Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans quotes

from thence again, that they removed to Thrace, and were named Bottiaeans and that this is the reason why, in a certain sacrifice, the Bottiaean girls sing a hymn beginning Let us go to Athens.

This may show us how dangerous a thing it is to incur the hostility of a city that is mistress of eloquence and song.

For Minos was always ill spoken of, and represented ever as a very wicked man, in the Athenian theaters; neither did Hesiod avail him by calling him “the most royal Minos,” nor Homer, who styles him “Jupiter’s familiar friend;”

and as for birds, it touches not them, though they are dead, as being of its own species, whereas eagles, owls, and hawks mangle and kill their own fellow-creatures; yet, as Aeschylus says,—

What bird is clean that preys on fellow bird ?

Besides all other birds are, so to say, never out of our eyes; they let themselves be seen of us continually; but a vulture is a very rare sight, and you can seldom meet with a man that has seen their young;

but did those he found in it no injury, only commanded them to demolish the place and attend him to Rome, there to be admitted to all the privileges of citizens.

And indeed there was nothing did more advance the greatness of Rome, than that she did always unite and incorporate those whom she conquered into herself.

Romulus, that he might perform his vow in the most acceptable manner to Jupiter, and withal make the pomp of it delightful to the eye of the city, cut down a tall oak which he saw growing in the camp, which he trimmed to the …

Both Theseus and Romulus were by nature meant for governors; yet neither lived up to the true character of a king, but fell off, and ran, the one into popularity, the other into tyranny, falling both into the same fault out of different passions.

For a ruler’s first end is to maintain his office, which is done no less by avoiding what is unfit than by observing what is suitable.

Whoever is either too remiss or too strict is no more a king or a governor, but either a demagogue or a despot, and so becomes either odious or contemptible to his subjects.

For a ruler’s first end is to maintain his office, which is done no less by avoiding what is unfit than by observing what is suitable.

Whoever is either too remiss or too strict is no more a king or a governor, but either a demagogue or a despot, and so becomes either odious or contemptible to his subjects.

Though certainly the one seems to be the fault of easiness and good-nature, the other of pride and severity.

It is reported, that, as he returned from a journey shortly after the division of the lands, in harvest time, the ground being newly reaped, seeing the stacks all standing equal and alike, he smiled, and said to those about him, “

Methinks all Laconia looks like one family estate just divided among a number of brothers.

”

For the rich, being obliged to go to the same table with the poor, could not make use of or enjoy their abundance, nor so much as please their vanity by looking at or displaying it.

So that the common proverb, that Plutus, the god of riches, is blind, was nowhere in all the world literally verified but in Sparta.

There, indeed, he was not only blind, but like a picture, without either life or motion.

So that the common proverb, that Plutus, the god of riches, is blind, was nowhere in all the world literally verified but in Sparta.

There, indeed, he was not only blind, but like a picture, without either life or motion.

Nor were they allowed to take food at home first, and then attend the public tables, for every one had an eye upon those who did not eat and drink like the rest, and reproached them with being dainty and effeminate.

which refusal when he resented so much as to omit next day the sacrifice due for a war happily ended, they made him pay a fine.

They used to send their children to these tables as to schools of temperance; here they were instructed in state affairs by listening to experienced statesmen; here they learnt to converse with pleasantry, to make jests without scurrility, and take them without ill humor.

In this point of good breeding, the Lacedaemonians excelled particularly, but if any man were uneasy under it, upon the least hint given there was no more to be said to him.

… to be changed as occasion requires, he thought it the best way to prescribe no positive rule or inviolable usage in such cases, willing that their manner and form should be altered according to the circumstances of time, and determinations of men of sound judgment.

Every end and object of law and enactment it was his design education should effect.

One, then, of the Rhetras was, that their laws should not be written;

Being consulted again whether it were requisite to enclose the city with a wall, he sent them word,

“The city is well fortified which hath a wall of men instead of brick.”

But whether these letters are counterfeit or not is not easy to determine.

King Leonidas said to one who held him in discourse upon some useful matter, but not in due time and place, “Much to the purpose, Sir, elsewhere.” King Charilaus, the nephew of Lycurgus, being asked why his uncle had made so few laws, answered,

“Men of few words require but few laws.”

When one blamed Hecataeus the sophist because that, being invited to the public table, he had not spoken one word all supper-time, Archidamidas answered in his vindication, “He who knows how to speak, knows also when. “

For they did not throw them out at random, but the very wit of them was grounded upon something or other worth thinking about. For instance, one, being asked to go hear a man who exactly counterfeited the voice of a nightingale, answered,

“Sir, I have heard the nightingale itself.”

Another, having read the following inscription upon a tomb,

A lad, being offered some game-cocks that would die upon the spot, said that he cared not for cocks that would die, but for such that would live and kill others. Another, seeing people easing themselves on seats, said,

“God forbid I should sit where I could not get up to salute my elders.”

In short, their answers were so sententious and pertinent, that one said well that intellectual much more truly than athletic exercise was the Spartan characteristic.

The first says of Lacedaemon—

The spear and song in her do meet, And Justice walks about her street;

Councils of wise elders here, And the young men’s conquering spear, And dance, and song, and joy appear;

both describing the Spartans as no less musical than warlike; in the words of one of their own poets—

With the iron stern and sharp Comes the playing on the harp.

For, indeed, before they engaged in battle, the king first did sacrifice to the Muses, in all likelihood to put them in mind of the manner of their education, and of the judgment that would be passed upon their actions, and thereby to animate them …

To return to the Lacedaemonians. Their discipline continued still after they were full-grown men.

No one was allowed to live after his own fancy; but the city was a sort of camp, in which every man had his share of provisions and business set out, and looked upon himself not so much born to serve his own ends as the interest of his country.

Therefore, if they were commanded nothing else, they went to see the boys perform their exercises, to teach them something useful, or to learn it themselves of those who knew better.

extolling the good, and censuring those who were otherwise, and that in a light and sportive manner, conveying, without too much gravity, lessons of advice and improvement. Nor was Lycurgus himself unduly austere; it was he who dedicated, says Sosibius, the little statue of Laughter.

Mirth, introduced seasonably at their suppers and places of common entertainment, was to serve as a sort of sweetmeat to accompany their strict and hard life.

To conclude, he bred up his citizens in such a way that they neither would nor could live by themselves;

not because he was afraid lest they should inform themselves of and imitate his manner of government (as Thucydides says), or learn any thing to their good; but rather lest they should introduce something contrary to good manners.

With strange people, strange words must be admitted; these novelties produce novelties in thought; and on these follow views and feelings whose discordant character destroys the harmony of the state.

He was as careful to save his city from the infection of foreign bad habits, as men usually are to prevent the introduction of a pestilence.

they styled them the composers and chasteners of each people or prince they were sent to, and had their eyes always fixed upon the city of Sparta itself, as the perfect model of good manners and wise government.

The rest seemed as scholars, they the masters of Greece; and to this Stratonicus pleasantly alluded, when in jest he pretended to make a law that the Athenians should conduct religious processions and the mysteries, the Eleans should preside at the Olympic games, and, if either did amiss, the Lacedaemonians be beaten.

Antisthenes, too, one of the scholars of Socrates, said, in earnest, of the Thebans, when they were elated by their victory at Leuctra, that they looked like schoolboys who had beaten their master.

For people do not obey, unless rulers know how to command; obedience is a lesson taught by commanders.

A true leader himself creates the obedience of his own followers; as it is the last attainment in the art of riding to make a horse gentle and tractable, so is it of the science of government, to inspire men with a willingness to obey.

The Lacedaemonians inspired men not with a mere willingness, but with an absolute desire, to be their subjects. For they did not send petitions to them for ships or money, or a supply of armed men, but only for a Spartan commander;

In presence of his father and his kinsman Marcius, he returned answer that “

Every alteration of a man’s life is dangerous to him; but madness only could induce one who needs nothing and is satisfied with everything to quit a life he is accustomed to; which, whatever else it is deficient in, at any rate has the advantage of certainty over one wholly doubtful and unknown.

Though, indeed, the difficulties of this government cannot even be called unknown; Romulus, who first held it, did not escape the suspicion of having plotted against the life of his colleague Tatius; nor the senate the like accusation, of having treasonably murdered Romulus.

… hand, Horses and mules, and acres of wheat-land, And him whose all is decent food to eat, Clothes to his back and shoes upon his feet, And a young wife and child, since so ’twill be, And no more years than will with that agree;—

Wealth I would have, but wealth by wrong procure I would not; justice, e’en if slow, is sure.

And it is perfectly possible for a good man and a statesman, without being solicitous for superfluities, to show some concern for competent necessaries.

for, having suffered a thousand dangers, it was natural they should be recompensed with some gratifications and enjoyments; but that he accounted himself rather poor than rich is evident from the lines,

Some wicked men are rich, some good are poor, We will not change our virtue for their store; Virtue’s a thing that none call take away, But money changes owners all the day.

At first he used his poetry only in trifles, not for any serious purpose, but simply to pass away his idle hours;

It is the clouds that make the snow and hail, And thunder comes from lightning without fail;

The sea is stormy when the winds have blown, But it deals fairly when ’tis left alone.

And, indeed, it is probable that at that time Thales alone had raised philosophy above mere practice into speculation; and the rest of the wise men were so called from prudence in political concerns.

and he would so fit his laws to the citizens, that all should understand it was more eligible to be just than to break the laws. But the event rather agreed with the conjecture of Anacharsis than Solon’s hope.

Anacharsis, being once at the assembly, expressed his wonder at the fact that in Greece wise men spoke and fools decided.

Solon went, they say, to Thales at Miletus, and wondered that Thales took no care to get him a wife and children. To this, Thales made no answer for the present;

others have borne the deaths of virtuous children without any extravagant or unbecoming grief; have passed the rest of their lives like men, and according to the principles of reason.

It is not affection, it is weakness, that brings men, unarmed against fortune by reason, into these endless pains and terrors; and they indeed have not even the present enjoyment of what they dote upon, the possibility of the future loss causing them continual pangs, tremors, and distresses.

We must not provide against the loss of wealth by poverty, or of friends by refusing all acquaintance, or of children by having none, but by morality and reason. But of this too much.

and they indeed have not even the present enjoyment of what they dote upon, the possibility of the future loss causing them continual pangs, tremors, and distresses.

We must not provide against the loss of wealth by poverty, or of friends by refusing all acquaintance, or of children by having none, but by morality and reason.

But of this too much.

He likewise forbade them to speak evil of the living in the temples, the courts of justice, the public offices, or at the games, or else to pay three drachmas to the person, and two to the public.

For never to be able to control passion shows a weak nature and ill-breeding; and always to moderate it is very hard, and to some impossible.

And laws must look to possibilities, if the maker designs to punish few in order to their amendment, and not many to no purpose.

and Thespis replying that it was no harm to say or do so in play, Solon vehemently struck his staff against the ground:

“Ay,” said he, “if we honor and commend such play as this, we shall find it some day in our business.”

Now when Pisistratus, having wounded himself, was brought into the marketplace in a chariot, and stirred up the people, as if he had been thus treated by his opponents because of his political conduct, and a great many were enraged and cried out, Solon, coming …

You dote upon his words and taking phrase;

True, you are singly each a crafty soul, But all together make one empty fool.

But observing the poor men bent to gratify Pisistratus, and tumultuous, and the rich fearful and getting out of harm’s way, he departed, saying he was wiser than some and stouter than others;

“I have done my part to maintain my country and my laws,” and then he busied himself no more. His friends advising him to fly, he refused; but wrote poems, and thus reproached the Athenians in them,—

If now you suffer, do not blame the Powers, For they are good, and all the fault was ours. All the strongholds you put into his hands, And now his slaves must do what he commands.

And many telling him that the tyrant would take his life for this, and asking what he trusted to, that he ventured to speak so boldly, he replied, “To my old age.”

not, as Plato says, by reason of want of time, but because of his age, and being discouraged at the greatness of the task; for that he had leisure enough, such verses testify, as

Each day grow older, and learn something new

But now the Powers of Beauty, Song, and Wine, Which are most men’s delights, are also mine.

Each day grow older, and learn something new

But now the Powers of Beauty, Song, and Wine, Which are most men’s delights, are also mine.

Plato, willing to improve the story of the Atlantic Island, as if it were a fair estate that wanted an heir and came with some title to him, formed, indeed, stately entrances, noble enclosures, large courts, such as never yet introduced any story, fable, or …

would be in his mouth in application to Domitian.

It is neither piety, he would say, nor magnificence, but, indeed, a mere disease of building, and a desire, like Midas, of converting every thing into gold or stone.

And thus much for this matter.

… he did not spend in play or idleness, as other children, but would be always inventing or arranging some oration or declamation to himself, the subject of which was generally the excusing or accusing his companions, so that his master would often say to him,

“You, my boy, will be nothing small, but great one way or other, for good or else for bad.”

He received reluctantly and carelessly instructions given him to improve his manners and behavior, or to teach him any pleasing or graceful accomplishment, but whatever was said to improve him in sagacity, or in management of affairs, he would give attention to, beyond one of …

he said to Simonides, the poet of Ceos, who desired something of him, when he was commander of the army, that was not reasonable,

“Simonides, you would be no good poet if you wrote false measure, nor should I be a good magistrate if for favor I made false law.”

And at another time, laughing at Simonides, he said, that he was a man of little judgment to speak against the Corinthians, who were inhabitants of a great city, and to have his own picture drawn so often, having so ill-looking a face.

these things they were to despise, and to come up close and grapple with their foes. This, Pindar appears to have seen, and says justly enough of the fight at Artemisium, that

There the sons of Athens set The stone that freedom stands on yet.

For the first step towards victory undoubtedly is to gain courage. Artemisium is in Euboea, beyond the city of Histiaea, a sea-beach open to the north; most nearly opposite to it stands Olizon, in the country which formerly was under Philoctetes;

There the sons of Athens set The stone that freedom stands on yet.

For the first step towards victory undoubtedly is to gain courage.

Artemisium is in Euboea, beyond the city of Histiaea, a sea-beach open to the north; most nearly opposite to it stands Olizon, in the country which formerly was under Philoctetes;

Laughing at his own son, who got his mother, and, by his mother’s means, his father also, to indulge him, he told him that he had the most power of any one in Greece:

“For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother.”

Loving to be singular in all things, when he had land to sell, he ordered the crier to give notice that there were good neighbors near it.

He said to Antiphates, a handsome young man, who had formerly avoided, but now in his glory courted him,

“Time, young man, has taught us both a lesson.”

He said that the Athenians did not honor him or admire him, but made, as it were, a sort of plane-tree of him; sheltered themselves under him in bad weather, and, as soon as it was fine, plucked his leaves and cut his branches.

sheltered themselves under him in bad weather, and, as soon as it was fine, plucked his leaves and cut his branches. When the Seriphian told him that he had not obtained this honor by himself, but by the greatness of his city, he replied,

“You speak truth; I should never have been famous if I had been of Seriphus; nor you, had you been of Athens.”

When another of the generals, who thought he had performed considerable service for the Athenians, boastingly compared his actions with those of Themistocles, he told him that once upon a time the Day after the Festival found fault with the Festival:

They relate, also, how Themistocles, when he was in great prosperity, and courted by many, seeing himself splendidly served at his table turned to his children and said,

“Children, we had been undone if we had not been undone.”

Most writers say that he had three cities given him, Magnesia, Myus, and Lampsacus, to maintain him in bread, meat, and wine.

Certain laws, however, all good men observe even in war itself; nor is victory so great an object as to induce us to incur for its sake obligations for base and impious acts.

A great general should rely on his own virtue, and not on other men’s vices.

” Which said, he commanded the officers to tear off the man’s clothes, and bind his hands behind him, and give the boys rods and scourges, to punish the traitor and drive him back to the city.

For it is enough for a king, or prince to find leisure sometimes to hear others sing, and he does the muses quite honor enough when he pleases to be but present, while others engage in such exercises and trials of skill.

He who busies himself in mean occupations produces, in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good.

Nor did any generous and ingenuous young man, at the sight of the statue of Jupiter at Pisa, ever desire to be a Phidias, or, on seeing that of Juno at Argos, long to be a Polycletus, or feel induced by his pleasure in their …

Whence it is that neither do such things really profit or advantage the beholders, upon the sight of which no zeal arises for the imitation of them, nor any impulse or inclination, which may prompt any desire or endeavor of doing the like.

But virtue, by the bare statement of its actions, can so affect men’s minds as to create at once both admiration of the things done and desire to imitate the doers of them.

The goods of fortune we would possess and would enjoy; those of virtue we long to practice and exercise; we are content to receive the former from others, the latter we wish others to experience from us. Moral good is a practical stimulus;

But virtue, by the bare statement of its actions, can so affect men’s minds as to create at once both admiration of the things done and desire to imitate the doers of them.

The goods of fortune we would possess and would enjoy; those of virtue we long to practice and exercise; we are content to receive the former from others, the latter we wish others to experience from us.

Moral good is a practical stimulus; it is no sooner seen, than it inspires an impulse to practice;

For these friendly meetings are very quick to defeat any assumed superiority, and in intimate familiarity an exterior of gravity is hard to maintain.

Real excellence, indeed, is most recognized when most openly looked into; and in really good men, nothing which meets the eyes of external observers so truly deserves their admiration, as their daily common life does that of their nearer friends.

Pericles, however, to avoid any feeling of commonness, or any satiety on the part of the people, presented himself at intervals only, not speaking to every business, nor at all times coming into the assembly, but, as Critolaus says, reserving himself, like the Salaminian galley, …

Although they say, too, that Zeuxis once, having heard Agatharchus the painter boast of dispatching his work with speed and ease, replied, “I take a long time.”

For ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty; the expenditure of time allowed to a man’s pains beforehand for the production of a thing is repaid by way of interest with a vital force for its preservation when once produced.

For which reason Pericles’s works are especially admired, as having been made quickly, to last long. For every particular piece of his work was immediately, even at that time, for its beauty and elegance, antique;

Fabius, after his men had picked up the spoils of the field, retired to his own camp, without saying any harsh or reproachful thing to his colleague; who also on his part, gathering his army together, spoke and said to them: “

To conduct great matters and never commit a fault is above the force of human nature; but to learn and improve by the faults we have committed, is that which becomes a good and sensible man.

Some reasons I may have to accuse fortune, but I have many more to thank her;

… roving, as it were, with a huge troop of banditti, now became master of the best provinces and towns of Italy, and of Capua itself, next to Rome the most flourishing and opulent city, all which came over to him, and submitted to his authority.

It is the saying of Euripides, that “a man is in ill-case when he must try a friend,” and so neither, it would seem, is a state in a good one, when it needs an able general.

And so it was with the Romans; the counsels and actions of Fabius, which, before the battle, they had branded as cowardice and fear, now, in the other extreme they accounted to have been more than human wisdom;

… persuaded that, by following close and not fighting him, Hannibal and his army would at last be tired out and consumed, like a wrestler in too high condition, whose very excess of strength makes him the more likely suddenly to give way and lose it.

Posidonius tells us that the Romans called Marcellus their sword, and Fabius their buckler; and that the vigor of the one, mixed with the steadiness of the other, made a happy compound that proved the salvation of Rome.

So that Hannibal found by experience that, encountering the one, he met with a rapid, impetuous river, which drove him back, and still made some breach upon him;

… ornament, he caused to be cut off, and his acquaintance exclaiming at him for it, and telling him that all Athens was sorry for the dog, and cried out upon him for this action, he laughed, and said, “Just what I wanted has happened, then.

I wished the Athenians to talk about this, that they might not say something worse of me.

”

Aristophanes has well expressed the people’s feeling towards him:—

“They love, and hate, and cannot do without him.”

And still more strongly, under a figurative expression,

but Alcibiades dreamed of nothing less than the conquest of Carthage and Libya, and by the accession of these conceiving himself at once made master of Italy and of Peloponnesus, seemed to look upon Sicily as little more than a magazine for the war.

The young men were soon elevated with these hopes, and listened gladly to those of riper years, who talked wonders of the countries they were going to; so that you might see great numbers sitting in the wrestling grounds and public places, drawing on the ground the figure of the island and the situation of Libya and Carthage.

Socrates the philosopher and Meton the astrologer are said, however, never to have hoped for any good to the commonwealth from this war; the one, it is to be supposed, presaging what would ensue, by the intervention of his attendant Genius;

When, afterwards, he was told that the assembly had pronounced judgment of death against him, all he said was, “

I will make them feel that I am alive.

”

For he had, as it was observed, this peculiar talent and artifice for gaining men’s affections, that he could at once comply with and really embrace and enter into their habits and ways of life, and change faster than the chameleon.

One color, indeed, they say the chameleon cannot assume; it cannot make itself appear white; but Alcibiades, whether with good men or with bad, could adapt himself to his company, and equally wear the appearance of virtue or vice.

At Sparta, he was devoted to athletic exercises, was frugal and reserved; in Ionia, luxurious, gay, and indolent; in Thrace, always drinking; in Thessaly, ever on horseback; and when he lived with Tisaphernes, the Persian satrap, he exceeded the Persians themselves in magnificence and pomp.

He did not, however, take the city; which gave the first occasion to his enemies for all their accusations against him.

Certainly, if ever man was ruined by his own glory, it was Alcibiades.

For his continual success had produced such an idea of his courage and conduct, that, if he failed in anything he undertook, it was imputed to his neglect, and no one would believe it was through want of power.

… that universal firmness of his the respective names of temperance, fortitude, and justice, yet, in the life of the citizen and the statesman, could not choose but be disgusted at the severity and ruggedness of his deportment, and with his overbearing, haughty, and imperious temper.

Education and study, and the favors of the muses, confer no greater benefit on those that seek them, than these humanizing and civilizing lessons, which teach our natural qualities to submit to the limitations prescribed by reason, and to avoid the wildness of extremes.

Those were times at Rome in which that kind of worth was most esteemed which displayed itself in military achievements; one evidence of which we find in the Latin word for virtue, which is properly equivalent to manly courage.

Of all the numerous wars and conflicts in those days, there was not one from which he returned without laurels and rewards.

And, whereas others made glory the end of their daring, the end of his glory was his mother’s gladness; the delight she took to hear him praised and to see him crowned, and her weeping for joy in his embraces, rendered him, in his own thoughts, the most honored and most happy person in the world.

Epaminondas is similarly said to have acknowledged his feeling, that it was the greatest felicity of his whole life that his father and mother survived to hear of his successful generalship and his victory at Leuctra.

and were more charmed with that virtue which made him despise advantage, than with any of those former actions that had gained him his title to it.

It is the hither accomplishment to use money well than to use arms; but not to need it is more noble than to use it.

When the noise of approbation and applause ceased, Cominius, resuming, said, “It is idle, fellow-soldiers, to force and obtrude those other gifts of ours on one who is unwilling to accept them ;

proceeding thence to attempt their tribunals, and even attack their camps, till, by hiring the valiant, and enslaving iron to silver, it grew master of the state, and turned their commonwealth into a monarchy.

For it was well and truly said that the first destroyer of the liberties of a people is he who first gave them bounties and largesses.

At Rome the mischief seems to have stolen secretly in, and by little and little, not being at once discerned and taken notice of. It is not certainly known who the man was that did there first either bribe the citizens, or corrupt the courts;

Not that either reflection taught him, or gentleness of temper made it natural for him, to submit: he was wholly possessed, on the contrary, with a profound and deep- seated fury, which passes with many for no pain at all.

And pain, it is true, transmuted, so to say, by its own fiery heat into anger, loses every appearance of depression and feebleness; the angry man makes a show of energy, as the man in a high fever does of natural heat, while, in fact, all this action of the soul is but mere diseased palpitation, distention, and inflammation.

That such was his distempered state appeared presently plainly enough in his actions.

Yet for all this, considering Tullus to have a certain generosity of temper, and knowing that no Volscian, so much as he, desired an occasion to requite upon the Romans the evils they had done, he did what much confirms the saying, that

Hard and unequal is with wrath the strife, Which makes us buy its pleasure with our life.

Putting on such a dress as would make him appear to any whom he might meet most unlike what he really was, thus, like Ulysses, —

differing from us in all respects, in its acts yet more than in other points we may well believe it to be unlike us and remote from us.

Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity.

When Marcius came back to Antium, Tullus, who thoroughly hated and greatly feared him, proceeded at once to contrive how he might immediately dispatch him; as, if he escaped now, he was never likely to give him such another advantage.

Neither of these courses can be called commendable; but a man who ingratiates himself by indulgence and flattery, is hardly so censurable as one who, to avoid the appearance of flattering, insults.

To seek power by servility to the people is a disgrace, but to maintain it by terror, violence, and oppression, is not a disgrace only, but an injustice.

Marcius, according to our common conceptions of his character, was undoubtedly simple and straightforward; Alcibiades, unscrupulous as a public man, and false.

And so, in spite of great and frequent hurt that he had done the city, he was repeatedly appointed to office and command; while Coriolanus stood in vain for a place which his great services had made his due.

The one, in spite of the harm he occasioned, could not make himself hated, nor the other, with all the admiration he attracted, succeed in being beloved by his countrymen.

Coriolanus, moreover, it should be said, did not as a general obtain any successes for his country, but only for his enemies against his country. Alcibiades was often of service to Athens, both as a soldier and as a commander.

The origin of all lay in his unsociable, supercilious, and self-willed disposition, which, in all cases, is offensive to most people; and when combined with a passion for distinction passes into absolute savageness and mercilessness.

Men decline to ask favors of the people, professing not to need any honors from them; and then are indignant if they do not obtain them.

Metellus, Aristides, and Epaminondas certainly did not beg favors of the multitude; but that was because they, in real truth, did not value the gifts which a popular body can either confer or refuse;

… were more than once driven into exile, rejected at elections, and condemned in courts of justice, they showed no resentment at the ill-humor of their fellow-citizens, but were willing and contented to return and be reconciled when the feeling altered and they were wished for.

He who least likes courting favor, ought also least to think of resenting neglect: to feel wounded at being refused a distinction can only arise from an overweening appetite to have it.

Alcibiades never professed to deny that it was pleasant to him to be honored, and distasteful to him to be overlooked; and, accordingly, he always tried to place himself upon good terms with all that he met;

It was for the sake of others that I first commenced writing biographies; but I find myself proceeding and attaching myself to it for my own; the virtues of these great men serving me as a sort of looking-glass, in which I may see how to adjust and adorn my own life.

Indeed, it can be compared to nothing but daily living and associating together; we receive, as it were, in our inquiry, and entertain each successive guest, view

men who conquered the world by judging that empire was to be purchased by money, not money by empire.

Certainly it became a proverb, that not Philip, but his gold took the cities of Greece.

And Alexander, when he undertook his expedition against the Indians, and found his Macedonians encumbered, and appear to march heavily with their Persian spoils, first set fire to his own carriages, and thence persuaded the rest to imitate his example, that thus freed they might …

The young commanders, eager to fight, riding along, by his side, pressed him not to delay, and most of all Nasica, flushed with his late success on Olympus. To whom Aemilius answered with a smile: “

So would I do, were I of your age; but many victories have taught me the ways in which men are defeated, and forbid me to engage soldiers weary with a long march, against an army drawn up and prepared for battle.

”

a God that is not wont to regard the faint offerings of cowards, or to fulfill unsanctioned vows.

For truly it can hardly be a thing that heaven would sanction, that he that never shoots should carry away the prize; he triumph that slinks from the battle; he that takes no pains meet with success, or the wicked man prosper.

But to Aemilius’s petitions the god listened; he prayed for victory with his sword in his hand, and fought while entreating divine assistance.

… and be exalted at the conquest of a city, nation, or kingdom, and not rather well to weigh this change of fortune, in which all warriors may see an example of their common frailty, and learn a lesson that there is nothing durable or constant?

For what time can men select to think themselves secure, when that of victory itself forces us more than any to dread our own fortune?

and a very little consideration on the law of things, and how all are hurried round, and each man’s station changed, will introduce sadness in the midst of the greatest joy.

Nor was it least gratifying to him, that, amidst all the magnificent and splendid preparations, he himself was always the most grateful sight, and greatest pleasure to those he entertained.

And he told those that seemed to wonder at his diligence, that there was the same spirit shown in marshaling a banquet as an army; in rendering the one formidable to the enemy, the other acceptable to the guests.

Nor did men less praise his liberality, and the greatness of his soul, than his other virtues;

which brave hero, when once cured, never afterwards sought danger or showed himself venturous in battle; and, when Antigonus wondered and upbraided him with his change, made no secret of the reason, and said,

“Sir, you are the cause of my cowardice, by freeing me from those miseries which made me care little for life.”

With the same feeling, the Sybarite seems to have said of the Spartans, that it was no commendable thing in them to be so ready to die in the wars, since by that they were freed from such hard labor, and miserable living.

They died, but not as lavish of their blood, Or thinking death itself was simply good; Their wishes neither were to live nor die, But to do both alike commendably.

An endeavor to avoid death is not blamable, if we do not basely desire to live; nor a willingness to die good and virtuous, if it proceeds from a contempt of life.

And therefore Homer always takes care to bring his bravest and most daring heroes well armed into battle; and the Greek lawgivers punished those that threw away their shields, but not him that lost his sword or spear;

and, being brought up to opulence, and having a fair estate left him whilst he was young, he made it his business to relieve the good and deserving amongst the poor, that he might show himself lord and not slave of his estate.

For amongst men, as Aristotle observes, some are too narrow-minded to use their wealth, and some are loose and abuse it; and these live perpetual slaves to their pleasures, as the others to their gain.

Others permitted themselves to be obliged by Pelopidas, and thankfully made use of his liberality and kindness; but amongst all his friends, he could never persuade Epaminondas to be a sharer in his wealth.

Ismenias was taken, carried to Sparta, and in a short time murdered; but Pelopidas, Pherenicus, Androclides, and many more that fled were publicly proclaimed outlaws. Epaminondas stayed at home, being not much looked after, as one whom philosophy had made inactive, and poverty incapable.

The Lacedaemonians cashiered Phoebidas, and fined him one hundred thousand drachmas, yet still kept a garrison in the Cadmea; which made all Greece wonder at their inconsistency, since they punished the doer, but approved the deed.

And though the Thebans, having lost their polity, and being enslaved by Archias and Leontidas, had no hopes to get free from this tyranny, which they saw guarded by the whole military power of the Spartans, and had no means to break the yoke, unless …

insomuch that Chlidon’s passion made him waste a great part of the day in this quarreling, and then, looking on this chance as an omen, he laid aside all thoughts of his journey, and went away to some other business.

So nearly had these great and glorious designs, even in their very birth, lost their opportunity.

But Pelopidas and his companions, dressing themselves like countrymen, divided, and, whilst it was yet day, entered at different quarters of the city.

As Thebans were retreating from Orchomenus towards Tegyrae, the Spartans, at the same time marching from Locris, met them. As soon as they came in view, advancing through the straits, one told Pelopidas, “We are fallen into our enemy’s hands;” he replied,

“And why not they into ours?”

and immediately commanded his horse to come up from the rear and charge, while he himself drew his infantry, being three hundred in number, into a close body, hoping by that means, at whatsoever point he made the attack, to break his way through his …

but that he should have joined lovers and their beloved.

For men of the same tribe or family little value one another when dangers press; but a band cemented by friendship grounded upon love, is never to be broken, and invincible; since the lovers, ashamed to be base in sight of their beloved, and the beloved before their lovers, willingly rush into danger for the relief of one another.

Nor can that be wondered at; since they have more regard for their absent lovers than for others present;

Pelopidas, at first not knowing who she was, stood amazed; but when he understood, saluted her by her father’s name — Jason and he having been friends and familiars — and she saying, “I pity your wife, Sir,” he replied,

“And I you, that though not in chains, can endure Alexander.”

This touched the woman, who already hated Alexander for his cruelty and injustice, for his general debaucheries, and for his abuse of her youngest brother.

He consecrated the spear with which he killed his uncle Polyphron, and, crowning it with garlands, sacrificed to it as a god, and called it Tychon.

And once seeing a tragedian act Euripides’s Troades, he left the theater; but sending for the actor, bade him not to be concerned at his departure, but act as he had been used to do, as it was not in contempt of him that he departed, but because he was ashamed that his citizens should see him, who never pitied any man that he murdered, weep at the sufferings of Hecuba and Andromache.

This tyrant, however, alarmed at the very name, report, and appearance of an expedition under the conduct of Epaminondas, presently

Posidonius writes, that Fabius was called the buckler, Marcellus the sword of Rome.

Certainly, Hannibal himself confessed that he feared Fabius as a schoolmaster, Marcellus as an adversary: the former, lest he should be hindered from doing mischief; the latter, lest he should receive harm himself.

And first, when among Hannibal’s soldiers, proud of their victory, carelessness and boldness had grown to a great height, Marcellus, attacking all their stragglers and plundering parties, cut them off, and by little and little diminished their forces.

It is not possible to find in all geometry more difficult and intricate questions, or more simple and lucid explanations. Some ascribe this to his natural genius; while others think that incredible effort and toil produced these, to all appearance, easy and unlabored results.

No amount of investigation of yours would succeed in attaining the proof, and yet, once seen, you immediately believe you would have discovered it; by so smooth and so rapid a path he leads you to the conclusion required.

And thus it ceases to be incredible that (as is commonly told of him), the charm of his familiar and domestic Siren made him forget his food and neglect his person, to that degree that when he was occasionally carried by absolute violence to bathe, …

But they who, without force, by colloquy, persuasion, and reasoning, had done the business, to these captains custom gave the honor of the unmilitary and festive ovation.

For the pipe is the badge of peace, and myrtle the plant of Venus, who more than the rest of the gods and goddesses abhors force and war.

It is called ovation, not, as most think, from the Greek euasmus, because they act it with shouting and cries of Eau: for so do they also the proper triumphs.

Although the divinity, to whom they desire to compare and assimilate themselves, excels, it is supposed, in three things, immortality, power, and virtue; of which three, the noblest and divinest is virtue.

For the elements and vacuum have an everlasting existence; earthquakes, thunders, storms, and torrents have great power; but in justice and equity nothing participates except by means of reason and the knowledge of that which is divine.

And thus, taking the three varieties of feeling commonly entertained towards the deity, the sense of his happiness, fear, and honor of him, people would seem to think him blest and happy for his exemption from death and corruption, to fear and dread him for …

and he being surprised and asking if Aristides had ever done him any injury,

“None at all,” said he, “neither know I the man; but I am tired of hearing him everywhere called the Just.”

Aristides, hearing this, is said to have made no reply, but returned the sherd with his own name inscribed.

and being desirous to be rated city by city in their due proportion, they desired Aristides of the Athenians, and gave him command, surveying the country and revenue, to assess every one according to their ability and what they were worth.

But he, being so largely empowered, Greece as it were submitting all her affairs to his sole management, went out poor, and returned poorer; laying the tax not only without corruption and injustice, but to the satisfaction and convenience of all.

For as the ancients celebrated the age of Saturn, so did the confederates of Athens Aristides’s taxation, terming it the happy time of Greece; and that more especially, as the sum was in a short time doubled, and afterwards trebled.

… man to take the work out of his servants as out of brute beasts, turning them off and selling them in their old age, and thinking there ought to be no further commerce between man and man, than whilst there arises some profit by it.

We see that kindness or humanity has a larger field than bare justice to exercise itself in; law and justice we cannot, in the nature of things, employ on others than men; but we may extend our goodness and charity even to irrational creatures; and such acts flow from a gentle nature, as water from an abundant spring.

It is doubtless the part of a kind-natured man to keep even worn-out horses and dogs, and not only take care of them when they are foals and whelps, but also when they are grown old.

but if intemperance and vice had made them great, they should change for the better; for by that means they were grown indeed quite great enough.

He would say, likewise, of men who wanted to be continually in office, that apparently they did not know their road; since they could not do without beadles to guide them on it.

He also reproved the citizens for choosing still the same men as their magistrates: “For you will seem,” said he, “either not to esteem government worth much, or to think few worthy to hold it.”

Being once desirous to dissuade the common people of Rome, from their unseasonable and impetuous clamor for largesses and distributions of corn, he began thus to harangue them:

“It is a difficult task, O citizens, to make speeches to the belly, which has no ears.”

Reproving, also, their sumptuous habits, he said, it was hard to preserve a city, where a fish sold for more than an ox. He had a saying, also, that the Roman people were like sheep;

He used to say, too, that his enemies envied him; because he had to get up every day before light, and neglect his own business to follow that of the public.

He would also tell you, that he had rather be deprived of the reward for doing well, than not to suffer the punishment for doing ill; and that he could pardon all offenders but himself.

The Romans having sent three ambassadors to Bithynia, of whom one was gouty, another had his skull trepanned, and the other seemed little better than a fool; Cato, laughing, gave out, that the Romans had sent an embassy, which had neither feet, head, nor heart.

“So you,” said he, “when you have got together in a body, let yourselves be guided by those whom singly you would never think of being advised by.” Discoursing of the power of women:

“Men,” said he, “usually command women; but we command all men, and the women command us.”

But this, indeed, is borrowed from the sayings of Themistocles, who, when his son was making many demands of him by means of the mother, said, “O woman, the Athenians govern the Greeks;

and, to this purpose, they sounded Cato for his opinion; but he, smiling, answered, that Polybius, Ulysses-like, having escaped out of the Cyclops’ den, wanted, it would seem, to go back again because he had left his cap and belt behind him.

He used to assert, also, that wise men profited more by fools, than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.

He would profess, too, that he was more taken with young men that blushed, than with those who looked pale; and that he never desired to have a soldier that moved his hands too much in marching, and his feet too much in fighting;

another, that he went by water when he might have gone by land; the third, that he had remained one whole day without doing any business of moment. Applying himself to an old man who was committing some vice:

“Friend,” said he, “old age has of itself blemishes enough; do not you add to it the deformity of vice.”

Speaking to a tribune, who was reputed a poisoner, and was very violent for the bringing in of a bill, in order to make a certain law:

“Young man,” cried he, “I know not which would be better, to drink what you mix, or confirm what you would put up for a law.” Being reviled by a fellow who lived a profligate and wicked life:

“A contest,” replied he, “is unequal between you and me; for you can hear ill words easily, and can as easily give them; but it is unpleasant to me to give such, and unusual to hear them.”

Such was his manner of expressing himself in his memorable sayings.

And thus, on the one side, not only those were disgusted at Cato, who bore the taxes for the sake of their luxury, but those, too, who on the other side laid by their luxury for fear of the taxes.

For people in general reckon, that an order not to display their riches, is equivalent to the taking away their riches; because riches are seen much more in superfluous, than in necessary, things.

Indeed, this was what excited the wonder of Ariston the philosopher; that we account those who possess superfluous things more happy than those who abound with what is necessary and useful.

… Thessalian, to give him some article of no great utility, saying that it was not a thing that he had any great need or use for himself, “In truth,” replied he, “it is just these useless and unnecessary things that make my wealth and happiness.”

Thus the desire of riches does not proceed from a natural passion within us, but arises rather from vulgar out-of-doors opinion of other people.

Cato, notwithstanding, being little solicitous as to those who exclaimed against him, increased his austerity.

being of opinion that the rich and the high-born are equally haughty and proud; but that those of noble blood, would be more ashamed of base things, and consequently more obedient to their husbands in all that was fit and right.

A man who beat his wife or child, laid violent hands, he said, on what was most sacred; and a good husband he reckoned worthy of more praise than a great senator; and he admired the ancient Socrates for nothing so much as for having lived a temperate and contented life with a wife who was a scold, and children who were half-witted.

As soon as he had a son born, though he had never such urgent business upon his hands, unless it were some public matter, he would be by when his wife washed it, and dressed it in its swaddling clothes.

leaving none means to perform any noble action, or worthy his dignity.

Yet why should this needs follow? since poverty is dishonorable not in itself, but when it is a proof of laziness, intemperance, luxury, and carelessness; whereas in a person that is temperate, industrious, just, and valiant, and who uses all his virtues for the public good, it shows a great and lofty mind.

For he has no time for great matters, who concerns himself with petty ones; nor can he relieve many needs of others, who himself has many needs of his own.

Hence Aristides, it is told, said, on the trial of Callias, that it was for them to blush at poverty, who were poor against their wills; they who like him were willingly so, might glory in it.

For it is ridiculous to think Aristides’s neediness imputable to his sloth, who might fairly enough by the spoil of one barbarian, or seizing one tent, have become wealthy.

But enough of this.

whereas in a person that is temperate, industrious, just, and valiant, and who uses all his virtues for the public good, it shows a great and lofty mind.

For he has no time for great matters, who concerns himself with petty ones; nor can he relieve many needs of others, who himself has many needs of his own.

What most of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and independence; which, requiring no superfluity at home, distracts not the mind from the common good. God alone is entirely exempt from all want:

For he has no time for great matters, who concerns himself with petty ones; nor can he relieve many needs of others, who himself has many needs of his own.

What most of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and independence; which, requiring no superfluity at home, distracts not the mind from the common good.

God alone is entirely exempt from all want: of human virtues, that which needs least, is the most absolute and most divine.

What most of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and independence; which, requiring no superfluity at home, distracts not the mind from the common good.

God alone is entirely exempt from all want: of human virtues, that which needs least, is the most absolute and most divine.

For as a body bred to a good habit requires nothing exquisite either in clothes or food, so a sound man and a sound household keep themselves up with a small matter. Riches ought to be proportioned to the use we have of them;

For as a body bred to a good habit requires nothing exquisite either in clothes or food, so a sound man and a sound household keep themselves up with a small matter.

Riches ought to be proportioned to the use we have of them; for he that scrapes together a great deal, making use of but little, is not independent; for if he wants them not, it is folly in him to make provision for things which he does not desire; or if he does desire them, and restrains his enjoyment out of sordidness, he is miserable.

I would fain know of Cato himself, if we seek riches that we may enjoy them, why is he proud of having a great deal, and being contented with little?

yet he who does not so much as desire others’ praises, seems to me more perfectly virtuous, than he who is always extolling himself.

A mind free from ambition is a main help to political gentleness: ambition, on the contrary, is hard-hearted, and the greatest fomenter of envy; from which Aristides was wholly exempt; Cato very subject to it.

Aristides assisted Themistocles in matters of highest importance, and, as his subordinate officer, in a manner raised Athens: Cato, by opposing Scipio, almost broke and defeated his expedition against the Carthaginians, in which he overthrew Hannibal, who till then was even invincible;

but endeavored to improve his own property the justest way, by tillage; and this not slightly, by way of diversion, but thinking it his strict duty, so to manage his own fortune, as to be out of the temptation of wronging others.

He spent much time on eloquence and philosophy, but selected his authors, and cared only for those by whom he might profit in virtue.

In Homer’s fictions his attention was given to whatever he thought apt to raise the courage. Of all other books he was most devoted to the commentaries of Evangelus on military tactics, and also took delight, at leisure hours, in the histories of Alexander;

the very sight of all which quickening and raising their spirits, made them contemn dangers, and feel ready to venture on any honorable dangers.

Other kinds of sumptuosity give us pleasure, but make us effeminate; the tickling of the sense slackening the vigor of the mind; but magnificence of this kind strengthens and heightens the courage; as Homer makes Achilles at the sight of his new arms exulting with joy, and on fire to use them.

When Philopoemen had obtained of them to arm, and set themselves out in this manner, he proceeded to train them, mustering and exercising them perpetually; in which they obeyed him with great zeal and eagerness.

Just at their coming in, it so happened, that the musician Pylades, with a voice well suited to the lofty style of the poet, was in the act of commencing the Persians of Timotheus,

Under his conduct Greece was glorious and was free.

The whole theater at once turned to look at Philopoemen, and clapped with delight; their hopes venturing once more to return to their country’s former reputation; and their feelings almost rising to the height of their ancient spirit.

the popular leaders in the several cities yielded before them; and their power speedily, under the divine guidance, advanced to the consummation due to it in the revolutions of fortune.

Philopoemen, in this conjuncture, carried himself like a good pilot in a high sea, sometimes shifting sail, and sometimes yielding, but still steering steady; and omitting no opportunity nor effort to keep all who were considerable, whether for eloquence or riches, fast to the defense of their common liberty.

Aristaenus, a Megalopolitan of great credit among the Achaeans, but always a favorer of the Romans, saying one day in the senate, that the Romans should not be opposed, or displeased in any way, Philopoemen heard him with an impatient silence;

almost without one drop of blood, or one citizen’s loss to be mourned for, she had this day had put into her hands the most glorious of rewards, and best worth the contending for.

Courage and wisdom are, indeed, rarities amongst men, but of all that is good, a just man it would seem is the most scarce.

Such as Agesilaus, Lysander, Nicias, and Alcibiades, knew how to play the general’s part, how to manage a war, how to bring off their men victorious by land and sea; but how to employ that success to generous and honest purposes, they had not known.

whereas those who but now were laughing to hear of Marius wandering about Africa, destitute and begging, in no long time after were seen entreating his mercy in Rome, with his rods at their backs, and his axes at their necks.

So true it is, that looking to the possible future, we can call nothing that we see either great or small; as nothing puts an end to the mutability and vicissitude of things, but what puts an end to their very being.

Some authors accordingly tell us, that Titus did not do this of his own head, but that he was joined in commission with Lucius Scipio, and that the whole object of the embassy was, to effect Hannibal’s death.

he pardoned the Aetolians, and stood their friend; but Philopoemen, exasperated against his country, deprived it of its supremacy over the adjacent villages. Titus was ever constant to those he had once befriended, the other, upon any offense, as prone to cancel kindnesses.

He who had once been a benefactor to the Lacedaemonians, afterwards laid their walls level with the ground, wasted their country, and in the end changed and destroyed the whole frame of their government.

He seems, in truth, to have prodigalled away his own life, through passion and perverseness; for he fell upon the Messenians, not with that conduct and caution that characterized the movements of Titus, but with unnecessary and unreasonable haste.

The equity, clemency, and humanity of Titus towards the Greeks, display a great and generous nature; but the actions of Philopoemen, full of courage, and forward to assert his country’s liberty against the Romans, have something yet greater and nobler in them.

For it is not as hard a task to gratify the indigent and distressed, as to bear up against, and to dare to incur the anger of the powerful.

To conclude, since it does not appear to be easy, by any review or discussion, to establish the true difference of their merits, and decide to which a preference is due, will it be an unfair award in the case, if we let the Greek …

Thus when Aeropus was dead, he could not bear it with moderation, saying, he indeed had suffered what was common to human nature, but condemning and blaming himself, that by puttings off and delays he had not returned his kindness in time.

For our debts may be satisfied to the creditor’s heirs, but not to have made the acknowledgment of received favors, while they to whom it is due can be sensible of it, afflicts a good and a worthy nature.

Some thinking it fit that Pyrrhus should banish a certain ill-tongued fellow in Ambracia, who had spoken very indecently of him, “Let him rather,” said he, “speak against us here to a few, than rambling about to a great many.”

Not by the lot decide. But with the sword the heritage divide.

So unsocial and wild-beast-like is the nature of ambition and cupidity.

After this battle Pyrrhus, returning gloriously home, enjoyed his fame and reputation, and being called “Eagle” by the Epirots, “By you,” said he, “I am an eagle; for how should I not be such, while I have your arms as wings to sustain me?”

This was for the present useful, and prevented a war; but shortly after they found the partition not so much a peaceful settlement, as an occasion of further complaint and difference.

For men whose ambition neither seas nor mountains, nor unpeopled deserts can limit, nor the bounds dividing Europe from Asia confine their vast desires, it would be hard to expect to forbear from injuring one another when they touch, and are close together.

These are ever naturally at war, envying and seeking advantages of one another, and merely make use of those two words, peace and war, like current coin, to serve their occasions, not as justice but as expediency suggests, and are really better men when they …

Said Pyrrhus, smiling, “we will live at our ease, my dear friend, and drink all day, and divert ourselves with pleasant conversation.” When Cineas had led Pyrrhus with his argument to this point: “

And what hinders us now, sir, if we have a mind to be merry, and entertain one another, since we have at hand without trouble all those necessary things, to which through much blood and great labor, and infinite hazards and mischief done to ourselves and to others, we design at last to arrive?

” Such reasonings rather troubled Pyrrhus with the thought of the happiness he was quitting, than any way altered his purpose, being unable to abandon the hopes of what he so much desired.

… only, after they had fought till sunset, both armies were unwillingly separated by the night, Pyrrhus being wounded by a javelin in the arm, and his baggage plundered by the Samnites, that in all there died of Pyrrhus’s men and the Romans above fifteen thousand.

The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory, that one other such would utterly undo him.

For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward.

… military experience, and personal valor and enterprise much the bravest of all the princes of his time, only what he got by great actions he lost again by vain hopes, and by new desires of what he had not, kept nothing of what he had.

So that Antigonus used to compare him to a player with dice, who had excellent throws, but knew not how to use them.

He returned into Epirus with eight thousand foot and five hundred horse, and for want of money to pay them, was fain to look out for a new war to maintain the army.

Their numbers, most writers agree, were not less, but rather greater than was reported.

They were of invincible strength and fierceness in their wars, and hurried into battle with the violence of a devouring flame; none could withstand them; all they assaulted became their prey.

Several of the greatest Roman commanders with their whole armies, that advanced for the defense of Transalpine Gaul, were ingloriously overthrown, and, indeed, by their faint resistance, chiefly gave them the impulse of marching towards Rome.

The storm now increasing and their victuals failing, they left their ship and wandered up and down without any certain purpose, simply as in great distresses people shun the present as the greatest evil, and rely upon the hopes of uncertainties.

For the land and sea were both equally unsafe for them; it was dangerous to meet with people, and it was no less so to meet with none, on account of their want of necessaries.

At length, though late, they lighted upon a few poor shepherds, that had not anything to relieve them;

and not judging truth to be in nature better than falsehood, but setting a value upon both according to interest. He would laugh at those who thought that Hercules’s posterity ought not to use deceit in war:

“For where the lion’s skin will not reach, you must patch it out with the fox’s.”

Such is the conduct recorded of him in the business about Miletus;

and that everyone should think that thing could be nothing worth for his own personal use, which was so extremely valued and desired for the use of the state.

And moral habits, induced by public practices, are far quicker in making their way into men’s private lives, than the failings and faults of individuals are in infecting the city at large.

For it is probable that the parts will be rather corrupted by the whole if that grows bad; while the vices which flow from a part into the whole, find many correctives and remedies from that which remains sound.

After the revolt of the Corinthians, when, on coming to their walls, he perceived the Lacedaemonians hesitating to make the assault, and a hare was seen to leap through the ditch:

“Are you not ashamed,” he said, “to fear an enemy, for whose laziness, the very hares sleep upon their walls?”

When king Agis died, leaving a brother Agesilaus, and Leotychides, who was supposed his son, Lysander, being attached to Agesilaus, persuaded him to lay claim to the kingdom, as being a true descendant of Hercules;

When he was boasting and magnifying himself for his exploits in Libya, a person of noble station made answer,

“And how can you be an honest man, who, since the death of a father who left you nothing, have become so rich?”

The time in which he lived was no longer an age of pure and upright manners, but had already declined, and yielded to the appetite for riches and luxury;

Hence, it is said, he was surnamed Sylla, and in allusion to it one of the scurrilous jesters at Athens made the verse upon him,

Sylla is a mulberry sprinkled o’er with meal.

Nor is it out of place to make use of marks of character like these, in the case of one who was by nature so addicted to raillery, that in his youthful obscurer years he would converse freely with players and professed jesters, and join …

but Sylla having got first to the camp, and the soldiers, upon hearing of the news, having stoned the tribunes, Marius, in requital, proceeded to put the friends of Sylla in the city to the sword, and rifled their goods.

Every kind of removal and flight went on, some hastening from the camp to the city, others from the city to the camp.

The senate, no more in its own power, but wholly governed by the dictates of Marius and Sulpicius, alarmed at the report of Sylla’s advancing with his troops towards the city, sent forth two of the praetors, Brutus and Servilius, to forbid his nearer approach.

And having used his twenty cohorts as decoys to ensnare the forty of the enemy, he led them all back into the camp.

On this occasion, Carbo was heard to say, that he had both a fox and a lion in the breast of Sylla to deal with, and was most troubled with the fox.

Some time after, at Signia, Marius the younger, with eighty-five cohorts, offered battle to Sylla, who was extremely desirous to have it decided on that very day;

… a sacrifice to private enmity, through his permission and indulgence to his friends, Caius Metellus, one of the younger men, made bold in the senate to ask him what end there was of these evils, and at what point he might be expected to stop?

“We do not ask you,” said he, “to pardon any whom you have resolved to destroy, but to free from doubt those whom you are pleased to save.”

Sylla answering, that he knew not as yet whom to spare. “Why then,” said he, “tell us whom you will punish.” This Sylla said he would do.

nor did he force anything from them against their good-will, nor hold any power contrary to the laws.

In civil strife e’en villains rise to fame.

And so then at Rome, when the people were distempered, and the government out of order, one or other was still raised to despotic power;

The very Spartans themselves have deposed several of their kings for want of kingly virtues, as degenerated and good for nothing.

As a vicious nature, though of an ancient stock, is dishonorable, it must be virtue itself, and not birth, that makes virtue honorable.

Furthermore, the one committed his acts of injustice for the sake of his friends; the other extended his to his friends themselves.

Lysander, temperate himself, filled Sparta with the luxury he disregarded. So that both were blameworthy, the one for raising himself above his own laws, the other for causing his fellow citizens to fall beneath his own example.

He taught Sparta to want the very things which he himself had learned to do without.

And thus much of their civil administration.

as neither Miltiades nor Themistocles ever received the like. When Miltiades claimed a garland, Sochares of Decelea stood up in the midst of the assembly and opposed it, using words which, though ungracious, were received with applause by the people.

“When you have gained a victory by yourself, Miltiades, then you may ask to triumph so too.”

What then induced them so particularly to honor Cimon? Was it that under other commanders they stood upon the defensive?

For I, Metrobius too, the scrivener poor, Of ease and comfort in my age secure, By Greece’s noblest son in life’s decline, Cimon, the generous-hearted, the divine, Well-fed and feasted hoped till death to be, Death which, alas! has taken him ere me.

Gorgias the Leontine gives him this character, that he got riches that he might use them, and used them that he might get honor by them.

And Critias, one of the thirty tyrants, makes it, in his elegies, his wish to have

So reasonable were men’s resentments in those times, and so moderate their anger, that it always gave way to the public good.

Even ambition, the least governable of all human passions, could then yield to the necessities of the State.

Cimon, as soon as he returned, put an end to the war, and reconciled the two cities.

… once had oracularly uttered of them, who, being requested to prescribe laws to them, and mold them into some sound form of government, made answer, that it was a hard thing to give laws to the Cyrenians, abounding, as they did, in wealth and plenty.

For nothing is more intractable than man when in felicity, nor anything more docile, when he has been reduced and humbled by fortune.

This made the Cyrenians so willingly submit to the laws which Lucullus imposed upon them. From thence sailing into Egypt, and, pressed by pirates, he lost most of his vessels; but he himself narrowly escaping, made a magnificent entry into Alexandria.

Upon which, out of fear, he straightaway left the camp, took horse, and without effect returned to Mithridates.

Thus in action as in physic, it is the critical moment that gives both the fortunate and the fatal effect.

After this, Sornatius being sent out with ten companies for forage, and pursued by Menander, one of Mithridates’s captains, stood his ground, and after a sharp engagement, routed and slew a considerable number of the enemy.

… those who flattered him, by saying that Lucullus would show himself a great commander, if he ventured to wait for Tigranes at Ephesus, and did not at once fly out of Asia, at the mere sight of the many thousands that were come against him.

He is a man of a strong body that can carry off a great quantity of wine, and of a powerful constitution of mind that can sustain felicity.

Mithrobarzanes, one of his chief favorites, first dared to tell him the truth, but had no more thanks for his freedom of speech, than to be immediately sent out against Lucullus with three thousand horse, and a great number of foot, with peremptory commands to …

Better, in like manner, they say, had it been for Cicero, after Catiline’s conspiracy, to have retired and grown old, and for Scipio, after his Numantine and Carthaginian conquests, to have sat down contented.

For the administration of public affairs has, like other things, its proper term, and statesmen as well as wrestlers will break down, when strength and youth fail.

But Crassus and Pompey, on the other hand, laughed to see Lucullus abandoning himself to pleasure and expense, as if luxurious living were not a thing that as little became his years, as government of affairs at home, or of an army abroad.

The expense for the Apollo was fifty thousand drachmas, and thus much being that day laid out, the greatness of the cost did not so much amaze Pompey and Cicero, as the rapidity of the outlay.

One might believe Lucullus thought his money really captive and barbarian, so wantonly and contumeliously did he treat it.

His furnishing a library, however, deserves praise and record, for he collected very many and choice manuscripts;

… said to have feasted several Greeks upon their coming to Rome day after day, who, out of a true Grecian principle, being ashamed, and declining the invitation, where so great an expense was every day incurred for them, he with a smile told them, “

Some of this, indeed, my Grecian friends, is for your sakes, but more for that of Lucullus.

” Once when he supped alone, there being only one course, and that but moderately furnished, he called his steward and reproved him, who, professing to have supposed that there would be no need of any great entertainment, when nobody was invited, was answered, “What, …

Once when he supped alone, there being only one course, and that but moderately furnished, he called his steward and reproved him, who, professing to have supposed that there would be no need of any great entertainment, when nobody was invited, was answered, “

What, did not you know, then, that to-day Lucullus dines with Lucullus?

” Which being much spoken of about the city, Cicero and Pompey one day met him loitering in the forum, the former his intimate friend and familiar, and, though there had been some ill-will between Pompey and him about the command in the war, still …

… Cimon, if he had retired in his old age from business and war to quiet and solitude, might have lived a more luxurious and self- indulgent life, as he was fond of wine and company, and accused, as has been said, of laxity with women?

The better pleasures gained in successful action and effort leave the baser appetites no time or place, and make active and heroic men forget them.

Had but Lucullus ended his days in the field, and in command, envy and detraction itself could never have accused him. So much for their manner of life.

But did not Cimon also suffer like him in this? For the citizens arraigned him, and did not leave off till they had banished him, that, as Plato says, they might not hear him for the space of ten years.

For high and noble minds seldom please the vulgar, or are acceptable to them; for the force they use to straighten their distorted actions gives the same pain as surgeons’ bandages do in bringing dislocated bones to their natural position.

Both of them, perhaps, come off pretty much with an equal acquittal on this count.

However, all these may be merely other instances of the same happy taste that makes him correct the diction of Philistus, and abuse Plato and Aristotle.

This sort of contention and rivalry with others in matter of style, to my mind, in any case, seems petty and pedantic, but when its objects are works of inimitable excellence, it is absolutely senseless.

Such actions in Nicias’s life as Thucydides and Philistus have related, since they cannot be passed by, illustrating as they do most especially his character and temper, under his many and great troubles, that I may not seem altogether negligent, I shall briefly run over.

And, in fact, none ever afterwards suffered this sort of punishment, but Hyperbolus was the last, as Hipparchus the Cholargian, who was kin to the tyrant, was the first.

There is no judgment to be made of fortune; nor can any reasoning bring us to a certainty about it.

If Nicias had run the risk with Alcibiades, whether of the two should undergo the ostracism, he had either prevailed, and, his rival being expelled the city, he had remained secure;

he kept open house, and to his friends he would lend money without interest, but called it in precisely at the time; so that his kindness was often thought worse than the paying the interest would have been.

His entertainments were, for the most part, plain and citizenlike, the company general and popular; good taste and kindness made them pleasanter than sumptuosity would have done.

As for learning, he chiefly cared for rhetoric, and what would be serviceable with large numbers; he became one of the best speakers at Rome, and by his pains and industry outdid the best natural orators.

Nay, they say he proscribed one of the Bruttians without Sylla’s order, only for his own profit, and that, on discovering this, Sylla never after trusted him in any public affairs.

As no man was more cunning than Crassus to ensnare others by flattery, so no man lay more open to it, or swallowed it more greedily than himself.

And this particularly was observed of him, that though he was the most covetous man in the world, yet he habitually disliked and cried out against others who were so.

Even those who thought most of him seem to have thought him, as the comic poet says:

A brave man anywhere but in the field.

There was no help, however, for the Romans, against his passion for command and for distinction. The Athenians sent out Nicias against his will to the war, and Crassus led out the Romans against theirs;

nor let us part with justice, like a cheap and common thing, for a small and trifling price.

Those who praise Alexander’s enterprise and blame that of Crassus, judge of the beginning unfairly by the results.

In actual service, Nicias did much that deserves high praise. He frequently defeated the enemy in battle, and was on the very point of capturing Syracuse;

… bringing along with them soft dews, which render the soil not only rich for plowing and planting, but so abundantly fruitful that it produces spontaneously an abundance of delicate fruits, sufficient to feed the inhabitants, who may here enjoy all things without trouble or labor.

The seasons of the year are temperate, and the transitions from one to another so moderate, that the air is almost always serene and pleasant.

The rough northerly and easterly winds which blow from the coasts of Europe and Africa, dissipated in the vast open space, utterly lose their force before they reach the islands.

Assiduity and persistence are irresistible, and in time overthrow and destroy the greatest powers whatever.

Time being the favorable friend and assistant of those who use their judgment to await his occasions, and the destructive enemy of those who are unseasonably urging and pressing forward.

” With a frequent use of such words and such devices, he soothed the fierceness of the barbarous people, and taught them to attend and watch for their opportunities.

For he looked upon it as his duty to enlarge the Roman possessions by his conquering arms, and not to increase his own power by the diminution of the Roman territories.

Since a noble-minded man, though he willingly accepts of victory when it comes with honor, will never so much as endeavor to save his own life upon any dishonorable terms.

When this was related to Mithridates, he was struck with amazement, and said to his intimate friends, “What will Sertorius enjoin us to do when he comes to be seated in the Palatium in Rome, who at present, when he is driven out to the …

therefore, if Antigonus thought it worth while to treat with him, he should first send him hostages. And when Antigonus required that Eumenes should first address himself to him as his superior, he replied, “

While I am able to wield a sword, I shall think no man greater than myself.

” At last, when according to Eumenes’s demand, Antigonus sent his own nephew Ptolemy to the fort, Eumenes went out to him, and they mutually embraced with great tenderness and friendship, as having formerly been very intimate.

yet with such as he had, he kept a cheerful table for his friends, inviting them severally in their turns, and seasoning his entertainment with a gentle and affable behavior.

For he had a pleasant countenance, and looked not like an old and practiced soldier, but was smooth and florid, and his shape as delicate as if his limbs had been carved by art in the most accurate proportions.

He was not a great orator, but winning and persuasive, as may be seen in his letters.

… sought an opportunity to kill him, pretended to be in want of money, and borrowed many talents, of those especially who most hated him, to make them at once confide in him, and forbear all violence to him for fear of losing their own money.

Thus his enemies’ estates were the guard of his person, and by receiving money he purchased safety, for which it is more common to give it.

The Macedonians, also, while there was no show of danger, allowed themselves to be corrupted, and made all their court to those who gave them presents, who had their body-guards, and affected to appear as generals-in-chief.

If Eumenes could have contented himself with the second place, Antigonus, freed from his competition for the first, would have used him well, and shown him favor, whereas Pompey’s friends would never permit Sertorius so much as to live in quiet.

The one made war of his own accord, out of a desire for command; and the other was constrained to accept of command, to defend himself from war that was made against him.

Eumenes was certainly a true lover of war, for he preferred his covetous ambition before his own security; but Sertorius was truly warlike, who procured his own safety by the success of his arms.

the Elders, holding their places during life; both instituted, as already told in the life of Lycurgus, to restrain the power of the kings. Hence it was that there was always from generation to generation, a feud and contention between them and the kings.

But Agesilaus took another course.

Instead of contending with them, he courted them; in all proceedings he commenced by taking their advice, was always ready to go, nay almost run, when they called him;

So that it brought to the minds of many the verses of Timotheus,

Mars is the tyrant, gold Greece does not fear.

Many parts of Asia now revolting from the Persians, Agesilaus restored order in the cities, and without bloodshed or banishment of any of their members, reestablished the proper constitution in the governments, and now resolved to carry away the war from the seaside, and to …

But these great thoughts were interrupted by unhappy news from Sparta; Epicydidas is from thence sent to remand him home, to assist his own country, which was then involved in a great war;

Greece to herself doth a barbarian grow, Others could not, she doth herself o’erthrow.

What better can we say of those jealousies, and that league and conspiracy of the Greeks for their own mischief, which arrested fortune in full career, and turned back arms that were already uplifted against the barbarians, to be used upon themselves, and recalled into …

For while approving himself an excellent king and general, he likewise showed himself in private an excellent friend, and a most agreeable companion.

The coin of Persia was stamped with the figure of an archer; Agesilaus said, That a thousand Persian archers had driven him out of Asia; meaning the money that had been laid out in bribing the demagogues and the orators in Thebes and Athens, and thus inciting those two States to hostility against Sparta.

Having passed the Hellespont, he marched by land through Thrace, not begging or entreating a passage anywhere, only he sent his messengers to them, to demand whether they would have him pass as a friend or as an enemy.

Menecrates, the physician, having had great success in some desperate diseases, was by way of flattery called Jupiter; he was so vain as to take the name, and having occasion to write a letter to Agesilaus, thus addressed it: “Jupiter Menecrates to King Agesilaus, greeting.”

The king returned answer: “Agesilaus to Menecrates, health and a sound mind.”

Whilst Agesilaus was in the Corinthian territories, having just taken the Heraeum, he was looking on while his soldiers were carrying away the prisoners and the plunder, when ambassadors from Thebes came to him to treat of peace.

He received no wound, whether it were that a special divine care rewarded his valor with an extraordinary protection, or whether his shape being so large and beautiful, and his dress so unusual, they thought him more than a man.

The Ephors gave him a garland; but as soon as they had done so, they fined him a thousand drachmas, for going out to battle unarmed.

A few days after this there was another battle fought near Mantinea, in which Epaminondas, having routed the van of the Lacedaemonians, was eager in the pursuit of them, when Anticrates, the Laconian, wounded him with a spear, says Dioscorides;

If, they said, at those years of eighty and odd, after his body had been worn out with age, and enfeebled with wounds, he had resumed that noble undertaking, the liberation of the Greeks from Persia, it had been worthy of some reproof.

To make an action honorable, it ought to be agreeable to the age, and other circumstances of the person; since it is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character, and make it either good or bad.

But Agesilaus valued not other men’s discourses; he thought no public employment dishonorable; the ignoblest thing in his esteem, was for a man to sit idle and useless at home, waiting for his death to come and take him.

To whom Agesilaus answered, that he did not fear their numbers, but did fear their ignorance, which gave no room for employing stratagem against them.

Stratagem only avails with men who are alive to suspicion, and expecting to be assailed, expose themselves by their attempts at defense; but one who has no thought or expectation of anything, gives as little opportunity to the enemy, as he who stands stock-still does to a wrestler.

The Mendesian was not wanting in solicitations of Agesilaus, insomuch that Nectanabis grew jealous.

his temperance, his skill, and exercise in war, his eloquence of speech, integrity of mind and affability in conversation and address; insomuch that no man ever asked a favor with less offense, or conferred one with a better grace.

When he gave, it was without assumption, when he received, it was with dignity and honor.

In his youth, his countenance pleaded for him, seeming to anticipate his eloquence, and win upon the affections of the people before he spoke. His beauty even in his bloom of youth had something in it at once of gentleness and dignity;

… more senseless than he, took the command and exercised it, while Sylla meantime was approaching, much to the joy and satisfaction of most people, who in their present evils were ready to find some comfort if it were but in the exchange of a master.

For the city was brought to that pass by oppression and calamities, that being utterly in despair of liberty, men were only anxious for the mildest and most tolerable bondage.

At that time Pompey was in Picenum in Italy, where he spent some time amusing himself, as he had estates in the country there, though the chief motive of his stay was the liking he felt for the towns of that district, which all regarded …

… most pleased to make his appearance before large numbers at once, as though he wished to maintain in this way his state and majesty, and as if he held himself bound to preserve his dignity from contact with the addresses and conversation of common people.

And life in the robe of peace is only too apt to lower the reputation of men that have grown great by arms, who naturally find difficulty in adapting themselves to the habits of civil equality.

They expect to be treated as the first in the city, even as they were in the camp;

Nor was it merely their being thus formidable that excited indignation; they were even more odious for their ostentation than they were feared for their force.

Their ships had gilded masts at their stems; the sails woven of purple, and the oars plated with silver, as if their delight were to glory in their iniquity.

There was nothing but music and dancing, banqueting and revels, all along the shore. Officers in command were taken prisoners, and cities put under contribution, to the reproach and dishonor of the Roman supremacy.

they were even more odious for their ostentation than they were feared for their force. Their ships had gilded masts at their stems; the sails woven of purple, and the oars plated with silver, as if their delight were to glory in their iniquity.

There was nothing but music and dancing, banqueting and revels, all along the shore.

Officers in command were taken prisoners, and cities put under contribution, to the reproach and dishonor of the Roman supremacy.

So that now by all these acts he well hoped to return into Italy in the greatest splendor and glory possible to man, and find his family as desirous to see him, as he felt himself to come home to them.

But that supernatural agency, whose province and charge it is always to mix some ingredient of evil with the greatest and most glorious goods of fortune, had for some time back been busy in his household, preparing him a sad welcome.

For Mucia during his absence had dishonored his bed. Whilst he was abroad at a distance, he had refused all credence to the report;

Thus Pompey being appointed chief purveyor, and having within his administration and management all the corn trade, sent abroad his factors and agents into all quarters, and he himself sailing into Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa, collected vast stores of corn.

He was just ready to set sail upon his voyage home, when a great storm arose upon the sea, and the ships’ commanders doubted whether it were safe.

Upon which Pompey himself went first aboard, and bid the mariners weigh anchor, declaring with a loud voice, that there was a necessity to sail, but no necessity to live.

and yet of these two, the people seemed at that time to pay Caesar a greater share of honor in his absence, than to Pompey, though he was present.

For the city now at once began to roll and swell, so to say, with the stir of the coming storm.

Things everywhere were in a state of agitation, and everybody’s discourse tended to division, now that death had put an end to that relation which hitherto had been a disguise rather than restraint to the ambition of these men.

The consuls also followed after in a hurry, without offering the sacrifices to the gods, usual before a war.

But in all this, Pompey himself had the glory, that in the midst of such calamities, he had so much of men’s love and good-will.

For though many found fault with the conduct of the war, yet no man hated the general;

… so large a field that I were to blame if I should not by way of apology forewarn my reader that I have chosen rather to epitomize the most celebrated parts of their story, than to insist at large on every particular circumstance of it.

It must be borne in mind that my design is not to write histories, but lives.

And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men;

It must be borne in mind that my design is not to write histories, but lives.

And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.

Therefore as portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of the face in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of …

Eratosthenes says that Olympias, when she attended Alexander on his way to the army in his first expedition, told him the secret of his birth, and bade him behave himself with courage suitable to his divine extraction.

Others again affirm that she wholly disclaimed any pretensions of the kind, and was wont to say, “When will Alexander leave off slandering me to Juno?”

Alexander was born the sixth of Hecatombaeon, which month the Macedonians call Lous, the same day that the temple of Diana at Ephesus was burnt; which Hegesias of Magnesia makes the occasion of a conceit, frigid enough to have stopped the conflagration.

and his father, shedding tears, it is said, for joy, kissed him as he came down from his horse, and in his transport, said,

“O my son, look thee out a kingdom equal to and worthy of thyself, for Macedonia is too little for thee.”

After this, considering him to be of a temper easy to be led to his duty by reason, but by no means to be compelled, he always endeavored to persuade rather than to command or force him to anything;

But afterwards, upon some mistrust of him, yet not so great as to make him do him any hurt, his familiarity and friendly kindness to him abated so much of its former force and affectionateness, as to make it evident he was alienated from him.

However, his violent thirst after and passion for learning, which were once implanted, still grew up with him, and never decayed; as appears by his veneration of Anaxarchus, by the present of fifty talents which he sent to Xenocrates, and his particular care and esteem of Dandamis and Calanus.

While Philip went on his expedition against the Byzantines, he left Alexander, then sixteen years old, his lieutenant in Macedonia, committing the charge of his seal to him;

“It ill becomes you,” replied Demaratus, “to be so solicitous about Greece, when you have involved your own house in so many dissensions and calamities.”

He was so convinced by this seasonable reproach, that he immediately sent for his son home, and by Demartatus’s mediation prevailed with him to return.

But this reconciliation lasted not long;

When he saw so much company near him, he raised himself a little, and vouchsafed to look upon Alexander; and when he kindly asked him whether he wanted anything,

“Yes,” said he, “I would have you stand from between me and the sun.”

Alexander was so struck at this answer, and surprised at the greatness of the man, who had taken so little notice of him, that as he went away, he told his followers who were laughing at the moroseness of the philosopher, that if he were …

So that at last he had portioned out or engaged almost all the royal property; which giving Perdiccas an occasion to ask him what he would leave himself, he replied, his hopes.

“Your soldiers,” replied Perdiccas, “will be your partners in those,” and refused to accept of the estate he had assigned him.

Some others of his friends did the like, but to those who willingly received, or desired assistance of him, he liberally granted it, as far as his patrimony in Macedonia would reach, the most part of which was spent in these donations.

Menander, in one of his comedies, alludes to this marvel when he says,

Was Alexander ever favored more? Each man I wish for meets me at my door, And should I ask for passage through the sea, The sea I doubt not would retire for me.

But Alexander himself in his epistles mentions nothing unusual in this at all, but says he went from Phaselis, and passed through what they call the Ladders.

In the same letter he added, that he had not so much as seen or desired to see the wife of Darius, no, nor suffered anybody to speak of her beauty before him.

He was wont to say, that sleep and the act of generation chiefly made him sensible that he was mortal; as much as to say, that weariness and pleasure proceed both from the same frailty and imbecility of human nature.

In his diet, also, he was most temperate, as appears, omitting many other circumstances, by what he said to Ada, whom he adopted, with the title of mother, and afterwards created queen of Caria.

And then, though otherwise no prince’s conversation was ever so agreeable, he would fall into a temper of ostentation and soldierly boasting, which gave his flatterers a great advantage to ride him, and made his better friends very uneasy.

For though they thought it too base to strive who should flatter him most, yet they found it hazardous not to do it; so that between the shame and the danger, they were in a great strait how to behave themselves.

After such an entertainment, he was wont to bathe, and then perhaps he would sleep till noon, and sometimes all day long.

These propositions he communicated to his friends, and when Parmenio told him, that for his part, if he were Alexander, he should readily embrace them,

“So would I,” said Alexander, “if I were Parmenio.”

Accordingly, his answer to Darius was, that if he would come and yield himself up into his power, he would treat him with all possible kindness; if not, he was resolved immediately to go himself and seek him.

… his bedside, and called him twice or thrice by his name, till he waked him, and then asked him how it was possible, when he was to fight the most important battle of all, he could sleep as soundly as if he were already victorious.

“And are we not so, indeed,” replied Alexander, smiling, “since we are at last relieved from the trouble of wandering in pursuit of Darius through a wide and wasted country, hoping in vain that he would fight us?”

And not only before the battle, but in the height of the danger, he showed himself great, and manifested the self-possession of a just foresight and confidence. For the battle for some time fluctuated and was dubious.

To his mother he sent many presents, but would never suffer her to meddle with matters of state or war, not indulging her busy temper, and when she fell out with him upon this account, he bore her ill-humor very patiently.

Nay more, when he read a long letter from Antipater, full of accusations against her, “Antipater,” he said, “does not know that one tear of a mother effaces a thousand such letters as these.”

But when he perceived his favorites grow so luxurious and extravagant in their way of living and expenses, that Hagnon, the Teian, wore silver nails in his shoes, that Leonnatus employed several camels, only to bring him powder out of Egypt to use when he …

and when he was informed, just as he was ready to lay down his burden for weariness, “Do not faint now,” said he to him, “but finish the journey, and carry what you have there to your own tent for yourself.”

He was always more displeased with those who would not accept of what he gave than with those who begged of him.

And therefore he wrote to Phocion, that he would not own him for his friend any longer, if he refused his presents.

… possible for anyone who pretended to be a soldier, either to look well after his horse, or to keep his armor bright and in good order, who thought it much to let his hands be serviceable to what was nearest to him, his own body.

“Are you still to learn,” said he, “that the end and perfection of our victories is to avoid the vices and infirmities of those whom we subdue?”

And to strengthen his precepts by example, he applied himself now more vigorously than ever to hunting and warlike expeditions, embracing all opportunities of hardship and danger, insomuch that a Lacedaemonian, who was there on an embassy to him, and chanced to be by when …

… in one to Megabyzus, concerning a slave that had taken sanctuary in a temple, gave direction that he should not meddle with him while he was there, but if he could entice him out by fair means, then he gave him leave to seize him.

It is reported of him that when he first sat in judgment upon capital causes, he would lay his hand upon one of his ears while the accuser spoke, to keep it free and unprejudiced in behalf of the party accused.

But afterwards such a multitude of accusations were brought before him, and so many proved true, that he lost his tenderness of heart, and gave credit to those also that were false;

The soldiers no sooner took notice of his temperance and magnanimity upon this occasion, but they one and all cried out to him to lead them forward boldly, and began whipping on their horses.

For whilst they had such a king, they said they defied both weariness and thirst, and looked upon themselves to be little less than immortal.

But though they were all equally cheerful and willing, yet not above threescore horse were able, it is said, to keep up, and to fall in with Alexander upon the enemy’s camp, where they rode over abundance of gold and silver that lay scattered about, …

… habits, while Craterus continued strict in the observation of the customs and fashions of his own country, he made it his practice to employ the first in all transactions with the Persians, and the latter when he had to do with the Greeks or Macedonians.

And in general he showed more affection for Hephaestion, and more respect for Craterus; Hephaestion, as he used to say, being Alexander’s, and Craterus the king’s friend.

And so these two friends always bore in secret a grudge to each other, and at times quarreled openly, so much so, that once in India they drew upon one another, and were proceeding in good earnest, with their friends on each side to second …

… a degree of assumption unbecoming a private man, and affecting all the loftiness without succeeding in showing any of the grace or gentleness of true greatness, by this mistaken and spurious majesty he gained so much envy and ill-will, that Parmenio would sometimes tell him,

“My son, to be not quite so great would be better.”

For he had long before been complained of, and accused to Alexander.

So that Alexander himself said in application to him,

That vain pretense to wisdom I detest, Where a man’s blind to his own interest.

Being with many more invited to sup with the king, he was called upon when the cup came to him, to make an oration extempore in praise of the Macedonians;

Callisthenes presently obeyed him, retracting all he had said before, and, inveighing against the Macedonians with great freedom, added, that Philip thrived and grew powerful, chiefly by the discord of the Grecians, applying this verse to him:—

In civil strife e’en villains rise to fame;

which so offended the Macedonians, that he was odious to them ever after. And Alexander said, that instead of his eloquence, he had only made his ill-will appear in what he had spoken.

whilst by indefatigable journeys, coarse diet, frequent lodging in the field, and continual laborious exercise, he struggled with his diseases, and fortified his body against all attacks.

He slept generally in his chariots or litters, employing even his rest in pursuit of action.

In the day he was thus carried to the forts, garrisons, and camps, one servant sitting with him, who used to write down what he dictated as he went, and a soldier attending behind with his sword drawn.

and taking the dose, drank it, in hopes of being dispatched by it. But soon after, when he was told that Caesar showed the utmost clemency towards those he took prisoners, he lamented his misfortune, and blamed the hastiness of his resolution.

His physician consoled him, by informing him that he had taken a sleeping draught, not a poison; upon which, much rejoiced, and rising from his bed, he went presently to Caesar, and gave him the pledge of his hand, yet afterwards again went over to Pompey.

The report of these actions at Rome, quieted those who were there, and some who had fled thence returned.

Some, who had formerly much favored Caesar’s cause, in the prevailing alarm, quitted their own sentiments, and without any prospect of good to themselves, were carried along by the common stream.

It was a melancholy thing to see the city tossed in these tumults, like a ship given up by her pilots, and left to run, as chance guides her, upon any rock in her way.

Yet, in spite of their sad condition, people still esteemed the place of their exile to be their country for Pompey’s sake, and fled from Rome, as if it had been Caesar’s camp.

Caesar, upon this, discovers himself, and taking the man by the hand, who was surprised to see him there, said,

“Go on, my friend, and fear nothing; you carry Caesar and his fortune in your boat.”

The mariners, when they heard that, forgot the storm, and laying all their strength to their oars, did what they could to force their way down the river.

… desperate at that time, that when Pompey, either through over-cautiousness, or his ill fortune, did not give the finishing stroke to that great success, but retreated after he had driven the routed enemy within their camp, Caesar, upon seeing his withdrawal, said to his friends,

“The victory to-day had been on the enemies’ side, if they had had a general who knew how to gain it.”

When he was retired into his tent, he laid himself down to sleep, but spent that night as miserably as ever he did any, in perplexity and consideration with himself, coming to the conclusion that he had conducted the war amiss.

Then first he seemed to have recovered his senses, and uttering, it is said, only these words,

“What, into the camp too?”

he laid aside his general’s habit, and putting on such clothes as might best favor his flight, stole off. What fortune he met with afterwards, how he took shelter in Egypt, and was murdered there, we tell you in his Life.

At last, with great difficulty, and the best efforts he could make, he forced back the enemy, killing thirty thousand of them, though with the loss of one thousand of his best men.

When he came back from the fight, he told his friends that he had often fought for victory, but this was the first time that he had ever fought for life.

This battle was won on the feast of Bacchus, the very day in which Pompey, four years before. had set out for the war. The younger of Pompey’s sons escaped; but Didius, some days after the fight, brought the head of the elder to Caesar.

as particularly to Brutus and Cassius, who both of them were praetors. Pompey’s images that were thrown down, he set up again, upon which Cicero also said that by raising Pompey’s statues he had fixed his own.

When his friends advised him to have a guard, and several offered their service, he would not hear of it; but said it was better to suffer death once, than always to live in fear of it.

He looked upon the affections of the people to be the best and surest guard, and entertained them again with public feasting, and general distributions of corn;

Nevertheless his countrymen, conceding all to his fortune, and accepting the bit, in the hope that the government of a single person would give them time to breathe after so many civil wars and calamities, made him dictator for life.

This was indeed a tyranny avowed, since his power now was not only absolute, but perpetual too.

Cicero made the first proposals to the senate for conferring honors upon him, which might in some sort be said not to exceed the limits of ordinary human moderation.

When Chares once made some remark on his frowning looks, and the Athenians laughed at the jest.

“My sullenness,” said Phocion, “never yet made any of you sad, but these men’s jollities have given you sorrow enough.”

In like manner Phocion’s language, also, was full of instruction, abounding in happy maxims and wise thoughts, but admitted no embellishment to its austere and commanding brevity. Zeno said a philosopher should never speak till his words had been steeped in meaning;

And to this, probably, Polyeuctus, the Sphettian, referred, when he said that Demosthenes was, indeed, the best orator of his time, but Phocion the most powerful speaker.

His oratory, like small coin of great value, was to be estimated, not by its bulk, but its intrinsic worth.

He was once observed, it is said, when the theater was filling with the audience, to walk musing alone behind the scenes, which one of his friends taking notice of, said, “Phocion, you seem to be thoughtful.”

Once, when he was addressing them, and they would not hear him or let him go on, said he,

“You may compel me to act against my wishes, but you shall never force me to speak against my judgment.”

Among the many public speakers who opposed him, Demosthenes, for example, once told him, “The Athenians, Phocion, will kill you some day when they once are in a rage.” “And you,” said he, “if they once are in their senses.”

For his general conversation, it was easy, courteous, and obliging to all, to that point that he would befriend his very opponents in their distress, and espouse the cause of those who differed most from him, when they needed his patronage.

His friends reproaching him for pleading in behalf of a man of indifferent character, he told them the innocent had no need of an advocate.

Aristogiton, the sycophant, whom we mentioned before, having after sentence passed upon him, sent earnestly to Phocion to speak with him in the prison, his friends dissuaded him from going;

“It is not a little,” said Phocion, “that the citizens have been buried in their own sepulchers.” And when Leosthenes continued to speak boldly and boastfully in the assembly,

“Young man,” he said, “your speeches are like cypress trees, stately and tall, and no fruit to come of them.”

And when he was then attacked by Hyperides, who asked him when the time would come, that he would advise the Athenians to make war, “As soon,” said he, “as I find the young men keep their ranks, the rich men contribute their money, and …

And on his pressing him to permit his son Phocus to receive it, he replied,

“If my son returns to a right mind, his patrimony is sufficient; if not, all supplies will be insufficient.”

But to Antipater he answered more sharply, who would have him engaged in something dishonorable. “Antipater,” said he, “cannot have me both as his friend and his flatterer.” And, indeed, Antipater was wont to say, he had two friends at Athens, Phocion and Demades;

if not, all supplies will be insufficient.” But to Antipater he answered more sharply, who would have him engaged in something dishonorable.

“Antipater,” said he, “cannot have me both as his friend and his flatterer.”

And, indeed, Antipater was wont to say, he had two friends at Athens, Phocion and Demades; the one would never suffer him to gratify him at all, the other would never be satisfied.

When he began to learn, he proved dull, and slow to apprehend, but of what he once received, his memory was remarkably tenacious.

And such, in fact, we find generally to be the course of nature; men of fine genius are readily reminded of things, but those who receive with most pains and difficulty, remember best; every new thing they learn, being, as it were, burnt and branded in on their minds.

Cato’s natural stubbornness and slowness to be persuaded, may also have made it more difficult for him to be taught. For to learn, is to submit to have something done to one; and persuasion comes soonest to those who have least strength to resist it.

every new thing they learn, being, as it were, burnt and branded in on their minds. Cato’s natural stubbornness and slowness to be persuaded, may also have made it more difficult for him to be taught.

For to learn, is to submit to have something done to one; and persuasion comes soonest to those who have least strength to resist it.

Hence young men are sooner persuaded than those that are more in years, and sick men, than those that are well in health In fine, where there is least previous doubt and difficulty the new impression is most easily accepted.

But he would never recite his exercises before company, nor was he ever heard to declaim. And to one that told him, men blamed his silence,

“But I hope not my life,” he replied, “I will begin to speak, when I have that to say which had not better be unsaid.”

The great Porcian Hall, as it was called, had been built and dedicated to the public use by the old Cato, when aedile.

but in character, high purpose, and wisdom, he far exceeded all that had the names and titles of commanders, and he made himself, without knowing it, the object of general affection.

For the true love of virtue is in all men produced by the love and respect they bear to him that teaches it; and those who praise good men, yet do not love them, may respect their reputation, but do not really admire, and will never imitate their virtue.

There dwelt at that time in Pergamus, Athenodorus, surnamed Cordylio, a man of high repute for his knowledge of the stoic philosophy, who was now grown old, and had always steadily refused the friendship and acquaintance of princes and great men. Cato understood this;

Sometimes, on such occasions, he would call them to him and tell them, “Foolish people, lay aside this inhospitality. All your visitors will not be Catos.

Use your courtesy, to take off the sharp edge of power.

There are men enough who desire but a pretense, to take from you by force, what you give with such reluctance.”

Cato’s assiduity also, and indefatigable diligence, won very much upon the people.

He always came first of any of his colleagues to the treasury, and went away the last.

He never missed any assembly of the people, or sitting of the senate;

It raised, however, as much envy against Cato as it gained him reputation, and many were offended at his thus taking upon himself the whole authority of the senate, the courts of judicature, and the magistracies.

For there is no virtue, the honor and credit for which procures a man more odium than that of justice; and this, because more than any other, it acquires a man power and authority among the common people.

For they only honor the valiant and admire the wise, while in addition they also love just men, and put entire trust and confidence in them. They fear the bold man, and mistrust the clever man, and moreover think them rather beholding;

Cato answered, that he lost the praetorship the first time, not by the voice of the people, but by the violence and corrupt dealing of his adversaries; whereas in the election of consuls, there had been no foul play.

So that he plainly saw the people did not like his manners, which an honest man ought not to alter for their sake; nor yet would a wise man attempt the same thing again, while liable to the same prejudices.

Caesar was at this time engaged with many warlike nations, and was subduing them at great hazards. Among the rest, it was believed he had set upon the Germans, in a time of truce, and had thus slain three hundred thousand of them.

so these men steered, as I may say, by popular applause, though they bear the name of governors, are in reality the mere underlings of the multitude.

The man who is completely wise and virtuous, has no need at all of glory, except so far as it disposes and eases his way to action by the greater trust that it procures him.

A young man, I grant, may be permitted, while yet eager for distinction, to pride himself a little in his good deeds;

for (as Theophrastus says) his virtues, which are yet tender and, as it were, in the blade, cherished and supported by praises, grow stronger, and take the deeper root.

But when this passion is exorbitant, it is dangerous in all men, and in those who govern a commonwealth, utterly destructive.

For in the possession of large power and authority, it transports men to a degree of madness; so that now they no more think what is good, glorious, but will have those actions only esteemed good that are glorious.

These were not indeed brothers by nature, as the two Romans, but they had a kind of brotherly resemblance in their actions and designs, which took a rise from such beginnings and occasions as I am now about to relate.

When the love of gold and silver had once gained admittance into the Lacedaemonian commonwealth, it was quickly followed by avarice and baseness of spirit in the pursuit of it, and by luxury, effeminacy, and prodigality in the use.

Then Sparta fell from almost all her former virtue and repute, and so continued till the days of Agis and Leonidas, who both together were kings of the Lacedaemonians.

For the rich men without scruple drew the estates into their own hands, excluding the rightful heirs from their succession; and all the wealth being centered upon a few, the generality were poor and miserable.

Honorable pursuits, for which there was no longer leisure, were neglected; and the state was filled with sordid business, and with hatred and envy of the rich.

There did not remain above seven hundred of the old Spartan families, of which perhaps one hundred might have estates in land, the rest were destitute alike of wealth and of honor, were tardy and unperforming in the defense of their country against its enemies …

He found the young men disposed beyond his expectation; they were eager to enter with him upon the contest in the cause of virtue, and to fling aside, for freedom’s sake, their old manner of life, as readily as the wrestler does his garment.

But the old men, habituated and more confirmed in their vices, were most of them as alarmed at the very name of Lycurgus, as a fugitive slave to be brought back before his offended master.

These men could not endure to hear Agis continually deploring the present state of Sparta, and wishing she might be restored to her ancient glory.

so that all men were presently commanded to bring in their bonds, or deeds of obligation, by the Lacedaemonians called Claria, into the market-place, where being laid together in a heap, they set fire to them.

The wealthy, money-lending people, one may easily imagine, beheld it with a heavy heart; but Agesilaus told them scoffingly, his eyes had never seen so bright and so pure a flame.

And now the people pressed earnestly for an immediate division of lands; the kings also had ordered it should be done; but Agesilaus, sometimes pretending one difficulty, and sometimes another, delayed the execution, till an occasion happened to call Agis to the wars.

The ancient Leonidas, as story tells, being asked what manner of poet he thought Tyrtaeus, replied, “Good to whet young men’s courage;” for being filled with a divine fury by his poems, they rushed into any danger.

And so the stoic philosophy is a dangerous incentive to strong and fiery dispositions, but where it combines with a grave and gentle temper, is most successful in leading it to its proper good.

Upon the death of his father Leonidas, he succeeded, and observing the citizens of all sorts to be debauched, the rich neglecting the public good, and intent on their private gain and pleasure, and the poor distressed in their own homes, and therefore without either …

The citizens lay dissolved in supine idleness and pleasures; the king let everything take its own way, thankful if nobody gave him any disturbance, nor called him away from the enjoyment of his wealth and luxury.

The public interest was neglected, and each man intent upon his private gain.

It was dangerous, now Agis was killed, so much as to name such a thing as the exercising and training of their youth; and to speak of the ancient temperance, endurance, and equality, was a sort of treason against the state.

… their government, made proclamation to the people, that they should shave their mustaches, and be obedient to the laws, that the laws might not be hard upon them, making, I suppose, this trivial injunction, to accustom their youth to obedience even in the smallest matters.

And the ancients, I think, did not imagine bravery to be plain fearlessness, but a cautious fear of blame and disgrace.

For those that show most timidity towards the laws, are most bold against their enemies; and those are least afraid of any danger who are most afraid of a just reproach. Therefore it was well said that

And the ancients, I think, did not imagine bravery to be plain fearlessness, but a cautious fear of blame and disgrace.

For those that show most timidity towards the laws, are most bold against their enemies; and those are least afraid of any danger who are most afraid of a just reproach.

Therefore it was well said that

The affairs of the Achaeans being in this unfortunate condition, Aratus, who was wont to take office every other year, refused the command, though they entreated and urged him to accept it.

And this was ill done, when the storm was high, to put the power out of his own hands, and set another to the helm.

Cleomenes at first proposed fair and easy conditions by his ambassadors to the Achaeans, but afterward he sent others, and required the chief command to be settled upon him;

Cratesiclea, when she was ready to go on board, took Cleomenes aside into Neptune’s temple, and embracing him, who was much dejected, and extremely discomposed, she said,

“Go to, king of Sparta; when we come forth at the door, let none see us weep, or show any passion that is unworthy of Sparta, for that alone is in our own power; as for success or disappointment, those wait on us as the deity decrees.”

Having thus said, and composed her countenance, she went to the ship with her little grandson, and bade the pilot put at once out to sea.

… Macedonians and all the Peloponnesians, supported by all the royal treasures, not only to preserve Laconia from being spoiled, but to waste the enemy’s country, and to take so many and such considerable cities, was an argument of no common skill and genius for command.

But he that first said that money was the sinews of affairs, seems especially in that saying to refer to war.

Demades, when the Athenians had voted that their galleys should be launched and equipped for action, but could produce no money, told them, “The baker was wanted first, and the pilot after.”

Thus spoke Therycion; and this was Cleomenes’s reply: “By seeking death, you coward, the most easy and most ready refuge, you fancy that you shall appear courageous and brave, though this flight is baser than the former.

Better men than we have given way to their enemies, having been betrayed by fortune, or oppressed by multitude; but he that gives way under labor or distresses, under the ill opinions or reports of men, yields the victory to his own effeminacy.

For a voluntary death ought not to be chosen as a relief from action, but as an exemplary action itself; and it is base either to live or to die only to ourselves.

Better men than we have given way to their enemies, having been betrayed by fortune, or oppressed by multitude; but he that gives way under labor or distresses, under the ill opinions or reports of men, yields the victory to his own effeminacy.

For a voluntary death ought not to be chosen as a relief from action, but as an exemplary action itself; and it is base either to live or to die only to ourselves.

That death to which you now invite us, is proposed only as a release from our present miseries, but carries nothing of nobleness or profit in it. And I think it becomes both me and you not to despair of our country;

… maintaining an honorable and just cause, and possessed of eloquence sufficient to have made a less creditable action appear plausible, was no safe or easy antagonist, when, with the people crowding around the hustings, he took his place, and spoke in behalf of the poor.

“The savage beasts,” said he, “in Italy, have their particular dens, they have their places of repose and refuge; but the men who bear arms, and expose their lives for the safety of their country, enjoy in the meantime nothing more in it but the air and light; and having no houses or settlements of their own, are constrained to wander from place to place with their wives and children.”

He told them that the commanders were guilty of a ridiculous error, when, at the head of their armies, they exhorted the common soldiers to fight for their sepulchres and altars;

They fought indeed, and were slain, but it was to maintain the luxury and the wealth of other men.

They were styled the masters of the world, but in the meantime had not one foot of ground which they could call their own.

A harangue of this nature, spoken to an enthusiastic and sympathizing audience, by a person of commanding spirit and genuine feeling, no adversaries at that time were competent to oppose.

In some little time, however, he quietly let his temper appear, which was one of an utter antipathy to a lazy retirement and effeminacy, and not the least likely to be contented with a life of eating, drinking, and money getting.

He gave great pains to the study of eloquence, as wings upon which he might aspire to public business; and it was very apparent that he did not intend to pass his days in obscurity.

When Vettius, a friend of his, was on his trial, he defended his cause, and the people were in an ecstasy, and transported with joy, finding him master of such eloquence that the other orators seemed like children in comparison, and jealousies and fears on …

Somebody in the night time, under the inscription of the temple, added this verse:—

Folly and Discord Concord’s temple built.

Yet this Opimius, the first who, being consul, presumed to usurp the power of a dictator, condemning, without any trial, with three thousand other citizens, Caius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus, one of whom had triumphed, and been consul, the other far excelled all his contemporaries …

whereas Agis might justly be offended, if he had only that mean commendation given him, that he took nothing wrongfully from any man, seeing he distributed his own fortunes, which, in ready money only, amounted to the value of six hundred talents, amongst his fellow-citizens.

Extortion would have appeared a crime of a strange nature to him, who esteemed it a piece of covetousness to possess, though never so justly gotten, greater riches than his neighbors.

Their political actions, also, and the state revolutions they attempted, were very different in magnitude. The chief things in general that the two Romans commonly aimed at, were the settlement of cities and mending of highways;

… hand, proceeded to effect the revolution with only too much boldness and violence, and unjustly slew the Ephors, whom he might, by superiority in arms, have gained over to his party, or else might easily have banished, as he did several others of the city.

For to use the knife, unless in the extremest necessity, is neither good surgery nor wise policy, but in both cases mere unskillfulness; and in the latter, unjust as well as unfeeling.

Of the Gracchi, neither the one nor the other was the first to shed the blood of his fellow-citizens;

… is no great island, and Aegina, which an Athenian once said ought to be removed, like a small eye-sore, from the port of Piraeus, should breed good actors and poets, and yet should never be able to produce a just, temperate, wise, and high-minded man.

Other arts, whose end it is to acquire riches or honor, are likely enough to wither and decay in poor and undistinguished towns; but virtue, like a strong and durable plant, may take root and thrive in any place where it can lay hold of an ingenuous nature, and a mind that is industrious.

I, for my part, shall desire that for any deficiency of mine in right judgment or action, I myself may be, as in fairness, held accountable, and shall not attribute it to the obscurity of my birthplace.

… to exercise myself in the Roman language, on account of public business and of those who came to be instructed by me in philosophy, it was very late, and in the decline of my age, before I applied myself to the reading of Latin authors.

Upon which that which happened to me, may seem strange, though it be true; for it was not so much by the knowledge of words, that I came to the understanding of things, as by my experience of things I was enabled to follow the meaning of words.

But to appreciate the graceful and ready pronunciation of the Roman tongue, to understand the various figures and connection of words, and such other ornaments, in which the beauty of speaking consists, is, I doubt not, an admirable and delightful accomplishment;

For there, as Ion says,

We are but like a fish upon dry land;

a proverb which Caecilius perhaps forgot, when he employed his always adventurous talents in so ambitious an attempt as a comparison of Demosthenes and Cicero:

To others, however, he would not much deny it, but would admit frankly enough, that he neither entirely wrote his speeches beforehand, nor yet spoke wholly extempore.

And he would affirm, that it was the more truly popular act to use premeditation, such preparation being a kind of respect to the people; whereas, to slight and take no care how what is said is likely to be received by the audience, shows something of an oligarchical temper, and is the course of one that intends force rather than persuasion.

Of his want of courage and assurance to speak off-hand, they make it also another argument, that when he was at a loss, and discomposed, Demades would often rise up on the sudden to support him, but he was never observed to do the same …

And, indeed, it is related, that Demosthenes himself, as often as Phocion stood up to plead against him, would say to his acquaintance,

“Here comes the knife to my speech.”

Yet it does not appear whether he had this feeling for his powers of speaking, or for his life and character, and meant to say that one word or nod from a man who was really trusted, would go further than a thousand lengthy periods …

Theopompus writes, that the Athenians having by name selected Demosthenes, and called upon him to accuse a certain person, he refused to do it; upon which the assembly being all in an uproar, he rose up and said,

“Your counselor, whether you will or no, O ye men of Athens, you shall always have me; but a sycophant or false accuser, though you would have me, I shall never be.”

And his conduct in the case of Antiphon was perfectly aristocratical;

On which occasion it was, says Theophrastus, on the allies requesting that their contributions for the war might be ascertained and stated, Crobylus, the orator, made use of the saying,

“War can’t be fed at so much a day.”

Now was all Greece up in arms, and in great expectation what would be the event. The Euboeans, the Achaeans, the Corinthians, the Megarians, the Leucadians, and Corcyraeans, their people and their cities, were all joined together in a league.

And such afterwards was Cicero’s delivery, that it did not a little contribute to render his eloquence persuasive.

He used to ridicule loud speakers, saying that they shouted because they could not speak, like lame men who get on horseback because they cannot walk.

And his readiness and address in sarcasm, and generally in witty sayings, was thought to suit a pleader very well, and to be highly attractive, but his using it to excess offended many, and gave him the repute of ill nature.

This for the time utterly mortified and cast him down, to perceive that the report of his actions had sunk into the city of Rome as into an immense ocean, without any visible effect or result in reputation.

And afterwards considering with himself that the glory he contended for was an infinite thing, and that there was no fixed end nor measure in its pursuit, he abated much of his ambitious thoughts.

Nevertheless, he was always excessively pleased with his own praise, and continued to the very last to be passionately fond of glory; which often interfered with the prosecution of his wisest resolutions.

… account of the unequal distribution of wealth and property, those of highest rank and greatest spirit having impoverished themselves by shows, entertainments, ambition of offices, and sumptuous buildings, and the riches of the city having thus fallen into the hands of mean and low-born persons.

So that there wanted but a slight impetus to set all in motion, it being in the power of every daring man to overturn a sickly commonwealth.

Catiline, however, being desirous of procuring a strong position to carry out his designs, stood for the consulship, and had great hopes of success, thinking he should be appointed, with Caius Antonius as his colleague, who was a man fit to lead neither in a …

He once said, when Cicero was pleading, that he could not hear him; “Yet there are holes,” said Cicero, “in your ears.” When Metellus Nepos told him, that he had ruined more as a witness, than he had saved as an advocate,

“I admit,” said Cicero, “that I have more truth than eloquence.”

To a young man who was suspected of having given a poisoned cake to his father, and who talked largely of the invectives he meant to deliver against Cicero, “Better these,” replied he, “than your cakes.”

Although, indeed, he was himself the cause of it, by his not denying that he was sorry he had come, by his depreciating Pompey’s resources, finding fault underhand with his counsels, and continually indulging in jests and sarcastic remarks on his fellow-soldiers.

Though he went about in the camp with a gloomy and melancholy face himself, he was always trying to raise a laugh in others, whether they wished it or not.

It may not be amiss to mention a few instances.

The terms of their mutual concessions were these; that Caesar should desert Cicero, Lepidus his brother Paulus, and Antony, Lucius Caesar, his uncle by his mother’s side.

Thus they let their anger and fury take from them the sense of humanity, and demonstrated that no beast is more savage than man, when possessed with power answerable to his rage.

Whilst these things were contriving, Cicero was with his brother at his country-house near Tusculum;

Soldier full-armed, terrific to the foe.

It is necessary, indeed, for a political leader to be an able speaker; but it is an ignoble thing for any man to admire and relish the glory of his own eloquence.

And, in this matter, Demosthenes had a more than ordinary gravity and magnificence of mind, accounting his talent in speaking nothing more than a mere accomplishment and matter of practice, the success of which must depend greatly on the good-will and candor of his hearers, …

But he quickly found himself deceived; for Demetrius came so unexpectedly upon him that he surprised both the general and his army, making him and seven thousand of the soldiers prisoners of war, and possessing himself of a large amount of treasure.

But his joy in the victory was not so much for the prizes he should keep, as for those he could restore; and his thankfulness was less for the wealth and glory than for the means it gave him of requiting his enemy’s former generosity.

He did not, however, take it into his own hands, but wrote to his father. And on receiving leave to do as he liked, he sent back to Ptolemy Cilles and his friends, loaded with presents.

The punishments they inflicted were more violent after they had thus laid aside that modest style under which they formerly dissembled their power, and the influence of which had often made them gentler and less exacting to their subjects.

A single pattering voice effected a revolution in the world.

Antigonus, extremely elevated with the success of his arms in Cyprus under the conduct of Demetrius, resolved to push on his good fortune, and to lead his forces in person against Ptolemy by land, whilst Demetrius should coast with a great fleet along the shore, …

The Parthian kings took a pride in whetting and sharpening with their own hands the points of their arrows and javelins.

But when Demetrius played the workman, it was like a king, and there was magnificence in his handicraft.

The articles he produced bore marks upon the face of them not of ingenuity only, but of a great mind and a lofty purpose. They were such as a king might not only design and pay for, but use his own hands to make;

But to be thus disappointed in the Athenians, and to find the friendship he had trusted prove, upon trial, thus empty and unreal, was a great pang to him.

And, in truth, an excessive display of outward honor would seem to be the most uncertain attestation of the real affection of a people for any king or potentate.

Such shows lose their whole credit as tokens of affection (which has its virtue in the feelings and moral choice), when we reflect that they may equally proceed from fear. The same decrees are voted upon the latter motive as upon the former.

And therefore judicious men do not look so much to statues, paintings, or divine honors that are paid them, as to their own actions and conduct, judging hence whether they shall trust these as a genuine, or discredit them as a forced homage.

As in fact nothing is less unusual than for a people, even while offering compliments, to be disgusted with those who accept them greedily, or arrogantly, or without respect to the freewill of the givers.

Demetrius, shamefully used as he thought himself, was in no condition to revenge the affront. He returned a message of gentle expostulation, saying, however, that he expected to have his galleys sent to him, among which was that of thirteen banks of oars.

However, he did but justify the saying of Plato, that the only certain way to be truly rich is not to have more property, but fewer desires.

For whoever is always grasping at more avows that he is still in want, and must be poor in the midst of affluence.

But Demetrius, whose courage did not sink, resolutely sent him answer, that, though he were to lose ten thousand battles like that of Ipsus, he would pay no price for the good-will of such a son-in-law as Seleucus.

They say in his sadder vicissitudes he used sometimes to apostrophize fortune in the words of Aeschylus —

Thou liftest up, to cast us down again.

And so at this moment, when all things seemed to conspire together to give him his heart’s desire of dominion and power, news arrived that Lysimachus had taken all his cities in Asia, that Ptolemy had reduced all Cyprus with the exception of Salamis, and …

And to do justice, truly enough, might well be called a king’s first business. “Mars,” as says Timotheus, “is the tyrant;” but Law, in Pindar’s words, the king of all.

Homer does not say that kings received at the hands of Jove besieging engines or ships of war, but sentences of justice, to keep and observe; nor is it the most warlike, unjust, and murderous, but the most righteous of kings, that has from him the name of Jupiter’s “familiar friend” and scholar.

Demetrius’s delight was the title most unlike the choices of the king of gods. The divine names were those of the Defender and Keeper, his was that of the Besieger of Cities.

One day when an old woman had assailed him several times in the road and importuned him to hear her, after he had told her he had no time,

“If so,” cried she, “you have no time to be a king.”

And this reprimand so stung the king that after thinking of it a while he went back into the house, and, setting all other matters apart, for several days together he did nothing else but receive, beginning with the old woman, the complaints of all …

… so stung the king that after thinking of it a while he went back into the house, and, setting all other matters apart, for several days together he did nothing else but receive, beginning with the old woman, the complaints of all that would come.

And to do justice, truly enough, might well be called a king’s first business.

“Mars,” as says Timotheus, “is the tyrant;” but Law, in Pindar’s words, the king of all. Homer does not say that kings received at the hands of Jove besieging engines or ships of war, but sentences of justice, to keep and observe;

Antony was defeated, but both the consuls were slain. Antony, in his flight, was overtaken by distresses of every kind, and the worst of all of them was famine. But it was his character in calamities to be better than at any other time.

Antony, in misfortune, was most nearly a virtuous man.

It is common enough for people, when they fall into great disasters, to discern what is right, and what they ought to do;

Antony, in his flight, was overtaken by distresses of every kind, and the worst of all of them was famine. But it was his character in calamities to be better than at any other time. Antony, in misfortune, was most nearly a virtuous man.

It is common enough for people, when they fall into great disasters, to discern what is right, and what they ought to do; but there are but few who in such extremities have the strength to obey their judgment, either in doing what it approves or avoiding what it condemns; and a good many are so weak as to give way to their habits all the more, and are incapable of using their minds.

Antony, on this occasion, was a most wonderful example to his soldiers. He, who had just quitted so much luxury and sumptuous living, made no difficulty now of drinking foul water and feeding on wild fruits and roots.

The perfumes diffused themselves from the vessel to the shore, which was covered with multitudes, part following the galley up the river on either bank, part running out of the city to see the sight.

The market-place was quite emptied, and Antony at last was left alone sitting upon the tribunal; while the word went through all the multitude, that Venus was come to feast with Bacchus, for the common good of Asia.

On her arrival, Antony sent to invite her to supper. She thought it fitter he should come to her; so, willing to show his good-humor and courtesy, he complied, and went.

for there may be amongst the rest some antique or famous piece of workmanship, which Antony would be sorry to part with.” These anecdotes my grandfather told us Philotas used frequently to relate.

To return to Cleopatra; Plato admits four sorts of flattery, but she had a thousand.

Were Antony serious or disposed to mirth, she had at any moment some new delight or charm to meet his wishes; at every turn she was upon him, and let him escape her neither by day nor by night.

Antony, feeling his line give, drew up the prey, and when, as may be imagined, great laughter ensued,

“Leave,” said Cleopatra, “the fishing-rod, general, to us poor sovereigns of Pharos and Canopus; your game is cities, provinces, and kingdoms.”

Whilst he was thus diverting himself and engaged in this boys’ play, two dispatches arrived;

for as yet everyone’s eyes were fixed upon her as the wife and sister of the two great commanders, but, if rash counsels should prevail, and war ensue,

“I shall be miserable,” said she, “without redress; for on what side soever victory falls, I shall be sure to be a loser.”

Caesar was overcome by these entreaties, and advanced in a peaceable temper to Tarentum, where those that were present beheld a most stately spectacle;

And this is looked upon as one of the greatest of Antony’s oversights, that he did not then press the war. For he allowed time at once for Caesar to make his preparations, and for the commotions to pass over.

For while people were having their money called for, they were mutinous and violent; but, having paid it, they held their peace.

Titius and Plancus, men of consular dignity and friends to Antony, having been ill used by Cleopatra, whom they had most resisted in her design of being present in the war, came over to Caesar, and gave information of the contents of Antony’s will, with …

Antigonus considered Antipater’s daughter Phila, in spite of the disparity of her years, an advantageous match for Demetrius. Antony was thought disgraced by his marriage with Cleopatra, a queen superior in power and glory to all, except Arsaces, who were kings in her time.

Antony was so great as to be thought by others worthy of higher things than his own desires.

As regards the right and justice of their aims at empire, Demetrius need not be blamed for seeking to rule a people that had always had a king to rule them.

… indulgence of voluptuous desires, must be attributed to him, who, in the pursuit of his pleasures, allowed, or to say more truly, compelled the death of the most beautiful and most chaste of the Athenians, who found no way but this to escape his violence.

In one word, Antony himself suffered by his excesses, and other people by those of Demetrius.

In his conduct to his parents, Demetrius was irreproachable.

While others seemed to admire and applaud the quibble, Dion very warmly replied, “Nevertheless, it is certain that you are sole governor here, because you were trusted for Gelon’s sake; but for your sake no man will ever hereafter be trusted again.”

For, indeed, Gelon had made a monarchy appear the best, whereas Dionysius had convinced men that it was the worst, of governments.

Dionysius had three children by Doris, and by Aristomache four, two of which were daughters, Sophrosyne and Arete. Sophrosyne was married to his son Dionysius; Arete, to his brother Thearides, after whose death, Dion received his niece Arete to wife.

It is likely then they had little kindness for Dion, who never indulged himself in any youthful pleasure or diversion.

And so his very virtues were the matter of their calumnies, and were represented under one or other plausible name as vices; they called his gravity pride, his plain-dealing self-will, the good advice he gave was all construed into reprimand, and he was censured for neglecting and scorning those in whose misdemeanors he declined to participate.

And to say the truth, there was in his natural character something stately, austere, reserved, and unsociable in conversation, which made his company unpleasant and disagreeable not only to the young tyrant, whose ears had been corrupted by flatteries;

When his brother Leptines was once describing the situation of a place, and took a javelin from one of the guard to draw the plan of it, he was extremely angry with him, and had the soldier who gave him the weapon put to death.

He declared, the more judicious his friends were, the more he suspected them; because he knew, that were it in their choice, they would rather be tyrants themselves than the subjects of a tyrant.

He slew Marsyas, one of his captains whom he had preferred to a considerable command, for dreaming that he killed him: without some previous waking thought and purpose of the kind, he could not, he supposed, have had that fancy in his sleep.

To which Plato answered with a smile, “

The Academy will never, I trust, be at such a loss for subjects to discuss as to seek one in you.

” Thus, they say, Plato was dismissed; but his own writings do not altogether agree with this account.

his soldiers were troubled at his grief, but bade him take good courage and proceed. When he had recovered himself a little, therefore, “Men of Peloponnesus,” he said, “and of the confederacy, I asked for your presence here, that you might consider your own interests.

For myself, I have no interests to consult while Syracuse is perishing, and, though I may not save it from destruction, I will nevertheless hasten thither, and be buried in the ruins of my country.

Yet if you can find in your hearts to assist us, the most inconsiderate and unfortunate of men, you may to your eternal honor again retrieve this unhappy city.

fortune will be sure to dispute it, though no man should pretend to have a claim. What if Heraclides be perfidious, malicious, and base, must Dion therefore sully or injure his virtue by passionate concern for it?

For, though the laws determine it juster to revenge an injury than to do an injury, yet it is evident that both, in the nature of things, originally proceed from the same deficiency and weakness.

The malicious humor of men, though perverse and refractory, is not so savage and invincible but it may be wrought upon by kindness, and altered by repeated obligations. Dion, making use of these arguments, pardoned and dismissed Heraclides and Theodotes.

For, though the laws determine it juster to revenge an injury than to do an injury, yet it is evident that both, in the nature of things, originally proceed from the same deficiency and weakness.

The malicious humor of men, though perverse and refractory, is not so savage and invincible but it may be wrought upon by kindness, and altered by repeated obligations.

Dion, making use of these arguments, pardoned and dismissed Heraclides and Theodotes.

but in Greek, he must be noted for affecting the sententious and short Laconic way of speaking in sundry passages of his epistles; as when, in the beginning of the war, he wrote thus to the Pergamenians: “

I hear you have given Dolabella money; if willingly, you must own you have injured me; if unwillingly, show it by giving willingly to me.

” And another time to the Samians: “Your counsels are remiss and your performances slow: what think ye will be the end?” And of the Patareans thus: “The Xanthians, suspecting my kindness, have made their country the grave of their despair;

“I hear you have given Dolabella money; if willingly, you must own you have injured me; if unwillingly, show it by giving willingly to me.” And another time to the Samians: “

Your counsels are remiss and your performances slow: what think ye will be the end?

” And of the Patareans thus: “The Xanthians, suspecting my kindness, have made their country the grave of their despair; the Patareans, trusting themselves to me, enjoy in all points their former liberty;

It is reported that Caesar, when he first heard Brutus speak in public, said to his friends, “

I know not what this young man intends, but, whatever he intends, he intends vehemently.

” For his natural firmness of mind, not easily yielding, or complying in favor of everyone that entreated his kindness, once set into action upon motives of right reason and deliberate moral choice, whatever direction it thus took, it was pretty sure to take effectively, …

Him Brutus visited, and, finding him sick, “O Ligarius,” says he, “what a time have you found out to be sick in!” At which words Ligarius, raising himself and leaning on his elbow, took Brutus by the hand, and said, “

But, O Brutus, if you are on any design worthy of yourself, I am well.

”

But there was one of Brutus’s party, named Atellius, who opposed his resolution, advising rather that they should tarry over the winter. And when Brutus asked him in how much better a condition he hoped to be a year after, his answer was, “

If I gain nothing else, yet I shall live so much the longer.

” Cassius was much displeased at this answer; and among the rest, Atellius was had in much disesteem for it. And so it was presently resolved to give battle the next day.

But Dionysodorus the Troezenian proves him to be wrong, and restores the true reading, which is this, —

Who praise their fathers but degenerate sons?

telling us that the proverb is meant to stop the mouth of those who, having no merit of their own, take refuge in the virtues of their ancestors, and make their advantage of praising them. But, as Pindar hath it,

… as though you had not been most diligently careful to inform yourself from the beginning concerning his actions, but that your sons, Polycrates and Pythocles, may both by hearing and reading become familiar with those family examples which it behooves them to follow and imitate.

It is a piece of self-love, and not of the love of virtue, to imagine one has already attained to what is best.

The city of Sicyon, from the time that it first fell off from the pure and Doric aristocracy (its harmony being destroyed, and a mere series of seditions and personal contests of popular leaders ensuing), continued to be distempered and unsettled, changing from one tyrant …

… though an old man, and one that had seen so many turns of fortune, he must needs revel it in the open streets and the midst of the market-place, crowned with garlands and attended with flute-women, inviting everybody he met to partake in his festivity.

So much more does joy without discretion transport and agitate the mind than either fear or sorrow.

Antigonus, therefore, having in this manner possessed himself of Acro-Corinthus, put a garrison into it of those he trusted most, making Persaeus the philosopher governor.