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