Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
them, the whole body turned to fly towards the hills. There were one
thousand of them slain; there died, also, of the Thebans three
hundred, who were killed with their enemies, while chasing them into
craggy and difficult places. These had been under suspicion of
favoring the Lacedaemonians, and in their eagerness to clear
themselves in the eyes of their fellow-citizens, exposed themselves
in the pursuit, and so met their death. News of the disaster reached
Pausanias as he was on the way from Plataea to Thespiae, and having
set his army in order he came to Haliartus; Thrasybulus, also, came
from Thebes, leading the Athenians.
Pausanias proposing to request the bodies of the dead under truce,
the elders of the Spartans took it ill, and were angry among
themselves, and coming to the king, declared that Lysander should not
be taken away upon any conditions; if they fought it out by arms
about his body, and conquered, then they might bury him; if they were
overcome, it was glorious to die upon the spot with their commander.
When the elders had spoken these things, Pausanias saw it would be a
difficult business to vanquish the Thebans, who had but just been
conquerors; that Lysander's body also lay near the walls, so that it
would be hard for them, though they overcame, to take it away without
a truce; he therefore sent a herald, obtained a truce, and withdrew
his forces, and carrying away the body of Lysander, they buried it in
the first friendly soil they reached on crossing the Boeotian
frontier, in the country of the Panopaeans; where the monument still
stands as you go on the road from Delphi to Chaeronea. Now the army
quartering there, it is said that a person of Phocis, relating the
battle to one who was not in it, said, the enemies fell upon them
just after Lysander had passed over the Hoplites; surprised at which
a Spartan, a friend of Lysander, asked what Hoplites he meant, for he
did not know the name. "It was there," answered the Phocian, "that
the enemy killed the first of us; the rivulet by the city is called
Hoplites." On hearing which the Spartan shed tears and observed, how
impossible it is for any man to avoid his appointed lot; Lysander, it
appears, having received an oracle, as follows: --
Sounding Hoplites see thou bear in mind,
And the earthborn dragon following behind.
Some, however, say that Hoplites does not run by Haliartus, but is a
watercourse near Coronea, falling into the river Philarus, not far
from the town in former times called Hoplias, and now Isomantus.
The man of Haliartus who killed Lysander, by name Neochorus, bore on
his shield the device of a dragon; and this, it was supposed, the
oracle signified. It is said, also, that at the time of the
Peloponnesian war, the Thebans received an oracle from the sanctuary
of Ismenus, referring at once to the battle at Delium, and to this
which thirty years after took place at Haliartus. It ran thus: --
Hunting the wolf, observe the utmost bound,
And the hill Orchalides where foxes most are found.
By the words, "the utmost bound," Delium being intended, where
Boeotia touches Attica, and by Orchalides, the hill now called
Alopecus, which lies in the parts of Haliartus towards Helicon.
But such a death befalling Lysander, the Spartans took it so
grievously at the time, that they put the king to a trial for his
life, which he not daring to await, fled to Tegea, and there lived
out his life in the sanctuary of Minerva. The poverty also of
Lysander being discovered by his death, made his merit more manifest,
since from so much wealth and power, from all the homage of the
cities, and of the Persian kingdom, he had not in the least degree,
so far as money goes, sought any private aggrandizement, as
Theopompus in his history relates, whom anyone may rather give
credit to when he commends, than when he finds fault, as it is more
agreeable to him to blame than to praise. But subsequently, Ephorus
says, some controversy arising among the allies at Sparta, which made
it necessary to consult the writings which Lysander had kept by him,
Agesilaus came to his house, and finding the book in which the
oration on the Spartan constitution was written at length, to the
effect that the kingdom ought to be taken from the Eurypontidae and
Agiadae, and to be offered in common, and a choice made out of the
best citizens, at first he was eager to make it public, and to show
his countrymen the real character of Lysander. But Lacratidas, a
wise man, and at that time chief of the Ephors, hindered Agesilaus,
and said, they ought not to dig up Lysander again, but rather to bury
with him a discourse, composed so plausibly and subtlety. Other
honors, also, were paid him after his death; and amongst these they
imposed a fine upon those who had engaged themselves to marry his
daughters, and then when Lysander was found to be poor, after his
decease, refused them; because when they thought him rich they had
been observant of him, but now his poverty had proved him just and
good, they forsook him. For there was, it seems, in Sparta, a
punishment for not marrying, for a late, and for a bad marriage; and
to the last penalty those were most especially liable, who sought
alliances with the rich instead of with the good and with their
friends. Such is the account we have found given of Lysander.
SYLLA
Lucius Cornelius Sylla was descended of a patrician or noble family.
Of his ancestors, Rufinus, it is said, had been consul, and incurred
a disgrace more signal than his distinction. For being found
possessed of more than ten pounds of silver plate, contrary to the
law, he was for this reason put out of the senate. His posterity
continued ever after in obscurity, nor had Sylla himself any opulent
parentage. In his younger days he lived in hired lodgings, at a low
rate, which in after-times was adduced against him as proof that he
had been fortunate above his quality. When he was boasting and
magnifying himself for his exploits in Libya, a person of noble
station made answer, "And how can you be an honest man, who, since
the death of a father who left you nothing, have become so rich?"
The time in which he lived was no longer an age of pure and upright
manners, but had already declined, and yielded to the appetite for
riches and luxury; yet still, in the general opinion, they who
deserted the hereditary poverty of their family, were as much blamed
as those who had run out a fair patrimonial estate. And afterwards,
when he had seized the power into his hands, and was putting many to
death, a freedman suspected of having concealed one of the
proscribed, and for that reason sentenced to be thrown down the
Tarpeian rock, in a reproachful way recounted, how they had lived
long together under the same roof, himself for the upper rooms paying
two thousand sesterces, and Sylla for the lower three thousand; so
that the difference between their fortunes then was no more than one
thousand sesterces, equivalent in Attic coin to two hundred and fifty
drachmas. And thus much of his early fortune.
His general personal appearance may be known by his statues; only his
blue eyes, of themselves extremely keen and glaring, were rendered
all the more forbidding and terrible by the complexion of his face,
in which white was mixed with rough blotches of fiery red. Hence, it
is said, he was surnamed Sylla, and in allusion to it one of the
scurrilous jesters at Athens made the verse upon him,
Sylla is a mulberry sprinkled o'er with meal.
Nor is it out of place to make use of marks of character like these,
in the case of one who was by nature so addicted to raillery, that in
his youthful obscurer years he would converse freely with players and
professed jesters, and join them in all their low pleasures. And
when supreme master of all, he was often wont to muster together the
most impudent players and stage-followers of the town, and to drink
and bandy jests with them without regard to his age or the dignity of
his place, and to the prejudice of important affairs that required
his attention. When he was once at table, it was not in Sylla's
nature to admit of anything that was serious, and whereas at other
times he was a man of business, and austere of countenance, he
underwent all of a sudden, at his first entrance upon wine and
good-fellowship, a total revolution, and was gentle and tractable
with common singers and dancers, and ready to oblige anyone that
spoke with him. It seems to have been a sort of diseased result of
this laxity, that he was so prone to amorous pleasures, and yielded
without resistance to any temptations of voluptuousness, from which
even ill his old age he could not refrain. He had a long attachment
for Metrobius, a player. In his first amours it happened, that he
made court to a common but rich lady, Nicopolis by name, and, what by
the air of his youth, and what by long intimacy, won so far on her
affections, that she rather than he was the lover, and at her death
she bequeathed him her whole property. He likewise inherited the
estate of a step-mother who loved him as her own son. By these means
he had pretty well advanced his fortunes.
He was chosen quaestor to Marius in his first consulship, and set
sail with him for Libya, to war upon Jugurtha. Here, in general, he
gained approbation; and more especially, by closing in dexterously
with an accidental occasion, made a friend of Bocchus, king of
Numidia. He hospitably entertained the king's ambassadors, on their
escape from some Numidian robbers, and after showing them much
kindness, sent them on their journey with presents, and an escort to
protect them. Bocchus had long hated and dreaded his son-in-law,
Jugurtha, who had now been worsted in the field and had fled to him
for shelter; and it so happened, he was at this time entertaining a
design to betray him. He accordingly invited Sylla to come to him,
wishing the seizure and surrender of Jugurtha to be effected rather
through him, than directly by himself. Sylla, when he had
communicated the business to Marius, and received from him a small
detachment, voluntarily put himself into this imminent danger; and
confiding in a barbarian, who had been unfaithful to his own
relations, to apprehend another man's person, made surrender of his
own. Bocchus, having both of them now in his power, was necessitated
to betray one or other, and after long debate with himself, at last
resolved on his first design, and gave up Jugurtha into the hands of
Sylla.
For this Marius triumphed, but the glory of the enterprise, which
through people's envy of Marius was ascribed to Sylla, secretly
grieved him. And the truth is, Sylla himself was by nature
vainglorious, and this being the first time that from a low and
private condition he had risen to esteem amongst the citizens and
tasted of honor, his appetite for distinction carried him to such a
pitch of ostentation, that he had a representation of this action
engraved on a signet ring; which he carried about with him, and made
use of ever after. The impress was, Bocchus delivering, and Sylla
receiving, Jugurtha. This touched Marius to the quick; however,
judging Sylla to be beneath his rivalry, he made use of him as
lieutenant, in his second consulship, and in his third, as tribune;
and many considerable services were effected by his means. When
acting as lieutenant he took Copillus, chief of the Tectosages,
prisoner, and compelled the Marsians, a great and populous nation,
to become friends and confederates of the Romans.
Henceforward, however, Sylla perceiving that Marius bore a jealous
eye over him, and would no longer afford him opportunities of action,
but rather opposed his advance, attached himself to Catulus, Marius's