Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language
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.