proculeius, running up quickly and seizing her with both hands, said, "You wrong yourself, Cleopatra, and you wrong Caesar, by robbing him of a great opportunity to display his kindness, and by making the gentlest of commanders appear faithless and implacable."
At the same time he took her sword from her, and shook out her clothing, lest it conceal some poison. Caesar also sent one of his freedmen, Epaphroditus, who was charged with guarding her alive and keeping close watch over her, while in everything else yielding to her ease and comfort.
Caesar himself rode into the city conversing with the philosopher Areius and holding his right hand, so that he might at once be an object of admiration and conspicuous honor among the citizens, seen to be distinguished by Caesar's favor. Entering the gymnasium and mounting a platform that had been built there, while the people, struck with terror, fell prostrate before him, he bade them rise and said that he released the people from all blame — first for the sake of their founder Alexander, second because he admired the beauty and size of the city, and third as a favor to his companion Areius.
This honor Areius obtained from Caesar, and he also begged pardon for many others, among whom was Philostratus, a man most capable of speaking extempore of all the sophists there ever were, but one who improperly attached himself to the Academy, without any real claim to it. For this reason Caesar, loathing his character, would not receive his petitions.
So this man, letting down a gray beard and wrapping himself in a dark cloak, followed behind Areius, continually declaiming this line: 'Wise men save wise men, if indeed they are wise.' Caesar, learning of this, and wishing to free Philostratus from fear rather than Areius from ill will, let him go.
Of Antony's children, Antyllus, the son by Fulvia, was handed over by his tutor Theodorus and put to death; and when the soldiers cut off his head, the tutor took a stone of great value that had been hanging from the boy's neck and stitched it inside his own belt. But when he denied having it and was caught out, he was crucified.
The children of Cleopatra, kept under guard along with those who reared them, had a life of freedom and comfort. Caesarion, reputed to be Julius Caesar's own son, was dispatched by his mother, together with a large sum of money, on a route through Ethiopia toward India; but another tutor like Theodorus, named Rhodon, persuaded him to turn back, saying that Caesar was calling him to a kingdom. While Caesar was deliberating what to do, they say Areius said: 'Too many Caesars is not a good thing.'
This boy Caesar afterward killed, after Cleopatra's death. As for Antony, though many, both kings and generals, asked to bury him, Caesar did not take the body away from Cleopatra, but it was buried by her own hands, lavishly and royally, she being given the use of everything she wished. And out of such great grief and anguish — for her breast had become inflamed from her beating it and had ulcerated, and fevers had set in — she welcomed this as a pretext, thinking that by abstaining from food on this account she might release herself from life unhindered.
She kept near her a physician, Olympus, to whom she confided everything honestly and whom she made her counselor and partner in plotting her own death, as Olympus himself has said, having published an account of these events. But Caesar, suspecting this, brought certain threats and fears to bear upon her concerning her children, by which she was undermined as though by siege engines, and she gave up her body to be tended and nourished by those who wished it.
He himself came, after letting a few days pass, to meet with her and offer consolation. She happened to be lying on a pallet in humble state, and when he entered, clad in a single tunic, she leapt up and threw herself at his feet, terribly disfigured in head and face, her voice trembling, her eyes wasted away. There were many visible marks of the violence done to her breast; and altogether her body seemed to be in no better condition than her soul.
Yet her charm and the daring quality of her beauty had not been altogether snuffed out; even now they somehow glowed from within and played across the movements of her face. When Caesar told her to lie back down and took a seat beside her, she ventured some defense of her own conduct, laying the blame on compulsion and her dread of Antony; but as Caesar refuted her point by point, she quickly shifted to pity and entreaty, as one who clung above all to life.
At last she handed him a written inventory of the sum of her money; and when a certain Seleucus, one of her stewards, charged that she was hiding and concealing some of it, she leapt up and, seizing him by the hair, rained many blows upon his face.
When Caesar smiled and tried to check her, she said: 'But is it not shameful, Caesar, that although you saw fit to visit me and address me even in the wretched condition you find me, my own slaves accuse me if I have set aside any of my women's things — not, surely, for myself, wretched as I am, but so that by giving small gifts to Octavia and your Livia I might find you more gracious and gentle toward me?'
At this Caesar was pleased, thinking that she was altogether clinging to life. So, saying that he entrusted these matters to her and that he would treat her in everything else more splendidly than she could hope, he went away, believing that he had deceived her, but rather having been deceived himself.
There was a certain Cornelius Dolabella, a distinguished young man among Caesar's companions. He was not indifferent toward Cleopatra; and now, doing her a favor at her request, he sent word secretly informing her that Caesar himself was setting out overland through Syria, and that he had decided to send her away with her children on the third day.
When she heard this, she first asked Caesar to allow her to pour libations for Antony; and when he consented, she was carried to the tomb and, falling upon the coffin together with the women who attended her, said: 'O dear Antony, I buried you but lately with hands still free, but now I pour libations as a captive, and am kept under guard so that I may not disfigure this enslaved body with blows of mourning or lamentation — this body that is being watched and kept for the triumph to be held over you.
Expect no other honors or libations from me: these are the last that Cleopatra can bring you, being led away as she is. For while we lived nothing separated us from each other, but in death we risk exchanging places: you, the Roman, lying here, and I, the unfortunate one, in Italy, receiving only so much of your country as that.
But if indeed the gods there have any strength or power — for the gods here have betrayed us — do not abandon your wife while she still lives, nor allow yourself to be triumphed over in my person, but hide me here with yourself and bury me with you, since of my countless troubles none is so great and terrible as this brief time that I have lived without you.'
Having lamented in this way, and having crowned the coffin and embraced it, she had a bath made ready for herself. Once she had bathed and taken her place at table, she ate a sumptuous meal. And someone came from the countryside carrying a certain basket; and when the guards asked what he was bringing, he opened it and, removing the leaves, showed them the vessel full of figs.
When they marveled at their beauty and size, he smiled and invited them to take some; and they, trusting him, told him to bring it in. After the meal, Cleopatra took a letter she had already written and sealed, dispatched it to Caesar, and, having dismissed everyone else apart from her two attendant women, she shut the doors.
Caesar, opening the tablet, when he came upon entreaties and lamentations from her begging to be buried together with Antony, quickly understood what had been done. At first he himself set out to help, but then sent men to investigate with all speed. The catastrophe had happened swiftly. For running at full speed, they found the guards perceiving nothing amiss, and opening the doors they found her dead, lying upon a golden couch, arrayed in royal splendor.
Among her women, one, named Iras, lay dying at her feet, and the other, Charmion, herself already unsteady and drooping, was setting straight the crown on her mistress's head. When someone said in anger, 'A fine deed this, Charmion,' she replied, 'Yes, very fine indeed, and fitting for the descendant of so many kings.' She said nothing more, but fell there beside the couch.
It is said the snake came in concealed among those figs, tucked under the leaves covering them, for Cleopatra had given orders to this effect, so that the creature might strike her body without her even realizing it; but when, removing some of the figs, she saw it, she said, 'So here it was after all,' and bared her arm to offer it to the bite.
Others claim the creature was confined inside a water vessel, and that once Cleopatra roused and provoked it with a golden distaff, it sprang forth and bit into her arm. Yet the true facts elude everyone; some also reported that she kept a poison concealed within a hollow hairpin case, hidden among her hair; yet no rash broke out on her body, nor any other sign of poison.
Nor indeed was the creature seen inside, though some claimed to have noticed a trail of its passing close to the water, on the side where the room had windows opening toward it. Some also said that Cleopatra's arm was seen to have two faint, slight puncture marks; and it seems Caesar himself gave credence to this. For in Cleopatra's triumph, an effigy of her was carried with the asp clinging to it. Such, then, is how these events are said to have happened.
Caesar, although vexed at the woman's death, admired her nobility of spirit, and ordered that her body be buried together with Antony's, splendidly and royally. Her women, too, received an honorable funeral by his command. Cleopatra died at the age of thirty-nine, having reigned twenty-two of those years, and having shared power with Antony for more than fourteen.
Antony, according to some accounts, was fifty-six; according to others, fifty-three. Antony's statues were pulled down, yet Cleopatra's were left standing, because Archibius, a friend of hers, paid Caesar two thousand talents to spare them Antony's fate.
Antony left behind seven children by three wives; the eldest, Antyllus, was put to death by Caesar alone among them. The rest Octavia took and raised together with her own children. Cleopatra, the daughter by Cleopatra, she married to Juba, the most graceful of kings; and Antony, the son by Fulvia, she made so great that, while Agrippa held the first place of honor with Caesar and Livia's sons the second, Antony was seen to hold the third.
Octavia had two daughters by Marcellus and one son, Marcellus; this son Caesar took as both adopted child and son-in-law, and one of his daughters he gave in marriage to Agrippa. But Marcellus died not long after the wedding, and Caesar found it difficult to pick, from the rest of his friends, someone he trusted equally to become his son-in-law, Octavia proposed that Agrippa should take Caesar's daughter, giving up her own.
Caesar was persuaded first, then Agrippa; and so, taking back her own daughter, she married her to Antony, while Caesar's daughter was married to Agrippa. Of the two daughters left by Antony and Octavia, Domitius Ahenobarbus took one, while Drusus, Livia's son and Caesar's stepson, took the other, Antonia, famous for her modesty and beauty. From these were born Germanicus and Claudius:
of whom Claudius later ruled, and of the children of Germanicus, Gaius, after ruling gloriously for no long time, was killed together with his child and wife; and Agrippina, having a son by Ahenobarbus, Lucius Domitius, married Claudius Caesar. Claudius adopted her son and renamed him Nero Germanicus. This man, ruling in our own time, killed his mother and very nearly, through madness and derangement, overturned the Roman empire, being the fifth in the line of succession counting from Antony.

======== Comparison Of Demetrius And Antony ========

Since, then, great reversals of fortune befell both men, let us first look at the matter of power and reputation: to the one there was an inheritance already accomplished by others, since Antigonus, having become the mightiest of the Successors, before Demetrius came of age had overrun and mastered most of Asia;
Antony, born of a father who was otherwise agreeable, but unwarlike and left him nothing great to be proud of, dared to aim at Caesar's power, which belonged to him by no family right at all, and made himself the successor to what that man had labored to build. And he grew so strong, setting out from nothing but his own resources, that when he divided the whole into two parts he chose and took for himself the more illustrious share, and even while he himself was absent, through his subordinates and lieutenant-generals, defeated the Parthians many times over and drove the barbarian peoples about the Caucasus back to the Caspian Sea.
Proofs of his greatness are found also in the very things for which he is ill spoken of. For Demetrius' father was glad to see him marry Antipater's daughter Phila, though she was above his years, as a match more distinguished than his age warranted; whereas for Antony the marriage to Cleopatra was held a reproach, though she surpassed in power and splendor all the kings of her time save Arsaces. Yet he made himself so great that to others he seemed worthy of greater things than he himself wished.
The policy by which each acquired power, however, deserves no censure in Demetrius' case, since he wished to rule and reign over a people already used to obeying kings; Antony's course, on the other hand, was harsh and tyrannical, for he made slaves of the Roman people at the very moment they had thrown off monarchy under Caesar.
The greatest and most illustrious of his achievements is the war against Cassius and Brutus, which was waged in order to strip his fatherland and fellow citizens of their freedom. Demetrius, even before he came upon hard necessity, continued without ceasing to free Greece and to drive garrisons out of the cities — not like Antony, who took pride, in Macedonia, in having killed the very men who had freed Rome.
One thing, then, that is praised in Antony is his generosity and lavishness in giving; and in this Demetrius so far surpasses him that he granted to his enemies what Antony did not give even to his friends. And yet Antony did win esteem for ordering that Brutus be buried and properly laid out; but Demetrius gave burial rites to all the enemy dead without exception, and sent back to Ptolemy those he had taken captive, together with money and gifts.
Both men, in their good fortune, were given to insolence, and given over to luxuries and indulgence. Yet no one could say that opportunity for action ever escaped Demetrius while he lived amid his pleasures and companions; rather, out of the abundance of his leisure he brought in his pleasures besides, and, quite simply playing and drowsing, he passed his time with Lamia as if she were the mythical monster of that name.
But in his preparations for war his spear had no ivy wound about it, nor did his helmet smell of perfumes, nor did he come forth to battle gleaming and blooming as if fresh from the women's quarters; instead, putting the revel-bands to rest and bringing the Bacchic rites to a close, he turned into what Euripides calls a minister of Ares the unhallowed, and through pleasure or idleness he never once simply stumbled.
Antony, on the other hand — just as we see in paintings Heracles' club being stolen away by Omphale, and his lion-skin stripped from him — was again and again disarmed and bewitched by Cleopatra, and persuaded by her to let great undertakings and necessary campaigns slip from his hands, and to idle and play about with her on the shores near Canopus and Taphosiris.
And in the end, like Paris, he fled from the battle and sank down into her embrace; or rather, Paris, once defeated, fled into his chamber, but Antony, in pursuit of Cleopatra, fled and let victory go from his grasp.
Furthermore, Demetrius — in a practice not forbidden but rather customary among the kings of Macedon, going back to Philip and Alexander — took several wives one after another, as did Lysimachus and Ptolemy, and he held in honor as many as he married; whereas Antony was the first to take two wives at once, a thing no Roman before him had dared to do, and then drove out his lawful citizen wife to please the foreign woman who was not joined to him under the laws; hence from marriage nothing came upon the one, but the greatest of evils befell the other.
Yet no impiety arising from licentiousness attaches to Antony's deeds so great as attaches to those of Demetrius. For the historians say that even dogs were barred from the whole of the Acropolis, because that animal most openly displays its mating; but Demetrius, within the Parthenon itself, consorted with prostitutes and debauched many citizen women besides.
And in that very sphere where one would least expect such luxuries and pleasures to have any part in cruelty, this is nonetheless found in Demetrius' love of pleasure: he allowed — or rather compelled — the noblest and most temperate of the Athenians to die pitiably, in flight from being violated. In sum: Antony wronged himself through his lack of self-control, but Demetrius wronged others.
Toward his parents, however, Demetrius showed himself blameless in every respect; but Antony handed over his mother's brother to secure Cicero's death — a deed vile and savage in itself, so that Antony could scarcely win pardon for it, even granting that his uncle's safety was the price paid for Cicero's death.
As for the oaths that both broke and the treaties both violated — the one by seizing Artabazus, the other by killing Alexander — Antony has an acknowledged excuse: he had been abandoned by Artabazus in Media and betrayed. But many say that Demetrius, having invented false charges, brought accusation for the very things he himself had done, and was avenging a wrong not done to him rather than defending himself against one he had suffered. Again, Demetrius was himself the doer of his own successes; Antony, by contrast, in campaigns where he was not even present, carried off through his generals the fairest and greatest victories credited to his name.
Both fell from power through their own fault, yet not in the same way: the one was abandoned, for the Macedonians deserted him; the other did the abandoning, for he fled from the men who were risking their lives on his behalf. So that it stands as a charge against the one that he made the men fighting for him so hostile toward himself, and as a charge against the other that he abandoned a goodwill and loyalty already prepared and waiting for him.
Concerning how they died, praise is due to neither man, though Demetrius deserves the greater censure. For he submitted to becoming a captive, and once shut up, was content to gain three more years of life, having grown tame to wine and his belly like a beast. Antony died a cowardly, pitiable, and dishonorable death, and yet, before the enemy could become master of his body, he took himself out of life.

======== Marcus Brutus ========

Marcus Brutus's ancestor was Junius Brutus, whom the Romans of old set up in bronze on the Capitol, in the midst of the kings, sword drawn, as the man who had most surely put an end to the Tarquins. But that Brutus, like blades tempered cold, having a nature hard and not softened by reason, was carried by his passion against tyrants as far as the killing of his own sons; whereas this one, on behalf of
whom this is written, having tempered his character with education and reason through philosophy, and having roused a nature grave and gentle by nature to active impulses, seems to have been blended most harmoniously toward the good, so that even those who hated him for the conspiracy against Caesar, if the deed brought forth anything noble, attached it to Brutus, while they turned the harsher parts of what had happened onto Cassius,
who was indeed a kinsman and friend of Brutus, but simple in character, not so pure in the same way. Servilia his mother traced her lineage back to Ahala Servilius, who, when Spurius Maelius was contriving a tyranny and stirring up the people, took a dagger under his arm and went forth into the marketplace, and standing close by the man as though about to meet him and converse, when he nodded assent, struck and killed him. This
much then is agreed. But as for the paternal line, those who, on account of the murder of Caesar, display some hostility and ill will toward Brutus say that he does not descend from the man who expelled the Tarquins; for no line was left to that man, since he had put his own sons to death, but that this Brutus was a commoner, son of a steward, who had only just recently advanced to a magistracy. Posidonius the philosopher says that the
grown sons of Brutus perished, as is recorded, but that a third, still a babe, survived, and from him the family's line continued, and that some of the notable men of the house in his own time traced the resemblance of their features to the statue of Brutus. So much then on these matters. The brother of Servilia, Brutus's mother, was Cato the philosopher, whom this man
of the Romans most emulated, Cato being his uncle and later becoming his father-in-law. Of the Greek philosophers there was none, so to speak, of whom he was ignorant or a stranger, but he was especially devoted to the followers of Plato, and not much inclined toward the so-called New and Middle Academy, he clung closely to the Old, and he continued to admire Antiochus of Ascalon, while he made a friend and companion of his brother
Aristus, a man who fell short of many philosophers in facility of speech, but was a rival of the foremost in orderliness and gentleness. And Empylus, whom he himself in his letters and his friends often mention as living with him, was an orator, and has left behind a small but not worthless treatise on the killing of Caesar, entitled Brutus. In Latin, then,
Brutus was well enough trained for the give-and-take of debates and contests, but in Greek he cultivated the terse, laconic manner of speech, and in his letters he is in places notable for it, as for instance, once already engaged in the war, he writes to the Pergamenes: "I hear that you have given money to Dolabella. If you gave it willingly, you confess you have done wrong; if unwillingly, prove it by giving to me willingly." Again to the Samians:
"Your deliberations are careless, your services slow. What end do you suppose these will come to?" And another: "The Xanthians, disregarding my kindness, have made their homeland a tomb of their own madness, while the Patareans, having entrusted themselves to me, lack nothing in managing their own affairs of freedom in every particular. It is open to you, then, to select either the Patareans' verdict or the Xanthians' doom." Such is a sample of his
distinctive letters. While still a youth he traveled abroad together with his uncle Cato, who had been sent to Cyprus to deal with Ptolemy. When Ptolemy had destroyed himself, Cato, himself held back at Rhodes by pressing business, had beforehand dispatched a friend of his, Canidius, to watch over the money; but suspecting the man might not keep his hands off it, he sent word to Brutus asking him to sail as quickly as possible to
Cyprus from Pamphylia, for there he was passing time recovering from some illness. Brutus, though very unwilling, sailed, both out of respect for Canidius, as a man dishonorably cast aside by Cato, and because he considered such oversight and management altogether, being as he was young and devoted to study, unbefitting a free man and beneath himself. Nevertheless he applied himself diligently to this business too, and by Cato
he was praised, and when the estate had been turned into money, he took the greater part of the funds and sailed to Rome. But when affairs were split apart by Pompey and Caesar taking up arms, and the leadership of the state was thrown into confusion, it was expected that he would choose Caesar's side, since his own father had earlier been put to death on account of Pompey; but holding that the public good should be set before private matters, and judging Pompey's
cause the better one for the war, he attached himself to that side. And yet before this, whenever he had met Pompey he had not even addressed him, considering it a grave defilement to converse with the man who had killed his father; yet now, submitting himself to him as ruler of the fatherland, he sailed to Cilicia as a legate together with Sestius, who had been allotted that province. But since there was nothing of importance to do there, and Pompey and
Caesar were already coming together to contend for the whole, he came to Macedonia as a volunteer to share the danger; at which time they say that Pompey, delighted and full of wonder at his approach, rose up from where he sat and embraced him as though he were the superior, in the sight of all. And during the campaign, whatever time of the day he did not spend with Pompey he passed in reading and books, not only at other times, but even before the great
battle. It was the height of summer, and there was great heat, since they were encamped near marshy ground, and those bringing Brutus's tent were slow in arriving; worn out from this, he barely anointed himself at midday and ate a little, and while the others were either sleeping or occupied with anxious thought about what was to come, he himself, until evening, wrote, composing an epitome of Polybius. And it is said too that
Caesar did not neglect the man, but even told his commanders beforehand, in the battle, not to kill Brutus, but to spare him, and if he offered himself voluntarily, to bring him along, but if he resisted capture, to let him be and not use force; and that he did this as a favor to Servilia, Brutus's mother. For he had, it seems, been aware, when he was still a young man, that Servilia was passionately in love with him,
and it was at just the time when this love was blazing most fiercely that Brutus had been born, and he was somehow persuaded that Brutus had come from himself. And it is said that when the great affair of Catiline had fallen upon the senate, which came close to overturning the city, Cato and Caesar stood together disputing over the verdict, and at that moment a small note was handed in from outside to Caesar, which he read in silence, while Cato
cried out that Caesar was doing something terrible in receiving overtures and letters from the enemy. Since many were in an uproar, and Caesar handed over the little tablet just as it was to Cato, who read it and found it to be a shameless letter from his own sister Servilia, he threw it at Caesar and said, "Keep it, drunkard," and then turned back again to his opinion and speech from the beginning. Such then
was the notorious love of Servilia for Caesar. And when the defeat at Pharsalus occurred, and Pompey had escaped to the sea, and the camp was being besieged, Brutus slipped out unnoticed through gates leading to marshland thick with water and reeds, and traveled through the night safely to Larissa. From there he wrote to Caesar, who was pleased that he was safe, and bidding him
come to him, not only released him from the charge, but held him among those most honored around his person. And when no one could say where Pompey had fled, but there was great perplexity, Caesar, walking along a road with Brutus alone, sounded out his opinion. And since Brutus seemed, from certain reasonings, to conjecture best about Pompey's flight, Caesar, abandoning the other routes, pressed on toward Egypt. But Pompey,
just as Brutus had guessed, met his fate when he landed in Egypt. And Brutus reconciled Caesar even to Cassius. And indeed when he pleaded for the king of the Libyans, though he fell short of the magnitude of the charges against him, by his entreaty and intercession on his behalf he preserved for him a large part of his kingdom. It is also reported that Caesar, upon first hearing him speak, remarked to his friends: "This
young man, I do not know what he wants, but whatever he wants, he wants it very strongly." For his gravity, and his not being easily or completely obedient to everyone who asked a favor, but acting on reasoned judgment and choice of what was honorable, wherever he turned, employed strong and effective impulses. And toward unjust requests he was not to be flattered into compliance, and the defeat
that comes from yielding to shameless entreaties, which some call being overawed, he held to be most shameful for a great man, and he used to say that those who are unable to refuse anything seem to him not to have arranged the prime of their life well. When Caesar was about to cross into Africa against Cato and Scipio, he entrusted to Brutus Gaul this side of the Alps, to the good fortune of that province; for while the others, entrusted to men who plundered them like captives through insolence and greed, to those people
even relief and consolation from their former misfortunes was Brutus. And he attached the gratitude for all this to Caesar, so that on his return, as he went about Italy, the most pleasant sight for him was the cities under Brutus's charge, and Brutus himself, increasing that honor and keeping company with him in a gracious manner. But when, of the several praetorships, the one holding the greatest dignity, called the urban praetorship, it was expected
that either Brutus or Cassius would obtain it, some say that they, already somewhat at odds from earlier causes, quarreled all the more fiercely over this, even though they were kinsmen; for Cassius was married to Junia, sister of Brutus. Others say that this rivalry was Caesar's doing, since he secretly gave each of them hopes, until, being thus led on and provoked, they were brought to open contest. Brutus contended on the strength of his reputation
and virtue against Cassius's many and brilliant youthful exploits in the Parthian campaigns. And Caesar, hearing this and deliberating among his friends, said: "Cassius has the juster claim, but Brutus must be given the first place." So Cassius was appointed to the other praetorship, holding not so much goodwill for what he received as anger for what he had missed. Brutus otherwise shared in Caesar's power as much as
he wished. For it was in his power, had he wished, to be first among his friends and to have the greatest influence; but the companionship with Cassius drew him away and turned him back, since he himself had not yet been reconciled with Cassius after that rivalry, and he listened to friends who urged him not to allow himself to be softened and charmed by Caesar, but to flee the tyrant's favors and kindnesses, by which Caesar dealt with him not so as to honor his virtue, but
so as to cut out his strength and undermine his spirit. Nor indeed was Caesar altogether free of suspicion or unaffected by slander against him, but while he feared the man's proud spirit and dignity and friends, he trusted his character. And first, when word came that Antony and Dolabella were scheming to overthrow the state, he remarked that his worry lay not with those stout, long-haired fellows, but
those lean, sallow-faced men—by which he meant Brutus and Cassius. Then, when some were slandering Brutus and urging him to be on guard, he touched his own body with his hand and said, "What then? Do you not think Brutus will wait for this bit of flesh?"—as though it were fitting that no one else but Brutus should have such power after him, and indeed he seems to have thought that Brutus would surely become first in the city, could he but endure for a little while
playing second to Caesar and let his power fade and let his glory over his successes wither away. But Cassius, a man of passionate spirit and one who was more a private hater of Caesar than a hater of tyranny in common, inflamed and hastened him on. It is said that Brutus was weighed down by his rule, while Cassius hated the ruler personally, making various other charges against him, including the seizure of lions, which Cassius
had prepared while intending to serve as aedile, but which Caesar seized when they were found at Megara, when that city was captured through the treachery of Calenus. These beasts are said to have brought a great disaster upon the Megarians. For when the city was already being taken, they broke open the cages and released the fetters, thinking the beasts would be an obstacle to the attackers, but instead the beasts rushed upon the very people themselves and, as they ran about unarmed, seized them, so that
to make the enemy's sight pitiable. As for Cassius, however, they say this was above all the cause of his conspiracy: not rightly speaking. For from the beginning there was in Cassius's nature a certain hostility and harshness toward the family of tyrants, as he showed even while still a boy, going to the same school as Faustus, the son of Sulla. For the one, among
the boys, boasting grandly, was praising his father's monarchy; but Cassius rose up and rubbed his fists into him. And when the guardians of Faustus and his household wanted to prosecute and bring suit, Pompey prevented it, and bringing the two boys together in the same place he questioned them about the affair, whereupon it is said Cassius said, "Come now, Faustus, dare to say in front of this man the very speech
over which I was provoked, so that I may again smash your mouth." Such, then, was Cassius. But Brutus was drawn out and urged on toward the deed by many speeches from his intimates and by many rumors and writings from the citizens. For on the statue of his ancestor Brutus, who had put down the rule of the kings, they wrote, "Would that you were now alive, Brutus," and
"Would that Brutus were living." And Brutus's own tribunal, while he was praetor, was found by day filled with writings of this kind: "Brutus, are you asleep?" and "You are not truly Brutus." Responsible for these were Caesar's flatterers, who, discovering other invidious honors for him, also placed diadems on his statues by night, as though they meant to bring the multitude around to calling him king instead of dictator. The opposite came about, as has been written accurately in the chapters
on Caesar. When Cassius was testing his friends against Caesar, all agreed, if Brutus would lead: for the deed needed neither manpower nor courage so much as it needed a man of such standing, as if his mere presence alone would inaugurate and confirming the justice of the act; but if not, then even those doing it would be more disheartened, and having done it, more suspected — as if the deed were not his own, even if
it had a noble cause, since he had refused it. Having thought this through, Cassius went to Brutus first, after that estrangement between them, and after their reconciliation and friendly words he asked whether on the Kalends of March Brutus had decided to be present at the senate: for he had heard, so he claimed, that a motion touching on kingship was to be put forward at that time by Caesar's partisans. When Brutus said he would not attend, "What then," said Cassius, "if they summon us?"
"It will then be my task," said Brutus, "not to be silent, but to defend the fatherland and to die before its freedom does." And Cassius, roused, said, "But what Roman will endure you dying first? Have you no idea what you are, Brutus? Or do you suppose it is mere weavers and shopkeepers scribbling on your tribunal, and not the first and most powerful men, demanding from the other
praetors distributions and shows and gladiators, but from you, as an ancestral debt, the overthrow of the tyranny — men ready to suffer everything for your sake, such as they expect and demand should you show yourself?" Saying this, he threw his arms around Brutus and gave him a kiss, and with their reconciliation complete they turned to consult their friends. There was a certain Gaius Ligarius among Pompey's friends, whom, though he had been accused on this account,
Caesar had pardoned. This man, not grateful for the trial from which he had been released, but resenting the very power that had put him in danger, was hostile to Caesar, while among Brutus's circle he was one of the closest intimates. Brutus, coming in to see him while he was ill, said, "O Ligarius, what a time to be sick." And Ligarius at once, rising up on his elbow and taking his right hand, said, "But Brutus, if you
have in mind anything worthy of yourself, I am well." After this, testing quietly those acquaintances whom they trusted, they shared their plan and enlisted them, choosing not merely their close friends but also anyone else they recognized as courageous, upright, and unafraid of dying. For this reason they concealed the matter from Cicero, even though he was first among them in both trust and goodwill, for fear that, being by nature lacking in boldness and having by now acquired, through age, an old man's
caution, by tracing everything, point by point, in his calculations to the utmost safety, he might blunt the edge of their eagerness, which required speed. Indeed, among his other companions Brutus also passed over Statilius the Epicurean and Favonius, the lover of Cato, because when he had tested them from a distance in some such way, circling around them in conversation and philosophical discussion, Favonius answered that civil war was a worse thing than an unlawful
monarchy, while Statilius said that it was not fitting for a wise and sensible man to be endangered and thrown into confusion on account of base and senseless men. But Labeo, who was present, spoke against both of them. And Brutus at that time, since the argument seemed to have something difficult and hard to judge, kept silent, but later shared the plan with Labeo. And when he accepted eagerly, they thought to bring in the other Brutus, surnamed Albinus, who otherwise
was not a man of action nor bold, but was strengthened by the great number of gladiators he kept for the entertainment of the Romans, and was trusted by Caesar, so it seemed good to win him over. When Cassius and Labeo spoke with him, he answered nothing; but when Brutus himself met with him privately and he learned that Brutus was the leader of the undertaking, he agreed to cooperate eagerly. And most of the others, the best men too, were drawn in by the reputation of
Brutus. And though they neither swore an oath together nor took nor gave any pledge over sacred rites, they all held so firmly together within themselves, kept silence, and carried it through together, that although the deed was foreshown by the gods through prophecies and apparitions and sacrifices, it did not become disbelieved. But Brutus, since he had attached to himself the foremost spirits, families, and virtues of Rome, and was turning over in his mind
the whole danger, tried outwardly to restrain himself and to keep his mind composed, but at home and by night he was not the same man; rather, sometimes his anxious thought carried him off against his will out of sleep, and other times, giving himself over more to reasoning and spending time amid his perplexities, he did not escape the notice of his wife, who slept beside him, that he was full of an unusual disturbance and was turning over in his mind some
hard and troublesome plan of his own. Now Porcia was, as has been said, the daughter of Cato, and Brutus, who was her cousin, had married her not while a maiden, but rather once her former husband had died, taking her when she was still young and already had a young son by that earlier marriage, whose name was Bibulus; and a small book of memoirs of Brutus, written by that son, is still preserved. Porcia, being devoted
to her husband and full of good sense, did not attempt to ask her husband about his secrets before she had first made trial of herself in this way. Taking a small blade, the kind barbers use to trim nails, and having sent all her attendants out of the chamber, she cut a deep gash into her own thigh, causing heavy bleeding, and shortly afterward severe pain
and shivering fever seized her from the wound. When Brutus, in great anguish and distress, was there in the height of her suffering, these were the words she addressed to him: "Brutus, Cato fathered me, and I came into this household not as some concubine, only to share your bed and board, but as a partner in whatever fortune, good or ill, falls to you. Now as for your part, everything concerning
our marriage is blameless; but what proof or favor is there from my side, if I am to share neither a hidden suffering with you nor a concern that requires trust? I know that a woman's nature is thought too weak to bear a secret word, but, Brutus, there is a certain strength that comes from good upbringing and virtuous company into one's character: as for me, I have both the fact of being Cato's daughter and of being Brutus's wife,
which I had trusted in less before, but now I have come to know myself to be unconquerable even by pain." Having said this, she showed him the wound and told him of the trial. He, astonished, and raising his hands, prayed that the gods would grant him, in bringing his undertaking to success, to appear a husband worthy of Porcia. And then he tried to restore his wife. When the senate had been proclaimed, a meeting to which
Caesar was expected to come, they decided to make their attempt: for then they could gather as a group without raising alarm, and the leading men of highest standing would all be present together, so that once the great deed was done they could at once lay hold of freedom. It seemed too that the place itself was somehow divine and favorable to them: for there was one of the porticoes near the theater, having a recess in which stood a
statue of Pompey, put up by the city at the time it embellished that spot with the theater and its colonnades. It was here, then, that the senate was called together, at approximately the mid-point of March (a date the Romans term the Ides), and it appeared that some divine power was leading the man on to answer for the wrong done to Pompey. When the day came, Brutus, girding on a dagger, with only his wife aware of it,
went forth, while the others, gathered around Cassius, brought his son down to the forum, as he was assuming the so-called toga of manhood. From there they all went into Pompey's portico and spent time there, since Caesar was expected to arrive at the senate shortly. There indeed one might especially have marveled, knowing what was to come, at the men's composure and steadiness in the face of terrors — that many of them, being compelled by their office as praetors to transact business,
not only listened calmly to those who came before them with disputes and lawsuits, as though they had leisure, but also rendered to each their judgments precisely and with due consideration, attending carefully. And when someone who did not wish to submit to trial appealed to Caesar and there was much shouting and calling of witnesses, Brutus, looking around at those present, said, "Caesar neither hinders me from doing what is according to
the laws, nor will he hinder me." And yet many disturbing things happened to them by chance: first and most of all, that Caesar was delaying, the day advancing, because the sacrifices were unfavorable, and he was being held back at home by his wife, and prevented from going forth by the seers. Second, someone approached Casca, one of the conspirators, and taking his right hand said, "You kept it hidden
from the rest of us, Casca — but Brutus already told me the whole thing." When Casca was startled, the man laughed and said, "How is it, blessed fellow, that you have grown rich so quickly, that you strip for a run at the aedileship?" So close did Casca come, thrown into confusion by the ambiguity, to blurting out the secret. And Popillius Laenas, a man of senatorial rank, greeting Brutus and Cassius themselves more warmly than usual, and whispering softly, said, "I pray with you that you accomplish
what you have in mind, and my advice is to waste no time, since the affair is no longer being kept secret." With these words he went off, leaving behind him strong grounds to suspect that he had gotten wind of the plot. Meanwhile a messenger ran from the house to Brutus to report that his wife lay dying. Porcia, worn down by dread of what was coming and unable to endure the burden pressing on her mind, could scarcely
keep herself at home, but at every noise and shout, like women possessed by Bacchic frenzies, she darted out, questioning everyone who arrived from the forum about what Brutus was up to, and repeatedly dispatching still more messengers. At last, as the time grew long, the strength of her body could no longer hold out, but she gave way and wasted away, her spirit distracted with anxiety, and before she could
reach her chamber, faintness and helpless bewilderment overtook her as she happened to be sitting in the middle of the room; her color changed and her voice failed her utterly. Her maidservants cried out at the sight, and when the neighbors ran together to the door, a report quickly spread and word went round that she had died — yet in fact she soon revived
in a short time and, coming to herself, was tended by the women. Brutus, when the report reached him, was disturbed, as was natural, but he did not abandon the public business nor let himself be swept toward his private affairs by his suffering. By now Caesar was announced to be approaching, being carried in a litter. For, discouraged by the sacrifices, he had decided to confirm none of the more important business that day, but
to put it off, pretending illness. As he was stepping out of the litter, Popillius Laenas approached him — the very man who a little before had prayed that Brutus and his friends succeed and accomplish their aim — and conversed with him at some length, Caesar stopping and giving him his attention. The conspirators (for so let it be said) not hearing his words, but conjecturing from what they suspected that this conversation was a disclosure of the plot, exchanged glances and
in their minds, and looked at one another, exchanging assent through their faces that they must not wait to be arrested, but must at once kill themselves with their own hands. And when Cassius and some others had already laid their hands on the hilts under their cloaks and were drawing their daggers, Brutus, seeing in Laenas's posture that he was pleading urgently and not making an accusation, said nothing, because many
outsiders were mixed in among them, but with a cheerful face he encouraged Cassius and his companions. And shortly after, Laenas, having kissed Caesar's right hand, withdrew, making it clear that his approach had concerned himself and some matter of his own. When the senate had already gone ahead into the exedra, the rest surrounded Caesar's chair as though about to bring some matter before him. And
Cassius, it is said, turned his face toward the statue of Pompey and called on it, as though sensing what was about to happen, while Trebonius drew Antony aside by the doors and, engaging him in conversation, held him back there. Caesar came in and took his seat, whereupon the senate rose to honor him, but as soon as he was seated they crowded around him in a body, putting forward Tillius Cimber from among themselves to plead on behalf of his exiled brother. And all of them joined in the plea, taking hold of his hands and kissing his chest
and his head. At first he brushed off their entreaties; then, when they would not let go, he rose to his feet by force. At that Tillius, with both hands, pulled the cloak down from his shoulders, and Casca—who stood behind him—was the first to draw his sword and strike, not deeply, near the shoulder. Caesar took hold of the hilt and cried out loudly in Latin, 'Casca, you villain, what
are you doing?' Casca, calling out to his brother in Greek, told him to help. Already being struck by many hands, and casting his eyes about on every side in an effort to break free, he caught sight of Brutus drawing his sword against him, and at once let go of Casca's hand, and covering his head with his toga, gave his body over to the blows. The others, crowding recklessly around his body and wielding their swords all together, wounded one another
so that even Brutus took a wound to the hand as he shared in the killing, and all of them were drenched in blood. When Caesar had died in this way, Brutus came forward into the middle, wishing to speak and to reassure the senate; but the senators fled in disorder out of fear, and there was a crush and confusion at the doors, though no one was pursuing or pressing them. For it had been firmly resolved
to kill no one else, but to call everyone to liberty. Now to all the rest, when they had been deliberating the deed, it had seemed good also to cut down Antony along with Caesar, as a man given to monarchy and to violence, who had built up strength through his association and familiarity with the soldiers, and especially because to his naturally overbearing and ambitious nature he had then added the dignity of the consulship, ruling jointly with Caesar at the time. But Brutus stood against
this plan—first, holding firm to justice, and second, holding out the hope of a change of course. For he did not despair that Antony, a man of good natural gifts, ambitious and a lover of glory, once Caesar was out of the way, would join with the fatherland in its liberty, drawn on by rivalry toward what is noble by them. In this way Brutus preserved Antony; but in the fear of that moment Antony changed into common clothing and fled.
Brutus and his men made their way to the Capitol, their hands stained with blood, and displaying their bared swords called on the citizens to liberty. At first there were shouts, and the running to and fro that by chance attended the event added still more to the confusion; but when no further killing or plundering of the dead occurred, the senators, growing bolder, went up,
and many of the common people too, to join the men on the Capitol. When the crowd had gathered, Brutus made a speech that was persuasive to the people and fitting to what had been done. As they applauded and shouted for him to come down, they went down boldly into the forum, the rest following one another, while Brutus was escorted in the middle by many prominent men and brought down from the height very splendidly, and was stationed on
the rostra. At the sight of him, the crowd, though of mixed composition and prepared to riot, grew fearful and received what followed with order and silence. When he came forward, all gave silence to his speech; but that not everyone approved of the deed became evident when Cinna started speaking and inveighing against Caesar—the crowd erupted in anger and railed bitterly at Cinna, so that
the men went back once more to the Capitol. There, fearing a siege, Brutus sent away the best of those who had gone up with him, not thinking it right that men who had no share in the responsibility should also undergo the danger with them. Nevertheless, on the following day, when the senate met in the temple of Earth, and Antony, Plancus, and Cicero spoke concerning amnesty and concord, it was resolved not only
that there be immunity for the men, but also that the consuls should bring forward a motion concerning honors for them; and having voted this, they dissolved the meeting. Antony sent his own son up to the Capitol as a pledge, and upon that Brutus and his companions came down, and there were greetings and handshakes as everyone mingled together. Antony took Cassius in and entertained him at dinner, Lepidus took Brutus, and the rest were entertained by whoever had, toward each of them, either familiarity
or affection. At daybreak the senators assembled again, and first gave honors to Antony for having put a stop to the outbreak of civil war; then there was praise for Brutus and his companions who were present; and finally, a distribution of provinces. Crete went to Brutus by their vote, Libya to Cassius, and Asia was assigned to Trebonius, Bithynia to Cimber, while the other Brutus received the part of Gaul around the Eridanus. After
this, when talk arose concerning Caesar's will and his funeral, and Antony's party demanded that the will be read out and that the body be carried out for burial neither hidden away nor dishonored, so that this too might not provoke the people, Cassius argued strongly against it, but Brutus yielded and agreed to it—which he later came to regard as his second mistake, for by sparing Antony he was thought to have
fortified against the conspiracy a heavy and hard-to-fight enemy, and by letting the funeral take place in the manner Antony demanded, he had ruined everything. For first, since in the will seventy-five drachmas had been given to every Roman, and to the people the gardens across the river had been left, where the temple of Fortune now stands, a remarkable goodwill and longing
for him seized the citizens. Then, when the body had been carried to the forum, Antony delivered a eulogy, as is the custom, and seeing the crowds stirred by his speech, he turned to lament, and taking up Caesar's bloodstained robe, unfolded it, displaying the gashes and the multitude of wounds. From that point nothing more was done in order: some cried out
for the killers to be put to death, while others—just as earlier in the case of Clodius the demagogue—tore benches and tables from the workshops, gathered them together, and heaped up an enormous pyre, and placing the body in its midst, set it ablaze in a place surrounded by many temples and many sacred and inviolable precincts. As the fire blazed up, people rushed in from every side, snatching half-burnt brands
and ran toward the houses of those who had killed him, intending to set them on fire. But those men, having fortified themselves well beforehand, beat back the danger. There was a certain Cinna, a man given to poetry, who had no part in the plot, but had in fact been a friend of Caesar's. This man dreamed that he was invited by Caesar to dinner and refused, but Caesar pressed him and used force, and at last, taking hold of his hand, led him into a vast
and dark place, while he himself, unwilling and bewildered, followed. Having seen this vision, it happened that he ran a fever through the night; nevertheless, at dawn, when the body was being carried out, feeling ashamed not to be present, he went out into the crowd, which had already grown savage. He was noticed there, and mistaken not for the Cinna he truly was but for another man who not long before had spoken abusively against Caesar in front of the assembly, and so was torn limb from limb. This calamity
most of all, coming after Antony's change of course, frightened Brutus and his companions, so that they left the city; in the beginning they took up residence at Antium, intending that once the anger had subsided and died down they would go back down to Rome again. This they expected would readily come about, given the unsteady and swift shifts of feeling among crowds, and given that they held the goodwill of the senate, which, letting those who had torn Cinna apart go unpunished, had
sought out and arrested those who had attacked the houses of those men. And now, since the people too were growing displeased, as Antony was setting himself up close to a monarchy, they longed for Brutus and expected that he himself would be present to put on the games which he, as praetor, owed them. But when he perceived that many of those who had served under Caesar, and had received land and cities from him, were plotting against him and creeping into the
city in small numbers, he did not dare to come; but the people watched the games in his absence, games provided with great and extravagant lavishness. For he had bought up a great many wild beasts and ordered that none be sold off or held back, but that all of them be used up; he himself meanwhile traveled down to Naples, where he met with most of the performers devoted to Dionysus. And concerning a certain Canutius, who was enjoying success on the stage, he wrote to his
friends asking them to persuade him to appear—for it was not fitting that any Greek be compelled. He also wrote to Cicero, asking him urgently to be present at the games. While affairs stood in such a condition, another change occurred, with the arrival of the young Caesar. This man was the son of Caesar's niece, and by the terms of the will had been left, in writing, as his son and heir. He was staying in Apollonia when Caesar was killed, occupied
with his studies and waiting for Caesar, who had already resolved to march against the Parthians at once. As soon as he learned of the calamity he came to Rome; and taking Caesar's name as the foundation of a bid for popular favor, and distributing among the citizens the money that had been left, he began to undermine Antony's standing and, by handing out money, won over and gathered together many of those who had served under Caesar. When Cicero, out of his hatred for Antony, began to act in Caesar's
interest, Brutus rebuked him sharply for this, writing that Cicero did not resent having a master, but feared one who hated him, and was pursuing a policy that chose a benevolent form of slavery, by writing and saying that Caesar was a good man. 'Our ancestors,' he says, 'did not put up with even mild masters.' As for himself, he said, at this point in time he had resolved neither to wage war outright nor to remain quiet, but had determined one thing only:
not to be a slave. He said he was amazed at Cicero, if he feared a civil and dangerous war but did not fear a shameful and inglorious peace, and demanded as his price for driving Antony out of his tyranny that Caesar be set up as tyrant. Such, then, was Brutus in his earliest letters; but now, with some siding with Caesar and others with Antony, and the armies being bought
as though under an auctioneer's call, going over to whoever offered more, he, utterly despairing of the state of affairs, resolved to leave Italy, and traveled on foot through Lucania to Elea on the sea. From there, as Porcia was about to turn back again to Rome, she tried to conceal how deeply she suffered, but a certain painting betrayed her, noble as she otherwise was. For there was, among the Greek paintings, a scene depicting Hector being sent off by Andromache, who was receiving
the child from him, while gazing at him. As Porcia looked upon this, the image of that suffering dissolved her into tears; and coming to it often during the day, she would weep. When a certain Acilius, one of Brutus's friends, recited the lines Andromache addresses to Hector— 'Hector, you are to me father and honored mother, and brother too, and you are my vigorous husband'— Brutus, smiling,
said, 'But it is not for me to say to Porcia the words of Hector, "tend to the loom and the distaff, and give orders to the maidservants"; for in body she falls short of the same feats of manly courage as others, but in spirit, on behalf of her country, she is as valiant as we are.' This is what Bibulus, Porcia's son, has recorded. Brutus, putting out to sea from there, sailed on toward Athens. When the people received
him warmly with acclamations and decrees, he lodged with a certain foreign host, and by attending the lectures of Theomnestus, head of the Academy, and Cratippus of the Peripatetic school, and taking part in their philosophical discussions, he seemed to be entirely at leisure and idle. But he was conducting his preparations for war without arousing suspicion. For he sent Herostratus into Macedonia to win over the officers of the armies stationed there, and he took in and kept together the young men who were idling away their time in the city of Rome.
Among them was Cicero's son, whom he praised especially, saying that whether he was awake or dreaming, he marveled at so noble a young man and so great a hater of tyrants. When Brutus began to take up affairs openly, and learned that Roman ships full of money were coming from Asia, with a general sailing on them, a charming and well-known man, he went to meet him near Carystus. Meeting him, persuading him, and taking over the ships, he gave a more splendid
reception. For it was the day on which Brutus had first been born. So when they came to drinking, they made libations to Brutus's victory and to the freedom of the Romans. Wanting to encourage them still further, he asked for a larger cup, and taking it, without any occasion, suddenly cried out this verse: "But deadly fate and the son of Leto slew me." And besides these things
they also report that when he went out to fight the last battle at Philippi, the watchword he gave to the soldiers was "Apollo." For this reason they count that exclamation as a sign of the disaster to come. Following that omen, Antistius handed over to him five hundred thousand drachmas from the funds he was carrying to Italy, and all the remnants of Pompey's army still roaming through Thessaly gladly joined his ranks
and he took away five hundred cavalry from Cinna, who was leading them to Dolabella in Asia. Sailing to Demetrias, where many weapons were being carried out to Antony — which had been made for the Parthian war by order of the elder Caesar — he seized them. When Hortensius the praetor handed Macedonia over to him, and the kings and rulers round about were joining and attaching themselves to him, word came that Gaius, Antony's brother, had crossed over from Italy
and was marching straight for the forces which Vatinius held together at Epidamnus and Apollonia. Brutus, wishing to forestall and get there first, suddenly roused those with him and marched through difficult country in a snowstorm; and he got well ahead of those bringing up the provisions. So when he came near Epidamnus, from exhaustion and cold he was struck with hunger-faintness. This condition falls especially upon men and animals laboring in snow,
whether because the body's heat, driven inward and compressed by the surrounding cold, consumes all the nourishment at once when it is all shut in together, or because a sharp, thin breath given off as the snow dissolves cuts into the body and destroys the heat by scattering it outward from within. For sweating seems to occur when the heat, meeting the cold at the surface, is quenched there. On these matters elsewhere
the difficulty is discussed more fully. When Brutus fainted, and no one in the camp had anything to eat, those with him were forced to flee to the enemy, and coming up to the gates, they asked the guards for bread. The guards, hearing of Brutus's condition, came out themselves bringing food and drink, and so, once Brutus had captured the city in exchange for that kindness, he treated not only these men,
but all the people generously for their sake. Gaius Antonius, attacking Apollonia, called to himself the soldiers who were nearby. But when these went over to Brutus instead, and he perceived that the people of Apollonia favored Brutus's cause, he abandoned the city and marched to Buthrotum. And first he lost three cohorts, cut down along the road by Brutus; then, attempting to force his way through the positions
already occupied around Byllis, and joining battle with Cicero, he was defeated. For Brutus employed this man as general and accomplished much through him. Having caught Gaius, scattered far apart in marshy ground, Brutus did not allow an attack, but rode around them, ordering his men to spare them, since before long they would belong to him. And that is exactly what happened: they gave themselves up along with their commander, with the result that Brutus already had a great
force around him. For a long time he kept Gaius in honor and did not strip him of the insignia of his office, although, as they say, many others, and Cicero especially, wrote from Rome urging him to kill him. But when Gaius secretly began to talk with the commanders and stirred up an attempt at revolution, Brutus put him on a ship and kept him under guard. When the corrupted soldiers revolted to Apollonia and called
Brutus there, he said this was not the ancestral custom of the Romans, but that they should go to their commander themselves and beg pardon for their offenses. And when they came and asked, he granted them forgiveness. As he was about to cross over into Asia, news came of the change in Rome: for the young Caesar had been raised up by the senate against Antony, and having driven
him out of Italy, he himself was now formidable, seeking the consulship contrary to law, and maintaining great armies though the city had no need of them. Seeing that the senate too was troubled by this and was looking to Brutus abroad, voting him honors and confirming his provinces, he grew afraid. So he sent to Antony offering friendship, and surrounding the city with his forces
he took the consulship, not yet quite a boy, but in his twentieth year, as he himself says in his memoirs. At once he brought charges of murder against Brutus's associates, as men who had killed, without trial, a man who had held the highest offices, and he set as accuser against Brutus Lucius Cornificius, and against Cassius Marcus Agrippa. So they were convicted in their absence, the jurors being forced to cast their votes,
and reportedly, once the herald, following custom, summoned Brutus from the platform to stand trial, the crowd let out an audible groan, while the most noble men lowered their heads to the ground and stayed silent, and Publius Silicius was observed weeping, a display that shortly afterward earned him a place among those condemned to death. Following that episode, the triumvirate of Caesar, Antony, and Lepidus, having reached a reconciliation,
divided the provinces among themselves and carried out the slaughter and proscription of two hundred men, among whom Cicero also died. When word of this reached Macedonia, Brutus, driven to it, wrote to Hortensius to kill Gaius Antonius, as if avenging both Brutus and Cicero — the one truly a friend, the other also a kinsman by blood. For this reason Antony later, having captured Hortensius at Philippi, slaughtered him at his brother's tomb.
Brutus, for his part, says he was ashamed of the cause of Cicero's death rather than grieved at the calamity itself, and that he blamed his friends in Rome: for they were enslaved by their own fault more than by that of the men who ruled them, and endured, seeing and being present, things which it would have been unbearable even to hear about. Having brought his army across into Asia, now grown splendid, he was fitting out a naval fleet
in Bithynia and around Cyzicus, while he himself advanced by land, establishing order in the cities and dealing with the local rulers, and he sent to Cassius in Syria, calling him back from Egypt: for they were not, he said, acquiring power for themselves, but freeing their country, and the force with which they meant to overthrow the tyrants was straying about being gathered together; they ought therefore to remember and keep to their purpose, and not remain far off from Italy, but
hasten there and help their fellow citizens. Cassius obeyed and, as he came down, Brutus went to meet him, and they encountered one another near Smyrna, for the first time since they had parted at Piraeus, one setting out for Syria, the other for Macedonia. There was great joy and confidence for each of them from the forces now at hand. For setting out from Italy like the most disgraced of exiles,
without money and without arms, having not one warship, not one soldier, not one city, after no very long time they had come together into the same place, matched in ships and infantry and cavalry and money, fit to contend for the leadership of the Romans. Cassius, then, wished to have equal honor and to grant it, but Brutus generally anticipated this by going to visit him himself,
since Cassius was older and could not endure exertion of body in the same way. There was a general opinion that Cassius was formidable in matters of war, but harsh in temper and ruled more by fear, while toward his intimates he was more relaxed, fond of a joke and given to mockery; but Brutus, they say, was loved by the many for his virtue, adored by his friends, admired by the
best men, and hated not even by his enemies, because the man was exceptionally gentle and great-minded, and untouched by anger, pleasure, or greed, and he kept his judgment upright and unbending, standing firm on behalf of what was noble and just; and what mattered most for the goodwill and reputation he enjoyed was the trust people had in his integrity of purpose. For not even that great Pompey, if
he had brought down Caesar, was confidently expected to hand over power to the laws, but rather always to keep hold of affairs, placating the people by calling it a consulship, a dictatorship, or whatever milder title for authority he chose; but this Cassius, a vehement and passionate man, often carried away toward gain rather than justice, people thought was fighting and wandering and taking risks, more than anyone else, in order to build up some dominion for himself, not
freedom for the citizens. For those still earlier than these men — the Cinnas, the Marii, the Carbos — set their country in the middle as a prize and as plunder, and fought all but openly for tyranny. But Brutus, they say, not even his enemies charged with such a reproach; indeed many even heard Antony saying that he believed Brutus alone had attacked Caesar led on by the splendor and apparent nobility
of the deed, while the rest banded together against the man out of hatred and envy. Hence Brutus is shown by what he writes to have trusted not so much in his power as in his virtue. He writes to Atticus, when already drawing near to the danger, that his affairs stand at the fairest point of fortune: for either, victorious, he will free the Roman people, or, dying, he will be delivered from slavery.
and while all their other circumstances stood secure and firm, one thing alone was uncertain: whether they would live in freedom or die. He says Marcus Antony is paying a fitting penalty for his folly, he who, though able to be numbered among the Brutuses and Cassiuses and Catos, has made himself an addition to Octavius: and even if he is not defeated now along with him, a little later he will fight against him. This indeed seems to have been a good prophecy about
the future. At Smyrna at that time he asked to share in the money which Cassius had gathered in great quantity, for he himself, he said, had spent all he had building so great a fleet, by which they would hold the whole sea within their power under themselves. Cassius's friends tried to stop him from giving it, saying it was not right that what you have saved by frugality and gathered at the cost of ill will he should take and use to court popularity and
gratify the soldiers. Nevertheless he gave him a third part of everything. And parting again, each to the tasks proper to him, Cassius, having taken Rhodes, did not treat affairs there with moderation, and indeed, when those entering addressed him as king and lord, he answered: "Neither king nor lord, but the killer and punisher of the king and lord." Brutus, meanwhile, from the Lycians
demanded money and troops. But when Naucrates the demagogue persuaded the cities to revolt, and they seized certain hills meaning to block Brutus's passage, first, while they were taking their meal, he sent cavalry against them, by whom six hundred were destroyed; then, taking their outposts and small towns, he released all of them without ransom, hoping to win over the nation by goodwill. But they were stubborn, resenting the harm done to them
in anger, and despising his fairness and humanity, until, having driven their most warlike men together into Xanthus, he laid siege to it. Since the river ran alongside the city, they attempted to get away by diving underwater and swimming through it. But they were caught by nets let down through the channel to the depths, whose ends, fitted with bells, at once signaled anyone caught in them. When the Xanthians made a night sortie with certain devices and threw in fire, so that the Romans were shut off
when the Romans became aware of it near the wall, and a strong wind fanned the flame onto the battlements, catching hold of the nearby houses, Brutus, fearing for the city, ordered his men to put it out and help. But the Lycians were seized by a sudden terrible impulse toward desperation, beyond words, which one might best compare to a passion for death, they who, together with their children and wives,
free and slave and every age, shot at the enemy who were helping against the flame from the walls, while they themselves, bringing reeds and wood and every kind of kindling, carried the fire on toward the city, offering it all manner of fuel and in every way stirring and feeding it. And when the flame, having spread and girded the city all around, blazed out mightily,
Brutus, in agony over what was happening, rode along outside the walls, eager to help, and stretched out his hands to the Xanthians, begging them to spare themselves and save the city; but no one paid him any attention, and instead they were destroying themselves by every means—not only the men and women, but even the small children, who with shouting and wailing leapt some into the fire, others from above
hurled themselves headlong from the walls, and others bared their throats and offered them to their fathers' swords, urging them to strike. And when the city had been destroyed, a woman was seen hanging from a noose, with her dead child fastened to her neck, and setting fire to her house with a burning torch. When this spectacle appeared, tragic as it was, Brutus could not bear to look at it, but wept on hearing of it, and
he proclaimed a reward for any soldier who could save a Lycian man alive. They say that only a hundred and fifty were found who did not escape being saved. So the Xanthians, after a long span of years, as if paying back a fated cycle of destruction, renewed by their recklessness the fortune of their ancestors—for they too, in the same way, in the time of the Persians, had burned their city and destroyed themselves. Brutus, seeing the city of the
Patarans standing firm against him, hesitated to attack and was in great doubt, fearing the same desperate madness; but having their women as captives, he released them without ransom. And they, being wives and daughters of prominent men, described Brutus to the others as a most temperate and just man, and persuaded them to yield and hand over the city. As a result of this, all the rest also came over, entrusting themselves
to him, and found him generous and, beyond their hopes, fair-minded—he who, while Cassius at the same time forced the Rhodians to bring in privately all the gold and silver they possessed (from which about eight thousand talents were gathered), and fined the city publicly another five hundred, from the Lycians he himself took just a hundred fifty talents as their sole levy, doing them no further harm, then set off for Ionia. Many indeed
were the deeds worthy of memory that he displayed, both in honors and in punishments of those who deserved them; but I will relate the one thing that most delighted him and the leading Romans. When Pompey the Great made for Egypt near Pelusium, at the time when, having lost his great power, he was fleeing from Caesar, the guardians of the king, who was still a boy, were in council with his friends, not agreeing
in their opinions. Some thought they should receive him, others that they should drive the man away from Egypt. But one Theodotus, a native of Chios hired as a paid rhetoric instructor in the king's service, who happened to sit in on the council that day since no abler men were on hand, announced that neither party had it right—not the men pressing for Pompey's reception, nor those pressing for his rejection. For there was, he said, one course of advantage in the present circumstances: to receive him and then kill him. And
he added, as he finished speaking, that a dead man does not bite. When the council adopted this opinion, Pompey the Great lay there, an example of things unbelievable and unexpected—the work of Theodotus's rhetorical skill and cleverness, as the sophist himself used to boast. A little later, when Caesar arrived, those who had done the deed perished miserably, paying the penalty, while Theodotus, borrowing time from fortune, into an obscure and
destitute and wandering life, did not then escape the notice of Brutus, who was passing through Asia; but he was arrested and punished, and gained more fame from his death than from his life. Brutus summoned Cassius to Sardis, and went out to meet him as he approached with his friends; and the whole army, under arms, hailed them both as imperator. But as happens in great affairs, when many friends and commanders are involved, accusations
and slanders had arisen between the two of them, and before doing anything else, as soon as they arrived they went by themselves into a room, and with the doors shut and no one present, they first traded reproaches, then charges and accusations. From this they moved to tears and outspoken words carried along by passion, and their friends, amazed at the harshness of their anger and its intensity, feared that something might come
of it—but they had been forbidden to approach. Marcus Favonius, who had been a devoted admirer of Cato, practicing philosophy not so much by reason as by a certain impulse and mad passion, walked in toward them, though the servants tried to stop him. But it was no easy task to restrain Favonius when he had rushed at something, for he was violent in everything and quick to act, since he considered himself, though a senator of Rome, worth nothing at all; and with the
Cynic's frankness he often took away the harshness of his outspokenness, and men received his untimeliness as a joke. So then, forcing his way past those present, he pushed open the doors and went in, reciting in an affected voice the verses which Homer has Nestor use: 'But obey; both of you are younger men than I,' and so on. At this Cassius laughed, but Brutus threw
him out, calling him a shameless dog and a false dog. Still, at that moment they made this the end of their quarrel with each other, and immediately parted. And when Cassius was giving a dinner, Brutus invited his friends, and when they were already reclining, Favonius arrived, freshly bathed. Brutus protested that he had not been invited, and ordered him taken to the topmost couch, but Favonius forced his way past and reclined in the middle one; and the
drinking party had its share of wit that was neither graceless nor unphilosophical. The next day Brutus condemned and disgraced a Roman who had held the praetorship and had been trusted by him—Lucius Pella—when the Sardians accused him publicly of theft; and this matter distressed Cassius more than moderately. For he himself, only a few days before, having privately reproved two friends convicted of the same offenses, had openly let them go and continued to make use of them, and for this reason he blamed
Brutus as being too rigidly legalistic and just, at a time when the political situation demanded flexibility and generosity. Brutus answered by telling him to keep in mind that day in March, the Ides, when together they had struck Caesar down—not because Brutus himself had been steering and plundering the entire world, but because he had been the power behind others who were doing these things; so that, if there is any fine pretext by which justice is neglected, it would have been better to put up with Caesar's
friends than to overlook their own men doing wrong. 'For those men will be charged with cowardice, but we bear the reputation of injustice along with dangers and hardships.' Such, then, was the principle by which Brutus lived. Just before the army was due to make the crossing out of Asia, a great portent is said to have come to Brutus. By nature the man was wakeful, and through discipline and
self-control he had reduced his sleep to a small portion of time, never sleeping during the day at all, and at night only so much as, with everyone else at rest, allowed him neither to act nor to converse with anyone; but at that time, with the war under way, holding in his hands the affairs of the whole cause, and his mind stretched taut toward the future, whenever he first began to nod off in the evening over his food, he would then spend the rest of the night on the pressing matters
of business, and if he managed to finish and settle what needed attention, he would take up a book and read until the third watch, the hour when it was customary for the centurions and tribunes to present themselves before him. So then, as he was about to bring the army across from Asia, it was the dead of night, and the tent had only a dim light, and the whole camp was held in silence. And he, reasoning something out
and considering it within himself, thought he perceived someone entering, and looking toward the entrance he saw a dreadful and strange apparition of a monstrous and terrifying body, standing silently beside him. Daring to ask it, 'Who are you,' he said, 'of men or of gods, or what do you wish, that you have come to me?' The phantom answered him in a low voice: 'I am your evil spirit, Brutus. You will see me
at Philippi.' And Brutus, not disturbed, said, 'I shall see you.' When it had vanished, he called his attendants; and when they said they had heard no voice and seen no vision, he then kept watch the rest of the night; but once dawn came he sought out Cassius and gave him an account of what he had seen. Cassius, who followed the teachings of Epicurus and was accustomed to argue with Brutus about such matters, said, 'This is our
doctrine, Brutus: that we do not perceive or see all things truly, but perception is a fluid and deceptive thing, and the mind is still quicker to set itself in motion and change from nothing that actually exists into every kind of image. For the impression is like wax, and the soul of a human being, having in itself both what is molded and what molds, can most easily diversify and shape itself
through its own agency, as the transformations of dreams in sleep make clear—dreams into which the imaginative faculty turns, starting from a slight impulse, becoming all sorts of feelings and images. It is by nature always in motion, and its motion is a kind of fantasy or thought. And in your case, your body, worn out with hardship, naturally makes your mind unsteady and prone to distraction. As for spirits, it is not plausible that they exist, or that, if they do exist,
they have a human form, or voice, or any power that reaches to us. I myself would have wished it were otherwise, so that we might take courage not only from so many weapons, horses, and ships, but also from the help of the gods, being leaders in the holiest and finest of undertakings.' With such words Cassius tried to soothe Brutus. As the soldiers were embarking behind the leading standards, two eagles swooped down together and were carried along with them,
and they accompanied the army, being fed by the soldiers, all the way to Philippi, but there, one day before the battle, they flew off and departed. Now most of the nearby peoples had already been made subject to Brutus. And if any city or ruler had been left out, they now brought them all in, and advanced as far as the sea near Thasos. There, finding Norbanus and his men encamped
at the place called the Narrows and around Symbolon, they surrounded them and forced them to withdraw and abandon their positions, and came close to capturing their entire force as well, since Caesar had been left behind by illness—had not Antony come to the rescue with astonishing speed, so that even Brutus's men could scarcely believe it. Caesar arrived ten days later and encamped opposite Brutus, and Antony opposite Cassius. The plain between
the two camps the Romans call the plains of Philippi; and never before had such great Roman forces come together against one another. In numbers, Brutus's side was not by much inferior to Caesar's, but in the splendor and adornment of their arms Brutus's army appeared marvelous, for most of their weapons were gold and silver, lavishly supplied, even though in other respects Brutus accustomed his commanders
to a temperate and disciplined way of life. But he thought that wealth carried close at hand and about one's person gave a certain pride to the more ambitious men, and made the more greedy ones more warlike, since they clung to their weapons as if to their own possessions. Now Caesar's men, having held a purification ceremony in their camp, distributed a little grain and five drachmas per man for the sacrifice, but Brutus's men,
looking down on them for this poverty or stinginess, first purified the army in the open, as is customary, then distributed great numbers of sacrificial victims by company, and fifty drachmas to each man, and so had the advantage in the goodwill and eagerness of their forces. Nevertheless, in the purification ceremony an ill omen seemed to occur for Cassius, for the lictor brought him his garland turned upside down. It is said
also that on an earlier occasion, at a certain festival and procession, a golden Victory belonging to Cassius fell, when the man carrying it slipped; and further, that day after day birds which feed on carrion hovered above the encampment, while a cluster of bees was spotted swarming at one point within the rampart, which the seers, out of religious caution, fenced off—a fear that, quietly and drawn from the teachings of Epicurus, was carrying Cassius himself along with it,
while it had wholly enslaved the soldiers. For this reason he was not eager, for the present, to have the decision made through battle, but thought it best to draw out the war over time, since they were strong in money but inferior in numbers of arms and men. Brutus, on the other hand, had for some time been eager to be decided by the swiftest of risks, whether to recover freedom for his country or to free all mankind from the troubles that beset them with expenses, campaigns, and
impositions; and now, seeing his own cavalry succeeding and prevailing in the skirmishes and advance engagements, his confidence was raised; and certain desertions to the enemy that occurred, and slanders against some, and suspicions, moved many of Cassius's friends in the council over to Brutus's side. But one of Brutus's own friends, Atillius, opposed this, saying that at least through the winter
telling him to wait. When someone asked Brutus whether he thought he would be better off a year from now, he said, "If nothing else, I will have lived a longer time." At this Cassius grew displeased, and Atillius offended the rest more than a little. It had, in any case, been decided to give battle the next day. Brutus, full of fine hopes and philosophical reasoning, rested through dinner; but Messala says that Cassius dined
apart by himself, bringing along only a small handful of close friends, and appeared pensive and silent, though this was not his nature. When dinner was over he took Messala's hand and, gripping it hard, said in Greek, as was his affectionate custom, "I call you to witness, Messala, that I am suffering the same fate as Pompey the Great, being forced to stake the fortune of our country on a single battle. Yet let us keep good courage as we look toward
Fortune, even though it is not right to distrust her merely because our plans have gone badly." Having said this, Messala says, Cassius embraced him last of all — he had also been invited to dine with him the next day, which was his birthday. At daybreak the signal for battle, a scarlet tunic, was set up before both Brutus's and Cassius's camps, while the two men themselves met between the armies and
Cassius said, "May it be, Brutus, that we win and spend all the rest of our time together in good fortune; but since the greatest of human affairs are the most uncertain, and if the battle is decided against our judgment it will not be easy for us to see each other again, what do you think about flight and death?" And Brutus answered, "Being young, Cassius, and inexperienced in affairs, I do not know how, in philosophy,
I let slip a rash statement. I blamed Cato for killing himself, on the ground that it was neither pious nor manly to give way before the divine and not accept without fear whatever befalls, but instead to run away from it. Now, however, in my present fortune I find myself of a different mind: if God does not judge well in the present situation, I have no need to go on testing other hopes and preparations, but will depart praising Fortune. On the Ides of March,
I gave my life to my country, and lived, because of her, another and free and glorious life since then." At this Cassius smiled, and embracing Brutus said, "With these thoughts let us march out against the enemy; for we shall either win the day, or need fear nothing from those who do." After this they discussed with their friends present the order of battle, and Brutus asked to lead the right wing himself, which by reason of experience
and age they thought belonged rather to Cassius. Nevertheless Cassius yielded this to him as well, and ordered Messala, whose legion was the most battle-hardened, to hold the position on the right side. Brutus immediately brought forward his cavalry, magnificently arrayed, and formed up his infantry without delay. Antony's men happened to be digging trenches from the marshes, around which they were encamped, out into the plain, and
cutting off Cassius's roads to the sea. Caesar lay in wait, not present himself owing to illness, but his forces were, not expecting the enemy to fight at all, but only to make sallies against the works and harass the diggers with light missiles and shouting; and paying no attention to those drawn up opposite, they were astonished at the shouting near the trenches, indiscernible in meaning yet loud and continuous.
Meanwhile, as dispatches were going round from Brutus to the officers with the watchword written on them, and he himself was riding past the ranks encouraging them, few managed to hear the watchword being passed along; most, without waiting, charged the enemy with a single rush and battle-cry. And from this disorder came unevenness and a tearing apart of the ranks, and Messala's
division first, then the units joined to it, passed by Caesar's left wing, and grazing its outermost edge and cutting down not many, but outflanking it, they burst into the camp. And Caesar himself, as he tells in his memoirs, had been carried out just a little before, on account of a friend of his, Marcus Artorius, who had seen a dream in his sleep bidding Caesar rise and withdraw from the camp; he was thought to have died.
For they drove their javelins and pikes through his empty litter. There was slaughter in the camp among those captured, and two thousand Lacedaemonians who had recently arrived as allies were cut down along with them. But those who, instead of surrounding Caesar's men, simply fell upon them, easily routed them in their confusion, and destroyed three legions hand to hand, and burst into the camp together with the fleeing men, carried along by the momentum of victory, having with
them Brutus himself. What the victors did not perceive, the occasion showed to the defeated. For pressing into the exposed and broken places of the opposing line, where the right wing had been torn away in pursuit, they pushed in but did not drive out the center, though they were locked in a great struggle there; but the left wing, confused and unaware of what had occurred, was put to flight by them, and chasing it back to the camp
they sacked it, with neither commander present. For Antony, as they say, had turned aside from the assault at the start and withdrawn into the marsh, and Caesar was nowhere to be seen, having gotten out of the camp; but some showed Brutus their bloodied swords, claiming to have killed him, describing the appearance and age he had. By now the center had driven back the opposing line with great slaughter, and it seemed altogether
that Brutus was victorious, just as Cassius seemed to be defeated. And this alone ruined their cause: that the one did not go to help Cassius, thinking himself already victorious, and the other did not wait for Brutus, thinking him already lost. As for the marker of victory, Messala counts as evidence the capture of three eagles and numerous standards seized from the enemy, whereas the enemy captured none from their side. As Brutus was withdrawing, now that Caesar's
camp had already been sacked, he was surprised not to see Cassius's headquarters standing high, as was its custom, visible all around, nor the rest of it in its place; for most of it had already been thrown down and pulled apart when the enemy burst in. But those of his companions who seemed to have sharper sight told him they saw many helmets gleaming, and many silver shields moving about in Cassius's camp; and it did not seem to them that either the number or
the equipment matched what would be left of a mere guard, nor did the number of corpses beyond seem as great as would be expected from so many legions defeated by force. This first gave Brutus a suspicion of the disaster; and leaving a guard at the enemy's camp, he called back those in pursuit and gathered them, intending to go to Cassius's aid. But the state of his own affairs was such that neither the first
charge of Brutus's men, made without watchword or command, had pleased him, nor, when after their victory they rushed at once to plunder and profit, neglecting to go round and encircle the enemy, was he satisfied with what was done. Through some delay and hesitation rather than eagerness and calculation on the part of the commanders, he was surrounded by the enemy's right wing; and when his cavalry at once broke away in flight toward the sea,
seeing also his infantry giving way, he tried to hold them and rally them. Snatching the standard from one standard-bearer who was fleeing, he planted it before his own feet, though not even the men stationed around his own person any longer stood by him with any eagerness. Thus forced back, he withdrew with a few men to a hill that had a view over the plain. But he himself could make out nothing except, with difficulty, the camp being plundered — for
his eyesight was weak — while the horsemen with him saw many riders approaching, whom Brutus had sent. Cassius supposed them to be enemies pursuing him. Nevertheless he sent one of those present, Titinius, to see. This man's approach did not go unnoticed by the riders, but as soon as they saw a man who was a friend and loyal to Cassius, they cried out for joy; his acquaintances among them embraced him
and greeted him, leaping down from their horses, while the rest rode around him in a circle with paeans and clamor, and by this excess of joy brought about the greatest of calamities. For Cassius thought that Titinius was truly being seized by the enemy, and saying just this — "Out of love of life we waited to see a friend fall captive to the enemy" — he retreated into an unoccupied tent, dragging along with him one
of his freedmen, Pindarus, whom he had kept ready for just this necessity ever since the disaster at Crassus's defeat. He had escaped the Parthians then; but now, drawing his cloak over his head and baring his neck, he offered it to be cut off. His head was found apart from his body, but no one ever saw Pindarus again after the killing, which gave
some the idea that he had killed the man without being ordered to. A little later the riders became visible, and Titinius, crowned by them, rode up to Cassius. But when, from the weeping and shouting of his lamenting and distressed friends, he learned the commander's fate and his mistake, he drew his sword, and after much reproach of his own slowness, killed himself. Brutus, having learned
of Cassius's defeat, was riding toward him, and heard of his death when already close to the camp. He wept over the body, and calling Cassius the last of the Romans, on the ground that Rome could no longer produce a spirit of such greatness, he had it wrapped and sent away to Thasos, so that its burial there might cause no disturbance. He himself then gathered the soldiers and comforted them; and seeing them all deprived
of necessities, he promised each man two thousand drachmas in place of what had been lost. At this they took heart from his words and marveled at the size of the gift; and they escorted him away with shouts of praise, hailing him as the sole commander among the four who had remained unbeaten in the battle. And the outcome bore witness that he had rightly believed he would prevail in the battle; for with only a few legions he routed
all who stood against him. And if he had used all his forces for the battle, and most of his men had not gone past the enemy in pursuit of plunder, it seems that no part of his army would have been left unconquered. Of his men there fell eight thousand, counting the camp servants who served in the army, whom Brutus called Bryges; of the enemy Messala says he believes more than twice that number fell, which is why they were even more discouraged —
those men, before a servant of Cassius named Demetrius reached Antony in the evening, having taken the cloak and the sword straight from the corpse. When these were brought, they took such heart that at daybreak they led out their armed forces for battle. Brutus, with both camps wavering precariously — for his own was crowded with prisoners and needed close guarding, while Cassius's men found the change
of commander hard to bear, and indeed there was in them, defeated as they were, a certain envy and hatred toward the victorious side — he decided to arm his army, but held back from battle. Of the prisoners, he ordered the mass of slaves, who were suspiciously mixed in among the arms, to be put to death; but of the free men he released some, saying that they had been captured by the enemy rather than
and were slaves there, but with him were free men and citizens. But when he saw his friends and officers implacably set against them, he saved them by hiding them and sending them away secretly. There was a certain Volumnius, a mime actor, and Sacculio, a jester, who had been captured, whom the friends brought before Brutus and accused, though he thought nothing of the matter, saying that even now they did not refrain from speaking and mocking to insult them. When
Brutus, occupied with other concerns, said nothing, Messala Corvinus demanded that they be scourged and handed over naked on a platform to the enemy's generals, so that they might know what sort of messmates and companions their soldiers wanted. Some of those present laughed, but Publius Casca, the first to strike Caesar, said, "It is not right, while Cassius lies dead, that we honor his memory with jesting and buffoonery. As for you,"
he said, "Brutus, you will show what regard you have for the memory of your commander, either by punishing or by keeping safe those who mock and speak ill of him." At this Brutus, quite displeased, said, "Why then do you ask me, Casca, instead of doing what you yourselves have decided?" Taking this answer as consent against the wretched men, they led them off and put them to death. After this he restored the promised gift to the
soldiers, and after a mild rebuke to them for charging the enemy in disorder without waiting for the watchword or command, he promised those who fought well that he would give over two cities for plunder and profit, Thessalonica and Sparta. This is the one charge against Brutus's life that has no defense — although far worse rewards of victory were paid to their soldiers by Antony and Caesar, who all but handed over nearly the whole of Italy
driving out the old inhabitants, so that they might seize land and cities that did not belong to them. But for these men the outcome that awaited was simply to rule and to prevail, whereas for Brutus, because of his reputation for virtue, the majority would allow him neither to win nor to survive except together with honor and justice — and this though Cassius was already dead, the man who had borne the blame for driving even Brutus into some of the harsher measures.
But just as when a rudder is smashed at sea men try to nail on and fit other timbers, not well, but out of necessity, fighting against the need, so Brutus, in so great a force and in circumstances so unsettled, having no general of equal weight, was compelled to make use of the men at hand and to do and say much of what pleased them. And it seemed that all the measures they thought would make Cassius's soldiers better were hard to manage,
for they were, in the camp, made bold by lack of discipline, but against the enemy, cowardly because of their defeat. Nor were things any better for Caesar and Antony, who were using up their supplies of necessities and, because of the low ground of their camp, were expecting a wretched winter. For being encamped near marshes, and after the battle when the autumn rains came on, they filled their tents with mud
and with water that froze at once from the cold. While they were in this condition, a report reached them of a disaster that had befallen their fleet at sea. For Brutus's ships, falling upon a great convoy being brought from Italy by Caesar, destroyed it, and of those who altogether escaped the enemy, only a few survived, eating the sails and ropes out of hunger. Hearing this, they hastened to have the matter decided by battle
before Brutus should perceive the extent of the good fortune that had befallen him. Indeed, as luck would have it, on one and the same day the two contests, on land and at sea, were both decided. But by some chance rather than through the fault of the commanders of the ships, Brutus remained ignorant of the success for twenty days. For he would not otherwise have advanced to a second battle, having prepared what was necessary for his army
for a long time, and being established in a strong position, so that his camp was both unaffected by winter and hard for the enemy to force, while being firmly master of the sea and having won, so far as concerned himself, on land — he had come to have great hopes and confidence. But since, as it seems, affairs were no longer manageable by the many, but required a monarchy, god, wishing to remove and
displace the one man who alone stood in the way of the man able to rule, cut off that piece of fortune, though it came very near to not escaping Brutus's notice. For on the day before the fighting was to begin, when evening had already come on, a certain Clodius, a deserter from the enemy, arrived, announcing that Caesar's men, having perceived that the fleet had been destroyed, were hastening to force a decisive battle. Speaking these things, the man was not believed, nor
did he even come into Brutus's sight, being altogether disregarded as one who had heard nothing sound but was reporting falsehoods to please. But that same night, they say, the apparition again came into Brutus's sight, and showing the same appearance, said nothing, but departed. Publius Volumnius, a philosopher and comrade-in-arms with Brutus from the beginning, does not report this
sign, but says that the first eagle became full of bees; and that the arm of one of the captains, of its own accord, burst forth with rose oil, and that though they wiped and rubbed it many times, it accomplished nothing. And before the battle itself, two eagles fell upon each other and fought in the space between the camps, and the plain held an unbelievable silence as everyone watched, and the one belonging to
Brutus gave way and fled. The Ethiopian became notorious, who, when the gate was opened, met the man carrying the eagle and was cut down with swords by the soldiers, who took it as an omen. Brutus, having led forward the phalanx and drawn it up facing the enemy, held back for a long time; for suspicions and reports against certain men kept coming to him as he inspected the army, and he saw that the cavalry were not at all eager
to begin the fighting, but were always waiting for the work of the infantry. Then suddenly a man skilled in war and distinguished for courage, riding out from beside Brutus, deserted to the enemy's side — a man named Camulatus. Seeing this, Brutus was struck with strong pain, and partly out of anger, partly out of fear of a greater defection and betrayal, he led his forces at once against the enemy, when the sun was already declining toward the ninth hour.
As for the part opposite himself, he prevailed and advanced, pressing upon the enemy's left wing as it gave way; and the cavalry, joining in, charged together with the infantry against the enemy who were now in confusion. But the other wing, in order not to be encircled, since the commanders extended it further while it was inferior in numbers, was torn apart in the middle, and becoming weak, could not hold out against the enemy, but fled first, and those who had cut through
at once encircled Brutus, who, though he displayed as much of a general's and a soldier's virtue as anyone could, both by hand and by judgment, amid the dangers, in pursuit of victory, was harmed by the very thing in which he had had the advantage in the earlier battle. For of the enemy, the side that was beaten there perished at once; but of Cassius's men who had been routed, few were destroyed, and those who survived, being terrified from their previous defeat,
filled most of the army with discouragement and confusion. There, too, Marcus, the son of Cato, fighting among the best and noblest of the young men, and being overpowered, did not flee nor yield, but using his hand and declaring who he was, naming his father, fell upon many corpses of the enemy; and the bravest of the others also fell, of
Brutus's men, facing the danger before him. There was a certain Lucilius, a good man among his companions; this man, seeing some barbarian horsemen in the pursuit paying no attention to anyone else but riding recklessly straight at Brutus, resolved to risk himself and stand in their way. And, falling a little behind, he himself said that he was Brutus; and he was believed when he begged to be brought to Antony, as though fearing Caesar,
but trusting Antony. They, welcoming their find and thinking they had had some marvelous stroke of fortune, brought the man along, it being already dark, having sent some of their own number ahead as messengers to Antony. Antony himself, then, delighted, went out to meet those bringing him, and the others, on learning that Brutus was being brought back alive, ran together, some considering his fortune pitiable, others thinking it unworthy of his fame, a prey seized by barbarians
brought about through love of life. When they were near, Antony halted, uncertain how he ought to greet Brutus; but Lucilius, brought before him and showing no lack of confidence, said, "Marcus Brutus, Antony, no enemy has taken and none ever will take; may fortune never so far prevail over virtue. He will be found either alive, or, if dead, lying in a manner worthy of himself. As for me, I have
come having deceived your soldiers, and I ask to suffer none of the irreparable penalties for it." When Lucilius had said this, and everyone was astonished, Antony, looking toward those who had brought him, said, "I suppose, fellow soldiers, you are taking this hard, thinking yourselves cheated by the mistake. But know well that you have caught something better than the prey you were seeking. For you came seeking an enemy, and you bring me a friend instead. As for Brutus, I do not know,
by the gods, what I would have done with him alive; but I would rather gain such men as friends than as enemies." Having said this, and embracing Lucilius, he entrusted him for the time to one of his friends, and afterward, employing him in everything, found him faithful and steadfast to the end. Brutus, meanwhile, having crossed a certain wooded and steep-banked stream, since darkness had already fallen, did not press on much farther, but settled himself in a hollow spot
with a great rock lying before it, only a few officers and friends being around him. First, looking up at the sky, which was full of stars, he uttered two verses, one of which Volumnius recorded: "Zeus, let him not escape you who is the cause of these evils" — but he says he forgot the other. A little later, naming each of the companions who had fallen in the battle before him,
he groaned most of all at the memory of Flavius and of Labeo. Labeo had been his legate, and Flavius the prefect of the engineers. Meanwhile someone, thirsty himself and noticing that Brutus was in the same state, grabbed a helmet and hurried down toward the river. As a noise arose on the other side, Volumnius went forward to look, and with him Dardanus the shield-bearer; and when they came back
shortly after, they asked about the drink, and Brutus, smiling very much in his usual manner, said to Volumnius, "It has been drunk up, but another will be brought to you." The same man was sent again, and was in danger of being captured by the enemy, and barely escaped, wounded. When Brutus guessed that not many had died in the battle, Statyllius undertook to force his way through the enemy — since there was no other means of viewing
the camp — to raise a torch if he found things there safe, and then to come back to him. The torch was in fact raised when Statyllius had gotten through into the camp, but when he had not come back even after a considerable while, Brutus remarked, "Should Statyllius be alive, he will come back." It happened, however, that on his way back he fell in with the enemy and was killed. As the night wore on, Brutus, leaning back where he happened to be sitting, spoke
to his servant Clitus. As Clitus was silent and weeping, he drew Dardanus the shield-bearer aside and said certain things to him privately. Finally he reminded Volumnius himself, in Greek, of their studies and their training together, and urged him to lay hold of the sword with his hand and help drive home the blow. When Volumnius refused, and the others likewise, and someone said that
they must not stay but flee, Brutus, rising, said, "Yes indeed, we must flee — not with our feet, though, but with our hands." And clasping each man's right hand, very cheerfully, he declared it gave him deep satisfaction that not one of his friends had turned traitor to him, and that he had a complaint against fortune only on his country's behalf; and he considered himself more blessed than those who had conquered, not
only yesterday or the day before, but even now, in that he was leaving behind a reputation for virtue which those who had prevailed would never leave behind by arms or by wealth, so that it would not seem that unjust and wicked men, having destroyed good and just men, ruled rightfully. After asking them, and urging them besides, to look to their own safety, he moved off a short distance with two or three others, among whom was Strato, who had become his friend through the study of rhetoric,
and, placing this man closest beside himself, and setting the naked sword's hilt against his own hands, both together, he fell upon it and died. Others say that it was not he himself but Strato, at Brutus's earnest entreaty, who, turning away his face, held the sword steady; and that Brutus, rushing forward against it, drove it into his chest, and died quickly. This Strato, Messala,
who had been a companion of Brutus, later, having reconciled with Caesar, brought before him at a leisure moment, and, in tears, said, "This is the man, Caesar, who did my Brutus the last service." Caesar, welcoming him, kept him among the good Greeks around him, both in his labors and in the struggles at Actium; and Messala himself, they say, was later praised by
Caesar because, although he had become his bitterest enemy at Philippi on account of Brutus, at Actium he showed himself most eager on his behalf. "I, indeed," he said, "Caesar, have always sided with the better and more just cause and party." As for Brutus, Antony, on finding him dead, ordered that the corpse be covered with the finest and most expensive of his own purple robes, but later, learning that the cloak had been stolen, he put to death the man who had taken it.
The remains he sent to Brutus's mother Servilia. As for Porcia, Brutus's wife, Nicolaus the philosopher and Valerius Maximus record that, wishing to die, since none of her friends would allow it, but they pressed round and kept close watch over her, she snatched up burning coals from the fire and swallowed them, and closing and holding shut her mouth, so died. And yet there is in circulation a letter of Brutus to his friends
reproaching them and lamenting over Porcia, on the ground that she had been neglected by them and, because of illness, had chosen to leave life. It seems, then, that Nicolaus was mistaken about the time, since the suffering and the woman's love and the manner of her death are, in fact, suggested even by the little letter itself, if indeed it is genuine.

======== Comparison Of Dion And Brutus ========

Now while many fine qualities belonged to these men, it is among the very finest that Dion achieved the greatest things from the smallest resources. For he did not have a rival to share the credit, as Brutus had Cassius — a man not equally trustworthy for virtue and reputation, but one who contributed no fewer resources to the war in daring, skill, and action, so that some even ascribe to him the beginning of the
whole enterprise, saying that he was the one who set the resolve against Caesar in motion for the still-hesitating Brutus. Dion, by contrast, appears to have acquired for himself, on his own, not only arms and ships and a military force, but also the friends and helpers for his undertaking. Nor, further, did Dion, like Brutus, gain wealth and power out of the very course of events and the war itself; rather
Dion advanced his own wealth in support of the war beforehand, spending in advance the resources of his exile for the sake of his fellow citizens' freedom. Moreover, Brutus and Cassius, since it was not safe for them to remain quiet once expelled from Rome, but they had been condemned to death and were being pursued, took refuge in war out of necessity, and having committed their persons to arms, ran their risk more on their own behalf
than on behalf of their fellow citizens. Dion, on the other hand, living in exile more fearlessly and more pleasantly than the tyrant who had banished him, willingly took on so great a danger for the sake of saving Sicily. And indeed it is not the same thing for the Syracusans to be freed of Dionysius as for the Romans to be freed of Caesar. For the former did not even deny that he was a tyrant, and had filled Sicily with countless evils, whereas Caesar's rule, while it was being established, did cause
no small trouble to those who opposed it, yet to those who accepted it and were mastered by it, it appeared to be only a name and a semblance, while in actual deed nothing harsh or tyrannical came of it; rather, to affairs that stood in need of monarchy it seemed that a most gentle physician had been given by heaven itself. For this reason the Roman people at once longed for Caesar, so that they became harsh and implacable toward his killers, whereas for Dion, the removal of Dionysius
from Syracuse, and his failure to tear down the tomb of the former tyrant, became the very things that made him most blamed by the citizens. Now, in the actual conduct of the wars themselves, Dion proved a blameless general — handling matters most excellently as far as his own planning went, and whatever setbacks occurred through others he took in hand and turned to the better. Brutus, on the other hand, in the final struggle for
everything, seems neither to have stood his ground wisely nor, having failed, to have found a way to set things right, but he yielded and let go of his hopes, daring less against fortune than even Pompey had dared — and this though much hope still remained there in arms, while by his ships he held firm mastery of the whole sea. But the gravest charge they bring against Brutus is this: that though he was saved by Caesar's favor, and though he saved as many of his fellow captives as he wished,
being counted a friend and honored above many, he became the very slayer of the man who saved him. This one could not say against Dion; quite the opposite — being related to Dionysius and his friend, he set his affairs right and helped preserve them; but once cast out of his homeland, wronged in the matter of his wife, and stripped of his property, he entered openly upon a war that was just and rightful. Or
does this reverse the case first? For that which stands as the greatest praise for these men, hatred of tyrants and detestation of wickedness, this is pure and unmixed in Brutus; for he held no personal quarrel with Caesar, yet staked his own life in advance for the freedom of all. Dion, however, would not have gone to war had he not himself suffered ill, and this is made plain by Plato's letters, from which it is clear that
having been cast out of the tyranny, not having voluntarily withdrawn, he brought down Dionysius. Further, the common advantage made Brutus a friend even to Pompey, though he was his enemy, and an enemy to Caesar, since he used one and the same standard, justice, as the measure of both enmity and friendship; whereas Dion, out of favor, set many things right for Dionysius while he was steadfast toward him, and when he was distrusted, made war on him out of anger. For this reason not even all his friends trusted him,
believing that, having removed Dionysius, he would not fail to secure the rule for himself, having led the citizens along under the gentler name of a milder tyranny than before; but concerning Brutus, even his enemies would say that alone among those who joined in the deed against Caesar, he set before himself, from beginning to end, one single aim: to restore to the Romans their ancestral form of government. Yet apart from all this, the struggle against Dionysius was surely not comparable to that against
Caesar. For as regards Dionysius, there was no one who would not have despised a man who spent the greater part of his time among his intimates in drinking, dice, and women; but to conceive in one's mind the overthrow of Caesar, and not to fear his formidable power and fortune — a man whose very name would not let the kings of the Parthians and the Indians sleep — this was the work of a soul of surpassing greatness, and one that could yield
nothing of its resolve to fear. For this reason, when Dion merely appeared in Sicily, no small number of tens of thousands rallied against Dionysius; but Caesar's reputation, even after he had fallen, upheld his friends, and his very name raised the one who bore it — from a helpless boy — at once to be first among the Romans, since he wrapped himself in it as an antidote against the enmity and power of Antony. But if someone should say that
Dion needed many hard struggles before he expelled the tyrant, whereas Brutus struck down Caesar while he was defenseless and without weapons, then that very fact was itself a feat of the utmost skill and generalship — to catch a man wrapped in so great a power unguarded and unarmed. For he did not fall upon him and destroy him suddenly, alone or with a few companions, but having composed the plan over a long time and having attacked with many, none of whom betrayed him — either
he judged the best men from the start, or by his choosing them he made those he trusted good. Dion, on the other hand, whether by judging badly he entrusted himself to wicked men, or by his associating with them turned good men into wicked ones, neither outcome was fitting for a prudent man to suffer. Plato too rebukes him for choosing such friends, by whom he was destroyed. And for Dion no avenger appeared after his fall; but Brutus, even among his enemies, Antony
buried with honor, and Caesar preserved his honors as well. There stands a bronze statue of him in Mediolanum, in the Gaul this side of the Alps; Caesar, seeing this statue afterward — a good likeness and gracefully wrought — passed it by; then, having stopped a little later, with many listening, he called for the magistrates, declaring that he had found their city to be in breach of treaty, since it harbored an enemy of his among them. At first, as was natural,
they denied it, and being at a loss as to whom he meant, they looked at one another. But when Caesar turned toward the statue and, drawing his face together, said, "But does not this man, an enemy of ours, stand here?" — they were struck with even greater consternation and fell silent. He, however, smiling, praised the Gauls for being steadfast to their friends even against fortune, and ordered the statue
to remain in its place.

======== Aratus ========

Fearing, I think, its ill-omened tone, Polycrates, the philosopher Chrysippus does not quote a certain old proverb as it actually runs, but as he himself thought better: "Who will praise a father, if not fortunate sons?" But Dionysodorus of Troezen, refuting him, sets against it the true version, which runs: "Who will praise a father, if not wretched sons?"
And he says that men who are worth nothing on their own account, but who creep in under the merits of certain ancestors and dwell at length on praise of them, are silenced by the proverb. But for one in whom nobility shines forth naturally from his fathers, as Pindar says, as it does for you, who model your life on the finest examples from your own house, it would be a happy thing to keep remembering the best of one's stock, always hearing something and saying something about them,
for such men do not hang their reputation on borrowed praises out of a lack of achievements of their own, but rather, by joining their own deeds to those of their forebears, celebrate them as the founders alike of their family and of their way of life. For this reason I too have composed and sent to you the Life of your fellow-citizen and ancestor Aratus, whom you disgrace neither by your own reputation nor by your power — not because I supposed that you were not already most exactly acquainted from the start with his deeds,
but so that your sons Polycrates and Pythocles may be nourished on the examples of their own house, partly by hearing of them, partly by reading of them — for it belongs to a self-loving man, not a lover of what is noble, always to think his own the best in everything.
The city of the Sicyonians, once its pure Dorian aristocracy, its harmony as it were confounded, first fell into factions and the ambitions of demagogues, did not cease being sick and disturbed, exchanging one tyrant for another, until, after Cleon had been put to death, they chose Timocleidas and Clinias as archons, men held in the very highest esteem and among the most powerful of the citizens,
and when the constitution already seemed to have achieved some settlement, Timocleidas died, and Abantidas son of Paseas, working toward a tyranny for himself, killed Clinias and banished some of his friends and kinsmen and put others to death. He sought also to kill Clinias's son, Aratus, who had been left behind at seven years old.
In the confusion around the house the boy was swept out along with the fleeing, and wandering about the city in terror and without help, he happened by chance to slip unnoticed into the house of a woman, a sister of Abantidas, wed to Prophantus (brother of Clinias), a woman named Sosus. She, being noble in character and believing that the child had taken refuge with her by the will of some god, kept him concealed within, and once darkness fell she quietly had him conveyed away to Argos.
Aratus, thus stolen away and having escaped the danger, immediately conceived and nursed a fierce and burning hatred against tyrants, and being brought up among the guest-friends and hereditary friends of his father at Argos in a manner befitting a free man, and seeing his body shooting up toward good condition and stature, he gave himself over to training in the wrestling-school, so that he even competed in the pentathlon and won crowns.
And indeed something of an athletic look plainly shows even in his portraits, and the intelligence and majesty of his face do not altogether deny the voracious appetite and the mattock-like jaw. Hence he perhaps devoted less attention to eloquence than was fitting for a statesman, although he was more elegant a speaker than some judge from his memoirs, which he left behind composed in passing and offhand, in words that came readily to hand.
Some time later Deinias and his circle, along with Aristotle the dialectician, having lured Abantidas — who was accustomed to be present whenever they held their discussions in the marketplace at leisure and to join in the disputation — into just such a pastime, and having contrived a plot, killed him; and Paseas, the father of Abantidas, having taken up the rule, was treacherously murdered by Nicocles, who proclaimed himself tyrant.
They say this man's looks matched almost exactly those of Periander, Cypselus's son, in the way that the Persian Orontes resembled Alcmaeon son of Amphiaraus, and a certain young Lacedaemonian resembled Hector — whom Myrtilus records was trampled to death by the crowd of onlookers when they recognized this.
While Nicocles was tyrant for four months, in the course of which, having done much harm to the city, he came near to losing it to a plot by the Aetolians, Aratus, already a young man, had a brilliant reputation for his noble birth and a spirit which showed itself to be neither small nor idle, but weighty, and for his age tempered with a more than usually secure judgment,
so that the exiles in particular turned their attention to him, and Nicocles too did not neglect what was going on, but watched unobtrusively and kept guard over his movements, fearing no such great venture on his part nor any deed so recklessly hazarded, but suspecting that he was in communication with the kings, who were friends and hereditary guest-friends of his father.
And indeed Aratus truly did attempt to travel that road. But when Antigonus kept making promises and let the time slip by, and the hopes placed in Egypt and Ptolemy remained distant, he made up his mind to bring down the tyrant through his own actions alone.
He first confided his plan to two men, Aristomachus and Ecdelus. Aristomachus was living in exile away from Sicyon, whereas Ecdelus, an Arcadian, hailed from Megalopolis, a man both philosophical and practical, who had become, while in the city, a close associate of Arcesilaus the Academic.
When these men had received the plan eagerly, he conferred with the other exiles, of whom a few, ashamed to abandon the hope, took part in what was being done, but the majority tried to hold Aratus back, thinking him emboldened by inexperience in such matters.
While he was deliberating about seizing some place in the territory of Sicyon, from which as a base he might wage war against the tyrant, there came to Argos a Sicyonian man who had escaped from prison; he was the brother of one of the exiles, Xenocles. Brought to Aratus by Xenocles, he said that at the point on the wall over which he himself had climbed and escaped safely, the ground within was nearly level, adjoining rocky and high ground, while the height on the outside was not altogether unreachable by ladders.
When Aratus heard this, he sent out, together with Xenocles, two of his own household servants, Seuthas and Technon, to reconnoiter the wall, having resolved, if he could, to stake everything swiftly and secretly on a single risk, rather than, as a private man, to set himself against a tyrant through a long war and open contests.
When Xenocles and his companions returned, having taken the measurements of the wall and reporting that the nature of the ground was not difficult or hard to manage, but saying that it was a troublesome thing to approach unnoticed because of a gardener's dogs — small ones, but extraordinarily pugnacious and implacable — he set the enterprise in motion at once.
Now the preparation of arms was ordinary enough, since practically everyone at that time practiced thefts and raids upon one another; but the ladders Euphranor the engineer built openly, since his craft made him free of suspicion, since he too was one of the exiles,
and as for men, each of his few friends at Argos supplied him ten out of a small number, while he himself armed thirty of his own household slaves. He also hired, through Proteus and Xenophilus, chief men among the freebooters, not many soldiers, to whom the story given out was that there would be an expedition against the king's horses in the territory of Sicyon. And most of them were sent ahead scattered to the tower of Polygnotus, ordered to wait there.
Caphisias too was sent ahead by him, lightly equipped, with four others, whose task was to reach the gardener in the dark, claiming to be travelers, and, having lodged with him, to lock him inside together with his dogs, since no other route existed for slipping past unseen. The ladders, which could be taken apart, they put into grain-bins, covered them over on wagons, and sent them ahead.
Meanwhile, since some of Nicocles's spies had appeared at Argos and were said to be going about unseen and watching Aratus, he came forward at daybreak and, making himself conspicuous, spent time in the marketplace with his friends; then, having anointed himself in the gymnasium and taken along from the wrestling-school some of the young men accustomed to drink and idle away time with him, he led them off home; and shortly afterward people spotted his household servants moving through the marketplace, this one bearing garlands, that one purchasing torches, another conversing with the girls who were accustomed to play the lyre and the flute at drinking-parties,
and the spies, seeing all this, were completely deceived, and laughing to one another said, "There was never anything more cowardly than a tyrant, after all, if Nicocles, holding so great a city and so great a power, dreads a young man who is spending his traveling-money for exile on pleasures and daytime drinking-bouts."
So these men, thus deceived, went off; but Aratus, immediately after breakfast, went out, and joining his soldiers at the tower of Polygnotus, led them forward to Nemea, where he disclosed the enterprise to the men for the first time, making them promises
and exhortations, and having given out the password "Apollo the All-Conquering," led them forward toward the city, timing his march to the circuit of the moon, hurrying it in one stretch and slackening it again, so that he might have the light to use along the road, and by the time it was setting be near the wall, close by the garden.
There Caphisias met him, having failed to master the dogs — for one had bolted away before he could catch it — though he had shut the gardener in. Most of the men grew discouraged and urged withdrawal, but Aratus encouraged them, saying he would lead them back if the dogs troubled them too much.
At the same time he sent ahead the men carrying the ladders, led by Ecdelus and Mnasitheus, while he himself followed at a leisurely pace, the dogs by now barking vigorously and running along beside Ecdelus's party. Nevertheless they reached the wall and set the ladders firmly against it. As the first men were climbing up,
the officer relieving the dawn watch went on his rounds ringing a bell, while numerous torches burned and a great din rose from the men moving about; the climbers, just as they were, crouched down there upon the ladders and escaped these men's notice without much difficulty, but as another watch, opposite to this one, was approaching, they came into the utmost danger.
As soon as they had gotten past that watch as well, the first men, Mnasitheus and Ecdelus, immediately began climbing up, and taking hold of the roads on either side of the wall, they sent Technon to Aratus, urging him to hurry.
The garden lay quite close to the wall and to the tower where a large hunting dog kept watch. Whether from natural sluggishness or from weariness after the day's heat, the dog failed to perceive the men creeping near. But when the small dogs of the gardener below began yelping at him, he answered first with a faint, muffled growl, then, as the men slipped past, he raised his voice louder.
And already a great deal of barking held the place, so that the guard on the far side asked the huntsman in a loud shout at whom the dog was barking so fiercely, and whether anything unusual was happening. He, from the tower, called back that nothing was wrong, but that the dog had been provoked by the light of the wall-guards and the sound of the bell.
This above all emboldened Aratus's soldiers, who supposed that the huntsman was concealing his own complicity in the affair, and that there were many others in the city as well who were cooperating. Still, as they pressed against the wall the danger was severe and dragged on, since the ladders shook unless the men climbed up one at a time and slowly; and the hour pressed them hard, for the cocks were already crowing, and it was all but time for the countryfolk who habitually brought produce to be coming in to market,
and so Aratus, hurrying, climbed up too, forty men in all having gone up before him; and after waiting to take on a few more from below, he advanced to the house of the tyrant and to the headquarters — for it was there that the mercenaries spent their nights. Falling upon them suddenly and seizing them all, but killing no one, he at once sent messengers around calling in each of his friends from their homes.
And as they came running together from every side, day was already beginning to break and the theater was full of a crowd, still tossed about by an uncertain rumor and knowing nothing clear about what was being done — until at last the herald came forward and announced that Aratus son of Cleinias called on the citizens to stand for freedom.
Then, believing that what they had long expected had at last arrived, they rushed in a body to the doors of the tyrant, bringing fire with them. A great flame rose up, visible as far as Corinth once the house had caught, so that the people in Corinth, amazed, very nearly set out to help. Nicocles, meanwhile, slipped away unnoticed through certain underground passages and fled from the city,
and the soldiers, together with the Sicyonians, put out the fire and plundered the house. Nor did Aratus prevent even this, and the rest of the tyrants' wealth he set before the citizens in common. No one was killed, nor was anyone at all wounded, either among the attackers or among their enemies, but fortune kept the deed pure and untouched by the blood of citizens.
He brought back the exiles — those driven out by Nicocles numbering eighty, and those from the earlier tyrants no fewer than five hundred, for whom the wandering had been long, coming close to fifty years. Most of those who returned were poor, and when they laid claim to what had once been theirs and went about among the estates and houses, they caused Aratus terrible difficulty, since he saw the city both plotted against from without and begrudged its freedom by Antigonus, and disturbed and torn by factional strife from within.
For this reason, weighing the situation with whatever judgment the moment allowed, he transferred the city and united it to the Achaeans; and though they were Dorians, they gladly assumed the Achaean name and civic identity, even though the Achaeans at that time enjoyed neither a shining reputation nor much power. Most of them dwelt in small towns and worked land that was neither rich nor plentiful, settled along a coast without harbors, one where the surf mostly pounded against the shore.
But it was these very Achaeans who showed most clearly that Greek strength is unconquerable whenever it happens to have order and unified organization and a leader with sense — men who were, one might say, no part at all of the old prime of Greece, and who together did not possess the power of even a single city of note, yet through good counsel and concord,
and because they could, upon meeting the man foremost in virtue, set envy aside and follow his lead in obedience, they not only kept themselves free in the midst of mighty cities, dominions, and despotisms, but went on liberating and rescuing as many of the rest of the Greeks as they were able.
Aratus was by temperament a statesman, high-minded, more exacting in public matters than in his own private affairs, bitterly a hater of tyrants, always measuring both enmity and friendship by the boundary of the common good.
Hence he seems to have been not so much a scrupulous friend as a reasonable and gentle enemy, shifting on both sides according to the moment as the political situation required — a man devoted, as no one else, to the concord of peoples and the fellowship of cities and to the single voice a council-chamber and a theater send forth; but when it came to using open war and pitched battle he was timid and without confidence, while at stealing a march on affairs and secretly contriving against cities and tyrants he was most resourceful.
For this reason, though he brought off many unexpected successes in the ventures he dared, he seems to have let slip no fewer opportunities that were within his power, out of caution. For it is not only, as it seems, that the eyes of certain beasts, active in the dark, go blind by day, since the moisture around the eye, being dry and thin, cannot bear its mixture with the light — but there is also a certain shrewdness and intelligence in men that is by nature ill at ease in matters carried out openly and proclaimed, but grows bold when turned toward hidden and secret undertakings.
Such unevenness is produced in gifted natures by a want of philosophical training, which brings forth virtue, like a fruit growing wild and untended, apart from knowledge. Let this much, then, be examined by the examples given.
Once Aratus had brought himself and his city into union with the Achaeans, he took his place in the cavalry, and the commanders came to love him for his readiness to obey; for despite having given the common cause so much through his own standing and his country's strength, he was content to be ranked as an ordinary member under whoever chanced to hold the office of Achaean general at the time — be it someone from Dyme, from Tritaea, or from a town smaller still,
and there also came to him a gift of money from the king, twenty-five talents; this Aratus received, and having received it he gave it over to his own citizens, who were in need both for other purposes and for the ransoming of captives.
But since the exiles were inconsolable, harassing those who held their properties, and the city was in danger of being thrown into upheaval, seeing one hope in the generosity of Ptolemy he set out to sail there and to beg the king to contribute money toward the settlement,
he put out then from Methone beyond Malea, meaning to make use of the direct crossing. But a great wind and a heavy sea coming down from the open water met them, and when the pilot gave way before it, he was carried off course and with difficulty made land at Adria, which was hostile territory — for it was held by Antigonus and kept under guard; but he managed to land undetected, and, leaving the ship behind, retreated well inland away from the coast, taking along one companion, his friend Timanthes.
And throwing themselves down in a spot thick with woods, they spent a harsh night there. A little later the garrison commander came searching for Aratus and was misled by Aratus's own servants, whom he had told beforehand to claim their master had already fled and taken ship for Euboea. The goods being carried, however, along with the ship and the attendants, he declared enemy property and seized them.
Not many days later, when Aratus was at a loss, a stroke of good fortune came to him: a Roman ship put in near the place where he was passing his time, at times climbing up to a lookout, at other times hiding. This ship was sailing to Syria, but he boarded it after persuading the shipmaster to carry him as far as Caria; and he was carried across, again meeting with no fewer dangers at sea.
From Caria, after a long time, he crossed over to Egypt, and there he met with the king, who was favorably disposed toward him and had already been courted with paintings and pictures from Greece — in which Aratus, having no unrefined judgment, was always gathering and acquiring some piece of skilled and exceptional work, above all by Pamphilus and Melanthus, and sending it to him.
For the fame of the Sicyonian school of art and fine painting was still flourishing, as being the only one that kept its beauty uncorrupted, so that even Apelles, already famed and admired, came to study among these artists for a talent's fee, eager to share their reputation rather than merely learn their craft. For this reason, when Aratus liberated the city he immediately removed every other portrait of the tyrants, yet over the one of Aristratus, who had risen to prominence under Philip, he hesitated for a long time.
For Aristratus had been painted by all the circle of Melanthus standing beside a victorious chariot, with Apelles himself having had a hand in the painting as well, as Polemon the guidebook-writer has recorded. The work was a sight worth seeing, so that Aratus was swayed by the art itself, yet, drawn on again by his hatred of tyrants, he ordered it destroyed.
They say that Nealces the painter, a friend of Aratus, pleaded with him in tears, and, failing to win him over, declared that the fight ought to be against the tyrants themselves, not against the works they had left behind. "Let us leave, then, the chariot and the figure of Victory, and I will provide you Aristratus himself withdrawing from the panel." Aratus having consented, Nealces painted over Aristratus, and in his place painted in only a palm tree, and dared to add nothing else; but they say that the feet of Aristratus, in being painted over, escaped notice, remaining hidden beneath the chariot.
From these things Aratus was beloved, and by giving proof of himself he won the king over still more, and received as a gift for the city one hundred fifty talents, of which he brought forty at once with himself back to the Peloponnese, while the king afterward sent the rest divided into installments, portion by portion.
It was indeed a great thing to procure so much money for the citizens — money of which other generals and popular leaders, receiving even a small part from kings, would do wrong and enslave their people and drink away their fatherlands in advance; but greater still was the reconciliation and concord toward the wealthy which was brought about for the poor by means of this money, and the safety and security it gave to the whole people, and admirable was the moderation of the man amid such great power.
For though appointed sole arbiter and master with full authority over the settlement of the exiles' affairs, he did not undertake it alone, but added fifteen of the citizens to himself, with whose help, through much toil and great effort, he worked out and fitted together friendship and peace among the citizens. In return for this, not only did all the citizens in common render him fitting honors, but the exiles too, on their own, set up a bronze statue and inscribed upon it this elegiac couplet:
Counsels and contests and the defense of Greece bring this man close to the pillars of Heracles; but we, Aratus, having obtained your safe return, have set up your image, in payment for your virtue and your justice, to the saving gods on behalf of the savior, because you granted to your homeland a heaven-sent and divine good governance.
Having accomplished these things, Aratus had grown, through the gratitude they earned him, greater than the envy of his fellow citizens; but King Antigonus, vexed at him and wishing either to win him over entirely to friendship with himself or else to slander him to Ptolemy, kept showing him other marks of goodwill even though Aratus did not welcome them at all warmly, and once, while sacrificing to the gods at Corinth, sent portions of the meat on to Aratus at Sicyon.
And at the dinner, with many guests feasting, he spoke out before them all: "I used to think," he said, "that this young man of Sicyon was, by nature, simply generous-minded and fond of the people among whom he lived; yet it turns out he is also a shrewd judge of ways of life and of royal affairs. Formerly he looked past us, his hopes fixed abroad, and admired Egyptian wealth, hearing of elephants and fleets and courts; but now that he has seen, from behind the stage-curtain as it were, that all those affairs there are mere tragedy and stage-scenery, he has come over to us entirely.
"I myself, then, welcome the young man, having resolved to make use of him in everything, and I urge all of you likewise to count him among your friends." Taking these words as their pretext, the envious and malicious men vied with one another in letters, writing many harsh things against Aratus to Ptolemy, so that even he sent a reproachful message. So much envy and malice attends even the fiercely contested and passionately pursued friendships of kings and tyrants.
Aratus, having been chosen general for the first time by the Achaeans, ravaged the Locris and Calydonia that lay across from them, but arrived too late, though he came to help the Boeotians with ten thousand soldiers, for the battle in which they were defeated by the Aetolians near Chaeronea, with the Boeotarch Aboeocritus and a thousand men with him having fallen,
and a year later, general again, he set his mind on the exploit concerning Acrocorinth — caring nothing for the Sicyonians or the Achaeans in particular, but intending to drive out from there what was a common tyranny over the whole of Greece, the Macedonian garrison.
For Chares the Athenian, having had success in some battle against the king's generals, wrote to the Athenian people that he had won a victory sister to the one at Marathon; and one would not be wrong to call this deed a sister to the tyrant-slayings carried out by Pelopidas of Thebes and Thrasybulus of Athens — except that it differed from theirs in this, that its target was not fellow Greeks but a foreign and imported power.
For the Isthmus, blocking off the seas, brings the two regions together into one and joins our mainland; while Acrocorinth, a lofty mountain rising up from the middle of Greece, whenever a garrison occupies it, blocks the route and severs all contact, travel, military movement, and trade within the Isthmus, whether by land or by sea,
and makes the single man who holds it master, controlling the place with a garrison — so that it was no jest, but true, that the younger Philip habitually called the city of the Corinthians "the fetters of Greece."
So this place was ever fought over by all — kings and dynasts alike — and Antigonus's eagerness for it fell short in nothing of the most frenzied of passions, but he was wholly given over to devising, by treachery, how he might take it from those who held it, since an open attempt was plainly hopeless.
For when Alexander, under whose control the place was, died — as is said, by poison at Antigonus's hand — and Nicaea, Alexander's wife, took charge of affairs and kept guard over Acrocorinth, Antigonus lost no time dispatching his son Demetrius on a secret courtship of her, holding out sweet hopes of a royal marriage and a shared life, a prospect not unpleasant for an older woman to encounter in a young man,
he had won her over, using his son as a kind of bait against her; but since she would not give up the place, guarding it firmly instead, he pretended to pay it no mind, and celebrated their wedding at Corinth, and put on shows and gathered drinking-parties day after day, as one who had let his mind relax entirely into play and leisure out of pleasure and good cheer.
But when the moment was right, while Amoebeus was singing in the theater, he himself escorted Nicaea to the performance in a litter adorned royally, she exulting in the honor and utterly far from suspecting what was to come. But when he reached the branch of the road leading upward, he bade her go on ahead to the theater, while he, bidding farewell to Amoebeus and to the wedding, went up toward Acrocorinth, hurrying beyond what his age would suggest, and finding the gate shut, knocked on it with his staff, ordering it opened.
Those inside opened it, terror-struck. Having thus mastered the place, he could not contain himself, but drank in celebration through joy in the narrow streets, and went reveling through the marketplace with flute-girls and wearing garlands about him — an old man who had been through so many such reversals of fortune — greeting and hailing those he met; so much more does joy that comes without reasoning unsettle and toss the soul than does grief or fear.
But Antigonus, as has been said, having gained Acrocorinth, kept guard over it, setting as commander, along with the others he trusted most, Persaeus the philosopher. Aratus, while Alexander was still alive, had already made an attempt on the exploit, but once the Achaeans and Alexander concluded an alliance, he had abandoned it.
But now again he took up, from the beginning, another pretext for the exploit, as follows. Four brothers of Syrian birth were then living in Corinth, and one of them, named Diocles, was serving as a mercenary in the garrison. The other three, having stolen some royal gold, came to Sicyon to a certain banker Aegias, whom Aratus used for his own business dealings. They at once disposed of part of the gold, and the rest one of them, Erginus, kept quietly exchanging on his visits.
From this he became familiar with Aegias, and being drawn by him into conversation about the garrison, he said that, going up to his brother by the cliff, he had noticed a slanted cutting, leading to where the wall of the fortress had been built lowest; and when Aegias jested with him and said, "Then, my good man, for so small a sum of gold do you undertake royal exploits, when you could sell one hour's work for a great deal of money? Or is it not the case that housebreakers and traitors, once caught, have only one death to suffer?"
Erginus laughed, and at that time only admitted he was testing Diocles's resolve — for he did not entirely trust his other brothers — but a few days later he returned and agreed that he would lead Aratus to the wall, where the height was no more than fifteen feet, and that he would cooperate in the rest along with Diocles.
For his part, Aratus committed to paying them sixty talents should the venture succeed, or, should it fail while they all got away unharmed, a house and one talent apiece. Since that sum of sixty talents needed to be lodged with Aegias on behalf of Erginus and his companions, and Aratus neither had the money himself nor wished, by borrowing, to give anyone else knowledge of the affair, he took most of his drinking-cups and his wife's gold ornaments and pledged them to Aegias for the money.
So exalted was he in spirit and so great a passion did he have for noble deeds, that although he knew that Phocion and Epaminondas were reckoned the most just and the ablest of the Greeks for having rejected great gifts and refused to sacrifice honor for money, he himself chose to spend and advance funds for these ends in secret, in matters where he alone risked everything on behalf of everyone, and not even they knew what was being done.
For who would not marvel at, and even now still join in admiring, the greatness of soul of the man, who bought so great a danger at the price of so much money, and pledged what seemed his most valuable possessions, so that, smuggled in by night among the enemy, he might fight for his life, having taken as his only security his hope of honor, and nothing else from them?
The exploit, hazardous in itself, was made more hazardous still by a blunder that occurred right at the start, through ignorance. For Aratus's servant Technon was sent, along with Diocles, to reconnoiter the wall, but had not yet met Diocles face to face before this, and thought he had fixed his form and appearance in mind from what Erginus had described — curly-haired, dark-skinned, and beardless.
So he came to the appointed place and waited before the city, before the spot called the Bird, expecting Erginus to arrive along with Diocles; meanwhile, by chance, the first to come along was another brother of Erginus and Diocles, named Dionysius, who knew nothing of the plot and had no part in it, but resembled Diocles. Technon, moved by the likeness to the marks of the man's appearance, asked the man whether he had any dealing with Erginus.
When the man said he was his brother, Technon was altogether convinced he was speaking with Diocles, and rather than ask the man's name or seek any further confirmation, he clasped his right hand and spoke to him about the arrangements made with Erginus, and questioned him about them. The man, seizing on Technon's mistake, cunningly agreed to everything, and turning back toward the city led him along, conversing without arousing suspicion,
and now, when he was near the city and about to seize Technon at any moment, once again by chance Erginus met them. Perceiving the deception and the danger, he signaled to Technon with a nod to flee, and both of them, leaping away, escaped at a run back to Aratus. Yet Aratus did not lose heart in his hopes, but at once sent Erginus, bringing gold to Dionysius, to beg him to keep silent.
And Dionysius did this, and brought Dionysius with him to Aratus. But once he had come, they did not let him go again, but bound him and kept him guarded, shut up in a small house; and they themselves made ready for the attack.
When everything was ready, Aratus ordered the rest of his force to spend the night under arms, and taking four hundred picked men, who themselves did not know what was being done, except for a few, he brought them up to the gates near the Heraeum. It was the season of the year when summer is at its height, and the moon was full that month, and the night was cloudless and bright, so that the armor, gleaming back against the moonlight, gave cause for fear that it would not escape the notice of the guards.
But when the foremost men were already near, clouds rose up from the sea and covered both the city itself and the ground outside it, casting it in shadow; and there the rest sat down and loosened their sandals, for men make less noise and slip less often when they grip the rungs of the ladders with bare feet — while Erginus, taking seven young men dressed as travelers, made his way unnoticed to the gate.
And they killed the gatekeeper along with the guards beside him; simultaneously the ladders went up against the wall, and Aratus hastily got a hundred men across it, and, ordering the rest to follow as quickly as they could, pulled up the ladders and advanced through the city with his hundred men toward the citadel, already overjoyed, since he had gone unnoticed, at the thought that he was succeeding.
And after a while, still at some distance, a guard of four men with a torch met them, though not yet clearly seen, for they were still within the moon's shadow; but they themselves saw the men approaching from opposite. So drawing back a little behind some walls and building-plots, he set an ambush for the men, and three of them fell upon them and died, but the fourth, struck on the head with a sword, fled, shouting that the enemy was within,
and after a little the trumpets gave the signal, and the city rose up at what was happening, and the streets were full of men running about, and many lights, some already shining from below, others from above upon the citadel, and a confused, indistinct shouting broke out from every side.
Meanwhile Aratus, clinging to the path along the cliff, struggled on, slowly and with difficulty at first, not mastering it, but straying from the track, which was altogether hidden and overshadowed by the roughness of the ground and wound through many turns and detours before reaching the wall; then, wonderfully, as they say the moon does, parting the clouds and shining faintly through, it made clear the hardest part of the way, until he touched the wall at the point where he needed to; but there again it grew dark and hid itself as the clouds gathered together.
But the soldiers of Aratus who had been left behind outside the gates near the Heraeum, three hundred in number, when at last they slipped into the city, which was full of confusion of every kind and of lights, being unable to find the same track or to set foot in the trace of the others' path, crouched together in a huddle beside a shadowed hollow of the cliff, drawing themselves in, and there held out, suffering greatly and chafing at their helplessness.
For as the men with Aratus were now under attack from the citadel and fighting, a battle-cry went down below, and shouting echoed all around, confused and indistinct because of the reverberation from the mountains, so that it was unclear where it had begun; and while they could not tell which direction offered escape, Archelaus, the commander of the king's troops, having many soldiers with him, came up with shouting and trumpets, bearing down upon Aratus's men, and passed by the three hundred,
who rose up as if from an ambush and fell upon him and destroyed those whom they first attacked, and put the rest to flight, along with Archelaus himself, terrifying them, chasing them until the enemy broke apart and scattered through the streets of the town. Just as these men had won their fight, Erginus came from those fighting above, announcing that Aratus was engaged with the enemy, defending himself vigorously, and that a great struggle was taking place right at the wall, and that help was needed with speed; and they at once bade him lead the way.
And as they climbed they announced themselves by shouting, encouraging their friends; and the full moon made their weapons appear more numerous to the enemy because of the length of the line as it advanced, and the echoing quality of the night made the war-cry seem to come from many times as many men as there actually were,
and at last, pressing together, they drove out the enemy and gained the upper hand over the citadel and held the fortress, with day already dawning, and the sun at once shone upon the deed, and the rest of the force arrived from Sicyon to join Aratus, the Corinthians eagerly receiving them at the gates and seizing the king's men.
When everything seemed to be safely in hand, he came down from the citadel to the theater, an immense crowd streaming together out of desire to see him and to hear the speech he was about to give to the Corinthians.
Stationing the Achaeans at the entrances on either side, he himself came forward from the wings into the middle, wearing his breastplate and altered in appearance by weariness and lack of sleep, so much so that the elation and delight within him were held down by his body's fatigue,
and as the people, the moment he came forward, poured out their affection upon him, he shifted his spear to his right hand, and leaning his knee and body slightly to one side and steadying himself, he stood a long time in silence receiving their applause and shouts, as they praised his courage and envied his good fortune.
When they had stopped and settled down, he composed himself and delivered a speech fitting to the deed, on behalf of the Achaeans, and persuaded the Corinthians to become Achaeans, and handed over the keys of the gates, then for the first time in their possession since the days of Philip; and of Antigonus's generals he released Archelaus, who had been taken prisoner, but put Theophrastus to death,
since he was unwilling to leave. Persaeus, when the citadel was captured, escaped through to Cenchreae. Later, it is said, when at leisure, someone said to him that only the wise man seemed to him to be a general, and he replied, "But by the gods, this was once, above all, one of the doctrines of Zeno that pleased me too; but now I have changed my mind, since that young fellow from Sicyon has taught me otherwise." Such is the tale most people tell about Persaeus.
Aratus at once brought under his control the Heraeum and Lechaeum, and took possession of twenty-five royal ships, disposing by sale of five hundred horses along with four hundred Syrian captives; and the Achaeans guarded Acrocorinth with four hundred hoplites and fifty dogs with an equal number of huntsmen, kept in the fortress.
The Romans, in their admiration, called Philopoemen the last of the Greeks, as though no great man had arisen among the Greeks after him; but I myself would say that this deed was the last and most recent of Greek achievements, rivaling the finest both in daring and in fortune, as the events that immediately followed made clear.
The Megarians broke away from Antigonus and threw in their lot with Aratus, while the Troezenians, along with the Epidaurians, had themselves enrolled as members of the Achaean League; and having made his first expedition into Attica, he crossed to Salamis and ravaged it, treating the power of the Achaeans, as though released from a prison, as he pleased. To the Athenians he released the free men without ransom, offering them the first steps toward revolt.
He made Ptolemy an ally of the Achaeans, giving him command of the war both by land and sea. And his influence among the Achaeans grew so great that, the law barring consecutive terms as general, he was elected in alternate years instead, and in deed and in judgment ruled continuously. For they saw that he put nothing before the growth of the Achaeans - not wealth, not glory, not friendship with kings, not even the advantage of his own homeland.
For he believed that the cities, being weak on their own, were preserved by one another, bound together as it were by their common advantage, and just as the parts of the body, living and breathing together through their mutual growth, when torn apart and separated wither and rot, so likewise cities are destroyed by those who tear apart the common bond, but grow through one another whenever, being parts of some great whole, they obtain a common providence.
Seeing that the best of the neighboring peoples governed themselves, and grieved that the Argives were enslaved, he plotted to remove their tyrant Aristomachus, being ambitious both to restore freedom to the city, as nourishment owed to it, and to bring the city over to the Achaeans.
So men were found bold enough for it, led by Aeschylus and Charimenes the seer; but they had no swords, for it was forbidden to possess them, and heavy penalties were imposed by the tyrant on those who owned them. So Aratus had small daggers made for them in Corinth and sewn into pack-saddles; and having fitted these upon pack-animals carrying some ordinary-looking baggage, he sent them off to Argos.
But when Charimenes the seer took on another man to join in the deed, Aeschylus and his party grew indignant and proceeded on their own, having condemned Charimenes. He, perceiving this, in anger informed against the men, who were already on their way against the tyrant; most of them, getting word in time, fled from the marketplace and escaped through to Corinth.
Nevertheless, not long afterward slaves put Aristomachus to death, and Aristippus, a man still more depraved as tyrant than his predecessor, seized power before anyone else could. Aratus, taking with him such of the Achaeans as happened to be of military age, hastened swiftly to the city's aid, expecting to find the Argives eager for him.
But since most of them, through long habit, were now willingly enslaved and no one revolted to join him, he withdrew, having thereby furnished the Achaeans an accusation against him, as if he had brought about a war in time of peace. And they were brought to trial over this before the Mantineans, and Aristippus, prosecuting in Aratus's absence, won the case, with damages assessed at thirty minae,
and he plotted to kill Aratus himself, both hating and fearing him, with King Antigonus's assistance; and there were men stationed nearly everywhere to do this to them and watching for the opportunity.
But there is nothing like true and steadfast goodwill as a guard for a ruler; for when both the many and the powerful are trained to fear not the ruler, but for the ruler, then countless eyes become his eyes, countless ears become his ears, and he learns of events before they unfold. For this reason I wish to pause the narrative here and go through something concerning the manner of life of Aristippus, which the envied tyranny and the burden of that blessed and much-talked-of sole rule imposed upon him.
For that man, having Antigonus as an ally, and keeping many men for the safety of his person, and having left not one of his enemies alive in the city, would order his spearmen and guards to be stationed outside in the courtyard, and his household servants,
whenever he had dined, he would drive them all out as quickly as possible and shut the inner courtyard, and himself with his mistress would go down into a small upper room, closed by a trapdoor; and above this he would set his bed and sleep, as one so situated was likely to sleep - in turmoil and fear.
And the ladder would be removed by his mistress's mother, who shut it away in a separate chamber, only to bring it back at dawn and call up the admirable tyrant, as though he were a creeping thing coming out of its den. But he, having gained an unceasing rule not by force of arms but, by law, through excellence, wearing an ordinary cloak and mantle, has, as the declared common enemy of all tyrants that ever were, left behind to this very day the most highly regarded family among the Greeks.
But of those who seize citadels and keep bodyguards and set up arms and gates and trapdoors for the safety of their persons, few escape a violent death, like hares; and not a house, nor a family, nor a tomb possessing honored remembrance is left of any of them.
Against Aristippus, then, Aratus often came to grief, both secretly and openly, in his attempts to seize Argos; and once, setting up ladders, he climbed the wall with a few men in a bold venture, and killed the guards there who came to defend it.
Then, when day appeared and the tyrant attacked him from every side, the Argives -- as if the fight were not being fought for their own freedom but as though they were judging the contest at the Nemean Games -- sat as impartial and fair spectators of what was happening, keeping perfectly quiet, while Aratus, defending himself vigorously, was run through the thigh by a spear thrust by hand, yet held the ground he occupied and was not driven out, though harassed by the enemy until nightfall.
And if he had endured through the night as well in his exertion, he would not have failed; for the tyrant was already thinking of flight and had sent many of his own possessions ahead to the sea. But as it was, since no one reported this to Aratus, and his water had run out, and his wound had left him unable to manage his own body, he withdrew his troops.
When he had given up on this course, he openly invaded the enemy's camp and ravaged the territory of Argolis, and after a fierce battle around the river Charadrus against Aristippus he incurred blame for abandoning the contest and throwing away the victory; for while the rest of his force was, by common admission, gaining the upper hand and had advanced far forward in the pursuit, he himself, not so much forced back by those before him as distrustful of his success and afraid, withdrew in confusion into the camp.
When the rest, returning from the pursuit, took it hard that, though they had routed the enemy and struck down a much greater number than they themselves had lost, they had left it to the defeated to set up a trophy over them, he, ashamed, resolved again to fight it out over the trophy, and after letting one day pass he drew up the army again.
But when he perceived that the tyrant's men had grown more numerous and were resisting more boldly, he did not dare to engage, but withdrew after taking up his dead under truce. Nevertheless, by his skill and grace in dealing with people and in statecraft he made up for this failure, and won over Cleonae to the Achaeans, and held the Nemean Games at Cleonae, on the ground that it was traditional and more properly belonged to them,
and the Argives held them too, and then for the first time the immunity and safety granted to the contestants was violated, all the Achaeans who were caught having competed at Argos being sold as enemies as they passed through the country. So fierce and implacable was he in his hatred of tyrants.
A little later, hearing that Aristippus was plotting against Cleonae but was afraid, since Aratus was stationed at Corinth, he gathered an army by proclamation. And having ordered several days' provisions to be brought to Cenchreae, he went down there, drawing out Aristippus by a deception, so that he might, thinking Aratus absent, attack the people of Cleonae -- which is just what happened, for he was present at once, coming from Argos with his force.
But Aratus, having already turned back from Cenchreae to Corinth while it was still dark, and having secured the roads with guards, led the Achaeans in his train so well ordered and so swiftly and eagerly that not only on the march but even after arriving at Cleonae, while it was still night, and after drawing up in order for battle, they went undetected and unnoticed by Aristippus.
At daybreak, when the gates were thrown open and the trumpet gave the signal, he fell upon the enemy at a run with a war-cry and routed them at once, and pressed the pursuit toward wherever he suspected Aristippus was most likely to flee, since the ground offered many avenues of escape.
When the pursuit had gone as far as Mycenae, the tyrant was overtaken and cut down by a Cretan, as Deinias records, by the name of Tragiscus, and of the rest more than fifteen hundred fell. But Aratus, for all this brilliant success, and though he lost none of his own soldiers, did not manage to take Argos or to free it, since the party of Agias and the younger Aristomachus, with a royal force, slipped in and took control of affairs.
Now, the greater part of the slander and the talk and jibes and vulgar abuse spread by those who flattered the tyrants and told tales to please them -- that the Achaean general's bowels were upset before battles, and that a stupor and dizziness seized him the moment the trumpeter took his place beside him, and that after drawing up his forces and giving out the watchword, he would ask his subordinate officers and captains whether there was any need of him, since (he said) his knucklebones had been cast, and would go off to watch from a distance how things would turn out --
this took such hold that even philosophers in their schools, when inquiring whether the pounding of the heart and the change of color and the loosening of the bowels in the face of apparent dangers is a mark of cowardice or of some ill temperament and coldness of the body, would always name Aratus, as being a good general who nevertheless always suffered these symptoms before his contests.
So, having done away with Aristippus, he at once began plotting against Lydiades of Megalopolis, who was ruling as tyrant over his own homeland. Lydiades was not by nature ignoble or without ambition, nor was he -- like most sole rulers -- carried into this wrongdoing by intemperance and greed, but rather, still young, lifted up by a love of glory and the false and empty talk spread about tyranny as though it were a blessed and admirable thing, he had foolishly let himself be filled with grand notions, and once he had made himself tyrant he quickly grew weary of the heaviness that comes from sole rule.
At the same time envying Aratus his good fortune and fearing his designs, he set out on the noblest of courses by a change of heart: first ridding himself of the fear and hatred that came with a bodyguard and armed men, and then becoming a benefactor to his homeland; and summoning Aratus, he gave up his rule and transferred the city to the Achaeans. For this the Achaeans, extolling him, chose him general.
Being eager at once to surpass Aratus in reputation, he proposed, among many other undertakings that did not seem necessary, a campaign against the Lacedaemonians. Aratus, opposing him, was thought to be moved by jealousy; and indeed for a second time Lydiades was chosen general, with Aratus openly opposing him and pushing to see the post handed to a different candidate -- for he himself, as has been said, held office only every other year.
Now up to his third generalship Lydiades continued to fare well, holding office in alternation with Aratus every other year; but once he had openly displayed enmity and repeatedly brought accusations against him before the Achaeans, he was rejected and passed over, being thought to be matching a feigned character against genuine and unmixed virtue,
and just as Aesop says of the cuckoo, that when the small birds asked him why they fled from him, he told them that he would one day be a hawk, so it seems that a suspicion attaching to Lydiades from his time as tyrant kept following him, damaging his standing after his change of course.
Aratus won distinction also in the affairs concerning the Aetolians, on the occasion when the Achaeans were eager to engage them before reaching Megarian territory, and Agis, king of the Lacedaemonians, had arrived with a force and was urging the Achaeans on together with him into battle; Aratus opposed this, and though he endured much reproach and much mockery and ridicule for softness and cowardice, he did not abandon the calculation of advantage for the sake of what appeared shameful, but let the enemy cross the Geraneia unopposed and pass into the Peloponnese.
When, however, they suddenly advanced and took Pellene, he became an altogether different man, no longer minded to wait and delay for his forces to be gathered and assembled together from every quarter, but set out at once with those on hand against the enemy, who in their moment of victory had grown very weak through lack of discipline and through arrogance.
For the moment they entered the city the soldiers scattered through the houses, shoving each other aside and fighting over the plunder, while the commanders and captains busied themselves laying hold of the Pellenian women and daughters as prizes, and, pulling off their own helmets, placed them on the women's heads so no other man would claim them, the helmet serving as a mark of ownership. While they were absorbed in this business, word suddenly came that Aratus had descended upon them. And in the confusion natural to such disorder, since not everyone yet knew what danger they faced, the first Achaeans who met the enemy near the gates and outskirts were already beaten and fled, and as they were driven headlong they filled with confusion those who were trying to rally and come to the rescue.
In this confusion one of the captives, the daughter of Epigethes, a man of note, herself striking in beauty and stature, chanced to be seated within the temple of Artemis, where the officer in command of the picked troops had placed her after taking her for himself and setting the triple-crested helmet upon her; but suddenly she ran out toward the uproar,
and as she stood before the doors of the temple and looked down on the combatants from above, wearing the triple crest, she appeared to the citizens themselves a sight more solemn than human, and to the enemy, who thought they were seeing a divine apparition, she struck such shuddering and awe that no one turned to resist. The Pellenians themselves say that the goddess's image lies untouched the rest of the time, but whenever it is carried out, moved by the priestess, no one looks directly at it, but all turn away; for it is not only a fearful and harsh sight for men, but it also makes the trees barren and blights the fruits through whatever place it is carried.
This, they say, the priestess then carried out and turned continually to face the Aetolians, driving them out of their senses and robbing them of reason. Aratus himself says nothing of this sort in his memoirs, but says that he routed the Aetolians, and, bursting into the city together with them as they fled, drove them out by force, killing seven hundred. The deed was celebrated among the greatest, and the painter Timanthes made a vivid rendering of the battle in his composition.
Nevertheless, when many peoples and rulers combined against the Achaeans, Aratus at once set about making friendship with the Aetolians, and using Pantaleon, the most powerful man among the Aetolians, as his agent, he brought about not only peace but an alliance between the Achaeans and the Aetolians.
In his eagerness to free the Athenians he was slandered and spoken of badly by the Achaeans, because, though a treaty had been made and a truce was being kept toward the Macedonians, he made an attempt on the Piraeus. He himself, denying this in the memoirs he left behind, lays the blame on Erginus, together with
whom he had carried out the affair concerning the Acrocorinthus. For Erginus, he says, when he attacked the Piraeus on his own and, after his ladder broke, was being pursued, kept calling out and shouting the name of Aratus as if he were present, and so escaped by deceiving the enemy. Yet this does not seem a convincing defense; for it seems improbable that Erginus, a Syrian holding no public office, would have devised so great an enterprise by himself, unless he had Aratus as his leader and had received from him the force and the occasion for the attack.
Aratus himself made this plain, not twice or three times but many times, like men unhappily in love, attempting the Piraeus and not growing weary at his failures, but each time, having missed his hopes narrowly and by a hair's breadth, being called back to fresh confidence; and once, in fleeing through the Thriasian plain, he even wrenched his leg and had to undergo many incisions in treatment, and for a long time carried out his campaigns being carried about in a litter.
When Antigonus had died and Demetrius had taken over the kingship, Aratus pressed even harder against Athens and held the Macedonians in outright contempt. Therefore, when Bithys, the commander serving Demetrius, defeated him in battle near Phylacia, and much talk arose, some saying he had been captured, some that he was dead, the one who held the Piraeus
Diogenes, who was in command of the garrison, dispatched a letter to Corinth, in which he directed the Achaeans to abandon the city, on the grounds that Aratus was dead. It happened that Aratus himself was present in Corinth when the letter arrived, and after providing much delay and much laughter for Diogenes' men, they went away empty-handed. From Macedonia the king dispatched a vessel meant to carry Aratus back to him bound in fetters.
The Athenians, surpassing every degree of servility in their flattery toward the Macedonians, put on garlands the moment it was first announced that he was dead. For this reason he immediately marched against them in anger and advanced as far as the Academy; but then, persuaded otherwise, he did them no harm. The Athenians, coming to appreciate his virtue, when after the death of Demetrius they set out toward freedom, called upon him.
He, although at that time another man held the generalship of the Achaeans, and he himself lay bedridden with a long illness, nevertheless had himself carried in a litter and went to meet the city in its need, and won over Diogenes, who held command of the garrison, to restore the Piraeus and Munychia and Salamis and Sunium to the Athenians in exchange for a sum of one hundred fifty talents; toward this Aratus personally paid twenty talents to the city.
The people of Aegina and Hermione at once joined the Achaeans, as did the greater part of Arcadia. And since the Macedonians were occupied by certain neighboring and bordering wars, and the Aetolians were in alliance, the power of the Achaeans took a great increase.
Aratus, pursuing his old design, and unable to bear the tyranny at Argos, which lay so near them, sent to persuade Aristomachus to put the matter to the vote and bring the city over to the Achaeans, and to emulate Lydiades by being, with praise and honor, general of so great a people rather than, at risk and hated, tyrant of a single city.
When Aristomachus consented and bade Aratus send him fifty talents so that he might discharge and disband the soldiers in his pay, and when the money was being raised, Lydiades, who was still general and eager that this policy toward the Achaeans should be credited to himself alone, accused Aratus before Aristomachus of always being hostile and irreconcilable toward tyrants, and by persuading Aristomachus to entrust the matter to him instead, brought the man over to the Achaeans.
It was on this occasion above all that the councilors of the Achaeans made plain their goodwill and trust toward Aratus. For when he spoke against it out of anger, they drove away Aristomachus and his party; but when he was won over again and himself began, in person, to speak on their behalf, they voted everything quickly and eagerly, and admitted the Argives and Phliasians into the confederacy, and a year later chose Aristomachus himself as general.
He, doing well among the Achaeans and set on invading Laconia, called for Aratus to come from Athens. Aratus wrote to him forbidding the campaign, not wanting the Achaeans to become entangled with Cleomenes, who was bold and dangerously on the rise; but since Aristomachus was set on it in any case, he complied, and being present, took part in the campaign.
It was then, too, that when Cleomenes appeared near Pallantium and Aratus prevented Aristomachus from joining battle with him, he was accused by Lydiades, and when he entered into a contest and rival candidacy over the generalship, he prevailed in the vote and was chosen general for the twelfth time.
In this generalship, defeated by Cleomenes near Lycaeum, he fled; and after wandering through the darkness, a rumor arose that he had perished, and word of his supposed death circulated widely among the Greeks. But he made it back unharmed, and having gathered his soldiers together, he was not content to withdraw in safety,
but making the best possible use of the occasion, when no one expected it or was reckoning on what would follow, he suddenly fell upon the Mantineans, who were allies of Cleomenes, and taking the city, he threw in a garrison and made the resident aliens citizens; and, though defeated, he alone gained what the Achaeans, even in victory, could not easily have won.
Again, when the Lacedaemonians campaigned against Megalopolis, he came to its aid, but was reluctant to give Cleomenes, who was skirmishing, an opening, and he resisted the Megalopolitans when they pressed him to act, being naturally ill-suited to pitched battles in any case, and at that time being inferior in numbers and matched against a bold and still young man whose spirit had not yet begun to wane and whose ambition was unchecked; and he thought that the reputation which Cleomenes was winning through daring, starting from nothing, must be guarded, once he himself possessed it, by caution.
Nevertheless, when the light-armed troops ran out and pushed the Spartans back to their camp and scattered around the tents, Aratus even so did not press the advantage, but took a ravine that lay between and stationed his men there, preventing the hoplites from crossing it. Lydiades, deeply stirred by what was happening and reviling Aratus, called back the cavalry to himself, insisting that they show themselves to the pursuers and neither throw away the victory nor abandon him as he fought for his country.
As many good men rallied to him and he was emboldened, he charged the enemy's right wing, routed it, and pursued, but carried away without restraint by spirit and ambition into broken ground full of planted trees and wide ditches, where Cleomenes attacked him, he fell, having fought the most splendid of fights at the very gates of his own country,
while the rest, fleeing back into the phalanx and throwing the hoplites into confusion, filled the whole army with the disaster of defeat. Aratus incurred great blame, being thought to have abandoned Lydiades; and, compelled by the Achaeans, who were withdrawing in anger, he followed them to Aegium. There, when they had assembled, they voted not to give him money nor to maintain mercenaries for him, but that he should provide for himself, if he needed to make war.
Having been so insulted, he resolved at once to lay down the seal and give up the generalship; but on reflection he held on for the time, and leading the Achaeans out toward Orchomenus, he gave battle to Megistonous, the stepfather of Cleomenes, and having won it, killed three hundred men and took Megistonous himself alive.
Since he was accustomed to hold the generalship every other year, when the rotation brought his name up once more and he was summoned to serve, he refused the office under oath, and Timoxenus was chosen general. His anger at the crowds was said to be the reason for his refusal, but this was not credible; the true cause was the situation surrounding the Achaeans, since Cleomenes was no longer, as before, encroaching quietly and by degrees, nor meddling in the political offices,
but after he had killed the ephors, redistributed the land, brought in many of the resident aliens into citizenship, and thereby gained power answerable to no one, he was now openly pressing upon the Achaeans and claiming the leadership for himself. For this reason they blame Aratus for having, like a helmsman, let go and handed over the tiller to another amid a great swell and storm of affairs, at a time when it was still possible for him, standing at his post even against their will,
to save the common cause; but if he had despaired of the situation and of the power of the Achaeans, he should have yielded to Cleomenes, and not again let the Peloponnese be barbarized with Macedonian garrisons, nor filled the Acrocorinthus with Illyrian and Gallic arms, nor brought in as masters over the cities, under the euphemism of allies, the very men whom in his actions he was constantly out-generaling and out-maneuvering in politics, while in his memoirs he kept on abusing them.
But if Cleomenes was, let it be said so, lawless and tyrannical, still the Heraclids were his fathers and Sparta his homeland, and those who set any store at all by Greek nobility ought to think even the most obscure man of that city worthy to be made leader in preference to the foremost of the Macedonians. And yet Cleomenes was asking for the leadership from the Achaeans on the understanding that he would do the cities much good in return for that honor and title,
whereas Antigonus, once he had been proclaimed supreme commander by land and sea, would not comply until the price of his leadership, the Acrocorinthus, had been agreed to him — exactly imitating Aesop's hunter. For he did not set foot among the Achaeans, for all their pleading and offering themselves through embassies and decrees, until they consented to be bridled, as it were, with a garrison and hostages.
And yet Aratus uses every possible argument in pleading necessity as his defense; but Polybius says that long before, even before the necessity arose, he had been suspicious of Cleomenes' boldness and was in secret communication with Antigonus, and that it was he who arranged for the Megalopolitans to approach and implore the Achaeans to summon Antigonus in. For it was they who suffered most from the fighting, given that Cleomenes kept on ravaging and despoiling their territory,
and Phylarchus has recorded these same events likewise, though where Polybius does not corroborate him he is not altogether to be trusted. For he becomes carried away with enthusiasm whenever he touches on Cleomenes, out of partiality, and, as though pleading a case in court, he continues throughout his history as advocate for the one and adversary of the other.
The Achaeans, then, lost Mantinea, Cleomenes taking it again, and after suffering a heavy defeat in the battle at Hecatombaeum, panic seized them so completely that they at once sent to summon Cleomenes to Argos, offering him the leadership,
but Aratus, upon discovering that Cleomenes was advancing and had reached the vicinity of Lerna with his forces, took fright and sent envoys asking him to come, as to friends and allies, with three hundred men, or, if he distrusted them, to take hostages. Cleomenes, saying this was an insult and a mockery of himself, turned back, having written a letter to the Achaeans full of many accusations and slanders against Aratus.
Aratus too wrote letters against Cleomenes, and abuse and slander were exchanged, the two men even reviling each other's marriages and wives. After this Cleomenes dispatched a herald with a formal declaration of war against the Achaeans, and came very close to seizing the city of the Sicyonians by treachery without their noticing; but being turned aside just short of it, he attacked Pellene, and when the general of the Achaeans had been driven out, he took the city. A little later he also took Pheneus and Penteleum.
Then at once the Argives went over to him, and a garrison was imposed on the Phliasians; and, in a word, none of the gains the Achaeans had made was any longer secure, but a great confusion suddenly surrounded Aratus, as he watched the Peloponnese shaking and the cities everywhere rising up under the influence of revolutionaries.
For nothing was quiet, and no one was content with the present state of things, but even within the ranks of the Sicyonians and Corinthians there proved to be many who had been in secret communication with Cleomenes and, out of a long-standing private desire for power against the common interest, were harboring designs treacherously.
Against these men Aratus, given unaccountable authority, put to death those in Sicyon who had been corrupted, but when he tried to hunt out and punish those in Corinth, he provoked to fury a populace already sick and resentful of its subjection under the Achaean government. So they rushed together to the temple of Apollo and summoned Aratus to them, resolved to kill him or take him captive ahead of their uprising.
He himself came leading his horse by hand, as though suspecting nothing and distrusting no one; but when many leaped up and began abusing and accusing him, he kept his face composed and his voice mild, and told them to sit down and not shout in disorder while standing, but to let those outside the doors come in too; and even as he said this he was quietly slipping away, as if to hand his horse over to someone.
Having thus slipped free, and speaking without any show of alarm to the Corinthians he met, and telling them to go to the Apollonium, he made his way unnoticed to a point near the citadel; then, leaping onto his horse and charging Cleopater, the commander of the garrison, to hold it firmly, he rode off to Sicyon, with thirty soldiers following him, the rest having deserted and melted away.
The Corinthians, discovering his flight a little afterward, gave chase, but failing to catch him, they sent for Cleomenes and handed over their city to him — who had never imagined he would gain from them so great a prize as this, which he obtained only because they had let Aratus slip through their fingers. So Cleomenes, once those who lived in the district called Acte had joined him and delivered up their cities, set about fencing off and walling in Acrocorinth.
Not many of the Achaeans came together to Aratus at Sicyon; but an assembly was held, and the office of general with full powers was conferred on him, and he formed a bodyguard from his own fellow-citizens — he who for thirty-three years had held public office among the Achaeans, and had stood first among the Greeks in power and reputation, but was now stripped bare, at a loss, and broken, tossed about, as if in the wreck of his homeland, amid such surging waves and danger.
For the Aetolians, when he asked for help, refused it; and the city of Athens, though inclined by goodwill toward Aratus to help, was held back by Eurycleides and Micion. And though Aratus had both money and a house in Corinth, Cleomenes touched none of it and let no one else touch it either; instead, he sent for his friends and stewards and ordered them to manage and guard everything, as men who would render account to Aratus;
and privately he sent Tripylus to him, and again Megistonous, his stepfather, promising him many other things, and twelve talents a year as a stipend — outbidding by half what Ptolemy gave, for Ptolemy used to send Aratus six talents a year. He asked to be proclaimed leader of the Achaeans and to guard Acrocorinth jointly with them.
But when Aratus replied that he did not control affairs, but was rather controlled by them, and seemed to Cleomenes to be mocking him, Cleomenes at once invaded the territory of Sicyon, ravaging and destroying it, and sat down before the city for three months, while Aratus held firm and was in doubt whether he should admit Antigonus on condition of handing over Acrocorinth — for otherwise Antigonus was unwilling to help.
The Achaeans, having gathered at Aegium, called Aratus there. But there was danger in the crossing, since Cleomenes was encamped near the city; and the citizens tried to hold him back, begging him not to risk his person while the enemy was so near, and saying they would not permit it. Even the women and children clung to him now, embracing him and weeping as though he were a common father and savior.
Nevertheless, encouraging and consoling them, he rode out on horseback to the sea, taking ten friends with him and his son, now a young man; and finding ships anchored there, they embarked and were carried to Aegium to the assembly, where they voted to summon Antigonus and to hand over Acrocorinth.
Aratus also sent his son to Antigonus along with the other hostages, at which the Corinthians, bitterly resentful, seized and stripped his estate, handing his house over to Cleomenes as a present.
As Antigonus was now approaching with his forces — he was leading twenty thousand Macedonian foot and thirteen hundred horse — Aratus, accompanied by the magistrates, sailed to meet him at Pegae, slipping past the enemy, though he was not altogether confident of Antigonus nor trusting toward the Macedonians. For he knew that he had risen to power by the harm he had done them, and that the first and greatest foundation of his political career had been his old hostility toward the elder Antigonus.
But seeing the inexorable necessity bearing down upon him, and the occasion which enslaves even those who seem to rule, he went forward to face the ordeal. And Antigonus, when someone told him that Aratus was approaching, greeted the others with moderate and ordinary courtesy, but received Aratus, even at their very first meeting, with extraordinary honor; and as he came to know him further, finding him a good man and a man of sense, he drew him closer than mere necessity required.
For Aratus was useful not only in great affairs, but was also, beyond anyone else, a delightful companion for a king at leisure. Hence, young as Antigonus was, once he perceived that the man's nature held nothing idle for royal friendship, he continued to make use of him more than of any other, whether Achaean or Macedonian, among all those with him;
and the sign turned out just as the god had shown it in the sacrifices. For it is said that not long before, when Aratus was sacrificing, two gall-bladders were found in the liver enclosed within a single fatty membrane; and the seer said that this meant he would soon come into closest friendship with those who were most hateful and hostile to him. At the time the saying passed unnoticed, since Aratus in any case placed little trust in sacrifices and prophecies, but relied on reasoning instead;
but later, when the war was going well, Antigonus gathered a banquet in Corinth and, entertaining many guests, placed Aratus above himself at table; and after a little he asked for a cloak, and inquired whether Aratus too felt the cold, and when he said he was indeed quite chilled, Antigonus told him to move closer, and when a rug was brought, the servants wrapped it around them both together — then Aratus, remembering those sacrifices, broke into laughter and related to the king the omen and what had been foretold. But this happened at a later time.
At Pegae, having given and received oaths, they marched at once against the enemy, and there were battles around the city, Cleomenes having fortified it well and the Corinthians defending eagerly. Meanwhile Aristotle the Argive, a friend of Aratus, sent word to him secretly, saying he would bring about the city's revolt if Aratus would come with soldiers.
When Aratus reported this to Antigonus and, taking fifteen hundred men, sailed quickly from the Isthmus to Epidaurus, the Argives rose up beforehand and attacked Cleomenes' men and shut them up in the acropolis; but Cleomenes, learning of this, and fearing that the enemy might seize Argos and cut him off from his safe return home, abandoned Acrocorinth and went to help while it was still night.
He got through to Argos just in time and turned the enemy back for a moment; but a little later, when Aratus was advancing and the king was appearing with his forces, he withdrew to Mantinea. From this point all the cities came over again to the Achaeans, Antigonus took over Acrocorinth, and Aratus, having been made general by the vote of the Argives, won them over to bestowing on Antigonus, as a gift, the estates of both the tyrants and the traitors.
And they tortured Aristomachus at Cenchreae and drowned him, for which Aratus was most severely blamed, since the man was not wicked, but had actually been persuaded and convinced by Aratus himself to give up his rule and bring the city over to the Achaeans — yet Aratus stood by and let him be destroyed against all law.
And now people were laying other charges against him besides: that they had given the city of the Corinthians to Antigonus as a gift, as if it were some chance village, while they had allowed him, after sacking Orchomenus, to install a Macedonian garrison there; and that they had voted not to write to any other king, nor to send embassies to anyone else, without Antigonus's consent;
and that they were forced to feed and pay the Macedonians, and celebrated sacrifices, processions, and games in Antigonus's honor, the citizens of Aratus's own city having begun it all and having welcomed Antigonus into their city as Aratus's guest — yet they blamed him for everything, not realizing that, having handed over the reins to Antigonus and being swept along by the momentum of royal power, he was master of nothing anymore except his voice alone, and even that voice carried a dangerous kind of freedom of speech.
For indeed many of the things being done openly grieved Aratus, as in the matter of the statues: Antigonus restored the toppled statues honoring Argos's former tyrants, yet he pulled down those honoring the men who had seized Acrocorinth — all except Aratus's own; and though Aratus pleaded much on this account, he did not persuade him.
It also seemed that what was done at Mantinea was not handled by the Achaeans in a manner worthy of Greeks. For having conquered them by Antigonus's help, they killed the most eminent and foremost men, sold some of the rest, and sent others in chains to Macedonia, enslaved the children and women, and of the money collected they divided a third among themselves and gave the other two parts to the Macedonians.
This much, at least, followed the law of retaliation; for although anger driving one to deal so brutally with kinsmen sharing the same blood is a dreadful thing, still, Simonides observes, necessity can make even a bitter remedy pleasant, much as one might apply soothing treatment to a soul that is inflamed and suffering. But what was done afterward concerning the city cannot be set down to Aratus's credit as either honorable or necessary.
For when the Achaeans had received the city as a gift from Antigonus and had resolved to resettle it, Aratus himself, serving as general and named its founder, ordained that its name change from Mantinea to Antigoneia — the name it still bears to this day; and it seems that because of him lovely Mantinea has been utterly effaced, while the city survives named after the very men who destroyed and slew its citizens.
After this Cleomenes, defeated in a great battle at Sellasia, abandoned Sparta and sailed away to Egypt; and Antigonus, having done everything just and humane toward Aratus, withdrew to Macedonia, and there, already falling ill, sent his successor to the throne, Philip — not yet quite a young man — into the Peloponnese, instructing him to give first attention to Aratus, and by that means to handle affairs with the cities and gain acquaintance with the Achaeans.
And indeed, once Aratus had taken him in hand, he disposed him in such a way that he dispatched him back to Macedonia brimming with warm regard for Aratus himself, and charged with keen ambition and zeal for the affairs of Greece.
When Antigonus died, the Aetolians, despising the Achaeans for their slackness — for having grown accustomed to being saved by other men's hands, and having sheltered themselves under Macedonian arms, they were living in great idleness and disorder — attacked the affairs of the Peloponnese; and they made the plundering of the territory of Patrae and Dyme a mere incident along their route, and, invading Messene, laid it waste.
At this Aratus was indignant, and seeing that Timoxenus, then general of the Achaeans, was hesitating and wasting time, his generalship already coming to its end, Aratus — who had been chosen to hold office after him — anticipated his term by five days in order to help the Messenians. And gathering the Achaeans, whose bodies were untrained and whose minds were slack for war, he was defeated near Caphyae:
And though he seemed to have generaled the campaign with a little more spirit, he then again blunted and let slip the whole affair and its hopes, so that he repeatedly gave the Aetolians their opening and put up with it, looking on as they ran riot, so to speak, through the Peloponnese with great licentiousness and insolence.
So once again they stretched out their hands toward Macedonia and drew Philip down into Greek affairs, not least because of his goodwill and trust toward Aratus, hoping that in everything they would find him easy to deal with and tractable.
And then, for the first time, the king was won over by Apelles and Megaleas and certain other courtiers who slandered Aratus, and joining forces at the elections with the opposing faction, he worked hard to have the Achaeans choose Eperatus as general.
But when Eperatus was held in complete contempt by the Achaeans, and nothing useful got done because Aratus took no part, Philip realized he had missed the whole mark, and turning back again to Aratus he was wholly his, and as his own fortunes grew both in power and in reputation, he became dependent on the man, as one who owed his good name and his growth to him.
And Aratus seemed to everyone to be a good tutor not only in democracy but also in kingship, for his own principles and character showed through in the king's actions like a color. For instance, the young man's moderation toward the Lacedaemonians who had done wrong, and his dealings with the Cretans, through which he brought over the whole island in a few days, and the campaign against the Aetolians, which was carried out with remarkable effect, all won Philip a reputation for tractability and Aratus one for good counsel,
and because of this the royal favorites, envious, and getting nowhere with their secret slanders, took to abusing him openly and clashing with him at drinking parties with much licentiousness and buffoonery; once they even pelted him with stones and chased him as he was leaving for his tent after dinner. At this Philip was angry and immediately fined them twenty talents, and later, when they seemed to be corrupting and disturbing affairs, he put them to death.
But when, elated by the success of fortune, Philip's affairs kept sprouting many great desires, and his innate wickedness, forcing off the mask it wore against its own nature and rising to the surface, little by little stripped bare and revealed his character — first privately he wronged the younger Aratus in the matter of his wife, and for a long time it went unnoticed that he was a guest and companion at their hearth; then he grew harsh toward the political affairs of the Greeks and was already plainly shaking Aratus off.
The affair at Messene furnished the beginning of suspicion. For when the Messenians fell into factional strife, Aratus was late in coming to help, but Philip, arriving in the city a day earlier, at once cast a kind of madness between the two sides against each other, privately asking the generals of the Messenians whether they had no laws against the common people, and privately again asking the leaders of the common people whether they had no hands against those playing the tyrant.
As a result of this the magistrates, emboldened, laid hold of the popular leaders, while the people, coming on with the crowd, killed the magistrates and nearly two hundred of the others besides.
When Philip had wrought so terrible a deed, and was still further setting the Messenians against one another, Aratus came upon the scene, and he himself was plainly taking it hard, and did not restrain his son from rebuking Philip bitterly and reviling him. The young man was thought to be in love with Philip; and speaking then he told him that he no longer even appeared handsome to him after doing such things, but the ugliest of all men.
Philip made no reply to him, although he was ready to burst out, restraining himself in anger and often snarling while the young man spoke; but toward the elder Aratus, as one who had borne what was said calmly and was a man of moderation and political sense by nature, he stretched out his right hand and raised him up from the theater, and led him toward Mount Ithome to sacrifice to Zeus and to view the place,
for it is no less well-fortified than the Acrocorinthus, and whoever takes a garrison there becomes difficult and hard to dislodge for those living around it. He went up and offered sacrifice; once the diviner had carried over the ox's entrails, he took them up in both hands and displayed them alternately to Aratus and to Demetrius of Pharos, bending toward each man and asking what he read in the sacred signs — that he himself would hold the citadel, or that he would give it back to the Messenians.
Demetrius laughed and said, "If you have the soul of a seer, you will let the place go; but if that of a king, you will hold the ox by both horns," hinting at the Peloponnese, as though, should he add Ithome to Acrocorinthus, it would be entirely under his hand and subdued.
But Aratus kept quiet for a long while, and when Philip pressed him to say what he thought, he said, "Philip, many are the mountains of the Cretans, and great ones, and many are the heights of the Boeotians and the Phocians that rise up out of the earth; and there are, I suppose, many places of the Acarnanians too, some inland, some by the sea, possessing wonderful natural strongholds; but you have seized none of these, and yet all of them willingly do what you command.
For bandits cling to rocks and hold to cliffs, but for a king nothing is stronger or more secure than trust and goodwill. These are what open the Cretan sea to you, these are what open the Peloponnese. Setting out from these, you, at such an age, have already become leader of some and master of others." While he was still speaking, Philip handed the entrails back to the seer, and taking hold of Aratus's hand said, "Come then, let us go this same way," as though he had been forced by him and had the city taken from him.
Aratus, now gradually drifting away from the court and little by little withdrawing himself from his intimacy with Philip, when Philip was crossing into Epirus and asked him to join the campaign, refused and stayed behind, fearing to be filled with the bad repute of what Philip was doing.
But when Philip, having most shamefully lost his ships to the Romans and having failed utterly in his undertakings, came back to the Peloponnese, and again attempted to cheat the Messenians, and, unable to hide it, wronged them openly and ravaged their territory, Aratus turned against him completely and was estranged from him, having by then also perceived the wrongs done in his own household, and bearing it painfully himself while concealing it from his son;
for it remained for him only to know that he had been wronged, and nothing more, being unable to take revenge. For Philip seems to have undergone the greatest and most paradoxical change, becoming, instead of a gentle king and a temperate youth, a licentious man and an utterly ruined tyrant; but in truth his nature had not changed at all; rather, once he felt safe enough, he simply unveiled a wickedness that fear had long kept hidden from view.
For that his feeling toward Aratus, bred in him from the beginning, was mixed with shame and fear, he made clear by what he did concerning him. Desiring to do away with the man, and believing that he could not even be a free man, let alone a tyrant or a king, while Aratus lived, he did not attempt it by force, but ordered Taurion, one of his generals and friends, to accomplish it by some undetectable means, chiefly through poisons,
in his own absence. Taurion, having made himself familiar with Aratus, gave him a drug — not a sharp and violent one, but one of the kind that at first only rouses a low fever and a heavy cough somewhere within, then goes on, step by gradual step, to bring about death. Yet it did not escape Aratus's notice; but since there was no use in exposing it, he bore the affliction gently and in silence, as though suffering from some common and ordinary illness.
Except that once, when one of his intimates was present in his room and he spat up blood, and that man saw it and was amazed, he said, "These, Cephalon, are the wages of royal friendship."
He died in this manner at Aegium, holding the generalship for a seventeenth term, and the Achaeans were determined that a funeral and memorials worthy of his life be held in that very place, the Sicyonians took it as a calamity that the body should not be laid to rest among them.
They persuaded the Achaeans to permit it, but since there was an ancient law that no one be buried within the walls, and a strong religious scruple attached to the law, they sent to Delphi to ask the Pythia about the matter. And she gave them this oracle in response: "Do you deliberate, Sicyon, over the perpetual life-ransom of Aratus, concerning the sacred rites and the funeral feast of your departed lord? For whatever is a burden to this man, and whatever burdens the earth because of him, is a sin against both heaven and sea."
When the oracle was brought back, all the Achaeans rejoiced, and the Sicyonians especially, turning their grief into a festival, at once brought the body from Aegium into the city, crowned and dressed in white, amid paeans and choral dances, and choosing a conspicuous spot they buried him there as though he were the founder and savior of the city.
And it is called to this day the Arateion, and they offer sacrifice to him — one sacrifice on the day he freed the city from tyranny, the fifth day of Daisios, the month the Athenians name Anthesterion, and this rite they call the Soteria; and the other on the day of the month on which the man was born, which they keep in memory. Of the first sacrifice the priest of Zeus the Savior took the lead, of the second the priest of Aratus, wearing a headband not entirely white but shot through with purple,
and hymns were sung to the lyre by the artists devoted to Dionysus, and the gymnasiarch joined the procession, leading the boys and the young men, and after him followed the council wearing garlands, and of the other citizens whoever wished. Small tokens of these observances they still preserve, keeping them sacred on those days, but most of the honors have lapsed through time and other circumstances.
But the elder Aratus, it is recorded, lived thus and was of such a character by nature. As for his son, Philip, being naturally polluted and violent with cruelty, drove him out of his senses not with deadly but with maddening drugs, and turned him toward terrible and monstrous attacks of frenzy, so that he pursued strange and shameful acts and ruinous passions, with the result that death, though he was young and in his prime, came to him not as a misfortune but as a release from evils and a salvation,
and Philip indeed continued to pay no small penalty to Zeus the god of hospitality and friendship for this unholy deed. For, defeated in war by the Romans, he handed over his affairs to them, and, cast out of the rest of his power and giving up all his ships but five, and agreeing to pay in addition a thousand talents and handing over his son as a hostage, he obtained Macedonia and its tribute-paying territories out of pity. But by continually putting to death the best men and his closest kin he filled the whole kingdom with dread and hatred of him,
and the one good fortune he had gained amid so many evils — a son outstanding in virtue — this one he destroyed out of envy and jealousy of the honor he received from the Romans, and handed over the kingdom to the other, Perseus, who they say was not legitimate but a supposititious child, born of a certain seamstress, Gnathaenion. This man Aemilius led in triumph, and here the succession of the Antigonid kingdom came to an end; but the family of Aratus survived in Sicyon and in Pellene down to our own time.

======== Artaxerxes ========

The first Artaxerxes, who surpassed all the kings of Persia in gentleness and greatness of soul, was called Longhand (Makrocheir), because his right hand was longer than the other; Xerxes was his father. This account concerns the second Artaxerxes, who was called Mnemon, and he was descended from that first Artaxerxes through a daughter. For Darius and Parysatis had four children: the eldest was Artaxerxes, after him Cyrus, and younger than these Ostanes and Oxathres.
Cyrus took his name from the elder Cyrus, and that Cyrus, they say, got his name from the sun, for the Persians call the sun Cyrus. Artaxerxes had earlier been called Arsicas -- though Deinon says he was called Oarses. But it is not likely that Ctesias, however many incredible and wild tales he has crammed into his books, a whole marketplace of every kind of thing, did not know what name the king he served actually went by, though he attended him along with his wife, mother, and children.
Now Cyrus had, from his earliest age, something intense and vehement about him, while the other seemed gentler in every way and by nature softer in his impulses. He took a beautiful and good wife at his parents' bidding, and kept her even when they later forbade it. For the king, having put her brother to death, was minded to destroy her as well,
but Arsicas, becoming a suppliant of his mother and weeping greatly, with difficulty persuaded her neither to kill the woman nor to part her from him. But the mother favored Cyrus more, and wished him to become king; and so, when their father was now ill, Cyrus, summoned from the sea, went up in full confidence, hoping that with her help he would be declared successor to the throne,
for Parysatis had a plausible argument, the very one the elder Xerxes had once used at Demaratus' urging: that Arsicas had been born to Darius while he was still a private citizen, but Cyrus while he was king. Yet she did not prevail; the elder son was declared king, renamed Artaxerxes, while Cyrus was made governor of Lydia and given command of the troops along the coast.
A little after Darius' death the king rode out to Pasargadae, so that he might be initiated into the royal rite by the priests of Persia. There stands a shrine there to a battle-loving goddess, comparable to Athena.
Into this the one being initiated must go, having first laid aside his own robe, and put on the one which the elder Cyrus wore before he became king; and he must eat a cake of dried figs, chew up terebinth, and drink a cup of sour milk. Whether they do anything else besides these things
is unclear to everyone else. While Artaxerxes was about to do these things, Tissaphernes came to him bringing one of the priests, a man who had been overseer of Cyrus' customary upbringing as a boy and had taught him magianism, and who appeared to lament, as much as any Persian, that Cyrus had never, for that reason, been proclaimed king; it was this that made his charge against Cyrus believable.
He accused him of intending to lie in ambush in the temple, and, when the king took off his robe, to set upon him and destroy him. Some say that it was from this slander that the arrest came about; others say that Cyrus actually entered the temple and was betrayed while hiding there by the priest,
and that when he stood already on the verge of execution, his mother flung her arms about him, wound her hair about him, drew his neck close to her own, and with much lamenting and supplication begged him off and sent him back down to the sea -- Cyrus not content with that reprieve, nor remembering the release so much as the arrest, and burning with anger even more than before for the kingship.
Some say that it was not being satisfied with what he received for his daily table that made him revolt from the king -- foolish talk, for even if nothing else were true, his mother was there to let him use and take whatever he wished of her own resources, supplying and giving it to him. His wealth is confirmed also by the mercenary force his friends and guest-friends kept up on his behalf in numerous locations, as Xenophon has recorded. For he did not gather them all together at once, still concealing his preparation, but kept others elsewhere recruiting soldiers on many pretexts.
The king's mother, by her presence, removed suspicions, and Cyrus himself always wrote to him in a flattering way, sometimes asking favors of him, sometimes accusing Tissaphernes in turn, as though his rivalry and contest were directed against that man.
There was also a certain hesitancy in the king's nature, which appeared to most as fair-mindedness. At the start he seemed very much to be emulating the gentleness of his namesake Artaxerxes, showing himself more agreeable to approach, exceeding due measure in honoring and granting favors, and removing from every punishment anything of insult or of pleasure taken in it; and in receiving favors he showed himself no less gracious and kindly toward those who gave than toward those who received in the giving,
for nothing offered to him was too small for him to accept gladly. Indeed, when a man named Omisus once brought him a single pomegranate of remarkable size, he remarked, "By Mithras, this man could quickly make a small city into a great one, if he were trusted with it."
Once, when various people were bringing him various things along the road, a laboring man, finding nothing ready at hand in time, ran to the river, took up water in his cupped hands, and offered it to him; Artaxerxes, delighted, sent him a golden bowl and a thousand darics. To Eucleides the Spartan, who spoke to him with much blunt freedom, he had the chiliarch tell him, "It is permitted to you to say what you wish, but to me both to say and to do."
Once during a hunt, when Teribazus showed him his kandys torn, he asked what should be done. When Teribazus said, "Put on another yourself, but give this one to me," he did so, saying, "I give it to you, Teribazus, but I forbid you to wear it." Teribazus paid no heed -- for he was not wicked, but somewhat light and flighty -- and immediately put on the kandys himself and put on gold necklaces and other feminine ornaments of the royal wardrobe. Everyone else was indignant, for this was not permitted, but the king only laughed and said, "I give you the golden things to wear as a woman, and the robe to wear as a madman."
No one shared the same table except the king's mother or his wedded wife, the one sitting below him, the mother above him; yet Artaxerxes invited even his younger brothers, Ostanes and Oxathres, to the same table. And among the things most pleasing to the Persians was the sight of the carriage of his wife Stateira, always brought forth with its curtains open, allowing the women of the people to greet and approach her; for this the queen was beloved by the many.
The revolutionaries and busybodies, however, thought that Cyrus, being a man brilliant in spirit, exceptionally warlike, and devoted to his companions, was what the situation longed for, and that the greatness of the empire needed a king with high ambition and love of honor.
So Cyrus, trusting no less in those from the interior than in those around himself, undertook the war; and he wrote to the Lacedaemonians urging them to help and to send men along with him, to whom he said he would give, if they came as infantry, horses, and if as cavalry, chariot-teams; and if they had fields, villages, and if villages, cities; and that pay for those who served would be, not a fixed number, but a full measure.
Boasting much about himself, he said he carried a heart heavier than his brother's, was a better philosopher and better versed in magianism, and could drink more wine and bear it better, while his brother, out of cowardice and softness, could not so much as sit a horse in the hunt, nor sit upon the throne in dangers. The Lacedaemonians accordingly sent a skytale to Clearchus ordering him to serve Cyrus in everything.
Cyrus advanced against the king leading a sizable native army together with Greek mercenaries numbering just under thirteen thousand, making one pretext after another for the campaign. Yet he did not remain hidden for long; Tissaphernes came to the king himself with the news, and great confusion seized the palace, with Parysatis bearing most of the blame for the war, and her friends falling under suspicion and slander.
What most vexed Parysatis was Stateira, who was deeply distressed over the war and cried out, "Where now are those pledges? Where the entreaties, by which you saved the man who plotted against your brother, and have filled us with war and troubles?" From this Parysatis came to hate Stateira, and being by nature sullen and barbarous in her wrath and in nursing grievances, she plotted to destroy her.
Deinon has said that the plot was carried out during the war itself, while Ctesias says it was later -- and it is not likely that Ctesias, who was present at the events, was ignorant of the time, nor did he have willing cause to shift the deed from its actual time in his account of how it happened, though his narrative often suffers from turning aside from the truth toward the fabulous and the theatrical. As for this matter, then, it shall keep the place he assigned it.
As Cyrus advanced, rumors and reports kept coming to him that the king had not decided to fight at once, nor was eager to close with him in battle, but meant to wait in Persia until his forces gathered there from every side. Indeed he had dug a trench ten fathoms wide and of equal depth across the plain for four hundred stades, and yet he allowed Cyrus to pass within it and to come not far from Babylon itself.
But when Teribazus, as they say, was the first to dare say that he ought not to avoid battle, nor, after yielding Media and at the same time letting slip Babylon and Susa, hide himself away in Persis -- he having a force many times greater than the enemy's, and countless satraps and generals better in judgment and in fighting than those of Cyrus -- the king set out to fight it out as quickly as possible,
and at first, appearing suddenly with nine hundred thousand troops drawn up in splendid array, he struck terror and confusion into the enemy, who were marching in disorder and unarmed out of confidence and contempt, so that it was with much uproar and shouting that Cyrus with difficulty got them into formation; but then, advancing in silence and at a measured pace, he presented a marvel of good order to the Greeks, who had expected disorderly shouts, leaping about, much confusion, and scattering in so great a multitude.
And well did he draw up, opposite the Greeks, the strongest of his scythe-bearing chariots in front of his own phalanx, so that before coming to close quarters they would cut through their ranks by the force of their charge.
That battle has been reported by many, and Xenophon all but shows it before our eyes, always setting the hearer, through his vividness, in the midst of the events as though they were not past but happening now, and keeping him engaged and sharing the danger; so it is not the part of a sensible man to go over it again, except for such things worth mention as he passed over in silence.
The site chosen for the battle-line bears the name Cunaxa, lying five hundred stadia distant from Babylon. Before the battle, they say, when Clearchus urged Cyrus to stay behind the fighters and not risk himself, Cyrus said, "What are you saying, Clearchus? Are you telling me, who am reaching for the kingship, to be unworthy of the kingship?"
But though Cyrus made a great mistake in plunging rashly into the thick of danger and not guarding against the risk, Clearchus erred no less — if not more — in refusing to draw up the Greeks against the king himself, but instead hugging the river with his right wing, to avoid being surrounded. For a man pursuing safety above all else, and setting the highest store on suffering no harm, it would have been best to stay home.
But he who had marched ten thousand stadia up from the sea under arms, compelled by no one, but in order to seat Cyrus on the royal throne, and who then, in looking about for position and formation, considered not from what point he might save his commander and paymaster, but in what position he himself might fight safely and at his ease — such a man was, out of fear of the dangers at hand, like one who had cast out all reckoning of the whole enterprise and abandoned the very purpose of the campaign.
For that none of those stationed around the king would have withstood the Greeks had they charged home, and that once those forces were driven off and the king had fled or fallen, it was open to Cyrus, if victorious, to survive and to reign — this is clear from what actually happened. Hence one must blame Clearchus's over-caution, rather than Cyrus's boldness, as the cause that ruined the whole affair, Cyrus included.
For if the king himself had been looking to find where, by stationing the Greeks, he would meet with the least harmful enemy, he could not have found any place better than the one farthest from himself and his own men — a position from which he himself would not have perceived his own defeat, and Cyrus would have been cut down before he could make any use of Clearchus's victory.
And yet Cyrus was not ignorant of what was advantageous — he ordered Clearchus to take position there, in the center — but Clearchus, saying that he would see to it that things went as well as possible for himself, ruined the whole plan.
The Greeks, for their part, defeated the barbarians as thoroughly as they wished and pressed the pursuit very far. But as Cyrus rode a noble horse, hard-mouthed and unruly, called Pasacas, as Ctesias says, Artagerses, commander of the Cadusians, rode out against him, shouting loudly,
"You who disgrace the fairest name among the Persians, that of Cyrus, most unjust and most senseless of men, you come leading the wretched Greeks on a wretched road against the blessings of Persia, hoping to destroy your own master and brother, who has ten thousand times ten thousand slaves better than you. You will find out at once — you will lose your head here before you set eyes on the king's face."
So saying, he hurled his javelin at him. The breastplate held firm, and Cyrus was not wounded, though he was shaken by the force of the heavy blow. As Artagerses wheeled his horse about, Cyrus, throwing in turn, did not miss, and drove the spear-point through his neck beside the collarbone.
That Artagerses died at the hand of Cyrus almost everyone agrees. But as to the death of Cyrus himself, since Xenophon spoke of it simply and briefly, not having been present himself, there is perhaps nothing to prevent us from going through the accounts of Dinon, and again those of Ctesias, separately.
Dinon, then, says that when Artagerses had fallen, Cyrus charged violently into the ranks drawn up before the king and wounded his horse, so that the king slipped off; and when Tiribazus swiftly mounted him upon a fresh horse, saying, "Remember, my king, this day, for it merits no oblivion," Cyrus, driving his horse at him again, struck Artaxerxes down.
At the third charge the king, unable to bear it any longer and saying to those present that it was better not to live, rode out to meet Cyrus, who was bearing down rashly and heedlessly into the enemy's missiles. The king himself cast a javelin, and those around him cast theirs,
at him, and Cyrus falls — according to some, struck by the king himself; according to others, by a Carian man, to whom the king gave, as the prize for this deed, the honor of always carrying a golden rooster on a spear before the ranks on campaigns; for the Persians were accustomed to nickname the Carians "roosters," on account of the plumes they wear atop their helmets.
Ctesias's account, to abridge much and report it briefly, runs something like this. Cyrus, having killed Artagerses, rode his horse straight at the king himself, and the king at him, both in silence. Ariaeus, a friend of Cyrus, got his throw in first at the king, and did not wound him; the king, letting fly his spear, missed Cyrus, but struck and killed Satiphernes, a loyal and noble man in Cyrus's service.
Cyrus, hurling his javelin at him in turn, wounded him through the breastplate in the chest, the javelin sinking in some two fingers' depth, and the king fell from his horse from the blow. In the flight and confusion that followed among those around him, the king rose with a few companions, among whom Ctesias himself was one, and, taking a nearby hill, kept quiet; but Cyrus, entangled among the enemy, was carried far off by his horse in its fury, unrecognized in the now-gathering darkness by the enemy, and sought after by his friends,
elated by his victory and full of dash and boldness, he rode through shouting, "Get out of the way, wretches!" And as he shouted this repeatedly in Persian, they did get out of the way, doing obeisance; but Cyrus's tiara slipped off in the confusion. A Persian youth called Mithridates, rushing by, hurled a javelin that caught him near the eye, at the temple, not knowing whom he had struck.
As much blood poured from the wound, Cyrus, grown dizzy and faint, fell; and his horse, slipping away, wandered off, while the blood-soaked saddle-cloth that slipped from it was retrieved by the servant belonging to the man who had dealt Cyrus the blow. Cyrus, struggling and barely managing to recover from the blow, was attended by a few eunuchs who happened to be present, and they tried to set him on another horse and save him.
As he was unable, and yet eager to walk on his own, they took hold of him and led him on, his head heavy and reeling in body, though he believed he was winning, hearing those fleeing calling out to Cyrus as king and begging for mercy. Meanwhile some Caunians, wretched and destitute men who followed the king's army for the sake of menial services, happened to have gotten mixed in among Cyrus's company as though they were friends — but with difficulty:
they made out the scarlet tunics, while all the king's men wore white, and realized they were enemies. So one of them, not knowing who it was, dared to hurl a javelin at Cyrus from behind. The vein behind his knee was slashed open; Cyrus collapsed, and in that same instant the wound at his temple met a stone as he fell, and he died. Such is Ctesias's account, in which, as though with a dull little dagger, he barely manages to finish the man off.
Now when Cyrus was already dead, Artasyras, the king's Eye, happened to be riding past. Recognizing the eunuchs wailing, he asked the most trusted of them, "Who is this, Pariscas, that you sit weeping over?" And he said, "Do you not see, Artasyras? Cyrus is dead." Artasyras, amazed, told the eunuch to take courage and guard the body, while he himself hurried to Artaxerxes,
who had already given up hope for his cause, and whose body was faring badly under the strain of thirst and his wound, and gladly reported that he had with his own eyes seen Cyrus lying dead. The king at first set out at once to go there himself, and ordered Artasyras to lead him to the spot; but since there was much talk of the Greeks, and fear that they were pursuing and conquering and prevailing everywhere, he decided to send a larger party to see for themselves — and thirty men were sent, carrying torches.
As the king, close to death from thirst, waited, Satibarzanes the eunuch ran about seeking drink — since no water was to be found there, and the camp lay some distance off. With difficulty he came upon one of those wretched Caunians who had, in a poor wineskin, some corrupted and foul water, about eight cotylae, and taking this and bringing it to the king, gave it to him. When he had drunk it all down, he asked whether he did not find the drink altogether disagreeable.
But the king swore before the gods that never had he tasted wine, however delightful, nor even the clearest and lightest water, with such delight. "So," he said, "if I am unable, after searching, to reward the man who gave you this, I pray the gods to make him blessed and rich."
Meanwhile the thirty rode up, radiant and overjoyed, announcing to him the unhoped-for good fortune. And now, with the crowd of men rallying and gathering around him again, he took courage, and came down from the hill, bathed in a blaze of light.
When he stood over the corpse, and, according to a certain Persian custom, the right hand was cut off along with the head from the body, he commanded that the head be carried to him, and, seizing it by its thick, shaggy locks, held it up on display to those still wavering and in flight. They marveled and did obeisance, so that soon seventy thousand gathered around him and rode back together into the camp.
Ctesias reports that he marched into battle at the head of four hundred thousand troops; Dinon and Xenophon, however, put the fighting forces at a considerably higher number. As for the count of the dead, Ctesias says nine thousand were reported to Artaxerxes, but that to his own eye the bodies lying there appeared no fewer than twenty thousand. This point is disputed; but here is a brilliant lie of Ctesias's already — that he claims to have been dispatched to the Greeks together with Phalinus of Zacynthus and a few others.
For Xenophon was aware that Ctesias attended upon the king — he refers to him, and is clearly acquainted with his books — and so would not, if Ctesias had actually gone and served as interpreter for such important words, have left him unnamed, while naming Phalinus of Zacynthus. But Ctesias, it seems, being extraordinarily fond of honor and no less fond of the Spartans and of Clearchus, is always giving himself some role in the narrative, in which, once placed there, he will have much fine occasion to remember Clearchus and Sparta.
After the battle he sent out the finest and greatest gifts to the son of Artagerses, who had fallen at Cyrus's hand, and he honored Ctesias and the others well too. And having sought out that Caunian who had given him the wineskin, he made him, from obscure and poor, honored and rich; there was also some concern shown for the punishment of wrongdoers.
As for a certain Mede named Arbaces, who fled in the battle before Cyrus and then, when Cyrus fell, changed sides again, the king judged him guilty of cowardice and weakness, not of treachery or ill will, and ordered him to take up a naked prostitute and carry her astride on his neck through the whole day in the marketplace. And another man, who besides deserting had falsely claimed to have struck down two of the enemy, he ordered to have his tongue pierced through with three needles.
Wishing and believing that all men should think and say that he himself had killed Cyrus, he sent gifts to Mithridates, the man who had first struck Cyrus, and instructed those bearing the gifts to say: "The King honors you with these because you found and brought back the horse-cap of Cyrus." But when the Carian, by whose blow to the hollow of the knee Cyrus had fallen, also asked for a reward, he ordered those bearing gifts to say to him: "The King gives you this as the second prize for good news, for Artasyras was first, and you second, to report the death of Cyrus."
Mithridates then went away in silence, grieved; but the wretched Carian was overtaken by a common misfortune born of foolishness. Corrupted, it seems, by the good things then present, and persuaded at once to claim more than was owed him, he was not content to have what was given as pay for good news, but grew indignant, protesting and shouting that no one else, but he himself, had killed Cyrus, and that he was being unjustly robbed of the glory. Hearing this, the King was greatly provoked and ordered the man's head cut off. But his mother, being present,
said: "Do not you, O King, release this Carian so easily from his ruin, but he shall receive from me the wages he deserves for what he dares to say." And when the King permitted it, Parysatis ordered those in charge of punishments to seize the man, stretch him on the wheel across a span of ten full days, and only afterward to gouge out his eyes and pour molten bronze down into his ears until he died.
Mithridates too perished miserably not long after, from the same foolishness. For having been invited to a dinner where eunuchs of both the King and the Queen Mother were present, he came adorned in the clothing and gold he had received from the King,
and when they came to drinking, the most powerful of Parysatis's eunuchs said to him: "What fine clothing the King has given you, Mithridates, and what fine collars and bracelets; and how valuable the scimitar! Truly he has made you blessed and admired by all." And Mithridates, already drunk, said: "What is all this, Sparamizes? For I proved myself worthy that day of far greater and finer things from the King."
And Sparamizes, smiling, said: "There is no envy, Mithridates; but since the Greeks say that wine and truth go together, what is so brilliant or great, my friend, in finding a horse's cap that slipped off and bringing it back?" He said this not in ignorance of the truth, but wishing to expose it to those present, he stirred up the man's frivolity, for he had become talkative and uncontrolled from the wine.
So, unable to restrain himself, Mithridates said: "You may call it a cap and nonsense, whatever you like; but I tell you plainly that it was this very hand that brought Cyrus down. Unlike Artagerses, I did not fling my spear uselessly and miss my mark, but I missed his eye by a little, and struck his temple, and drove the blow through and brought the man down, and he died of that wound."
The others then, seeing already the end of Mithridates and his misfortune, bowed their heads to the ground; but the host said to them: "Come now, Mithridates, let us drink and eat for the present, doing obeisance to the King's fortune, and let us leave aside talk too great for the likes of us."
After this the eunuch reported the story to Parysatis, who then carried it to the King; the King grew indignant, feeling exposed, as though he were losing the finest and sweetest part of his victory, for he wished all the barbarians and Greeks to be persuaded that in the charges and clashes he had given and received a blow, and had been wounded himself while killing Cyrus. He therefore ordered Mithridates to die by the boats.
The punishment of the boats is this: taking two boats built to fit one upon the other, they lay the condemned man on his back in one of them; then bringing the other over and fitting it together, so that his head and hands and feet are left outside while the rest of his body is entirely hidden within, they give the man food to eat, and if he is unwilling they force him by pricking his eyes; and after he has eaten they pour into his mouth a mixture of milk and honey, and pour it also over his face.
Then they keep turning his eyes always toward the sun, and a swarm of flies settling upon it covers his whole face; and since inside he does all that men eating and drinking necessarily must do, maggots and worms boil up out of the decay and corruption of his waste, by which, as they eat their way inward, his body is consumed.
For when the man is now plainly dead, the upper boat being removed, they see the flesh eaten away, and around his entrails swarms of such creatures clinging to it and devouring it. In this way Mithridates, wasting away for seventeen days, at last barely died.
There remained for Parysatis one more target: Masabates, eunuch to the King, the very man who had severed Cyrus's head and hand. Since he gave her no opening of his own accord, Parysatis devised a plot of the following kind.
She was in other respects a woman shrewd in temperament and skilled at dice, and for this reason she often diced with the King in the years before the war broke out; then, once the war had ended and she had been reconciled to him, she did not avoid his friendly overtures, but joined in his amusements and shared in his love affairs, cooperating and being present, and in general allowed Stateira only the smallest part of his company and companionship, hating that woman above all others and wishing herself to have the greatest power.
Once, catching Artoxerxes at leisure and restless with idleness, she challenged him to play dice for a thousand darics; and while playing she let him win, and paid over the gold, but pretending to be vexed and eager to compete again, she proposed they play once more from the start for a eunuch; and he agreed.
Having made an agreement that each should set aside five of his most trusted eunuchs, and that from the rest the winner might choose whichever one he wished, the loser to hand him over, on these terms they played dice. She applied herself intensely to the matter and was earnest about the game, and the dice falling well for her somehow, having won, she takes Masabates, for he was not among those set aside.
And before the King came to suspect the matter, she handed him over to those in charge of punishments and ordered them to flay him alive, and to fix his body sideways upon three stakes, and to nail up the skin separately. When this had been done and the King took it badly and grew angry at her, she said mockingly with a laugh: "How sweet and blessed you are, if you are angry over an old wretched eunuch, while I, cheated out of a thousand darics at dice, keep silent and am content."
The King then, regretting how he had been deceived, kept quiet; but Stateira openly opposed her in other matters as well and was displeased at this, on the ground that she was cruelly and lawlessly destroying men who were eunuchs loyal to the King, on account of Cyrus.
Now when Tissaphernes deceived Clearchus and the other generals and broke faith after oaths had been sworn, and having seized them sent them up bound in fetters, Ctesias says that Clearchus asked him to provide him with a comb. Having obtained it and having groomed his head, he was pleased with the service and gave him his ring, a token of friendship for his relatives and household in Lacedaemon; and the engraving on the seal was of Caryatid dancers.
The food sent to Clearchus was taken and consumed by the soldiers bound with him, who gave only a little of it to Clearchus; and Ctesias says he remedied this too, arranging for more to be sent to Clearchus, and privately having other food given to the soldiers; and that these services and provisions were rendered as a favor and by the will of Parysatis.
And when a ham was sent daily to Clearchus along with the other food, he urged and instructed him that he should conceal a small blade within the meat before sending it in, rather than let the King's cruelty finish him off unopposed; but he himself, fearing, was unwilling to do so. And the King, entreated by his mother not to kill Clearchus, agreed and swore an oath; but being persuaded again by Stateira, he put all to death except Menon.
After this, he says, Parysatis plotted against Stateira and contrived the poisoning against her, saying things not plausible but containing much unreason in the charge, if Parysatis really did so terrible a deed and put herself at such risk for the sake of Clearchus, daring to kill the King's legitimate wife and partner in children being raised for the kingship,
but it is clear enough that these things are embellished melodramatically in honor of the memory of Clearchus; for indeed he says that when the generals were killed, the others were torn apart by dogs and birds, but over the corpse of Clearchus a windstorm heaped up a great mound of earth and hid the body; and that from some date-palm stones scattered there, in a little while a marvelous grove sprang up and shaded the place, so that the King greatly repented, as one who had killed a man dear to the gods.
Parysatis, then, with hatred toward Stateira lying beneath the surface from the start, and with jealousy, seeing that her own power rested on the King's respect and honor for her, while Stateira's rested on his love and was firm and strong through his trust, plotted concerning the greatest matters, as she thought, staking everything.
She had a trusted maidservant able to wield the greatest influence with her, named Gigis, who Deinon says assisted in the poisoning, though Ctesias says she was only aware of it unwillingly. The one who gave the poison Ctesias names Belitaras, but Deinon calls him Melantas. Having begun again from their former suspicion and quarrel to visit and dine together, still out of fear and caution they used the same food and from the same portions.
There is in Persia a small bird which has no waste matter at all, but is entirely full inside with fat, and they suppose the creature is nourished by wind and dew; it is called the rhyntakes. This, Ctesias says, Parysatis, with a small knife smeared with poison on one side, cut in two, wiping the poison onto one portion; and putting the untainted, clean portion into her own mouth she ate it, but gave to Stateira the poisoned portion. But Deinon says it was not Parysatis,
but Melantas who, cutting with the little knife the poisoned pieces of meat, placed them before Stateira. The woman, dying amid great pain and convulsions, herself perceived the evil, and gave the King cause for suspicion against his mother, since he knew her savage and implacable nature.
For this reason he set out at once on the search, and seized and tortured his mother's attendants and table-servants. But Parysatis kept Gigis with her at home for a long time, and although the king demanded her surrender she would not give her up; only later, when Gigis herself asked to be let go home by night, did he learn of it, and setting an ambush he seized her and condemned her to death.
Poisoners in Persia are put to death by law in this manner: there is a broad flat stone, upon which they lay the head, and with another stone they strike and press it until they crush the face and the skull. So Gigis died in this way; but toward Parysatis, Artoxerxes neither said nor did any other unkind thing, apart from dispatching her to Babylon, since it was her own wish to go there, declaring that while she remained alive he personally would never set eyes on Babylon. That, in short, was the condition of matters within the household.
When the king, though eager to capture the Greeks who had gone up with Cyrus no less than he had been to overcome Cyrus and secure his kingdom, failed to take them, but they, having lost Cyrus their leader and their own generals, made their way to safety from within almost the very palace itself, having exposed and shown for all to see that the affairs of the Persians and of the king, though rich in gold and luxury and women, were in everything else mere show and pretension,
all Greece took courage and grew contemptuous of the barbarians, while to the Lacedaemonians it seemed a terrible thing not now, at least, to free from servitude the Greeks who dwelt in Asia, nor to put a stop to their being abused by the barbarians; and though they had earlier waged war first through Thimbron, then through Dercyllidas, without accomplishing anything worth mention, they entrusted the war to King Agesilaus,
who, having crossed over into Asia with his ships, was at once vigorous in action and won great renown, defeating Tissaphernes in pitched battle and causing the cities to revolt from him. When this had happened, Artoxerxes, taking counsel as to how he must make war upon them, sent Timocrates the Rhodian into Greece carrying much gold, with orders to give it and to corrupt those who had the greatest power in the cities, and to stir up a Greek war against Lacedaemon.
While Timocrates was carrying out these instructions, and the greatest cities were combining against Sparta and the Peloponnese was being thrown into confusion, the magistrates sent for Agesilaus to return from Asia; and it was then, they say, that as he was departing he remarked to his companions that thirty thousand archers were driving him out of Asia—for the Persian coin bore the device of an archer.
He also pushed the Lacedaemonians back from mastery of the sea, making use of Conon the Athenian, general in company with Pharnabazus. For Conon had been spending his time in Cyprus after the naval battle at Aegospotami, not content with safety, but waiting, as one waits at sea for a change of wind, for a reversal of fortune.
Seeing that his own calculations required a power, and that the king's power required a man of sense, he sent a letter to the king about what he had in mind. And he ordered the bearer to deliver it, if possible, through Zeno the Cretan or Polycritus the Mendaean—of whom Zeno was a dancer and Polycritus a physician; but if these were not available, through Ctesias the physician.
According to report, once Ctesias had the letter in hand, he inserted on his own initiative, alongside what Conon had written, a plea that he too be dispatched to the king, since he would prove useful in naval matters. Ctesias himself, however, says that the king assigned him this service on his own initiative.
But when, having prevailed in the sea-battle off Cnidus through Pharnabazus and Conon, he took away from the Lacedaemonians their command of the sea, he turned all Greece at once toward himself, so that he became the arbiter, for the Greeks, of that renowned settlement known as the Peace of Antalcidas.
Antalcidas was a Spartiate, son of Leon, and by courting the king's favor he secured the outcome that every Greek city in Asia, together with the neighboring islands, would be surrendered to him as tribute-paying subjects, once peace had been made for the Greeks—if indeed one ought to call peace an outrage and betrayal of Greece, the end of which no war ever brought more ingloriously upon the defeated.
For this reason Artoxerxes, who always loathed the rest of the Spartiates, and thought them, as Deinon says, the most shameless of all men, held Antalcidas in extraordinary affection when he went up to the Persians. And once, taking one of the floral garlands and steeping it in the richest perfume, he sent it from his own dinner to Antalcidas, and everyone marveled at this mark of friendliness.
This man was, it seems, a fitting one to be so pampered and to receive such a garland, having danced away in Persia the memory of Leonidas and Callicratidas. For Agesilaus, it appears, when a certain man remarked to him, "How sad for Greece, now that the Laconians are turning Persian," replied, "Rather, is it not that the Medes are Laconizing?" But the neatness of the retort did not remove the shame of the fact; instead, the Spartans lost their supremacy by fighting badly at Leuctra, though the glory of Sparta had already been destroyed beforehand by those agreements.
Now so long as Sparta held first place, she made Antalcidas her guest-friend and called him her own friend; but when the Spartans were defeated at Leuctra and, brought low, were in need of money, they sent Agesilaus off to Egypt, while Antalcidas went up to Artoxerxes to beg him to come to the aid of the Lacedaemonians.
But the king so utterly neglected him, overlooked him, and cast him aside, that when he came down again, mocked by his enemies and fearing the ephors besides, he brought about his own death by starvation. Ismenias of Thebes likewise made the journey up to the king, and Pelopidas too, already victor in the battle at Leuctra. But Pelopidas did nothing shameful; Ismenias, however, when ordered to prostrate himself, dropped his ring on the ground before himself, then stooped and picked it up, and so gave the impression of performing obeisance.
As for Timagoras the Athenian, who through Beluris his secretary sent in a confidential note, the king was so delighted that he presented him with ten thousand darics; and because illness required him to drink cow's milk, eighty cows were made to follow him about so he could be supplied; besides this he sent him a couch and bedding along with attendants to make it up, since he supposed the Greeks did not know the proper way to make up a bed, and litter-bearers to carry him, since he was in poor health, all the way to the sea,
and while he was there a most splendid dinner was sent to him, so that Ostanes, the king's brother, said, "Timagoras, remember this table: it is not set before you so splendidly for small services." This amounted to a rebuke for his betrayal rather than any recollection of a favor done. And in fact the Athenians put Timagoras to death, having convicted him of accepting bribes.
But Artoxerxes gave the Greeks one joy to offset all the pain he caused them, by putting to death Tissaphernes, their bitterest and most hostile enemy. He put him to death through the accusations of Parysatis, who joined in the attack against him. For the king did not remain angry with his mother for long, but was reconciled with her and sent for her, since he saw that she had intelligence and a spirit worthy of royalty, and there was no longer any reason standing in the way for which, being together, they should suspect or grieve each other.
After this, doing everything to please the king, and having, through her power to gratify him in nothing that he did being troublesome, the ability to prevail with him and obtain anything, she perceived that one of her daughters, Atossa, was suffering a terrible passion of love, kept hidden above all for her sake, and that he was restraining the passion—so some say—although intimacy with the girl had already taken place secretly,
As soon as Parysatis suspected this, she embraced the girl more than before, and praised to Artoxerxes both her beauty and her character, as being royal and magnificent. In the end she persuaded him to marry the girl and to declare her his lawful wife, dismissing the opinions and customs of the Greeks, and taking himself, for the Persians, as a law appointed by god and an arbiter of what was shameful and honorable.
Some, however—among them Heraclides of Cyme—say that Artoxerxes married not one only of his daughters but a second as well, Amestris, of whom we shall report a little later. But Atossa the father loved so much while she lived with him that, when a leprous disease spread over her body, he was not in the least troubled by it,
but prayed on her behalf to Hera, doing obeisance to her alone of the gods, touching the ground with his hands, and had his satraps and friends send such gifts to the goddess, at his command, that the space between the temple and the palace, sixteen stadia, was crowded with gold, silver, purple cloth, and horses.
He waged war against the Egyptians through Pharnabazus and Iphicrates, but failed, since those two fell into factional strife with each other; but against the Cadusians he campaigned in person with three hundred thousand foot and ten thousand horse. Invading a country harsh and misty in its ruggedness, barren of the fruits of sowing, but nourishing on pears and apples and other such tree-fruit men who were warlike and spirited, he found himself, before he knew it, fallen into great difficulties and dangers.
For there was nothing edible to be had, nor could any be brought in from outside, and they slaughtered only the pack-animals, so that the head of a donkey barely sold for sixty drachmas. The royal dinner ceased to be served; and few of the horses still survived, the rest having been eaten up and used up. At this point Teribazus, a man who had often stood in the first rank for his valor, and often had been cast down for his frivolity, and was then in low circumstances and looked upon with contempt, saved the king and the army.
For there were two kings among the Cadusians, each encamped separately, and Teribazus, meeting with Artoxerxes and explaining his plan of action, went in person to one of the two Cadusian kings, while secretly sending his son to the other. Each deceived the other, telling him that the other was sending an embassy to Artoxerxes seeking friendship and alliance for himself alone: therefore, if he were wise, he ought to approach the king first, and Teribazus himself would help arrange everything.
Both were persuaded by this, and thinking they were forestalling one another, one sent envoys accompanied by Teribazus, the other sent his along with Teribazus's son. Yet as time wore on, suspicions and accusations against Teribazus began to fall upon Artoxerxes; he himself grew despondent and regretted having trusted Teribazus, and gave those who envied him occasion to bring charges.
But when Teribazus arrived, and his son arrived too, bringing the Cadusians with them, and a truce and peace was made with both kings, Teribazus, now great and splendid, marched back together with the king, who displayed in every way that his cowardice and softness were not, as most people suppose, the offspring of luxury and extravagance, but of a base and ignoble nature that followed wicked opinions,
for neither the gold nor the robe nor the ornament of twelve thousand talents that always hung upon the king's body kept that man from toiling and enduring hardship like ordinary men; instead, with his quiver slung on and carrying his light shield, he himself marched first along mountain roads, steep and difficult, leaving his horse behind, so that the others grew winged, as it were, and were lightened in spirit at the sight of his eagerness and strength: for he would cover a day's march of two hundred stadia and more.
When he came down to a royal station that had marvelous parks, splendidly adorned, in a district round about that was otherwise treeless and bare, since it was bitterly cold, he allowed the soldiers to cut wood from the park, felling the trees, sparing neither pine nor cypress.
But since they hesitated and spared the trees because of their beauty and size, he himself took an axe and cut down the largest and finest of the plantings. After this, taking wood freely and making many fires, they passed the night comfortably. Nevertheless, having lost many good men, and nearly all the horses along with them, he made his way back.
And since he was thought to be held in contempt because of this misfortune and the failure of the campaign, he grew suspicious of his leading men; many he put to death out of anger, and more out of fear, for cowardice is the most murderous thing in tyrannies, while boldness is gracious and gentle and free of suspicion. That is why, among wild beasts, those that are untamable and hard to domesticate are the most timid and skittish, while the noble ones, trusting more because of their courage, do not flee from friendly advances.
By this time Artaxerxes had grown quite elderly, and he noticed that his sons, together with their respective friends and powerful backers, were vying with one another over who would succeed to the kingship. Those who reasoned soundly maintained that, since he himself had come to the throne by right of age, he ought likewise to hand the crown down to Darius as the elder; but the youngest son, Ochus, hot-tempered and violent by nature, commanded no small number of eager supporters, even among the palace household, and counted above all on winning his father over through Atossa.
For he was courting her as one who would marry him and share the kingship with him after his father's death. There was also a story that even while the king was alive he had secretly been intimate with her, though Artaxerxes was unaware of this. Wishing quickly to dash Ochus's hope, so that, should he dare the same things as Cyrus, wars and struggles might not again seize hold of the kingdom, he proclaimed Darius king, he being then fifty years old, and gave him leave to wear the so-called upright tiara,
and since it was law among the Persians that the one proclaimed heir might ask a gift, and the one who proclaimed him must give whatever was asked, if it were possible, Darius asked for Aspasia, the woman who had been most cherished by Cyrus, and who was then concubine to the king. She was Phocaean by birth, from Ionia, born of free parents and brought up virtuously.
When she was brought in along with other women while Cyrus was dining, the other women, sitting down beside him, received his playful advances, his touching and jesting, not unpleasantly; but she stood beside the couch in silence, and though Cyrus called her, she did not obey; and when the chamberlains wished to bring her forward, she said, "That man shall rue it, whoever lays hands on me." So she seemed to those present to be graceless and boorish.
But Cyrus, delighted, laughed, and turned to the man responsible for bringing him the women, asking, "Do you notice, then, that of everyone you delivered to me, she alone remains untouched and honest?" From that moment onward he showed her special favor, cherished her above the rest, and gave her the name "the wise one." She fell into captivity at the time Cyrus was killed in battle and his camp was overrun.
Darius, in asking for her, distressed his father; for barbarian peoples are terribly jealous in matters of licentiousness, so that not only the man who approaches and touches a royal concubine, but even one who, in traveling, passes ahead and drives through the wagons in which they are conveyed, is punished with death.
And yet Artaxerxes himself had married Atossa out of his own desire, in defiance of custom, and he maintained three hundred and sixty concubines of exceptional beauty at his court. All the same, when Darius asked for Aspasia, the king replied that she was a free woman, telling Darius he might have her only with her own consent, never by compulsion. Aspasia was accordingly summoned, and, to the king's surprise, she opted for Darius; unwilling to override custom, the king surrendered her, though not long afterward he took her back for himself.
For he appointed her priestess of Artemis at Ecbatana, whom they call Anaitis, so that she might spend the rest of her life in chastity — thinking that he would thereby exact from his son a punishment not harsh, but rather moderate and even mixed with playfulness. But Darius bore it immoderately, whether because he had become passionately smitten with love for Aspasia, or because he thought himself insulted and mocked by his father.
Terobazus, noticing Darius in such a mood, stirred him up still more, recognizing in Darius's grievance a mirror of his own experience. The matter stood thus: among the king's several daughters, he had pledged Apama's hand to Pharnabazus, Rhodogune's to Orontes, and Amestris's to Terobazus himself. The first two pledges he honored, but he cheated Terobazus, taking Amestris as his own wife instead and giving Terobazus his youngest daughter, Atossa, as a substitute betrothal.
But when, as already related, the king fell in love with this daughter as well and married her, Terobazus turned wholly against him — all the more so since Terobazus was by nature inconsistent, given to sudden swings of temper. Thus, whether he rose to prominence among the leading men or fell into disgrace and rejection, he never faced either turn of fortune calmly: honor made him overbearing out of conceit, while disgrace left him neither meek nor composed, but instead bitter and overbearing.
So Terobazus became fire upon fire for the young man, ever pressing upon him and saying that the tiara standing upright upon his head profited nothing to those who did not seek to set their own affairs upright; and that Darius was foolish if, while his brother was working his way into affairs through the women's quarters, and his father had so fickle and unstable a character, he supposed the succession to be secure for himself.
For someone who, on account of a Greek woman, had broken the Persian rule against ever lying could scarcely be relied upon to honor his word in matters of the highest weight. Nor, he added, was it equivalent for Ochus to miss out on the throne and for Darius to have it taken away once granted; Ochus, after all, would be free to live out a contented life as a commoner, while Darius, having already been proclaimed king, faced a stark choice — rule, or perish altogether.
Generally speaking, then, as the Sophoclean line has it, persuasion toward evil travels a quick road; for the path is smooth and downhill toward what one desires. And most men desire base things through inexperience of noble ones and through ignorance; yet it was not this alone — the greatness of the empire, and fear of Ochus on Darius's part, gave Terobazus his opening; nor was the Cyprus-born goddess entirely without blame, in the matter of the taking of Aspasia.
So Darius gave himself over to Terobazus, and when many were now conspiring, a eunuch revealed to the king the plot and its manner, knowing precisely that they had resolved to fall upon him by night as he lay in his chamber, and kill him. When Artaxerxes heard it, it seemed to him a terrible thing to overlook so great a danger by neglecting the accusation, and more terrible still to believe it when no proof had been given. So he did as follows:
He ordered the eunuch to be present with the conspirators and to follow along with them, while he himself had a wall behind his bed in the chamber cut through and fitted with a door, and covered the doorway with a curtain; and when the hour arrived and the eunuch signaled the moment, he waited on his bed and did not rise until he had seen the faces of those coming against him and clearly recognized each one.
But when he saw them with daggers drawn, advancing upon him, he quickly caught up the curtain and withdrew into the inner room, and slammed the doors shut, crying out. So the assassins, having been seen by him and having accomplished nothing, fled in flight through the doors, and told those around Terobazus to withdraw, since they had been discovered.
The others then scattered and fled, but Terobazus, being seized, killed many of the king's spearmen, and was at last struck by a javelin from a distance and fell. As for Darius, who was brought up along with his children, the king set royal judges to try him — he himself not being present, but others bringing the accusation — and ordered his attendants to write down the verdict of each judge and bring it back to him.
When all had given the same judgment and condemned Darius to death, the attendants seized him and led him away to a nearby chamber, and the executioner was summoned and came with the razor with which they cut off the heads of those punished; but seeing Darius, he was struck with dread and drew back, looking toward the doors, as though he would not be able nor dare to lay hand himself upon the king,
but when the judges waiting outside pressed and threatened him, he turned back, grabbed Darius's hair with one hand, pulled his head downward, and sliced through his neck with the razor. Some accounts, however, say the king himself was present for the trial, and that Darius, crushed under the weight of the evidence against him, dropped to the ground face-down and pleaded
and pleaded for mercy; but the king, rising in anger and drawing his short sword, struck him until he had killed him; then, going out into the courtyard, he bowed down to the Sun and said, "Rejoice as you depart, O Persians, and tell the others that great Oromazes has visited punishment upon those who devised unlawful and forbidden things."
That, in short, is how the conspiracy came to its end. Ochus's ambitions now shone all the brighter, buoyed up as he was by Atossa, yet he continued to dread two remaining rivals: Ariaspes among the legitimate sons, and Arsames among those born of a concubine. Ariaspes was regarded by the Persians as worthy of kingship, not on the grounds of being senior to Ochus, but because of his gentle, unaffected, and humane character; Arsames, meanwhile, had a reputation for good judgment and, being especially beloved by his father, could not escape Ochus's watchful suspicion.
Plotting, then, against both, and being at once deceitful and murderous, he employed the savagery of his nature against Arsames, but against Ariaspes his cunning and cleverness. For he sent in secret to him eunuchs and friends of the king, who continually reported certain threats and terrifying words, saying that his father had resolved to kill him cruelly and with insult.
And these men, day after day bringing this out as though it were secret, saying that some things the king intended, and other things he was on the very point of doing, so terrified the man and cast such fright and confusion and despondency into his reasoning, that he prepared a deadly drug, and drinking it, was freed from life.
When the king learned the manner of his death, he wept for him, but suspected the cause. Being unable, because of his old age, to investigate and prove it, he embraced Arsames all the more, and was plainly most trusting of him and spoke freely to him. Whereupon those around Ochus did not delay their design, but, having prepared Harpates, son of Terobazus, killed the man through his agency.
By this point, then, Artaxerxes's hold on life hung by the merest thread owing to his advanced years; so when the disaster involving Arsames struck him, he had no strength left to endure it, and grief and despair snuffed him out almost immediately. He had lived ninety-four years, ruled for sixty-two of them, and earned a reputation for gentleness and goodwill toward his subjects — a reputation only heightened by contrast with his son Ochus, who outdid every man alive in cruelty and lust for blood.

======== Galba ========

Iphicrates the Athenian held that the mercenary soldier ought to love money and to crave luxury, so that in seeking supply for his desires he might fight the more recklessly; but most men judge that the soldiery, like a vigorous body, ought never to act on impulse of its own, but move only in concert with the impulse of its general.
For this reason they say that Paulus Aemilius, on taking over the army in Macedonia, which was full of talk and meddlesome interference, as though it were doing the generaling itself, gave orders that each man make his hand ready and his sword sharp, and leave the rest of the business to him.
But Plato, seeing no work for a good ruler and general in an army that is neither disciplined nor of one mind with him, but believing that the virtue of obedience, no less than that of kingship, calls for a noble nature paired with schooling in philosophy — one in which the spirited and energetic element is fittingly blended above all with gentleness and humanity — has, among many other examples, what happened to the Romans in the years following Nero's death as testimony and proof that nothing is more fearsome than a military power in command that employs uneducated and unreasoning impulses.
For Demades, after Alexander's death, compared the Macedonian army to the blinded Cyclops, seeing it making many disordered and frenzied movements; but the Roman state was overtaken by convulsions and movements like those called Titanic, being torn apart into many pieces at once and again colliding with itself from many directions — not so much through the love of power of those proclaimed emperors, as through the greed and licentiousness of the soldiery, which knocked out its commanders from one another like so many nails.
And yet Dionysius used to call the man who ruled the Pheraeans for ten months, and was then immediately put to death, 'the tragic tyrant,' mocking the swiftness of his fall; but the hearth of the Caesars, the Palatine, received four emperors in a still shorter span of time, one being brought in as though through a stage door, another led out. Yet there was one consolation for those who suffered ill: that they had no need of another's justice against the guilty, but could see them murdered by their own kind — and first and most justly of all, the man who had lured and taught them to hope for as great a reward at a change of Caesar as he himself had promised, having discredited the noblest of deeds by attaching a price to it, so that the revolt from Nero became a betrayal.
For Nymphidius Sabinus, who was prefect, as has been said, together with Tigellinus, of the court, when Nero's cause was altogether given up for lost and he was plainly about to flee to Egypt, won over the soldiers by treating Nero as already gone, as if he had fled the scene,
to proclaim Galba emperor, and he promised a donative to each man — to those called the household and praetorian troops, a sum of seven thousand five hundred drachmas for each man, and to those serving outside, twelve hundred and fifty — a sum it was impossible to raise without inflicting on all mankind ten thousand times the evils that Nero himself had inflicted,
for this immediately destroyed Nero, and shortly afterward Galba as well: the one they gave up in expectation of receiving it, the other they killed for not giving it. Then, seeking the man who would give so great a sum, they anticipated events, wasting themselves away in revolts and betrayals, or else obtaining what they had hoped for. Now to report accurately the particulars of what happened belongs to formal history, but whatever is memorable in the deeds and sufferings of the Caesars it is not fitting for me either to pass over.
That Sulpicius Galba entered the household of the Caesars as the wealthiest private citizen of all is agreed; and though he had a great claim to nobility in the house of the Servii, he himself took more pride in his kinship with Catulus, a man who was foremost in virtue and reputation among his contemporaries, even though he willingly yielded the power to others.
Galba was also in some way related by birth to Livia, Caesar's wife, and it was through Livia's influence that he advanced from the Palatine to the consulship. He is also said to have commanded an army in Germany creditably, and, having become proconsul of Libya, to have won praise along with few others. The easy simplicity of his manner of life and his frugality and lack of extravagance in expenses were, once he became emperor, held against him as stinginess, though earlier they had earned him a stale sort of reputation for orderliness and self-control.
He was sent by Nero to govern Spain, at a time when Nero had not yet learned to fear citizens of great distinction. To him, who seemed by nature also to have become gentle, old age added the further credit of caution.
But when the wicked procurators were plundering the provinces under him savagely and cruelly, he had nothing else with which to help, but by openly showing himself to share their pain and to be wronged along with them he provided in some manner a measure of relief and comfort to those condemned and sold; and when verses against Nero were being composed and circulated and sung everywhere, he neither forbade them nor joined the procurators in indignation over them; for which he was even more beloved by the people,
for he was by now a familiar figure, being in the eighth year of his command when Julius Vindex rose up against Nero, being governor of Gaul. It is said that even before the open revolt, letters had reached him from Vindex, which he neither believed nor denounced and reported, just as other governors who had received letters written to them likewise sent them on to Nero and thereby thwarted the undertaking so far as lay in their power — men who, having later taken part in it themselves, confessed that they had been no less traitors to Vindex than he had been to Nero.
But when Vindex, having openly declared the war, wrote to Galba urging him to assume the leadership and offer himself as a head to a strong body that was seeking one — the Gauls having a hundred thousand armed men and able to arm still more — Galba laid the matter before his friends for deliberation. Of these, some thought it best to wait and watch what movement and direction Rome itself would take toward this revolution;
but Titus Vinius, commander of the praetorian cohort, said to them: "Galba, what manner of deliberating is this? To ask whether we shall remain loyal to Nero is no longer the part of men who are in fact remaining loyal. Since Nero is now our enemy, we must not give up the friendship of Vindex, but must rather at once accuse him openly and make war on him, since what he wants is for Rome to be ruled by you instead of tyrannized by Nero."
As a result of this Galba announced by edict a day on which he would grant manumissions individually to those who requested them, and talk and rumor, spreading in advance, gathered a crowd of men eager for revolution. He had scarcely appeared openly on the tribunal before the whole crowd, speaking as one, greeted him with the title of emperor.
He did not at once accept this title, but after denouncing Nero, and lamenting the most distinguished of the men put to death by him, he declared that he would devote his own foresight to his country, being named neither Caesar nor emperor, but general of the senate and people of Rome.
That Vindex acted rightly and with sound reasoning in summoning Galba to the leadership, he confirmed with Nero himself as witness. For Nero, pretending to despise him and to think nothing of the affairs of the Gauls, upon learning the news about Galba — he happened to be bathing and dining at the time — overturned the table.
Nevertheless, when the senate had voted Galba a public enemy, Nero himself, wishing to jest and put on a bold face before his friends, said that quite a stroke of luck had come his way, since money was something he needed: the property of the Gauls, once they were subdued, he would carry off as plunder, and as for Galba's estate, it was already available for him to use and sell, since the man had now been declared an enemy.
So he ordered Galba's property to be sold; and Galba, on hearing this, put up for auction whatever belonged to Nero in Spain, and found many purchasers far more eager than Nero's had been.
As many were deserting Nero and virtually all were going over to Galba, only Clodius Macer in Libya and Verginius Rufus in Gaul, who commanded the German army, acted each on his own, not holding the same course; for Clodius,
who had engaged in plundering property and in the murder of men out of cruelty and greed, was plainly wavering, unable either to hold onto or to let go of his position of power; whereas Verginius, in command of the strongest legions, though they many times proclaimed him emperor and pressed him, said that he himself would not accept the leadership, nor would he allow it to be given to another, save whomever the senate should choose.
This threw Galba into no small confusion at first; but when the armies of Verginius and Vindex, their commanders having been unable, like charioteers, to hold the reins, somehow by force brought matters to a great battle and clashed together, and Vindex, after twenty thousand Gauls had fallen, took his own life, a report spread that all, in view of so great a victory, wished Verginius to assume the leadership, or else were to go over again to Nero,
then indeed Galba, becoming altogether fearful, wrote to Verginius urging him to act jointly with him and together safeguard both the leadership and the freedom of the Romans; and withdrawing again with his friends to Clunia, a Spanish city, he spent his time repenting of what had happened and longing for his accustomed and familiar inactivity rather than doing anything that circumstances required.
It was now summer, and a little before evening there arrived from Rome Icelus, a freedman, having made the journey in seven days. Learning that Galba was resting by himself, he walked briskly to his chamber, and forcing his way past the attendants and entering, announced that while Nero was still alive,
though not openly to be seen, the army first, and then the people and the senate, had proclaimed Galba emperor, and a little later word had come that Nero was dead; he himself, however, had not trusted those who reported it, but had gone to the corpse and, having seen it lying there, had come away only then convinced.
These tidings, being announced, raised Galba to great splendor, and a crowd of men gathered at his doors, having been made bold and confident by him firmly, although the speed of the news was scarcely credible. But even so, two days later Titus Vinius arrived from the camp with others, reporting in detail what the senate had decreed. This man was accordingly advanced to an honored rank; and to the freedman he gave golden rings, and Marcianus — for Icelus was now so called — held the foremost power among the freedmen.
At Rome, Nymphidius Sabinus, not gradually and by degrees but all at once and in a body, drew all affairs to himself, on the ground that Galba was an old man and could scarcely be brought to Rome even carried in a litter because of his age — for he was seventy-three years old — while the troops there, who had long been well disposed toward him and were now attached to him alone, considered him, because of the size of the donative, their benefactor, and Galba merely their debtor.
At once, therefore, he ordered Tigellinus, his colleague in office, to lay aside his sword, and giving receptions he entertained the men of consular and praetorian rank at dinner, still adding the name of Galba to the invitations; and in the camp he had many prepared to say that a delegation should be sent to Galba requesting that Nymphidius be made prefect for all time without a colleague.
And the honors and power which the senate conferred on him — hailing him as benefactor, thronging daily to his doors, and deeming him worthy to lead off and confirm every decree — raised him to still greater boldness, with the result that before long he had become not merely someone envied by his flatterers, but someone feared too,
when the consuls, having appointed public slaves to carry the decrees to the emperor, and having given them the so-called sealed diplomas — which the magistrates in each city, recognizing them, use to speed the couriers' relays of vehicles along their route — he was greatly indignant that they had not received seal and soldiers from him before sending them off; indeed it is said that he even deliberated about the consuls, but then, when they defended themselves and made entreaty, let his anger go,
Currying favor with the populace, he did not prevent them from clubbing to death anyone they caught who had belonged to Nero's circle. So they seized Spiculus the gladiator and, throwing him beneath statues of Nero that were being dragged through the forum, killed him there; and a certain Aponius, one of the informers, they overturned carts loaded with stones onto and crushed; many others they tore apart, some of whom were guilty of nothing, so that even Mauricus, a man who both was and was reputed to be among the best, said to the senate that he feared they would soon be looking for a Nero.
As Nymphidius drew nearer in this way to the fulfillment of his hopes, he did not shrink from being called the son of Gaius Caesar, the one who ruled after Tiberius. For Gaius, it seems, had known the woman who bore him while he was still a young man — she was not unattractive in appearance — she who had been born to Callistus, a freedman of Caesar, from a wage-earning seamstress.
But her liaison with Gaius was, it seems, later than Nymphidius's birth, and the charge arose that he had been fathered by Martianus the gladiator, since Nymphidia had fallen in love with him for his fame, and Nymphidius was also thought to resemble that man more closely in the cast of his features.
Yet even while admitting that he was the son of Nymphidia, he made the overthrow of Nero his own work alone, and, not thinking the rewards he was reaping sufficient — the honors, the money, and sleeping with Nero's Sporus, whom Nero, summoning him straight from the pyre while the corpse was still burning, had kept in the position of a wife and called Poppaea — he stole into the succession to the principate,
and he worked on some matters himself in Rome through his friends, with certain women and senators being secretly enlisted for him, while he sent one of his friends, Gellianus, to Spain to spy things out.
For Galba, after Nero's death, everything was proceeding well. But Verginius Rufus, still uncommitted, caused concern that he, having in addition to command of a large and most warlike force the fact that he had defeated Vindex and subdued a great part of the Roman Empire — all of Gaul, which had been in a state of rebellious upheaval — might yield to those urging him toward the principate,
for no one's name was greater, nor did anyone hold such reputation as Verginius, since he had become, in one stroke, the greatest relief to Roman affairs both from a harsh tyranny and from the Gallic wars. But he at that time held fast to his original reasoning and preserved for the senate the choice of emperor. And yet, once Nero's death became known, the multitude pressed upon Verginius again, and one of the tribunes in his tent, drawing his sword, ordered Verginius to accept either the command or the blade.
But when Fabius Valens, commander of one legion, was the first to swear allegiance, and letters arrived from Rome concerning what the senate had voted, he persuaded the soldiers, with difficulty and only after struggle, to hail Galba as their new ruler; and when Galba dispatched Flaccus Hordeonius to take his place, Verginius accepted the man. Having handed the army over to him, Verginius himself set out toward the approaching Galba, then rode back alongside him, met with neither open resentment nor any mark of honor.
Responsible for the one part of this was Galba himself, out of respect for the man; for the other, his friends, and especially Titus Vinius, who thought out of envy that he was cutting Verginius down, but did not realize that he was in fact cooperating with Verginius's good fortune, by removing the man already from the wars and evils that beset the other commanders, into a storm-free life and toward an old age filled with tranquility and rest.
As for Galba, near Narbo, a Gallic city, the envoys sent by the senate met him and welcomed him, and urged him to appear before the people who longed to see him quickly. He gave them the other kinds of meetings and interviews, humane and democratic in tone, and toward the banquets — though a great array of royal preparation and service was on hand, which Nymphidius had sent him from Nero's stores — he used none of it, but relied entirely on his own resources, and won great approval, appearing a magnanimous man and superior to vulgar extravagance,
but quickly Vinius, representing these noble, unassuming, and civic-minded qualities as mere demagoguery and an affectation unworthy of great matters, persuaded him to make use of Nero's money and not to spare royal lavishness in his receptions, and altogether the old man was, little by little, allowing himself to be perceived as coming under Vinius's control.
Now Vinius was, in matters of money, the most susceptible of anyone to corruption, and he was also guilty of offenses concerning women. For while still young and serving his first campaign under Calvisius Sabinus, which was undisciplined, he brought the commander's wife into the camp at night in soldier's dress and seduced her in the headquarters building, which the Romans call the principia.
For this Gaius Caesar had him imprisoned; but when Gaius died, he was released through good fortune. And dining once with Claudius Caesar, he stole a silver cup; Caesar, learning of it, invited him again to dinner the next day, and when he arrived, ordered his servants to bring and set nothing silver before him, but only earthenware.
This affair, then, because of Caesar's mildness, turned into more of a comedy and seemed worthy of laughter rather than anger. But the things Vinius did, once he had Galba under his control and could exercise the greatest power through money, furnished for some the cause, and for others the pretext, of tragic sufferings and great calamities.
For Nymphidius, as soon as Gellianus returned to him — the man he had sent to spy in a way on Galba — and learned that the post of prefect over the court and guard had gone to Cornelius Laco, and that Vinius held all power in his hands, while he himself had never once been allowed to stand close to Galba or speak with him privately, since everyone eyed him with suspicion and kept watch over him, was thrown into confusion,
and gathering the officers of the army, he said that Galba himself was a reasonable and moderate old man, but that, making the least use of his own judgment, he was being poorly managed by Vinius and Laco. Therefore, before they let slip the power which Tigellinus had once acquired in affairs pass into these men's hands unnoticed, envoys ought to be sent from the camp to the emperor to instruct him that, by ridding himself of these two friends alone, he would appear more agreeable and more desired by all.
But when, speaking thus, he failed to persuade them, and it seemed strange and outlandish for an old commander, as though he were a youth just tasting power for the first time, to have his choice of friends regulated for him, he turned to another course and wrote to Galba to frighten him, now saying that the city held much that was unsound and unsettled, now that Clodius Macer was withholding the grain ships in Libya, again that the German legions were stirring, and making similar inquiries about the forces in Syria and Judaea.
But since Galba paid no great heed to him nor trusted him, he resolved to act first — although Clodius Celsus of Antioch, a sensible man, well disposed and loyal to Galba, tried to dissuade him, saying he did not believe there was a single tenement building in Rome that would hail Nymphidius as Caesar. But many mocked him, and Mithridates of Pontus, jesting at Galba's baldness and wrinkled skin, said that now he seemed to be something to the Romans, but once seen, he would prove a reproach to those days that are called Caesar's.
It was resolved, then, to bring Nymphidius into the camp around midnight and proclaim him emperor. But the first of the tribunes, Antonius Honoratus, when evening came, gathered the soldiers under his own command and reproached himself, and reproached them too, for turning about so many times in so short a while, following no reasoning nor choice of the better course, but driven by some evil spirit from one betrayal into another.
"At first," he said, "we had Nero's crimes as pretexts; but now we are betraying Galba — what murder of a mother do we charge him with, or slaughter of a wife, or what stage-shame or tragic acting of the emperor's do we shrink from? But not even in Nero's case did we endure to abandon him for these things, but were persuaded by Nymphidius that he had abandoned us first and fled to Egypt.
"Shall we, then, hand Galba over to Nero, picking Nymphidia's son as our Caesar, and destroy the son of Livia just as we destroyed the son of Agrippina? Or, holding this man accountable for what he has done, shall we stand out as Nero's avengers, yet as Galba's good and faithful protectors?" When the tribune had said this, all the soldiers assented, and going to the others urged them to remain steadfast in their loyalty to the emperor,
and they won over the greater number. When a shout arose — whether because Nymphidius had been told, as some report, that the troops were already crying out his name, or because he wanted to get ahead of the unrest and wavering that was still unfolding — he came forward under many torches, carrying a speech written out in a scroll by Cingonius Varro, which he had rehearsed to deliver to the soldiers.
Yet finding the camp gates shut and a great many men standing armed along the walls, fear took hold of him; drawing nearer, he asked what it was they wanted and on whose authority they had armed themselves. When every one of them answered as with one voice that they acknowledged Galba as their emperor, he too, falling in with them, joined the acclamation and told his own followers to do the same.
But though those at the gates let him enter with a few companions, he himself was struck by a javelin; this blow Septimius took upon his shield in front of him, but as others closed in with drawn swords, he took flight, was chased down, and met his death inside a barracks room. And dragging the corpse into the open and setting a railing around it, they gave the sight for whoever wished to view it, once day came.
When Galba learned that Nymphidius had met his end in this way, and ordered the death of his fellow conspirators, as many as had not died immediately by their own hands — among whom were Cingonius, who had written the speech, and Mithridates of Pontus — it seemed that he had acted, even if justly, not lawfully nor in a manner befitting a popular ruler, in putting to death without trial men who were not obscure; for everyone had been expecting a different character of rule, being deceived, as usual, by what is said at the outset,
and they were still more distressed that a man of consular rank and loyal to Nero was ordered to die — Petronius Turpilianus. For in doing away with Macer in Libya through Trebonius, and Fonteius in Germany through Valens, he had the excuse that they were feared while under arms and at the head of armies. But nothing prevented Turpilianus, an old man, unarmed and stripped of command, from being given a hearing, if anyone were going to keep in deed the moderation he professed toward affairs.
These matters, then, incur such reproaches. But when, as he approached, he was about twenty-five stadia from the city, he encountered disorder and uproar from the oarsmen who occupied the road ahead and were pouring around on every side — these were the men whom Nero had enrolled together into a single legion and declared soldiers,
and now, being on hand to make good their claim to military standing, the emperor was denied any chance of being seen or heard by the people who came out to greet him, but shouted out demands for standards for the legion and for a proper place among the troops, clamoring for it. And when he put them off and told them to speak again later, they took the delay as a form of refusal and grew indignant, following alongside him and sparing no shouting. And when some even drew their swords, Galba ordered the cavalry to charge them. None of them stood their ground; some were struck down at once, others perished fleeing — an omen neither auspicious nor favorable for Galba as he entered the city amid so much slaughter and so many corpses. But if anyone had before held him in contempt, seeing him as weak and old, he now became to all a figure of dread and fear.
Wishing to demonstrate a great change from Nero's boundless extravagance in gifts, he seemed to miss the mark of what was fitting. For when Canus once played the flute for him at dinner — Canus being a performer of high repute — he praised and applauded him, and ordered his cashbox brought to him; and taking out some gold coins, he gave them to Canus, saying that he was granting them from his own private funds, not from the public treasury,
while the gifts Nero had given to men of the stage and the wrestling-school he ordered to be exacted back with strict rigor, all but a tenth part; and then, recovering only small and meager sums — for most of those who had received the money had squandered it, being men of dissolute and riotous lives — he sought out those to whom they had sold or given anything at all, and extracted it from them as well.
And since the matter had no limit, but spread far and wide, reaching many people, he himself lost repute for it, while Vinius incurred envy and hatred, since he made the ruler appear ungenerous and petty-minded toward everyone else, while he himself lived extravagantly, taking everything and selling it.
Hesiod says one must drink one's fill both when the jar is being opened and when it is running out; but Vinius, seeing that Galba was weak and old, gorged himself on his fortune as though it were both beginning and ending at once.
The old man was wronged, first by Vinius's bad management, and then by his slandering or blocking of the things Galba himself rightly chose to do — for example, in how he dealt with punishing Nero's henchmen.
For Galba put to death the wicked men, among them Helius, Polyclitus, Petinus, and Patrobius. The people applauded, and as they were led through the forum the crowd shouted that it was a fine and god-pleasing procession, but that gods and men alike demanded the teacher and tutor of the tyranny, Tigellinus. But that noble fellow had already forestalled them, having bought Vinius beforehand with large pledges.
Then Turpilianus, because, though himself hated for it, he had neither betrayed nor hated his commander, such a ruler though he was, and had joined in no other great wrong, was put to death — while the very man responsible for turning Nero into someone deserving death, who had then abandoned and betrayed him once he had become such, lived on: proof that no scheme was too far and no outcome too much to hope for, provided one paid Vinius.
For the Roman people had never so longed to see any spectacle as the sight of Tigellinus led off to execution, nor did they ever cease demanding him in all the theaters and stadiums, until they were rebuked by an edict of the emperor, saying that Tigellinus would not live much longer in any case, being consumed by a wasting disease, and asking them not to grow more savage nor to make his rule a tyranny.
While the people were vexed and mocked at this, Tigellinus held thanksgiving sacrifices and laid on a lavish banquet; Vinius, getting up from dinner at the emperor's table, headed off in revelry to Tigellinus's house, taking along his own daughter, who was a widow. And Tigellinus drank a toast to her of two hundred fifty thousand sesterces in silver, and ordered the leader of his mistresses to take off her own necklace, said to be worth one hundred fifty thousand, and fasten it on her.
After this, even Galba's moderate acts came under suspicion, as in the matter of the Gauls who had joined Vindex. For it was thought that they obtained relief from tribute and citizenship not through the emperor's goodwill, but by buying it from Vinius.
For these reasons the majority grew hostile to his rule; and as for the soldiers who had not received their promised bounty, at first hope led them on, that he would pay them, if not the full sum, then at any rate a sum comparable to what Nero had bestowed. But when he heard their complaints and let fall a remark fit for a great commander, saying that he was accustomed to levy soldiers, not to buy them, a terrible and savage hatred toward him entered those who heard of it; for it seemed that he was not merely cheating them himself, but laying down a law and teaching a lesson to the emperors who would come after him.
In Rome, however, this unrest was still blind and unfocused, and a certain reverence, together with Galba's actual presence, produced a dullness and hesitation in any move toward revolution, and the fact that no open beginning of change was visible held their ill-will in check and somehow concealed it. But those who had earlier served under Verginius, and were now under Flaccus in Germany, believing themselves owed great rewards for the fight they had waged against Vindex, and receiving none, were implacable toward their commanders.
As for Flaccus himself, disabled in body by a severe attack of gout and inexperienced in affairs, they held him in no account whatsoever. And once, at a public spectacle, when the tribunes and centurions offered the customary Roman prayer for good fortune to the emperor Galba, the mass of soldiers at first raised an uproar, and then, as the officers persisted in their prayers, shouted back in response, "If he is worthy."
Since similar outrages were often committed by the troops under Tigellinus as well, letters kept being sent to Galba by the procurators; and he, afraid that he was held in contempt not only because of his age but also because he had no children, resolved to adopt some young man of distinguished family and declare him his successor to the rule.
There was one Marcus Otho, a man of no obscure birth, but corrupted from boyhood by luxury and pleasure-seeking beyond almost any other Roman — such a man as Homer, speaking of Alexander, often calls "the husband of fair-haired Helen," having nothing else to give him distinction but glorifying him through his wife; so Otho too had become notorious in Rome through his marriage to Poppaea, whom Nero loved while she was still living with Crispinus, and, still respecting his own wife and fearing his mother, he had put Otho forward to court Poppaea for him.
Nero treated Otho as a friend and companion in his debauchery, and often took pleasure in being mocked by him for stinginess and lack of refinement. It is said that once, when Nero had anointed himself with the most expensive perfume and drenched Otho with it too, Otho, receiving him in turn the next day, suddenly had pipes of silver and gold spring up on all sides, pouring out perfume as if it were water and flooding the place,
But having first seduced Poppaea on Nero's behalf, and corrupting her with hopes set on Nero, he persuaded her to leave her husband. When she came to him as his wife, however, he was not content to merely share her, but chafed at having to share her at all — nor, they say, was Poppaea herself displeased at his jealousy.
Indeed it is said that she once shut Nero out when Otho was not present — whether to sharpen his pleasure by denying its satiety, or, as some say, because she found marriage to Caesar a burden but, being fond of licentiousness, was not averse to having a lover. So Otho came close to being executed for it; and it was a strange thing that Nero, who killed his own wife and sister in order to marry Poppaea, let Otho live.
Otho had Seneca's good will, and it was through Seneca's persuasion and advice to Nero that he was sent out as governor of Lusitania on the Ocean. And he showed himself to his subjects neither disagreeable nor oppressive, knowing that the office had been given him as a disguised and veiled form of exile.
Once Galba raised his revolt, Otho was, among the governors, the first to declare for him, and bringing all the silver and gold he had in cups and tableware, he gave it to be struck into coin, and he gave away those of his servants who were skilled and accustomed to attending an emperor properly in daily life. In everything else too he was loyal to Galba, and in the test of experience he seemed no less skilled in affairs than anyone; and for many days, as Galba traveled the whole road, Otho continued riding beside him in the same carriage.
During the journey and through their close association he won over Vinius as well, by conversation and gifts, and especially by yielding first place to him — so that the second place of power after him he held securely through him, while he himself enjoyed freedom from envy, assisting all who needed help without charge, and making himself affable and kind to everyone. He did a great deal for the soldiers too, and advanced many of them to commands, some by requesting it from the emperor,
and others by appealing to Vinius and to the freedmen Icelus and Asiaticus, since these two held the greatest sway of anyone around the court. And whenever he entertained Galba, he bribed the cohort on guard duty, distributing a gold piece to each man, on the pretense of honoring Galba, but actually working the political ground and courting popularity with the soldiers.
But when Galba was deliberating about a successor, Vinius brought Otho forward — nor was he doing this for nothing either, but for the sake of his daughter's marriage, an agreement having been made that Otho would marry her once he had been adopted as Galba's son and declared successor to the rule. Galba, however, always made clear that he put the common good before his own preference, and sought not to choose for himself the man most pleasing, but for the Romans the man most useful.
Indeed he seems not to have chosen Otho as heir even for his own private property alone, knowing him to be dissolute and extravagant and sunk in debts of fifty million sesterces. Hence, on hearing Vinius out, he silently and gently put off the decision. But having designated himself consul, with Vinius as his colleague, he was expected to proclaim his successor at the beginning of the year, and the soldiers would gladly have seen Otho proclaimed above any other.
But while he was still deliberating and delaying, the outbreak in Germany overtook him. For all the soldiers there alike hated Galba for not paying the bounty, though they each made their own separate pretexts: that Verginius Rufus had been cast aside in disgrace, and that the Gauls who had opposed them in battle were now being rewarded,
while those who had stayed clear of Vindex's uprising were suffering punishment — Vindex, the one man to whom, they said, Galba ought to be grateful, whom he ought to honor and to honor with public offerings even in death, since it was by him that Galba had been proclaimed emperor of the Romans.
With such talk already circulating openly in the camp, the first day of the month arrived, which they call the Kalends of January; and when Flaccus assembled them for the oath customarily sworn on behalf of the emperor, they went up to Galba's images and overturned and tore them down, and then, having sworn only on behalf of the senate and people of Rome, dispersed.
Then it occurred to the officers to fear this absence of a leader as itself a form of revolt. One of the men among them said: "What is happening to us, fellow soldiers, that we neither make another leader nor keep the one we now have — as if we were fleeing not Galba in particular, but ruling and being ruled altogether?
As for Flaccus Hordeonius, a mere shadow and phantom of Galba, let us leave him aside; but a single day's march from us is Vitellius, governor of the other Germany, son of a censor and three-time consul who in a sense shared rule with the emperor Claudius, and himself possessing, in the poverty some reproach him with, a shining proof of goodness and greatness of soul. Come, let us choose him, and show all mankind that we are better than the Iberians and Lusitanians at choosing an emperor."
Some of them were already won over by this, others not, when one standard-bearer slipped out and reported it to Vitellius by night, while many were feasting with him. Once the report had spread through the troops, Fabius Valens, commander of one legion, was the first to ride out the next day with a large body of cavalry and hail Vitellius as emperor.
In the preceding days Vitellius had seemed to hold back and shrink from it, fearing the magnitude of the office; but then, they say, full of wine and midday food, he came forward and accepted, when they gave him the name Germanicus, though he did not accept the title Caesar.
At once too the army under Flaccus, abandoning those fine democratic oaths to the senate, swore to the emperor Vitellius to do whatever was commanded.
Thus was Vitellius proclaimed emperor in Germany. On learning of the revolution there, Galba no longer put off the adoption. Knowing that some of his friends favored Dolabella, but that the majority favored Otho, neither of whom he himself approved, he suddenly, without warning anyone beforehand, sent for Piso, descendant of Crassus and Scribonia, whom Nero had put to death,
a young man whose natural disposition toward every virtue showed most plainly in his self-restraint and severity; and Galba went down to the camp to proclaim him Caesar and successor. And yet, as he set out, great signs from the heavens attended him at once; and when he began to speak in the camp, and then to read from a document, it thundered and lightninged so many times, and such a downpour and darkness poured down upon the camp and the city, that it was plain the divine power did not welcome or approve this adoption, and that it would not turn out well.
The soldiers too were sullen and dark, since even then no bonus had been given them. Those present marveled at Piso, judging from his voice and his face, that he received so great a favor without excitement, yet not without feeling, just as in Otho's countenance many signs appeared of a man bearing the loss of his hopes bitterly and with anger — he who had been the first thought worthy of adoption, and who had come nearest to attaining it, took his failure as a token of Galba's hatred and ill-will toward him.
For this reason he was not without fear for the future, but, dreading Piso, putting Galba forward as his excuse, and growing angry at Vinius, he went away full of many passions. For the seers and Chaldaeans who were always around him would not let his hope fail nor let him despair utterly, above all Ptolemy, who insisted, since he had often foretold that Nero would not kill him but would himself die first, while Otho would survive and rule the Romans — having proved that prediction true, he claimed the right not to despair of the rest either. Not least among those who spurred him on were those who secretly grieved with him and groaned along with him that he had been treated so ungratefully; and very many of those who had been in honor under Tigellinus and Nymphidius, now cast down and living humbly, corrupted him, joined in his indignation, and provoked him further.
Numbered among them were Veturius and Barbius, one holding the rank of optio, the other that of tesserarius — for so those are called who perform the service of messengers and scouts. With them Onomastus, a freedman of Otho, went about corrupting some with money and others with hopes, men already unsound and in need of a pretext. For it was not the work of four days to shift the loyalty of a healthy camp — the days that passed between the adoption and the slaughter, for they were killed on the sixth day, which the Romans reckon as the eighteenth day before the Kalends of February.
For on that day, at dawn, Galba was sacrificing on the Palatine with his friends present, and the diviner Umbricius, no sooner had he taken the victim's entrails into his own hands and examined them than he said — not in riddles but plainly — that they showed signs of great disturbance, and that danger from treachery hung over the emperor's very head, all but delivering Otho into his hands by the god's own doing,
for Otho was standing behind Galba, and was attending to what was being said and shown by Umbricius. As he grew agitated and changed color in every way from fear, the freedman Onomastus came up to him and said that the architects had arrived and were waiting for him at home — this being the agreed signal for the moment at which Otho was to go meet the soldiers.
So, claiming he had purchased an aging house and wanted the sellers to point out its faulty portions, he went off, and passing down through the so-called House of Tiberius he walked to the forum, where the golden column stood, at which all the surveyed roads of Italy end.
There, they say, the ones who first came upon him and greeted him as emperor numbered barely twenty-three; and for this reason, although in his soul he was not softened or made effeminate to match the weakness of his body, but was in fact bold and unyielding in the face of danger, he grew afraid.
But those present would not let him be, but circled around his litter with drawn swords and ordered it to be lifted, while he repeatedly cried out that he was ruined and urged the litter-bearers to hurry. Some, hearing this, were more amazed than alarmed at the smallness of the number who had dared the deed; but as he was borne thus through the forum, another band equal in number met him, and again others came up by threes and fours to join them.
Then all together they turned back with him, calling out 'Caesar' and holding out their bared swords. Martialis, the tribune who held the watch of the camp, so they say, was not privy to the plot, but, struck with astonishment and fear at the unexpected event, allowed them to enter. Once he was inside, no one resisted, for those who did not know what was being done, being surrounded singly or in pairs by those who did know and had banded together by design, at first out of fear and then persuaded, followed along.
The news was reported at once to Galba on the Palatine, while the diviner was still there and the sacred rites still in hand, so that even those most disinclined to distrust and most unmoved by such things were struck with astonishment and wondered at the divine power. As a crowd of every sort came streaming in from the forum, Vinius, Laco, and some of the freedmen took their stand by Galba himself with bared swords, while Piso went forward and fell in with the guards who were watching the courtyard.
As the Illyrian legion was encamped in the so-called Vipsanian colonnade, Marius Celsus, a good man, was sent to secure it beforehand.
While Galba was deliberating whether to go forward — Vinius not allowing it, but Celsus and Laco urging him on and rebuking Vinius rather sharply — a great rumor spread through that Otho had been killed in the camp; and shortly after there appeared Julius Atticus, a man of no small standing among the guardsmen, brandishing a bared sword and shouting that he had killed the enemy of Caesar; and pushing through those standing before Galba, he showed him the sword stained with blood.
Galba, looking at him, said, 'Who ordered you to do this?' And when the man told of his loyalty and the oath he had sworn, and the crowd shouted its approval and applauded, Galba climbed into his litter and had himself borne onward, meaning to offer sacrifice to Zeus and appear before the citizens. But as he entered the forum, like a wind veering about, a report met him that Otho had gained control of the army,
and, as happens in so great a crowd, some shouting to turn back, some to go forward, some urging courage, some crying disbelief, and the litter, as though on a wave, being carried this way and that and constantly veering aside, first horsemen appeared, then armed men advancing through the Basilica of Paulus, shouting with one voice, loudly, for the common people to get out of the way.
Now most of the crowd ran, not scattering in flight, but to the porticoes and the raised parts of the forum, as though to secure a view of a spectacle. And when Atillius Vergilio knocked down a statue of Galba, making this the beginning of the fighting, they hurled javelins at the litter; and when they failed to hit it, they came on with drawn swords. No one defended him or stood his ground, except one man alone, whom the sun looked down upon in all that great multitude as worthy of the Roman command — Sempronius Densus, a centurion,
who, though he had received no personal kindness from Galba, in defense of honor and law stood before the litter, and lifting up the vine-staff with which centurions punish those who need flogging, shouted at the attackers, commanding that the emperor be left unharmed. Then, as they pressed in on him, he drew his sword and defended himself for a long time, until, struck in the hamstrings, he fell.
As for Galba, when the litter tipped over near the place called the Pool of Curtius, he was rolled out still in his breastplate, and they ran up and struck him. He, baring his throat, said, 'Do this, if it is better for the people of Rome.'
He took many blows to his legs and arms, and, according to the most common account, a soldier named Camurius, from the fifteenth legion, finished him off; yet other versions name Terentius, or Lecanius, or Fabius Fabulus as the one who, it is said, severed his head and, finding it awkward to hold on account of his baldness, wrapped it in his own cloak to carry it.
Then those with him would not let it be hidden but made his valorous deed plain to all — running with it fixed on a spear, and, since it bore the face of an old man who had been an orderly magistrate, high priest, and consul, running like the Bacchae, turning about again and again, brandishing the spear streaming with blood. And Otho, when the head was brought to him, is said to have cried out, 'This head means nothing, comrades in arms — bring me Piso instead.'
A little later it too was brought, for the young man, wounded, had fled, and, hunted down by a certain Murcus, was slaughtered by the temple of Vesta. Vinius too was slaughtered, though he confessed he had been a party to the conspiracy against Galba, for he cried out that he was dying against Otho's wish. But they cut off his head too, and Laco's, and brought them to Otho, asking for rewards.
As Archilochus says: 'Though seven of the dead fell, whom we overtook on foot, we are a thousand slayers' — so then too many who had had no part in the killing showed their hands and swords smeared with blood and asked for rewards, presenting petitions to Otho. In any event some hundred and twenty men were subsequently exposed by these very petitions, all of whom Vitellius hunted down and put to death.
Marius Celsus also came into the camp, and though many accused him of having persuaded the soldiers to help Galba, and the crowd shouted for him to be killed, Otho did not wish it; but fearing to speak against them openly, he said he would not put him to death so quickly, for there were things he needed first to learn from the man. He therefore ordered him bound and kept under guard, and handed him over to those he trusted most.
At once the senate was convened, and, as though they had become other men, or as though other gods had come to be, they assembled and swore an oath on Otho's behalf — an oath which Otho himself, having sworn it, did not keep — and proclaimed him Caesar and Augustus, while the headless corpses were still lying in the forum in their consular robes.
As for the heads, having no more use for the heads themselves, they sold Vinius's to his own daughter, the price being two thousand five hundred drachmas; that of Piso his wife Verania received, having begged for it; and that of Galba they gave as a gift to the slaves of Patrobius.
These men, having taken it and abused and outraged it in every way, threw it down at the place where those punished by the Caesars are put to death — the place called the Sessorium. The body of Galba, Helvidius Priscus took up, with Otho's permission, and Argeius, a freedman, buried it by night.
Such was the end of Galba, a man who, though inferior to many Romans in neither birth nor wealth, surpassed all his contemporaries in the combination of wealth and birth, and who lived through the reigns of five emperors with honor and renown, so that it was by reputation rather than by power that he brought down Nero,
for of those who joined the uprising at that time, some no one thought worthy of the command, and others thought themselves unworthy of it, but Galba, both when called and when he answered the call as emperor, lent his name to the daring of Vindex, and made what was called his revolt a movement and an uprising into a civil war, since it had found a man fit to lead it.
For this reason, thinking that he was not so much taking power for himself as giving himself over to affairs, he thought it right to rule those who had been tamed by Tigellinus and Nymphidius in the way that Scipio and Fabricius and Camillus had ruled the Romans of their day,
but, undermined by old age, though as far as arms and armies were concerned he was an emperor pure and old-fashioned, in giving himself over to Vinius, Laco, and the freedmen, who sold every matter of state, just as Nero had given himself over to the most insatiable of men, he left behind him no one who longed for his rule, though many pitied his death.

======== Otho ========

The younger emperor, at daybreak, went out to the Capitol and offered sacrifice. Then, having ordered that Marius Celsus be brought before him, he greeted him warmly and spoke with him, urging him to put the accusation out of mind rather than dwell on his release. Celsus answered neither basely nor thoughtlessly, but said that the very manner of his conduct gave credibility to the accusation, for he had been accused of having remained faithful to Galba, to whom he owed no such debt of gratitude; and those present admired them both, and the soldiery approved.
Speaking in the senate many popular and kindly words, of the time he himself was to hold the consulship he gave a portion to Verginius Rufus, and to all those who had been appointed by Nero or Galba he preserved their consulships. He adorned with priesthoods those who
were distinguished by age or reputation. To all the senators who had been exiled under Nero and had returned under Galba he restored whatever of each man's property he could discover had not been sold. Hence the foremost and most powerful men, who before had shuddered as though it were not a man but some avenging Fury or blood-guilty demon that had suddenly fallen upon their affairs, grew more cheerful in their hopes for the government, as though it were smiling upon them.
Nothing so delighted all the Romans together, nor so won them over to him, as his measures concerning Tigellinus. He had, in fact, escaped notice for some time, being already punished by the very fear of the punishment which the city demanded of him as a public debt,
and by incurable bodily diseases, and those unholy and unspeakable wallowings among prostitutes and unclean women, in which, even while he lay dying, his lust still convulsively clutched — those who kept their senses reckoned this the ultimate penalty, worth many deaths. Yet it grieved most people all the same to see him still looking upon the sun after so many and such men had, because of him, ceased to see it.
So Otho sent after him, to the estates around Sinuessa, where he was living, with ships anchored nearby so that he might flee farther off. The man sent tried to persuade him with much gold to come along; and when he would not be persuaded, he gave him gifts nonetheless, but begged him to wait until he had shaved his beard — and then, taking a razor, he cut his own throat.
Having thus granted the people this most just pleasure, Caesar himself bore no malice whatever for his own private enmities, and, to gratify the many, at first did not avoid being addressed as Nero in the theaters; and when some set up images of Nero in public view, he did not forbid it.
Cluvius Rufus says that dispatches were carried to Spain, in which those who send out the couriers had attached Nero's adopted name to that of Otho. Nevertheless, when he perceived that the foremost and most powerful men were displeased at this, he stopped it. While the government was settling into such a shape, the mercenary soldiers made themselves troublesome, urging distrust and vigilance and the cutting-down of men of note, whether truly fearful out of goodwill, or using this as a pretext for stirring up trouble and making war.
When he sent Crispinus to bring back the seventeenth cohort from Ostia, and that man, while it was still night, was making his preparations and loading the weapons onto the wagons, all the boldest among the soldiers shouted that Crispinus was up to no good, but that the senate was attempting a revolution, and that the weapons were being carried against Caesar, not for Caesar.
As the talk took hold of many and inflamed them, some laid hold of the wagons, others killed the two centurions who opposed them, and Crispinus himself; and all of them, arming themselves and exhorting one another to go help Caesar, rode off to Rome, and learning that eighty senators were dining with him, they made for the palace, saying that now was the time to kill all of Caesar's enemies at once,
so the city was in great uproar, as if it were about to be plundered on the spot, and in the palace there was running to and fro, and a terrible helplessness seized Otho. For, fearing on behalf of the men, he himself turned into someone they dreaded, and he noticed their eyes fixed on him, wordless and full of terror, some even having come to dinner with their wives.
At the same time he sent the prefects out, ordering them to speak to the soldiers and calm them, and at the same time he raised up his guests and sent them out by other doors; and they barely escaped in time, as the mercenaries came pushing into the dining hall asking where Caesar's enemies had gone.
At that time, then, standing up from his couch, offering much comfort and entreaty, and sparing not even his tears, he barely managed to send them off; and on the following day, having presented every man with twelve hundred and fifty drachmas, he entered the camp, and praised the multitude
as being well-disposed and eager toward him, but said that a few, not for any good purpose, were secretly at work, slandering his moderation and their own good order, and he asked them to share his indignation and join in punishing them. When all approved and urged him on, he took only two men, whose punishment no one was going to be upset about, and went away.
These measures those who already loved and trusted him admired as a change of heart; but others considered them necessary political moves suited to the moment, since he was courting popular favor because of the war. For already it was being reported with certainty that Vitellius had assumed the rank and power of emperor; and winged messengers kept constantly arriving, announcing that something new was always coming over to his side, others declaring that the Pannonian and Dalmatian and Moesian armies, together with their commanders, had chosen Otho.
Soon letters also arrived from Mucianus, and friendly ones from Vespasian, the one having great forces in Syria, the other in Judea; encouraged by these, he wrote to Vitellius urging him to think as befits a soldier, promising that he himself would give him much money and a city in which he might live the easiest and most pleasant life, in peace,
and that man wrote back to him too, mocking gently at first; then, growing more provoked, they wrote many abusive and indecent taunts to one another, not falsely, but foolishly and ridiculously, each reproaching the other with faults that belonged to them both. For as to profligacy and softness and inexperience of war, and the multitude of debts contracted earlier out of poverty, it was hard to say which of the two had the lesser share in these things.
Many signs and apparitions were reported, though most of them were rumors without a source and open to doubt; but on the Capitol, where a statue of Victory stood mounted on a chariot, everyone saw the reins slip from her hands, as though she were unable to hold them; and the statue of Gaius Caesar on the island in the Tiber, though there had been no earthquake or wind, turned from facing west to facing east,
which they say happened around those days in which Vespasian's supporters were already openly taking hold of affairs. And the incident concerning the Tiber, most people took as an evil omen. For it was around the season when rivers rise the most, but never before had it risen so high, nor destroyed and ruined so much, overflowing and flooding a great part of the city, and most of all the district where they sell grain for purchase, so that a terrible shortage held the city for many days.
When it was reported that Caecina and Valens, Vitellius's generals, already held the Alps, in Rome Dolabella, a man of noble birth, aroused suspicion among the mercenaries that he had revolutionary designs. So Otho, whether fearing him or someone else, sent him under escort, with reassuring words, to the town of Aquinum. And in enrolling those in authority as fellow travelers, he included among them Lucius, the brother of Vitellius, neither adding to nor taking away from the honor he held,
and he took strong care also of Vitellius's mother and wife, so that they should fear nothing on their own account; and as guardian of Rome he appointed Flavius Sabinus, Vespasian's brother, whether he did this also in honor of Nero — for Sabinus had received that office from him, and Galba had taken it from him — or rather to show goodwill toward Vespasian and strengthen Sabinus's loyalty.
He himself remained behind at Brixellum, a city of Italy on the Po, and sent out as generals of his forces Marius Celsus and Suetonius Paulinus, and also Gallus and Spurina, men of renown, who were not able to manage affairs as they had planned, in accordance with their own judgment, because of the indiscipline and recklessness of the soldiers.
For the soldiers did not think it fitting to listen to others, holding that command belonged to them, on the emperor's behalf. Now the enemy's affairs, too, were not altogether sound, nor tractable to their commanders, but likewise unruly and arrogant for the same reason; nevertheless those men had experience of fighting, and being accustomed to hardship, did not shrink from it,
whereas these were soft from leisure and an unwarlike way of living, having passed the greater part of their lives amid theaters, festivals, and the stage, but out of insolence and boastfulness they wanted to cover this over, disdaining to be thought fit for their duties as though they were too great for them, not as though unable to bear them. Spurina, pressing them, came close to being killed by them when they nearly attacked him,
sparing him no insolence or abuse, calling him a traitor and a ruiner of Caesar's opportunities and affairs; and some, already drunk, came by night to his tent demanding travel money, saying that they must go to Caesar, in order to bring accusations against him.
What helped matters, and Spurina too, for the moment, was a taunting exchange that took place among the soldiers around Placentia; for Vitellius's men, attacking the walls, mocked those of Otho's men standing along the battlements, calling them stage performers and pyrrhic dancers and spectators of the Pythian and Olympic games, inexperienced in war and campaigning and never having seen it, and priding themselves greatly on having cut off the head of an unarmed old man — meaning Galba — though they themselves would never openly go down into a contest and battle of men.
So stirred up were they by these taunts, and so inflamed, that they fell upon Spurina, begging him to make use of them and give them orders, refusing no danger or toil. A fierce siege of the walls followed, with many engines brought up, and Spurina's men prevailed, and beating back their opponents with great slaughter, preserved a famous city, flourishing as much as any in Italy,
The rest of Vitellius's generals, too, were less harsh to encounter, both for cities and for private individuals, than Otho's were; but of them Caecina had neither the voice nor the bearing of a man of the people, but was offensive and strange, of great bodily size, got up in Gallic fashion with trousers and sleeves, though he addressed the standards and Roman officials,
and they escorted his wife to him, mounted on a horse conspicuously adorned, with a picked body of cavalry. But Fabius Valens, the other general, was filled up neither by plundering the enemy nor by thefts and bribe-taking from the allies as he made his money; indeed it was thought that it was for this reason — moving slowly — that he was late for the earlier battle,
while others blame Caecina, who, hastening for the victory to be his own before Valens arrived, fell into other lesser errors as well, and joined battle neither at the right time nor nobly, and so came within a little of ruining the whole cause for them.
For when Caecina, repulsed from Placentia, set out for Cremona, another prosperous and great city, first Annius Gallus, who was going to Spurinna's aid near Placentia, when he heard along the road that the people of Placentia had come off victorious, but that those at Cremona were in danger, transferred his army there and encamped near the enemy; then each of the others also came to the general's aid,
and when Caecina had posted many hoplites in ambush in shaggy, wooded places, and had ordered his cavalry to ride out ahead, and if the enemy engaged, to withdraw little by little and flee back, until by so retreating they should draw them into the ambush, deserters reported this to Celsus. And he, riding out against them with good cavalry, but conducting the pursuit warily, and having surrounded and thrown the ambush into confusion, called up his hoplites from the camp.
and it seems that if they had come up in time they would have left not one of the enemy, but would have crushed and destroyed the whole army with Caecina by following hard upon the cavalry; but as it was, Paulinus, coming to their aid late and at leisure, was charged with having generaled below his reputation, out of excessive caution.
And most of the soldiers even accused him of treachery, and provoked Otho, boasting loudly that they themselves had been victorious, and that the victory had not gone further because of the generals' cowardice. But Otho did not trust them so much as he wished not to seem to distrust them. He therefore sent his brother Titianus to the armies, and Proculus the prefect, who in fact held the whole command, while Titianus was but a screen.
Those about Celsus and Paulinus were otherwise dragged along merely with the name of counselors and friends, having no authority or power in affairs; and things were in confusion among the enemy too, especially among those under Valens; and when the battle at the ambush was reported, they grew angry that they had not been present nor had come to the aid of so many men who had died — but with difficulty he persuaded and restrained them from rushing to attack, and broke camp and joined Caecina's forces.
And Otho, having arrived at Bedriacum, at the camp — Bedriacum is a small town near Cremona — deliberated about the battle; and it seemed best to Proculus and Titianus, since the armies were eager and the victory was fresh, to fight it out and not to sit still blunting the edge of their force while waiting for Vitellius himself to come from Gaul,
but Paulinus said that the enemy had at hand everything with which they would fight, and lacked nothing, while for Otho a force no less than what was already present was expected from Moesia and Pannonia, if he would wait for his own proper time, and not play the general to suit the enemy's convenience,
for those who now had confidence from lesser numbers would use no blunter weapons then, if they should gain more men to fight along with them, but would fight from a position of abundance; and besides this, the delay would be to their advantage, since they were in want of nothing, whereas time would bring the enemy scarcity of necessities, encamped as they were in hostile territory.
Marius Celsus became of the same opinion as Paulinus in saying these things. Annius Gallus was not present, but was being tended for a fall from his horse; yet when Otho wrote to him he advised him not to hasten, but to wait for the force from Moesia which was already on the road. However Otho was not persuaded by these men, but those urging him on to battle prevailed.
Several other reasons are given by different people; but plainly those called the praetorians, having the rank of guardsmen, tasting then for the first time a genuine campaign, and longing for their pastimes and festive ways of life in Rome, free from war, were not to be restrained in their eagerness for battle, as though they would snatch up the enemy at once by a mere onrush,
and it seems that Otho himself no longer bore up under the uncertainty, nor could he endure, through inexperience and softness, calculations about the dangers, but, worn out by anxieties, hastened, covering his eyes as it were, to let events go however they might happen, as if leaping from a cliff.
This is what Secundus the rhetorician, who had been in charge of Otho's correspondence, used to relate. From others one could hear that in both armies many impulses arose to come together as one, and above all, that they themselves, in agreement, should choose the best of the present commanders, or if not, that they should seat the senate jointly and refer the choice of emperor to it.
And it is not unlikely that, since neither of those then called emperors enjoyed a good reputation, such reflections fell upon the genuine, hard-working, and sensible among the soldiers — that it was most hateful and terrible that what long ago, on account of Sulla and Marius, and then Caesar and Pompey, the citizens pitied one another for doing and suffering, they should now endure for the sake of providing an empire as fodder either for Vitellius's gluttony and drunkenness, or for Otho's luxury and licentiousness.
It is suspected, then, that those about Celsus, perceiving this, threw in delay, hoping that matters would be decided without battle and toil, while those about Otho, fearing this, hastened on the battle.
He himself withdrew again to Brixellum, and by this too he added to his errors — not only because he removed from those fighting the reverence and ambition felt in the presence of his eyes, but because, in taking away for his own bodyguard the strongest and most eager cavalry and infantry, he cut off, as it were, the tempered edge of his force.
It happened in those same days that there was also a contest around the river Po, Caecina attempting to bridge the crossing, while Otho's men hindered and fought against him. And when they accomplished nothing this way, they loaded onto boats torches full of sulphur and pitch, and a wind, suddenly falling upon the strait, fanned the prepared material against the enemy.
First smoke, then a bright flame burst out, and being thrown into confusion and leaping into the river, they overturned their own boats and gave their bodies over to the enemy amid laughter. And the Germans, engaging Otho's gladiators near a small island in the river, overpowered them and destroyed not a few of them.
When this had happened, and Otho's soldiers at Bedriacum were being carried away in anger toward battle, Proculus led them out from Bedriacum, and encamped about fifty stades away, so inexpertly and laughably that, though it was springtime, and the surrounding plains had many springs and ever-flowing rivers, they were pressed by a shortage of water.
And on the next day, when he wished to lead them forward against the enemy by a road of no less than a hundred stades, Paulinus and his party would not allow it, but thought they ought to wait and not wear themselves out beforehand, nor engage in battle straight from the march against men armed and drawn up at their leisure, in the time it would take themselves to advance so great a distance with their baggage-animals and camp-followers mixed in among them,
and while this dispute was going on among the generals, a horseman of those called Numidians came from Otho bearing a letter ordering them not to remain nor to delay, but to lead at once against the enemy. They therefore broke camp and advanced; and Caecina, learning of their approach, was thrown into confusion, and hastily abandoning his works and the river, came to the camp.
As most of the men were already armed, and were receiving the watchword from Valens, and even as the legions were still forming up into their battle lines, they sent forward the best of the cavalry.
There fell upon those of Otho's men drawn up in front, for some reason, an opinion and a rumor that Vitellius's generals were about to come over to their side; so when they were near, they greeted them in friendly fashion, calling them fellow-soldiers. But when the others answered the greeting not kindly, but with anger and a warlike shout, despondency came upon those who had greeted them, and suspicion against them fell upon the rest, as though they had been betraying the army,
and this first threw them into confusion, the enemy now being at close quarters; then nothing else was done in order, but the baggage-train, getting entangled with the combatants, caused much disorder, and the ground, being full of ditches and pits, caused many separations, which men, fearing and trying to go around, were forced in confusion and by scattered groups to engage the enemy.
Only two legions — for that is what the Romans call these units — one of Vitellius's surnamed Rapax, the other of Otho's called Adiutrix, deploying into an open and level plain, fought a regular pitched battle, meeting phalanx against phalanx, for a long time. Otho's men were strong and good, but were then getting their first taste of war and battle; Vitellius's men were seasoned in many contests, but were by now old and past their prime.
So Otho's men, charging upon them, pushed them back and took away their eagle, killing nearly all their front-fighters; but the others, out of shame and anger, fell upon them, killed Orfidius, who commanded the legion as its legate, and captured a great number of its standards. And Varus Alfenus, bringing up those called the Batavians, seems to have given the gladiators skill and confidence for close combat.
These are the best cavalry among the Germans, inhabiting an island surrounded by the Rhine. Few of the gladiators withstood them, but most, fleeing to the river, fell in among cohorts of the enemy stationed there, and being unable to defend themselves, all alike were destroyed.
Of all the men, those who fought most shamefully were the commanders themselves, who did not even hold their position long enough to clash hand to hand with the foe, but by fleeing spread panic and disorder among troops who had not yet suffered defeat. Nevertheless, many of Otho's men, having overcome those set against them, forced their way through and broke through the enemy's lines, though the enemy held the field, and got back to the camp.
Of the generals, neither Proculus nor Paulinus dared to go in with them, but turned aside, fearing the soldiers, who were already turning the blame onto their commanders. Annius Gallus, however, took charge in the city and tried to comfort those gathering in from the battle, telling them that it had been evenly fought and that in many parts they had actually gotten the better of the enemy.
Marius Celsus gathered the officers together and urged them to consider the common good: that after so great a disaster and so much slaughter of citizens, not even Otho, if he were truly a good man, would still wish to try his fortune further — seeing that even Cato and Scipio, who after Pharsalus refused to yield to Caesar though he was victorious, are blamed for having needlessly thrown away many good men in Libya, even though they were fighting for the freedom of the Romans,
for although fortune grants herself in common to all in other respects, there is one good thing she does not take away from good men: the power, even when they stumble, to reason well about what befalls them. By saying this he persuaded the officers; and when, on testing the soldiers, they saw that the men wanted peace, and Titianus pressed for envoys to be dispatched to arrange peace terms, Celsus and Gallus resolved to meet in person with Caecina and Valens for talks,
and as they were on their way, centurions met them, saying that the army was already on the move and coming toward Bedriacum, but that they themselves had been sent by the generals to treat for concord. Celsus and his companions welcomed this, and told them to turn back and go with them to meet Caecina. But when they drew near, Celsus was in danger, for the cavalry who had earlier been defeated in the ambush happened to be riding out ahead of the rest.
As soon as they caught sight of Celsus approaching, they shouted and rushed at him at once, yet a line of centurions blocked their way and kept them from reaching him; and when the other officers cried out for them to spare him, Caecina's men, learning of this and riding up, quickly put a stop to the cavalry's disorder, and greeting Celsus warmly, went with him toward Bedriacum.
Meanwhile Titianus, who had sent out the envoys, had a change of heart, and again brought up onto the walls those soldiers who were still defiant, and called on the rest to help. But once Caecina came riding up and stretched forth his right hand, resistance ceased at once; instead, those on the walls greeted the soldiers, and others threw open the gates, went out, and mingled with their fellow soldiers.
No one was wronged; there were only expressions of friendship and handclasps. And all of them swore the oath to Vitellius and went over to his side.
This is how most of those who were present report the battle to have gone, though even they do not claim to know the details clearly, on account of the disorder and unevenness of the fighting. But I myself, traveling later through the plain, was shown by Mestrius Florus — a man of consular rank, one of those who had been with Otho not by choice but out of necessity — an old temple, and he told me that after the battle he had gone up and seen so great a pile of corpses that those lying on top of it touched the temple's pediments,
and he said that although he searched for the cause of this he could neither discover it himself nor learn it from anyone else. For in civil wars, once a rout occurs, it is likely that more men die than usual, because no one is taken alive — there is no use in keeping prisoners — but a piling up and heaping together of bodies to such a degree does not have an easy explanation.
To Otho at first came a report that was unclear, as commonly happens about such great matters; but when some wounded men arrived from the battle bringing word of it, one might well expect that his companions refused to let him despair and instead pressed him to keep heart; what is astounding beyond all belief was the feeling of the soldiers. Not one of them left him,
nor did any go over to the victors, nor was anyone seen seeking his own safety once their leader had given up hope; but all alike came to his door, calling him imperator, and as he came forward became suppliants before him, and with shouting and entreaty laid hold of his hands, fell before him, wept, and begged him not to abandon them, not to betray them to the enemy, but to make use of them, both their lives and their bodies, on his behalf as long as they drew breath — all of them together made this same plea,
and one of the lesser-known soldiers, drawing his sword and saying, "Know, Caesar, that all of us stand arrayed like this for your sake," killed himself. Yet none of this broke Otho's resolve; with a bright and composed face he turned his gaze around on every side and said, "This day, fellow soldiers, I consider more blessed than that other on which you first made me imperator, seeing you like this and being thought worthy of such devotion.
But do not deprive me of something greater — of dying well for the sake of so many and such citizens. If I have proven worthy of the leadership of Rome, I must be unsparing of my own life for my country's sake. I know that the enemy's victory is neither secure nor strong. They report that our forces from Moesia are not many days' march away, already coming down toward the Adriatic.
Asia, Syria, Egypt, and the legions campaigning against the Jews all stand on our side, as does the senate, along with the children and wives of our opponents. But this is not a war against Hannibal, or Pyrrhus, or the Cimbri, fought for Italy's sake; rather, both sides, fighting against fellow Romans, wrong our country whether we win or lose. For even the victor's gain is, in that respect, a loss.
Believe me when I say, again and again, that I am able to die more nobly than to rule. For I do not see what benefit so great to the Romans I would bring by prevailing, as great as that which I would bring by giving myself up for the sake of peace and concord, and so that Italy might never again look upon such a day as this."
Having spoken in this way, and having firmly resisted those who tried to object and urge him otherwise, he ordered his friends to depart, and those senators who were present with him; and to those not present he sent letters and dispatches to the cities, that they should be escorted with honor and in safety.
Drawing his nephew Cocceius to him, who was still a young boy, he urged him to take courage and not fear Vitellius, whose mother, family, and wife he himself had protected as if they were his own kin. This, he said, was why he had held back from making him his son by adoption and had delayed the matter, so that the boy could share in his rule should he himself succeed, but not perish along with him if he fell. "This one thing," he said, "my child, I charge you with as my last word: neither forget entirely, nor remember too much, that you had Caesar for an uncle."
Having finished with this, a little later he heard tumult and shouting at the doors; for the soldiers were threatening to kill those senators who were leaving, if they did not stay, and were saying that they would go off and abandon the emperor. So he came forward again on behalf of the men, being afraid for them, and looking at the soldiers no longer with entreaty or gentleness but with sternness, and fixing an angry gaze especially upon those making the greatest disturbance, he made them yield and disperse, and they went away in fear.
It being now evening, he grew thirsty, and after drinking a little water, he had two daggers; he examined the edge of each for a long time, and gave back one of them, while taking the other under his arm he called in his household servants. And treating them kindly, he distributed his money among them, more to one, less to another, not as one squandering what was no longer his, but carefully observing what was fitting and proportionate to each.
Having sent them away, he then rested for what remained of the night, so soundly that his chamberlains could tell he was sleeping deeply. At dawn he called for the freedman who had helped him manage matters concerning the senators, and ordered him to find out what had become of them; and learning that each of those departing had been given what he needed, he said, "Go, then, and show yourself to the soldiers, if you do not wish to die a bad death at their hands, as one who helped bring about my death."
When the man had gone out, Otho set the sword upright with both hands and fell upon it from above; he was felt to groan only once from the pain, and this alone gave those outside a sign of what had happened. When the attendants cried out in mourning, weeping instantly spread through the entire camp and city, and the soldiers, shouting, forced their way in at the doors and mourned aloud, overcome with grief and reproaching themselves for not having guarded their emperor nor prevented him from dying on their behalf,
yet none of those around him withdrew, even though the enemy was near; instead, having adorned the body and prepared a pyre, those who managed to get under the bier first and carry it out did so in full armor, exulting in the honor. Of the rest, some fell upon the corpse and kissed the wound, others touched his hands, others made obeisance from a distance. And some, having set torches to the pyre, killed themselves, though they had clearly received no benefit from the dead man nor had anything terrible to fear from the victor.
But it seems that never in any tyrant or king before has there arisen so terrible and frenzied a passion for ruling as the passion these men had for being ruled by and obeying Otho — men whose longing for him did not leave them even after his death, but continued as an implacable hatred of Vitellius even to the end.
The rest of the story has its own proper occasion to be told. Having hidden Otho's remains in the earth, they made his tomb give no offense either by the size of the monument or by the pomp of an inscription. I myself saw it, having gone to Brixellum, and found it a modest memorial, with an inscription that, if translated, reads: "To the memory of Marcus Otho."
Otho died having lived thirty-seven years and having ruled three months, and he left behind admirers of his death fully as numerous as the critics of his conduct; for even granting that he had lived no better than Nero, he met death in a far nobler manner.
The soldiers grew resentful when Pollio, the other of the prefects, at once ordered them to swear allegiance to Vitellius; and learning that some of the senators were still present, they let the rest go, but gave trouble to Verginius Rufus, coming to his house under arms and calling on him again and again, bidding him either to rule or to act as their envoy,
but he, having earlier refused to take the leadership when they were victorious, considered it madness to accept it now that they were defeated; and fearing to act as envoy to the Germans, who felt that much had been forced upon them against their judgment through his doing, he slipped away unnoticed through other doors and got himself out of the way. When the soldiers learned of this, they took the oath and, receiving pardon, joined the side of Caecina and his men.