 Part 14 of Volume 2 of Plutarch's Parallel Lives. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Volume 2 of Plutarch's Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, translated by Bernadotte Perrin. Marcus Cato Major. Part 3. However, Cato paid not the slightest heed to his accusers, but grew still more strict. He cut off the pipes by which people conveyed part of the public water supply into their private houses and gardens. He upset and demolished all buildings that enroached on public land. He reduced the cost of public works to the lowest, and forced the rent of public lands to the highest possible figure. All these things brought much odium upon him. Justice Flaminius headed a party against him which induced the Senate to annul as useless the outlays and payments which he had authorized for temples and public works, and incited the boldest of the tribunes to call him to account before the people and find him two talents. The Senate also strongly opposed the erection of the basilica which he built at the public cost below the council house in the Forum, which was called the Basilica Porchea. Still, it appears that the people approved of his censorship to an amazing extent. At any rate, after erecting a statue to his honor in the Temple of Health, they commemorated, in the inscription upon it, not the military commands nor the triumph of Cato, but as the inscription may be translated, the fact that, when the Roman Senate was tottering to its fall, he was made censor, and by helpful guidance, wise restraints and sound teachings restored it again. And yet, before this time, he used to laugh at those who delighted in such honors, saying that, although they knew it not, their pride was based simply on the work of statuaries and painters, whereas his own images of the most exquisite workmanship were born about in the hearts of his fellow citizens. And for those who expressed their amazement that many men of no fame had statues while he had none, he used to say, I would rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one. In short, he thought a good citizen should not even allow himself to be praised, unless such praise was beneficial to the Commonwealth. And yet, of all men, he has heaped most praises upon himself. He tells us that men of self-indulgent lives, when rebuked for it, used to say, we ought not to be blamed, we are no Katoes. Also that those who imitated some of his practices and did it clumsily were called left-handed Katoes. Also that the Senate looked to him in the most dangerous crisis as seafarers to their helmsmen, and often, if he was not present, postponed its most serious business. These boasts of his are confirmed, it is true, by other witnesses, for he had great authority in the city, alike for his life, his eloquence, and his age. He was also a good father, a considerate husband, and a household manager of no mean talent. Nor did he give only a fitful attention to this, as a matter of little or no importance. Therefore I think I ought to give suitable instances of his conduct in these relations. He married a wife who was of gentler birth than she was rich, thinking that, although the rich and the high-born may be alike given to pride, still women of high birth have such a horror of what is disgraceful that they are more obedient to their husbands in all that is honorable. He used to say that the man who struck his wife or child laid violent hands on the holiest of holy things. Also that he thought it more praiseworthy to be a good husband than a great senator. Nay, there was nothing else to admire in Socrates of old except that he was kind and gentle in his intercourse with his shrewish wife and stupid sons. After the birth of his son, no business could be so urgent unless it had a public character as to prevent him from being present when his wife bathed and swaddled the babe. For the mother nursed it herself and often gave sucked also to the infants of her slaves. That so they may come to shareish a brotherly affection for her son. As soon as the boy showed signs of understanding, his father took him under his own charge and taught him to read, although he had an accomplished slave, chilo by name, who was a schoolteacher and taught many boys. Still, Cato thought it not right, as he tells us himself, that his son should be scolded by a slave, or have his ears tweaked when he was slow to learn, still less that he should be indebted to his slave for such a priceless thing as education. He was therefore himself not only the boy's reading teacher, but his tutor-in-law and his athletic trainer, and he taught his son not merely to hurl the javelin and fight in armor and ride the horse, but also to box, to endure heat and cold, and to swim lustily through the eddies and billows of the Tiber. His history of Rome, as he tells us himself, he wrote out, with his own hand and in large characters, that his son might have in his own home an aid to acquaintance with his country's ancient traditions. He declares that his son's presence put him on his guard against indecencies of speech as much as that of the so-called Vestal Virgins, and that he never bathed with him. This indeed would seem to have been a general custom with the Romans, for even fathers-in-law avoided bathing with their sons-in-law, because they were ashamed to uncover their nakedness. Afterwards, however, when they learned from the Greeks their freedom in going naked, they in their turn infected the Greeks with the practice even when women were present. So Cato wrought at the fair task of molding and fashioning his son to virtue, binding his zeal blameless and his spirit answering to his good natural parts. But since his body was rather too delicate to endure much hardship, he relaxed somewhat in his favor the excessive rigidity and austerity of his own mode of life. But his son, although thus delicate, made a sturdy soldier and fought brilliantly under Paulus Emilianus in the battle against Perseus. On that occasion his sword either was smitten from his hand or slit from his moist grasp. Distressed at this mishap he turned to some of his companions for aid and supported by them rushed again into the thick of the enemy. After a long and furious struggle he succeeded in clearing the place and found the sword at last among the many heaps of arms and dead bodies where friends and foes alike lay piled upon one another. Paulus, his commander, admired the young man's exploit, and there was still extant a letter written by Cato himself to his son in which he heaps extravagant praise upon him for this honorable zeal in recovering his sword. The young man afterwards married Tertia, a daughter of Paulus, and a sister of the younger Scipio, and his admission into such a family was due no less to himself than to his father. Thus Cato's careful attention to the education of his son bore worthy fruit. He owned many domestics and usually bought those prisoners of war who were young and still capable of being reared and trained like welps or not one of his slaves ever entered another man's house unless sent thither by Cato or his wife, and when such in one was asked what Cato was doing he always answered that he did not know. A slave of his was expected either to be busy about the house or to be asleep, and he was very partial to the sleepy ones. He thought these gentler than the wakeful ones, and that those who enjoyed the gift of sleep were better for any kind of service than those who lacked it. In the belief that his slaves were led into the most mischief by their sexual passions he stipulated that the males should consort with the females at a fixed price but should never approach any other women. At the outset, while he was still poor and in military service, he found no fault at all with what was served up to him, declaring that it was shameful for a man to quarrel with the domestic over food and drink. But afterwards when his circumstances were improved he used to entertain his friends and colleagues at table. No sooner was the dinner over than he would flog those slaves who had been remiss at all in preparing or serving it. He was always contriving that his slaves should have feuds and dissensions among themselves. Harmony among them made him suspicious and fearful of them. He had those who were suspected of some capital offence brought to trial before all their fellow servants and, if convicted, put the death. However, as he applied himself more strenuously to money-getting, he came to regard agriculture as more entertaining than profitable and invested his capital in businesses that was safe and sure. He bought ponds, hot springs, districts given over to fullers, pitch factories, land with natural pasture, and forest, all of which brought him large profits, and could not, to use his own phrase, be ruined by Jupiter. He used to loan money also in the most disreputable of all ways, namely on ships, and his method was as follows. He required his borrowers to form a large company, and when there were fifty partners and as many ships for his security, he took one share in the company himself and was represented by Quintio, a freedman of his, who accompanied his clients in all their ventures. In this way his entire security was not imperiled, but only a small part of it, and his profits were huge. He used to lend money also to those of his slaves who wished it, and they would buy boys with it, and after training and teaching them for a year, a Cato's expense would sell them again. Many of these boys Cato would retain for himself, reckoning to the credit of the slave the highest price bid for his boy. He tried to incite his son also to such economies, by saying that it was not the part of a man, but of a widow woman, to lessen his substance. But that surely was too vehement a speech of Cato's, when he went too far as to say that a man was to be admired and glorified like a god if the final inventory of his property showed that he had added to it more than he had inherited. When he was well on in years there came as ambassadors from Athens to Rome, Carnedys the academic, and Diogenes the stoic philosopher, to beg the reversal of a certain decision against the Athenian people which imposed upon them a fine of five hundred talents. The people of Oropus had brought the suit, the Athenians had let the case go by default, and the Syconians had pronounced judgment against them. Upon the arrival of these philosophers the most studious of the city's youth hastened to wait upon them, and become their devoted and admiring listeners. The charm of Carnedys especially, which had boundless power and a fame not inferior to its power, won large and sympathetic audiences and filled the city like a rushing mighty wind with the noise of his praises. Reports spread far and wide that a Greek of amazing talent, who disarmed all opposition by the magic of his eloquence, had infused a tremendous passion into the youth of the city, in consequence of which they forsook their other pleasures and pursuits and were possessed about philosophy. The other Romans were pleased at this, and glad to see their young men lay hold of Greek culture and consort with such admirable men. But Cato, at the very outset, when this zeal for discussion came pouring into the city was distressed, fearing lest the young men, by giving this direction to their ambition, should come to love a reputation based on mere words more than one achieved by martial deeds. When the fame of the visiting philosophers rose yet higher in the city, and their first speeches before the Senate were interpreted, at his own instance and request by so conspicuous a man as Gaius Achilius, Cato determined, on some decent pretext or other, to rid and purge the city of them all. So he rose in the Senate, and censured the magistrates for keeping in such long suspense an embassy composed of men who could easily secure anything they wished so persuasive were they. We ought, he said, to make up our minds one way or the other, and vote on what the embassy proposes, in order that these men may return to their schools and lecture to the sons of Greece, while the youth of Rome give ear to their laws and magistrates as heretofore. This he did not, as some think, out of personal hostility to carnities, but because he was wholly adverse to philosophy, and made mock of all Greek culture and training out of patriotic zeal. He says, for instance, that Socrates was a mighty prattler, who attempted, at best he could, to be his country's tyrant by abolishing its customs, and by enticing his fellow citizens into opinions contrary to the laws. He made fun of the school of Isocrates, declaring that his pupils kept on studying with him till they were old men, as if they were to practice their arts and plead their cases before minos and hades. In seeking to prejudice his son against Greek culture, he indulges in an utterance all too rash for his years declaring, in the tone of a prophet or seer, that Rome would lose her empire when she became infected with Greek letters. But time has certainly shown the emptiness of this ill-boating speech of his. For while the city was at the zenith of its empire, she made every form of Greek learning and culture her own. It was not only Greek philosophers that he hated, but he was suspicious of Greeks who practiced medicine at Rome. He had heard it would seem, of Hippocrates' reply, when the great king of Persia consulted him, that the promise of a fee of many talents, namely that he would never put his skill at the service of barbarians who were enemies of Greece. He said all Greek physicians had taken a similar oath and urged his son to beware of them all. He himself, he said, had written a book of recipes which he followed in the treatment and regimen of any who were sick in his family. He never required his patients to fast, but fed them on greens, or bits of duck, pigeon, or hare. Such a diet, he said, was light and good for sick people, except that it often causes dreams. By following such treatment and regimen, he said, he had good health himself and kept his family in good health. Such presumption on his part seems not to have gone unpunished, for he lost his wife and his son. He himself was well confirmed in bodily health and vigor, and long withstood the assaults of old age, even when an old man he was prone to indulge his sexual appetite, and alas married a wife when he was long past the marrying age. This was the way it came about. After the death of his wife, he married his son to the daughter of Emilius Paulus, the sister of Scipio, but he himself in widowhood took solace with the slave girl who secretly visited his bed. Of course in a small house with a young married woman in it the matter was discovered, and once, when the girl seemed to flaunt her way rather too boldly to his chamber, the old man could not help noticing that his son, although he said nothing, looked very sour and turned away. Receiving that the thing displeased his children, Cato did not abrade or blame them at all, but as he was going down in his usual way to the forum with his clients, called out with a loud voice to a certain Salunius, who had been one of his undersecretaries, and was now in his train, asking him if he had found a good husband for his young daughter. The man said that he had not, and would not, do so without first consulting his patron. Well then, said Cato, I have found a suitable son-of-law for you, unless his age should be displeasing. In other ways no fault can be found with him, but he is a very old man. Salunius at once bade him to take the matter in charge, and give the maid to the man of his choice, since she was the dependent on his, and in need of his kind services. Then Cato, without any more ado, said that he asked the damsel to wife for himself. He at first, as was natural, the proposal amazed the man, who counted Cato far past marriage, and himself, far beneath alliance with the house of consular dignity and triumphal honors. But when he saw that Cato was in earnest, he gladly accepted his proposal, and as soon as they reached the forum, the bands were published. While the marriage was in hand, Cato's son, accompanied by his friends, asked his father if it was because he had any complaint to make against him, that he was now foisting a stepmother upon him. Heaven forbid, my son, cried Cato, all your conduct towards me has been admirable, and I have no fault to find with you, but I desire to bless myself and my country with more such sons. However, they say that this sentiment was uttered long before by Pisistratus, the tyrant of Athens, who gave his grown-up sons a stepmother in the person of Tumunasa of Argolis, by whom he is said to have had Alofan and Thessalus. Of this second marriage a son was born to Cato, who was named Solonius after his mother's father, but his elder son died in the pritorship. Cato often speaks of him in his books as a brave and worthy man, and is said to have borne his loss with all the equanimity of a philosopher, remitting not a wit because of it his ardor in the public service. For he was not, like Lucius Lucullus, or Metellus Pius and aftertimes, too enfeebled by old age to serve the people, regarding the service of the state as a burdensome duty. Nor did he, like Scipio Africanus before him, because of envious attacks upon his reputation, turn his back upon the people and make leisure his end and aim for the rest of his life. But rather, as someone persuaded Dionysus to regard his sovereignty as his fairest winding-sheet. So he held public service to be the fairest privilege of old age. For recreation and amusement, when he had leisure therefore, he resorted to the writing of books and to farming. He composed speeches then on all sorts of subjects and histories, and as for farming, he followed it and earnest when he was young and poor. Indeed, he says, he then had only two ways of getting money, farming and fugality. But in later life he was only a theoretical and fancy farmer. He also composed a book on farming, in which he actually gave recipes for making cakes and preserving fruit. So ambitious was he to be superior and peculiar in everything. The dinners too which he gave in the country were quite plentiful. He often asked in congenial country neighbors and made merry with them, and not only did those of his own age find him an agreeable and much desired companion, but also the young, for he was a man of large experience who had read and heard much of what was well worth repeating. He held the table to be the very best promoter of friendship, and at his own the conversation turned much to the praise of honorable and worthy citizens, greatly to the neglect of those who were worthless and base. About such Cato suffered no table-talk, either by way of praise or blame. The last of his public services is supposed to have been the destruction of Carthage. It was Scipio the Younger who actually brought the task to completion, but it was largely in consequence of the advice and counsel of Cato that the Romans undertook the war. It was on this wise. Cato was sent on an embassy to the Carthaginians and Masinissa, the Numidian, who were at war with one another, to inquire into the grounds of their quarrel. Masinissa had been a friend of the Roman people from the first, and the Carthaginians had entered into treaty relations with Rome after the defeat which the Elder Scipio had given them. The treaty deprived them of their empire and imposed a grievous money tribute upon them. Cato, however, found the city by no means in a poor and lowly state as the Romans opposed, but rather teeming with vigorous fighting men, overflowing with enormous wealth, filled with arms of every sort and with military supplies, and not a little puffed up by all this. He therefore thought it no time for the Romans to be ordering and arranging the affairs of Masinissa and the Numidians, but that unless they should repress the city, which had always been their malignant foe, now that its power was so incredibly grown that they would be involved again in dangers as great as before. Accordingly he returned with speed to Rome and advised the Senate that the former, calamitous defeats of the Carthaginians had diminished not so much their power as their full hardiness, and were likely to render them, in the end, not weaker but more expert in war. Their present contest with Numidia was but a prelude to a contest with Rome, while peace and treaty were mere names wherewith to cover their postponement of war till a fit occasion offered. In addition to this it is said that Cato contrived to drop a Libyan fig in the Senate as he shook out the folds of his toga, and then as the Senators admired its size and beauty, said that the country where it grew was only three days' sale from Rome. And in one thing he was even more savage, namely in adding to his vote on any question whatsoever these words, in my opinion Carthage must be destroyed. Publius Scipio Nassica, on the contrary, when asked upon his vote always ended his speech with this declaration, in my opinion Carthage must be spared. He saw probably that the Roman people in its wantonness was already guilty of many excesses, and in the pride of its prosperity spurned the control of the Senate, and forcibly dragged the whole state with it, whithersoever its mad desires inclined it. He wished therefore that the fear of Carthage should abide, to curb the boldness of the multitude like a bridle, believing her not strong enough to conquer Rome, nor yet weak enough to be despised. But this was precisely what Cato dreaded, when the Roman people was inebriated and staggering with its power, to have a city which had always been great, and was now but sobered and chestened with its calamities, for ever threatening them. Such external threats to their sovereignty ought to be done away with altogether, he thought, that they might be free to devise a cure for their domestic failings. In this way Cato Isedra brought to pass the Third and Last War against Carthage, but it had no sooner begun than he died, having first prophesied to the man who was destined to end it. This man was then young, but as tribune in the army he was given proofs of judgment and daring in his engagements with the enemy. Tidings of this came to Rome, and Cato Isedra is said to have cried on hearing them, only he has wits, but the rest are fluttering shadows. This utterance of Cato Isedra, scipio speedily confirmed by his deeds. Cato left only one son by his second wife, whose surname, as we have already remarked, was Solonius, and one grandson by the son who had died before him. Solonius died in the Pritorship, but the son whom he left, Marcus, came to be consul. This Marcus was the grandfather of Cato the Philosopher, who was the best and most illustrious man of his time. Volume 2 of Plutarch's Parallel Lives of the noble Greeks and Romans translated by Bernadotte Perrin, Comparison of Aristides with Marcus Cato Now that I have recorded the most noteworthy things in the careers of these men also, if one compare the entire life of the one with that of the other, it will not be easy to mark the difference between them, obscured as it is by many great resemblances. And even if, in our comparison, we analyze each life, as we would a poem or a picture, we shall find that the rise to political power and repute in consequence of innate excellence and strength, rather than of inherited advantages, is common to both. But in the case of Aristides, Athens was not yet great when he rose to eminence, and the leaders and generals with whom he dealt were men of moderate and uniform fortunes. The highest assessment of property in those days was five hundred bushels of grain, the second three hundred, the third and last two hundred. Whereas Cato, coming from a little town and from ways of life deemed rustic, plunged headlong into the boundless sea of Roman politics when they were no longer conducted by such men as Curius, Fabricius, and Atilius, nor welcomed at his magistrates and leaders poor men who had mounted the rostrum after working with their own hands at the plow in the matak, but were want to have to regard, rather for great families and their wealth, largeses and solicitations, while those who sought office, such was now the power and arrogance of the people, were wantonly handled. It was not the same thing to have the mysticlies for arrival. Who was of no illustrious family and had only moderate possessions, he has said to have been worth three or at most five talents when he entered public life, as it was to compete for preeminence with such men as Scipio Africanus, Servius Galba, and Quintius Flaminius, having no other advantage than a tongue which spoke boldly for the right. Besides a marathon, and again at Plataia, Aristides was only one of ten generals, while Cato was elected one of two councils out of many competitors, and one of two censors over the heads of seven of the foremost and most illustrious Romans who stood for the office with him. Furthermore, Aristides was not the foremost man in any one of his ministries, but Miltiades has the chief honor of marathon, the mysticlies of Salamis, and at Plataia, Herodotus says it was Palsanius who won the fairest of all victories, while even for second honors, Aristides had such rivals as Sophanes, Ameianus, Calimacus, and Sanagerus, who displayed the greatest valor in those actions. Cato, on the other hand, was not only chief in the plans and actions of the Spanish War during his own consulate, but also at Thermopylae. When he was but a tribune in the army, and another was consul, he got the glory of the victory, opening up great mountain passes for the Romans to rush through, upon Antiochus, and swinging the war around it into the king's rear, when he had eyes only for what was in front of him. That victory was manifestly the work of Cato, and it not only drove Asia out of Hellas, but made it afterwards accessible to Scipio. It is true that both were always victorious in war, but in politics Aristides got a fall, being driven into a minority and ostracized by the mysticlies. Cato, on the contrary, though he had for his antagonists almost always the greatest and ableist men in Rome, and though he kept on wrestling with them up to his old age, never lost his footing. He was involved in countless civil processes, both as plaintiff and as defendant. As plaintiff he often won his case. As defendant he never lost it, thanks to that bulwark and efficacious weapon of his life, his eloquence. To this, more justly than to fortune, and the guardian genius of the man, we may ascribe the fact that he was never visited with disgrace. That was a great tribute which was paid Aristotle the philosopher by Antipater, when he wrote concerning him, after his death, that in addition to all his other gifts, the man had also the gift of persuasion. Man has no higher capacity than that for conducting cities and states, as is generally admitted. But the ability to conduct a household enters a no small degree into this higher political capacity, as most believe. For the city is but an organized sum total of households, and has public vigor, only as its citizens prosper in their private lives. When Lycurgus banished both silver and gold from Sparta, and introduced there a coinage of iron that had been ruined by fire, he did not set his fellow citizens free from the duty of domestic economy. He merely removed the swollen and feverish wantonness of wealth, and so provided that all alike might have abundance of the necessary and useful things of life. He did this because, better than any other ancient legislator, he foresaw that the helpless, homeless, and poverty-stricken citizen was a greater menace to the commonwealth than one who was rich and ostentatious. Cato then was no wit less efficient in the conduct of his household than in that of the city. He not only increased his own substance, but became a recognized teacher of domestic economy and agriculture for others, and compiled many useful precepts on these subjects. Aristides, on the other hand, was so poor as to even bring his righteousness into disrepute, as ruining a household, reducing a man to beggary, and profiting everybody rather than its possessor. Yet he see it as much to say by way of exhorting us to righteousness allied with the domestic economy, and abuses idleness as a source of injustice. Labor also says well, Labor I never liked, nor household thrift which breeds good children, but ships equipped with ores were ever my delight, battles and polished javelins and arrows, implying that the men who neglect their households are the very ones who to live by injustice. Oil, as physicians tell us, is very beneficial when externally implied, though very injurious when used internally. But the righteous is not so. He is not helpful to others, while heedless of himself and of his family. Indeed the poverty of Aristides would seem to have been a blemish on his political career, if, as most writers state, he had not foresight enough to leave his poor daughter a marriage portion, or even the cost of his own burial. And so it fell out that the family of Cato furnished Rome with praitors and councils down to the fourth generation, for his grandsons and their sons after them filled the highest offices of state, whereas, though Aristides was the foremost of the Greeks, the abject poverty of his descendants forced some to ply a fortune teller's trade and others for very want to solicit the public bounty, while it robbed them all of every ambition to excel, or even to be worthy of their great ancestor. Similarly this point invites discussion. Poverty is never dishonorable in itself, but only when it is a mark of sloth, intemperance, extravagance, or thoughtlessness. When on the other hand, it is the handmaiden of a sober, industrious, righteous, and brave man who devotes all his powers to the service of the people, it is the sign of a lofty spirit that harbors no mean thoughts. It is impossible for a man to do great things when his thoughts are busy with little things. Nor can he aid the many who are in need when he himself is in need of many things. A great equipment for public service consists, not in wealth, but in contented independence, which requires no private superfluities, and so puts no hindrance in the way of serving the commonwealth. God alone is absolutely free from wants, but that is the most perfect and godlike quality in human excellence which reduces man's wants to their lowest terms. For as a body which is well tempered and vigorous needs no superfluous food or raiment, so a healthy individual or family life can be conducted with the simplest outlays. A man should make his gains tally with his needs. He who heaps up much substance and uses little of it is not contented and independent. If he does not need it, he is a fool for providing what he does not crave, and if he craves it he makes himself most wretched by parsimoniously courtailing his enjoyment of it. Indeed I would feign as Cato himself this question. If wealth is a thing to be enjoyed, why do you plume yourself on being satisfied with little when possessed of much? But if it be a fine thing, as indeed it is to eat ordinary bread and to drink such wine as laborers and servants drink, and not to want purple robes or even plastered houses, and Aristides and Epaminondas and Menius Curius and Gaius Fabricus were perfectly right in turning their backs on the gaining of what they scorned to use. Surely it is not worthwhile for a man who, like Cato, esteemed turnips a delectable dish and cooked them himself while his wife was kneading bread to babble so much about a poultry copper and right on the occupation in which one might soonest get rich. It is the simple life and great its independence, but only because it frees a man from the anxious desire of superfluous things. Hence it was that Aristides, as we are told, remarked at the trial of Chaleus, that only those who were poor in spite of themselves should be ashamed of their poverty. Those who, like himself, chose poverty should glory in it. Surely it were ridiculous to suppose that the poverty of Aristides was due to a sloth, when, without doing anything disgraceful, but merely by stripping a single barbarian or seizing a single tent, he might have made himself rich. So much on this head. The military campaigns of Cato made no great addition to the Roman Empire, which was great already, but those of Aristides include the fairest, most brilliant and most important actions of the Greeks, namely Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. And certainly Antiochus is not worthy to be compared with Xerxes, nor the demolition of the walls of the Spanish cities, with the destruction of so many myriads of barbarians both by land and sea. On these occasions Aristides was inferior to no one in actual service, but he left the glory and the laurels, as he did wealth and substance, to those who wanted them more, because he was superior to all these things also. For my own part I do not blame Cato for his constant boasting, or for raiding himself above everybody else, although he does say, in one of his speeches, that self-praise and self-deprecation are alike absurd. But I regard the man who is often lauding himself as less complete in excellence than one who does not even want others to do so. Freedom from ambition is no slight requisite for the gentleness which should be the mark, estatesman. And on the contrary, ambition is harsh in the greatest formenter of envy. From this spirit Aristides was wholly free, whereas Cato was very full of it. For example Aristides cooperated with Themistocles in his greatest achievements, and, as one might say, stood guard over him while he was in command, and thereby saved Athens. While Cato, by his opposition to Scipio, almost vitiated and ruined that wonderful campaign of his against the Carthaginians, in which he overthrew the invincible, Hannibal. And finally, by perpetually inventing all sorts of suspicions and calamities against him, drove him out of Rome, and brought down on his brother's head a most shameful condemnation for embezzlement. Once more, the temperance which Cato always decked out with the fairest praises Aristides maintained and practiced in unsullied purity, whereas Cato, by marrying unworthily and unseasonably, fell under no slight or insignificant censure in this regard. It was surely quite indecent that a man of his years should bring home a stepmother to his grown-up son and that son's bride, a girl whose father was his assistant, and served the public for hire. Whether he did this merely for his own pleasure or in anger to punish his son for objecting to his mistresses, both what he did and what led him to do it were disgraceful, and the sarcastic reason for it, which he gave his son, was not a true one, for had he wished to begot more sons as good, he should have planned at the outset to marry a woman of family instead of contenting himself, as long as he could so secretly, with the society of a low concubine, and when he was discovered, making a man his father-in-law whom he could most easily persuade, rather than one whose alliance would bring him most honor. Part 16 of Volume 2 of Plutarch's Parallel Lives. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Volume 2 of Plutarch's Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, translated by Bernadotte Perrin. Come on, Part 1. Harry Pultus this year, who conducted King Opheltus with his subjects from Thessaly and Duboeitia, left a posterity there, which was in high repute for many generations. The greater part of them settled in Caronia, which was the first city they went from the barbarians. Now, most of this posterity were naturally men of war and courage, so they were consumed away in the Persian invasion and in the contests with the Gauls, because they did not spare themselves. There remained, however, an orphan boy, Damon by name, Perry Pultus by surname, who far surpassed his fellows at beauty of body and vigor of spirit, though otherwise he was untrained and of a harsh disposition. With this Damon, just passed out of a boy's estate, the Roman commander of a cohort that was wintering in Caronia fell enamored. And since he could not win him over by solicitations and presents, he was plainly bent on violence, seeing that our native city was at that time in a sorry plight and neglected because of her smallness and poverty. Violence was just what Damon feared, and since the solicitation itself had enraged him, he plotted against the man and enlisted against him sundry companions, a few only that they might escape notice. There were 16 of them in all who smeared their faces with soot one night, heated with themselves with wine, and a daybreak fell upon the Roman while he was sacrificing the marketplace, slew him, together with many of his followers, and departed the city. During the commotion which followed, the Council of Caronia met and condemned the murderers to death, and this was the defense which the city afterwards made to its Roman rulers. But in the evening, while the magistrates were dining together as the custom is, Damon and his men burst into the town hall, slew them, and again fled the city. Now about that time, it chanced that Lucius Lucullus passed that way, on an errand with his army. Halting on his march and investigating matters while they were still fresh in mind, he found that the city was in no wise to blame, but rather had itself also suffered wrong. So he took its garrison of soldiers and led them away with him. Then Damon, who was ravaging the country with predatory forays and threatening the city, was induced by embassies and conciliatory decrees of the citizens to return, and was appointed gymnasiac, but soon, as he was anointing himself in the vapor bath, he was slain, and because for a long while thereafter certain phantoms appeared in the place, and groans were heard there, as our fathers tell us, the door of the vapor bath was walled up until this present time the neighbors think it is the source of alarming sights and sounds. Descendants of Damon's family, and some are still living, especially near Styrus and Phocis, Aeolians in speech, are called as Bolomini, or Besutid, because Damon smeared himself with soot before he went forth to do his deed of murder. But the Orchomenians, who were neighbors and rivals of the Chironians, hired a Roman informer to cite the city by name, as though it were an individual person, and prosecute it for the murder of the Roman soldiers who had been slain by Damon. The trial was held before the Praetor of Macedonia. The Romans were not yet sending Praetor's degrees, and the city's advocates invoked the testimony of Lucullus. Lucullus, when the Praetor wrote to him, testified to the truth of the matter, and so the city escaped capital condemnation. Accordingly, the people who at that time were saved by him erected a marble statue of Lucullus in the marketplace beside that of Dionysus. And we, though many generations removed from him, think that his favor extends even down to us who are now living. And since we believe that a portrait which reveals character and disposition is far more beautiful than one which merely copies form and feature, we shall incorporate this man's deeds into our parallel lives, and we shall rehearse them truly. The mere mention of them is sufficient favor to show him, and as a return for his truthful testimony, he himself surely will not deign to accept the false and garbled narrative of his career. We demand of those who would paint fair and graceful features that, in case of any slight imperfection therein, they shall neither wholly omit it, nor yet emphasize it, because the one course makes the portrait ugly, and the other unlike its original. In like manner, since it is difficult, they rather perhaps impossible to represent a man's life as stainless and pure, in its fair chapters we must round out the truth into full assemblance, but those transgressions and follies by which owing to passion, perhaps are political compulsion. A man's career is sullied, we must regard his shortcomings in some particular excellence, rather than his vile products of positive baseness, and we must not all too zealously delineate them in our history, and superfluously too, but treat them as though we were tenderly defending human nature for producing no character, which is absolutely good, and indisputably set towards virtue. On looking about for someone to compare with Lucullus, we decided that it must be Kimon. Both were men of war, and of brilliant exploits against the barbarians, and yet they were mild and beneficent statesmen, and that they gave their countries unusual respite from civil strife, though each one of them set up martial trophies and won victories that were famous. No Hulene before Kimon, and no Roman before Lucullus carried his wars into such remote lands. If we leave out of our account the exploits of Heracles and Dionysus, and whatever credible deeds of Perseus against the Ethiopians, or Medes and Armenians, or of Jason, have been brought down in the memory of man from those early times to our own, common also in a way to both their careers was the incompleteness of their campaigns. Each crushed, but neither gave the death blow to his antagonist. But more than all else, the lavishies which marched their entertainments and hospitalities, as well as the ardor and laxity of their way of living, was conspicuous alike in both. Possibly we may omit still other resemblances, but it will not be hard to gather them directly from our story. Kimon was the son of Militaides by Higgs Vile, a woman of Thracian stock, daughter of King Oloris, as is stated in the poems Archelaes and Melentheus, addressed to Kimon himself. That explains how it was the father of Thucydides, the historian, and Thucydides was connected with the family of Kimon, was also an Oloris, who referred his name back to that of the common ancestor, and how it was that Thucydides had gold mines and thrace, and it is said that Thucydides dies in Scapatejule, a place in Thrace, having been murdered there, but his remains were brought to Attica, and his monument is shown among those of Kimon's family, hard by the tomb of Alpissini, Kimon's sister. However, Thucydides belonged to the deem of Halimus, the family of Militaides to that of Lecaide. Now, Militaides, who had been condemned to pay a fine of 50 talents and confined till payment should be made, died in prison, and Kimon, thus left a mere stripling with his sister, who was a young girl and unmarried, was of no account in the city at first. He had the bad name of being disillute and fabulous, and of taking after his grandfather, Kimon, who, they say, because of his simplicity, was Koalimus, or booby. And Stresimbrotis the Thacian, it was of about Kimon's time, says that he acquired no literary education nor any other liberal and distinctively Hellenic accomplishment, that he lacked entirely the attic cleverness and fluency of speech, that in his outward bearing there was much nobility and truthfulness, that the fashion of the man's spirit was rather Peloponnesian, plain, unadorned, in a great crisis, brave and true, as Euripides says of Heracles, as a Thacian, which we may add to what Stresimbrotis wrote. While he was still a youth, he was accused of a proper intercourse with his sister, and indeed, in other cases too, they say that Alpissin was not very decorous, but that she had improper relations also with Polygnotus the painter, and that it was for this reason that, in the Pysenactium, as it was then called, but now the painted colonnade, when he was painting the Trojan women, he made the features of Leodus a portrait of Alpinesi. Now, Polygnotus was not a mere artisan, and did not paint the stoa for a contract price, but gratis, out of zeal for the welfare of the city, as the historians relate, and as Melanthius the poet testifies after this fashion, he had his own lavish outlay, the god's great feins and the market, named Chichropia adorned, demigods valor his theme. Still, there are some who say that Alpinesi did not live with Kimmon in secret intercourse, but openly rather, as his wedded wife, because, on account of her poverty, she could not get a husband worthy of her high lineage, but that Palaeus, a wealthy Athenian fell in love with her and offered to pay into the state treasury the fine which had been imposed on her father, she consented herself and Kimmon freely gave Alpinesi to Palaeus as wife. However, it is perfectly apparent that Kimmon was given to the love of women. Asteria of Salamnian family and a certain Nestra are mentioned by the poet Melanthius in a sport of elegy addressed to Kimmon as wooed and won by him, and it is clear that he was even too passionately attached to his lawful wife, Isodike, the daughter of Eurytolemus and granddaughter of Megaglis, and that he was too sorely afflicted at her death if we may judge from the elegy addressed to him for the mitigation of his grief. This was composed by the naturalist Archelaus as Penetius, the philosopher thinks, and his conjecture as chronologically possible. Other traits of Kimmon's character were admirable and noble. Neither endearing was he inferior to Militades nor in sagacity to Themistocles, and as it admitted that he was a juster man than either, and that while not one whit behind them in the good qualities of a soldier, he was inconceivably their superior in those of his statesmen, even when he was still young and untried in war. When the Medes made their invasion and Themistocles was trying to persuade the people to give up their city, abandon their country, make a stand with their fleet off Salamis, and fight the issue at sea, most men were terrified at the boldness of the scene. But lo, Kimmon was the first to act, and with a gay mean, led a procession of his companions through the Saramacias up to the Acropolis to dedicate to the goddess there the horse's bridle which he carried in his hands, signifying thus that what the city needed then was not nightly prowess, but sea fighters. After he had dedicated his bridle, he took up one of the shields which were hung about the temple, addressed his prayers to the goddess, and went down to the sea, where at many were first made to take heart. He was of no mean presence, as I on the poet says, but tall and stately, with an abundant and curly head of hair, and since he displayed brilliant and heroic qualities in the actual struggle at Salamis, he soon acquired reputation and goodwill in the city. Many thronged to him and besought him to purpose and perform at once what would be worthy of Marathon. So when he entered politics, the people gladly welcomed him and promoted him since they were full to surfeit of Themistocles to the highest honors offices of the city, for he was engaging and attractive to the common folk by reason of his gentleness and artlessness. But it was Harry Stadeis, son of Lysimachus, who more than anyone else furthered his career, for he saw the fine features of his character and made him, as it were, of boil to the cleverness and daring of Themistocles. After the flight of the Medes from Hellas, Camon was sent out a commander before the Athenians had obtained their empire of the sea and while they were still under the leadership of Palsanias and the Lassidimonians. During this campaign, the citizen soldiers he furnished on expeditions were always admirably disciplined and far more zealous than any others. And again, while Palsanias was holding treasonable conferences with the barbarians, writing letters to the king, treating the allies with harsh arrogance and displaying much wantonness of power and silly pretension, Camon received with mildness those who brought their wrongs to him, treated them humanely and so, before men were aware of it, secured the leadership of Hellas, not by force of arms, but by virtue of his address and character. For most of the allies, because they could not endure the severity and disdain of Palsanias, attached themselves to Camon and Aristides, whom no sooner won this following than they sent also to the F-4s and told them since Sparta had lost her prestige and Hellas was in confusion to recall Palsanias. It is said that a maiden of Byzantium, of excellent parentage, Cleones, my name, was summoned by Palsanias for a purpose that would disgrace her. Her parents, influenced by constraint and fear, abandoned their daughter to her fate and she, after requesting the attendance before his chamber to remove the light in darkness and silence at length, drew near the couch on which Palsanias was asleep. But accidentally stumbled against the lamp holder and upset it. Palsanias, startled by the noise, drew the jagger which lay at his side with the idea that some enemy was upon him and smote and felled in the maiden. After her death and consequence of the blow, she gave Palsanias no peace but kept coming into his sleep by night in phantom form, wrathfully uttering this verse, Draw thou nigh to thy doom, to his evil for men to be wanted. At this outrage, the allies were beyond measure and sense and joined Kimon enforcing Palsanias to give up the city. Driven from Byzantium and still harassed by the phantom as the story goes, he had recourse to the ghost oracle of Heraclea and summoning up the spirit of Cleones besought her to forgo her wrath. She came into his presence and said that he would soon cease from his troubles on coming to Sparta, thus darkly intimating as it seems, his impending death. At any rate, this tale is told by many. But Kimon, now that the allies had attached themselves to him, took command of them and sailed to Thrace for he heard that men of rank among the Persians and kinsmen of the king held possession of Eon, a city on the banks of the Strymon and were harassing the Helenes of that vicinity. First he defeated the Persians themselves in battle and shut them up in the city. Then he expelled from their homes above the Strymon, the Thracians from whom the Persians had been getting provisions, put the whole country under guard and brought the besieged to such straits that Boutes, the king's general, gave up the struggle, set fire to the city and destroyed with it his family, his treasures, and himself. And so it was that though Kimon took the city, he gained no other memorable advantage thereby, since most of its treasurers had been burned up with the barbarians. But the surrounding territory was very fertile and fair, and this he turned over to the Athenians for occupation, wherefore the people permitted him to dedicate the stone Hermae on the first of which is the inscription. Valarys hearted as well were they who I am in fighting, facing the sons of the Medes, Strymon's current beside, fiery famine arrayed and gore-flecked aries against them, thus first finding for foes that grim exit to spare. And on the second, on two their leaders rewarded by Athenians thus have been given, benefits one such return, Valarys deeds of the brave, all the more strong at the sight will were men of the future be eager, fighting for the commonwealth, wars dead strife to maintain. And on the third, with the atreidae of old, from this our city, Menestheus, led his men to the plain Trojan called and divine. He, once Homer asserted, among well armored Achaeans, Marshaler was of the fight, best of them all who had come. Thus there is not on seemingly in giving that name to Athenians, marshallers, they both of war and of the vigor of men. Although these inscriptions nowhere mentioned Kimone by name, his contemporaries held them to be a surpassing honor for him. Neither themistically as normalitades achieved any such nay, when the later asked for a crown of olive merely, Sophanes the Declean rose up in the midst of the assembly and protested. His speech was ungracious but appeased the people of that day. When said he, thou hast fought out alone a victory over the Barbarians, then demand to be honored alone. Why then were the people so excessively pleased with the achievement of Kimone? Perhaps it was because when the others were their generals, they were trying to repel their enemies and so avert disaster. But when he led them, they were unable to ravage the land of their enemies with incursions of their own and acquired fresh territories for settlement, not only in Neon itself, but also in Phypolis. They settled Scyros too, which Kimone seized for the following reason. Dolopians were living on the island, but they were poor tillers of the soil, so they practiced piracy on the high seas from of old, and finally did not withhold their hands even from those who put into their ports and had dealings with them, but robbed some Thessalian merchants who had cast anger at Cetizium and threw them into prison. When these men had escaped from bondage and won their suit against the city at the Amphectonic Assembly, the people of Scyros were not willing to make restitution, but called on those who actually held the plunder to give it back. The robbers in terror sent a letter to Kimone, urging him to come with his fleet to seize the city, and they would give it up to him. In this manner, Kimone got possession of the island, drove out the Dolopians and made the Aegean a free sea. On learning that the ancient Thessias, son of Aegeus, had fled Nexal from Athens to Scyros, but had been treacherously put to death there through fear by Lecomides the king. Kimone eagerly sought to discover his grave. For the Athenians had once received an oracle bidding them to bring back the bones of Thessias to the city, and honor him as became a hero, but they knew not where he lay buried, since the Scyrians would not admit the truth of the story, nor permit any search to be made. Now, however, Kimone set to work with great ardor, discovered at last the hallowed spot, had the bones bestowed upon his own trireme, and with general pomp and show brought them back to the hero's own country after an absence of about 400 years. This was the chief reason why the people took kindly to him. But they also cherished in kindly remembrance of him that decision of his in the tragic contest which became so famous. When Sophocles, still a young man, entered the list with his first plays, Epspion the Archon, seeing that the spirit of rivalry and partisanship ran high among the spectators, did not appoint the judges of the contest as usual by lot, but when Kimone and his fellow generals advanced into the theater and made the customary libation to the god, he would not suffer them to depart, but forced them to take the oath and sit his judges, being ten and all one from each tribe. So then the contest, even because of the unusual dignity of the judges, was more animated than ever before, but Sophocles came off victorious and it is said that Escalus in great distress and indignation there at lingered only a little while at Athens, and then went off in anger to Sicily. There he died also and is buried near Gala. Eon says that coming from Kios to Athens is a mere stripling, he was once a fellow guest with Kimone and a dinner given by Lourdon, and that over the wine the hero was invited to sing, and did sing very agreeably, and was praised by the guests as a clever man that Themisticles, that hero, they said, declared that he had not learned to sing, nor even to play the liar, but knew how to make a city great and rich. Next Eon says, as his natural over the cups, the conversation drifted to the exploits of Kimone, and as his greatest deeds were being recounted, the hero himself dwells at length on a particular stratagem which he thought as shrewdest. Once he said, when the Athenians and their allies had taken many barbarian prisoners at Sestos and Byzantium and turned them over to him for distribution, he put into one lot the persons of the captives and into another the rich adornments of their bodies, and his distribution was blamed as unequal. But he bade the allies choose one of the lots and the Athenians would be content with whichever one they left. So in the advice of Herio Phytus, the Samian, they chose the Persian wealth rather than the Persians, and the allies took the rich adornments for themselves and left the prisoners for the Athenians. At the same time, Kimone came off with a reputation as being a ridiculous distributor since the allies had got their gold enclets and armlets and collars and jackets and purple robes to display, while the Athenians got only naked bodies ill trained for labor. But a little while after, the friends and kinsmen of the captives came down from Frigia and Lydia and ransomed every one of them at a great price so that Kimone had four months' pay and rations for his fleet, and besides that, much gold from the ransoms was left over for the city. And since he was already wealthy, Kimone lavished revenues from his campaign which he was thought to have won with honor from the enemy to his still greater honor on his fellow citizens. He took away the fences from his fields that strangers and needy citizens might have it in their power to take fearlessly of the fruits of the land. And every day, he gave a dinner at his house, simple it is true, but sufficient for many, to which any poor man who wished came in and so received a maintenance which cost him no effort and left him free to devote himself solely to public affairs. But Aristotle says that it was not for all Athenians it was only for his own deansmen, the Lacchiade that he provided a free dinner. He was constantly attended by young comrades in fine attire, each one of whom whenever an elderly citizen in needy array came up was ready to exchange rein with him. The practice made a deep impression. These same followers also carried with them a generous sum of money and going up to poor men of finer quality in the marketplace, they would quietly thrust small change into their hands. To such generosity as this, Cretanus seems to have referred in his archiloki with the words Yes, I too hoped Metrobius, I, the public scribe, along with man divine, the rarest host that lives in every way the best of Ahluenic men, with Camus feasting out in joyously gold age to while away the remnant of my life. But he has gone before and left me. And again, Gorgius the Leontine says that Camus made money that he might spend it and spent it that he might be honored for it. And Cretanus, one of the 30 tyrants, praising his elegies that he may have the wealth of the Scopade, the great mindedness of Camus, and the victories of Archezilaus of Lassadamon. And we know that Luchius the Spartan became famous among the Hellenes for no other reason than that he entertained the strangers at the Boys Gymnastic Festival. But the generosity of Camus surpassed even the hospitality and philanthropy of the Athenians of olden time. For they, and their city is justly very proud of it, spread about among the Hellenes the sowing of grain and the lustral uses of spring waters and taught mankind who knew it not the art of kindling fire. But he made his home in the city a general public residence for his fellow citizens and on his estates in the country allowed even the stranger to take and use the choicest of the ripe and fruits with all the fair things which the seasons bring. Thus in a certain fashion he restored to human life the fabled communism of the age of Cronus, the golden age. Those who slanderously said that this was flattery of the rabble and a demagoguic art in him were refuted by the man's political policy which was aristocratic and Laconian. He actually opposed the mysticlies when he exalted the democracy on Duli as Aristides also did. Later on, he took hostile issue with Ephialtes who, to please the people, tried to dethrone the council of the Areopagus and though he saw all the rest except Aristides and Ephialtes filling their purses with the gains from their public services he remained on-bought and on-approached by bribes devoting all his powers to the state without recompense and in all purity through to the end. It is told indeed the one Rhoesakes, a barbarian who had deserted from the king, came to Athens with large monies and being set upon fiercely by the public informers fled for refuge to Kimon and deposited at his door two platters, one filled with silver the other with golden directs. Kimon, when he saw them, smiled and asked the man whether he preferred to have Kimon as his hireling or his friend and on his replying as my friend Well then said Kimon take this money with thee and go that way for I shall have the use of it when I want if I am thy friend. End of Kimon, Part One The Allies continued to pay their assessments, but did not furnish men and ships according to allotment since they were soon weary of military service and had no need of war but a great desire to till their land and live at their ease. The barbarians were gone and did not harass them so they neither manned their ships nor sent out shoulders. The rest of the Athenian generals tried to force them to do this and by prosecuting delinquents and punishing them rendered their empire burdensome and vexatious. But Simon took just the opposite course when he was general and brought no compulsion to bear on a single haleen but accepted money from those who did not wish to go out on service and ships without crews and so suffered the Allies caught with the bait of their own ease to stay at home and become tillers of the soil and unwarlike merchants instead of warriors and all through their foolish love of comfort. On the other hand he made great numbers of the Athenians man their ships, one crew leaving another and imposed on them the toil of his expeditions and so in a little while by means of the very wages which they got from the Allies made them lords of their own paymasters. For those who did no military service became used to fearing and flattering those who were continually voyaging and for ever under arms and training and practicing and so before they knew it they were tributary subjects instead of Allies. And surely there was no one who humbled the great king himself and reduced his haughty spirit more than Simon for he did not let him go quietly away from Hellas but followed right at his heels as it were and before the barbarians had come to a halt and taken breath he sacked and overthrew here or subverted an annex to the Hellenes there until Asia from Ionia to Pamphylia was entirely cleared of Persian arms learning that the generals of the king were lurking about Pamphylia with a great army in many ships and wishing to make them afraid to enter at all the sea to the west of the Chilodonian Isles he set sail from Snydus and Tropium with two hundred triremes these vessels had been from the beginning very well constructed for speed and maneuvering by Themastocles but Simon now made them broader and put bridges between their decks in order that with their amorous hoplites they might be more effective in their onsets putting in at Facilis which was a Hellenic city but refused to admit his armament or even abandoned the king's cause he ravaged its territory and assaulted its walls but the Keyens who formed part of his fleet and were of old on friendly terms with the people of Facilis labored to soften Simon's hostility and at the same time by shooting arrows over the walls with little documents attached they conveyed messages of their success to the men of Facilis so finally Simon made friends with them on condition that they should pay ten talents and join him in his expedition against the barbarians now Ephorus says that Tithrostes was commander of the royal fleet and Ferendatis of the infantry but Callisthenes says that it was Ariomandes the son of Gobraus who as commander in chief of all the forces lay at anchor with the fleet off the mouth of the Eurymedon and that he was not at all eager to fight with the Hellenes but was waiting for 80 Phoenician ships to sail up from Cyprus wishing to anticipate their arrival Simon put out to sea prepared to force the fighting if his enemies should decline in engagement at first the enemy put into the river that they might not be forced to fight but when the Athenians bore down on them there they sailed out to meet them they had six hundred ships according to Fanadimas 350 according to Ephorus whatever the number nothing was achieved by them on the water which was worthy of such a force but they straightway put about and made for shore where the foremost of them abandoned their ships and fled for refuge to the infantry which was drawn up nearby those who were overtaken were destroyed with their ships whereby also it is plain that the barbarian ships which went into action were very numerous indeed since though many of course made their escape and many were destroyed still two hundred were captured by the Athenians when the enemy's land forces marched threateningly down to the sea Simon thought it a vast undertaking to force a landing and lead his weary helenes against an unwirried and many times more numerous foe but he saw that his men were exalted by the impetus and pride of their victory and eager to come to close quarters with the barbarians so he landed his hoplites still hot with the struggle of the sea fight and they advanced to the attack with shouts and on the run the persians stood firm and received the onset nobly and a mighty battle ensued wherein there fell brave men of Athens who were foremost in public office and eminent but after a long struggle the Athenians routed the barbarians with slaughter and then captured them in their camp which was full of all sorts of treasure but Simon, though like a powerful athlete he had brought down two contests in one day and though he had surpassed the victory of Salamis with an infantry battle and that of Platia with a naval battle still went on competing with his own victories hearing that the 80 Phoenician triremes which were too late for the battle had put in at Hydras he sailed thither with all speed while their commanders as yet knew nothing definite about the major force but were still in distrustful suspense for this reason they were all the more panic-stricken at his attack and lost all their ships most of their crews were destroyed with the ships this exploit so humbled the purpose of the king that he made the terms of that notorious piece by which he was to keep away from the Hellenic seacoast as far as a horse could travel in a day and was not to sail west of the Siennian and the Caledonian islands with armored ships of war and yet Kelesthenes denies that the barbarian made any such terms but says he really acted as though he did through the fear which that victory inspired and kept so far aloof from Hellas that Pyrocles with fifty and Effialtes with only thirty ships sailed beyond the Caledonian isles without encountering any navy of the barbarians but in the decrees collected by Krataris there is a copy of the treaty in its due place as though it had actually been made and they say that the Athenians also built the altar of peace to commemorate this event and paid distinguished honors to Keles as their ambassador by the sale of the captured spoils the people was enabled to meet various financial demands and especially it constructed the southern wall of the Acropolis with the generous resources obtained from that expedition and it is said that though the building of the long walls called legs was completed afterwards yet their first foundations where the work was obstructed by swamps and marshes were stayed up securely by Simon who dumped vast quantities of rubble and heavy stones into the swamps meeting the expenses himself he was the first to beautify the city with the so-called liberal and elegant resorts which were so excessively popular a little later by planting the marketplace with plain trees and by converting the academy from a waterless and arid spot into a well-watered grove which he provided with clear running tracks and shady walks now there were certain persons who would not abandon the Chersonesi but called in Thracians from the north to help them despising Simon who had sailed out from Athens with only a few triremes all told but he sallied out against them with his four ships and captured their thirteen drove out the Persians overwhelmed the Thracians and turned the whole Chersonesi over to his city for settlement and after this when the Thacians were in revolt from Athens he defeated them in a sea fight captured thirty-three of their ships besieged and took their city acquired their gold mines on the opposite mainland for Athens and took possession of the territory which the Thacians controlled there from this base he had a good opportunity as it was thought to invade Macedonia and cut off a great part of it and because he would not consent to do it he was accused of having been bribed to this position by King Alexander and was actually prosecuted his enemies forming a coalition against him in making his defense before his judges he said he was no proxenus of rich Ionians and Thessalians as others were to be courted and paid for their services but rather of Lachodemonians whose temperate simplicity he lovingly imitated counting no wealth above it but embellishing the city with the wealth which he got from the enemy in mentioning this famous trial Stessimbrotus says that El Panici came with a plea for Simon to the house of Pericles since he was the most ardent accuser and that he smiled and said too old, too old El Panici to meddle with such business but at the trial he was very gentle with Simon and took the floor only once in accusation of him as though it were a mere formality well then Simon was acquitted at this trial and during the remainder of his political career when he was at home he mastered and constrained the people in its onsets upon the nobles and in its efforts to rest all office and power to itself but when he sailed away again on military service the populace got completely beyond control they confounded the established political order of things and the ancestral practices which they had formally observed and under the lead of effialities they robbed the council of the Areopagus of all but a few of the cases in its jurisdiction they made themselves masters of the courts of justice and plunged the city into unmitigated democracy Pericles being now a man of power and espousing the cause of the populace and so when Simon came back home and in his indignation of the insults he'd upon the reverent council tried to recall again in its jurisdiction and revive the aristocracy of the times of Cleisthenes they banded together to denounce him and tried to inflame the people against him renewing the old slanders about his sister and accusing him of being a Spartan sympathizer it was to these kalumnis that the famous and popular verses of Iopolis about Simon had reference he was not base but fond of wine and full of sloth and oft he did sleep in Lachodoman, far from home and leave his alpinichis sleeping all alone but if, though full of sloth and given to tipling he yet took so many cities and won so many victories it is clear that had he been sober and mindful of his business no Haleen either before or after him would have suppressed his exploits it is true indeed that he was from the first of Philo Laconian he actually named one of his twin sons Lachodimonius and the other Elias the sons whom a woman of Cleator bore him as Stesembrotus relates wherefore Pericles often reproached them with their maternal lineage but Diodorus the topographer says that these as well as the third of Simon's sons Thessalus were born of Isodici the daughter of Europtolamus the son of Megacles and he was looked upon with favour by the Lachodimonians who soon were at enmity with Themastocles and therefore preferred that Simon, young as he was, should have the more weight and power in Athens the Athenians were glad to see this at first since they reaped no slight advantage from the good will which the Spartans showed him while their empire was fast growing and they were busy making alliances they were not displeased that honour and favour should be shown to Simon he was the foremost Hellenic statesman dealing gently with the allies and acceptably with the Lachodimonians but afterwards when they became more powerful and saw that Simon was strongly attached to the Spartans they were displeased there at for on every occasion he was prone to exalt Lachodamen to the Athenians especially when he had occasion to chide or incite them then as Stesembrotus tells us he would say but the Lachodimonians are not of such a sort in this way he awakened the envy and hatred of his fellow citizens at any rate the strongest charge against him rose as follows the son of Zucidimus was in the fourth year of his reign at Sparta a greater earthquake than any before reported rent the land of the Lachodimonians into many chasms shook to get us so that sundry peaks were torn away and demolished the entire city with the exception of five houses the rest were thrown down by the earthquake it is said that while the young men and youths were exercising together in the interior of the colonnade just a little before the earthquake a hair made its appearance and the youths all anointed as they were in sport dashed out and gave chase to it but the young men remained behind on whom the gymnasium fell and all perished together their tomb even down to the present day they call size Matthias Archedemus at once comprehended from the danger at hand that which was sure to follow and as he saw the citizens trying to save the choicest valuables out of their houses ordered the trumpet to give the signal of an enemy's attack in order that they might flock to him at once under arms this was all that saved Sparta at that crisis for the helots hurriedly gathered from all the country round about with intent to dispatch the surviving Spartans but finding them arrayed in arms they withdrew to their cities and waged open war persuading many periochi also so to do the miscineans besides joined in this attack upon the Spartans accordingly the Lachodemonians sent Peracliatus to Athens with request for aid and Aristophanes introduces him into a comedy as sitting at the altars pale a face in a purple cloak soliciting an army but if he altars opposed the project and besought the Athenians not to succor nor restore a city which was their rival but to let haughty Sparta lie to be trodden under foot of men whereupon as Cretius says Simon made his country's increase of less account than Sparta's interest and persuaded the people to go forth to her aid with many hoplites and ion actually mentions the phrase by which more than by anything else Simon prevailed upon the Athenians exhorting them not to suffer hell as to be crippled nor their city to be robbed of its yoke fellow after he had given aid to the Lachodemonians he was going back home with his forces through the Isthmus of Corinth when Lachartus abraded him for having introduced his army before he had conferred with the citizens people who knock at doors said he do not go in before the owner bids them to which Simon replied and yet you Corinthians oh Lachartus did not so much as knock at the gates of Cleonac and Magara but hewed them down and forced your way in under arms demanding that everything be opened up to the stronger such was his boldness of speech the Corinthian in an emergency and he passed on through with his forces once more the Lachodemonians summoned the Athenians to come to their aid against the messianians and helads in Ithom and the Athenians went but their dashing boldness awakened fear and they were singled out from all the allies and sent off as dangerous conspirators they came back home in a rage and at once took open measures of hostility against the Lachonizers and above all against Simon laying hold of a trifling pretext they ostracized him for ten years that was the period decreed in all cases of ostracism it was during this period that the Lachodemonians after freeing the Delphians from the Phocians encamped at Tanagra on their march back home here the Athenians confronted them bent on fighting their issue out and here Simon came in arms to join his own Aeneid tribe eager to share with his fellow citizens in repelling the Lachodemonians but the council of the 500 learned of this and was filled with fear since Simon's foes accused him of wishing to throw their ranks into confusion and then lead the Lachodemonians in an attack upon the city so they forbade the generals to receive the man as he went away he besought Euthypus of Anophilistus and his other comrades all who were specially charged with Lachonizing to fight sturdily against the enemy and by their deeds of valor to dissipate the charge which their countrymen laid at their door they took his armor and set it in the midst of their company supported one another ardently in the fight and fell to the number of 100 leaving behind them among the Athenians a great and yearning sense of their loss and sorrow for the unjust charges made against them for this reason the Athenians did not long abide by their displeasure against Simon partly because as was natural they remembered his benefits and partly because the turn of events favored his cause for they were defeated at Tenagra in a great battle and expected that in the following springtime an armed force of Peloponnesians would come against them and so they recalled Simon from his exile the decree which provided for his return was formerly proposed by Pericles to such a degree in those days were dissensions based on political differences of opinion while personal feelings were moderate and easily recalled into conformity with the public wheel even ambition that master passion paid deference to the country's welfare well then as soon as Simon returned from exile he stopped the war and reconciled the rival cities after peace was made since he saw that the Athenians were unable to keep quiet but wished to be on the move and to wax great by means of military expeditions also because he wished that they should not exasperate the Hellenes generally nor by hovering around the islands and the Peloponnesians with a large fleet bring down upon the city charges of intestine war and initial complaints from the allies he manned 200 triremes his design was to make another expedition with them against Egypt and Cyprus he wished to keep the Athenians in constant training by their struggles with the barbarians and to give them the legitimate benefits of importing into Helles the wealth taken from their natural foes all things were now ready and the soldiery on the point of embarking when Simon had a dream he thought an angry bitch was baying at him and that mingled with its baying it utter a human voice saying go thy way for a friend shalt thou be both to me and my puppies the vision being hard of interpretation as Staphyllus of Hosedonia an inspired man and an intimate of simons told him that it signified his death he analyzed the vision thus a dog is a foe of the man at whom it bays to a foe one cannot be a friend any better than by dying the mixture of speech indicates that the enemy is the meddi for the army of the meddies is a mixture of helenes and barbarians after this vision when simon had sacrificed to Dionysus and the seer was cut up in the victim swarms of ants took the blood as it congealed brought it little by little to simon and enveloped his great toe there with he being unconscious of their work for some time just about at the time when he noticed what they were doing the minister came and showed him the liver of his victim without a head but since he could not get out of the expedition he set sail and after detailing sixty of his ships to go to Egypt with the rest he made again for Cyprus after defeating at sea the royal armament of Phoenician and Sicilian ships he went over the cities around about and then lay threatening the royal enterprise in Egypt and not in any trifling fashion nay he had in mind the dissolution of the king's entire supremacy and all the more because he learned that the reputation and power of the masticleys were great among the barbarians who had promised the king that when the Hellenic war was set on foot he would take command of it at any rate it is said that it was most of all due to the masticleys' despair of his Hellenic undertakings since he could not eclipse the good fortune and valor of simon that he took his own life but simon while he was projecting vast conflicts and holding his naval forces in the vicinity of Cyprus sent men to the shrine of Amnion to get oracular answer from the god to some secret question no one knows what they were sent to ask nor did the god vouch save them any response but as soon as the inquirers drew nigh he bade them depart saying that simon himself was already with him on hearing this the inquirers went down to the sea coast and when they reached the camp of the Hellenes which was at that time on the confines of Egypt they learned that simon was dead and on counting the days back to the utterance of the oracle they found that it was their commander's death which had been darkly intimated since he was already with the gods he died while besieging sitium of sickness as most say but some say it was of a wound which he got while fighting the barbarians as he was dying he bade those about him to sail away at once and to conceal his death and so it came to pass that neither the enemy nor the allies understood what had happened and the force was brought back in safety under the command of simon as fenadine says who had been dead for thirty days after his death no further brilliant exploit against the barbarians was performed by any general of the helenes who were swayed by demagogues and partisans of civil war with none to hold a mediating hand between them till they actually clashed together in war this afforded the cause of the king a respite but brought to pass an indescribable destruction of Hellenic power it was not until long afterwards that Agassilius carried his arms into asia and prosecuted a brief war against the king's generals along the sea coast and even he could perform no great and brilliant deeds but was overwhelmed in his turn by a flood of Hellenic disorders and seditions and swept away from a second empire so he withdrew leaving in the midst of allied and friendly cities the tax gatherers of the persians not one of whose scribes nay nor so much as a horse had been seen within four hundred furlongs of the sea as long as simon was general that his remains were brought home to attica there is testimony in the funeral monuments to this day called simonian but the people of citium also pay honors to a certain tomb of simon as nasa crates the returisition says because in a time of pestilence and famine the god enjoined upon them not to neglect simon but to revere and honor him as a superior being such was the greek leader end of simon part 18 of volume two of plutarx parallel lives this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox dot org volume two of plutarx parallel lives of the noble greeks and romans translated by bernadotte perron lucullus part one in the case of lucullus his grandfather was a man of consular rank and his uncle on his mother's side was metalus sir named nimidiceus but as for his parents his father was convicted of peculation and his mother cecilia had the bad name of a dissolute woman lucullus himself while he was still a mere youth before he had entered public life or stood for any office made it his first business to impeach his father's accuser servileus the auger whom he found wronging the commonwealth the romans thought this a brilliant stroke and the case was in everybody's mouth like a great deed of prowess indeed they thought the business of impeachment on general principles and without special provocation no ignoble thing but were very desirous to see their young men fastening themselves on malefactors like highbred welps on wild beasts however the case stirred up great animosity so that sundry persons were actually wounded in slain and servileus was acquitted lucullus was trained to speak fluently both latin and greek so that sulla in writing his own memoirs dedicated them to him as a man who would set it in order and duly arrange the history of the times better than himself for the style of lucullus was not only business like and ready the same was true of many another man's in the forums there like smitten tony through the billowy see it dashed although outside of the forum it was withered in elegant and dead but lucullus from his youth up was devoted to the genial and so called liberal culture then in vogue wherein the beautiful was sought and when he came to be well on in years he suffered his mind to find complete leisure and repose as it were after many struggles in philosophy encouraging the contemplative side of his nature and giving timely halt and check after his difference with pompi to the play of his ambition now as to his love of literature this also is reported in addition to what has been already said when he was a young man proceeding from jest to earnest in conversation with hortensius the orator and sesena the historian he agreed on their suggestion of a poem and a history both in greek and latin that he would treat the marsic war in whichever of these forms the lot should prescribe and it would seem that the lot prescribed a greek history for there is extant a greek history of the marsic war of his affection for his brother marcus there are many proofs but the romans dwell most upon the first although namely he was older than his brother he was unwilling to hold office alone but waited until his brother was of the proper age and thus gained the favor of the people to such an extent that although in absence from the city he was elected a deal along with his brother though he was but a young man in the marsic war he gave many proofs of courage and understanding it was however more owing to his constancy and mildness that sella attached him to himself and employed him from first to last on business of the highest importance such for instance was the management of the mint most of the money used in peloponnesus during the mithriditic war was coined by him and was called ducalean after him it remained current for a long time since the wands of the soldiery during the war gave it rapid circulation afterwards at athens sella found himself master on land but cut off from supplies by sea owing to the superior naval force of the enemy he therefore dispatched lucullus to egypt and libya with orders to fetch ships from there winter was then at its worst but he sailed forth with three greek brigantines and as many small rodian galleys exposing himself not only to the high sea but to numerous hostile ships which were cruising about everywhere in full mastery of it however he put in at crete and wanted over to his side he also made sirene and finding it in confusion in consequence of successive tyrannies and wars he restored it to order and fixed its constitution reminding the city of a certain irracular utterance which the great play-doh had once about safe to them they asked him it would seem to write laws for them and to mold their people into some form of sound government whereupon he said that it was hard to be a law giver for the sireneans when they were having such good fortune in fact nothing is more ungovernable than a man reputed to be prosperous and on the other hand nothing is more receptive of authority than a man who assembled by misfortune this was what made the sireneans at that time so submissive to lucullus as their law giver from thence he set sail for egypt but was attacked by pirates and lost most of his vessels he himself however escaped in safety and entered the port of alexandria in splendid style the entire egyptian fleet came to meet him as it was want to do when a king put into port in resplendent array and the youthful ptolemy besides showing him other astonishing marks of kindness gave him lodging and sustenance in the royal palace whether no foreign commander had ever been brought before the allowance which the king made for his expenses was not the same as others had received but four times as much and yet he accepted nothing beyond what was actually necessary and took no gift although he was offered the worth of eighty talents it is also said that he neither went up to memphis nor sought out any other of the famous wonders of egypt this he held to be the privilege of a leisurely and luxurious sight seer not of one who like himself had left his commander in chief and camped under the open sky alongside the battlements of the enemy ptolemy abandoned his alliance with rome out of fear for the outcome of the war but furnished lucullus with ships to convey him as far as cyprus embraced him graciously at parting and offered him a costly emerald set in gold at first lucullus declined to accept it but when the king showed him that the engraving on it was a likeness of himself he was afraid to reject it lest he be thought to have sailed away at utter enmity with the king and so have some plot laid against him on the voyage as he sailed along he collected a multitude of ships from the maritime cities omitting all those engaged in piracy and came at last to cyprus learning there that the enemy lay at anchor off the headlands and were watching for his coming he hauled all his vessels up on land and wrote letters to the cities requesting winter quarters and provisions as though he would await the fine season there then when the winds served he suddenly launched his ships and put out to sea and by sailing in the daytime with his sails reefed and low but in the nighttime under full canvas he came safely to roads the rhodians furnished him with more ships and he induced the people of cos and synodus to forsake the royal cause and join him in an expedition against samos without any aid he also drove the royal forces out of kiosk and set the californians free from their tyrant epigunus whom he arrested it also happened about this time that mithridates abandoned pergamum and shut himself up in pitane since fimbria held him in close siege there by land he looked to make his escape by sea and collected and summoned his fleets from every quarter for this purpose renouncing all engagements in the field with a man so bold and victorious as fimbria this design fimbria perceived and being without any fleet of his own sent to the culis beseeching him to come with his and assist in capturing the most hostile and warlike of kings that the great prize which they had sought with so many toils and struggles might not escape the romans now that mithridates was in their grip and fast in the meshes of their net if he should be captured fimbria said no one would get more of the glory than the man who stood in the way of his flight and seized him as he was running off driven from the land by me and excluded from a sea by you he will crown us both with success and the much heralded exploits of sulla at arcomenis and caronia will cease to interest the romans and there was nothing absurd in the proposition it is clear to everyone that if lucullus who was close at hand had then listened to fimbria brought his ships thither and closed up the harbor with his fleet the war would have been at an end and the world freed from an infinite mischief but whether he ranked the honorable treatment of sulla above every consideration of private or public advantage or whether he regarded fimbria as a wretch whose ambition for command had recently led him to murder a man who was his friend and superior officer or whether it was by some mysterious dispensation of fortune that he chose to spare mithridates and so reserved him for his own antagonist for whatever the reason he would not listen to the proposal but suffered mithridates to sail off and mock at fimbria's forces while he himself to begin with defeated the kingships which showed themselves off lectam and in the trod and again catching sight of neotolomus lying in wait for him at tenados with a still larger armament he sailed out against him in advance of the rest on board of a rhodian gallery which was commanded by demigoras a man well disposed to the romans and of the largest experience as a sea fighter neotolomus dashed out to meet him and ordered his steersman to ram the enemy demigoras however fearing the weight of the royal ship and her rugged bronze armor did not venture to engage head on but put swiftly about and ordered his men to backwater thus receiving his enemy a stern where his vessel was depressed the blow was harmless since it fell upon the submerged parts of the ship at this point his friends coming up lucullus gave orders to turn the ship about and after performing many praiseworthy feats put the enemy to flight and gave close chase to neotolomus from thence he joined cella at the chersonesis where he was about to cross the strait into asia he rendered his passage safe and assisted in transporting his troops after peace had been made mithridati sailed away into the yukseen and cella laid a contribution of twenty thousand talents upon asia lucullus was commissioned to collect the money and recoin it and the cities of asia felt it to be no slight assaugements of solid severity when lucullus showed himself not only honest and just but even mild in the performance of a task so oppressive and disagreeable the middle anayans too who had revolted outright he wished to be reasonable and to submit to a moderate penalty for having espoused the cause of marias but when he saw that they were possessed by an evil spirit he sailed against them conquered them in battle and shut them up within their walls after instituting a siege of their city he sailed away in open day to elia but returned by stealth and lay quietly in ambush near the city when the middle anayans sailed forth in disorder and with the competent expectation of plundering his deserted camp he fell upon them took a great number of them alive and slew five hundred of those who offered resistance he also carried off six thousand slaves besides countless other booty but in the boundless and manifold evils which sulla and marias were bringing upon the people of italy at that time he had no share whatever for as some kindly fortune would have it he was detained at his business in asia however sulla accorded no less favor to lucullus than to his other friends his memoirs as i have said sulla dedicated to lucullus in token of affection and in his will appointed him guardian of his son thereby passing pompy by and this seems to have been the first ground for estrangement and jealousy between these two men both were young and burning for distinction shortly after the death of sulla lucullus was made consul along with marcus kata about the 176th olympiad many were now trying to stir up anew the mythrodatic war which marcus said had not come to an end but merely to a pause therefore when the province of sasal pin gall was allotted to lucullus he was displeased since it offered no opportunity for great exploits but what most of all embittered him was the reputation which pompy was winning in spain if the war in spain should happen to come to an end pompy was more likely than anyone else to be at once chosen general against mythrodates therefore when pompy wrote home requesting money and declaring that if they did not send it he would abandon spain and sartorius and bring his forces back to italy lucullus moved heaven and earth to have the money sent and to prevent pompy from coming back on any pretext whatsoever while he was consul he knew that all roam would be in pompy's hands if he were there was so large an army for the man who at that time controlled the course of political affairs by virtue of doing and saying everything to court the favor of the people cathagus hated lucullus who loathed his manner of life full as it was of disgraceful amours and wanton trespasses against this man lucullus waged open war but lucius quintus another popular leader who opposed the institutions of sella and sought to confound the established order of things he turned from his purpose by much private remonstrance and public admonition and delayed his ambition thus treating in his wise and wholesome a manner as was possible the beginnings of a great distemper at this time there came tidings of the death of octavius the governor of celicia there were many eager applicants for the province and they paid court to cathagus as the man best able to further their designs of celicia itself lucullus made little account but in the belief that if he should get this province which was near capedosia no one else would be sent to conduct the war against mithridates he strained every nerve to keep the province from being assigned to another and finally contrary to his natural bent he was driven by the necessities of the case to adopt a course which was neither dignified nor praiseworthy it is true but conducive to his end there was a certain woman then in rome precia by name whose fame for beauty and wit filled the city in other respects she was no wit better than an ordinary courtesan but she used her associates and companions to further the political ambitions of her friends and so added to her other charms the reputation of being a true comrade and one who could bring things to pass she thus acquired the greatest influence and when cathagus also then at the zenith of his fame and in control of the city joined her train and became her lover political power passed entirely into her hands no public measure passed unless cathagus favored it and cathagus did nothing except with precia's approval this woman then lucullus won over by gifts and flatteries and it was doubtless a great boon for a woman so forward and ostentatious to be seen sharing the ambitions of lucullus straightway he had cathagus singing his praises and suing for salicia and his behalf but as soon as he had obtained this province there was no further need of his soliciting the aid of precia or of cathagus for that matter but all were unanimous and prompt in putting into his hands the mythodactic war assured him that no one else could bring it to a triumphant close pompy was still engaged in his war with sartorius mentalists had now retired from active service by reason of his age and these were the only men who could be regarded as rivals of lucullus in any dispute about this command kata however his colleague in the council ship after fervent entreaties to the senate was sent with some ships to guard the propontus and to protect bithnia with a legion which he had raised himself in italy lucullus crossed into asia and there assumed command of the rest of the roman forces all these had long been spoiled by habits of luxury and greed and the fimbrians as they were called had become unmanageable through long lack of discipline these were the men who in collusion with fimbrias has slain flockus their consul and general had delivered fimbrias himself over to sulla they were self-willed and lawless but good fighters hearty and experienced in war however in a short time lucullus pruned off their insolent boldness and reformed the rest then for the first time as it would seem they made the acquaintance of a genuine commander and leader whereas before this they had always been cajoled into doing their duty like crowds at the hostings on the enemy's side matters stood as follows mithridates boastful and pompous at the outset like most of the sophists had first opposed the romans with forces which were really unsubstantial though brilliant in ostentations to look upon with these he had made a ridiculous fiasco and learned a salutary lesson when therefore he thought to go to war the second time he organized his forces into a genuinely effective armament he did away with barbarous hordes from every climb and all their discordant and threatening cries he provided no more armor in laid with gold and set with precious stones for he saw that these made a rich booty for the victors but gave no strength whatever to their wearers instead he had swords forged in the roman fashion and heavy shields welded he collected horses that were well trained rather than richly comparisonned and a hundred and twenty thousand footmen drilled in the roman phalanx formation and sixteen thousand horsemen not counting the sith bearing four horse chariots which were a hundred in number and further he put in readiness ships which were not tricked out with gilded canopies or baths for concubines and luxurious apartments for women but which were rather loaded down with armor and missiles and munitions of war then he burst into bithnia and not only did the cities there receive him again with gladness but all asia suffered a relapse into its former distempered condition afflicted as it was past bearing by roman moneylenders and tax gatherers these were afterwards driven off by lucullus harpies that they were snatching the people's food but then he merely tried by admonishing them to make them more moderate in their demands and labor to stop the uprisings of the towns hardly one of which was in a quiet state while lucullus was thus occupied kata thinking that his own golden opportunity had come was getting ready to give battle to mithridates and when tidings came for many sources that lucullus was coming up and was already encamped in fyrgia thinking that a triumph was all but in his grasp and desiring that lucullus have no share in it he hastened to engage the king but he was defeated by sea and land lost sixty vessels cruise and all and four thousand foot soldiers while he himself was shut up in calcedon and besieged there looking for relief at the hands of lucullus now there were some who urged lucullus to ignore kata and march on into the kingdom of mithridates assured of capturing it in its defenseless condition this was the reasoning of the soldiers especially who were indignant that kata by his evil councils should not only be the undoing of himself in his army but also block their way to a victory which they could have won without a battle but lucullus in a harangue which he made them said that he would rather save one roman from the enemy than take all the enemy's possessions and when arcalaeus who had held command for mithridates in boce and then had abandoned his cause and was now in the roman army stoutly maintained that if lucullus were once seen in pontus he would master everything at once lucullus declared that he was at least as courageous as the hunter he would not give the wild beast the slip and stock their empty layers with these words he led his army against mithridates having 30 000 foot soldiers and 2500 horsemen but when he had come with inside of the enemy and had seen with amazement their multitude he desired to refrain from battle and dry out the time but marius whom sartorius had sent to mithridates from spain with an army came out to meet him and challenged him to combat and so he put his forces in array to fight the issue out but presently as they were on the point of joining in battle with no apparent change of weather but all on a sudden the sky burst asunder and a huge flame like body was seen to fall between the two armies in shape it was most like a wine jar and in color like molten silver both sides were astonished at the side and separated this marvel as they say occurred in fergia at a place called atrie but lucullus feeling sure that no human provision or wealth could maintain for any length of time and in the face of an enemy so many thousands of men as mithridates had ordered one of the captives to be brought to him and asked him first how many men shared his mess and then how much food he had left in his tent when the man answered these questions he ordered him to be removed and questioned a second and a third in like manner then comparing the amount of food provided with the number of men to be fed he concluded that within three or four days the enemy's provisions would fail them all the more therefore did he trust a time and collected into his camp a great abundance of provisions that so himself in the midst of plenty he might watch for his enemies to stress end of lucullus part one