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